Wildwood (7 page)

There was no sign of any animal.

I ran my hands down my forearms, feeling the sting of many tiny cuts from the spiny leaves. My fingers came away
bloody
. I put my hands on my knees, clawing back control over my ragged breath, still staring. By the time I’d straightened up I was starting to shake. I walked right round the tree looking in vain for any further sign of threat, then set out, blindly.

I think I’d lost my bearings a while back, but at least there’d been a chance of retracing my path. Now I was really lost. It doesn’t take much to do that in a wood, where the horizon is hidden and the land folds in unforeseen directions. Little hillocks that wouldn’t even show up on a map become huge obstacles, and tiny valleys promise to lead places but peter out to dead ends. I stumbled around aimlessly, switching between rabbit tracks. As the shock of my flight wore off it gave room to shame and confusion and finally an unfocused anger. I had no clue what had just happened to me and that made me want to lash out even more. I felt just as I had done standing on the fountain, hearing the laughter and realising for the first time that it was all a joke at my expense, and that everyone but me was in on it.

When I finally stumbled onto a track – a proper earthen track, wide enough to drive a Land Rover down and carpeted in pale grass – I was none the wiser about where I was, but I did feel some relief. It didn’t stop me snapping at the first person that I saw coming round a bend in the path, ‘Excuse me, this is private property, you know.’

He stopped dead, taken aback. His hands were thrust into the pockets of an army-surplus jacket. Everything about him was army surplus down to the boots on his feet, and all of it looked worn out and hung baggily. ‘This is a public bridle path,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got a right of way.’

I took a better look at him and noted he didn’t look the squaddie type at all. He was a redhead, and red hair is so criminally unfashionable on men that there are only two
options:
shave the lot short and let your scalp shine through, or go the other way and flaunt it defiantly. This guy had chosen the latter course, sporting long dreadlocks tied back loosely. There were two gold rings through his right eyebrow. More student than soldier, I told myself.

‘There’s no bridle path through Grange Wood,’ I insisted, already regretting being so rude.

‘Oh there is,’ he said, not rising at all to the aggressive tone of my opening gambit. I’d realised he was somewhat older than his style of dress indicated: not a student but a real neo-hippie. His stubble glinted red gold where the sunlight caught his cheek. ‘Look on your county map; this is an ancient greenway. It’s been used since at least the Middle Ages by local people, and was said at one time to stretch all the way to Dartmoor. Supposedly the fay ride from Yes Tor down this path on moonlit nights.’

In the face of this excess of information I just repeated dumbly, ‘Fay?’

‘I’d avoid them if I were you. They like young –’ He tilted his head, glanced sharply from my helmet to my leggings, and suddenly his expression, which had been quite relaxed, grew much colder. ‘Hey, you’re not one of Deverick’s stooges, are you?’

This wasn’t how I wanted to hear myself described. ‘I work for Michael Deverick, yes,’ I said stiffly.

He swore under his breath and looked about him sharply. ‘He’s not in the wood, is he? No, I’d have heard if he was.’

‘No, he’s not.’ Christ, he was a bit too intense.

‘He’s got more sense, I’d assume. He sent you in though. Got someone to do his dirty work for him, as usual.’

‘I’m just starting a survey.’ Now that he was the one being unfriendly, I was quite uncomfortable. ‘I’m not doing anyone’s “dirty work”. Have you got a problem with him?’

Swampy – or whatever his name was – pulled a face and pointedly ignored my question. ‘And did he tell you what he was looking for?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Did he tell you how dangerous it was?’

We glared at each other. A blackbird rustled around noisily in the undergrowth. ‘There’s … you should be careful,’ I admitted awkwardly. ‘There’re dogs or something loose in the wood.’

‘Or something,’ he agreed.

I refused to use the word lurking at the tip of my tongue. ‘You’ve seen them?’ I demanded. My head was whirling. I couldn’t even make up my mind if I had imagined those … animals, whatever they were.

‘There are lots of things in the woods. Some of them are there to keep people like Deverick – and you – out.’ There was no mistaking the hostility now.

‘You put the Christmas decorations up, did you? Are you trying to scare people off?’

He squinted, half-contemptuous, half-irritated.

‘What have got in there? Your squat? Your caravan? This isn’t your land, you know.’

He laughed out loud, but it didn’t sound like he thought it funny. ‘You think it’s Deverick’s? People like you make me sick.’

‘I’m damn sure it’s Mr Deverick’s land. And all I’m doing is my job.’

‘I can see that. Kill trees, do you, to make more room for little boxy houses and executive golf courses? Congratulations. You should be proud.’

That was so unfair. Nine times out of ten I was on the side of people like him – ignorant, impractical, self-righteous pricks as they were. ‘It’s not exactly that simple, is it?’

‘You work for Deverick. Sounds simple enough to me.’

‘You have no idea what he’s planning,’ I protested. ‘He’s very positive about enviro–’

‘
I
have no idea?’ He’d gone really pale; it was a strange reaction. ‘Who do you think you’re kidding? I know exactly what he’s up to! And you can tell him from me that he’s not getting his hands on these woods. So go on, you can piss off now.’

Well, that certainly brought the conversation to an end. He folded his arms, waiting for my next move. I gritted my teeth, looked around me, and finally admitted, ‘I don’t know which way’s out.’

He didn’t laugh at me. Good God, a man who didn’t laugh. He just nodded, very slightly. He had hazel eyes, I noticed, fractured green and brown. ‘The track behind you will get you to the bank at the wood boundary. Don’t worry, the bridle path is safe, even for you. Go through the gap in the hedge, down the farm track and you’ll be on the road to the village.’

I blinked. ‘You’re sure? That doesn’t sound like the right direction at all.’

‘You got yourself turned round. It happens here a lot. It’s the witch balls.’

‘The what?’

He sighed. ‘The glass balls.’

I shook my head. ‘What do they do?’

‘They deflect witches,’ he said, as if it were obvious. ‘And similar sorts.’

‘Hey,’ I said, trying to make light. ‘My sister reads the tarot, but I’m not a witch.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not.’ And reaching out, he plucked something from my jacket pocket before I realised he was touching me. I saw the object in his hands: a hooded purple flower. Then he dropped it to the floor and crushed it underfoot.

The monkshood. And then I remembered its other common
name:
wolfsbane
. I nodded dizzily and turned away, confused into acquiescence. Only after I’d started walking down the track did I think to ask my eco-freak acquaintance about the flower’s significance. I span round, but he had already gone, vanished from the public right of way into the forbidden depths of the wood.

3: Ill Met by Moonlight

THAT NIGHT THERE
was a full moon. I switched off the TV, grabbed my climbing harness and headed out across the rough grassland behind my cottage.

I love the night, out in the country. Taking away my vision seems to bring all my other senses to life – my skin prickles, my ears pick up the faintest sounds, even my sense of smell seems more acute. Stick me in an urban alley after midnight and I’m as jumpy as the next woman, but not out here where the furtive noises that can sound so ominous to city-dwellers are familiar to me: the scream of a fox, the clatter of a pigeon in the treetops as it settles itself, the creak of branches. There’s no harm in the English night, so long as you’re away from other human beings.

I intended to climb the big old low-branching beech in the middle of the meadow. It wasn’t cold and the sky was clear enough to show the Milky Way like a band of gauze across the sky, something you’ll never see from a city. My heart was racing. Michael Deverick’s words, like seeds planted in my mind, had been putting out pale, irresistible shoots; I was on my own in the grounds, the whole of the estate locked down behind its high wall and its new electronic gates and, like I said, I enjoy sex in the great outdoors. Getting my kit off in the countryside gives me one hell of a buzz. I like the feel of the air on my skin and the sense of being in intimate contact with the landscape around me. I’d never tried combining it with climbing, mind you, but that idea once it
had
occurred to me had bitten and niggled and burnt until I had to scratch it.

This wasn’t like me. OK, it was like me to think of it, but not to act so recklessly on an impulse. I felt light-headed, almost high.

With one last look around, I pulled off my top and dropped it on the grass, relishing the whisper of the breeze across my skin. My nipples tightened as if in anticipation. I stretched my arms up and jiggled my boobs, bathing them in starlight, intoxicated with my own daring. I dropped my trousers next, leaving them where they lay, creating a trail across the lawn from my back door towards my goal. Grass stubble scratched my ankles. I shook my behind playfully at the moon. Scents of flowering woodbine and cow parsley and elderflower flowed over me, washing from an area of longer grass and shrubs beyond the tree: a perfume of early summer that I adored.

My knickers were the last item of clothing to go and then I strode forwards naked but for my shoes. I kicked even those off when I got under the canopy of the beech, feeling the husks of last year’s mast prickly beneath my bare soles. I cinched on my harness more by touch than sight and tossed the rope end over a branch. Climbing naked, I then discovered, wasn’t nearly so comfortable as in padded trousers. Luckily it was a well-furnished tree and after the first scramble I didn’t need the ropes. I kept the harness on though; I liked the feel of the tight belt about my waist and the leg straps that fitted snugly about my arse cheeks and between my thighs. The torch I had hanging from a side loop slapped against my right cheek as if in appreciation of the way the straps framed my backside.

By the time I got right into the high crown I admit I wasn’t just flushed from the exertion, I was feeling wickedly horny too, adding the thrill of vertigo to the dizzy surge of sexual arousal. Adding to the scents of the night was the perfume of
my
own body. I found a place where I could plant my feet wide apart on two radiating limbs and hook one arm over a branch near my head. My back was to the trunk and my legs were spread wide, beneath them nothing but a drop of fifty feet to the ground and the cool air which licked at the inside of my thighs. It was as if I were inviting the whole of the night into my open sex.

Go on, touch me.

I let my free hand drift down to my clit, stirring the wet itch there to further torment. My lips needed little coaxing to part; I was a night-flowering blossom, heavy with nectar. Shudders of pleasure mounted quickly through my body. I imagined what would happen if I should let go and slip; how they would find my body in the morning stark naked and legs spread. How shameful that would be, I told myself teasingly. Perhaps Michael Deverick would be the one to find me. I imagined his face stooping over mine, his eyes blazing with dismay and frustration. I imagined what it would be like to be working in the shrubbery alone one day, and then to turn and see him watching me with that lancing gaze. How he’d step forwards and peel the tight Lycra up my breasts and bend to bite my salty, grateful nipples. How he’d wrench my jeans down and slam me up against a tree trunk and fuck me long and hard. Sex with him, I was sure, would be deliberate and prolonged; he was a control freak. My bare arse brushed the bark. Maybe he’d make me get down and lick his cock clean when he’d come. Maybe he’d tie me to the tree with my own ropes and screw me as I strained against my bonds. Maybe he’d bend me over a fallen trunk and fuck my splayed pussy while my hands clawed at the leaf mould and I screamed for more until the woods rang and everybody on the whole estate knew I was finally getting it, getting it, getting it.

I came then, riding the storm surge of chaotic imagery.
‘Woah,’
I breathed, blinking. An owl hooted its wavering call from the wood edge.

Glowing with pleasure, I worked my way back down to a larger branch and settled myself comfortably. The smooth beech bark felt cool against my hot pussy. I flicked away a spider that had the cheek to run across my thigh. My feet dangled in space and I swung them idly.

From here I could see through a broad gap between the leaves, down onto the long weeds that had once been a lawn. The moon had turned it silver, but the shadows beneath the shrubby elders and the far tree line were jet black. When someone came into sight wading through the grass he was clearly visible, and left a dark furrow of bent grasses in his wake.

I held my breath. For a brief moment – my head addled with moonlight and sensuality – I thought that I’d somehow summoned Michael Deverick. Then I recognised my army-surplus tree-hugger from Grange Wood. His dreadlocks were unmistakable. He was shirtless and, under that moonlight, so pale that he seemed to glimmer, except on his left shoulder where there was a big dark patch.

‘What are you up to?’ I muttered under my breath, leaning forwards to get a better look. His hands trailed through the flower heads caressingly. Then my eyes widened as I realised that he wasn’t just shirtless; the waist-high foliage had been hiding the fact that he was naked. At this distance I couldn’t make out any details, but a momentary glimpse of the unbroken line of flank and hip made me certain.

Bloody hippie, I thought, with tolerant disdain. Of course, it was Midsummer’s Eve, wasn’t it? No doubt he was indulging in a bit of pagan nudity for the occasion. If I kept him in sight then I might spy on a bit of sky-clad morris dancing or whatever it was these people did. Of course the fact that I was
butt-naked
myself made it difficult to feel really superior. Then I caught sight of his companions, and I forgot to feel superior at all. My spine crawled.