Guy Smith: The Wood

'Caught with our bleedin' trousers down,' was Victor's favourite phrase most nights in the Dun Cow before he went on duty. 'Everybody could see it comin' but they kept on sayin' "peace in our time" until bloody war broke out. Then "who would've thought it?" So the best they can do is arm all the old fogies with twelve-bores and say "give it the Hun good and proper up his arse if he dares to come".' And he had come, all right, Victor reflected grimly. At fifty life was becoming very tiresome. A clerk by day and a fire-watcher by night. When the bloody hell did they think you were going to sleep? Fire-watching, that was a bleedin' laugh.

Until tonight. Jesus Christ, he'd watched some fires, like a gigantic Guy Fawkes' Night and still going on. The Jerries came in drove after drove, the entire Luftwaffe, surely, concentrated on one target. The railway network first, roads and bridges, then they just let all fuck loose on the city. Victor saw the munitions factory go up, there was no mistaking it. Puny retaliatory fire, the Jerries were having a field day. But they got one, oh Christ, they got one big bugger! Good for our lads!

Vie saw the bomber coming his way, wondered what the hell they were up to. All the others turned back once they had jettisoned their loads. But this one was hit, losing height and then bursting into flames. Victor Amery saw it nosedive, explode in a field of cut hay and catch fire, burning debris everywhere setting the hay alight. Smoke billowed up, hung in the still atmosphere like those fogs that came in from the sea at times. Had you coughing, your eyes smarting.

Fire-watching.

And then he saw the parachutist out of the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was a bird, so big and graceful, but eventually made out the shape of a man, gliding. Heading towards the Droy Wood.

Victor cocked the hammers of his shotgun. A Boche, an enemy. A killer. Look what the bastards had done to the city, an inferno that was even now cremating its dead, hundreds, maybe thousands more trapped by the flames. He swung the gun to his shoulder, his forefinger brushing the trigger. Too far; three, maybe four hundred yards. Not even a WD-loaded SG would reach that distance. Regretfully he lowered his gun, narrowed his smarting eyes. The bastard was going to hit the wood all right, no doubt about that. Victor Amery saw the parachutist clear a tall oak, then dip from sight, swallowed up by the dark shape that was the outline of Droy Wood. Rather you than me, mate. He shuddered, didn't want to think too much about the wood at night. There were too many stories, going back far too long. Half of 'em were probably fiction, village gossip. But there was no smoke without fire. He coughed, wiped his smarting eyes.

Then he was hurrying back towards the village, his shout ready for when he got within earshot,

'There's a Boche in the wood!'

The cordon was thrown around Droy Wood with an hour still to go to daylight, a makeshift village posse. A dozen Home Guard, some youths who were on the verge of being called up, and one or two old stagers who would act as lookouts. Twenty in all, a sparse force when one viewed the wood from the hills above, five hundred or so acres of swampy woodland. Patches of dense reed beds which had infiltrated from the adjacent marsh like stonecrop spreading from a garden rockery into a flowerbed. Trees that had died, rotted, but still stood firm. A very old wood indeed.

But it was when the fogs came in from the marsh that you had to worry, Victor Amery reflected grimly. There was no telling when they would come, winter or summer. A bright May day would cloud over, turn sultry, hazy; then before you knew it that vile opaque vapour was wisping up through the trees, blotting everything out. And Jesus Christ help you if you were in Droy Wood when that happened!

Dawn came, bringing with it clear skies, a glow that could have been from the rising sun, or else a reflection from the city which still burned. You could smell the smoke.

A dog barked. Brutus, the Alsatian that belonged to Owen, the gamekeeper. Owen was somewhere abroad, nobody had heard from him for over two months, didn't bloody well want to, either. Like a lot of others you knew the next time you saw his name it would be on the War Memorial plaque in the church. Secretly, selfishly, you hoped so if you'd lost one of your cats in his snares or traps. That dog was a personification of its absent master; vicious. If anybody was in the wood, and in all probability the German was lying low there, he'd find the bugger. And if he didn't, then Tom Morris's Jack Russell would, a snappy little creature that raced and barked all over the place, sniffed every clump of grass in the hope of a scent; a bloody nuisance on any day except today. Victor Amery could see the others spaced over half a mile in a half-moon formation. Waiting. Captain Cartwright and old Emson would be at the far end of the wood, the guns in a pheasant drive. Everybody else were the beaters. Take your time, tap every tree and bush with your stick. An assorted armoury; twelve-bores, a couple of.410s, air-rifles, pitchforks, pick-axe handles, anything that could be used as a weapon.

A shrill whistle jerked Amery into action, had him moving forward with the rest of them, thumb resting on the hammer of his gun. That Jerry was undoubtedly armed, at bay. Nobody could blame you if you shot him. Self-defence; and think of all those folks who got caught in the raid last night. Women and kids. Anger: he would have walked with his shotgun cocked in readiness if the ground had not been so uneven.

Twenty yards from the wood. The dogs had already gone in, the terrier yapping incessantly. Even with the dogs, Victor decided, it was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. You needed a full pack of hounds, ten times the number of searchers, and even then the German had a good chance of holing up somewhere.

Amery's uneasiness grew once they were inside the wood. So dark, it was incredible how the summer foliage shut out the light, gave everywhere a kind of sinister green hue, the shade that film cameras exaggerated to produce an everglades effect. Everything smelled damp and rotten, the black soil wet, muddy. It had not dried out over the centuries. You got a sense of timelessness in here, even to the extent of being unsure whether it was day or night, kept glancing about you, expecting to see. you didn't know what you expected to see and that was what made it a thousand times worse. Childhood bogey fears came flooding back; if they were reality then this was their spawning ground.

Victor Amery stopped because Fred Ewart had stopped to light his foul-smelling pipe, the flare of the match almost dazzling in the gloom. By its light you saw his wizened features, the crop of blackheads which might have been taken for a dark stubble of beard except that his drooping moustache was iron grey. Pale blue eyes, alert, watching about him. Four-score years had not dulled his brain, only stooped the shoulders beneath the navy blue knee-length mac which he always wore, summer or winter.

The next man down was looking to Ewart too; he'd been around longer than most of them. Ewart glanced one way, met Amery's gaze.

'We'll no' find him.' We're wasting our time but I've come along just for the walk. 'They never find anybody in here. Remember Vallum? 1932. He killed his wife and her lover, ran in here, left a trail of blood where he'd slashed his wrists. A trail a child could follow but there was nothing at the end of it. It just petered out. Nothing. They won't find the German.'

Victor Amery shivered. Damn Ewart and his tales of yesteryear. That was one of the reasons why Victor had almost stopped going to the Dun Cow. Night after night, it got on your nerves, stories you remembered when you put the light out. Always Droy Wood figured in them. Maybe he made them up. Yes, that was it, the silly old bugger took a delight in scaring folks. He was the source of the legends, told 'em over and over again till people believed them and passed them on. The wood was just like any other wood.