The Silent Forest Read online

  As are my best Sunday clothes.

  My whole body shakes, throbs, burns.

  Emmy and Jack are gone. That much I can be sure of.

  But what can I do about it now?

  I’ll sit here all night under this bridge while the battle rages on and on.

  That might work.

  I have to try, at least.

  The combined noise of guns, planes and detonating explosive is utterly deafening. That’s when something hits the river not too far from where I’m kneeling. I have no idea what’s happening. The water erupts in a spectacular fountain as I tumble head over heels backwards. Coming straight at me is a wall of roiling liquid. I have to hang on to the bridge’s pier to stop myself being taken – I have to cling for dear life to an iron boat ring on the wall in the tsunami.

  Soaked, choked and profoundly shaken, I somehow resurface for air.

  That bomb was meant for me, but it missed.

  That has to count for something.

  SIX

  The outside of the elaborately named Church of St Mary, St Peter and St Paul in Westbury- on-Severn had seen better days, all right. Sizeable sections of render peeled like scabs to expose rough stone patches beneath ochre-coloured walls that struck Jo as positively rusty. The heavy oak door creaked horribly on its black hinges despite her best efforts.

  She was here to pay her respects like any other mourner but behaved more like a thief. That’s because she felt like one. This wasn’t going to be easy. She had to slink in the back without being noticed. A coward was what she was. Perhaps one day she would be able to mourn other people in a way they deserved. First, though, she would have to quell the rage in her heart.

  Exuberant singing reached her ears from the nave’s somewhat gloomy interior. By the sound of it, relatives and friends of Sarah Smith had all come together to give her a good send-off in her home town.

  She unfortunately had not. Thanks to her troublesome Brough Superior Combination motorcycle she was horribly late – she’d been obliged to use her Automobile Association key to unlock a phone box at the side of the road to summon help. The problem was dirty petrol blocking the carburettor, since clean fuel was increasingly hard to come by. Next time, she’d know how to fix it herself, though – she’d make damned sure she had the right tools.

  She peeled off her leather cap and goggles with relief. Walking into a church dressed in her heavy oilskin coat and leggings was hardly appropriate, she feared, feeling somewhat mortified. She felt like a seal.

  Actually she was just being diplomatic.

  ‘Did you just go wee on that wall, Bella?’

  Bella lowered her tail.

  Might have for all she knew.

  ‘Remember, not a sound.’

  She bared a canine.

  ‘It’s a funeral. You got a problem with that?’

  Not me, whined Bella.

  Jo led the way across the uneven stone floor to rest six pink roses on the nearest pew. Up to one hundred mourners faced the chancel whose pretty arcades, each with seven bays, lined the aisle. Either it was her hangover or those very old, pointed limestone arches on the north side leaned decidedly outwards?

  Not only had she failed to see the arrival of the coffin, she had just missed all the eulogies. As the message of hope was read out prior to the time for reflection and remembering, she pictured Sarah’s bittersweet smile as they had sat on the cathedral roof scanning the night sky through their binoculars. It was too soon to call them memories because her friend was hardly yet gone, but some impressions flooded her mind. Her fellow fire watcher had very red, curly hair and freckles. She was always busy yet somehow inwardly calm – whenever she directed her large, aquamarine eyes at her, she did so with a laser look that brooked no nonsense.

  If she’d been allowed to speak in church today, she would have said how much Sarah had loved people.

  She’d say how lovingly she had nursed her terminally sick sister who had sickle-cell anaemia.

  She’d say how much she’d worried about a German invasion.

  She’d recall how she was equally happy going shopping with her in Gloucester on Saturdays or climbing Welsh mountains.

  Most importantly she treasured her raunchy laugh that was gone forever. She’d taken it for granted because she’d thought it immortal. She didn’t know what to believe now. That tall, thin, somewhat awkward woman who never hesitated to voice her opinions right or wrong lay cold in her coffin. She only hoped that someone had thought to dress her in those colourful, not to say dreadful, tops and trousers that she was always wearing.

  Was it possible to see into someone’s soul without truly knowing them? Sarah had struck her as unusually shy and nervous the last week she was alive, but she had put it down to the fact that, like her, she had just found out that she was several months pregnant.

  Now Sarah had been silenced. Perhaps she should have shown more interest, thought Jo? Been more curious? Asked her a question or two? Looked for that clue? Next moment she felt very sad that her friend had not chosen to confide in her more. Her eyes misted. There was a strange hole where her stomach should have been; her heart fluttered and her breathing quickened. An uncontrollable tremor took hold in her bottom lip. Both eyelids did the same. The power of speech deserted her. All she knew was, the sooner this was over the better.

  Her thoughts went back to the Bible reading that echoed along the nave: ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill…’

  In a matter of moments, it seemed, she was staring at the grey-faced pallbearers who bore the coffin down the aisle. The graveyard being a ‘closed’ one, everybody began to proceed along the lengthy stone path that led away from the church. She could do no better than join the last mourners to exit the building?

  She was all set to walk down the lane to the new burial ground that lay behind the village school when Bella barked.

  ‘Be quiet, damn you.’

  But Bella uttered a more urgent growl that commanded her attention. A little boy was peering round the corner of the unusual church tower that stood all by itself in one half of the graveyard. He was eyeing the funeral procession very keenly from his careful vantage point.

  ‘The devil!’ said Jo, rather too loudly and gazed again at the tall stone structure-cum-watchtower overlooking the curve in the river. ‘Sam? Is that you?’

  Not who she was expecting to see today.

  In her confusion she missed her chance to place her flowers on the coffin before it left for the lane.

  At first she thought their spy must have entered the ancient tower itself, but the door proved firmly locked for repairs. Instead, she trod several cedar shingles that had shed their copper nails and tumbled from the fragile 160-foot high timber spire.

  Suddenly Sam broke cover. Jo saw him race down the path that wound its way past ancient, ivy-clad table tombs in the graveyard.

  ‘Damn the brat,’ she thought and followed.

  She saw him double back to the mourners, then leave another way.

  Should she not simply return to her motorcycle?

  What was she to this silly child anyway?

  That’s assuming she was the one being spied upon?

  Perhaps she was wrong.

  How should she know?

  It was the cathedral all over again.

  Suddenly she lost patience.

  ‘Bella. Come here. We’re going home.’

  But Bella had already exited through a wrought-iron gate in the middle of a hedge at the back of more tombs. Jo dived after her. To her surprise, she at once found herself standing before the entrance to a very large house that looked all shut up for the winter.

  A green Riley 9 Lynx Tourer was parked in the driveway.

  Not for the first time she sensed that Sam might be leading her on. The spy wriggled past wrought i
ron gates, then set off across the extensive grounds of an unusual Dutch-style garden. She did the same. A two-storey red-brick tower afforded her an elevated view of a very long channel of water, but nowhere among all the very neat rows of yew and holly topiary that were cut into pyramids and balls could she see her quarry.

  It didn’t add up.

  Should she worry? Could be no one. But now she felt obliged to descend the pavilion’s steep steps, then walk the length of the ornamental canal as a duck waddled her way. Greedy fish surfaced from deep water and tried to catch her attention.

  Which was when she saw Sam dart towards a small, brick summerhouse that overlooked a second T-shaped canal and its mass of glittering ripples.

  ‘Wait!’ cried Jo. ‘What the devil do you mean by creeping around the churchyard like that?’

  Beyond the summerhouse lay a small walled garden of bedraggled and otherwise dying cottage plants. From there she entered an old-fashioned orchard. She had just ducked the low hanging branches of several pear and cherry trees when she heard the sound of urgent voices. A willowy blonde leaned off a small bridge above a fast-flowing stream lost in shadow. Sam stood beside her, talking rapidly in whispers.

  Jo’s astonishment was not lost on Bella who flattened her ears, bared her teeth and all but snarled. The scent of the woman’s eau de toilette with its hint of perfumed verbena drifted into her nostrils.

  ‘Forgive me. I don’t mean to trespass, only I met Sam just now and….’

  The water gazer gave a start. Her square look, knee-length winter coat with its mix of green, black and maroon herring-bone tweed was immaculate. On her head she wore a multi-coloured propaganda scarf with ‘Save to Make Bombers’ sewn into it in patches. Round her neck hung a green Coronet Midget camera. All the same, Jo was astounded by the bloodless, very white colour of her face – there was something so blanched and unnatural about it that she might have lived her whole life in perpetual gloom. Yet, to dismiss her as ill or worse, anorexic, was not to diagnose but to misunderstand her, so poised was she in her calf skin court shoes with their rounded toes and solid heels. She cuddled her pet dog very closely.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not the owner. This house belongs to the Colchester family, but they are hardly ever here because they own another, grander home elsewhere in the Forest. They have been reviving the water gardens, however, and said I simply must photograph them. Aren’t they lovely, even in winter? Photography’s rather my thing, you see.’

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude.’

  ‘Sam tells me you’re the chief Fire Guard at Gloucester Cathedral. You’re Mrs Jo Wheeler?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On who you are.’

  ‘I’m Freya. I’m Sam’s mother.’

  ‘You are? Then I’m pleased to meet you.’

  ‘He says you were very kind to him.’

  ‘Not really. He was lighting every damned candle in the cathedral and I was sent to investigate.’

  ‘That your miniature bullterrier?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Bella. She rode here with me today in my motorcycle sidecar. We’ve been firm friends for a while now, ever since I found her wandering about with her coat half burned off during the Blitz on Bristol.’

  ‘Where are her owners?’

  ‘Dead, I would imagine.’

  ‘Something you didn’t see coming?’

  ‘Never considered myself a dog lover.’

  ‘But I can see you do now,’ said Freya. ‘You can tell a lot about a person from the pets they keep.’

  ‘And yours?’

  ‘Her name is Ruby. I’ve been told she’s descended from dogs once kept by the Aztecs.’

  Bella curled her lip. A dog might embarrass or otherwise let down its owner, but that was only because it had not been properly introduced. But this newcomer was well-versed in canine etiquette. She pulled off a glove and offered her bony fist for her to sniff, all the while clutching her bug-eyed, six-inch-high bundle in her other arm. It was a Chihuahua, all right. Yap. Yap. Yap. Hmm, how fitting.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jo. ‘Bella can be wary of strangers.’

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Wheeler….’

  ‘Please call me Jo.’

  ‘…. did you give my son an American chocolate bar?’

  ‘Well, all right then, I know a few GIs who have access to such things.’

  ‘Much obliged.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Sam’s not like most other boys. He doesn’t seem to need friends. Don’t get me wrong, he likes company but he doesn’t seek it out. He’s happiest on his own which can make things difficult at times. Other children won’t take the trouble to understand him. They either ignore or tease him. Did he mention it, at all?’

  ‘Never said a word.’

  ‘It’s like this. His fellow pupils at school try to push him around because they consider he gives off an air of defensive hostility, I suppose. I can’t say what it is. They take him on just to see what his reaction will be. They bait him like a stray dog. You’ve no idea. Some of the girls are the worst because they throw stones. They see him alone in the playground and have a go.’

  ‘OK, I didn’t know.’

  ‘But most children do that, don’t they? They have a pack mentality. There’s nothing they like more than to prove how tough they are by picking on some easy target who’s all on his own.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ said Jo, ‘I have his book of train numbers. I retrieved it in the cathedral just after he and I had our little chat. It was on the floor of the choir.’

  ‘Thank God, he’s been going crazy about that book. There’s never been anything like it before, you see – the publisher only just started compiling lists last year.’

  ‘I’ll make sure he gets it.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Soon as I can.’

  ‘His father thinks it shows he isn’t quite right in the head.’

  ‘And you? What do you think?’

  Suddenly Freya turned her face and her scarf slipped back on her hair to reveal a patch of white scalp above one ear. Either she had scratched her head bald at this point or a large tuft of hair had been torn out recently by its roots. The wound still looked red and sore in the middle. Whatever her accident, it had left her bruised.

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Wheeler – I mean Jo – he’s just Sam to me. Yes, he finds being around people awkward and is pre-occupied with very narrow interests, but he’s still my Sam. Always will be. Some people might want to call him unusually serious and focused, but that implies that he’s somehow deficient when all he is, really, is a bit different. Different can be good. And he’s not often so frustrated that he gets violent. We can all learn a lot from Sam. He’s very resilient. Which reminds me. Where is he? Sam! Oh dear, he’s prone to wander off at a whim.’

  ‘I last saw him over there with Bella under those black Poplar trees.’

  ‘I do hope he hasn’t walked down to the river.’

  ‘Let’s go find him.’

  ‘Please, that’s not necessary.’

  Freya hid her head in her scarf again. Dark circles round her sunken eyes had been artfully masked in part by make-up. Something about her pale green irises suggested another deeper shadow behind the gloss. Whatever she was giving, doing or sacrificing to talk to her like this came at a price, thought Jo, like someone long out of practice when it came to idle chit-chat.

  ‘At least let me walk with you for a while.’

  ‘Goodbye Jo.’

  ‘You’re right, I really should leave you to your photography. Sarah’s wake will be starting any minute.’

  ‘You knew her well?’

  ‘For the last two years we looked out for enemy planes flying over Gloucester Cathedral.’

  ‘She and I went to the same school together.’

  ‘Then you’re coming to the wake, too!�
�

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  More Freya would not explain. Yet here she was. That she was avoiding someone was suddenly obvious; it had to account for the blushing under the rouge on her cheeks. She didn’t believe all that nonsense about photographing the gardens. Evidently, she had come here to give vent to her feelings in private.

  Which she’d so carelessly interrupted, thought Jo.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  Yes, it really was.

  She envied her tears, though.

  To cry was not to fear emotion.

  Since the mention of Sarah, Freya was much troubled. It was as if they had just traded, thanks to Sam, some sort of secret. They paused to go their separate ways at a gnarled evergreen oak that looked so cracked and old, it could have been the world’s oldest.

  ‘Hurry up and send me my son’s book, Mrs Wheeler, if you can. I will, of course, refund the postage.’

  ‘Thank you. Please take my card. I’m in the middle of looking for new digs, but you can reach me via Gloucester Cathedral at any time.’

  ‘I’m about to move home, too. My current address is Drake’s House in Gatcombe. It’s just a few miles from here, by the river. Folklore has it that Sir Francis Drake once stayed there when it was still an inn, which is one reason I’ve always liked it.’

  ‘Had I known I’d meet you like this I would have brought Sam’s book with me.’

  But Freya was no longer listening. A fresh cloud crossed her face as she successfully recalled her son to her side. They hurried away past the canals and pyramidal yews where they somehow managed to look very lonely.

  ‘Drat!’ said Jo aloud, unable to forgive herself.

  She last caught sight of mother and son at the parterres by the pavilion, where Sam would have stopped to feed the lame duck had Freya not hurried him on.

  That strange picture that he had drawn her in the cathedral shook in her hand. Too late, she pulled it from her pocket.

  Either it was her imagination, or it had changed its beastly mien. She hesitated to say what it represented exactly, except to say that it reminded her of those fearsome creatures that were to be seen carved in medieval oak misericords of the choir stalls. Its ugly eyes had, in the last few days, grown more malign? As had its teeth.