The Wood Beyond

v

Peter Pascoe could have done without the funeral meats but felt he'd gone as far as he dared in disrupting his sister's arrangements. In fact it worked out rather well as under the influence of cups of tea and salmon sandwiches the wrinkly clones turned into amiable, intelligent individuals, several of them well below retirement age. Some even went out of their way to compliment him on his address, saying how pleased Ada would have been with the service and how much they'd like something like that when their turn came.

Myra clearly took all this in because when they'd waved the stragglers goodbye, she said, 'OK, so as usual you were right.'

He smiled at her but she wasn't ready for that yet, and turned back into the old cottage which had been Ada's home for fifty years.

'Only room for one in that kitchen,' she said. 'I'll do the washing up. You can carry on with your inventory.'

When she came back into the living room, he was manoeuvring an old mahogany secretaire through the doorway.

'You're taking that old thing then?'

'Yes. I thought I'd get it on the roof rack now so I can make a quick getaway in the morning. Don't worry. It's on the inventory. I'll get it valued and make sure it goes into the estate.'

'I didn't mean that … oh think what you will, you always did.'

She turned away, angry and hurt.

Oh shit, thought Pascoe. Whatever happened to old silver tongue?

He reached out and caught her arm and said, 'Sorry. I was talking like an executor. Maybe a bit like a cop too. Listen, you don't have to say anything but anything you do say will be taken down.'

She stared at him blankly and for a second he thought she'd forgotten the grubby little schoolboy joke he'd tried to embarrass her with all those years ago.

Then she smiled and said, 'Knickers,' and through the eggshell make-up he glimpsed the girl who'd been his closest ally in the long war of adolescence. OK, so her motivation had a lot to do with resentment that Sue, the eldest, could get away with shorter skirts, thicker lipstick, and later hours than herself. Whatever the reason, their closest moments within the family had been together.

'What about you?' he said. 'Isn't there anything you'd like?'

'Far too old-fashioned for our house,' she said firmly.

'Something small, as a memento,' Pascoe urged.

'No need for that. I'll remember,' she said.

There was something in her tone, not acerbic exactly, but certainly acetic. She'd never been anyone's favourite, Pascoe realized. Susan had been the apple of their parents' eye, would perhaps have been their only fruit if their chosen method of contraception had been more efficient. He himself had been Ada's favourite — or, as he sometimes felt, target. Driven by the loss of two men in her life (three if you counted the disappointment of her own son) she'd focused all her shaping care on her male grandchild, leaving poor Myra to find her own way.

It had led to marriage with Trevor, the kind of financial advisor who bores clients into submission; an ultra-modern executive villa in Coventry, a pair of ultra-neanderthal teenage sons in private education; and a resolve to show the world that what she'd got was exactly what she wanted.

So, no appetite-spoiling bitterness this, just a condiment sharpness.

Pascoe said, 'About the music …'

'It doesn't matter, Pete. I've said you were right.'

'No, I'd like to explain. Here, let me show you something.'

He opened the drawer of the secretaire, reached inside, pressed a knob of wood, and a second tiny drawer, concealed by the inlay pattern, came sliding out of the first.

'Neat, eh?' he said. 'I found it when I was ten. No gold sovereigns or anything. Just this.'

From the drawer he took a dog-eared sepia photograph of a soldier, seated rather stiffly with his body turned to display the single stripe on his sleeve. His face, looking directly into the camera, wore the solemn set expression demanded by old technique and convention, but there was the hint of a smile around the eyes as if he was feeling rather pleased with himself.

'Know who this is?'

'Well, he looks so like you when you're feeling cocky, it must be our great-grandfather.'

Pascoe couldn't see the resemblance but felt he'd probably earned the crack. He turned the picture over so she could see what was written on the back in black ink faded to grey.

First lance corporal from our draft! December 1914.

Then Pascoe tipped the photo so that it caught the light. There was more writing, this time in pencil long since been erased. But the writer had pressed so hard the indented words were still legible. Killed Wipers 1917.

'All those years and she couldn't bear to have it on display,' mused Pascoe.

'All those years and you never mentioned it,' accused Myra.

'I promised Gran,' he said. 'She caught me looking at it. She was furious at first, then she calmed down and made me promise not to say anything.'

'Another of your little secrets,' she said. 'The Pascoes must have more of them than MI5.'

'You're right,' he said, trying to keep things light. 'Anyway, that was when she told me her only recollection of her father was of him playing on their old piano. Her mother must've told her it was ragtime, I doubt if Ada could tell Scott Joplin from Janis Joplin. And that's what made me think of that tape.'

Myra took the photo from him and said, 'Poor sod. Can't have been more than twenty-two or — three. What was he in?'

'West York Fusiliers. That's how I found out about the Yorkshire connection.'

'She really hated uniforms, didn't she?' said Myra dropping the picture back in the drawer. 'I still remember how sarky she got when I joined the Brownies.'

'Think of how she must have felt with Dad playing soldiers in the TA once a week. Not to mention him turning out a Hang 'em and Flog 'em Tory.'

'Still voting for the revolution are you, Peter? Funny that, you being a cop. Now that was really the last straw for poor old Ada, wasn't it?'

She sounded as if the memory didn't altogether displease her.

'At least it got her and Dad on the same side for once,' said Pascoe, determined not to he lured back into a squabble. 'He told me he hadn't subsidized me through a university education to pound a beat. He wanted me to be a bank manager or something in the City. Gran saw me as a reforming MP. She was even more incredulous than Dad. She came to my graduation thinking she could change my mind. Dad had given up on me by then. He wouldn't even let Mum come.'

Despite his effort at lightness he could feel bitterness creeping in.

'Well, you got your own back, getting yourself posted up north and finding fifty-seven varieties of excuse why you could never make it home at Christmas,' said Myra. 'Still, it's all water under the bridge. Gran's gone, and I bet Dad bores the corks off their hats down under boasting about my son the chief inspector.'

'You reckon? Maybe I'll resign. Hey, remember how you used to beat me at tennis when I was a weedy kid and you had forearms like Rod Laver? Got any of those muscles left?'

Between them they manoeuvred the secretaire out of the cottage and up onto his roof rack. He strapped it down, with a waterproof sheet on top of it.

'Right,' said Myra. 'Now what?'

'Now you push off. I'll finish the inventory and start sorting her papers. You've got to be back here tomorrow morning to meet the house clearance man, remember?'

Pascoe had been delighted when Myra volunteered for this task, being justly derided by his wife as probably the only man in Yorkshire who could haggle a price upwards.

Myra, a terrier in a bargain, bared her teeth in an anticipatory smile.

'Don't expect a fortune,' she said. 'But I'll see we're not cheated. You're not expecting me to sell that, are you?'

That was a plastic urn in taupe. Were Warwickshire's funerary suppliers capable of a bilingual pun? wondered Pascoe.

'No, that goes with me.'

'You're going to do what she asked with the ashes then?'

'If I can.'

'Funny, with her hating the army so much.'

'It's a symbolic gesture, I assume. I won't try to work out what it means as I'd prefer to be thinking holy thoughts as I scatter them.'

'It's still weird. Then, so was Gran a lot of the time. I shouldn't care to spend the night in this old place with her ashes on the mantelpiece. You sure you won't change your mind and come over to us? Trevor would be delighted to see you.'

Pascoe, who had only once set foot in Myra's executive villa and found it as aesthetically and atmospherically appealing as a multi-gym, said, 'No, thanks. I've got a lot to do and I'd like to be off at the crack.'

They stood regarding each other rather awkwardly. Myra looked untypically vulnerable. Me too maybe, thought Pascoe. On impulse he stepped forward, took her in his arms and kissed her. He could feel her surprise. They'd never been a hugging and kissing family. Then she pressed him close and said, "Bye, Peter. Safe journey. Give my love to Ellie. Sorry she couldn't make it. But I know about kids' colds when they're that age.'

And I know about urgent business appointments with important clients, thought Pascoe. At least Rosie really had been snuffling in bed when he left.

And perhaps Trevor really did have an urgent deal to close, he reproved himself.

He gave Myra another hug and let her go.

'Let's not make it so long next time,' he said.

'And let's try not to make it a funeral,' she replied.

But neither of them tried to put any flesh on these bones of a promise.

He stood in the porch and watched her drive away. He felt glad and sad, full of relief that they'd parted on good terms and full of guilt that they hadn't been better.

He went inside and addressed the urn.

'Ada,' he said, 'we really are a fucked-up family, us Pascoes. I wonder whose fault that is?'

He worked hard on the inventory till mid-evening then made a neat copy of it to leave for Myra. He'd need another copy to send to Susan in Australia.

One thing he felt certain of. His eldest sister might not be able to fly halfway round the world for her grandmother's funeral, but she would expect any money making the journey in the opposite direction to be accounted for down to the last halfpenny. The will, of which Pascoe was executor, left various legacies to Ada's favourite causes and the residue to be divided equally between her three grandchildren. Whether this evenhandedness had postdated his fall from grace, Pascoe wasn't sure, but he was glad that in this at least the old accusation of favouritism was clearly given the lie. Not that there was much — Ada had lived up to her income and the cottage was rented. But Pascoe had seen blood shed over far smaller amounts than were likely to be realized from Ada's estate and he'd already arranged to have all the paperwork double-checked by Ada's solicitor, a no-nonsense woman called Barbara Lomax, whose probity was beyond aspersion.

He boxed up some books that interested him or might interest Ellie and scrupulously made a note on the inventory. Next he started sorting out Ada's papers, starting with a rough division into personal/business. He was touched to find every letter he had ever written to her carefully preserved, an emotion slightly diluted when he realized that this urge to conservation also included fifty-year-old grocery receipts.

His stomach rumbled like distant gunfire. It seemed a long time since the salmon sandwiches. Also he felt like stretching his legs.

Taking a torch from the car he strolled the half-mile to the village pub where he enjoyed a pint and a pie and a reminiscent conversation about Ada with the landlord. As he walked back he found he was knee-deep in mist drifting from the fields, but the night sky was so bright it felt like his head was brushing the stars. The pub telly had spoken of severe weather with gales and sleet in the north. Dalziel was right, he thought with a smile. The soft south really did begin after Sheffield.

He resumed his work on the papers but found that his starry stroll had unsettled him. Also after a while he realized he was more aware than a rational man ought to be of the screw-top urn squatting on the mantel shelf. In the end, slightly ashamed, he took it out to the car and locked it in the boot. As for the papers, home where he had a computer, a calculator and a copier, plus a wife who knew how to work them, was the place to get Ada's affairs sorted. It was time for bed.

Getting his clothes off was an effort. His limbs felt dull and heavy and the air in the tiny bedroom, though hardly less sharp than the frosty night outside, seemed viscous and clinging. The cold sheets on the narrow bed received him like a shroud.

Sleep was a long time coming..

… a long time coming — maybe because I wouldnt take any rum — no shortage here — how the lads ud lap it up!

And when it did come darkdream came too terrible as ever — only this time there was more — this time when the muzzles flashed and the hot metal burnt I didnt scream and try to wake but went right through it and came out on the other side and kept on going — heart pounding — muscles aching — lungs bursting — like a man running from summat so vile he wont stop till he falls or knows he has left it far behind.

In the end I had to stop — knowing somehow it werent just miles Id run over but years — seventy or eighty of them maybe — near clean on out of this terrible century — and Id run home.

Where else would a frightened man run to?

O it were so good Alice! Fields so fresh and green — woods all bursting with leaf — river running pure and clean with fat trout shadowing all the pools. Away yonder I could see mucky old Leeds — only now there werent no smoke hanging over it — and all that grimy granite were washed to a pearly grey — and shooting up above the old quiet chimneys were towers and turrets of gleaming white marble like a picture in a fairy tale.

As for Kirkton it were just the same as I long to be back in only so much better — with all them tumbledown cottages alongside Grindals turned into gardens — and the mill itself had big airy windows and I could see lasses and lads laughing and talking inside — and that old bog meadow out towards Haggs Farm that used to stink so much was all drained and the river banks built up so thered be no more flooding — and High Street seemed wider too with all them slimy cobbles that broke old Tom Steddings head when his horse slipped covered over with level tarmac — and the Maisterhouse away through the trees with its red brick glowing and its pointing gleaming like it were just built yesterday.

Even St Marks looked a lot more welcoming cos the parson had ripped out them gloomy windows that used to terrify us kids with their blood and flames — and in their stead hed put clear new glass which let sun come streaming through like spring water. Even the old tombstones had been cleaned up and I took this fancy to see my own — only I thought on that Id not be buried here with tothers of my name but far away across the sea where none would ever find me — and soon as I thought that I felt myself being hauled back to this awful place.

But I werent going easy and I fought against it and hung on still and peered over the wall into the schoolyard to see the kiddies playing there all so happy and strong and free — and I wondered whether any on them was descended from me — and I thought I saw a familiar face then came the sound of a distant crump like they was blasting out at Abels Quarry — only I knew they werent

— and a voice a long way off saying some poor sods catching it — and I didn't want to blink though the sun was shining straight into my eyes — but I had to blink — and though it was only a second or even less when I opened my eyes again sun were gone and kiddies were gone and all I could see were the night sky through the window red and terrible as that old stained glass — and all I could hear were the rumble of the guns — and all I could feel was the straw from my palliasse pricking into my back …

Pascoe awoke. Had he been dreaming? He thought he had but his dream had gone. Or had it? Did dreams ever go? Our present was someone else's future. We live in other men's dreams..

He closed his eyes and drifted back to that other place.

.. but I’ll try to keep them dream children bright in my mind my love — you too — and tell little Ada about them — I still cant credit a bible heaven spite of old padre preaching at me every other day — so unless this lots going to teach us summat about the way we live here on earth wheres the point of it all eh?

Wheres the bloody point?