The morning draws on and the sky becomes a deeper grey, while the air drifting down the valley grows cooler and not so humid. A change is coming. The sycamore leaves in the deep of the wood begin to show their backs, a paler green lending contrast to the shadow, and I smell centuries of life rising, centuries of decay and renewal. There will be rain.
I descend the bank to a narrow ledge by the river, along which there runs a sketchy path. I follow it downstream, nosing through low branches to a hidden bend, half remembered, and to a broad shelf where there lies a ring of rounded river-washed stones, and the remains of a recent fire. It’s hard to believe it’s still here. I built this ring as a boy, here on this dry bank – nothing combustible close by, nothing to risk a fire getting out of hand in the dry season.
I’ve thought of this place over the years. In the meantime, some other soul has adopted it, a sympathetic soul too; there is no litter, no orange peel, or chocolate wrappers to disturb the harmony of the wood – just the scent of those centuries, and the ever present rippling of the peaty Rye.
I gather dry grasses and twigs, then set them in the ashes contained by the ring, and I light them, then add more fuel to the flames and while the fire grows, I take out a screwdriver and dismantle the gun. The stock comes off easily and I lay it across the fire. It steams for a while, as if in disbelief, then darkens suddenly and begins to burn. Before removing the barrel, I cock the spring to make sure time will ruin it. Then I take off the telescope and unscrew the focusing lens to expose the delicate graticule and its adjustment.
The river runs slower here, bulging out to a hundred feet or more, and slowing to a ponderous glide as it takes the bend, so that towards the far and inaccessible bank there is an almost stagnant pool bottomed by deep silt. I toss the telescope into the middle of it, then the mechanism of the spring and cylinder. The barrel I lay between two rocks and strike it with a hefty stone, bending it. Then it follows the rest of the gun into the silty pool,… and is gone.
I remember the gun as an accurate weapon. More than that, the gun represents for me the lore of the wood. It belongs to a time beyond the ken of today’s children. But the days of guns in Durleston Wood are over, and it’s better it should meet its end here by my own hand, than be sold on, perhaps to fall into the hands of a misanthropic teenager, to become corrupted as a breaker of windows and a killer of cats.
Guns mean something else entirely to people these days.
It’s partly this sentiment that has brought me back to the wood, but there’s something else, something in the ritual I do not immediately understand. It is a sacrifice of course, an offering. It is a letting go, the sending of a ripple into the past, so the past might offer something back to me, now.
It’s then, glancing up from the flames, I realize I am being watched. It’s a woman, dark skinned, gaunt, crouching perfectly still among the sleepy balsam on the opposite bank. I had thought myself alone. Suddenly though I’m looking across the silty waters of the Rye into a pair of eyes, watching me.
How long has she been there? What must she be thinking?
I call over : “Hello?”
But she takes fright and is gone, snatched back into the shadow of the wood. And for a moment, above the thickly lapping sound of the river, there comes the sound of a chain being dragged.
The Rivendale Review 