13. Over the Wall

13

Over the Wall

Josie set the basket down on the ground at the base of the tree. ‘Right, you lot,’ she said. ‘Grub’s up. I have pasties, scones, and some Cornish shortbread. If you want it, though, you have to come down and get it.’

No sound came from the treehouses overhead, except for a little gentle creaking that could have been caused by the wind. Josie, hands on her hips, turned to look out at the cliffs as she waited, trying to see exactly what part of the distant headland looked like St. Michael. While the bay itself kind of looked like an old man with a moustache, even when she squinted or blurred her eyes, all the headland looked like was a jagged pile of rocks. Perhaps a little outcrop on the left could be perceived as a nose, perhaps a rounded upper section could be the forehead—

A rustle of sound made her spin round. The basket was eight feet off the ground, its handles caught by a hook made out of a wire coat hanger. Leaning over the wooden guard rail of the platform overhead, a man with a thick grey beard was pulling on a rope attached to the hanger, the basket slowly rising through the air.

‘Hey!’

Josie jumped, fingertips just catching the basket’s bottom, but not enough to get a decent grip. She stumbled forwards onto her hands and knees as the basket rose over the guard rail. For a moment, the man’s eyes met with Josie’s, then he ducked out of sight.

Josie sat up and rolled over. Only as she did so, did she feel a stab of pain in her knee where she had landed on a protruding stone. It had cut right through a section of her jeans that was already frayed, digging deep into the skin of her kneecap. Blood pooled in a deep gash, running through her fingers.

As she felt in her pocket for a handkerchief, Josie looked up at the treehouses above her, then thumped her hands on the ground. She opened her mouth to shout something meaningful, but all that would come out was an angry, frustrated scream. When she looked up, four faces quickly ducked back out of sight.

‘If Nat doesn’t mind them being there, there’s not a lot you can do,’ Hilda said. ‘I mean, you said you offered them the basket of food, so it’s not like they stole it by taking it, is it? And you said you tripped over?’

Josie ran a hand through her hair. ‘I can’t do it anymore,’ she said. ‘I just can’t.’

‘I know the local police constable,’ Hilda said, a note of desperation in her voice. ‘He lives down in the village. Do you want me to have a word?’

Josie, slumped over in the chair, pushed herself upright. ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll go if you tell me where I can find him. I need a walk to clear my head.’

‘Oh, he lives down in one of the harbourside cottages,’ Hilda said. ‘Do you want me to call him first, just to make sure he’s in?’

Josie shook her head. ‘I’ll surprise him,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘That way he’ll have less chance to plan his escape.’

The policeman, predictably, wasn’t home. As Josie gave his doorbell another desperate ring, however, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction in this latest failure. Like a bout of self-flagellation, she probably deserved it. After all, everything she had tried to do in recent memory had failed. She had tried to be a good mother, a good wife. A good teacher. Even her ability to be a good friend to Hilda was slipping, like a section of cliff about to give way. And being some kind of free spirit entrepreneur resurrecting an abandoned campsite was as laughable as it was sad.

She staggered away from the policeman’s cottage, feeling a half-hearted sense of jealousy at how pretty his house was, and wandered down to the harbourside. Too tired even to sit on one of the benches lined up with a view of the harbour and the cliffs, instead she just slumped to the ground, feet dangling over the harbourside wall.

Had the water been more than a gentle trickle or perhaps the fall—five feet at best—great enough to cause any damage, she could have just pitched herself over. As it was, she simply stared down into the murky green, weed drifting in the slow-moving water as though it might present her with an answer.

She could see her own reflection in there, a vague outline of a human, against a backdrop of mockingly cloudless sky, and—

—a looming figure, leaning over her, one hand lifting to push her over the edge—

‘Jose! Jose, is that you?’

A heavy hand cracked down on Josie shoulder, and she looked up to see Cathy Ubbers-Benson leaning over her. One hand still lay on her shoulder, the other clutched an enormous bundle of white sheets.

‘Oh, hi. Cathy, isn’t it?’

The hand clapped down again. Josie suppressed a wince of pain.

‘The very same! Oh, you remember! It’s like we were born to be best friends. What’s this, ice-cream time?’

‘Ah, no. I was just thinking about something.’

‘Come on, love, tell Auntie Cathy all about it!’

‘Auntie’ Cathy was at least fifteen years younger than Josie, perhaps more, but the huge, jovial woman couldn’t surely make matters worse.

‘You don’t know where I can find the local policeman?’ she asked. ‘I’m after some help from emergency services. I didn’t want to worry anyone with a call out, though.’

‘Love, I don’t, but if it’s emergency services you need, perhaps my daddy can help. He’s a volunteer fireman, don’t you know?’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, best in the village.’ Cathy chortled. ‘Only one in the village, but we’ll keep quiet about that, won’t we?’

Images of siege towers moving up against castle battlements came to mind. Josie looked up. ‘I don’t suppose I could borrow a ladder?’

Cathy’s father, Colin Ubbers, had one in his shed which Cathy was happy to loan out.

‘He won’t even notice, the old love,’ she said. ‘Just give us a holler in the launderette or the pub when you’re done with it.’

Leaving Josie standing on the pavement with a fifteen-foot ladder, Cathy hurried off back to work. Thankfully it was a lightweight model, but its sheer size made it awkward as Josie carried it down the village’s main street to the harbour and started up the hill. About halfway up, a kind farmer in a tractor offered her a lift, and dropped her off at the top of the campsite road. With a renewed spring in her step, Josie carried the ladder down to the campsite.

No sound came from inside the treehouses as she set the ladder down, then made a couple of circuits of the treehouse community, looking for a way up. Five treehouses, all interconnected with little walkways and rope bridges, some of which looked original, others that had clearly been recently repaired. She could imagine that it had once been a heavenly place for kids to play, with several of the houses comprising two or more floors, rising up through the trees to tower rooms and crow’s nests. However, time waited for no one, and as the trees had grown, several of the treehouses had taken on a leaning, distorted look, boards and roofs shifted, nails bent, floors distorted, as the trees continued their gradual expansion.

Extended, the ladder would easily reach any of the walkways, but Josie had never been much good when it came to ladders. Once, while repainting their house back in their better days, she had stuck to the ground floor while Reid had done everything that required standing on a ladder.

She picked a spot with a decent base, flat and firm, then rested the ladder against the walkway railing overhead. Little more than a couple of yards overhead, it was only just out of jumping range.

It only took a couple of steps to make her feel queasy, however. She clung to the ladder for dear life, squeezing her eyes shut as she took one step and then another. Only when she felt the wooden walkway railing brush her fingers did she open her eyes to find herself level with the treehouse.

They had taken pains to waterproof the little treehouses, pinning plastic sheets up to the insides, attaching pieces of plywood threaded with string to make crude doors. Through one that stood open, hooked against the wind on a latch made by a twist of dried vine, she peered into a gloomy space of camp beds, sleeping bags, inflatable mattresses and dirty blankets. A little camping stove stood in one corner, a bucket filled with plastic plates and bowls in another. A pack of cards lay on a foldout coffee table, its packet so ripped and worn it was barely holding the cards inside. Beneath the table, a couple of dozen generic airport thrillers made a wonky stack.

One thing was for certain, however, was that there were no people here. Perhaps they had gone up to see Nathaniel, to beg the old man to lead them again. Or perhaps they had just gone down to the beach for a swim—and rather grossly, to take care of toilet business, since there didn’t appear to be anything here they could use. Whatever the reason, that they had left everything behind meant they were certainly coming back.

Not wanting to get caught unawares, Josie started back down. Just as she glanced down at her feet, however, she spotted the radio Nat had given her standing in a corner of the nearest treehouse.

It would only take a moment to get it. Josie took another step up and tried to hook a leg over the railing. It looked easy, and perhaps twenty years ago she wouldn’t have had a problem, but now she was older and what she thought she could do and what she actually could do were two distinctly different things. Halfway over, she felt something tweak in her hamstring, causing her to jerk sideways. One foot caught the side of the ladder even as the other fell over the railing, rolling her inside. As she bumped down hard on the walkway floor, the breath knocked out of her, she wheezed as the ladder fell away, landing in the undergrowth with a metallic thud.

Josie lay there for a few moments, recovering her breath. When she could finally draw enough air back into her lungs, she scrambled to her feet and peered over the railing.

The ladder lay in the undergrowth beneath the treehouses. Even though she knew it was only a few feet, and her mind told her it was a few feet, the drop looked like about fifty. Maybe if she could get back over the railing and lower herself down, she could make it, but at the slightest movement her leg sent an electric current of pain through her. Even a short fall could make it worse, and while Hilda might not agree, at Josie’s age she might never recover.

She climbed to her feet and hobbled along the walkway to an adjacent treehouse built against the side of a thick oak tree. Here was no different, the remains of a miserable existence inside the cramped hut, but no obvious way down.

Just as she was beginning to come around to the decision that she would have to chance the jump down and hope for the best, she heard voices on the footpath leading up from the beach. She hobbled through another door leading out of the other side of the hut, only to find herself on a walkway that led back around to the first treehouse. She found herself standing next to her radio, so needing an excuse, she reached down and scooped it up, just as a bamboo pole with a hook on the end rose into view, then kept rising until it hooked over something hung in the tree branches overhead.

A rope ladder she hadn’t even noticed, attached to the walkway railing along a section that had been reinforced with extra wooden planks to give it more strength. The ladder fell over the side, then the wood began to creak and groan as the squatters hauled themselves up. Josie, clutching her radio, backed up against the railing behind her, watching through the gloomy interior of the treehouse as the first person climbed over, then reached out to help the second person up. Together they helped the third, but instead of waiting for the fourth, they headed straight into the treehouse and sat down around the table, not yet noticing Josie standing outside the other door, the radio held against her chest like a protective shield.

‘I’ll miss him,’ the oldest of the three, a man with a long grey beard that covered most of his face and neck said. ‘You never know, he might come back.’

‘He was adamant that he was done,’ another said, this one a much younger man, his beard undeveloped, mostly just stubble. ‘You know, perhaps he has a point. I mean, it was fun while it lasted—’

‘Who’s for tea?’ the third person said, and to Josie’s surprise she realised it was a woman of around fifty, but badly aged, looking closer to Hilda’s age than Josie’s. Her hair was scraggly and knotted, what clothes were visible under the grass sewn into them little more than rags. Her face was narrow, lined, underfed, her eyes bloodshot as though she didn’t get enough sleep. This must be Lindsay, Josie surmised, with the old-timer Geoffrey, and the younger man Barney. None of them looked happy; none of them looked pleased to be living in the treehouse.

‘Sure, I’ll have one,’ Geoffrey said.

‘If you’re making,’ Barney added.

Josie cleared her throat. ‘If you’ve got a spare cup … I’d really appreciate one.’ As they spun around to look at her, scrambling away from her as though she were a lion about to leap into their midst, she grinned. ‘It’s been one hell of a day.’