Wilderness

by Tanya Hawkes

Steve.

Steve’s insomnia forced him out of bed and into St Mary’s far too early. His pupils’ feigned mock surprise when they found him already there, shovelling the allocated ration of wood chips into the boiler.

“Hey Steve, did you forget to go home?” Charlie shouted. Others sniggered. Steve rolled his eyes and got on with the job.

Hannah, arrived, just shifting her clanking rucksack full of god knows what today, and nodded in that way she always did, like they had a shared secret. Sparky and moody, they made him feel normal. He ordered Charlie and co to dig up vegetables for lunch, or else. Hannah hung around him as usual, lazily arranging chairs into two rows in the classroom asking him questions like: Did he know woodlice are the best thing to eat if you’re stranded in the wilderness?’ Did he know how to make a rabbit snare? Was that what she had in her bag? Hannah shrugged. Steve wasn’t sure he should encourage her so he fiddled with the radiator some more and checked the thermometer again. It was creeping up to 16 degrees. They would have heat in the classroom today. Josie, his daughter would be impressed.

More pupils arrived, most of them hanging around the gardens.

“Don’t forget. Film and talk at 9.30. In the classroom.” He shouted at them over his shoulder as he headed to the gates to wait for Josie to arrive.

Once there he nervously picked at the peeling black paint on the old school gates and kicked some stones out of path, scanning the deserted track for signs of her arrival. It was a whole year since he’d last seen her (which wasn’t his fault this time.) She’d slammed out of his cottage door, crying, (which may have been partly his fault, it was hard to remember.) He read the letter again: To Dr Stephen Harris, it said, as if it were for someone else, some one important. He’d almost forgotten about being a Dr. Once, when Josie was little, three or four perhaps, when they’d lived out in the forests, she’d asked him to make the dog better because he was a “Dr.” “I’m not that kind of doctor, I’m afraid. I can’t make Blue better. I’m a doctor of philosophy.” Josie had cried accusing tears. Fair enough, he thought afterwards- being a real doctor would have been much more useful. Saving lives was a proper skill. He wondered how he would disappoint her, today.

Josie.

Josie was on the tube and out of Birmingham by 4.30am. Tired, Aaden had huffed and squirmed for most of the night. At 3am Josie got up, muttered and dressed, grabbing her cards and pass as she went. They hardly ever bothered arguing about it any more, there was no point. Last night they’d tried, half heartedly:

“Why cant I come?”

“It’s not that you can’t, it’s just that it might be awkward. For you.”

“You think he won’t like me”

Josie laugh snorted and Aaden clashed a plate down on the side board. ‘Nope. You know why.’

‘You don’t have to go there. They could send someone else.’

Josie sighed. ‘I need to do this. Please. He’s just…’

‘It’s not right. A father should want to meet his daughter’s partner. You needed him, he should have known that. What kind of father would…’

‘Please. Aaden. Not now.’

The mention of Dr Stephen Harris usually procured long silences and slamming doors. Aaden couldn’t undertand. His siblings, parents, aunties and uncles, were loud and laughing with endless shared history. Josie would flick quietly through Aaden’s pictures and he would watch surreptitiously, knowing with all his heart that his bold, blundering family, who occasionally arrived en masse at their little boat with strong alcohol and cakes, probably meant more to Josie than their own insignificant little relationship. Josie would wonder at Aaden’s ability to know when to come and drape his arms around her neck from behind, and tell her how clever she was and how much a part of the family she was and how much they all loved her. Then they would curl up and drink whatever was left was in the cupboard and play childish cards games on the bed until sleep got the better of them. Dr Stephen Harris, Absent Father, entered into their conversations less and less as time ebbed by.

She had no time for breakfast and wound her way through the stirring streets, grabbing fruit and potato cakes from the little stall that stayed open all night, pushing past people to get aboard the first train. Most of the commuter crowd got off by the poly tunnels on the outskirts and the sparse carriages gave her a welcome sit down. The empty seats looked old and dirty without their occupants and the sudden space was hollow and shaky.

Steve.

She arrived at St Mary’s breathless and glossy. He had an urge to bundle up her tiny frame in his arms, but her rapid movements preventing any physical contact. Her bike was folded up over one shoulder in a trice and her professional looking bag swung onto her other arm. He tried to take one of them, but it was too late. He scratched his head instead.

‘I wish you’d told me you were coming ages ago. I could have rearranged stuff so you could stay at the cottage.’ He cringed at his thin excuse.

‘I sent five messages. I rang’

‘I don’t always get my messages. And the post is always late.’ He felt hot, in spite of the frost.

He broke the silence.

‘So. What are you planning to say to the kids?’

I’m going to show a careers film. Didn’t you get the letter about it? We sent it a while ago.’ She was looking up at the school.

‘Ah yes. Got one of your minions to write it? Surprised you government lot would bother coming here. Barely twenty children left now.’

She sighed. ‘I’m not the government. I work at Programme for Urban Sustainability.’

‘PUS?’

She looked at him at last slowly scanning her eyes round and then seemed to study his face: its lines, the stretched, dry skin or the maybe the dark shadows. He looked away. She gave him a civil servant smile and touched his arm, a quick up and down movement. “Shall we look round before I show my film. The school looks so different. Is it true the pupils take it in turns to cook lunch? That’s amazing.” He moved along in front of her. Be nice, be good, her fingers implied. There’s a good boy.

The pupils they found working in the gardens followed her around with questions:

“Is Steve, I mean Mr Harris, really your dad?” –he certainly is.

“Are you from the Government?” –Ha ha, I’m not quite that important.

“Where did you get your trousers from?” -I made them.

She touched everything. She knew the names of the plants, rubbing rosemary and lovage between her fingers as his pupils, with their practical clothes and unrealistic dreams couldn’t help but desire the aura of possibility that hummed around her. She introduced herself to them as Josephine, which surprised him. That’s what her mother had called her because it was “old fashioned but would never go out of date” He would have preferred a short unisex name, but he didn’t argue, back then. Josephine had shortened to Josie when she was about two and he’d hoped it would have shrunk to Jo, but instead it seemed to have lengthened out in importance. Steve felt like an aide, leading the celebrity entourage to the classroom. She was like a magnet, a modern day pied piper. Cool and unruffled until they arrived at the classroom.

“My god. We built this. I remember. We all built it.” She actually smelled the oak door frame. “Dad. I’d forgotten about it.” Her eyes were sparkling. With what? Happiness? tears? He couldn’t tell. How old was she back then? Six, seven? Josie pointed to the strawbale “truth” window, laughed and said something he didn’t catch.

They’d all had to get busy then. Happy times, he remembered. Busy times. Half the town had helped build this classroom. Tying the strawbales together, mixing the lime plaster that burned the children’s fingers if they touched it without wearing the heavy gloves. Anything but face the creeping unemployment and empty, useless days. The funds for schools in the small towns and villages ran dry and the teachers needed a classroom. The men in the area needed something too, that they didn’t really understand at the time. “The devil makes work for idle hand” Steve’s mum used to say something like that. “Nothing is more dangerous that a redundant male.” It was fun, in the end. They didn’t want to finish. He saw one man repainting a wall unecessairliy. Nothing to go home to, maybe. They’d all left now, those men. He couldn’t even remember their names. Moved on to the cities. Steve remembered going to the supermarket and buying a bottle of champagne to smash against the side of the finished building, like a ship. That was the turning point for him: the supermarket with the empty isles and bored staff. Just two bottles of the fizzy stuff left on the shelves. He’d never even liked champagne before that but felt a strange nostalgia for the heavy green bottles. He bought them both- the other one still waits dustily on his shelf for a celebration.

The children had wandered into the classroom, messing around as usual.

Josie broke his daydreaming by tugging his sleeve. He almost brushed her off, absently.

“Dad? You are Ok about me being here aren’t you?”

“Of course.” What’s a father supposed to say?

“It’s not just because it’s my job. I wanted to see you. To make sure everything’s alright.”

“It’s fine.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. I’ve got something for you. Here.”

Steve took the picture. It was almost unrecognizable. He looked so young, thirty maybe, his smile determined and confident below his dark hair and eyebrows. Josie, all curly hair and clutching a teddy, distractedly looking at something on the floor. And Rachel. God, Rachel. Watching Josie, no smile, even back then when everything was still ok.

“I thought you might like a picture of all of us. I found it when I went through all the stuff. Dad?”

Could she tell? Did she know she’d disabled him? Limbs paralyzed, stomach dissolving, the familiar old feeling of his body sabotaging him. Josie touched his arm with what looked like warmth but felt like ice. He suddenly wasn’t sure if he would make it through the afternoon.

Naturally the power in the classroom went down as soon as Josie flicked the switch on her equipment. She smiled tightly through the interruption while Hannah, star pupil, was able to show off her electrical engineering skills, rolling her eyes at the teachers and pulling tools out of her bag. Steve followed her around and fiddled with some wires pretending that he knew less than her. The power snapped back on and everyone cheered (or jeered) Hannah who went red and shrugged angrily. Steve saw a brief image of himself at fourteen, wearing black and hugging a guitar case as the History teacher read out his essay to the class while Steve seethed and shrank into his desk.

The blinds rolled down into darkness and the images flicked across the wall: a pictorial Utopia. They all hushed as they swept across roof gardens, above small whizzing turbines, through windows into modern apartments. The graphics moved quickly and silently along on trams and electric taxis. There were no delays, no grime, no litter. Mallards paddled across sparkling ponds in compact, leafy parks. People of all nationalities played musical instruments next to gleaming, black railings. Gardeners in row upon row of silvery polytunnels smiled as they harvested uniform crops and teachers in schools demonstrated intricate engineering equipment to eager young faces. Sunbeams bounced from photovolatiacs like a Phantasmagoria. Just like in the old Disney films, the perfect life was almost within reach; if only the children leaned in a little closer they could touch it before it faded. The film stopped and the row of faces looked desperate, desolate, thought Steve, as if the dealer had taken away their drugs just when they needed them most.

Josie paused as if to absorb the splendor they had just witnessed.

Steve stopped pacing and scribbled some questions:

Where are the millions of people living in slums on the way in to the city?

What is the crime rate?

What is the suicide rate? His pencil hovered over the last question.

The basic gist of the kids’ questions seemed to be:

“How can I leave this boring village and move to the city as fast as possible?”

“What’s the fastest train in the world? Etc etc”

Hannah (thank god) asked: “why aren’t there any jobs in the countryside?”

Steve asked his questions, straightening his back for confidence. His last question made her flinch, just a fraction, and he hated himself.

She put on her glossy smile and described the squatter cities, “we don’t call them slums” full of opportunity, not poverty. The democratic structures of neighborhoods, with their elected spokespeople. The community policing system. The endless jobs: growing, feeding, teaching, nursing, building, engineering, computing, communicating. The charity and provision for refugees. And it was all so green. Everything was green, she said. The roofs, the parks, the wastelands. And most of all — and she looked directly at Steve as she spoke -the forests. The finest example of carbon sequestration in Europe. Huge, lush carbon sinks where wild animals roamed and trees branched for hundreds of miles, untouched by humans. The cities were full so that the woods could thrive. So that they could all survive. The sacrifice was worth it. Putting people in cities naturally reduced the population. People had smaller numbers of quality children. She actually said that. Quality children.

She never answered Steve’s suicide question. Some questions had no explanations, he thought.

The kids were starting to fidget now that the film was over.

“You can come and chat to me about the city Programmes if you want to know more.” Josie was neatly putting equipment away

Charlie, school bully, must have spotted some tension.

“Mr Harris, tell us about when you lived in the woods. Is it true you had to eat babies when you lived in the woods?” Some bored laughter broke out at the back of the classroom.

“Well it’s true that times were pretty tough, living away from all the amenities you have, but no, luckily we didn’t have to eat any people, babies or otherwise. And as you can see my very own child is now grown up, alive and well and doing very important work. So. Any questions for Josie, before she needs to heads back to the metropolis.” Steve felt a rush of welcome superiority returning. It was all manageable. They were just kids.

“Did you live in the woods with Mr Harris when you were little?” Charlie dragged the question back like a terrier. “What was it like?”

Josie answered slowly “Um. I can only remember bits. It was fun. It was a long time ago.” She carried on packing up.

“Tell us. Mr Harris said you all had to fight the police. Did you have to fight police, when you were little.” Josie looked confused. “I don’t remember that….”

Hannah, bless her intervened, almost spitting at Charlie. “What would you know you idiot. People had to fight or you’d be living in a hovel or… or in some prison.”

Charlie was snapping back at Hannah. Josie was glaring at Steve.

“It wasn’t like that.” Steve wasn’t even sure who he was explaining to. He folded and unfolded his arms.

“For god’s sake. It was ages ago. It was the right thing to do at the time.” The room fell quiet at the volume of his voice and Josie stopped filling her bag. A small snigger came from the back.

“They had to make sure we didn’t all get sent to the slums.” Hannah was trying to help, but they sounded more like Steve’s words, coming from the wrong mouth.

For a moment he looked around the room as if there were someone who would interrupt. But Charlie had run out of steam and Hannah had the sense to be quiet. Steve was forced to break the hanging silence.

“We had to leave here. Me and Rachel, my wife. Your…” He glanced at Josie who was staring at the table. “And we had to go to camps in the forest. He paused. “We had to go.” Had they really had to go. He’d lost his certainty somewhere.

“Millions of people, not enough food or energy. So everyone started moving to the cities. Household by household, street by street. I always thought that it would be better in the countryside, but it wasn’t. People got cut off and they got scared. Everything had started to close. First the shops, then the doctors, this school, the pubs. The teachers didn’t want to leave but what else could they do. We were teaching, cooking, nursing. They were offered better jobs in the city. There were so many children there, refugees arriving, overflowing slums. They were needed. They had to go.

So we ran away. To the forest. We had to. Anyone with children had to go to the cities. Not forced, you understand, but of course there was no school or hospital here and you could be arrested for not sending your child to school so….well, what choice? Hundreds of us went to the forests. Ate first we were just making a point: The Wilderness Belongs to All. You can’t fence off the commons…..We called them forest camps and all were welcome, at first. It was summer and we built temporary homes. Children were everywhere. Tents were erected, yurts, treehouses built. It was beautiful. What I remember most is how healthy we all looked. Muddy, clothes ragged, hair uncut, skinny, but everyone people’s eyes shone and their skin glowed.

People kept coming and the police came too. Tried to evict us and arrest people. They got bored and we so obviously weren’t doing any harm that they left us alone in the end.

Steve paused. The thin cry of buzzards were audible through the draughty doors. He sat down heavily and glanced at Josie, who hadn’t moved, and continued.

“Anyway, more permanent houses got built, food was grown and we thrived, much to everyone’s surprise. We split into neighborhoods and work groups. Gardening group, engineering, building group, cooking, technology. Our neighbourhood was amazing. And Rachel, she was the cornerstone of it all. She always built everyone up, floating around. She didn’t mix in as well as the rest of us maybe. It’s only now that I notice that. She was on the edge of things, but people went to her, listened to her. She never got angry, never did anything quickly. Once there was a big debate about new people arriving at the camp. Should we let more people in? How many is enough? These two young men had found us, and they had to sit there in the big hall, listening to everyone arguing over whether they could stay. Someone asked what Rachel thought and she just stood up in front of the hundred or so people in the meeting and went over and hugged the two men. She led them off to the door and turned back and said: “I’m going to cook them some food and make them welcome. They’ve come a long way.” That ended that meeting.

Four years we lasted out there. Four years. We had our own society; it was hard work, but it was fun. We forgot about life outside of the woods and we heard less and less news. Sometimes people would go to the deserted towns and get tools and food if we were lucky. We should have known it couldn’t last. We got too relaxed and eventually the police came. Serious police, with guns.”

Steve was aware of the kid’s faces leaning in slightly. He almost laughed. He couldn’t look at Josie.

“They came in the night. We couldn’t even hide in the woods, there were helicopters everywhere and they could see us through the trees with their heat sensing equipment. It went on all night and everything was destroyed. Darkness and crying and sirens. Shouts from the woods as people got arrested. The sounds of gunshots and the fear of wondering who had been hit. There were so many of us that they could never get us all. Most of us escaped.

I remember coming back to where our homes had been, all smashed up. Year of work, gardens, sheds, tools. The horses all lost. We crept out from the trees, one by one. It was like the scene of a massacre. So many people were gone; some of them I’ve never heard from since. After a while when the shock wore off, we regrouped found the other neighborhoods and began to rebuild our tattered lives. It was October and the nights were getting dark. I remember thinking we would need to build again quickly, before it gets too cold.

We tried to go to the cities, to talk to people, tell them we were working in harmony with the forest, that we would hep protect it. No-one would listen. There were a few people who supported us as if we were an indigenous population. But otherwise no-one even mentioned us, kept it all out of the news, in case people came to join us. The small towns, like this were run down and had hardly any power and the cities were getting denser and closed off, like enormous prisons. Roads had gates on them, supposedly to stop criminals, but really to stop poor people wandering around in the wrong areas. What’s hilarious is that to justify coming in and attacking us they said that a couple of people had been killed. Killed! People were being killed all over the cities. Crime was going crazy. In four years two people were killed in the camps. It was a total overreaction. If it even happened.

Anyway, we regrouped and people got started again. We built new homes, we replanted. People came and helped us, hundreds of them, bringing food and tents and all sorts. Rachel was such a fighter, I thought she’d be right in there, building and cooking and meeting the other neighbourhoods. But she just stayed near the house. Every time the children wandered off Rachel would panic. I could see it in her eyes, restless, watching the trees all the time. She was quiet. Everyone else was running around and talking and discussing. Rachel was still.

She never said what she was planning, if she even did plan it. The police came back of course, more of them, many more. We were more prepared this time, but it was chaos. Our barricades were strong, miles of ditches and fences, camouflaged holes that the police fell down. The “War of the Woods” the paper’s called it. We were holding back rows of police with makeshift shields; in the end it was hours of pushing and pushing against each other. People with children were kept well back, further in the woods to keep them safe. Then I saw Rachel. Just floating slowly, holding our daughter….” Steve flicked his eyes over at Josie, as did most of the kids, but she was facing away from them, her head in her hand.

“Rachel looked so calm, like a ghost on a battle field. She raised her open hands to the police and then picked up our daughter and walked through the police lines. They closed around her like a black sea and I never saw her again.”

“She never came back.” Was Hannah asking or telling.

“She went to the city and I never saw her again. Eventually it killed her. Not right away, but slowly, like cancer. Creeping into her. She couldn’t handle all that chaos and violence, the tower blocks, blocking the light, blocking the view. Nothing but thin strips of grey sky to look up at.”

There are still camps in those forests. They pretend there isn’t but there is. She should have stayed.”

Charlie broke the tension. Steve didn’t hear what he said and he didn’t care.

Hannah walked past him and nodded knowingly and the other kid’s started messing around and eventually the room reached it usual noise level, until the children milled out towards the kitchen.

Josie slowly walked over until she was behind her Dad. She draped her arms around his neck from behind and thought she felt a little tremour. His hand was on top of hers, tight and warm.

“I should have…I’m sorry. I didn’t know that she would…she was always so.”

“I know. Come back with me for Christmas. Stay on the boat for a bit with us.”

She felt him nod and they stayed in that position for a while as the orange yellow sun melted around the walls. Then without word they left the school and past the thong of noisy children.

On the 13 December 2048, Dr Stephen Harris, father, husband, and one time outlaw, left the lively Welsh hills for the last time. His face pressed against the cold window of the train, the dull sunset disappearing behind him and the unchanging landscape of the city, his prison, awaited him.

5–3–2010