From the Forest (30 page)

Fungi have three vital functions in forests. First, there is the symbiotic partnership mycorrhiza have with individual trees, as I discussed in the first chapter. Second, once the tree is dead, or even diseased, the relationship changes and the fungi become aggressors, crucial in breaking down and recycling dead organic matter – without fungi, we would be living in a vast woodpile, stacked up yards deep over much of the surface of the world. And third, they are there in the ancient woodlands to remind us how beautiful and uncanny the forests are.

There are surprisingly few direct references to toadstools (for good or bad) in the fairy stories, although I for one am certain that if you wanted to poison half an apple to rid yourself of a stepdaughter, a small slice of
Amanita muscaria –
fly algaric – might work very well. It causes delirium and coma, a good possibility for Snow White’s apparent death.
¹⁸
Nonetheless, the atmosphere of the forest, the sense that strange things, both beautiful and dangerous, can happen at any moment and without warning, is mirrored in the life of the forest fungi. Fungi constantly remind us that there are other forms of life than the obvious ones; there is the human and the wild and the ‘something else’ – magic or mushroom.

It is on this connection between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ that Liz Holden has been working. In 2003 she published
Recommended English Names for Fungi in the UK
, sponsored by the British Mycological Society, English Nature, Plantlife and Scottish Natural Heritage. The Latin or scientific names are – as the reader may have noticed – not easily manageable for most amateurs, and because fungi are so often elusive it is hard to keep track of them. Holden took on the job of creating English names for British fungi. Obviously no one can make these compulsory, but most modern field guides to mushrooms and toadstools are now using her list.

As Richard Mabey so richly illustrates in
Flora Britannica
, many British wild flowers have local informal names, in addition to their ‘proper’ scientific Latin ones.
¹⁹
Because it is so much easier both to see and to care about something you have a personal name for (particularly if the name ‘matches’ the plant in terms of its shape, behaviour or other actual feature – snowdrop rather than
Gallanthus
; bluebell rather than
Hyancinthoides
), wild flowers tend to attract attention, affection and care. But when it comes to fungi, unfortunately ‘there is a paucity of vernacular “folk names” even in Welsh and Gaelic from which to draw inspiration’.
²⁰
Earlier I spoke about the tragic loss of words describing nature and the folk stories in the new edition of the
Oxford Junior Dictionary
; Holden’s project moves in the opposite direction, providing new names to reclaim something of the old tradition. Among the sources for inspiration that she used, she included:

Folklore and legend e.g. elfcup, elfin, dryad, fairy, fairy ring, Goliath, Medusa, St. George, King Alfred, Knights, Shields, Cavaliers and Roundheads have all found a place in this nomenclature. Word play and humour have been included wherever possible. Names such as Crowned Tooth, White Knight, Funeral Bell, The Flirt, Strathy Strangler, Dogend, and Nettle Rash hopefully reflect this.

The names should be ‘distinctive and lively in order to engage public interest. They . . . should avoid too many negative associations . . . care should be taken not to introduce names for poisonous species that could infer edibility.’

Holden’s work, with adults and primary school children, taking people out to walk in forests where they can learn to see and not be frightened, naming, telling, showing these magical life forms, seems to me the sort of conservation project both the woods and the fairy stories need. For all the uncanny horror of the wild places, there is the balancing – the naming and seeing and telling of stories (as dark as death caps, as scary as witches butter, as jokey as crowned tooth) about the forests, so that people can go there with their eyes open and see the deep magic and not feel too much of the uncanny terror.

Rapunzel

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess.

Her beauty was without question – it would have flamed before the whole world if I had let it, and every time I climbed up the tower it flamed for me, blazing more brightly than the morning. And whatever they may say, it was not just that extraordinary hair – that was a mere embellishment, an extravagance of ornamentation where none was needed. She was beautiful in her deep bones and graceful as a beech tree. There’s an old saying in these woods: ‘every beetle is a butterfly to its mother’. But I was not her mother and when I speak of her beauty, I speak of what undid me. I would deny it if I could, but she was beautiful.

‘Princess’ I admit is more subjective. She was always a princess to me, although out there in the more judgemental and foolish world she was a daughter of the underclass, her father a petty thief without imagination or flair, and her mother a selfish, self-indulgent, vulgar trollop. Of course I should not say such things, but I am too old and sad for caution or kindness. They sold me their child for a handful of salad greens because that woman wanted them now and would not wait. If they had had normal neighbourly good manners he could have knocked on my door and asked for a bunch of rapunzel and I would have given it to him for free. He tried to steal it and he got caught and he sold his unborn child to protect his own scurvy skin. And in that tawdry bargain she became mine – my beautiful princess; for, as Solomon taught us, any mother who would freely put her child at risk is not the real mother. I was her real mother and she was my true princess.

I did not even plan it. I went, as neighbours do, to see the new child. I even took the silver coin to slip under the baby’s pillow, to welcome her and help her family, as we do in these woods. I had not planned for my heart to leap out of my mouth and gobble the baby up. I fell in love there, for ever – a thing I have never done before. Nor since.

I picked up the child, as you do, and muttered some admiring words, as you do. Her skin was so soft against my cheek, like windflowers, cool and delicate. But I think, or at least I believe, I was joking when I said, ‘Of course, she’s mine. You promised her to me. Remember?’

‘Yes, yes,’ they both squealed. ‘Yes, take her; yes, of course.’

They say I am a witch and that they were afraid. But I am not a witch. I am a woman with different desires.

Even then I was shocked, and I have become more shocked since, but I wanted her so much and they wanted her so little. I laid her against my shoulder, warm and sweet. I said, ‘You need not fear about her well-being, for I shall take care of her like a mother.’ And then she was mine.

I took care of her like a mother. Or like I think a mother should; we women all have our own ideas about that. I could not nurse her of course – there were no spells for that back then – but I was tender to her in every other way I could imagine. I taught her to read so that she could be free in her heart and mind; I stuffed her pillow with Sweet Woodruff, Lady’s Bedstraw, so that she slept to scents of fresh-mown hay and almonds, sweeter and less useful than silver coins; I took her to play in the beech woods, because her hair was the colour of beech mast, and I taught her the names of all the flowers and the birds.

I brushed her hair. When she was small I brushed her hair every day, morning and evening. Later, as it grew longer and thicker, I was obliged to surrender to it, there was not time in a day to brush it twice; before the end there was not time in the week to brush it twice.

In my dreams I am still brushing her hair, brushing and braiding and binding her hair – her lovely, tendrilling, conker-coloured, wanton hair. Brushing and braiding and binding. It was the colour of beech leaves in autumn; there were reds and golds in it like Slender St John’s Wort in high summer and deep gilt like Bog Asphodel on the moors. It twined like honeysuckle around my fingers, my hands, my arms, my heart. Brushing and braiding and binding her hair. Singing as I ran the brush through it:

Rapunzel, Rapunzel
Let down your long hair.

Bright morning,
The birds all sing,
Rapunzel, Rapunzel
I’m brushing your hair.

One, two, three
Like the Holy Trinity,
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
I’m braiding your hair.

She was a delightful baby, and then a lovely child; but long before she was a woman – even before she was truly a girl – her beauty began to blaze in the sunshine. It was not just her hair – that was a mere embellishment, an extravagance of ornamentation where none was needed. She was like a beech tree, tall and slender and graceful, with long fingers and green eyes and a crown of golden hair. She was beautiful in her deep bones and in her windblown gestures. I let myself forget that beech trees are shallow rooted and therefore vulnerable to wind damage and storm-fall.

Her beauty was disturbing; if we walked in the woods, the roe deer would emerge from hiding to watch her; the foxes would grovel at her feet, confused because her hair was the same colour as theirs, and they would walk alongside her, admiring; even the wild birds would alight on her shoulders and the frogs surface on the ponds and puddles to gaze at her. The wild rose bushes put up long shoots and clambered through her bedroom window to admire her asleep. That was fine and proper; but her beauty ruffled the tenor of the village too; and young men, like dogs after a bitch on heat, hung around my gates as her father had done and the rapunzel they wanted to steal now was not green and cheap but golden and precious.

One day I caught a pimply youth trying to cut off the tassel of her hair below its binding. He was a sneaking thief, but he did not get my treasure. I took her into the forest where she could be free. I took her into the forest where she could be safe. I believed they were the same thing. I was wrong, but I did believe it. I took her into the forest where I could keep her hidden.

It was not a tower. They chose to call it a tower, which sounds grim, like a dungeon. But I called it our Belvedere; when she was little she called it the Tree House, and when she was older she called it the Folly. It was not a tower and I did not mean it to be a dungeon. It was a lovely playful little house, high in the trees and looking over a nearly perfect glade in the wood; high enough to see across the tops of the beech trees as they ran down the steep valley side to the river. To perch high in the beech canopy is a lovely thing, and to look down into a clearing in an old wood is a thing to be desired. Below her was the everlasting procession of snowdrops, then bluebells, windflowers, ransoms, cherry blossom, wild roses, crab apples and dark dusty sloes. A little waterfall dropped into a deep pool at the top of the glade and sparkled as a stony brook across the green grass, with ferns and kingcups and horsetails along it. So it was indeed a Belvedere and a Tree House.

But it was not a tower, even though it had no door. I could not be there all the time and she had to be protected. And each morning I would walk into the forest, taking good care that no one followed me, and come out from beneath the beech trees and into the green glade, singing for pure joy:

Rapunzel, Rapunzel
Let down your long hair.

And she would let it down, all twenty ells of it, and I would climb up, up to her nest, and we were both happy.

I thought we were both happy.

But...

She was innocent to the point of stupidity, which was my fault.

And she was romantic to the point of self-abnegation, which was her fault.

I do not know and I will never know just how long it went on for. Longer, I suspect, than I like to think. She was as sly as her father and as self-indulgent as her mother and she did not even have the courage to tell me. I only found out by a stupid foolish thing she said.

So there we were, happy and free and safe and together, I thought, and living in the beauty of the woods. And one morning I was brushing and braiding and binding her hair, weaving daises and four-petalled tormentil into each autumn beech leaf strand. When I finished, she stood up, with her hands against the top of her buttocks, suddenly awkward and heavy. I noticed, but without assigning any meaning to it. And she said,

‘I need a new skirt. This one is too small. I seem to be getting fat.’ After a little pause she added, ‘Please’ because I was always strict about good manners.

I knew. I knew at once. The wanton little bitch. I had the clothes off her in a twinkling. There’s no mistaking: ‘getting fat’ indeed. Her nipples were already darkening and the bulge below her navel unmistakable. In a white heat of what I thought was justifiable moral outrage I beat her and then I threw her out, as any decent woman would. There was no place for this in my house and I was not prepared to tolerate it. Before I banished her for good and all to a cold and desolate place I cut off her hair with a carving knife. It was mine and I wanted it.