From the Forest (36 page)

On Christmas Eve, under a nearly untouched cover of soft white snow, and on a faintly guilt-inducing (or at least don’t-get-caught) expedition, the Purgatory Wood seemed especially eerie. There is only one road access into the plantation, and that is up a long single-track country road. The gate is always kept padlocked, which, under the Scottish Access code, it probably should not be, but it is a good solid clean gate and easy to lift the dog over and then climb myself.

That afternoon it was plain to see that one vehicle had been in since the snowfall, leaving clean, precise tyre lines in the snow. There were sharp little roe-deer tracks, and either a large dog or more likely a fox had walked up the hill before I did, but overall the snow lay smooth and dense – so white in the sunshine, and flat because there had been no wind to ruffle or drift its surface. Each branch of each tree had a perfectly poised line of snow on it, and under the trees where the snow had not reached the ground, it was by contrast very black and dark. I headed up the hill about half a mile into the forest where I had previously noticed a little patch of small spruce seedlings and where I planned to cull ‘my’ tree. I had slightly underestimated the difficulties of selecting a tree in thick snow. One problem was that I could not see the base of the tree trunks, as they were hidden beneath the white surface, and consequently I could not accurately gauge the height or be certain that the tree under consideration was separate from the ones that surrounded it. Another was that what, on the bigger trees, were charming, decorative lines of snow were, on these tiny ones, heavy enough to weight down the branches and distort the shape. Since my conscience would not allow me to cut a tree and then reject it, I had to get it right first time. I wandered around my little thicket kicking promising trees to dislodge the snow and then waiting for the branches to rise up to their natural angle; I ferreted around the bases, clearing away enough snow to get very wet, cold hands and to inspect the point at which the tree emerged from the ground. The area began to look rather peculiar, as wherever I had kicked a tree it was dark green and prickly, while those around it stayed white with the sharpness of the needles softened by the snow; and the ground began to look as though a flock of demented rabbits had been scrabbling there. Finally I made my choice (not, I have to say, entirely successfully – that year’s tree will not go down in the annals as one of my better selections; it was not quite straight and was a little spindly) and cut down and lifted out the chosen tree.

I stood back in the middle of the track and paid attention to the forest itself. Although it was only early afternoon, the northern sun this near to the solstice stays low in the southern sky, so there was no direct sunlight; but looking back down the track, I could see over the trees and out onto the Markdhu Fell and the distinct shape of the Corlie Craig at the top of it bathed in golden sunshine. The shadows of the dyke along the moor edge looked very black. Inside the forest the trees seemed to stretch away for miles. Up there, the long grass broke through the snow, creating golden patches bright under the very blue sky, so that it looked a completely different colour, a different world, from the blue-white shaded forest around me. It was perfectly still and completely silent.

But although I could hear no sound at all, I was aware that something was going on because suddenly the dog, who had been snuffling about to her own amusement, was standing rigid, head up, quivering with attention, alert and looking straight into the blackness of the trees.

Snow has a strange acoustic effect. Sound diminishes over distance, but does not do so in a measurable way – there is a sound phenomenon called ‘attenuation’, which causes the distance and volume at which sound travels to vary according to the atmosphere. Noise attenuates more rapidly the hotter and drier the air is. (This is one reason why it is famously so silent in deserts – the hot dry air swallows up the sounds.) Equally, sound carries further and louder in cold, wet weather. Obviously, cold and wet do not always go together any more than hot and dry do – the calculations are complex in all weather conditions. But with snow, thick soft snow, there is a further complication because, just like a thick soft carpet or curtains inside a house, the snow absorbs the sound (rather than bouncing it back like rock cliffs or plain windows and walls do). The overall effect is to separate individual clear noises from general background murmur, so that the former become sharper while the latter fade. It also makes it very hard to guess the distance from the source of the sound to the ear.

The explosive bang of a rifle shot was therefore sudden and enormous, and seemed to come from very close indeed. It was immediately followed by a bizarre cacophony of noise: the dog started barking, high and sharp in the clear still air, and simultaneously there was a great cracking and smashing of wood. Three roe deer broke out into the open and leapt across the drainage ditch less than ten metres from where I was standing; seeing me too late, the lead deer immediately spun round to head up the track, but there was the dog dementedly barking; the second deer, trying desperately to flee the rifle somewhere behind it, and avoid both me and the dog, slipped on the track and fell. There was a flurry of panicked deer, one sprawled and struggling to get on its legs again, the other confused and frantic. The third deer found a path between me and the dog, crossed the track and second drainage channel in two huge glorious bounds, and led the way into the forest on the other side, followed amazingly rapidly by the other two and then by the wildly over-excited dog. Briefly I could see the leaping movement of their white butts, and then, as they thrust into the dark trees, snaking and pushing through the lower branches, I could hear but not see them.

The whole noisy episode was over within moments. I knew that my dog could not catch them and would return shortly, wet and panting and pleased with herself, so I felt no concern. I stood on the track with my little tree in one hand and my loppers in the other and tried to calm myself. It had been a shattering, as well as a rather magical, moment; I had been very abruptly shocked out of silence, and there is always a purely physical reaction when this happens; but I quickly realised that this was not, or was not all, that was making me scared: it was the invisible man with the gun in the forest. A thug, a robber, a maniac killer.

Afterwards I realised that this was ridiculous: in the first place, had I been attentive to what I had seen, I would have known there was someone in the forest, because there had been that single line of car tracks coming up the hill in the snow, and since I knew there was no other way in or out for vehicles, I could have worked out that whoever it was was still in the plantation. Second, whoever it was was there legitimately, because the gate had been neatly padlocked behind the car tracks, so he must have had a key. It was almost certainly one of the good guys of the forest – a woodcutter, a huntsman, a forester. Because deer are so destructive to woodland (see chapter 8), it is very normal in this sort of plantation to issue licences to competent sportsmen and encourage them into the forest to cull deer. There was no reason for me to suppose that this was anyone other than that. Nonetheless, I was alarmed.

I had a second, more rational reason for anxiety. People shoot foxes, as well as deer, in these woods. My border terrier looks at first sight remarkably like a fox – indeed, the previous summer I had yelled at her as she streaked through long grass out on the high moor, apparently out of control and off after the sheep. After a few moments of infuriating impotence as I tried to get her even to listen, let alone obey as she disappeared into the bracken, I was drawn by some small noise to look down and she was sitting just beside me looking worried: I had been shouting, ineffectually, at a fox. My neighbours are all aware of this possible confusion, and are mostly kindly and careful, but an armed stranger in the thick trees might have shot her accidentally.

But I quickly realised that this was not the source of the gripping fear I experienced then. It was the fear of a robber band, a murderous gang, or even a party of giants.

This was a different fear – it felt physically different from the true forest terror, the uncanny fairy-tale shivers I discussed in Chapter 8. That fear comes from inside, from the imagination and, I believe, from my body itself. The fear of robbers, of violence and violation comes from external sources, like this: rifle shots; stashes of old alcohol containers – broken bottles and empty beer cans; seriously abused and wrecked bothies; and the distant growl of dirt bikes and quads where there should not be any. As a matter of fact, I strongly suspect that the riding of illegal bikes in wild places and the back-hill drunken parties in ruined steadings are not usually remotely sinister or likely to lead to rape and robbery, although they are potentially hideously damaging to the forest environment – the deep peat of the Silver Flow, about twenty miles East of the Purgatory Wood, is probably ruined for ever because of the wild off-track journey that quad-bike fashion has developed from Carsphairn to Gatehouse-of-Fleet which routes itself through several SSSIs. But the fear is there; it is a fear brought on by hearing or seeing something aggressively human, where you thought there was nothing but wilderness. It is a particular forest fear, because people can be so near you without you seeing them. Other walkers on hill or moor are usually visible a long way away. In the densely planted forest there are no long views; there are natural sounds and things on the move that you cannot identify and some of them may be ‘wild’, but equally they may be human and dangerous. Without the gunshot, three deer suddenly leaping across a track in front of me would have been startling, even alarming – and the dog would have been just as deranged. A sheep in the dark, or a fox, or even a large bird encountered suddenly can be breath stopping, but the fear evaporates immediately with identification and knowledge. The sharp awareness that you are not alone, and that strangers may be very near to you indeed and no one, except the stranger, will hear you if you scream generates a straightforward and not necessarily irrational or inappropriate fear.

For me, and I expect for most women, there is an extra edge to this fear – most of the people you encounter in wild places are men; the sorts of things that create this sort of fear are strongly connected, for me, with masculinity. Yes, of course there are women who lurk about in the high hills and deep in the woods – indeed, I am one of them – but guns, hard drinking and noisy vehicles have the deep fear of rape as well as robbery attached to them.

I never saw the man with the gun that day, although I have often met strangers in the woods: men with guns, men with binoculars and cameras, men with power saws and survey rods – and none of them have ever in the flesh felt remotely threatening. But under the trees it is very dark – someone in there could be watching me, tracking me, stalking me rather than the deer and I do not know who they are or where they are or how many they are.

The fear is there and is particularly present for anyone immersed in fairy-story literature. Because, along with those who work there – woodcutters, foresters, miners, huntsmen and hermits, who are usually on the side of goodness and love – forests in fairy stories have practical as well as magical dangers. As well as wicked witches, greedy wolves or other magical perils, there are robbers, murderous gangs and human social dangers. Robbers are a very different kettle of fish in the fairy stories either from the legitimate inhabitants of the woods or from outlaws, exiles or the dispossessed. It is not always morally clear why one cunning tricky character is a hero and another a villain – except perhaps the virtue of courtesy. The tricksiest hero, the most determined heroine is always polite. Robbers are not polite – they have appalling table manners and aggressive conduct.

There are a lot of them. We think of fairy stories as being about princes and princesses, but, as I pointed out, there are only 29 (out of 210) stories in the Grimms’ collections in which the principal character is a prince or princess. In fact, there are more stories – over thirty – that feature robbers – often in gangs – thieves, and other criminal individuals. These are stories about ‘stranger danger’. Your stepmother is highly likely to try and get rid of you, your father to sacrifice you selfishly for his own comfort, your brothers to laugh at you and take sibling rivalry well beyond the point of humour. (Your sisters, on the other hand, are an almost invariable resource of support, succour and love.) Your beloved’s parents, your own servants, and assorted wicked old women may well be ranged against you; the Devil himself, magical animals and powerful elemental forces will endeavour to work your downfall. But the robbers are in a different category – they are nameless strangers and there is really nothing personal about their assaults; in a sense, they are simply doing their job. In ‘The Robber Bridegroom’, which is very nearly a Bluebeard story, except that the heroine makes no error apart from agreeing to marry a man she does not feel comfortable with, the robber’s action is so impersonal that he kidnaps, kills and eats a different woman even while expecting his fiancée to supper – he is driven by simple wickedness and violence untouched by love or indeed any emotional engagement whatsoever.

The robbers are the single most serious practical, as opposed to magical, danger that that heroes and heroines have to encounter, with the possible exception of parental poverty for the young and the unhappiness of marrying without love. These robbers are not usually burglars; they do not break into houses to steal while the residents are safely in bed. They attack people who are on the road, travellers – and usually travellers passing through forests.

Clearly assaults by robbers on travellers are not confined to forests. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is semi-desert, but ‘falling among robbers’ there was a sufficiently recognisable misfortune to find its way into Jesus’s parables, with the story of the Good Samaritan. Travel has always been dangerous, and some of the fairy stories reflect just this simple knavery such as anyone might encounter on the road, and against which modern travellers take out insurance. When I earlier described the story ‘The Magic Table, the Golden Donkey and the Club in the Sack’, I did not focus on the narrative role of a rascally innkeeper who steals the table that spreads itself with food and the donkey that spews out gold coins from the two older brothers on their way home from apprenticeships. The innkeeper is thwarted by the youngest brother, whose magical cudgel which ‘plays such a dance on the innkeeper’s back’ that he returns the two previous thefts as well. This is a moral tale about it not being enough to go out into the world and earn your fortune – you have also to be wary and clever about guarding and keeping it. This is not a story about the forest, or even really about robbers.