Reginald Hill: The Wood Beyond

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?

Wanwood House had had pieces added to it in the modern Portaloo style, but basically it was a square solid Victorian building, its proportions not palatial but just far enough outside the human scale to put a peasant in his place. Thus did the nineteenth-century Yorkshireman underline the natural order of things.

His twentieth-century successors were more self-effacing it seemed.

'Don't advertise much,' observed Dalziel looking at a discreet plaque which read ALBA PHARMACEUTICALS Research Division. 'And there's nowt on the gate.'

'Might as well have put a neon sign on the roof for all the good it's done them,' said Longbottom ringing the bell.

The door was opened by a man in a dark green uniform with the name 'PATTEN' and a logo consisting of an orange sunburst and the letters 'TecSec' at his breast. He was leanly muscular with close-cropped hair and a long scar down the right cheek which, helped by a slightly askew nose, suggested that at some time the whole face had been removed and rather badly stitched back on. Dalziel viewed him with the distaste of a professional soldier for private armies. But at least the man sized them up at a glance and didn't do anything silly like asking for identification.

He ushered them through the nineteenth into the twentieth century in the form of a modern reception area with a stainless-steel desk, pink fitted carpet and hessian-hung walls from which depended what might have been a selection of Prince Charles's watercolours left standing in the rain.

One of three doors almost invisible in their hessian camouflage opened and a slim fair-haired man in his thirties and a dinner jacket, who reminded Dalziel of someone but he couldn't quite say who, came towards them saying, 'My dear chap, you're soaked. No need, I'm sure. The fuzz must have plenty of pensioned-off sawbones all too keen to earn a bob doing basics.'

Assuming none of this solicitude was aimed at him, Dalziel said, 'Aye, and we sometimes make do with a barber and a leech. You'll be Batty, I daresay.'

'Indeed,' said the man regarding Dalziel with the air of one nostalgic for the days of tradesmen's entrances. 'And you.. ?'

'Superintendent Andrew Dalziel,' offered Longbottom.

'Ah, the great white chief. Took your time getting here, superintendent.'

'Got the call on my way back from a meeting in Nottingham,' said Dalziel. He saw Longbottom smile his awareness that the meeting in question had taken place under floodlights on a rugby pitch.