Someday I'll Find You - the original first chapter

(The following extract contain references to indigenous names and practices  that are correct usage for characters of their background and this period but may be offensive to some today. Apologies if so.)


                                                        PROLOGUE
 
Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. Summer 1923.
 
A man and a boy stood at the edge of the forest. The man was tall, a hair over six foot. He wore a check shirt, khaki shorts, boots. The boy, just seven, was tall too, and dressed like his father.
               The man leaned down. “Have you got your tomahawk, Little Wolf?”
            Billy smiled up, lifting his weapon. “I sharpened it, just like you showed me.” He raised the hatchet. “See?”
            His father reached a hand to the blade. Jerked it back. “Ouch!” he yelped, sucking at a finger. “That is a fine edge. Those Apaches had better watch out, don’t you think, old chum?”
            “They better!” The boy leapt to his feet. “The war path?”
            Charles Coke picked up his own weapon, the axe with its heavy iron head, its yew shaft stained dark with the palm sweat of a thousand split logs. “Indeed,” he replied, pointing with the blade. “Lead on, Macduff.”
            “Aie aie-aie-aie ayee!” Billy cried, and ran off down the deer trail. It was one of several that cut through their forest which was mainly Douglas Fir but also had maple and alder. These, with their summer bounty of leaves, hid Stowell Lake from view which Billy, for most of the year, could see from their cabin. He could smell the water as he ran though. It excited him. His father had promised that when their work was done - and any apaches dealt with, of course – they would swim.
            His father overtook him as he dallied to hunt a chipmunk. He’d never managed to hit one with a thrown hatchet, but he had hopes. He scanned the forest for other life – deer, which roamed the island in their hundreds. Tawny owls, which he heard at night but had only spotted once. And cougar, which he’d never seen. It was his dream, to spot a cougar. Two days before his father had shown him one’s paw print in the muddy bank of a stream. And yesterday Davy Kerrigan had told him, at the Beaver Point supply store, that two lambs had been killed at their farm, thrillingly beheaded; and that his step-father had used some marvellously strange new curse words when he’d found the corpses. Davy was nine, two years older than Billy, and his tutor for all sorts of grown ups stuff. Under his coaching Billy had repeated the words, gleefully.
            He’d paused for a while by a huge cedar, mouthing the new curses, seeking targets. “Come on, Billy Boy,” his father called from ahead, “work to do.”
            He caught up fast. “Little Wolf,” he said, scowling up.
            His father nodded. “Of course, of course. My mistake.”
          They soon reached the small clearing where this day’s task was before them – a mid-sized fir, its girth about the length of his father’s joined arms, its height about ten of him tall, though its crown was lost amidst the others above. A double-edged saw was lodged in it three foot from its base, and about three quarters of the way through. Yesterday they’d taken two hours to get that far but his father had called it a day when the heat had become too much, and the lake too alluring.
            “Ready, old chum?” His father, who’d laid his axe against a stump, spat in his hands, rubbed then together, then grasped one of the saw’s wooden handles. Billy spat, rubbed and grasped the other. In his excitement, he forgot to correct the chief as to his name.
            They sawed. The big teeth bit. They took frequent breaks, when Billy tired. Still, within an hour they were nearly through. “Enough,” said his father, releasing his grip, stepping away to sit on a fallen cedar, a nurse log, its wood stained dark by age and winter rains. “Here,” he said and pointed to the space beside him. Billy came and his father put his arm around him, leaned in. “When I push this bugger over,” he confided, “it may take out those two smaller buggers too.” He pointed them out. “And that’s next winter’s fuel, lad. No more felling required.”
         For a while they sat in silence, enjoying the bird calls, the fall of light through needle and leaf. Then his father stood, and began rolling his shoulders. He’d taken off his shirt during a previous break. As always, Billy’s eyes went to the scars there – a small, puckered indentation on the front of the left shoulder, a larger tracery on the back, like an exploding star. Billy loved the scar but he could never get his father to tell him much of the story. “The war,” he’d say, simply. Once he’d added, “Sniper.”
          “I’ll push,” Billy said, jumping up, beginning to roll his shoulders too.
       “No, chum.” His father peered up into the canopy, the interlocked branches above. “May be some stray branches up there. Widowmakers, they call ‘em. Don’t think so but - ” He looked down, grinned. “Besides, if you’re helping me, who’s keeping an eye out for the apaches? I think I saw one over there, creeping through the brush.”
         For once, Billy didn’t look, didn’t smile. He knew the word ‘widow’. Davy Kerrigan’s mum had been one, her first husband killed in that same war where his dad had got the scars. A dozen Salt Springers had gone off to Europe and not come back. His dad had started there and come here, to this remote island, the year before Billy was born.
          His father had moved to the leaning tree. “Don’t, dad,” he said. “Let’s get Old Man Miller and his horse. Put a rope on it, like you did that one last month.”
         His father shook his head. “Old Man Miller has gone to Victoria for a week to see his sister. And I want to get this wood bucked, split and stacked. Needs three months to season for our autumn fires.” He pointed. “Go on, chum. Move over there.”
        “But father - ”
        “Move!”
      This command was snapped. Billy recognized the changed tone, and moved. When he was a dozen paces away, his father’s frown eased to a smile. “But listen here - all that other stuff can wait. I’ll push this and we’ll go to the lake. Pax, Little Wolf?”
        “Pax, father.”
       “Good show.” William Coke moved to the tree, rolled his shoulders again, leaned and placed his palms against the grey, fissured bark. It was already at an angle, blade and gravity having done their work. He put his legs back, bent, pressed. The scars whitened against his tanned skin.
       He’d barely touched the fir when it shifted. Billy was looking up, saw movement in the canopy, a parting. His father had stumbled forward, off balanced by the tree’s sudden fall. “Father!” Billy yelled. Too late.
        The Widowmaker, the snapped off top of an older fir, twelve feet long and no wider than a hand, fell; and though instinct made Charles Coke start to move to the side he was too slow and the branch too fast. The blunt end struck him beside the star-shaped scar that a German’s bullet had made nine years before in a Belgian field. Unlike the bullet, the tree top snapped his spine.
         “No!” Billy was across in a heartbeat. Dragging the wood off took all his seven year old’s strength. Charles was face down. Billy turned him. “Father?” he cried. All he could see were his father’s eyes fluttering. All he could hear were the words, his last words, barely a whisper.
         “Little Wolf,” Charles Coke said, and died.
         Billy, who’d seen death before because he was a farmer’s son, refused to believe it. “Dad!” he said, sitting down, grabbing his father’s hand. “Wake up. Wake up. We’re going swimming. You promised. You promised!”     
 
Coke Hall House. Cheyne Walk. London. Three months later.
 
“You do speak, boy. We know you do.” Sir Archibald Greville Aloysius Coke peered over his pince nez at Billy, who stood before the table on the dining room’s thick carpet. “Says here,” he continued, refocusing on the paper he held in his hand. “Miss Williams, who we sent to collect you, writes that you spoke not at all on the train journey across Canada. Understandable in a way, took them two days to find you and your father, what? Saw it in France, the shock.” He shook his head. “Anyway, she then writes that when you finally spoke it was most forcefully, when she tried to get you onto the boat. In language, she adds, that would have made a Irish navvy blush. Is this true?”
            He peered again at Billy, who’d been staring at a painting on the back wall. It was of a man with long curly hair, wearing a red embroidered coat. Now he looked again at his uncle. He saw little of his father in his older brother. Something around the eyes perhaps, though these so lost in flesh. He still didn’t feel that there was anything worth saying. He returned the stare and after a few seconds the man grunted.
            “Silence is insolence, you know. When an adult asks you a question, you have a duty to answer. Hmm?” When Billy still said nothing, his uncle threw down the paper and leaned back, reaching for his wine. “Like father like son, eh? Charles was often insolent. And had strange ideas about duty as well.” He swirled his wine. “Took that wound in Belgium, all jolly good. But when he healed, do you know, he refused to rejoin the regiment? Refused to return to the war. Went off to Canada instead. Married some - ” He broke off, took a sip. “We made enquiries after your mother. Thought she at least might recognize an obligation and take you. But she’d vanished, into America. Left your father after one year, what? Can’t say I blame her.” He huffed, put down his glass unsipped, leaned forward. “Look here,” he continued, his voice getting huskier, “will you stop giving me the bloody fish eye and say something?”
               Billy looked above him, at the man in the painting with the hair. In his right hand, he held a pistol. That’s interesting, he thought.
              “Very well.” His uncle who’d picked up his fork and pushed some food around on his plate, now threw the fork down and stood. He came around the table and loomed. “In the morning, you’ll be sent off to Forest Dene. It is the school where all Cokes go, including your father. I can assure you that silence and insolence will not be tolerated there. They have methods of ensuring that they are not.” He picked up a small, silver bell, shook it forcefully. “My son, your cousin Gervase, is there. He’s two years older than you. He’ll keep an eye on you, make sure you do not disgrace the family name.”
               A man appeared in the doorway. “Clear away, sir?”
          “After, Jeffers. First see if Mrs Jacobs can get this ingrate to eat something in the kitchen, then arrange a bed in one of the attic rooms. One night only.”
              “Very good, sir.” The butler turned to Billy. “Come along, boy.”
               But Billy didn’t move. Spoke. “The school is in a forest.”
             His uncle, who’d resumed his seat and picked up his wine, paused with it half way to his lips. “Eh?” he said.
            “The school is in a forest, is it?”
            “Well, it’s Forest Dene so, yes. Hampshire. Plenty of trees.”
            “Then I’ll go.”
           Billy moved to follow the butler. His uncle’s voice halted him at the door. “What the devil difference does a forest make?”
        Billy turned back. For the first time in three months, he smiled.      “Apaches,” he said.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
It's interesting for a writer to revisit an early impulse for his novel. Things that appear in first drafts often don't make it into the final cut for all sorts of reasons. Actually this chapter wasn't even in the very first draft. I'd started the book where it starts now, on the streets of London just before the Germans start to bomb them. But when my then agent Heather Adams read those she found Billy Coke, the protagonist, to be a little cold. Wanted some sympathy for him. And since I'd always envisaged him growing up as a child in Canada till orphaned at the age of seven, I wrote this new opener.
             Heather liked it  but my editor at Doubleday, Melanie Tutino, did not. She appreciated the writing but felt we needed to jump into the main story straightaway, the meeting of Billy and Ilse. As with so many of her observations she was right. So this chapter hit the cutting room floor. It is an outtake.
         Hope you enjoy a glimpse of Billy's early life anyway - as well as a snapshot of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia where I happily lived for many years. I learned many terms there, including 'widowmaker' when an arborist felling a tree on our land was very nearly killed by one! Interestingly his accident had the reverse effect. Estranged from his wife, she came to his hospital bed… and they are together to this day! This widowmaker was a marriagemaker!
           Any comments most appreciated.