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 true,’ he protested, tearing away whole sections of the plant with the tips of his fingers. ‘See for yourself. All the spikes point towards the middle.’
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 in, down there between the trees.’
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 the head remained invisible.
Marc, alarmed by the anxiety in his father’s voice, made a hasty move to climb down, then seemed to panic. The lower sleeve of his jacket had become entwined in the briars surrounding the part of the statue he had been trying to uncover.
‘It’s got me,’ he said. ‘It won’t let go.’
He snatched and tugged wildly at the plant, calling out to his father for help. A section of the briars suddenly snapped, causing him to lose balance. He toppled down against Daniel, and the pair of them, with nothing to cling to, slithered down the sides of the trees to the ground.
Neither was worse than shaken by the fall. Marc got up at once and, without speaking, ran off towards the gate. Daniel looked back towards the wall. A section of green and red striped fabric billowed over the top briefly, then vanished. Daniel waited to see if it would reappear. When, after half a minute, it hadn’t, he shrugged, and trudged out of the pit in pursuit of his son. He was angry now, for allowing himself to become so flustered by what was probably some local eccentric in fancy dress, and cross with Marc for overreacting. They must both have looked very foolish to the character in the striped gown, whoever it was. He was half inclined to seek out and confront the culprit, but then remembered the peculiar way that person’s garments had swirled about in air that was totally still, and thought again.
Marc was waiting for him on the other side of the gate, inspecting the damage done to his jacket.
‘That wasn’t a good idea, Dad. We shouldn’t have done that.’
Daniel noticed his son avoided his eye. He said, ‘Well, no harm’s done.’
As if he wasn’t too sure about that, Marc plunged his hands into his pockets and hauled his shoulders up closer to his ears in a truculent gesture. ‘I’m hungry now,’ he complained. ‘Can we go and eat?’
Daniel realized he’d left the packed lunch his ex-wife had provided in the car. The heat in there would not have done it any good.
‘Let’s get back,’ he said. He pointed down a different street to the one they had taken into the village. ‘I think if we go down there, it should be a short cut.’
Marc was clearly not enthusiastic about this proposal, but he said, ‘Can we go then, Dad? Away from this place. Please?’
‘Okay,’ Daniel said, finally defeated.
‘That wasn’t a short cut,’ Marc complained a quarter of an hour later. ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’
‘You can’t really say that, in a little village like this, but, yes, we seem to have lost our bearing at the moment.’
‘We’ve been walking twice as long as it took to get to that field already.’
‘It just seems like that because you’re hungry.’
‘And thirsty.’
Daniel decided not to admit that he was too.
An elderly man was coming slowly towards them: the first pedestrian they had seen for some time.
‘Ask that bloke the way back to the car,’ Marc urged.
They stopped and waited for the man to reach them. His movements were circumspect and indecisive. At the last moment, when he was about six feet away, he must have sensed their presence, and he looked up. His face shocked them both. He was very old, bent and tiny: his features seemed half obliterated by time. His nose was almost flat, like a partly raised flap in the centre of his face, but had huge nostrils; his lips were so thin and withdrawn as to be virtually absent, and his round, creamy eyes looked blank. He was screwing up his eyes to get the two figures in front of him in focus. His contorted expression would have been comical if it had not also indicated that he was confused and alarmed. Assuming the man felt threatened, and aware that Marc looked intimidating, like the archetypal hooligan, Daniel made his face look friendly.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to find our car. I left it near a pub down by the river.’
The old man shook his head as though Daniel’s words were outrageous, incredible.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you. Off you go. Carry on.’
Marc moved a couple of steps towards him. ‘We’re lost, mister,’ he explained. ‘We don’t know where we are. We just want to get out of here.’
‘I can’t help you.’
‘But you live here, don’t you?’ Daniel said. ‘You’re a resident?’