by T. S. Easton
‘And what about you?’ Sharon asked me.
‘Me?’ I watched the boy as he put on a pair of boxing gloves.
‘Yes, dear, what about you?’ Sharon said, slightly impatiently.
The boy stepped up to a hanging punch bag and started hitting it. He was fast, two quick jabs with his left hand then a big whack with his right. He hit the bag so hard I heard the bolts creak where it was attached to the ceiling. He dropped back, his guard up, and I saw him grin, exposing perfect white teeth.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I might come next Saturday.’
We Happy Few
‘Stop being passive-aggressive,’ I said in the car on the way to Battle.
‘I’m not being passive-aggressive,’ Blossom replied primly. ‘I just find it really interesting that you decided to join the very club we were protesting against.’
‘We were taking direct action,’ I said. ‘While you were arguing about apostrophes on a flyer, we slipped behind enemy lines to bring them down from within. I’m like Charlotte Grey. Pip’s like … um …’
‘Frodo,’ Pip suggested. I couldn’t think of anyone Pip was less like than Frodo, but I let it go. As we parked the car, Garnet Pitman came hurrying over to meet us. Garnet was one of the chief volunteers at Battle and had very strong opinions. He ran walking tours for people who were terribly serious about history and organised archaeological digs and got excited about misshapen lumps of rock that he claimed were arrowheads. Ignoring me and Blossom, he spoke to Pip.
‘What’s your name?’
Pip looked panicked. But he stuttered out his name, somehow.
‘Right, Pip, we’re a bit short on numbers for the battle re-enactment today.’
‘You’re having a re-enactment today?’ Blossom asked.
‘Just a practise really,’ Garnet said dismissively. ‘The big one’s in October, obviously.’
‘Why October?’ I asked. He turned slowly to look at me with contempt.
‘Because that’s the anniversary of the battle itself. The fourteenth of October.’
‘Really? I’ve been telling everyone it was the twentieth of March.’ I got my phone out to check.
Garnet glared at me, tutted and looked back at Pip. ‘Can you help us out? Harold will give you a shield and tell you what to do.’
‘King Harold?’
‘Yes, King Harold, leader of the Saxon army. Ruler of Britain. He’s in the café having a mochaccino.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ I said, looking up from my phone. ‘The battle was on the fourteenth of October.’
‘I KNOW,’ Garnet snapped.
‘Twentieth of March is actually World Oral Health Day,’ I said. ‘How could I have got those confused?’
‘Can we be in it?’ Blossom asked, ignoring me. ‘The re-enactment?’ Garnet looked at her as if she’d just asked for permission to set fire to the abbey.
‘I’m afraid there were no women at the Battle of Hastings, my dear,’ he said coolly.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Blossom said. ‘There must have been SOME women at the Battle.’
‘Yeah, who ran the tea shop?’ I asked.
‘There were certainly no girls,’ Garnet said firmly.
Blossom bristled. ‘There weren’t any iPhones either,’ she said, pointing to the one in his hand.
‘I need that to coordinate with the Saxons. I have an app. And no one will notice a phone.’
‘No one’s going to notice that we’re girls either,’ Blossom said, refusing to let it go. I would have given up by this point, but Blossom never did. She would have held out longer than Harold and his mochaccino.
‘Of course they’ll notice you’re girls.’
‘We’re going to be swishing swords,’ Blossom said. ‘Not twirling tampons.’
Garnet drew himself up to his full height. ‘There’s no need for talk like that. It’s very important to our visitors that we put on a realistic demonstration of what the battle would have looked like. And I’m afraid that means men only.’
‘There was another young woman who the men tried to stop from fighting,’ Blossom growled. ‘An ordinary, devout girl who went on to conquer half the French-speaking world.’
‘She’s talking about Celine Dion,’ I said.
‘I’m talking about Joan of Arc,’ she corrected.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Garnet huffed. He turned and led a terrified-looking Pip off, leaving Blossom fuming.
‘Garnet thinks he’s such a Thane,’ I said.
‘This must be illegal,’ Blossom said. ‘I’m getting out my human rights law book as soon as we get home.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go for a coffee. I’ll buy you a Bakewell tart.’
‘What are you doing?’ a small boy asked once I had taken up my post.
‘Whittling,’ I explained. ‘I’m using a sharp knife to fashion useful tools from wood.’ I was sitting in a hovel that we’d constructed a few weeks before. I was dressed in my Saxon finery, which was not great because the weather was warming up and the tunic was hot and scratchy. Blossom was off doing one of her ghost walks. She plays the mad woman who leaps out from behind a gravestone and stabs the tour guide. Sometimes people think it’s real and faint with the shock, but mostly they just laugh.
‘Can I have a go with the knife?’ the small boy said as more children came in to the hovel to poke about.
‘No,’ I said.
‘What are you carving?’ a little girl asked.
‘Whittling, not carving,’ I said. ‘It’s a spoon.’
The children leaned forward to inspect my work. ‘It doesn’t look like a spoon,’ the little girl said. I peered at it; she was right.
‘It looks more like a willy,’ the small boy said. They screamed with laughter.
‘Excuse me?’ I said, outraged. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’ I looked closer and they were right, it did look like a big wooden willy. A sort of medieval marital aid.
‘How come you’re not going in the battle?’ the little girl asked.
‘Because girls don’t fight,’ the small boy said. ‘They just stay in the house and do cooking and willy-whittling.’
‘Girls do more than that,’ I said. ‘Nowadays at least.’
‘Not really,’ the boy said. I was about to retort when one of the dads poked his head through the door.
‘Come on, kids, the battle’s about to start.’
I put the knife safely away and followed them out of the hovel. The air was a bit cooler outside and I was pleased to see Blossom come strolling along. We joined the crowd assembling on the concourse just below the abbey: from there you could get a great view of the whole battlefield.
‘There he is,’ cried Blossom, pointing Pip out to me. He was wearing a helmet and carried, or rather dragged, a sword and shield. He stumbled along behind the other Saxons as they formed a raggedy line at the top of the slope.
‘There are the Normans,’ Blossom cried, pointing to a group at the bottom of the slope wearing ill-assorted armour and adjusting each other’s helmet straps.
‘Boo,’ I said.
‘Boo,’ everyone cried. Technically you weren’t supposed to take sides, but no one liked the Normans, with their horses and fancy armour. There was only one horse today, a small pony struggling under the weight of Garnet Pitman, who was looking at his phone. Garnet was playing William of course. With a hoarse shout he lifted his sword and dug his heels into the pony’s flank. It trotted slowly up the slope towards the Saxons.
The fickle crowd gave a cheer as the Normans charged. ‘William! William!’
‘Who wins?’ the little girl asked.
‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ I said.
‘I hope it’s the Saxons,’ she said.
‘I hope so too,’ I said. I always hoped the Saxons would win, but they never did. We watched four Saxon archers fire blunt arrows over the heads of the approaching Normans.
‘The Saxon archers had a problem,’ I ex
plained to the little girl and boy who were standing beside us. I knew the details of the battle very well, even if I was hazy on the date. ‘It was common practise to collect the arrows your enemies fired at you and fire them back. But the Normans didn’t have archers so the Saxons quickly ran out of ammunition.’
‘They are so dumb,’ the little boy said. ‘No wonder they lost.’
‘Spoilers,’ Blossom said.
‘They lost?’ the little girl cried, bereft.
‘We don’t know that yet,’ I said, glaring at the boy.
Eventually the Norman charge reached the Saxon shield wall. I could see Pip crouched down watching the line of knights approach.
‘The Normans charged and charged again,’ I said. ‘But they couldn’t break the Saxon shield wall, the stout English yeomen stood firm against the French.’ But then we heard a high-pitched shriek from the battlefield. Pip dropped his shield and ran helter-skelter away from the battle towards a stand of trees, disappearing from view. The Norman knights seemed surprised by this development and stopped in their tracks. No one had ever run off before, not at this point in the battle anyway.
‘Oh Pip,’ Blossom muttered. ‘It’s not real.’ The Saxon line shuffled across to plug the gap and the battle continued.
‘Why did that soldier run away?’ the little girl asked.
‘Because he’s sensible,’ I said. ‘And he didn’t want to get killed.’
‘He’s a wuss,’ the boy said.
‘Yeah, that too,’ I agreed. I wasn’t convinced Pip’s future as a Saxon warrior was entirely secure.
Sunday Lunch
Our village is called Rangers’ Wood. It used to be called Rangers Wood, but a couple of years ago a group of middle-class punctuation enthusiasts, including my mother, successfully lobbied the parish council to add an apostrophe. Convincing the council to do it was the easy part. The tricky bit was deciding whether to add the apostrophe before, or after, the ‘s’ of Rangers. Is it the wood of one ranger? Or are there loads of the sneaky chaps ranging about in there? I suspect the rangers who used to inhabit the village wouldn’t have given a wimple one way or the other. But there are very few farming folk in the village these days – it’s mostly full of middle-class refugees from London, driving pristine Range Rovers. Like my parents.
Sundays in our house can be … interesting. It’s the same drill every week. Mum and Dad start arguing over breakfast about how best to cook the roast. You’d think that after twenty-four years of marriage they’d have come to some sort of resolution about how many times the gravy should be reduced, or at least have agreed an uneasy truce. But no, apparently not. Dad says once is enough, Mum insists on twice, minimum. Another thing they can’t agree on is whether to add water to the roasting tray before putting the meat in. Mum says that’s the best way to make the gravy. Dad says the meat needs to ‘roast dry’ in order for the sugars to caramelise.
I know. I’m boring myself even mentioning it.
It makes no difference of course. The meat is always overdone whoever gets their way. Blossom often comes over. Both her parents are vegetarian and this is where she gets most of her protein. She arrives around 11 a.m. We’re supposed to do an hour’s revision before we eat but we usually don’t. George turns up around midday and Mum and Dad drop whatever they’re doing to run outside and greet him with hugs and kisses and firm handshakes and jokey asides. Mum gets him a small lager (he’ll be driving later) and they talk about the cricket scores for a bit, or rugby in winter. Never football. Then Dad tells him to come outside and look at his plums. George says, ‘I’d rather you kept your trousers on if it’s all the same to you, Mr W,’ and how we laugh.
It’s always the same and it’s always warm and comfortable. We sit down to lunch at 1 p.m. sharp and my mum talks non-stop. As we start to eat I wonder what sort of lunch it’s going to be. Some days Mum will be relaxed and leave me alone and she’ll just talk non-stop about nothing in particular. If Blossom is there she and George will have a gentle argument about politics. I’ll chip in from time to time, picking my position at random. Dad will see the strengths in both sides of the argument. Mum will carry on talking regardless of anyone else and she won’t seem to mind that we all ignore her. These are the best days.
Then there are the other days, when Mum is in a mood and will goad Dad until he snaps. Then she won’t speak to him for the rest of the meal, just sit there tight-lipped. Dad will shake his head at her and they’ll end up in the kitchen together banging plates around and having a blazing row over the dishwasher. Anyway, those days aren’t so great.
‘How’s the revision going, girls?’ Mum asked today. Blossom and I shot a nervous glance at each other. Neither of us was particularly conscientious when it came to revising.
‘Really well, Liz,’ Blossom lied.
‘What are you working on at the moment?’
‘Oh, you know. Sin, Cos, Tan … Um, turds?’
‘Do you mean surds?’ George asked.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Only a few more weeks before exams,’ Mum said, unconvinced. ‘Probably time to knuckle down and get your heads into the books.’
‘It’s only first year of A-levels,’ I pointed out. ‘The important exams aren’t until next year.’
‘All exams are important,’ Dad said. ‘And if you fall behind now, it’ll be that much harder to catch up.’
‘I agree,’ Mum said. ‘And frankly I really don’t think you should be wasting your time going to this boxing class. Your father and I talked about it last night and we’re not happy about it.’
‘Oh Mum,’ I said. ‘I only want to go along once, just to see what it’s like.’ It had been a mistake to mention it to them, I now realised.
George shook his head. ‘I have to agree with your parents, Fleur. Boxing is very dangerous. There’s a boxing club at the college and last year poor Toby Pitcairn-Hume had to be taken to hospital with concussion. Happens all the time. Even with the proper safety precautions boxing is rough. I can tell you, more than one lad at our college has ended up needing his nose rebuilt.’
I glared at Mum. As soon as George had arrived she’d rushed out to greet him and told him all about the boxing idea before he’d even got out of his car. I’d been planning to build up to it. I was going to start by complaining of a lack of upper-body strength, then mentioning casually that I’d heard body combat classes were well-thought of, before dropping the word boxercise into the conversation, then rounding it all off by suggesting he pay for it.
‘Oh listen to you all,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘It’s a sport. It’s healthy. And who knows, I might learn to defend myself. A sweet right-hook might save me from some pervy sex-weirdo one day.’ Mum shook her head and pursed her lips, putting up the shield wall. ‘The question is, Mum,’ I went on, ‘why do you want me to be at risk from pervy sex-weirdos?’
George cleared his throat in an authoritative manner. ‘Self-defence classes are one thing. But the risk of brain damage from being repeatedly punched in the head is a genuine concern.’
‘If you want exercise,’ Mum said, ‘come to my Pilates class with me. You’d love Pilates and it would be fun to do something together.’
‘Would I love it though?’ I asked.
‘What do you think, Blossom?’ Dad said. ‘You’re usually not short of an opinion.’
‘I don’t think it’s a great idea either,’ Blossom said after a pause.
I gasped.
Blossom looked over at me apologetically. ‘Sorry, Fleur, but boxing is a patriarchal, exploitative sport,’ she said. ‘And while I admire your resolve in seeking to infiltrate a male-dominated organisation, I don’t accept boxing is a legitimate pastime. It glorifies violence and aggressive resolution to conflict.’
‘See? Arguments on both sides,’ Dad said.
‘Et tu, Brute?’ I said to Blossom, shaking my head at this treachery. And that’s when I made my mind up. I was going to do it. I’d show them.
The Bluebell Road Film Club
I love my Friday nights. Instead of going home, I go to Blossom’s house, on the edge of the village, on Bluebell Road. The idea is that her parents go out so we can settle down to some serious revision and then reward ourselves with a film. But we usually don’t get a lot of revision done, instead we talk about stuff or watch another film.
‘How’s your mum?’ she asked as I made two cups of tea. ‘What’s she obsessing over this week?’
‘Meningitis,’ I replied. ‘She read an article and she’s convinced I’ve got it. She keeps pressing tumblers to my forehead, looking for red marks. On Wednesday she shone a reading lamp into my eyes to see if I was sensitive to light.’
‘Were you?’ she asked.
‘Kinda. It nearly blinded me.’
‘What about your dad?’
‘He’s not showing any symptoms.’
‘No, I mean, how is he? He hasn’t left her yet?’
‘I think he’s in two minds.’
Blossom and I have been friends forever, and she’s been there through all the ups and downs and we’re well past the stage where she feels she’s not allowed to comment on my parents’ personality disorders. Blossom popped the DVD in the player. It was her turn to choose tonight and she’d gone for a Lithuanian film called The Seventh Raven. I was not holding out much hope.
We have a thing we call the Bluebell Road Film Club. We take it in turns to choose films and the other person isn’t allowed to complain. Blossom always chooses films from Eastern Europe, or China, about young women leading bleak lives and holding sparse conversations in desolate countryside. They’re usually called things like Four Yellow Stones, or The House at the End of the Desert, or A Hundred and Twelve Autumns.
I tend to go for the exact opposite end of the cinematic spectrum and choose romantic comedies which Blossom tuts through and deconstructs as she watches. It might sound as though we are fatally divergent in our choices but actually it tends to work quite well. I know Blossom secretly enjoys the rom-coms. I think that she loves that I’m not like her other friends, Magnet and the crusty Swampy types from SAG, who are all pretty humourless. And for my part I enjoy her films because I get to catch up on sleep. I expected I probably wouldn’t make it past the third raven tonight.
