Nigel and Mary in the Forest

Nigel and Mary walked through the forest, like two of its trees let loose. They walked gingerly as they knew that the more people who walked through the forest made it less of a forest.

Nigel carried what appeared to be an ordinary household vase as if it were the holy grail itself. He did not want to stir unwelcome coincidences just as much as he did not want to stir other people to follow in their wake.  There was an optimum state for forest and people - so that, in the long run, forest remained forest and, no doubt, people people.

Things fitted a pattern, he knew.  That pattern had to be preserved at all costs. Rogue elements could not be allowed their thin edge of the wedge.

The vase was unfashionably decorated to imitate a purchase from a low grade department store in the nineteen fifties. Mary sniffed: a snooty response to ambitions she once had to outdo her neighbours with items of art deco or clarice cliff. On the face of it, by contrast, this vase was a come down.  But it was as if she knew this vase hid something wonderful beneath its naffness.  Not its contents (as there were none, she knew) but more its intrinsic power as an object: a vessel with or without contents. Nigel held it at the end of one arm; she held his other arm to ensure he did not bodily slip in the autumnal mulch.  His feet could not be seen for dead leaves,

Those who followed Nigel and Mary saw only two trees moving through the forest, with their branches steadying in the wind for balance of rootly gait. Or was it that those who followed Nigel and Mary were trees themselves being followed by Nigel and Mary as real people being seen as trees by dint of inverse gradual time-travel?  The whole forest shrugged its shoulders in uncomprehending despair at becoming people.  Or the wind was simply too great to prevent such shaggy shaking, whether or not it was later inferred to be a thinking emotion or a simple natural physical reaction to the weather. This whole paragraph (including these italics) can be transposed to any other part as a scorched earth policy in the art of story-telling. It should not necessarily stay here because it tends to spoil the textual landscape wherever it is permanently sited.  But it needs to exist to make the story what it is, in the same way as each tree needs to exist to make the forest what it is.. Wood processing is tantamount to word processing, even in the worst of times.

“I feel we are being followed by people who are cleverer than us,” said Mary.  “It’s as if we mean more that we can ever mean to mean.”

“Just keep calm, Mary.  Don’t look back.  We shall soon be finished. There are no hidden meanings here. This is a simple matter of delivering the vase to the clearing and then to get back before dark.”  Nigel pointedly ignored the fact that the forest around them was now so deep-hearted it was as if everything had become dark already. “This is just a walk through the forest.  No strings attached.  We are simply a courting couple.  Just ignore the vase.  We shall soon be rid of it.  Our duty done.”

As if to prove to any followers the truth of his statement, Nigel suddenly kissed Mary full on the lips.  However, by so doing, he accidentally let drop the vase.  Luckily, if not by sheer coincidence, the autumnal mulch accepted its fall with a dull harmless clunk.  Nigel bent to see if it had cracked at all.  He picked it up.  Mary, by now, had managed to leave his side and was seen vanishing back the way they had both come.  Her motives of reaction were hard to read.  Nigel made as if to follow her, but the call of duty was evidently too strong.  He was a brave man because his cover as part of a courting couple was now blown, but he intended to proceed towards the clearing where he could safely leave the vase.

He examined the vase again, wiping off the cold brown tea-leaves with the sleeve of his jacket.  There was no obvious damage.  Mary must have had second thoughts, as he heard her returning step.

“Alice never returned from Wonderland,” interrupted a bark nearby.

Nigel swivelled quickly to see which third party spoke.  Someone or something that wanted Nigel for their own share of couple? Or it might have been his imagination.  Imagination is a heavy responsibility to wield.  It makes us move sections of reality around like interchangeable jigsaw pieces while all the time knowing – at heart – that there is only one box-top picture that will fit, whether we start with the straight edges or not.  Only one set of neighbours to outdo.

Nigel heard the buzz of a mechanical circular chain of serrated events as if to confirm his worst fears.  Smelt the creeping stench, the smouldering death.

He stared at the vase, knowing it wouldn’t have mattered whether he was destined to save it or not. It was just a way of making sense of things, whilst, all along, it made no sense at all as a thing-in-itself. Just a saving grace.

Pieces of Mary as a flower arrangement for a forest shrine.  Tree’s a crowd.

Thoughts that would not go away.


  (written today and first published here today)