16. THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

A wet day, but there bis the laptop...

THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

16. In The Clearing

Deirdre Greengage didn’t like to see her husband the way he was too often these days. Things had changed, life had laid a hard hand on the loving man she had married and spread a layer of cynicism over him.

There had been a time, why, almost forty years ago, when they’d been young lovers courting in Brumpton Woods and he’d tried all manner of little tricks on her and she’d let him with pretended reluctance. It had been fun, her flashing her knickers and he hiding his excitement, But she supposed the one thing, the secret that was in reality no such thing as a secret, was Caesar.

It hadn’t been anything like rape though she tried to tell herself that was exactly what it should be called. But the relaity was that it was nothing like rape, it had been a one nighter on a faith course, two people drawn together and ending up in exactly the right position for instinct to take over and to make her pregnant, and pregnant she’d become. They’d prayed together, of course, but praying wasn’t all that had been on their minds. Their bodies were flesh, and the flesh became joined.

At home she’d taken the pill but she’d dropped it off whilst on the course because she didn’t think she’d need anything like contraception away from home. But back home with all the pressures of work and life they’d discussed it and come to the same conclusion: their careers were important, his in the force and hers in the church with her faith, and a family could be put off until… well, never, it seemed, because Caesar had come into their lives and he’d become a full stop.

And that was that. There had been no real questions by Ricky even though he must have known. But he had loved her and his love was entire and without limitation. But that had been back then. Now he only seemed to have eyes for young thighs and long fragrant hair and it upset her, but what could she do? He was a man and men have uncontrollable God-given instincts.

So now she was going to repay part of the debt she owed him, She was going to have a chat with Winifred Winterbotham in the hope she might reach the woman’s inner self and help bring peace of mind to Ricky by so doing, so she took out her bicycle, put a few treasures in its saddle bag (she knew that Winifred loved treasures even though they were just about worthless) and set off along the unmade track through Brumpton woods.

Until that day the weather had been too good to be true, but now it decided to treat her to a long expected downpour. With the dawn that morning the sky was suddenly dark and leaden, and a gentle but very wetting rain was falling from it before she and Ricky arose from bed, and it only got heavier as the morning grew older. He moaned about the rain and that he’d have to get the car out when it was no distance at all to Brumpton police station but he wasn’t going to get wet, not for anything.

She decided it was the Lord’s message that not everything in life is easy. It encouraged her because of the discomfort involved, and she got her bicycle out.

And she did get wet as she cycled along the unmade road to Winifred’s cottage, but she was wrapped up as sensibly as was practical in waterproofs that succeeded in getting heavier and heavier as she cycled along, but they would be easy to dry off when she got home. It wasn’t pleasant even though she tried to teach herself a little homily about mortification, the rain lashing down and dislodging the first few loose leaves of autumn.

“You wet!” cackled a voice when she got there. The old woman was standing in her kitchen doorway just out of reach of the rain as if that’s where she spent her life which, thought Deirdre, she might.

“Can I come in?” she asked, “I have gifts for you.”

“Gifts? No want gifts,” responded Winifred, but Deirdre noted that she’d already received a gift from someone, a carrier bag bearing the shop in Islandwood’s logo, and with a few tins still inside it. When Winifred went herself she always took the same wicker basket, never a plastic bag, so someone must have dropped them off.

“A few candles,” she told Winifred, “winter’s on its way and the nights are going to get darker again.”

“Why?” the older woman asked, “why darker?”

“You don’t understand,” sighed Deirdre, “it’s God’s will, that’s what it is, though my Ricky might suggest it has something to do with the sun and the moon and the tilt of the Earth and that sort of nonsense.”

“The sun,” nodded Winifred, “the sun is light.”

I know you’re not stupid, and I guess that proves it, thought Deirdre.

“Anyway,” she said, “ have you anything to tell me, Winifred?”

“They took my daddy away,” whispered the old woman, indicating where the grave of the skeleton had been opened and its contents removed, “they come, they dig, the take him away. And my daddy came from the stars! Mother told me many times, your daddy is a starman, she said, your daddy came to mummy from the stars… your daddy not a Nazi.”

“Not a Nazi,” sighed Deirdre, “that would be a start, I suppose.” Thn she smiled at Winifred, “let me tell you a story,” she said, “about a long time ago. Look: I’ve got some coffee, and some powdered milk” she produced a large jar of instant coffee from her saddlebag, “if you put your kettle on we can have a nice cup of coffee. And when I go I’ll leave it with you. It’ll last for quite a long time!”

“Like coffee,” sighed Winifred, and she bustled back into her kitchen and returned with a battered old kettle which she held under a tap on the water butt.

It took an age for that kettle to boil, but it did in the end, and while they were waiting Deirdre recounted a couple of simple stories stolen from the Old Testament and made them relevant to the Winifred of today.

“You see,” she aid, “there was a beginning once. And it was in that beginning that a mighty power decided to make the world we live on, and we call that power God. And he made two people, a man and a woman… they came from the stars, my love, like your daddy did.”

“And?” asked Winifred, “are they in holes in gardens like my daddy?”

Deirdre shook her head. “No,” she whispered, “they are the first people, those who went before, and we, you and me and everyone you ever knew, are their children…”

Meanwhile, after school on that wet day Ricky went across the road to call on Enid because it was far more peaceful in her house than in the chaos of his.

“I wanted to go back to that clearing because I’ve got an idea,” he said, “but I’m not going in this rain. I’d get wet through and end up with double pneumonia!”

“You mean we’d get wet through, darling,” she said in her most grown up voice yet, “because if you’re going, so am I.”

“Anyway, I got to thinking I, or I mean we, could go there virtually,” he smiled. “You’ve got Google Earth on your laptop, haven’t you?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” she grinned, and reached for her slender machine. “We can take a walk in the dry and find it. What were you hoping to see? Remains of the old forties aeroplane still tucked into the blackberries?”

He grinned at her. “I dunno,” he replied, “it’s just that, well, there was a photograph, in the archive, can you remember? Showing the smouldering remains of a small aeroplane? It hadn’t been totally destroyed, so even though all the reports said the fire was fierce it can’t have been all that fierce, can it? And there was the half crown…”

“You’re obsessed by that old coin,” she teased.

“Not really. It’s just that… well, that corner of the clearing where the aeroplane came to a juddering halt, it’s only a small part of a much larger clearing isn’t it? Here, put Google Earth on your laptop and we’ll go for a walk in Brumpton Woods in the dry!”

“First, look at this,” suggested Enid, and the tapped a few keys on the computer. An image appeared on its screen, a newspaper photograph that was taken at the time of the nineteen forties crash. And it was the picture Anthony had been alluding to, the one they’d seen in the archive, with what must have been tendrils of smoke spiralling away from what could only have been very hot metal.

“See,” whispered Anthony, “I knew it! The clearing was much larger even back then! The fighter plane only fills a small part of it, and all the talk of a vicious fire threatening the whole woods was way over the top.”

“You might well be right, dearest,” smiled Enid, and she reached one hand towards him and brushed it against his own hand. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, “I mean, being all alone with me in my boudoir and all sorts of risqué thoughts going through my head?”

He looked at her, troubled. Then, “let’s check out the place where the aeroplane crashed on your laptop and then… well, you know how I feel about hurting you, bringing trouble on you, making you, you know, in the family way! After all we’re not sixteen yet.”

“Not quite,” she said, “but we both will be soon and I get the feeling that there are some things that can’t wait for ever. Take Winifred in her cottage, she’s waited for ever and it’s too late. For her, that is.”

Anthony felt uncomfortable at Enid’s conversation, and she noticed and told herself that all things would come to pass… in good time. She was absurdly fond of this boy!

“Look at Google Earth,” she said, changing the subject. She tapped the relevant keys, entered a post code and the screen was filled with a view of their corner of Brumpton, seen from way above them.

“Look,” she said, “I’ll follow the road to the cottage and see if it’s there.

The road didn’t exist as a three dimensional image for her to follow probably because it wasn’’t a road at all, but just a dirty old track, but she could see the area set out as if a map had been placed on the laptop. And seeing it from that perspective she was able to find the famous aircraft site clearing.

“You’re right,” she said, “it’s a much bigger area than we thought.

“Big enough for the aircraft’s pilot to think of landing in?” It was a question, and she nodded.

“And look:” she pointed, “where we think the plane landed, over there, under a tree, not so easy to identify…”

“It’s Winifred,” breathed Anthony, “Looking around, standing still by the look of her, I wonder why?”

“More questions, and fewer answers,” sighed Enid, “come here, lover boy, I want a kiss, and donlt you dared refuse me!”

© Peter Rogerson 29.01.23

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