– The Door to the River –

In Memoriam
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997)

Why do I always think, in the evenings,
of the river, and river smells, and river words?

— George Mackay Brown

It was late one July evening, long past his bedtime, that Quin found the rusty door under the trees at the end of his garden. He crept through the scullery and walked out into the falling light. The air was warm and sticky with the soft thickness of the summer night as he crept down the overgrown path that led through the glade.

There was hardly a breath of wind in the three big oak trees that grew on the western side of the house. There were swallows catching flies in the dusk, diving and turning. There were many sounds in the garden of other birds calling, and the low hum of insects came through when the birds were quiet. Far away, very high up, or in the far distance, there was a deeper drone, like the sound of an old plane.

The evening sun was almost on the horizon, and the taller oak trees cast shadows right across the lawn, beyond the east wall, and out into the meadow on the other side of the garden. The shadows were long, and it seemed to Quin they might belong to another world entirely, to a realm of plants perhaps never seen for thousands of years. At the far corner of the lawn, where it met the copper beech trees at the edge of Briar Wood, he felt the air around him grow warmer still. The scent of the summer day that had almost past hung heavy in the opening of the glade that led into the wood.

The light was falling faster in the deeper shadows of the glade, and Quin had to look hard into the middle distance to see which way the path would lead him. He had been this way before, but never this late in the evening. Now it seemed that he was treading a quite different path to the one he knew, and the wood grew darker.

The growing gloom seemed to alter the colours and shapes of the trees. As he turned a sharp corner in the path, Quin stumbled on a fallen branch, or a root, and almost fell. He stopped to regain his balance and looked up, staring straight ahead. In the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something between a pair of tangled laurels; an abrupt, blurred flash of colour, noticeable only because it was different to the dim green-black forms of the entwined laurels and the surrounding trees.

Quin caught his breath as he stepped forward towards it, his steps slow and careful. He could feel his heart pounding, afraid that he would disturb something.

The big waxy leaves of the laurel trees were almost black, shining at certain angles in the dusky light. Quin brushed them aside. He peered intently through the small gap he had made in the leaves, and his whole body trembled. At first, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw nothing but the darkness all around. Then, suddenly, a shape appeared from out of that darkness behind the laurels.

There was a door in the trees, in the deepest and darkest place at the very end of his garden. It was a very small door, less than a metre high, so even Quin would have to crouch down to get through it. It seemed to be made of iron and was completely covered in a thick rust. It looked very old. The rust had spread over the door in swathes of red and brown, and there were a few patches of green moss growing on it. Quin traced around the edge of the door with his fingers, hoping to find a bolt or a catch, or anything else that might give him a chance of opening it. He found nothing but a few gnarled