The Psychonomists’ pills had only seemed to make her more agitated and more unable to sleep and function at all. Mary now secretly believed that these so called ‘Mentality Doctors’ didn’t really know what they were talking about. But there was nothing she could do about it, not now, nor back then either. It was just something that was always there, always painful to her, and something she had never really understood.
After a while, Mary’s sobs subsided, and in their place once again were just the half-heard, distant sounds of the world of nature she loved, of the wind, the wild and the wood.
She felt better now but also somewhat self-conscious at blubbering in front of a boy. And one she’d at first taken as a bit of a weedling. But her mind was now changing on that score.
Now they were both in the so-called ‘Bad Wood’, and it somehow did feel different to her. Whether it was just her imagination being full of the old stories she’d heard, or whether it was an actual difference, she wouldn’t have been able to say. What was true for her though, whether real or imagined, was that this wood, this so called ‘Bad Wood,’ had a very different sort of air and feel to it, almost like being in a dream or having gone off to that magical land of Woz she’d seen in the motion picture her Gran had taken her to at the local Eltingham Gaumont Picture House, barely a year ago now.
As she lay there, she could hear the wind in the trees above, sighing and whispering to her.
It feels just like someone is calling to me from far away, she thought dreamily.
Roger stirred himself from his own daydreams and thought it would now be okay to say something to her. But as usual when it came to actually ‘talking’ to someone, especially girls, his mind went blank and his tongue felt like an over-sized sausage, stuck inside his mouth.
“Th-th-thank you,” he managed, at last, and then fell silent again.
Mary sniffed and turned towards him and gave him a smile and an acknowledging nod.
“You’re welcome,” she said quietly.
“My name’s Roger, Roger Briggs,” he said, politely offering his hand in introduction.
“Mary, Mary Maddam, very pleased to meet you,” she replied, shaking his hand.
“Erm… Likewise,” said Roger, hesitantly.
And then all at once… they both just started giggling.
Sometimes, when you’ve just been scared right out of your wits and then found somehow, against all the odds, you’ve survived, the only sane thing to do is to cry; but to cry with the joyful tears of relief and the cathartic laughter of disbelief too.
They lay on their backs, side by side, the deep blue of the heavens arched above them and framed between the leafy branches of beech trees, soaring into the distant mystery of the sky. There were just a few clouds dotted about, but nothing else to bother the summer sun from beaming down on them, radiating through the broad trellis of the tree’s branches.
It was very pleasant and pleasing to just be able to lie there, drying themselves, without a worry in the world. Well, no ‘worry’ other than having just been chased across the forbidden borderline between the Good Wood and the Bad Wood of course.
Roger started to idly muse over all they’d been taught at their School and State Church, about the Great Forest of Lundun and the similar wild and untamed pockets of Forest yet to be cleared and brought under Mankind’s management.
“We really shouldn’t be here, you know,” he murmured to Mary. “We’ll be in big trouble if we get found out. There are only supposed to be criminals and mad people who come into the Bad Wood. Or so we are told. But you know, it doesn’t seem that bad to me at all.”
“No, it’s exciting, isn’t it?” Mary replied eagerly. “My Gran’s always forbidden me to go across the Quaggy. But she ain’t never explained properly as to why though.”
“Well, if it’s really because there’s loads of dangerous animals and mad people and such, what I don’t understand is, then why don’t the Government Council just clear them all out? Surely, with all our modern, twentieth century technologies and great advances in Science, we Humans can handle a little problem like that?”
Mary, though, had drifted off again and was now peacefully dozing. Roger thought he’d do likewise. But as he lay there, he got a strange feeling that he was beginning to float away.
It was as if his conscious mind was slowly drifting off, away from his body and he was being summoned by someone calling to him from out there, out in the Bad Wood somewhere.
“Erm. Mary. Can you hear anything, anything at all?” he cautiously and drowsily asked.
“Yes, I can hear Mother Nature softly singing to me,” she replied dreamily. “Now just rest yer body and mind a wee bit while we get dry, then we’ll go and explore a while. I thinks it’ll do you some real good to juss relax and be as one with Mother Nature for a change.”
“Wh-wh-what do you mean one with Nature?” he asked, wondering if Mary really was a bit touched in the head, or whether maybe, in fact, they now both were. Anyway, whether they were both ‘loony’ or not, he thought, one thing was for sure, this day certainly was.
“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Mary dreamily answered him. “It’s juss me… me being a bit over metaphorical, I s’pose.”
Roger just smiled and relaxed as directed, still not sure what she was on about, and slowly let himself slip away into daydream again, floating off with the cotton-wool clouds up above.
But just as Roger was drifting off to sleep, Mary nudged him. Roger looked at her and saw she looked surprised at her audacity and then a little uncertain. Roger was about to ask her what was up when she suddenly blurted out exactly what was on her mind.
Roger found himself being told all about her life. He now realized she needed to confide in someone and for some reason it was to him she felt she could do that. And she was right, Mary instinctively knew he was different, his having a big heart and not just a big brain.
She now found herself telling him all about her mother and how she felt about what had happened to her. She quietly told him about her mum getting ill and finally being taken away by the Psychonomists and put in an Institution somewhere. And she told him how she’d lived with and been looked after by Grannie Maddam ever since, but also, how, a lot of the time, really, it felt like she was the one looking after her dear old Gran.
Roger, thinking himself as having a ‘scientific’ turn of mind, had some questions though. He’d never really understood this so-called ‘New Science of Psychonomy’ at all.
What he had read about it though, he’d found to be a load of over-complicated and near meaningless jargon and in fact all very unscientific indeed. They couldn’t even make up their minds as to what a ‘Mind’ actually was!
When Mary had finished her story, he turned fully towards her and smiled. “Thanks for telling me all that, Mary. It’s good that we know more about each other. I’ll tell you about me but first, can I ask you… what was it that the Psychonomists found wrong with her? I mean, what was the diagnosis and treatment those pill-pushing Psychonomists prescribed for her?”
“Loads of gibberish, gobbledygook and argle-bargle, is all my Gran says they gave to her; that and loads of their useless pills, an’ that made her even more ill,” Mary answered sharply, with a shiver of disgust.
“Oh, I see. Right. Fair enough,” Roger replied apologetically, not wanting to upset her and question her too hard. No point in causing her any further, unnecessary sadness, he thought.
“Well, what was really going on,” Mary heaved with a sigh, “was me Mum was seeing things, an’ hearin’ voices, alright? An’ they were scaring her, an’ no one would listen; an’ it was juss ’orrible is all, really, really ‘orrible!” she finished, on the edge of tears again.