Winter Wood (2 page)

Midge turned away and watched George's float for a while. She had found, lately, that she didn't want to think about Howard's Hill very much.

‘So how old do you think he is?'

‘Who – Old Whitey? Well, Dad says he used to come here and fish for him when he was young. Before he was married to Mum, anyway. He reckons pike can live up to twenty-five years, maybe even more. Somebody down at the pub saw him not long ago, Dad said – Old Whitey. Big as a pig, almost.'

‘Hm.' Midge was unconvinced. It sounded like yet another of Uncle Brian's little stories. ‘What would you do if you caught it, anyway?'

George laughed. ‘Run a mile probably.'

Midge picked at a bit of moss that was growing out of a crack in the ancient planks, and flicked it into the water below. It disappeared into the tumbling foam, lost for ever.

‘School next week,' she said.

‘Yeah. Hey – stop throwing stuff in the water. You'll scare the fish away.'

‘Sorry. Can I have a go? With the rod?'

‘OK.' George sighed, but handed the rod to her. He was nice like that, always willing to share whatever he had. ‘You don't have to do anything,' he said. ‘Just keep an eye on the float.'

‘But what if it goes under?' said Midge.

‘Give me back the rod, quick. It'd be just my luck for you to catch him, after all the work I've put in.'

‘Can I wind the windy thing?'

‘The reel. Go on then, just a bit. No . . . the other way. That's right. Whoa . . . that's enough.'

They sat together for a while and said nothing. Midge found her attention straying from the orangey tip of the float. She glanced towards the bramble bushes that tumbled along the far bank. There was something creepy about this place, she decided. Not just the dark waters of the weir, but a feeling that everything around her was drawing a little closer, edging up on her as evening fell. Something watching, and waiting . . .

She was glad when George said, ‘I'm bored now.
And
I'm getting cold. Come on, you can wind the reel in if you like, and we'll go back. Just give it a quick tug to make sure there's nothing there.'

‘Like this?' Midge swished the rod up into the air, and the float leaped straight out of the water. It dangled and bounced about wildly before wrapping itself around the end of the rod a couple of times.

‘Hey – look out!' George ducked away from
her. ‘You've got it all tangled up now. Give it here.'

‘No, I can do it.' Midge pointed the rod downwards, gave it a little shake, and the float freed itself, tumbling down into the water once more. She began to turn the handle of the reel and wound in the line until the float had almost reached the tip of the rod. Then she handed the whole lot back to George.

‘Is it OK?'

‘Yeah, it's fine.' George was frowning, but not in an angry way. He looked puzzled.

‘Where's the thingy?' said Midge. ‘The bait? Isn't there supposed to be something on there for the fish to eat?'

‘Yes,' said George, ‘there is.' He grabbed at the dancing piece of line and examined it. ‘There's supposed to be a blimmin' hook there, as well.'

‘Maybe you didn't tie it on right.'

But there were no kinks in the end of the nylon line, as might have been expected if the knot had simply come undone. It was as clean and straight as if it had been cut by a pair of scissors.

‘Nothing wrong with my knots,' George said.

‘So what's happened to it then?'

‘Dunno.' George flicked his hair out of his eyes, and began to dismantle the rod.

It was a good twenty minutes' walk across the squelchy fields to Mill Farm, and in that time the sun had begun to sink behind the looming bulk of Howard's Hill, turning the winter skies above it to orangey pink. There was a lonely feel to the darkening landscape, a
sadness at the dying of the day. It had been warm for the time of year, but now Midge felt shivery, and she zipped the collar of her fleece a little closer to her chin.

‘Do
you
ever think about it much?' she said.

George didn't reply for a while, but eventually he said, ‘No. Not really. Try not to, anyway,' and Midge knew that he'd understood her question. The events of last summer had been so overwhelming that at first they could talk of nothing else, but after a while the memory began to fade, as though none of it had ever truly happened. It was like some weird dream, scary-weird, a dream that you didn't want to remember. And it was easy to forget, what with having so many other things to think about – the move down from London, a new school to cope with, and all the disruption of converting Mill Farm into something different. Something less wonderful than it had been, Midge felt.

She didn't like what was happening, and she wasn't as blissfully happy as she'd imagined she would be. It had seemed such a great idea at the time – moving to the dilapidated old farmhouse with her mum, dividing the property with Uncle Brian, her mum's brother, and turning it into something new and exciting. But it wasn't exciting, it was just a mess. They'd ripped the roofs off the old stables and the cider barn, knocked walls down in the house and changed the shape of the rooms, put in new staircases and smart kitchen units, tarmacked the cobbled yard. Nothing was the same any more. And her mum seemed even more distracted
and stressed than when she'd been a musician. She was like a whirlwind, on the go from morning till night, haranguing the builders, nagging at Uncle Brian over this detail or that. It made Midge tired to think about it. Sometimes she wished that they'd just stayed in London.

Trudge trudge trudge. The two of them walked in single file along a rough track between a hedge and the bank of one of the open ditches – or rhynes – that criss-crossed the Somerset wetlands. The track was narrow and the hedge overgrown, so that they occasionally had to duck beneath the branches of the stunted willows that grew along the bank of the rhyne. Not so far to go now. Midge followed automatically in George's footsteps, the clump of her Wellington boots keeping in time with his. And it was no good – there was a stone in one of those boots, niggling at her. She lifted her leg and pulled off the boot, hopping about and trying not to put her foot on the muddy ground. ‘Hang on, George . . .' Midge turned the boot upside down, shook it, and then stooped to pull it back on again. George had either not heard her or taken no notice. He was still walking ahead. Midge struggled with the boot, stumbling forward and almost overbalancing. As she did so, she heard a kind of whizzing sound and a
thunk
in the hedge beside her. She peered at the hedge, but could see nothing unusual – just leaves and twigs, a couple of feathers. Weird. It hadn't sounded like an animal, quite. A little surge of panic ran through her. ‘George . . . wait for me!'

George turned round, and looked surprised. ‘Huh?'

Midge ran to catch him up. ‘It's OK,' she said. ‘Stone in my boot, that's all.' But she couldn't help glancing over her shoulder.

‘Oh, right. Sorry.'

They walked on in silence. Midge looked up again at the shadowy mound of Howard's Hill and at the jumbled barrier of trees and briars that kept the outside world at bay. They guarded another world within, those thick and thorny brambles, and other existences, secrets beyond all imagining. People lived up there – tribes of little people, wild and extraordinary.

The Various.

But although Midge had met them, and knew their names and could still picture their faces, she could no longer make any of it real somehow. It was too much to carry, too much to cope with. She knew that her cousins felt the same. George had seen the little people, and Katie too – and their lives had been put in real danger – but they seldom spoke about it any more. That terrifying day when Scurl and his archers had actually mounted an attack upon Mill Farm should have been impossible to forget, and yet it was becoming more and more difficult to put the sequence of events into any order.

Why was that? thought Midge. Finding Henty and Little-Marten in the cider barn . . . burying Tojo in the lagoon . . . hiding in terror on top of the wardrobe – all of these things she remembered as though they had happened to someone else. Katie with the water cannon. Scurl's wretched crew being hauled out of the muck under Maglin's stern and unforgiving eye. And
Pegs . . . the amazing and wonderful little winged horse . . . whose voice spoke to her in soft bursts of colour. She could never forget him, how she had found him, and made him well again, and carried him back to the forest. But it had all become such a blur, such a confusion of vague images, like a film once watched a very long time ago.

Celandine's cup – that was definitely real, thought Midge. It stood on her bedside table. Sometimes she picked it up and looked at it, studying the figures that were engraved upon it, the little people, with Celandine herself standing tall amongst them, and all of them open-mouthed, singing, singing. The cup had been a gift from Henty, but it was a struggle to say when that had been exactly. Was it before or after the day of the battle? Midge couldn't remember. Perhaps she didn't want to remember. Perhaps she didn't want to remember because whenever she tried to do so another thought would take over – the thought that came to her in the darkness sometimes, and made her reach out to touch her mother's bed for reassurance. There was more to come. There was more for her to do. It wasn't over yet . . .

George had stopped to open the gate to the old paddock – the Field of Thistles, as Midge liked to call it. He turned to wait for her, smiling as he pushed his fair hair out of his eyes.

‘You OK?'

‘Yeah.'

Together they walked down the gently sloping patch of ground towards Mill Farm. A couple of the
downstairs lights had already come on, and everything was quiet and peaceful. It looked as though the builders might have knocked off early for a change.

After tea her mum said, ‘Come upstairs, Midge. I've got a surprise for you.'

Midge thought that she could guess what it was. She followed Mum up to the landing, and from there towards the door of her old bedroom.

‘Ta-da!' Her mum gave the freshly painted door a push, and flicked on the light switch. ‘I
made
them finish it today,' she said. ‘I told them – “No more excuses. Just get it done.” What do you think, though? Isn't it great?'

Midge stepped into the room and looked about her. She wouldn't have recognized it. The heavy swagged curtains, the frilly lampshades and the chintzy matching valances had all gone. Now there was beechwood, and chrome, and a blue bedside lamp that shone softly against the clean white walls and made a starry pattern on the ceiling. A plain blue coverlet on her bed . . . stripped and polished floorboards . . . a creamy sheepskin rug. It was gorgeous – a picture from a catalogue. In fact it looked just like the catalogue that she and her mum had chosen all these things from. Everything new, and perfect. And different . . .

‘Oh, it's lovely,' she said. ‘Really lovely. Thanks, Mum.'

‘Well, you deserve it.' Her mum kissed the top of her head – something Midge actually found quite
annoying. ‘And I'm sorry that it's taken so long. I'm afraid that everything
does
seem to be taking a bit longer than we'd hoped. Anyway, now you can move in properly. Go and get your clothes and things out of my room and start putting them away. I brought that little silver bowl of yours in and put it on the desk, next to your laptop, but I've left everything else for you to sort out. It's a very
nice
little bowl, by the way. Where did you get it?'

Midge looked across at Celandine's cup, sitting prettily on her new desk.

‘Oh . . . it was a present,' she said, deliberately vague. ‘A friend gave it to me.'

‘Really? Who was that – Azzie? It must have cost her parents a fortune. Well, they could afford it, I suppose. Um . . . towels. I knew there was something else. I'd better find you some.'

Midge remained in the centre of the room for a few moments after Mum had gone, trying to take it all in. She had so loved it here when she had first come to stay – loved the silly fussiness of it, the daft curtains and the pointless frills. And now it was different and new and modern like everything else. She knew she should be grateful, and she was, but she wished that
something
could just stay the same.

The sheepskin rug didn't appear to be the kind of rug that wanted to be stepped on, at least not by someone wearing shabby trainers. Midge walked around it and sat on her bed, jiggled up and down on it a couple of times to test the mattress. She looked at Celandine's cup, brilliant in the gentle blue light that shone onto
the desk that would also serve as her bedside table. Silver, her mum had said. Silver? How could that be? Midge reached out for the cup – and immediately fumbled it, almost dropped it in fright. There! It had happened again, just like before . . . a snatch of song . . . a chorus of many voices raised in harmony. The little people singing. On and off like a radio . . . just a brief burst of sound inside her head, no time to catch any of the words.

A funny feeling spread about Midge's shoulders, and she turned round. The big old photograph was on the wall behind her. They'd put it in her room, just as she had asked them to. It was beside the new wardrobe, hidden from her view until now. The glass had been cleaned, and the lacquered frame was shiny black, polished. Celandine. That extraordinary-looking girl, gazing down upon her. The decades of kitchen grime and grease had been washed away, and now every detail of the photograph was clear and focused – the pale face, the wicker box, the sombre grandmother clock in the background. Twenty-five past ten. And the hands . . . the hands that held the little bridle. Midge could somehow feel the texture of that bridle, how the leather was smoother on one side than the other. She could hear the faint jingling sound that the three little bells made, and the deep hollow tick of the clock in the background. She knew how chilly the air had been in that little parlour, long ago, when that photograph had been taken, and how tight and uncomfortable that dress. Somehow she just knew. It was almost as though she had been there
herself. Such a strange sensation, but she wasn't afraid. There was no need.