The Path Through the Wood Chapter 1 (Version 2)

Chapter 1

From above, the sea would be all there is, a realm of grey rushing in from where the water is thicker, from where the horizons are flecked with ice. Miles away to the North perhaps, beyond the natural curvature of the Earth, there may exist a definable edge or an island, desolate and terrible, composed of volcanic rock, spewed from the belly of the Earth millennia ago and thrashed by a resentful sea ever since.
From that high vantage point, from that bird's eye perhaps, or from the cockpit of that aircraft, all hints of civilisation would seem as remote as the islands that the sea inevitably retains and the horizon inevitably conceals. I would appear as a bead of water choosing a path down a window, or a glint of light travelling along the edge of a blade.
These are the things that I find myself pondering as I drive, as if those ideas that are as unattainable as galaxies in the night are somehow brought into being by the simple act of a thought, of a wish thrown out against the face of all probability.
There is something good about being on the road again. Out here, with the countryside sheathed in a gathering fog, with the hills beyond, black and starkly impressive in the failing light, I can pretend that everything is still the same, that nothing fundamental has changed, that the world continues much as before. Some miles back I became convinced that I had taken a wrong turn amongst the lanes that mark the approach to the coast. With the fog to keep me company I could have been travelling either way. North towards one of the larger towns, making my way through the heath before catching site of the lights on the headland, or perhaps South, racing to catch a ferry to Norway or Denmark, if there were any still running.
It makes no difference. In ways that go beyond the obvious, I am leaving civilisation behind.
I listen to the radio as I drive, the impenetrable mantra of the foreign stations, emergency channels, all that remains. There are fewer now than there were a week ago, their frequencies failing, growing steadily silent. The failure of power is widespread. The signal shifts and fades. It hisses like a cornered cat and makes me thing that I am witnessing the end of something.

It is too dark to continue on to the house now. There is a certain safety to be had during daylight hours that I cannot risk by being hasty.
Parking the car next to the marsh, I take the ruck-sac from the back seat. Then I set out on foot, crossing the bridges that span the muddy tributaries.
There is life here, microbial, bacterial, embedded beneath the surface. The mud is full of crabs, hibernating, cajoled into stasis by the cold.
Closer to the dunes, I pass a line of Tank Traps, discarded like step-stones along the shore, rough, ferrous. A single pillbox stands guard, a lonely wind trap amongst the beach grass.
The sea heaves and ferments, shrouded in an indistinct fog. Clouds the colour of a bruise march the horizon, bold and immense like a pantheon of gods passing judgement. Somewhere out there, the sky meets the waves. It is a fact, a given, a scientifically proven truth, like electricity or the splitting of the atom. And like those things, like a world that existed barely two months ago, it seems impossible to visualise.

In the hollows between the dunes there are beach huts, low wooden shacks arranged in ranks like standing stones, raised in honour of the sea. I wander amongst them. The dune is a hollow, shielded by a sand bank, protected from the worst of the weather, a little oasis of stillness. The wind cannot reach me here. I select the furthest hut from the path and smash the lock with a large stone.

I cannot sleep. The interior of the hut has become the last bastion of calm on Earth. Outside the rain rushes up like sparrows against the wood, like a million tiny claws, an echo of white noise. There is a comfort to be had in that. I hear the sea, clawing at the coast as if to call ‘don’t leave me’, when all the time it is the sea and not the land that is leaving.
The camping lamp throws out only a meagre heat. Sometime during the previous day the storms that kept me inland have cleared. The temperature has dropped from just above freezing to just a few degrees below and a frost has enveloped the coast, dusting everything in fine threads of ice.
Nested within the warmth of the sleeping bag, my hands are cold and tiny ice sculptures, perfectly formed yet not truly a part of me, alien and unfamiliar. The chill runs deep within the bones, within the veins and arteries. I imagine my blood, thick as engine oil, slowed into lethargy, working against my heart like treacle.
With aching fingers, I unpack the meagre rations that I have been husbanding. There is something reassuring in an ability to boil soup, something primitive.
I think of my family, animated in my mind like poorly transferred cine film, flickery with over-exposure and sunlight that seems to slip around them, dress them in haloes and coronas.
I remember little of the last time I saw them. That in itself would be a terrible admission, but it can only be made worse by what came after.
I recall that last afternoon in their garden, the last images I have of them, relaxing in deck chairs, drowsy from a summer meal and the bottle of wine that went with it.
My father rises from his deck chair in slow motion, crosses the garden and gives me one last look before entering the house. This is almost certainly a dramatisation that I have concocted. I undoubtedly saw them after that moment. We sat in that garden all afternoon, chatted into the evening, said our goodbyes with no hint of the finality that was even then, only gracing the horizon.
That moment, however, that fleeting glimpse of my father disappearing inside the house is the last image that I can clearly remember. It exists in its own right, a shard of memory, preserved and snowballed into something more momentous like the speck of dirt at the heart of a hail-stone.
Thinking about all this now, of my life in London, I may as well be imagining something that took place on the moon. There is an otherworldliness connected to these memories, a sensation of viewing them through fog or smoke.
I retrieve the photo of my father that I carry, compare myself to him by the light of the camping lamp. The family resemblance is there, hidden beneath the surface like a watermark. We are about the same height. Our eyes are the same shade of green. Our features move in similar ways. This is something I have to remember. No matter how hard I try I cannot see it in a photograph.
The rain comes down hard and makes me shiver. There is a thickness to it this evening, something syrupy, the definite mass of ice perhaps. I am oblivious to its abrasiveness.
I no longer feel anything of what I once did. Even my proximity to the sea has become something akin to magnetism, something in the bones that reminds me of toothache. This is the closest I have been to the coast for three years. It is as though a part of me, primitive and primordial, never really left the sea at all, and still feels the pull of every tide.

There were reasons for leaving London when I did and yet when I try to picture them, form them into some sort of coherent narrative, my memory grows cloudy What I am certain of is that the impulse had been whispering in my ear for weeks, as soon as the first few people started to die anyway. An idea, secretly nursed in the small hours, get away, stay away, find somewhere safe.
It wasn’t as if there was a single cause, a prime mover that made the decision for me. There was no tipping point. During those final weeks I saw sights that made me wonder how I had managed to ignore it for so long: the rioting, the looting, the abdication of authority, the use of mass graves. Even now it amazes me that I could have denied the reality of the situation so thoroughly, but there is something in the human psyche that excels at creating hesitation, convinces us that a situation is normal right up until the point when it is quite clearly not.
It was when they made the announcement that they were no longer registering the dead. That was when I knew they had lost control. I remember the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, the sensation of something liquid in the guts, a reaction to the mundanity of it all.

At two in the morning there is a light along the coast, bold and pronounced, a single star, a sign of life. In the darkness I cannot be certain that it is the house or somewhere beyond, a little piece of the universe fallen to Earth perhaps.
The light shimmers, vaporous and indistinct, distorted by the inconsistencies of the hut window and the rain. It flickers in the darkness then goes out altogether leaving my eyes to scratch against the darkness. I wipe the grime from the window leaving tracks in the condensation. The rain comes down in obscuring drifts. The after-image is lost. The ocean burns and is empty once more.

Chapter 2

To describe Neptune House as a fortress would not be entirely inaccurate and yet this morning, that is what I need it to be. The building squats upon the very last ledge of the world like an edifice.
“Immobile,” is how my father described it, “isolated yet fully formed, forgotten.” He liked to compare it to an Incan city, built to the highest standards and then abandoned in the hope that one kind of god or another would judge it fit to inhabit.
I cannot help but dwell upon the parallels, although it would be a strange day indeed when I regarded myself as any kind of God; a god of my own destiny perhaps, a small god, a quiet god, but never a god of other people.
The years have made the illusion hard to maintain. All things are subject to atrophy and this morning the house appears shrunken, wind smeared and grey, its upper floors shrouded in a drizzle fog that has come in off the marshes only to settle around all the wrong corners.
I try the front door, find it locked of course, reinforced with an ironwork lattice. I scrape the salt grime from the window. The hall looks empty, deserted, the ground floor windows tightly shuttered against the day and whatever it brings in. At the rear, a small, cellar window provides access. A brick from the garden makes short work of it. The sound of breaking glass amidst so much stillness is jarring.

I wander the halls with their antique chandeliers, the living rooms with their ghost-shrouded furniture, scattered with dead leaves that have collected in the corners.
In the East wing I come across a large drawing room. The shutters allow only the barest slivers of daylight to enter, casting the room in shadow. Dust dances, pirouetting like protozoa, like satellites following their orbits.
I stand at the window there and admire the sea. Something out there shimmers. It is as if the perspective of the beach has changed, a reflection in the glass perhaps.
I am already moving as the bat comes down on my shoulder. It is only a glancing blow, yet it is enough to send me reeling. I try to turn as I fall and end up barrelling into a stack of chairs, spilling them like bowling pins. I roll onto my back, ready for the second blow.
“Who are you?”
The girl takes a step closer, the fear apparent on her face. She wields a baseball bat but I can see that she is not used to its weight.
“What do you want?”
I think fast.
“I’m not here to take anything. I didn’t think there was anyone here.”
She regards me with suspicion. She has the look of a small animal about her, something that lives its life in a perpetual state of fear.
“You’re alone?”
“Yes.”
I notice her knuckles turning white. She grips the bat tighter, holds it to my face but the conviction is no longer there. We both know that the moment for violence has passed.
I push it away and clamber to my feet.
“My name’s Erin.” I say.
I see the realisation that I am a woman cross her face. She remains silent, wary.
“If I was going to harm you I’d have done it by now, don’t you think?”
“How do I know there’s nobody else?”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
She watches me, sizing me up, considering her options perhaps.
“I’m Catherine,” she mutters, finally.
She is shorter than I am and slightly built. Her hair is perhaps shoulder length, held in place by a woollen hat, revealing cheekbones that remind me of something sleek and fast. She moves like a toy, every motion a deliberate and carefully considered act. She is perhaps the least likely candidate I would think of to wield a baseball bat.
“Trust is something of a commodity these days.” She says, “You’re lucky I wasn’t armed.”