Three British Mystery Novels

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

As if that first breakfast had unlocked something inside of Freya, they became a regular habit in the mornings. Any guilt at her activities, the violent shudders of her stomach, faded beneath the sizzling scent of hot fat, the wetness that flooded her mouth and the quick, primitive beating of her heart as she bit into that which was tough and fleshy and once a living, breathing thing. Her lips glistened with grease from swollen sausages and bacon – sometimes rare, other times as crispy and black as that horrid thing melted into McCready’s field. The very act of eating became sensual and primal as she remembered that last meal with Robert to be.

Her children remarked on the readiness of cooked breakfasts, and the kitchen stank perpetually of smoke, but beyond that nothing was said. Nothing could be said, for her feasts were private and she always ate alone, before her children woke. The virtue of her vegetarianism was maintained, as was that of her motherhood, and life went on in Lynnwood.

On the thirteenth of September she saw her children, George and Lizzie, return to school. Hollybush Manor was not an outstanding college of learning but it was built, like most of the village’s heritage, on old traditions. These aged values gave it strength. It was also blessed with being the only school in Lynnwood. Those children – or indeed their parents – with an appetite for education had nowhere else to turn without driving the distance through the Forest, to Lymington. The school owed much to that hunger.

That morning Freya walked with her children to school. George was more than capable of looking after himself, when left to his own devices, but the other children weren’t so accommodating. Only last summer she had been called in for a meeting with his headteacher, Mrs. Morecroft, when it had emerged than Daniel Collins and some of the other boys from George’s class were bullying him.

“Good riddance,” she said, as they set off from Haven House towards the village green. Nobody had missed the Collins family since they had moved last Christmas. Between their troublesome boy and Mr. Collins’s penchant for drink they had made terrible neighbours, undeserving of Lynnwood’s good name. She could never remember quite where they had moved to, or the precise date, though truthfully she gave such things little thought.

“I feel sick,” muttered George, from where he walked beside her. He refused to hold her hand, no matter where they were, not since his eighth birthday when she had taken him to the park and another boy had laughed at them.

“You feel sick, darling? Where is it, your tummy?”

“Yes, my stomach,” he said. “It’s cramping.”

“Maybe you ate your breakfast too quickly.” She paused, crouched to his level and brushed the stray hair from his forehead. “Did you rush your food? You know this happens if you don’t chew properly.”

From several paces behind them Lizzie snorted. “Maybe you should stop force-feeding us fry-ups every morning.”

“Yes,” Freya said. “Yes, I... I probably should.”

They had stopped on the roadside, by the Old Dairy. The sky stretched pale grey, promising rain. The wind rushed against her face, stinging her cheeks and bringing tears to her eyes. She blinked them dry.

Though the dairy had long since closed down, the field behind it was still used to graze cows. As she watched through the slats in the wooden gate, the nearest lifted its head from the grass and brought its sidelong gaze to bear on her. For several moments she stared at the cow and the cow stared back, its mouth slowly working the cud. And if it seemed as though the cow was chewing something else, something darker, fleshier, as she later thought when she tried to remember what she had seen, she knew that she was mistaken. Cows were herbivores, and largely placid animals at that. They didn’t eat meat.

“Hurry up, Mum,” said Lizzie, “or we’re going to be late. He’s not sick, just nervous. I get it all the time when something important’s coming up.”

“I didn’t know that,” Freya said.

“Sure you did. That’s why I didn’t eat before my GCSEs last year, remember?” Shouldering her school bag, her daughter marched ahead.

“Exams or not, you should always eat breakfast, Elizabeth Rankin. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

“Come on, I think we’ve all established that much already...”

Presently the grey, moss-flecked brick of the Manor rose into view. Freya knew all about the building, having once helped George with a piece of History homework on the subject. The school was first commissioned in 1698 when the wealthy merchant, Peter Young, passed through the village on his way to Lymington. So struck was he by the idyllic air of the village that he committed his thoughts to paper, a modern translation of which could still be read in Southampton’s City Library. Freya had found a scan of it on the Internet.

“Knowing the area of the Royal Forest, the New Forest, so well and being so familiar with its surroundings already, which are nothing short of pleasant, I was entirely taken aback by the little village of Lynnwood. I call it a village still, although how it has not yet flourished into something more I cannot fathom. Surely, I challenge anyone who spends more than an evening here, or the day thereafter, to display anything other than reluctance at having to leave this place, or regret at not choosing to stay longer. The soul of this village, its wholesome spirit, is without doubt the public house, The Hollybush. The ale flows freely here, as does the custom, and nary on my travels through the Forest, indeed the county, have I encountered such friendly faces. But there is more to Lynnwood than its tavern. The air tastes clean, unlike that of my London. The cottages are quaint, modest buildings and everywhere I look I find trees, lush and green as any I have ever seen. They must feed well here, and must have done so for many years, to have grown to such heights. Beyond these things, I cannot identify the nature of the village’s charm. It is quite plausible this itself is the source of my being contented. An air of underlying pleasantry, which dulls the senses, illuminates everything so softly, and infuses me with a delightful hunger only Lynnwood can appease...”

The children of Lynnwood were at this time educated in the village hall, although poorly and without much in the way of direction. Peter, a firm advocate of the merits of teaching wherever they might be imparted, sought to rectify this and Hollybush Manor was commissioned, named after the pub he had found so charming.

That morning, neither Lizzie nor George was late. She left them to enter the grounds themselves, kissing them both before they went. Then she made the ten-minute walk back to Haven House. She stopped only once, as she passed the field behind the Old Dairy. This time the cows did not stare at her but stood and chewed, as only cows can.

* * *

October became November, the air grew colder, but the Forest still retained the russet glow of autumn. Red leaves clung to the branches, and orange and brown, so that it seemed as though the trees had patchwork quilts draped across the branches. Much of the ground was similarly coloured, where the leaves had started to fall, and the pathways were littered with puddles. These were the best indicators of the subtly changing seasons; even long into the afternoon the puddles retained the icy glaze of morning. Many were cracked, where they had been trodden on, but those that were undisturbed showed no signs of melting. Mawley Bog, when they reached it, was similarly chilled. Sheets of ice spread from the banks across the surface of the water, like hardened wax. Nor was Freya alone in her observations; gone were the swarms of flies, usually seen dancing just above the water level, and the frogs, which seemed to fascinate George so much, were nowhere in sight.

“They’re hibernating,” he said, when she asked him about their absence. “They crawl into holes beneath the ground and wait out the cold.”

She didn’t blame the frogs. She had anticipated a mild winter, thrown off, perhaps, by the lingering golden brown of the trees, but walking through the Forest she knew she had been mistaken. There was nothing mild about the air. Her faux coonskin cap protected her ears, and she had even seen need for a scarf.

They took the long route around the water. Of the two ways around Mawley Bog, this was the path her parents had always preferred. Often her father would take her for walks but sometimes her mother, Harriet, accompanied them.

* * *

Freya chased the dogs beneath the trees. The year was ’76 and she was nine years old. Though her chest heaved and her feet flew, her legs were only little. The dogs barked playfully as they dashed ahead, noses close to the ground. The earth was a spill of shadows and soil.

“Careful, Freya, darling, don’t run too far!”

She didn’t heed her mother’s advice. It was a wonder she heard it at all. The Forest was not Haven House. Propriety held no sway here, only sharp branches and soft leaves and the damp Forest mulch beneath her shoes. Here she could run as fast as she wanted, as far as she wanted, with her faithful hounds by her side.

“David, she’s going to hurt herself.”

“Let her run,” he said. His voice seemed to carry through the trees. “She knows to keep to the paths. And look at her, look at that smile. Have you ever seen her so happy?”

“She’s easily pleased. Unlike her mother.”

David’s voice thawed into laughter. “You’re telling me.”

“You’d hardly think we were related, looking at her now. A wild child of the Forest.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Look at how her hair streams behind her. And her cheeks, when she turns around. Tell me you don’t recognize those cheeks...”

Freya’s parents continued talking until they faded out of earshot. Still she ran after the dogs. Exhilaration burned her chest as Ralph and Jack led her deeper into the trees. They came upon the hollow of an oak, where leaves had fallen, or been blown into a pile. She slipped between the dogs, kneeling before the hollow. It felt colder here, though not unpleasant. The air smelled ripe. Poking through the leaf-layer, like a child’s emerging tooth, was a small bone. She touched it tentatively at first, feeling the smoothness of the creamy surface, dry and light. Then she grasped it firmly and pulled it from its bed of leaves; a tool with which to repulse her mother and impress her father. How proud he would be of his brave little girl! How her mother would shriek!

* * *

Harriet had been a vain woman, the product of modernity, but even she hadn’t been able to ignore the allure of the Forest, as though some part of her under that false face longed to be beneath the trees. It was a longing that had kept her from the Forest, in the same way that the hungry sometimes deny themselves food, for fear of overindulgence. Freya knew that now, although such a thing would never have occurred to her younger self, who only delighted that both her parents were walking with her. She drew comfort from that delight, from the old paths, the memories of simpler times.

She wrapped that comfort round her like a blanket. More than the cold or the arrival of winter she detected something else in the Forest; a gnawing uneasiness at the back of her mind. She didn’t see or hear anything untoward, but she couldn’t deny the weight she felt, pressing in from all around.

“What’s that?” George said suddenly. Lost in her thoughts, she had almost walked into him. He was standing in the middle of the path. She followed where he was pointing to a bird, a solitary magpie, perched on a sign.

“That’s a magpie, George.”

“No, not the magpie. I know what those are,” he said. “I meant the other thing.”

“What other thing?” She studied the Forest.

“There was a figure, by the trees. A person, I think, except it was hard to see properly because of the shade.”

“It was probably another person then,” she said. “You know, plenty of people from the village walk their dogs around here, like we do.”

“It reminded me of someone. My friend from the train tracks.”

“Your friend?”

He looked up at her with wide, impressionable eyes, the darkness of the Forest reflected in his pale face. “My friend. The man who lives in the tunnel.”

* * *

The memories are so clear now. She can hardly think, hardly breathe, for their clarity, after so long in the dark. That which was once clouded has run clear until she can think of nothing else. They sluice like the brook through her mind, its waters swollen with spring.

She pauses, pen in hand, and turns to the AGA cooker. The ache inside her redoubles, crippling in its intensity until she cannot move except to clutch her arms around her stomach. But these are not hunger pangs; they are aches of a different kind. It is not her stomach wrapped in her arms but her abdomen and the womb beneath, where her little ones first came into being, where they grew and from where they were born into this wilderness world. They are children of Lynnwood and now Lynnwood has them again. She feels hollow. Lightheaded at the thought of what they have become. They are lost to her, devoured by the same hunger that threatens to consume their mother.

She moans helplessly, a low, bovine sound, before dropping her pen and clasping a hand to her mouth. Her eyes flicker to the window. Evening is fast fading. Shadows lengthen, spilling from the empty windows of Granary Cottage opposite, moving where all else is still. The building is tinged with the lingering pink of dusk. Soon there will be shadows of other things too; bony silhouettes peering into her house, crawling through the streets, slender arms reaching for her door. And she will answer them. She will open her house to Midwinter because there is no fighting it anymore...

There is not long left but there is still time, if she writes quickly. She retrieves the pen from the tabletop and places the nib to paper. With the smells of the Forest filling her nostrils and the haunting laughter of her children in her ears, she writes.