14. Confessions
14
Confessions
‘You can’t surely be happy up here,’ Josie said, sitting beside the coffee table with one leg tucked up under her and the other—the one she had hurt in the climb up—stretched out to the side. ‘I mean … no offence, but it’s totally grotty. And believe me, I know grotty. The last place I had to live in had mould all up the walls. At least it had walls, though. There are holes in yours big enough for birds to fly through.’
‘And they frequently do,’ Geoffrey said, looking down at his hands. ‘We had an owl get in once.’
‘Managed to plug that gap with a bit of bark,’ Barney said.
‘And the spiders and other insects, how do you handle it?’
‘Nothing wrong with a few bugs,’ Lindsay said.
‘If you grow out your beard, it keeps them out of your mouth while you sleep,’ Geoffrey said, nodding glumly at Barney.
‘That’s why I’m growing one,’ Barney said, giving Josie an apologetic smile.
‘You’re a pair of pansies,’ Lindsay snapped. ‘That extra protein is good for you.’
‘Doesn’t taste as nice,’ Geoffrey muttered.
‘Especially when they’re still moving,’ Barney agreed.
‘Can you please stop talking about insects,’ Josie said. ‘It’s bad enough up here during the day. I can’t imagine what it’s like during the night. Why on earth do you do it? I mean, are you trying to escape the world or something? Considering you’re only twenty minutes by bus from a major city, you probably want to try a bit harder.’
‘We all have our stories,’ Geoffrey said, staring at the floor. ‘Me … I was trying to find some meaning to it all. Had the corporate gig, running a little computer chip company. Suddenly it blows up, and I’ve got money coming out of my ears.’ He sighed. ‘It was the guilt more than anything. Why do I deserve all this when the next man has nothing? So I blew it. Threw it away on the horses. Sold the company for a fraction of what it’s now worth, ended up destitute. Spent my last money on a flight over.’
He had a slight accent which was either South African or German. Josie had never travelled much, so asked him.
‘Swiss,’ he said. ‘You weren’t far off.’
‘What about you?’ she said, turning to Barney. ‘Why are you here?’
Barney traced a finger along a grove in the wooden planks. ‘Dad’s a policeman,’ he said. ‘He brought us up to follow the law to the letter. Everything we did, everywhere we went, he would go on and on about following the rules and everything would be all right. Then one night last year my sister got killed in a hit-and-run in Plymouth. Dad’s a policeman, yet he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t catch who did it. My sister never put a foot wrong in her whole life. She didn’t deserve that, yet it happened anyway. Me, I was flogging pirated stuff on the internet, games, music, films. Making a decent bit of side money. Yet I’m still here. Chloe, she was a perfect, pure soul. Yet she’s dead.’ He looked up, and the way he stared at Josie made her feel like he expected a genuine answer. ‘Why?’
She turned to Lindsay. ‘How about you?’
Lindsay, all skin and bones, just stared at the ground. ‘What does it matter?’
‘We all ended up here for a reason.’
‘Did we?’ She looked up, glaring at Josie. ‘What about you?’
‘You want my sob story? It’s not much of one, perhaps, but here goes. I was married to a musician. You might know of him; his song was at number two in the charts, the last time I checked. I believed in him, supported him, put my hope in him. I gave him my money, my time, my attention, my energy … and he took it all, and gave nothing back. He found himself a rich older woman and then divorced me, taking everything. I have a few suitcases in a lock up and the clothes on my back.’ She patted the radio. ‘Oh, and the radio Nat gave me, that you stole.’
‘I just wanted to know the score in the Test,’ Geoffrey said.
Barney began tapping his fingers on the wooden planks, then started to sing, in a low, gentle voice: ‘When I gave up on my wife, I regained my life, now I’ve pulled those sutures, I can see the future….’
‘That’s the one,’ Josie said with a groan. ‘Would you mind not singing it, please?’
‘You have to admit it’s pretty catchy,’ Barney said.
‘It’s on all the stations,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I even heard it during a break in the Shipping Forecast.’
‘It’s still at number two in the charts,’ Lindsay said, still not smiling. ‘Behind some stupid charity single.’
‘He wrote that song while we were still married,’ Josie said. ‘He said it was a joke, and I forgot about it for years, then suddenly it’s gone viral. Now all my friends think I was a terrible wife to him. I lost my teaching job because the school governors sided with the lyrics in a stupid song and said that explained my actions in a certain disciplinary situation. So, if we’re playing the My Life is Hell game, I’ve got a pretty good hand.’
‘I think Barney still shaves it,’ Geoffrey said. ‘His dad’s a pig.’
‘At least he’s alive,’ Josie snapped.
‘If you can call it that,’ Geoffrey said.
Barney sniffed. ‘I was thinking … wondering, you know … if I should tell him how I feel.’
‘He’ll just shoot you down,’ Lindsay said. ‘That’s what all those people do. Shoot others down.’
‘He used to read me a bedtime story,’ Barney said, sniffing. ‘I liked Paddington Bear the best.’ He sighed. ‘I ripped the newest Paddington film off the Net and flogged it on an auction site to a distributor in China. I made about a grand.’
Josie gave him a small smile. ‘You could make yourself feel better if you give that money to charity,’ she said.
‘I spent it on shoes,’ Barney said, not looking up.
‘Well, why don’t you give those shoes to charity?’
Barney’s head lifted. ‘Do you think?’
Geoffrey gave him a supportive pat on the shoulder. Josie smiled again. ‘Yes. I think that would be a good idea. Or perhaps give them to a children’s home or something. I bet none of those kids will ever have worn anything like that.’
‘I’m a size twelve.’
Josie grimaced. ‘Well, perhaps some of them have big feet.’
‘They could use them as flowerpots,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Avant-garde.’
Lindsay was still glaring at Josie. ‘You think you have all of the answers, don’t you?’
Josie held her gaze, seeing not only anger there in Lindsay’s eyes, but resentment, and a little hopelessness too. Whatever the older woman had been through in life, she felt certain her own troubles paled in comparison.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t have the answers. But I think that I’m starting to find some of them.’ Then, unable to resist, she added, ‘How many answers did Mike give you?’
‘Mike,’ Geoffrey and Barney said together, both smiling. ‘We had a number done on us there.’
‘What do you mean?’
Geoffrey chuckled. ‘Among other things, St. Michael is the patron saint of banking and the police. We showed up here to escape everything he represents, and every evening he laughs in our face.’
‘It’s like being in purgatory,’ Barney said.
‘Is that why Dennis left?’
‘Oh, no,’ Geoffrey said. ‘He just got tired of walking down into the town to scrounge for food every night. Me, I enjoy the exercise.’
Josie stretched out her bad leg, feeling the tug on her hamstring. It felt better than before, a little tight, but she could probably walk on it.
‘I saw you’d been in the barn,’ she said.
‘Only so many games of rummy you can play before you lose your mind,’ Barney said.
‘Are any of you any good at table tennis?’
‘Lindsay has a wicked forehand,’ Geoffrey said, to which Lindsay just gave a sharp shake of her head and a hiss of denial.
‘Well, my friend is rather good, and I’m terrible. I wouldn’t mind a bit of practice. Doubles?’
‘Bagsy with Lindsay,’ Barney said.
‘And afterwards, how about you come to my cabin for something to eat? I have a bit of food in, and perhaps you might be a little more comfortable there than in this treehouse.’
Geoffrey and Barney immediately nodded. Lindsay glared at the floor for a few seconds, before grudgingly saying, ‘Well, if you’re both going, I suppose I might as well.’
Lindsay, it turned out, indeed did have a wicked forehand, but her anger made it misfire frequently, and with some steady defensive play, concentrating on getting the ball over the net while waiting for the other pair to make a mistake, Geoffrey and Josie came out narrow winners by two sets to one.
Afterwards, they went up to Josie’s cabin, where they set up a little barbeque outside, grilled some burgers and sausages that Josie had bought and even opened a bottle of wine.
‘So,’ Josie said, a little wine loosening her tongue, asking the question her nose had been dying to ask for the last hour. ‘Do you wash in the sea?’
‘Sea or the stream down there,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Every few days.’
Josie wrinkled her nose. ‘How about your clothes?’
‘Oh, when we get a warm enough day. They don’t dry out all that quick when it’s cold and there’s so much rain in the air.’
‘Right. I was wondering about that.’
‘Are you trying to say that we smell?’ Lindsay snapped, a piece of hamburger falling out of the side of her mouth.
‘Um … in a word … yes?’
‘We do,’ Barney said, head lowered. ‘I get a whiff every time I go up that ladder. I mean, you get used to it, and when the wind’s blowing through, it’s not too bad.’
‘Well, the shower block, the one currently engulfed with vines and leaf litter, it still works. There’s water. There’s even hot water, according to Nat. How about I do you a deal? Help me clear back the weeds and clean it up, and you can use it anytime you like.’
Barney’s eyes lit up. ‘Deal.’
Geoffrey nodded. ‘To be honest, it would be nice to have something to do.’
‘Lindsay?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Look,’ Josie said, setting down her plate and leaning forward. ‘I can go even further. I’m trying to get this campsite up to a standard where it can be reopened. You might have noticed me cutting the grass. You know, before you kicked my strimmer over the cliff.’
‘That was Dennis,’ Barney said. ‘He had a bit of a temper.’
‘Well, there’s a lot of work to be done. And I really can’t do everything. I’d be long gone already if my best friend didn’t keep guilt-tripping me into staying.’ She stabbed a blackened sausage with her fork and dunked it into a bit of ketchup on the edge of her plate. ‘If you were willing to help me get it ready, I’d be willing to give you a couple of the cabins to use. And if we can ever get it tidy enough to open, I’d even be up for splitting whatever money we make.’
Geoffrey watched her over the top of his hamburger. Barney stared into his glass of wine. Lindsay glared at the embers of the barbeque as though trying to make them spit and flare.
‘Well?’
‘Miss, you don’t know how much a proper hot shower and a decent bed would mean right now,’ Geoffrey said.
‘That’s a yes?’
Geoffrey nodded. ‘Don’t worry about the money, though. It’s not important. Just enough to get by.’
‘Barney?’
‘Hell yes.’
‘Great. Lindsay?’
The other woman didn’t look up. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. However, there was just enough of a hinted smile on her lips to suggest she was thinking about it very strongly indeed.