The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan

Hood. Christopher believed that William Fitzooth, a twelfth century landowner, had been dispossessed by King John while accompanying Richard the Lionheart during the crusades. Such a catastrophe, it seemed to Christopher, would be enough to create the violent outlaw who inhabited the early Robin Hood ballads.
    Christopher had trapped Cullis in the corridor after class. He didn’t like the way Cullis nodded to the other students who passed slowly by, watching the scene. ‘This is an important, erm, historical issue,’ Christopher said.
    ‘Listen, Christopher. Can’t we talk about this some other time?’
    ‘It’s not very nice to be usurped,’ Christopher said. ‘I’ve had a similar experience myself. I know how Robin Hood must have felt.’
    ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ said Cullis. It was not their first argument on the subject. ‘Robin Hood is always a product of his times. He tends to be most popular in eras of tyrannical leaders, unjust wars and revolution. People turn to a moral hero who pulls down the pants of the men in charge.’
    ‘Pulls down their pants?’
    ‘Figuratively,’ said Cullis, looking over his shoulder towards the staff-room.
    ‘Oh, right.’
    ‘Each Robin Hood is created in line with the society he comes from. You yourself have created a Hood with your own sense of . . . well, a man with your issues at heart. Injustice, and such like. An angry man.’
    ‘But what about the corpses?’ said Christopher. ‘What about the evidence?’
    Christopher reminded Cullis of the crossbow bolt, the skull, the rank of bodies. Cullis pushed his fingers under his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. He wore an overlarge denim shirt tucked into what Christopher would have called ‘school trousers’. The skin at his neck hung loose and smooth. ‘Nottingham’s got the worst per capita gun crime in the country, and every time a body turns up they blame it on Robin Hood,’ Cullis said.
    Christopher considered this. ‘Whose side are you on, exactly?’
    ‘Look. Your essay is shaping up well. You can analyse the texts . How does the psychotic vigilante of the ballads compare to the all-American code of Kevin Costner? It’s good stuff.’
    ‘He wasn’t psychotic. It’s understandable that he’d be, erm, erm, aggrieved. How would you like it if someone usurped you?’
    ‘Christopher, you’ve got to let go of him being real. He was a tree-sprite.’
    Christopher walked away at that point. He considered the ‘tree-sprite’ comment to be sacrilege. Figurative pants. But he knew, on some level, that it might be true.
    In the canteen he had lentil soup, nostalgic for his years of vegetarianism. His refusal to eat meat had come from his fear of the animals on the park, the fear of retribution. His father had talked him out of it. ‘Protein is the building bollocks of life,’ David had said. His father had a way of swearing which was different to other people. He made it sound kind and funny, like a hiccup. There was nobody to tell Christopher what was right and wrong now. Nobody to tell him what was true or mythical about Robin Hood, or anything else.
    When he listened to the stories of Maggie Green and the villagers, it was hard to hold on to the real memories of his father. Maggie Green sometimes tried to tell him that old story of how they met, in the deer enclosure in London. Christopher used to like that story, but now it just sounded like the tale of how she wangled her way onto the park. Anyway, why should he believe such a story? Where was her evidence? Everything was uncertain.
    His building bollocks of life, it seemed, had tumbled to the floor.
    As she drove to collect Christopher from college, Maggie remembered his fifteenth birthday, when they had set up a treasure hunt in the woods. Maggie and David had spent the day writing clues for Christopher, riddles about Madge and Harold from Neighbours , and Ayrton Senna. David found a tree with two protrusions at chest height and he tied