The Enemy Within

Chapter 3

Will stopped in mid-stride, stunned. "Toby!" he called. "What are you doing?"

There was no reply.

He ran towards the place where Toby vanished. The area formed a shallow grass-covered depression, with slightly higher land surrounding it. Straggly elder bushes, goat willows and hawthorns fringed the edges of the hollow.

The ball lay in the grass in the centre of the depression, but there was no sign of Toby. Will, utterly perplexed, called again.

"Toby? Where are you?"

The wind in the bushes. No other sound. Will turned in a circle, shielding his eyes from the late-afternoon sun, trying to catch a glimpse of Toby. Once or twice he thought he had spotted him, but it was only nettles and willowherb blowing in the wind.

He searched among the encircling fringe of bushes, prodded with his stick at any holes he saw among the bony moss-covered roots. But he found nothing. "Ow! Damn!" he exclaimed, as he cut his hand on a briar.

He bound his bleeding hand with his handkerchief. It was surprisingly painful. He began to feel irritable – he really didn"t need Toby to start playing silly games. "Hey, Toby," he called. "Stop messing about!"

He hurried this way and that, peering behind bushes, clumps of nettles and thick tussocks of grass, but still no Toby. He returned to the standing stone on its mound. He searched around the stone, investigated the w**d-choked gateway that led into the field. Still nothing.

"Toby! TOBY!!"

He retraced his steps as far as the lane. He shouted Toby"s name over and over, but with no result. He felt a growing sense of unreality, as if he was trapped in the strangest of dreams and had lost the ability to wake himself up.

He ran back to the field, looked behind every bush. He ended up in the hollow, where the ball still lay in the grass. He beat his forehead with his fists, hoping the violent action would dispel the intolerable limbo he was stuck in. But it did not.

He let out an agonised cry: "TOBEEEEE!!!"

There was no answer, only the bushes shuddering in the strengthening breeze. It was as if an invisible hand had plucked his son from the planet. He recalled tales from his student days of ancient gods who meddled in the affairs of men, spiriting hapless mortals away to mountain fastnesses and secret islands. However, these were just stories, told to illustrate some point of social history. But you could almost believe they were true in a place like this!

He looked at his watch. Took it off and shook it. The watch had stopped. He cursed in disbelief. Didn"t normal things work around here?

"Damn! DAMN!!" He felt like screaming in furious frustration.

He thrust the watch into his pocket, took out his mobile and keyed in the number of Alice"s mobile. No signal.

"I don"t believe it!" he cried in hopeless rage. I"m going to go mad now, he thought. Alone in an empty field, with nothing but nettles and thistles to mock me. Perhaps I"m insane already, trapped in a nightmare illusion, while Toby is sitting happily at home eating his tea, having forgotten I have ever existed. Was this some bizarre punishment for his recent affair? Surely not. Life simply wasn"t like that. Was it?

He left the hollow and keyed the number in again from slightly higher ground. Still no signal.

"This is totally crazy!"

He was about to fling his mobile to the ground, but restrained himself. He stared around the field as despair swept through him. Then he heard a faint voice…

"Daddeee!!"

He rushed towards the sound. "Toby – where are you?"

"Daddy – I"m here!"

Will, his emotions swinging between wild extremes, rushed erratically about the field. Toby"s voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "I can"t see you, Toby," he cried in anguish. "Where are you? Are you hurt?"

"Daddeee!"

"Wave your arms so I can see you!" Will turned in a circle, straining his eyes to look. "Wave your arms! Wave! Wave! I still can"t see you!"

He heard Toby"s voice again but, to his distress, its sound was growing fainter. "Daddy…I"m here…Dad…Dad…"

Then, to his ultimate disbelief, silence.

Will, frantic now, rushed around the field, shouting till he had almost lost his voice. But he was unable to find any sign of Toby. He called, but Toby no longer replied. The thought occurred to him that perhaps Toby had never heard him, that maybe his son was so far away his own voice hadn"t carried that far. But Toby"s voice had reached him… He could make no sense of it.

He sat abruptly on the ground, his head in his hands. "This can"t be real." He got to his feet, looked around at the empty field. "This has to be some kind of joke!" He drew deep breaths, doing his best to calm himself. "Be methodical."

He quartered the field, striding one way, turning and pacing back. As, once again, he arrived at the standing stone, Alice appeared by the gate to the field.

"What"s going on, Will? You"ve been away hours. It"s almost teatime." She looked around. "Where"s Toby?"

He stared at her, speechless.

They searched the field together, Alice becoming increasingly upset. Eventually she broke down and wept. Will, exhausted, staggered towards her. "Alice - " he began, not knowing what else to say. Before he could get his thoughts to work, she rounded on him in fury.

"You can"t take our precious little son for a walk and just lose him – in an empty field! It"s impossible!"

"I can"t understand it," he managed at last, "one moment he was here and the next he"d gone. As if the earth had just swallowed him up."

"You and your stupid ideas!" She was screaming at him now. "We should never have come here!"

"We had to. You know that. It was as much your idea as mine to come somewhere new where no one knows us."

"And the first thing you do is tell Simon who we are and where we live!"

"So what? He"s a stranger. What does it matter? Anyway," he added resentfully, "you had plenty to say to him!"

She shrugged, wrong-footed for a moment. "I was just trying to be neighbourly."

"Neighbourly!" he exploded. "I thought any second you"d be showing him your t**s!"

They glared at each other. He shook his head. "Simon knows nothing about our past. Let"s keep it that way."

They faced each other testily. But they were too exhausted and distraught to continue to fight. Then they heard it:

"Dad! Mum!"

They turned in the direction of the voice.

Simon, his camera over his shoulder, approached on horseback across an adjacent field. Toby sat in front of him. Will and Alice hurried towards them.

"Lost someone?" Simon smiled. "I found him wandering about in the field below the Hall. He doesn"t seem to remember how he got there. And he"s wet through. Must have fallen in a ditch."

"No, I didn"t," Toby disagreed. "It wasn"t a ditch."

Simon passed Toby over a connecting field gate into his father"s arms. Will and Alice gave Toby a relieved hug. Will put his jacket around his son"s shoulders.

"Thanks, Simon," Alice gushed. "We really thought we"d lost him!"

Will found himself struggling to save face. "I can"t understand how he got away from me. He"s never done that before."

Simon smiled. "All"s well that ends well."

Will and Alice laughed, their stress finding release. Simon pulled his horse back from the gate, as the animal was becoming skittish.

"Odd field that," Simon gestured at the pasture where Will and Alice stood. "My horses hate it. Something spooks them every time they come near. The locals seem to avoid it too. You"ll have noticed the footpath"s pretty overgrown back there."

"A real nightmare tangle," Will agreed.

Simon turned his horse. "Have to catch the sunset. It"ll be a glorious one, I think. Be seeing you! Bye, Toby. Take care of your mum and dad now."

He rode away. Will, Alice and Toby crossed the field to the gate and the thicket of nettles beyond.

"Toby – don"t you ever run off like that again!" Alice addressed her son angrily.

"I didn"t run off," Toby protested. "I went to look for Kubla Khan. I found the sea, but I didn"t find Kubla Khan."

"What sea?" Will asked sharply.

"You said there was a sea. And I found it! Because I had my special eyes. Back there." He pointed across the field to the way they had come. "I went for a paddle. But it"s all gone now."

Will and Alice exchanged a puzzled look.

"What"s he talking about?" she asked.

Will took his best shot at an explanation. "I think he"s still got his head in the game I invented. But he"s certainly been somewhere to get so wet."

"Well, the important thing is he"s back."

"Exactly." He was relieved there were no more accusations.

They walked up the lane towards the cottage, Toby holding hands between them.

"First thing"s to get you in the bath," Alice announced. "Then we"ll make you something hot for supper."

"Not tripe and onions!" Toby blurted forcefully.

Will and Alice reacted with surprise. They looked at each other, puzzled all over again.

"You"ve never had tripe and onions," Alice frowned at her son. "How on earth do you know about that?"

They caught Toby"s sudden shifty look.

"I don"t." He seemed confused. "I… I just made up a joke!" His expression was suddenly all innocence.

Will and Alice exchanged a mystified, uneasy look.

"How about sausage and eggs?" Will suggested.

Toby grinned. "That"ll do, ta."

His parents looked askance.

"Ta? Where"s that come from?" Alice demanded crossly.

Toby looked blank. Then, after a long pause: "I meant thanks."

thanks"I should think so," Alice frowned.

Will and Alice still seemed troubled. They glanced at Toby, who looked up at them with a wide winning smile.