Over By Christmas (a short story)
A Weird winter's tale of lost time, lost hearts, and a devil's bargain - published here for the first time anywhere (30-minute read)
The papers hadn’t said nothing about a blizzard. Then again, the papers weren’t saying much about anything except the war. The ladies who came in the shop that morning for their Christmas goose had been mercilessly eager to talk. How about what the Germans had just done to them poor buggers up north, eh? Kiddies on their way to school when the shells come down, they reckon. And what if the Kaiser should ever think to send them boats up the Thames? Tom hugged his coat more tightly around him and squinted back through the dark and lashing cold.
The snow was a swarm of white hornets. He tried to make out the steeple of Saint Nic’s, the gravestones of the churchyard, the yellow glow of the street-lamps beyond the wall along Church Lane. But the biting snow and grey mist had swallowed everything. If he was somewhere on the green behind the church then he would have passed through a gate, surely. He could no longer see even the trees that had seemed to multiply into a forest about him, their trunks spreading like a line of playing cards from a trickster’s deck as he puzzled his way through their low, prickling branches.
Then the wind had picked up all of a sudden and the trees were gone, scooped away all at once, leaving him staggering across this tundra with a whistling snowstorm whipping at his back.
It had been bombing it down like this for, what, five minutes? And already the snow had filled in his footprints, stranding him in a sea of blank and moonlit white. It was like he’d just appeared in the middle of this wild and wailing nowhere.
Tom yelled yet again. ‘Gwen?’
But again the wind only seemed to rise and shout him down. It had snatched off his cap at some point, the cold now hammering a wedge of pain deep into his skull.
He felt more sick than restless now. Where the bloody hell had she got to? Had she run off home? Got second thoughts about that promise of a second kiss? He’d assured Gwen’s old man he’d have her back from the music hall by ten.
She had beckoned him from inside the gates of Saint Nic’s. They were late getting back and she knew a shortcut through the churchyard. The snow had then been nothing more than flakes fading on her knitted scarf, her curls shivering in the wind either side of her flapper’s bonnet, her eyes bright and impish.
Her kiss had been warm, prickled with ice.
“You want another, you’ll have to catch me,” she had said and pulled away laughing. Tom stood a moment, dazed by that dimpled grin and the plum-pudding smell of her perfume. Then he hurried down the path after her, skidding on the icy flagstones, yelling at her to be careful, the church a wall of good, solid bricks hard to his left.
He turned the corner in time to see her vanish through the trees. He followed, but already she was gone. No sign of her out in this snowstorm. No sign of anything. Was she back among the trees somewhere? Christ, had she slipped and turned her ankle? Perhaps he couldn’t hear her screaming for help over this bastard wind. Or maybe she’d cracked her head. Maybe she was lying on a grave mound somewhere, barely breathing as the snow gently buried her alive.
Tom finally turned and banged on the door of the cabin. Booted footsteps approached from within.
‘Who is there?’ The voice was gruff, its accent odd.
Tom yelled at the door. ‘I need help!’
The cabin door was wrenched open by a bearded monster wielding an axe. Tom faltered back, the porch creaking under feet numb and heavy as pork loins packed in ice.
‘I’m sorry, mate,’ said Tom, annoyed to hear the lisp in his voice. He still wasn’t used to his broken tooth, an incisor snapped to a stub, its edge grainy as chipped porcelain under his tongue.
The man said nothing, only stared at Tom like he was daring him to say another word, big as a bear rearing at the mouth of its cave. His shoulders were heaped with grey furs, rimmed by a fire glowing within. The axe-head gleamed a cold and well-worn silver.
‘I’ve gone and lost me girl,’ said Tom, trying to laugh. He could see that blade was scarred and newly whetted, keen as the cleavers he used to split pigs’ heads on the block. ‘This bloody snow kicked up out of nowhere and I can’t find her.’
The man’s bare forearms were heavily muscled, bigger even than those of Tom’s father. He looked nothing like a church sexton, not that Tom had any idea what a church sexton might look like. But who else would be living in a cabin behind a church if not the resident gravedigger? That glowering beard made him look like a pantomime woodcutter Tom had seen as a child, booming across the stage, axe in hand, to free Little Red Riding Hood from the belly of the Big Bad Wolf.
‘Can you help me?’ Tom lisped again and shivered to hear himself sound so helpless.
The Woodcutter hung his axe on the wall beside him and Tom let out a long and smoking breath.
‘Another wanderer fresh from the woods, eh?’ The bloke sounded European. Maybe German. Tom felt a lick of anger.
‘Fresh off Mitcham Road, mate.’ Tom had to shout above the keening wind. ‘Look, we was cutting through the churchyard when all this kicked off. I’m worried she might be hurt. Look, can you help me or not?’
The Woodcutter’s watchful, animal eyes wrinkled as he smiled back with something like melancholy. ‘The roads here rarely bring more than one wanderer at a time. Your beloved is most likely waiting for you back where you came from.’
Tom searched those eyes and found nothing there but an earnestness that made his heart quicken.
‘What does she look like, this girl?’ the Woodcutter asked, making no move to step from his doorway.
‘Same age as me.’ Tom moved to the edge of the porch, trying to urge the man to follow. But he wouldn’t budge, only nodded, absorbed in his own peculiar thoughts.
‘Many pass this way. Some from the village. Some not. All are strangers to me. I have been here so long, my memory is not what it was.’ The wind rattled a shuttered window beside him and he gave an idle chuckle. ‘I wouldn’t recognise the same face if I saw it twice in as many days.’
Tom’s head throbbed as he shivered, the cold finding its way through his coat.
‘Come inside, my boy.’ The man stepped back and beckoned curtly, revealing a grotto of wood and stone within, dim in the firelight.
Tom tried to keep his voice low and menacing, struggling to keep that bloody lisp at bay as he stammered against the cold.
‘Just tell me which way back to the church from here.’
The Woodcutter shook his head. ‘You are lucky to have made it this far without the wolves finding you.’
Tom stared at the man, feeling a sudden panic. He turned back into the wind. The Woodcutter called out after him. ‘Luckier still not to have been found by those that prey on the wolves.’
Tom screamed Gwen’s name into the flying snow, over and over, the intensity of it driving that slice of pain ever deeper into his skull. He screamed on anyway, but the empty, gnawing whiteness gave him nothing.
‘Enough of this.’ The Woodcutter’s bark made Tom cringe.
The man had taken a step from the doorway, waving him indoors as fiercely as if he were driving sheep, snow gathering on his furs and beard. ‘Your girl is safe back where you left her, my boy. Be certain of this.’
Tom stared at the cabin’s inviting glow, the wind flaying tears from his eyes. The cold held him so tightly now it felt as though the only part of him left alive was the pain pounding in his head, and soon it would extinguish even that.
Tom dropped to his knees before the fire, enjoying the heat now pulsing through his fingers as he held them close as he dared to the snapping logs. The cabin smelled of the countryside, of cattle-straw and freshly splintered pine, spiced with something that made Tom think of gingerbread still soft from the oven. The moan of the blizzard outside ended with a thump and Tom felt a shiver of terror to see the Woodcutter slot an immense wooden bar across the door. His axe stayed gleaming on the wall as the man plodded across groaning boards, stopping to rummage in a quaint little cupboard.
‘You are from England, yes?’ he said.
The fire’s heat had left Tom woozy. All he could do was nod.
The man approached, boots thumping as he wiped a bowl with a chequered cloth.
‘From when in England?’ he said, as though expecting Tom to know what to say.
The Woodcutter shooed Tom away from the flames as he lifted a steaming ladle from a cooking pot that hung suspended from iron chains. Tom knelt at the man’s feet, transfixed by the strangeness of his boots. They were made of some flawless fawn-coloured leather, with thick, stripy laces, and moulded rubber soles like a pair of Wellies. A tiny label was stitched into a seam and read Timberland. Was that where the Woodcutter was from, some faraway land of log-piles and wolf-haunted woods?
The mantel above the fire was carved with gargoyles gaping and grinning, their wooden muscles made supple by the glimmering firelight. Rows of things that looked like dolls and other glittering trinkets peered down at Tom from the shelves of a stout dresser. Bunches of holly, sprigs of spices and bulbs of garlic decorated the beams. On a wall hung what looked like a Roman helmet, shiny and new. The man was offering him a bowl of some gamey-smelling stew.
The whole place looked like a backdrop from that bloody pantomime. The thought gave Tom a lonely thrill, as if countless eyes might be watching him from the surrounding gloom, invisible and expectant.
Tom asked where he was.
The Woodcutter shrugged and looked down at the bowl of stew, as if surprised to find himself still holding it. He pondered a moment then took it for himself and lowered his bulk into a great, squealing rocking chair made of smooth, pale wood.
‘You are in Faeblmir.’ He sounded resigned and began to eat his stew, his little finger crooked delicately as he held his spoon.
Tom found himself nodding, his head feeling light. At least the pain seemed to have thawed from his skull. He thought of Gwen far away, imagined her calling his name across that deserted London churchyard, cursing him like a docker for playing tricks on her.
The Woodcutter supped his stew, pausing to dab at his beard. ‘Wanderers, they come from all over. They take a wrong turn in the right direction, maybe? I know not for sure.’
He paused, jovial as he lifted a dark bottle from beside his chair.
‘Though always they come bearing gifts.’ He chuckled and glanced again at the label as if to remind himself what the bottle contained.
Tom could make out the word Madeira on the label and what he thought might have been the year 1790. His head felt like a balloon steadily rising from his shoulders. The man popped the cork and poured himself a cup of some dark and fragrant liquor.
Tom found himself murmuring nonsense. If this world were so unreal, perhaps its magic could see its way to making these walls disappear, make them lift up into the shadow ceiling of this dream-theatre and reveal Saint Nicholas’ Church, Tooting, London, its steeple rightly nailed to the dawn of a Christmas morning. Anything might be possible. Perhaps the arcane laws of this place were beyond even the grasp of those who lived here. Perhaps his host was mistaken. Perhaps Gwen had followed him into this nightmare after all.
Tom’s stomach crawled to think of hearing Gwen’s frantic knock on the other side of that bolted door. Better she walk home alone, freezing cold and cursing his name. Let her old man swear to wring his ruddy neck, if this great bearded bastard didn’t do it first. At least Gwen wasn’t here. At least she was safe.
‘You want to go home?’ The Woodcutter spoke like a man reluctant to impart bad news. ‘For this to happen, first you must have something to trade.’
Tom thrust his hands into both pockets, whipped out a handkerchief, his few remaining coppers clinking and spinning across the floorboards. The Woodcutter looked on, bemused, then slapped the cork back into the bottle and placed it carefully on the table beside him, next to a human skull with a crack in its pate, filled with a posy of dried wildflowers.
‘Not far from here.’ The Woodcutter spoke as if reciting lines from some grand and ancient play. ‘In the heart of the village, there lives a great cauldron of bronze with a tree growing from inside it. The branches of this tree reach across the world, across all time, for the roots of this tree are nourished not by soil, but by the tales of mankind.’
The fire bristled and cracked, glowering at a gust of wind that dared blow down the chimney and interrupt the speaker.
The Woodcutter went on, finishing his stew. ‘Wanderers come and they bring new stories. And those stories are bartered here same as coin and cattle. And if there is no one around, all the wild things that abide in earth and water shall turn an ear. Not even the air of Faeblmir will let a good tale go unheard. The very soil here drinks stories like it drinks rain. And by such exchange, fresh leaves unfurl on that great cauldron-tree. Its roots deepen, its fruits ripen, varied and strange. Indeed, when Faeblmir has gathered a rich enough store of these tales, the very weight of them causes the wheel of the seasons to turn, like the cogs of a clock, vast and timeless. And so our crops grow, and so deer and pheasant return to the woods, and so we live.’
He sucked the spoon clean and placed it on a napkin to one side. ‘Stories,’ he said. ‘Stories have more value here than meat or gold. And so that is the toll every wanderer must pay if they wish to leave here. They must first give a story, fresh and fine and extraordinary.’
‘What if I can’t?’ Tom watched the Woodcutter lift the bowl to his mouth. ‘What if I don’t have a story?’ The air got tighter as he spoke. ‘What happens if I can’t think of one?’
Something clinked between the man’s teeth as he gulped the last of his stew. He retrieved something from his lips and held it up to the firelight. Tom saw it gleam. Not a pellet of buckshot, but a ring that was missing a finger.
The Woodcutter opened his mouth wider than seemed right, his tongue curling like that of a cat, unnaturally long as he licked his gums.
Trinkets jittered on the shelves as Tom backed against the dresser. He thought he saw the man’s eyes flash like pennies.
‘Give me a story, my boy. And I shall give you your life. May it be long and happily wedded to the one you love.’
The Woodcutter tossed the ring towards Tom, who batted the thing away as though it might bite him. The ring clinked as it landed somewhere in the grate and Tom saw now those blackened logs were too long and fine to be lengths of wood, too slender to be the thigh bones of any cow or pig.
The Woodcutter sat with his wine, eyes gleaming patiently, like a wolf waiting for the wayfarer’s torch to dwindle. His watchful stillness promised violence immediate and conclusive should Tom even think about trying to grab that axe by the door. The snow scrabbled all around, like rats gnawing at the cabin walls.
‘I am not a beast of the wild,’ the Woodcutter said. ‘Nor am I of the village. So I live as I can.’ He nodded to himself. ‘So I live as I must. Yet only by the fairest means.’ He raised his cup to whatever lay burning in the grate and bubbling in the pot.
Tom watched him take a long sip of wine before settling back into that rocking chair of strange pale wood, its joints groaning like a thousand tiny voices.
The fire crackled awhile and all Tom could think of was the face of Kitchener on that blasted poster, glaring at Tom from under the brim of his field marshal’s cap, his big, posh mug with his walrus moustache, pointing at Tom from every window and newsstand, every bloody day, demanding to know if Tom was ever going to take action. He swallowed.
‘Once upon a time,’ Tom said, his voice little more than a shiver. ‘There was this little girl on her way through the woods to her nan’s house.’
‘Do you think me a child?’ said the Woodcutter, eerily still.
‘It’s a story, ain’t it?’
‘One I heard long before it was ever written,’ the man said. ‘Try again.’
Tom fumbled elsewhere, maybe a joke, a mucky anecdote. Ronnie always used to come to The Castle on Friday armed with some right ticklers. Back in the days when he could still lift a pint.
‘I crave something of you and only you,’ said the Woodcutter, slowly rubbing his eyes, as though he had explained these rules many times before. ‘It must be something new, something true to its heart. Show me the world in a light I’ve never before seen. Give me a tale never before told.’
Tom felt as though he were back at school, toyed with by a spiteful headmaster. ‘I’m a butcher, not bloody Shakespeare.’
Tom recoiled with a gasp that seized his heart as the Woodcutter almost started from his chair in rage. His eyes were gold rings in the darkness, long white teeth flashing from within the thicket of his beard, his voice a snarl of passion.
‘The voice of the beggar rivals that of any poet. The scoundrel is equal to a king. Let no man tell you your voice, your life, your pain be of no value, boy.’ Those flashing teeth seemed too many for one mouth, fist raised as though the man meant to strike Tom down with a thunderbolt. But instead he took a breath, softened and dropped back into his seat.
He apologised, looking away as though ashamed of his outburst. ‘I forget myseIf,’ he said. ‘Along with much else, it seems.’ He beckoned Tom, impatiently. ‘Now come, come away from the dresser before you break something.’
The feet of a wooden stool grated on the boards as the man kicked it towards Tom.
‘The tale must take something of the teller for it to truly live,’ said the Woodcutter. ‘For it to provide proper nourishment. And in you, my boy, I sense a tale nutritious indeed.’ The man sniffed the air. ‘I can smell it in you, as surely as the salt in your sweat. Yes, the roots of the great tree shall grow long at the telling of your tale, long enough perhaps to reach into the sky, part the clouds and bring back the sun.’
Tom crept onto the stool, listening, barely feeling the heat of the fire.
‘But I’m nobody,’ he said.
The Woodcutter smiled dreamily, his eyes wandering.
‘Like a tale I once heard of another man. This man called himself Nobody and he sought his fortune at the court of a cruel and languid king, who demanded of this man a tale never before told. Should Nobody return a year hence without such a tale, then he would die upon the morrow. Just as King Shahryar threatened our sainted Scheherazade. And so Nobody searched the world for this singular tale. He battled strange beasts, braved the deepest dungeons, endured terrible trials, yet he found no tale. He returned as agreed and was beheaded on the morrow. They say the king had his head served on a golden platter with a peach stuffed in his mouth, for no other reason but for the amusement of his court.’
The Woodcutter leaned in and wagged a finger. ‘If only Nobody had thought to tell the story of his own adventure, for that – that would have been a tale never before told.’
‘I was born in Tooting,’ Tom said quickly. ‘I help me dad run the butchers on Mitcham Road. Mum and me sisters do laundry.’
‘From humble beginnings,’ said the Woodcutter. ‘The best place from which to embark on any honest adventure, no?’
‘No,’ said Tom. His jaw clenched as he glared at the Woodcutter.
The Woodcutter’s eyes gleamed back. ‘Yet I believe where you are from the Great War has begun, yes?’ His tone was oddly gentle.
Tom shrugged. ‘Not that great,’ he said. ‘They reckon it’ll be over by Christmas.’
A mysterious sadness crept into the Woodcutter’s eyes, a gloom that spread until his entire bulk seemed to sag under the weight of it.
‘I had a mate who enlisted the day it kicked off,’ Tom said. ‘Joined the Territorials. They’re always short, he said. The sergeants don’t give a monkeys how young you are. Ronnie. Used to work the cobblers up Garratt Lane. Same age as me. He was like the rest of us, really. Just wanted to see some action before it’s all over, y’know? Chance to do right by King and country. See a bit of the world, all that.’ Tom stared at the emptiness in his hands. ‘Do his dad proud.’
He could feel those gleaming eyes watching him, but the sound of this story seemed to drive all fear away.
‘Got another mate who’s a porter on the railways,’ Tom said, careless of his lisp. ‘Told me he saw Ronnie getting stretchered off a troop carriage a few weeks back. Ronnie was over in Belgium, see? Some place called Ypres?’
Tom fumbled in a coat pocket for his Woodbines. The Woodcutter waited as Tom struck a match and blew a smoke that tasted of nothing at all. ‘See, me mate didn’t know it was Ronnie at first. Said he was all wrapped up in bandages. Looked like one of them big violin cases, y’know? No legs. Just a body with a head sticking out.’
Tom tried to laugh. The Woodcutter didn’t blink. ‘Anyway, me mate said there was this sergeant there banging on about Ronnie being first in the queue when they’re handing out medals.’
Tom flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the fire.
‘Not much left to pin ‘em on, though, eh?’
He thumbed the pewter ring on his right hand. It was shaped like a horseshoe. Mum had given it to him on his birthday last year. “For luck,” she’d told him.
He heard the Woodcutter clear his throat, poised to ask a question. Tom snapped back before he could speak.
‘Course I wanted to enlist! Think I’d marry a girl without a medal on me chest?’
He relented.
‘Was up for it a few days after Ronnie. Told me sister I wanted it to be a surprise. Only she went and told me dad.’
Tom fingered a scar on his chin. ‘There was mum crying her eyes out over the Sunday roast, sisters screaming and the old man banging on at me about him having a brother in the rifles, telling me I had no idea what it was like, screaming at me like I was a bloody kid, telling me over and over I was staying at the shop, and that’s all there was to it. Business is bad enough, he says. The shop’s just hanging on as it is. And I told him, I says, what business is anyone gonna have when the Kaiser marches over here with all his mob behind him? What happens when they start lobbing bombs over London, eh?’
Tom thought of Gwen in the early morning sun, her work shoes clipping along the pavement to the bakery on Amen Corner. Would she hear the bomb whistle before it landed right next to her? Would she go to sleep forever under a sheet of fire or be crushed to mincemeat under a ton of tumbling bricks?
‘I looked up at the old bastard,’ Tom said. ‘Looked him dead in the eye and I told him, I said I was signing them recruitment papers first thing in the morning.’
Tom remembered the flash of terror he’d seen in his father’s eyes, how it had seemed to shrink the man in an instant, how it had ignited the eruption that followed.
Tom sucked hard at his broken tooth.
He looked up to see the Woodcutter staring at him, fascinated. ‘And what did you learn from this, my boy? I can sense you are a man transformed in some manner of which you are not yet aware.’
He nosed at the air, like he was trying to distinguish a particular flavour. He alighted on something, then closed his eyes. ‘Look deeper, my boy. I cannot help you in this. You must realise the ending for yourself.’
Tom looked down at his hands, surprised to find his fingers curled and rigid, the claws of a strangler in want of a victim. He felt an ice-hard rage refusing to leave him. He could feel it urgent as the wind rushing outside, swirling cold and tight as clockwork somewhere deep inside him, demanding he squeeze the breath from someone’s throat in payment for some crime of which Tom had no memory.
‘Tell me how your story ends, my boy.’
Tom felt something give.
‘It ends with you letting me go,’ he said, amazed by his own spontaneity. ‘I go home to Gwen. I work hard. I spend the rest of me life keeping her safe, making us happy. Happily ever after. Just like you said, innit? That bloke called Nobody. His life, I mean. That was the story never before told, you said.’
The Woodcutter winced as though gravely wounded and shook his head.
‘Now hang on, mate,’ said Tom. ‘It’s my story. If I tell you that’s how it ends, then that’s how it ends.’
But the Woodcutter had already risen, tall as a gallows tree, his ivory throne letting him up with a thousand tortured groans. ‘You have spoiled your only offering,’ he said, eyes weary and sad. ‘You have settled for an ending unworthy of the tale.’
The stool clattered away as Tom stood to attention, calling after the man now lumbering towards that axe by the door, a hulk of draped wolfskins and strange orange boots.
‘Please.’ Tom was horrified by the sound of his own voice, whining like a child pleading to delay bedtime. ‘I gave you what you wanted. A story. Just like we agreed. Now you let me go, right now.’ His voice was a razor-falsetto, like a pig pinned down and squealing before the slaughterman.
The axe winked as the Woodcutter lifted it from the wall. ‘You agreed to give me a tale true to its heart,’ he said. ‘You should have listened to what the story wants. Instead, you gave it what you want. There is no courage in this, my boy. No truth.’
Tom could hardly breathe. ‘What truth?’
The Woodcutter halted, looking genuinely puzzled. ‘I do not know, my boy. Truly. Though I sense it still within you, yes.’ He seemed hesitant, almost fearful. ‘There is something about you. Some terrible treasure now never to be discovered.’
He advanced, inevitable as nightfall, bearing a terrible razor-sharp moon. Tom’s legs seemed to vanish out from under him as he turned to flee. He stumbled over the rocking chair, dragging the awful contraption after him, tripping again, this time over the table, knocking over the bottle and crashing down with it onto the well-swept floor.
Tom heard the Woodcutter curse his clumsiness, pausing to set the rocking chair back on its feet. Tom could only crawl on his elbows, sobbing with fury. The broken skull tumbled in front of him, spilling brittle flowers from the crack in its noggin. It stopped like a rolled dice, offering him a grin.
Tom stared, as if at his own reflection.
The Woodcutter was fussing with the table now, swearing hellsfire to find one of the legs had been broken.
Tom just lay on his belly, staring at the skull before him. It had been expertly split, intact save for that perfect slot in the top, the stroke of a master butcher.
The Woodcutter stood over him now, legs braced either side of Tom’s legs. He could hear the soles of those big orange boots squeak as he hefted the axe, heard the clink of broken glass, like the clink of a dead man’s ring tossed into the grate. Unlucky for some.
Tom awaited the blow, the top of his head pounding in anticipation. A splitting headache. Haha! He wondered whose face this skull had once worn. What hapless wanderer might the Woodcutter not recognise should he ever meet them twice in as many days?
The bone was fresh, the exposed marrow still moist. The skull might have been boiled clean that very morning.
The Woodcutter’s boots squeaked again as he found the angle and held his breath. The bloke clearly knew what he was doing. His axe had hit this skull so perfectly that all the teeth were still intact.
Except for the front incisor.
That one was already broken, snapped to a stump.
Gwen gasped in fright, caught in the act of knotting this year’s ribbon to the tip of the old fir tree. Her hearing wasn’t what it was, but she’d heard a bloke scream all right. A sound distant and terrible, sending odd vibrations humming deep in her aching bones, like the choir sending the chorus of Silent Night soaring into the rafters of the nearby church.
The scream had come from somewhere beyond these scant trees and the headstones crusted with frozen snow, past those squat little flats they’d built just beyond the churchyard wall.
She could hear the murmur of the other parishioners around the corner, exchanging warm greetings as they filed inside for midnight mass. Maggie and Joan had found a pew near the back, patiently waiting for Mum to hurry up and dig a bag of humbugs out of her purse to keep the grandkids from fidgeting. Dennis was at home, snoring no doubt. Those tablets the doctor give him for his chest always knocked him spark out.
Gwen stared into the trees, waiting, urging the darkness to offer another beckoning cry. If Dennis were here he would have only got annoyed, told her she was losing what few marbles she had left. Same argument, every Christmas Eve dinner at Maggie’s. Why go all the way down to Tooting when you’ve got a church two minutes away on Streatham High Road? That’s where all her mates from the bridge club were going. He’d given Gwen that pleading look that seemed to go on forever, his eyes asking for mercy.
The girls had cleared the table, made their daft fellas and the kids help out, whipped the tea towel out of Gwen’s hands and shooed her off into that massive living room of theirs. That silly great plastic Christmas tree must’ve cost them a fortune. She was ordered to put her feet up, have a sherry and watch Max Bygraves. Dennis sat with his Double Diamond in a posh glass and glared at the telly through his pipe-smoke. Once Maggie left the room and he was sure she was out of earshot, he grumbled again about it being unhealthy. Bloody stupid. Woman of your age.
But the girls, the girls understood. After all, what’s the harm in giving in to Mum’s funny little ways. If it kept her happy.
The red ribbon fluttered, tied in a careful bow, bright as a wound on the whispering green branches. The pines seemed to move like the prisms of a kaleidoscope as Gwen stepped between them, their trunks a curtain drawn over the wall of the church, veiling the glow of the street-lights, muffling the choir. She picked her way forward, not needing her walking stick so long as she was careful, moving through a familiar dream, not at all surprised as she stepped into a meadow of empty moonlit snow.
Snow drifted all around, the air shockingly quiet as she looked down at a perfect little log cabin, snuggled amid white hills like a scene off a tin of Christmas shortbread, like a picture out of that book of fairy tales she used to read to the girls when they were little. Had Tom been living here all these years? Had he been alive and safe all this time, surrounded by all this wonder, safe from all those years of ruin that had come to the real world?
Gwen felt a horrid stab of jealousy and took careful, crunching steps towards the cabin, her best handbag slung in the crook of her elbow, ice freezing through her winter tights, soaking the shoes Dennis had neglected to polish for her that afternoon. And soon she had descended the snowy hill and soon she was inside the cabin.
The door had been left open, a little snow dusting the wooden floorboards. The fire was out, though the place was not yet cold and smelled for all the world like Christmas pudding.
There was no one home and Gwen felt a girlish thrill, half-expected to find three bowls of porridge waiting for her on a table. Instead, she found a ring gleaming in the ashes of the grate. Her memory of that pewter horseshoe hit her like a gunshot. There was blood-red wine splashed across the floorboards, still gleaming wet. An axe lay nearby, unused. And what’s this? A cracked skull, its gap-toothed grin instantly familiar.
Gwen found herself smiling back, disappointed by the absence of tears. Of all the endings she had imagined for Tom over the last fifty years, this was somehow far from the worst.
She shuffled about a bit, wondering what to do. Bring him home with her? What would she tell the girls? Then she saw what sat against the wall behind her.
She had passed it coming in and thought it a chair piled with furs, far too big to be a man. The great bearded head lay flat against one shoulder, like a felled and bushy tree, exposing a trunk squeezed to a frostbitten twig. The man’s face was blue as frost, shrivelled tight to the bone, eyes like sunken ice cubes.
It was as if the ghost of winter itself had risen in fury and throttled him.
Gwen felt her handbag slide down her sleeve and land on the floor, spilling a rattle of humbugs as a great, gulping terror finally caught up with her and she was outside once more, struggling through a thrashing blizzard that hadn’t been there before. It lashed her face, spotted her glasses as she waded back uphill against the deepening snow.
Maggie and Joan and all the kids were waiting for her somewhere beyond that treeline, safe in the wide-awake world. Gwen slowed, exhausted already, a silly, stupid old woman dying somewhere that didn’t even exist. The snow came on faster, heavier, sounding like ants swarming in her ears.
She felt a deep, drowning sickness. The girls would never know what happened to their mum, a life-sentence Gwen wouldn’t wish upon anyone. It was the weight of not knowing that broke you, the tantalising absence that invited a thousand horrible endings. Had she wandered off? Had the senility they always suspected finally got the better of her? Who would ever know? That would be the weight that got heavier, Christmas upon Christmas, until obsession got the better of them and they lost any chance of ever moving on, the hope of joy crushed out of them, leaving them buried in emptiness.
The snow was pushing her back like a rising tide, dragging her away from that wooded shoreline, which seemed to shrink deeper into the horizon every time she looked up. The snow piled on her shoulders felt heavy as grave-dirt, everything lost in a whirling whiteness, meaningless, endless.
She stumbled, almost falling, almost glad to stop fighting, when a hand caught her own. Through the billowing waves of powder, she could see a figure standing behind her. Their grip was gloveless, strong, impossibly warm, invigorating as a kiss on a winter’s night. Gwen squeezed the hand back and looked away, in case the shock of recognition might break the spell and leave them both stranded. She fought on through the snow, pulling whoever it was along with her, feeling them close, straining behind her.
The snow strained back, stinging her face, smothering her glasses and freezing her tears until she could barely make out the gathering darkness she knew was the treeline, close enough now to smell the sweetness of pine. She felt those fingers cling all the tighter, grateful for her effort, and Gwen felt a strange vigour released, flowing through her like blood, like fire rekindled. Suddenly, the depth of the snow was no match for the strength of her legs as she drove up the slope, the trees widening their arms to embrace her.
She tugged that hand deep into the woods along with her, then let it go, knowing she would be followed when she ran ahead. She stumbled at first, until her fine young legs found their balance and she was bounding over grasping roots, nimble as a fawn, giggling at the memory of a black-haired boy with shy and serious eyes chasing close behind, hungry for that kiss, the promise of which Gwen had long ago given up regretting.
She laughed as she slipped in the mud, as she scraped her palm on the hide of a tree. How silly she must look. Bloody stupid. Woman of your age. She laughed at her own tears, a sound so brave and breathless that winter dare not follow.
Gwen couldn’t see through these silly, thick glasses and she threw them away, dazzled by a sudden brilliance of detail. Strange birds fluttered overhead, flitting from branch to branch as she ran. Things of the earth skittered and loped beside her, eager to hear the song of her laughter.
The trees were dripping, shrugging off their winter vestments. The ice was shrinking from the ground ahead, revealing bright grass that glistened like a newborn. Gwen squinted, swearing she could see the glare of a spring morning. But it was just the windows of the church, glimmering in darkness as the trees gave way to snow-humped graves and sensible slabs of stone, flat and icy under her feet.
Gwen slipped and landed on her side, shocked to find herself wheezing, angry as she struggled to rise. She felt like something had been whipped out of her, like a precious scarf snatched away by the wind, leaving nothing behind but a heap of heavy, aching bones.
She managed to sit up, panting as she felt someone rush past her, swore she felt the brush of a coat, smelled the sweat and sawdust of him as he passed into the world like a dying breath.
Someone was calling. ‘Mum?’
It was Maggie, huffing among the gravestones towards her, plump in her winter coat and headscarf, still fussing as she helped Gwen to her feet. ‘Mum, you need a stick. I keep bloody telling you. Why won’t you use the one we bought you? Now where’s your bag? And what have you done with your glasses?’
She ushered Gwen to the door of the church, the vestibule within radiant with candles and the blare of the choir. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum. You’re bleeding. Did you hit your head? Mum, what are you staring at?’
He was standing by the gate onto Mitcham Road.
God, he looked so young. Barely a year older than her youngest grandson. How had Nanny Gwen ever been young enough to love a boy like that? He seemed to be gazing at the church like he couldn’t believe it was there. Gwen wished the choir would stick a bloody sock in it. She wanted to hear again the quiet of those empty woods, to run again, to feel her feet thumping on solid earth, to let him catch her and press against her, laughing, to smell pine and woodsmoke and feel the quiet strength of him as he finally took that kiss.
Maggie protested as Gwen fought to pull away, gasping at a sudden brilliant pain in her hip that sat her right back down again.
Gwen cried out his name, but Tom didn’t seem to hear. She felt something crack like ice in her chest. The choir sang on, ecstatic and indifferent as the boy moved on beneath the glowing street-lights, as if on urgent business, leaving behind him no footprints in the snow and Gwen heavy with a story she could never tell.
© Alec Worley, 2023
With thanks to John Ware.
What can I say but wow wow wow. Loved the writing, the concept, the execution. Maybe I missed something, but what exactly happened with Tom and the Woodcutter before Gwen finds the cabin as she does?
That was beautiful! And so sad. I really loved the shift in the middle, well done!