The Wood Beyond

Pascoe was now regarding Studholme with wide-eyed interest.

‘You don’t sound like a member of Douglas Haig’s fan club, major.’

Studholme gave a snort like a rifle shot.

He said, ‘When they finally got rid of Sir John French at the end of ’15, it was as if his main fault was not killing off his own men quickly enough. So what they looked for was a general who’d get the job done quicker. French had slain his ten thousands, but Haig was soon slaying his hundred thousands, nearly half a million on the Somme and now another quarter million at Passchendaele. Of course Third Wipers went down as a victory. They gained six or seven miles of mud. Imagine a column of men, twenty-five abreast, stretching out over those six or seven miles, and you’re looking at the British dead. Bit different from Agincourt, eh?’

‘Tell me, major,’ said Pascoe curiously. ‘Feeling like this, how come you took the job of looking after a military museum? In fact, how come you got started on a military career at all?’

For a moment he thought he’d gone too far. The major was regarding him once more with the flintlock gleam in his eye. Then he sipped his tea, brushed his moustache, smiled faintly and said, ‘How come a bright young fellow like you went into the police? Was it the bribes or the chance to beat up suspects that attracted you?’

‘Touché,’ said Pascoe. ‘And apologies for my youthful impudence.’

‘Accepted. Now I’ll answer you. I joined the army ’cos way back about the time of Waterloo, someone decided that the only way to make anything out of my line of Studholmes was to get ’em into uniform and send ’em out for foreigners to shoot at. No one’s come up with a viable alternative since, so on we go, generation after generation, providing moving targets. Rarely get beyond my rank, though my father made colonel. Shot from being a subaltern in ’15 to major, acting lieutenant colonel in ’18. That was one plus for that show – lots of scope for accelerated promotion. If you survived.’

‘Nice to know someone did,’ said Pascoe.

‘Oh yes, he had a talent for it. Lived to be ninety. Still working on his memoirs when he died. I told him he’d left it a bit late, but he said no point in starting till you were pretty sure you were past doing anything worth remembering.’

‘Sounds as if they’d make interesting reading,’ said Pascoe. ‘Talking of which, is there anything you’d recommend to start remedying my immense ignorance about the Great War?’

The major looked at him with one-eyed keenness to see if he was taking the piss. Then selecting a volume from the bookshelf behind him he said, ‘This is about as good a general introduction as you’ll get. After that, if you develop a taste for horror, you can specialize.’

‘Thank you,’ said Pascoe, taking the book. ‘I’ll return it, of course.’

‘Damn right you will,’ said the major. ‘Chaps who borrow your kit and don’t return it always come to a sticky end. Now let’s see if we can’t find somewhere a bit more suitable for your gran than a fireplace, shall we?’

He rose abruptly. As Pascoe followed him out of the office, he said, ‘You run a very tidy museum, sir.’

‘What? Oh thank you. Or do I detect an irony? Perhaps you find tidiness incompatible with a place dedicated to the glorification of war?’

‘All I meant was—’

‘Don’t lie out of politeness, please. Policemen should always speak the truth. So should museums. That’s what I hope this one does. If it glorifies anything it is courage and service. But when the truth is that men were sacrificed needlessly, even wantonly, in the kind of battle your great-grandfather died in, a place like this mustn’t flinch from saying so. We owe it to the men who died. We owe it to ourselves as professional soldiers too.’

They had entered a room at the back of the house, formerly the kitchen but now given over to an exhibition of catering equipment. Studholme pointed through the window into a small paved yard with a single circular flowerbed at its centre. It contained three brutally pruned rose bushes.

‘Looks better in the summer,’ he said. ‘White roses surrounded by lilies. The regimental badge. Used to be an old joke. You always get a good cup of tea from the Wyfies, they even advertise in their badge. Roses, fleur-de-lis; Rosy Lee, you follow? Not a very good joke. Also new recruits are called lilies; passing out, you get your rose. Sorry. Regimental folklore. Set me off, I go on forever. What started this?’

‘My grandmother’s ashes,’ prompted Pascoe.

‘Indeed. The rose bed. Good scattering of bonemeal wouldn’t go amiss there. Or …’ He hesitated then went on, ‘Just say if you think it a touch crass but down in the cellar … well, let me show you.’

He opened a door onto a steep flight of stone steps.

‘Cold, damp and miserable down there,’ said Studholme. ‘Couldn’t think what to do with it. Cost a fortune to cheer it up. Then I thought, why bother? Go with the flow, isn’t that what they say? Not original, of course. Imperial War Museum does something similar, but I reckon for atmosphere, we’ve got the edge.’

‘I’m sorry …?’ said Pascoe.

‘My fault. Rattling on again. Bad habit. Here, take a look.’

He pressed a switch in the wall. Below lights came on, not bright modern electric lights, but the kind of dull yellow flicker that might emanate from old oil lamps. And sound too, a dull basso continuo of distant artillery overlaid from time to time by the soprano shriek of passing shells or the snare-drum stutter of machine-gun fire.

‘Go down,’ urged Studholme.

Pascoe descended, and with each step felt his stomach clench as his old claustrophobia began to take its paralysing grip.

At the foot of the steps he had to duck under a rough curtain of hempen sacking and when he straightened up, he found he was standing in a First World War dugout.

There were figures here, old shop-window dummies, he guessed, now clad in khaki, but their smooth white faces weren’t at all ludicrous. They were death masks, equally terrifying whether belonging to the corporal crouched over a field telephone on a makeshift table or the officer sprawled on a canvas camp bed with an open book neglected on his breast.

In the darkest corner, face turned to the wall, lay another figure with one leg completely swathed in a bloodstained bandage. Close by his foot two large rats, eyes glinting in the yellow light, seemed about to pounce.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Pascoe, uncertain in that second if they were real or stuffed.

‘Convincing, ain’t they?’ said Studholme with modest pride. ‘Could have had the real thing down here with very little effort, but didn’t want the local health snoops down on me. Everything you see is authentic. Kit, weapons, uniforms. All saw service on the Western Front.’

‘Even this?’ said Pascoe indicating the sleeping officer’s book.

‘Oh yes. My father’s. Not a great reader, but he told me that at that time in that place, it was a lifeline to home.’

Pascoe picked up the book.

‘Good God,’ he said.

It was a copy of the original Kelmscott Press Edition of William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World.

‘What?’ said Studholme.

‘This book, it’s worth, I don’t know, thousands maybe. You really shouldn’t leave it lying around down here.’

‘Spoken like a policeman,’ said Studholme. ‘Didn’t realize it was valuable to anyone except me. Still, kind of johnny who comes down here isn’t likely to be a sneak thief, eh?’

‘Spoken like a soldier,’ said Pascoe opening the book and reading the inscription: To Hillie with love from Mummy Christmas 1903. It was clearly a well-thumbed and well-travelled volume. Lifeline to home, Christmas, mother, childhood …

‘Take your time,’ said Studholme. ‘Bit more dust round here won’t be noticed, richer dust concealed, eh? But if you feel it’s too macabre, there’s always the rose bush. I’ll leave you to have a think.’

He turned and vanished up the steps. Carefully Pascoe replaced the book on the dummy’s chest, taking care not to touch the pale plastic hand.

‘So, Gran, what’s it to be?’ he said to the urn which he’d placed by the telephone. ‘Up there with the flowers or down here with the roots?’

He’d already made up his mind, but some pathetically macho pride prevented him from going in immediate pursuit of the major. Next moment he wished he had as one of the passing shells on the sound tape failed to pass, its scream climaxing to a huge explosion with a power of suggestion so strong that the whole cellar seemed to shake and, simultaneously, the lights went out.

Coincidence, or part of Studholme’s special effects? wondered Pascoe, desperately trying to stem the panic rising in his gut.

The telephone rang, a single long rasping burr.

His hand shot out to grab it, hit something, then found the receiver.

‘Hello!’ came a voice, tinny and distant. ‘Who’s that?’

‘This is Pascoe.’

‘Pascoe? What the hell are you doing there?’

‘Is that you, Studholme?’ he demanded.

‘Don’t be an ass, man. This is Lieutenant …’

And a voice behind him at the same time said, ‘Someone wanting me? Damn these lamps!’

For a moment it seemed to his disorientated and panicking mind that the voice came from the camp bed. Then a torch beam shone in his eyes and the major went on, ‘Sorry about this. Often happens when one of those supermarket juggernauts goes up the service road behind us. Sometimes feels like the whole damn place is coming down. Lights should be back on in a tick … ah, there we are.’

The pseudo oil lamps flickered back on. Pascoe blinked then looked at the dummy on the bed. It lay there with the book where he’d replaced it.

Studholme said mildly, ‘Ringing for help?’

‘What?’ He realized he was still holding the telephone. ‘I thought it rang …’

‘Does sometimes,’ said the major. ‘Little battery-operated random ringing device I knocked up. Helps with the atmosphere. Makes people jump, I tell you. Oh dear. Your decision or has your grandmother chosen for herself?’

Pascoe followed his gaze and saw that when he’d grabbed for the phone he must have knocked the urn off the table. It had cracked open when it hit the floor and a spoor of ash marked where it had rolled a few inches.

Pascoe replaced the telephone.

‘Can’t argue with fate,’ he said, trying to establish control.

He picked up the urn and scattered the ashes into the corners of the dugout where, as Studholme had forecast, they blended in imperceptibly.

He felt he ought to say something. But what? It would either come out flip, or pseudo-religious, which was worse. In the end he contented himself with thinking, there you go, Ada. This world was a bit of a disappointment to you. I hope the next comes up to scratch.

It was a relief to get back to the ground floor.

Studholme said, ‘Got a number? I’ll check through our records, see if I can get any details on your great-grandfather’s time in the regiment if you like. Or would you rather put all that behind you?’

‘No, I’d be interested,’ said Pascoe, producing a card. ‘And thanks for being so helpful.’

‘My pleasure. Goodbye, Mr Pascoe.’

He held out his left hand. There was a moment’s awkwardness as Pascoe instinctively reached for it with his right. To cover it he said, ‘By the way, that pistol. It wasn’t really loaded, was it?’

Studholme said, ‘One thing my father taught me was, never point a loaded weapon at anyone you’re not willing to shoot.’

It wasn’t till Pascoe was driving away that it dawned on him that he still didn’t know if his question had been answered or not.

x

1982 was a key year for the Tory Party both nationally and in Mid-Yorkshire.

At its start, Margaret Thatcher’s grasp of the premiership seemed rather less secure than Richard Nixon’s of the principles of democracy, while Amanda Pitt-Evenlode, née Marvell, seemed set to be Vice President (Functions) of the Mid-Yorks Conservative Association for at least the next forty years.

Then came the Falklands War. Never (or at least not since Troy) in the field of human daftness had so many gone so far to sacrifice so much for the sake of one silly woman.

Its effect on the fortunes of the UK government is a matter of public record.

Its effect on the life of Amanda Pitt-Evenlode is less widely known.

What it came down to was this: on June 12th, 1982, she was radicalized.

Curiously it was not the news that her only son, Second Lieutenant Piers Pitt-Evenlode of the Yorkshire Fusiliers, was missing in action, believed dead, that did the trick. That came on June 7th and left her prostrate with shock and unable to register, let alone reject, the canonical comforts of her parish priest, the patriotic platitudes of her committee colleagues, or the phylogenic fortitude of her spouse, the Hon. Rupert Pitt-Evenlode, JP.

No, it was the news that Piers had been discovered alive and, apart from a few inconsequential bullet holes, well, that pricked her into life. While all around the air was full of joyful congratulation, and talk of a possible gong, and plans for the welcome-home party, all she could think of was her recent certainty that this war – any war – was a crime against humanity, and its attendant conclusion that those responsible for it, or supportive of it, or even indifferent to it, must therefore be war criminals.

She tried to pretend that such a certainty should crumble in face of her son’s survival, but found she couldn’t keep it up.

Other women’s sons had fallen without being raised from the grave. How then could she be so arrogant as to assert the health of her own boy as the sole yardstick?

She tried to talk about her feelings with those she felt closest to, and found herself once again prayed over and patronized, and finally pushed towards a very fashionable psychiatrist who’d done wonders for Binky Bullmain’s nervous flatulence.

Piers himself, far from being the hoped-for confidant, took to the role of bemedalled hero like a blowfly to dead meat and clearly regarded any hint of her new anxieties as a personal slur.

But still she looked for ways to adapt her new-found self to her family, her social circle and her political party, and still she found herself rejected like a new heart in an old body.

So she resigned from all of them.

The old Amanda Pitt-Evenlode felt a slight pang that the sighs which marked her passing contained as much relief as sorrow.

The new Mandy Marvell didn’t give a toss.

She had married at seventeen, borne Piers at eighteen, and spent the next two decades performing all the duties proper to a woman of her husband’s status in society. This meant that while tennis, golf and swimming kept her body in pretty good shape, her mind had fewer demands made upon it than would have stretched the ratiocinative powers of a footballer’s parrot.

Now she found that one thought led to another in a most delightful way. Happily her father had died before succeeding in his avowed intent of dissipating all the wealth his father had so assiduously accrued, leaving Mandy with a sufficient private income to be able to live comfortably while at the same time paying the divorce settlement from Pitt-Evenlode straight into the coffers of various excellent charities. Her time and energy she gave generously too, but she did not miss any chance of proving all the pleasures which the hills and valleys, dales and fields, of her quiet country existence had failed to yield. She popped and snorted, drank and smoked; she read, wrote, painted and performed; she travelled widely and tried most alternatives from the religious to the medicinal.

For ten years she overwhelmed herself in experience and at this crowded decade’s end she found that all she retained any real enthusiasm for was Mexican beer, the songs of Gustav Mahler, and straight sex. She even found she’d gone off the poor a bit, not in particular, but as an insoluble symptom of humanity’s shittiness. Fifty was approaching fast. She wanted to do something she could see getting done. But what?

It had occurred to her from time to time as interesting though hardly significant that her strongest memories of life with the Hon. Rupert involved animals rather than people. They had started even, but as the humans faded, the beasts came into ever clearer focus. Now ten years on, with the Hon. reduced to little more than a long nose under a silly hat, she could still recall the exact disposition of the dark spots on a pair of Dalmatians called Aggers and Staggers she’d been given on her twentieth birthday. An upwardly mobile farm cat trying to ingratiate itself into smoked-salmon circles with gifts of moles and shrews was clearer to her than the infant Piers; and while she couldn’t have sworn to the Hon’s private parts in a line-up, the splendid equipment of Balzac, the estate’s prize Charolais, was as detailed in her mind as if etched there by Stubbs.

She explained this to her current lover, an American evangelist, on their last night together before he bore his burden of souls and shekels home.

‘This is your heart bleeping you, Cap. Pick up that phone and get in touch with base.’

His phraseology made her wince, but against that she set the pleasure she derived from his habit of crying ‘HALLELUJAH!’ at the moment of climax. And when he had gone she spoke to her heart.

Animals, her heart answered, were the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. They showed fortitude in adversity and temperance in prosperity. They had no need of prisons, nor did they prey on their own kind. Therefore the way humans treated them was the touchstone of their humanity.

To conclude was to act. Six months later her vigorous sampling of local loose coalitions of hunt saboteurs, cetaphiles, donkey sanctuarians, et cetera, had drawn to her several similarly minded women who agreed to form a more tightly knitted group which came to be known as ANIMA. That it was all female was not a conscious choice but a dynamic inevitability. Men fear more than they admire a powerful woman, and for her to rule over them she must normally usurp the masculine leadership of an already existing group. If instead she forms a new one, she will rarely attract male recruits till she is so successful, she doesn’t want them.

The day after the abortive raid on Wanwood House, Cap Marvell laid the table in the kitchen of her flat for two.

It was simple fare: a large pie, a bowl of crisps, a green salad, a wedge of cheese, a jar of onions, and a couple of baguettes. By one place setting she put a tankard and three cans of draught bitter, by the other a tumbler and a bottle of Mexican beer.

At one o’clock precisely the doorbell rang.

Smiling she drew open the door.

The smile faded as she saw Wendy Walker standing in the corridor.

‘Wendy,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m not selling bloody brushes that’s for sure,’ snapped the other.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Cap. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude, only I’m expecting someone for lunch …’

‘And I’ll be in the way? Well that shouldn’t bother you, Cap. You lot get trained to roll over folk who get in your way, don’t you?’

Cap gritted her teeth. Why was it that every time Wendy treated her like she was still the Hon. Mrs Rupert she found herself wanting to act like she was still the Hon. Mrs Rupert?

She said, ‘Wendy, please, unless it’s a matter of life or death, I wonder if—’

‘Life or death!’ Wendy interrupted her. ‘Why’d that bother you? ’Less it was some sodding animal’s life or death, and even then I daresay you’ve slaughtered more birds and beasts than you’ve ever bloody well saved!’

‘What is it you want to talk about, Wendy?’ said Cap, dangerously calm.

‘Last night, what the fuck do you think? The price of tea? You’re our group leader, aren’t you? Right, I want to talk to my leader about what happened on the raid last night.’

‘Look, I can see how it must have upset you, finding that body …’

‘That’s not what’s upsetting me, no, it’s not a few old bones that’s upsetting me … look, you gonna let me in or not?’

Cap leaned forward and sniffed.

‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said.

‘Well pardon me for breathing,’ said Wendy. ‘Pardon me for eating and drinking and sleeping and waking and pissing and crapping and doing all the other things that real human beings do. Yes, I’ve been drinking, not much, just enough for me to get the crazy idea it might be worthwhile coming round here to sort things out …’

‘Very impressive,’ said Cap. ‘But it will have to keep till you’re a little more sober and I’m a little less busy. I’ll see you later, Wendy.’

‘Later? Yeah sure, only it might be a bit too fucking late for you, Cap, a bit too fucking late!’

Cap Marvell stepped back and closed the door. Wendy Walker turned away and headed for the lift but before she could reach it, Andy Dalziel who’d been standing in it, listening, for the last few minutes, withdrew the foot which was holding the doors open, and pressed the button for the next floor up.

‘Shit,’ said Wendy, and headed for the stairs.

Five minutes later the flat bell rang again.

Cap checked through the peephole this time to be sure, then opened the door, smiling widely.

‘Hello there,’ she said. ‘No need to apologize for being late. It’s permissible on a first date.’

‘Oh aye?’ said Dalziel. ‘Told me down the station you wanted to make a statement. Didn’t say owt about dates.’

‘I believe I did mention lunch. But whether you’ve come with that in mind or your timing is merely a happy coincidence matters little. You’re here. There is food. Please take a seat.’

‘What if I’m not hungry?’

‘You don’t look to me, Mr Dalziel, like a man in whom appetite has much to do with hunger. Do sit down.’

Dalziel considered this. The woman were right. So he did sit and eat.

She watched in silence, admiring the simple almost poetic efficiency of his technique.

There was no impression of gluttony, no overfilling of or overspilling from the mouth (which would indeed have been difficult given the cetacean dimensions of that maw), just a simple procession of food through the marble portals of his teeth, a short rhythmic manducation, and a quick swallow which hardly registered on the massy column of his oesophagus.

The pie vanished save for the small wedge she had taken.

He said, ‘You going to eat or just watch?’

She began to nibble at the pastry crust, still observing with awe as he split one of the baguettes in half, expertly lined it with cheese, crisps, salad, and pickled onions, replaced the lid, raised it to his lips.

‘Remember that scene in the film of Tom Jones where they turn each other on just by eating?’ she said. ‘I never really understood how it worked before.’

‘Eh?’ said Dalziel.

She said, ‘You’ll never get it in.’

Dalziel didn’t reply. His mother had brought him up not to speak with his mouth full.

When the baguette had vanished like a waking dream, he poured himself the third can of bitter and said, ‘Right, Mrs Marvell, what’s all this about?’