Breathless and brave

There’s an old swing that hangs from the branch of an ancient oak, deep in the wooded valley of Langtondale, nestled in England’s northern hills. Its ropes are brown and worn with age, smoothed by the hands of time. The wooden seat, sawn from the piano lid of some long dead child’s grandmother, is still sturdy and firm. It moves in tempo with the breeze that visits this small clearing by the river. And it is but the breeze and his more raucous cousin the wind, that now while away the hours in this secluded place.

Not so many years have passed since the children of Langtondale village would tumble through the woodlands, feet crushing through year on year of fallen leaves, perpetual, even in the heat of summer when stinging nettles would guard the narrow paths and spiralling ferns grabbed at the ankles of those who passed.

But years pass quickly, time spins a new web of delicate memories and notions, covering the days as they open and close. Georgina felt sure that they would be back. She sat in her car at the side of the woodland road. It was barely conceivable that once, there had been a path leading from the lay-by where she’d parked. Even after so many years, some things are indelibly printed, and she knew exactly where the path should be and where it led.

Georgina changed into her sturdy walking boots. They felt strange and alien, not like her usual city attire. Then, parting the dense foliage, she began to descend the route of the still remembered path, into the woods. Into something more.

“This way, quick!” Davy, the farmer’s son, chronic asthma rattling in his chest, led the way. He called back, almost camouflaged in the vegetation. “We’re going to play truth, dare, or double dare,” he grinned, jabbing his way through the Himalayan balsam, its sickly scent tugging at Georgina’s memories from behind a door that had closed years ago.

Cathy came next. The youngest of the village doctor’s significant brood. She raced up behind Georgina, shoving her in the small of the back, making her legs buckle slightly. She stopped for a moment to regain her balance. Her back had been a constant torment since she’d turned forty.

“Come on ‘Gina you slow coach!” Cathy in her sing-song voice, always tormenting and cocksure. Her pigtails bounced from side to side as she pushed past, the red of her sweatshirt darting by.

Georgina’s eyes prickled for a moment. There had always been one. Whether at school, at church, in the village. Always one who would pick or jab with words or even more pointed objects. She brushed her hair and thoughts aside and continued where the old path had been, twisting backwards and forwards down the banking, towards the river.

Billy caught up at her heels, his twin sister Shelly trailing behind.

“We’ve got some rock that my gran brought back from holiday.” Billy spoke through a mouthful of the minty pink candy. “There’s loads of it. Mum said to bring it out to share.”

Georgina watched and stood back to allow Billy and Shelly to pass. Shelly was always bringing up the rear, following in her brother’s steps. The twins disappeared around a corner and Georgina was left for a moment of stillness, alone with the voices of the woods, the call of the wood pigeons, rustling of small four-legged creatures in the undergrowth. The faint clatter of the river below, babbling over mossy rocks and fallen branches, telling its stories.

The familiar scents and sounds of the woods opened boxes of flickering images. Old Kodak photographs tumbled from a green shoe-box, the lingering smell of wild garlic, the loud pink of the rosebay-willowherb that her grandmother had believed held the secret cure for many ailments. Blackberry stems were fighting with themselves, their long thorny arms and legs thrusting in all directions, small hard green fruits sprouting from its limbs, ready to turn darker in the heat of the summer.

From below, Georgina could hear Cathy’s shrill voice echoing through the trees. “Last one there’s a loser!”

And then Shelly, her words carrying on the air like a small bird. “Wait for me Billy. I don’t like this steep bit!”

Poor Shelly. Georgina smiled at the fond memories of her childhood friend, then continued down the valley side until eventually she reached the bottom.

The village children had lit many a campfire in the small ring of stones by the river. It was there that they had set their dares and told their stories, each child perched on a large mossy stone. Billy was handing out the rock, his sticky hands brown with dirt, but no one minded.

“So, who’s going to start then?” Davy was keen to begin the game.

“Me! Me!” Cathy was first to shout. “I’ve got a special dare for Billy,” she added slyly.

Georgina wandered over to the swing, running her hands over the smooth shiny rope, amazed that it could still be hanging there after so many years, so many generations of children who’d found their playground and defined their childhoods in the woods.

When she’d left the village in her early twenties to pursue a career in journalism, she had rarely returned. Her parents had moved to Spain and Langtondale held nothing more for her except a great many memories, some of them quite golden, others, less so.

Cathy was loudly proclaiming the dare for Billy, to clamber to the top of the banking and roll back down on his side. Despite the rocks and river at the bottom. Billy was protesting.

“I’ll be sick! I’m full of rock.”

“Don’t do it Billy, it’s too dangerous.” Shelly grabbed at his arm.

“Sissy,” Cathy retorted, “I bet Davy would do it. Wouldn’t you Davy?”

Davy, if he’d had the chance, would have been a real-life action man figure. Georgina watched him in his army-surplus trousers and khaki jersey with patches on the elbows and shoulders. Billy and Shelly looked up to Davy. Cathy tolerated him. He wasn’t sharp like her with her quick mouth and words so harshly curated for someone so young. A product of being the youngest sibling of six.

Georgina carefully edged up the banking under the oak tree and tentatively eased herself onto the old swing, wondering if it would take her weight. It creaked a little, protesting at her buxom frame, but seemed sturdy enough and she pushed away from the banking gently with her boots, just a little way, not out over the river like Davy and Billy would do. The seat swayed gently forward and back, the past, brushing over her for a while, catching her hair in the woodland filled breeze.

Davy had dismissed Cathy’s dare as stupid and was still at the edge of the clearing, crouched by the fire pit, poking at invisible embers with a stick. His familiar wheeze rose and fell but here, in the woods, it didn’t matter. It was his sanctuary. Save for Cathy and her thorny tongue, the village children saw him as a leader, great builder of dens, adventurer, the one always to carry out a double dare.

If only his lungs had been stronger, Georgina thought. If only he’d made it past sixteen. But the winter had come for him in his sleep, breath by breath in the perishingly cold farmhouse, like snow slowly blanketing a field.

She looked for Cathy who had now moved away from the ring of stones. Cathy never sat still. She darted along the river’s edge, daring the rushing water to catch her feet, her red sweatshirt flickering through the trees like a warning flare. Cathy, who’d been too restless for Langtondale, too hungry for everything bigger, faster and better. She’d married a banker’s son and spent winters in Saint Moritz. A momentary loss of concentration that’s what they’d said. She’d shown great talent on the ski slopes but her attempt on the notoriously difficult black run that day almost twenty years ago, had been her last.

Georgina gripped the ropes tighter and closed her eyes. The swing drifted.

When she opened her eyes, Billy and Shelly were standing together, side by side on the opposite bank, just beyond the swing’s reach. Billy in his football top with his crooked grin, always sticky with sugar and mischief. He’d done well for himself for a while as a self-employed builder, with a wife and child. Until the accident. Until the scaffold gave way, sending him down four stories onto cold concrete. Georgina had read it in the news, sitting in a London cafe, pretending to be a woman with no past.

And Shelly. Poor Shelly. Georgina opened her eyes and watched her. Stuck like glue to the brother she adored. Sweet, soft Shelly who once, when they were just eleven, had confided in Georgina about the darkness that sometimes crept behind her eyelids. When Billy was gone, the darkness won. They’d found her in her parent’s cottage where they’d grown up, in the bedroom, still full of Billy’s old football trophies and teenage posters. The scent of boyhood adventures still lingering.

Georgina’s throat felt raw. The swing moved, back and forth. The woods breathed around her, the river gabbled its secrets to itself.

They’d all left in the end. She’d been the one to run away to London, to loud newsrooms and long nights. She’d written about war zones and disasters and other people’s tragedies, the stories of the world’s shattered places. And all the while, her own broken parts sat unspoken. A marriage that had lost all direction and purpose, with no children, leaving Georgina with an overpriced London apartment that was more full of books than friends.

Yet here they were, Davy, Cathy, Billy and Shelly, whole again in the woods. With her, from the other side of memory.

She pushed off from the banking. Harder this time. The swing lifted her feet high above the ground, the wind catching at her hair. For a moment she felt the danger of the old dare. A deep, unfathomable feeling to leap and fly.

The swing reached its peak and stilled for a heartbeat, high in the air above the river. The rope groaned a little as Georgina let the ghosts surround her.

She’d lived when they hadn’t. Maybe that was the biggest dare of all, to keep breathing when life threw rocks, the past tugged hard at her heels, and the future beckoned her with its promise of uncertainty.

When the swing slowed and the hush of the woods settled again, Georgina slid down from the seat. The clearing was deserted. No one at the river or by the stones. She knelt by the old fire pit and brushed away the leaves, tracing the still blackened stones with her fingers. She imagined the sparks, the laughter, the secrets shared, with only the trees to overhear.

Maybe she’d write about them one day. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe it was enough to know she was the keeper of it all, the truths, the dares, the double dares. Running through nettles and brambles, shouting at the wind, breathless and brave, full of childhood promise.

Pushing herself back onto her feet, Georgina looked through the trees to where the path rose back to the road. She was older now and she knew her back would ache the following day. But she had returned and they had been there, just as she’d hoped.

Georgina turned around, taking in the memory of the place, the years of children’s shouts and voices, the laughter and the fights. The scuffed knees, the dares that very nearly went wrong. She watched the swing, still moving with the weight of an invisible child. She could almost see Davy pushing Cathy too high, Billy and Shelly doubled up with giggles. She smiled, a small, tired smile. Then she stepped onto the old path, and climbed back towards the waiting world.