Guy Smith: The Wood

Rocking all over the world. Legs apart, swinging her whole body from the waist upwards from side to side, creating a sensation of dizziness as though your scalp might slip right off.

Maybe Andy hadn't taken her seriously. Well, he soon would when that ring arrived back. Posted tomorrow, first class, it might just get there on Wednesday. Not an idle threat made in the heat of anger; she meant it. This had happened just once too often. Andy didn't have to go filming badgers at night with these nuts. He was always on about people trespassing, disturbing the countryside, and if tramping through the woods at night with cameras and dazzling lights wasn't creating a disturbance. she winced as that red disco light hit her full in the face again, knew just how those poor badgers would feel. then she didn't know what disturbance was. Hypocritical. OK, he was determined to go, and that was his decision. Likewise she made her decision. We're through, Andy, don't pester me, please. There are plenty of other girls, just like there are plenty of other chaps. But not the yobbo breed. She moved her pitch again and just then the music changed, a slower record, smoochy. Romantic. That was fine if you were feeling romantic; if you weren't it grated.

She began to push her way off the floor, caught a glimpse of the clock at the far end of the hall. Eleven-thirty. The disc-jockey would be folding it in another half-hour. If she walked steadily back home her folks would have gone to bed by the time she arrived. Christ, she couldn't face one of their inquests, their patronising talk. 'It's only a lover's tiff. You go and sleep on it and you'll feel altogether different in the morning. Andy's such a nice lad, you don't realise how lucky you are, Carol.'

Maybe Andy was nice if you didn't mind sharing him with badgers and foxes and any other species which happened to attract his interest at the time. The cloakroom door was sticking and she had to force it with her shoulder. It had been like that ever since she had come to her first disco here when she was fourteen. The whole village was like that, didn't want to change anything, good or bad. Andy, too. He'd still be going out filming something or other at night when he was sixty. Which was a damned good reason for not marrying him. The night was dry but cool as she shrugged on her sheepskin jacket, just a hint of autumn in the air. Horse-chestnut leaves were already beginning to fill the gutters, they were always the first to fall. Andy had taught her that, damn him.

A sudden decision. She would walk home the long way, a circular detour following the B-road that went north and then skirted the Droy Estate. There was enough moon to see her way by and for sure then her parents would be in bed when she got home. And I won't feel any different in the morning, I'll make damned sure I don't.

She walked on through the deserted village, realised how it had suddenly lost its appeal for her. Twenty years she had lived here, hardly spent a night away except for boring old holidays with her parents and once she was sixteen she had stopped going with them any longer. She'd got into a rut, hadn't bothered with holidays at all. That was where she had made a big mistake. Then Andy (damn it, she couldn't get him out of her system, it was something that would take months) had come on the scene. A university education, travelled in Africa and the Middle East, all on a government hand-out to watch something or other in the wild which didn't want to be watched. And look what it had done to him!

Ragged clouds scudded across the face of a near full moon, the silvery ghostly light showing her glimpses of the surrounding countryside. Wild. Rolling slopes that eventually made steep hillsides, and further on still became mountains. Dark patches where forests grew, the terrain of the fox and the deer. And the badger.

Sod Andy Dark, this whole place reeked of him like he had made it with his own hands. She hadn't used to notice it much until she had started courting him. Now there was no getting away from it. Or was there?

Elizabeth, her school-mate, had packed up and left the village when she was seventeen, gone down to London, found herself a job; and a feller, one who didn't know such a place as Droy existed. A sudden idea crossed Carol's mind. There was nothing to stop her from going tomorrow. London sounded exciting, she had only ever been there once, a day excursion by train while she was staying with Uncle Don and Auntie Ellen in the Potteries. London was a big place where you made your own life, didn't have it moulded for you by a petty bird-watcher. She had no ties, apart from her parents, and they would have to get used to life without her, give them something else to think about. She didn't have a job, had been on the dole since the trouser factory closed down. Most of the younger generation of Droy had shared the same fate. There wasn't much likelihood of finding employment so you just accepted your lot and found something to occupy your time. Now Andy didn't really have a proper job. Studying birds and animals in the hills wasn't work, it wasn't doing anything useful. It was about on a par with young Roy Bean, the Droy gamekeeper. He was worse, all he was bothered about was killing wildlife, setting traps and snares all over the place, firing his gun at anything that flew. It… damn it, it was starting to rain.

Cold rainspots gusted by the wind stung her face, had her turning up the collar of her sheepskin, wishing she had brought her umbrella. More than that, wishing that she had elected to go the short way home. It was too late now, to retrace her steps would make the journey even longer. And to make matters worse the moon was clouding over, leaving her with only a dim outline of the road ahead. So dark, in fact, that there was a possibility that she might walk right by the stile in the hedge up beyond Droy Wood and miss the short-cut across the fields to the village.

A hint of panic but she pushed it away. She wouldn't miss the stile, she had walked this way too many times, could almost tell it by the way the camber of the road sloped. A favourite stroll on a fine evening. With Andy. I wish he was here now. Liar, you don't, you never want to set eyes on him again. The bastard!

Autumn rain; sudden, heavy and cold, a hint that winter was not far away even though it was still only early October. Carol quickened her pace, felt her jeans beginning to dampen around the lower half of her legs. There was at least a mile and a half to go, she would be saturated by the time she got home. She hoped to God Mother hadn't decided to wait up for her. 'Wherever have you been to get soaked like that, Carol, and where's Andy?' Oh shut up, Mother, I'm leaving home, going to live in London and nothing you or Dad can say will stop me.

And then she heard the car approaching from behind, coming from the direction of the village. It was still some way off, half a mile perhaps, the sound of its engine a drone like an angry insect.

Carol Embleton hesitated, turned to face in the opposite direction. Now she could see its headlights, twin white beams swinging over the tops of the hedgerows like the searchlights of an anti-aircraft gun searching the night sky for an enemy aircraft. She found herself stepping back into the undergrowth, remembered those teenagers who had come into the hall after closing time at the Dun Cow. They had had too much to drink, wouldn't have passed a breathalyser test; except that in Droy you didn't get breathalysed, not unless you had driven crazily down the main street and bumped into a dozen parked cars. And even then it would depend upon PC Houliston being around. It could be those yobbos. On the other hand it did not necessarily have to be. And as if to aid her decision the rain suddenly increased almost to thunderstorm force, a blinding downpour that had her stepping back on to the edge of the road. Catchy strains of that disco music came back to her, a