The dark woods of the mind.

By Anne Maloney

A collection of seven short stories set in the recent past about the impact of experience upon understanding, in a wide-ranging variety of situations. A walk on the beach, a chance to talk cements a relationship which is breaking apart;loss of innnocence caused by a terrifying incident damages forever a young girl's potential for happiness. Other situations are less obvious but just as potent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Maloney
• Release date: Aug 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476114361

Anne Maloney

I was born in Brighton, UK during the first week of WWII. I went to a co-educational grammar school in Dorking, Surrey, UK, where I learned that I could easily compete with the boys at most subjects (Not PE or Woodwork). I gave up the idea of going to university and got married - still with the same guy. My descendants are increasing all the time, love them all. I always wanted to be a)independent, b)a writer. I have written five novels,all of which I hope to edit and e-publish before I croak it.

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The Dark Woods of the Mind

Anne Maloney

Copyright Anne Maloney2012

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place-names, media and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

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1. Pool

2. Vikings!

3. Something Sacred

4. Newcomer

5. A Message in the Sand

6. A Shore Too Distant

7. Is That You, Jane?

Pool

Wakeful in the deep pits of a winter night, beset by her isolation and lack of family, Marigold Gippley would summon up her blurred remembrance of that idyllic summer, fifty long years ago: the year she was ten.

She would re-live the long days passed in play, in and out of the water at the abandoned swimming pool, as casually sited as if it had been dropped there.

This was the only truly happy memory of her lonely childhood. If she tried, she could keep it in isolation, concentrate on the golden beauty of long summer days, her innocent joy in the pool.

They had discovered it quite by chance.

On one of her mother’s endless walks through woods and fields, they had followed a path which led to the grounds of the enormous old house known as Green Leas. Apparently empty, the house was in fact owned by some unfamiliar body, some society for the improvement of or research into something or other.

They had come across the abandoned pool at the bottom of a grassy meadow, already inviting in its wealth of tall flowers: poppies and cranesbill and wild blue mallows. They had decided (hoped) that the pool could not be seen from the house. There was no-one there anyway.

Once, the house had been a boys’ boarding school. This was well known.

Mrs. Gippley, Marigold’s mother, poured scorn on the foolhardy soul who had organised the creation of the pool, the big hole, the concrete walls and bottom covered by the ceramic tiles which had now fallen off in their hundreds.

‘No heating! No water supply! No showers or changing rooms! I daresay all the parents forking out a fortune for their sons’ education found this miserable attempt at a pool quite laughable.’

Marigold found it delightful. In the absence of everyone but herself and her mother, she was the owner, the sole enjoyer of this little realm.

The crowning glory of the pool was the presence of a narrow, flat-bottomed boat, lodged immovably upon the cracked and broken tiles of the bottom when it was dry, swollen and disintegrating when it was wet.

‘It’s a punt,’ Mrs. Gippley stated. ‘You’d need a pole, to propel it along. What a ludicrous idea, though, punting up and down a swimming pool. I’ve only ever been punting on the river.’

The pool was never completely empty. Rain always gathered at the deep end, the culmination of the sloping bottom, creating a still pool of dark water. Detritus (seeds and various insect progeny, the nymphs of lacewing and dragonfly, the eggs of mayflies) had gradually contaminated the depths and the surfaces alike. Marigold would lie on the loosened tiles of the edging, watching that tiny world, trailing her fingers through the warm shallows, if the water had risen that far. She always kept away from the deep end. She did not need to be told that drowning would be inevitable, if she fell in. If the water level was low, the prospect of falling six or seven feet onto hard concrete was just as daunting.

When a spell of good weather had diminished the deep end to a puddle, Marigold was allowed to play in the punt, now in its stranded stage, when not even the squarish end of its prow was submerged. At these times her mother would bring a book to read at the pool-side. Marigold’s father was often away, so her mother had plenty of time to read. She took full advantage of it, lacing her gin with bitter remarks as evening approached and her husband did not.

Stranded, the boat was a safe vehicle for even Marigold’s most imaginative play-scenes; it was holed and rotten and would never float again. True, if it rained enough, the bows would stir and seem to rise. Quite soon, though, the truth of its limitations would prevail. Sodden and disintegrating, the sunken vessel would be immersed once more. It was rapidly heading for its inevitable fate, the collapse into wood pulp.

Overseen by her mother, those days within the warmth and safety of the empty pool space were the happiest and the most secure she had ever known. Then one day they stopped going there.

She was growing up, busy with school work, soon reaching the transition point when she would pass from primary to secondary education.

She had made some friends and some enemies, by then.

Doreen was a bad girl who had once thrown Marigold’s school beret out of the bus window. Long after this was forgotten (by Doreen at least) they met in the middle of the village. (Marigold lived at one end, Doreen at the other.)

‘It’s Gypsy Gippley,’