‘It looks as though someone’s been throwing paint at it,’ Marc observed. The object was criss-crossed with streaks of red and green.
‘Vandals. That could be why they’ve padlocked the gate.’
‘That’s silly. It would be easy to get over the wall.’
‘Or the gate,’ Daniel agreed. A mischievous note in his voice appealed to Marc.
‘Shall we, Dad?’ he said, encouragingly.
‘Why not?’
For some time now Daniel had felt the urge to make a gesture of protest at the oppressive, silent stillness around them: to metaphorically wave two fingers at the village and its invisible or indifferent inhabitants, and it seemed to him that the padlock offered an opportunity to do something of the kind. Nevertheless, he felt rather foolish as he put his foot on one of the cross-bars of the gate and lifted his other leg over the top. He sat astride the gate for a moment, wondering if he had gone too far, but it was plain from the expression on Marc’s face that his son thought he had not gone nearly far enough. Daniel realized there was no going back, if he wanted to retain the scrap of outlaw credibility he had so easily acquired, so he dropped down to the ground on the other side of the gate, making room for the boy to follow him.
‘Lots of people come here anyway,’ Marc said.
The unmown grass in the field was inches high. Ahead of them a well-worn path, that had obviously been trodden recently by many feet, stretched towards the middle of the enclosed area.
They walked on in silence, through the intense quiet.
The field naturally inclined towards the middle from all directions but as they got nearer to the object of their excursion it became obvious that the structure, whatever it was, protruded out of the centre of a steep-sided, circular pit about thirty feet across and five feet deep.
When they reached the edge, Daniel saw there were dozens of different sets of footprints in the dust around the rim. Marc tumbled awkwardly down into the pit and moments later, feeling some small, unaccountable misgivings, Daniel followed him.
The thing itself, when they got close to it, was rather disappointing. Inside a six-foot circle of extraordinarily thick iron railings were entrapped a number of broad tree trunks that had all been severed just above head height. The railings had been there a long time because, over the years, the sides of the trees had bellied out between the constricting iron uprights in huge bark-splitting blisters that were uncomfortable to contemplate. Up out of the centre of the tight cluster of stunted trees extended what was in all probability a sculptured form representing the top half of a human being. This figure was posed with one arm stretched down, as though taking hold of the top of one of the trees to push itself upwards. Its other arm, bent, and half-raised, was held aloft in what could have been an appeal for help, or a gesture of despair, anger or even triumph. It was impossible to be quite sure if the figure was exactly human, because the whole thing was overgrown by a complex network of thorny tendrils, like briars, that concealed every inch of its surface. Two overgrown lumps on its back suggested to Daniel that it could originally have been the representation of an angel, with wings that had broken off at the base, but nothing about its posture was in any way conventionally angelic.
What had seemed, from a distance, to have been streaks of paint, were in fact strips of torn, brightly-dyed red and green cloth, tied together with yards of ribbon, that had been wound round the edifice in a way that looked entirely haphazard.
Daniel was gazing mystified at all this when Marc called out from almost under his feet, ‘There’s something down here with writing on, but I can’t read what it says.’ The boy was crouching down, peering at something close to the ground on one side of the — ‘monument’ — Daniel could still think of nothing better to call it. He went and stood next to his son.
A stone tablet, like a simple, unornamented gravestone, was trapped behind the iron railings. The thrust of enormous pressure from the swollen trees behind had cracked it diagonally in two places, and shifted the sections upwards and apart. Close to, it was possible to see some kind of inscription had been cut deeply in the stone. Daniel squatted down to try to make out what was written. ‘I can read the letters, but it doesn’t make sense. It’s foreign, isn’t it Dad?’
‘It must be, I guess, but God knows what language that is.’ A lot of the individual letters were hidden behind the railings, and the surface of the stone had flaked away in places, but, from what remained, it was obvious to Daniel that the original must have been almost unpronounceable.
‘—jabber-jabber-jabber,’ Marc chanted, in exaggerated mockery. ‘Try reading it aloud, Dad. It makes your tongue hurt.’
Daniel grinned, but didn’t take up the invitation. He’d given up trying to decipher the memorial message, if that was what it was. Finding solutions to pointless puzzles didn’t interest him.
Marc reached up, took hold of the stump of a lopped-off branch of one of the trees, clambered up on to the horizontal iron band through which the tops of the railings protruded, then started cautiously tugging at the tendrils that encrusted the half-emerged figure.
‘Watch out for thorns on that thing up there,’ Daniel warned, sure that the plant that covered it was some kind of briar.
‘It’s okay. There’s no problem. They all grow inwards.’
‘What? Are you sure?’
Marc didn’t like it when his father doubted his word. ‘It’s
Daniel climbed part of the way up until his face was close to the lowest sections of the briar-like growth that seemed to sprout from around the base of the figure they concealed, and saw that the boy was right. ‘That’s unusual,’ he observed. ‘Plants like that grow spikes to protect themselves — against cattle, or people like you and me, for instance, who might want to root them out and destroy them.’
‘With all the thorns pointing that way,’ the boy said thoughtfully, ‘it’s as though they’re trying to keep something
Daniel grunted noncommittally. His arms, supporting most of his weight, had quickly grown tired, and he dropped back to the ground. Marc, however, climbed higher until he stood on the crest of the ‘monument’, held on to the upraised arm of the enclosed figure, and yelled out joyfully, as though he had attained the top of an Alp.
Almost at once, to his and his father’s surprise, his call was answered: someone yelled back, in what could have been elation. Daniel and Marc twisted round to face the sound.
Because he was standing chest-deep in the pit, and the ground around him rose in all directions, Daniel couldn’t see much more than the slope of the field in front of him, a stretch of the wall that enclosed it, and the tops of a few trees beyond. Whoever had shouted was presumably on the other side of the wall, some distance back, and thus out of his sight.
The shout came again, sounding louder and sharper.
‘Who’s there? Can you see, Marc?’
The boy, still clasping the upraised hand of the statue, was up on tiptoes, bending towards the sound. ‘I think it’s a woman.’
‘Are you sure? It sounds like a man.’
‘I know. But if it is, he’s wearing a dress.’
‘What kind of dress?’
‘Green and red. Very long and loose. The wind’s flapping it about, like a big flag.’
‘There isn’t any wind, Marc: there hasn’t been all day.’ Daniel started to climb back up to join his son.
The voice called out again.
‘I think it’s shouting at us, Dad.’
‘Whoever it is wants us out of here,’ Daniel decided.
‘He doesn’t sound unfriendly.’
‘Even so, I think we ought to go.’
Daniel had hauled himself up almost to the top of the monument and turned in the direction his son had been looking. He saw, some distance beyond the wall, what seemed to be a large article of clothing that had been blown off a washing line by a gale, flapping and fluttering towards him. It was almost impossible to make out the human shape that must be in there somewhere. Some of the movements indicated the actions of hidden arms and legs, but
