Under a Watchful Eye(16)

If the treetops in the wood were a wind-blown chaos in a gale, the ground remained oddly still and Seb liked the airy, vaulted spaces extending for hundreds of feet between the myriad trees on the slopes. When Seb wandered through the wood he usually only came across occasional dogs and their owners, in the foot of the valley before the trees leapt up the slopes and loomed over the trails below.

Amidst the sweet beech and larch that morning, and all the way to the sea, they came across no one. He led Becky along the main trail, passing the ruined limekilns that once produced the materials that built Torquay and fertilized the surrounding land. He pointed out to her the excavation craters that pitted the earth, all overgrown with ivy, as were the pale slabs that suggested ruins of a greater antiquity.

The intended destination was a sheltered cove where the water became an enticing aquamarine colour as it deepened, while the shallows were so clear that a photograph failed to reveal the water’s surface. Seals often frolicked in the cove, or followed those patient fishers, the grebes, around the shoreline and towards Brixham harbour.

As they lost sight of where they had entered the trees, and before they were in sight of the stone gateposts at the rear of the cove, Becky stopped walking and sucked in her breath as if she’d trodden on broken glass. Seb turned to see what was wrong. ‘What?’

She didn’t answer him, but appeared troubled by something she’d seen. Her head was angled to peer up the slope on the right side of the trail.

Seb moved to where she stood and noticed that her face had adopted an expression identical to the one accompanying her narration of her dream. She whispered, ‘I thought . . .’ Then added, ‘Doesn’t matter.’

Seb followed her stare and peered through the trunks, part furred by khaki moss and black ivy. The bonier branches had once given him the idea that such trees might resemble the magnified legs of insects. ‘What is it?’

‘I could swear . . . up there . . . there was an arm that waved.’

She wasn’t making much sense and struggled to find the words in the right sequence for whatever had caught her eye. ‘Sometimes trees look like people, don’t they?’ She tittered after she’d spoken, embarrassed. ‘I’ve been reading too many of your books.’

Seb didn’t suggest a return to the car. That would involve going back the way they had come. Instead, as they were almost clear of the trees, they could follow the coastal path into the harbour.

They continued towards the cove until Becky stopped again. ‘There!’ Her voice was quiet, but tense and insistent. ‘God, it made me jump.’

‘It?’ Seb stared at the ridge above them. ‘Where?’

‘I’m not pointing,’ she whispered, as if nervous about drawing even more attention to herself.

‘Someone is up there? Where?’

‘Watching. Looking right at us.’ Becky seemed to retract her head into her shoulders as if suddenly cold. ‘Do you see? Or am I imagining it? Jesus, what is that? Something over their face?’

‘Who? I can’t see . . .’ And then Seb did see something that he had initially mistaken for a profoundly twisted tree.

Surely people can’t grow so tall. Though if that was a person, then it was someone that must have been standing behind a groping branch, with a body that matched the trunk’s woody contortions, while peering down at them.

Or were they? It wasn’t easy to see who was up there, nor easy to guess why anyone would be on the ridge. And if that was a man, then his legs must have been obscured by the thick nettles between the trees. What was visible, however, made Seb think of Ewan.

Becky touched his arm. ‘I don’t know . . . Seb?’

His concentration rewarded him with a suggestion of a figure in dark clothing, even a formal suit that was tight on a pair of impossibly long arms. And if he could see a hand then the hand was pale enough to be mistaken for limestone, or fungi attached to dead wood. The hand was positioned as if a long arm had been extended to grasp the fallen timber before it.

The only other detail that struck Seb was a covered head. Was that a head? If it was, there was something about the position of the head, and how it was cocked but held still, that made him feel unwell with fear. And whatever was looking at them from within the hood compelled Seb to look away. A meeting of his eyes with those distant and indistinct black holes was too great an ordeal.

Becky sucked in her breath. ‘Oh God. It’s moving.’

Seb flinched, then looked up again and saw a flurry that later reminded him of a dancer able to swing the upper body to one side while their feet remained planted on a stage.

‘Who do you think . . . ?’ Becky began to ask, and then stopped as the indistinct shape seemed to slide, or maybe withdraw backwards, and so quickly that Seb almost missed the movement. Sideways it went, briefly, as if on runners, and the manoeuvre issued no noise. But Seb’s next impression was of the form not so much moving away, but shrinking into the undergrowth.

‘A deer?’ Becky muttered. ‘Sometimes they . . .’ But she never finished the suggestion. Neither of them had seen a deer. And what they had glimpsed was no longer there at all.

There had been a vigorous breeze in the tree canopy when they’d entered the wood, but there had been no sound around them on the path during the sighting. Birdsong was audible again, and the reintroduction of sound made Seb realize that they’d both been transfixed in a soundless glade of the wood, for several seconds.