A Question of Us

by Mary Jayne Baker

  ‘Are you going back to your tent or what? I’m not getting caught in a threesome with Dave and Lyndsey.’

  She looked at Si. His eyes were soft, reflecting the milky glow of the neglected torch by his sleeping bag.

  ‘Can I stay with you?’ she whispered.

  ‘If you behave yourself.’

  ‘Go on then, you can take my tent,’ she said to the disembodied head in the doorway.

  ‘You shouldn’t do this, you know,’ said the Sonny head, shaking itself disapprovingly. It looked at Simon. ‘Careful with her, Si, she’s pretty slaughtered.’

  ‘I’ll look after her. Go on, Sonny, sod off now.’

  Once Sonny had zipped the door back up, Si grinned at her. ‘Good thing you didn’t manage to seduce me or he’d have copped a view and a half then. Could’ve intimidated him for life.’

  ‘Never mind him,’ Clarrie said. ‘Hold me again, Si. It was nice.’

  ‘Okay, drunkie.’ He gathered her into his embrace and she nestled against him.

  ‘You know, I think last time we shared a bed we were at your mum’s, top-and-tailing,’ he said softly after he’d cuddled her for a little while.

  ‘Is that your way of telling me you’ve got a foot fetish?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Kinky bugger. Want to play with my hair?’

  ‘Go on then.’ He ran his hands through it, twirling the strands around his fingers.

  ‘’Member when… I used to ask you to do that at primary?’ she said, feeling herself getting drowsy. ‘You sat behind me on that mat in the reading corner when we had stories…’

  ‘… and got in trouble when Miss caught me at it. I never minded though.’ He sighed. ‘Long time ago, Clarissa.’

  ‘I love you, you know,’ she said, her voice careful with sleepiness and booze.

  ‘Is that Clarrie or lager talking?’

  ‘Both.’

  He stroked her hair away from her face. ‘Yeah. I love you too.’

  ‘I know, Sonny told me.’

  ‘Perceptive little bastard. I do though,’ he said. ‘Hey, you know if you love me, you should think about asking me out.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  He laughed. ‘Okay, now I know it’s the lager. Go to sleep, Clar.’

  He pressed his lips to her forehead and she drifted off in his safe arms, wondering through the alcohol haze if there was any way it could always be like this.

  17

  Clarrie unzipped the flap of her own tent the next morning to find Sonny lying face down in the same jeans and thermal top he’d been wearing the previous night, half covered by her sleeping bag.

  ‘Oi,’ she said, chucking his walking boots and a pair of hiking socks to him. ‘Morning alarm call. I got these out of your tent for you.’

  Sonny groaned. ‘Leave me,’ said a groundsheet-muffled voice. ‘Let me die in peace.’

  ‘Hungover, are we?’

  ‘No. I’m dying, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re not dying, you just need fresh air and a bacon butty.’ She gave his backside an encouraging pat. ‘Come on, up you get. Jesus wants you for a sunbeam.’

  ‘It’s no good bringing him into it.’ Sonny managed to shuffle himself into a sitting position. ‘And you can stop fondling my arse, I’m not in the mood. Why aren’t you hungover?’

  ‘I am, just unlike you, I’m not being a whiny little bitch about it. It’s called powering through,’ she said. ‘Look, are you coming walking or what? We’re doing Whernside.’

  ‘Oh, what?’ Sonny gave another deep groan. ‘You want me to climb a mountain with little pixie bastards pronging forks into my eyes? Bugger that.’

  ‘You get a pub lunch at the Station after.’

  ‘Not good enough, sorry. I’m going back to sleep.’

  ‘Yorkshire pud.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Beef. Parsnips. Gravy.’

  ‘Stop it, Clar.’

  ‘Roasties.’

  ‘Oh, fucking… all right, I’m getting up. Hate you, Midwinter.’

  ‘Come on, hillwalking with a hangover’s one of the great camp traditions. I’ll hold your hand over the rocky bits.’

  ‘No thanks. Si might punch me again.’ He started getting his socks and boots on.

  Clarrie looked him up and down. ‘You’re going out like that, are you? Not getting a shower?’

  ‘Nah. I’m allowed to be a scruff at camp.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to reek.’

  ‘I always smell like sunshine and rose petals, it’s part of my sex-god superpowers.’ He rolled his eyes as she continued to glare at him. ‘I’ll have a shower when I get back, okay? Bloody girls.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet when it was just you three last year it stank to high heaven round here. Did you wash at all?’

  ‘Pretty much not. Dave hung a Magic Tree up in our tent though.’

  Clarrie laughed. ‘I take it all back. Sounds like everything was fragrant and new-car fresh.’

  ‘Yep. Still, it’s better when you’re here, Clar.’ He managed a smile, wincing only slightly as the effort of changing his expression seared through his sore head. ‘Not just because it smells nicer either.’

  ‘Thanks, soppy. Go on then, get out so I can find my stuff.’ She jerked her head towards the door flap.

  ‘Clar…’ He looked down at the groundsheet. ‘Think I did something stupid after you went to bed.’

  ‘What?’ She shot a suspicious look at her rucksack. ‘Haven’t been trying my knickers on, have you?’

  ‘Not this year. Think I might’ve… oh God, my head hurts. I’ll talk to you about it later, okay? It’s a Gem thing.’

  ‘Oh. All right, whenever you’re ready.’ She patted his shoulder. ‘Now bugger off. I want to grab a shower.’

  Sonny crawled out of the tent, leaving her alone to rummage out clean underwear.

  *

  ‘Oh. Hi, Lyndsey. Forgot there was another lass here,’ Clarrie said, coming out of her austere campsite shower cubicle in the nude to find Dave’s girlfriend putting on her makeup. She yanked her towel from its metal peg and wrapped it round her.

  ‘Morning.’ Lyndsey flashed her a brief smile from a face still only half foundationed. Clarrie stifled a giggle. She looked like Two-Face in a very low-budget Batman film.

  ‘You coming walking with us?’ Clarrie asked.

  ‘Can’t, sorry. I’ve got work this afternoon.’

  Clarrie looked her up and down, wondering what kind of job someone like Lyndsey might have. She was more punk than grunge today, in a tight t-shirt with a pair of sequinned lips emblazoned on it and a flared skull-print skirt. Maybe some sort of art… person?

  ‘What is it you do, Lyndsey?’

  ‘I’m a mental health nurse. Got a shift at two.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  Clarrie dried herself off, pulled on clean knickers and fought her way into her jeans and hoodie. As a special camp treat, she decided to skip the bra.

  ‘Hey.’ She nudged Lyndsey matily, knocking the mascara she was trying to apply. ‘Sounded like a good night last night.’

  Lyndsey shot her a good-natured grin while she dabbed off the stray mascara. ‘Always is with him.’

  ‘So you like our Davy, do you?’

  ‘Yeah… you know, I do like him. I really like him.’

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  Lyndsey shook her head, smiling. ‘Not that common for me to meet a decent one, I have to say.’

  ‘What do you like about him?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, he’s great in bed.’

  Clarrie fought to stop her eyebrows lifting. ‘Seriously? Dave?’

  ‘Mmhmm. Very… keen.’ She started counting on her fingers. ‘Great taste in music, makes me laugh, and he’s sweet but not too much, if you get what I mean. I’ve got a good feeling about him actually.’

  ‘That’s great, Lyndsey. You couldn’t hope to meet a nicer lad.’ Clarrie patted her shoulder. ‘Hang onto him, eh?’


  ‘We’ll see how it goes. But yeah, I can see it going the distance.’ Lyndsey applied a sliver of dark red lippy then moved out of the way to give Clarrie access to the cracked mirror. ‘So what about you and that fit-as teacher then, if we’re doing girl talk?’

  Clarrie started putting on her own makeup. Rather scaled down compared with Lyndsey’s routine: just a few streaks of cover stick to hide the dark circles under her eyes and a slick of rose-tinted lip balm. Good enough for camp, anyway. She squeezed out her wet hair over the sink and turbaned it with the towel, avoiding Lyndsey’s question for as long as she could get away with.

  ‘What about us?’ she said eventually.

  ‘Dave says Si’s been asking you out for ages and you keep turning him down.’

  ‘Dave can shut up.’

  ‘Your lookout, isn’t it?’ Lyndsey said with a shrug. ‘Seems a nice guy though.’

  Clarrie started brushing her teeth, sparing her the necessity of answering.

  ‘Let’s get back,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘The lads’ll hoover up all the bacon butties if we don’t grab one.’

  ‘Okay, subject change noted. Still, I’d have boffed his brains out years ago.’

  ‘I feel like I’m starting to learn that about you.’ Clarrie linked Lyndsey’s arm and led her towards the door. ‘Come on then, nympho. Breakfast.’

  *

  Once they’d had a HP-lashed bacon sarnie each and Lyndsey had gone off to do some nursing, the four Flower Arrangers – suited, booted and ready to hike – stood under the viaduct gazing up at the killer ascent to the summit of Whernside.

  ‘Right then, gang,’ Si said, running determined eyes along the mountain’s spine. ‘Let’s break this fucker.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Si, what’s with the mad glint in your eye?’ Dave said, shuddering. ‘You’re scaring me.’

  ‘That’s coz I’m the alpha male in the group.’

  Sonny snorted. ‘You what? How’re you the alpha male?’

  ‘Why, you reckon it’s you, do you?’

  ‘Er, yeah, obviously.’

  ‘Right. Casting vote.’ Si turned to Clarrie. ‘You’re our woman so you get to pick. Alpha us up, Clar.’

  She sighed. ‘Really, lads? Are we doing this?’

  ‘Yeah, go on.’ Simon lowered his voice. ‘It’s me, right?’

  She paused to consider. ‘Well, Sonny is good at sulking – sorry, brooding. That’s pretty alpha.’

  Sonny grinned, then quickly fixed his face into his customary sulk before he lost his advantage. He cleared his throat, deepening his voice slightly. ‘Thanks, Clar.’

  Si narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Traitor.’

  ‘Hadn’t finished, had I?’ she said, giving him a playful punch on the arm. ‘Okay, you’re better at… I dunno, beating your chest and carrying tiny ladies up buildings.’

  ‘Right. Um, am I?’

  ‘Yep. Like a big hairy silverback gorilla. So, all things considered, I’m going to have to say… Dave wins.’

  ‘Oh, what?’ Sonny said. ‘How does he win? Alpha males aren’t allowed to be ginger. Says so in The Bumper Book of Man Rules.’

  ‘He wins because he’s not pathetic enough to care,’ Clarrie said. ‘That’s the most alpha thing of all. Also, he got laid last night, which is more than you two did.’ She shook her head. ‘In my capacity as judge, I have to say your lack of breeding potential appals me.’

  ‘Could’ve if I’d wanted to,’ Si muttered in her ear. ‘Ow.’ He winced when she elbowed him in the ribs.

  ‘Yes!’ Dave gave his two Y-chromosomed friends a triumphant nod. ‘In your faces, beta bitches. Eat my sex-having dust.’ He strode up the shale track that led to the mountain’s summit, the other three following.

  ‘You want to retract that statement about him not being pathetic enough to care?’ Si muttered to Clarrie.

  ‘Ah, go on, Simon, let him be the alpha. You can be it next year.’

  ‘Just so long as I get my turn, that’s all. That does come with mating rights to all the females in the group, right?’

  ‘There’s just me now, Si.’

  ‘Your point?’

  It took them two hours to reach the peak, including a ten-minute break for everyone to have a rest and a handful of the warm wine gums Dave had stuffed in his pocket. At the top they tagged the concrete trig point that marked the summit, the time-honoured way of signalling a mountain had been conquered and conquered good.

  Clarrie leaned back against the trig and cast her gaze dreamily over the stark valley, seamed with meandering drystone walls in bleached limestone. A toy-like train sped over the viaduct to Carlisle, and the fog-robed table peak of Ingleborough cast its shadow in the distance.

  ‘God, I love all this,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Think that’s why I could never stomach the idea of following the work to London after uni.’

  ‘Oh right,’ Dave said, shovelling another handful of increasingly squidgy wine gums into his gob. ‘Not coz you loved us so much then.’

  ‘No. You guys suck.’

  ‘Liar,’ chomped the human wine gum formerly known as Dave Henderson.

  ‘Yeah, all right, I did miss you. You know, a little bit.’ She breathed deep, feeling the tight mountain air tingle in her gullet. ‘Tell you what, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. Nothing like it.’

  ‘All right, love, spare us the Emily Brontë,’ Sonny said, relaxing his resting sulk face into a grin. ‘You’ll be wandering lonely as a cloud or some bollocks in a minute.’

  Si was next to her, drinking the view, the wind whipping a few escaping waves of hair around his face from under his beanie. He slipped his hand into hers and she squeezed it tightly, feeling the pull of an unspoken bond called home.

  ‘Come on,’ he said eventually. ‘We’d better get on. Baltic up here.’

  ‘Don’t remember you getting poetic like that the year we did Scafell Pike, Clar,’ Dave said as they started the descent. ‘I think your exact words were – stop me if I’m misquoting – “Oh God, oh God, I want to die”.’

  ‘No, my exact words were “Oh God, I want to die, Dave, you absolute twat” while you dragged me up the bastard against my will. Couldn’t feel my legs for a week.’ She slowed her steps a little so they were walking apart from the other two. ‘How are things at home, love? Your mum and dad getting on okay?’

  Dave shrugged. ‘They’re not arguing too much at the moment. I mean, mainly because they’re not speaking to each other, but still, it’s quiet.’

  ‘Poor Davy.’ Clarrie gave his shoulders a fond squeeze. At five-seven he only stood an inch shorter than her, but it gave him an air of petiteness that always made her feel protective. She wondered if to Si, scraping the clouds with his beanie up ahead, Dave looked like a tiny ginger ant.

  ‘Still thinking about moving out?’ she asked.

  ‘Been thinking about it for years, haven’t I? I just can’t afford it, not on my own. Wish one of you lot’d come in with me, but Si’s got his house, you’ve got your bookshop, Sonny’s got his massive Oedipus Complex…’

  ‘You could go to Rob. He’s always asking if you want to flat-share with him.’

  Dave’s younger brother had migrated to Leeds after finishing university, and rarely came back to Denworth unless he couldn’t avoid it.

  ‘Nah. Too far,’ Dave said.

  ‘It’s only fifteen miles. Not long on the train.’

  ‘Not the same as being at home though.’

  ‘Funny how we all stayed in the area, isn’t it?’ Clarrie said.

  ‘Never really thought about it.’

  ‘It just makes you wonder what it is about Denworth that’s such a draw for us cosmopolitan young professionals. It’s not like there’s much to do round the old hometown but drink, shag and do the quizzes, same as ever.’

  ‘Well, exactly. What else do you need?’ Dave said with a grin. ‘And don’t forget Ritz, the world’s worst nightclub. Every time I go I wonder if this’ll be the time I finall
y stick to the floor and end up a permanent fixture, like that weird Santa-a-like who’s always there propping up the bar and letching at girls.’

  ‘Bet you don’t get nightlife like that in Leeds. With its Ecstasy and its Drum & Bass and its… vajazzles.’

  ‘Vajazzles?’

  ‘All I could think of.’

  He squeezed her elbow. ‘You’re right though, Clar, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. Not while there’s us lot.’

  ‘Me neither, Davy. Not while there’s us lot.’

  18

  When they got back to the campsite, Gemma was there, getting the fire going.

  ‘Hi guys,’ she said with a bright smile.

  ‘Hiya Gem,’ Clarrie said, crouching to give her a puzzled hug. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  Gemma jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘Ask Sunil.’

  Sonny was all blushes when Clarrie turned to him. ‘Er, yeah, there may have been a drunk-dialling incident after you all went to bed last night. There’s only so much listening to everyone getting their end away but me I can stand.’

  ‘Ha!’ Dave said. ‘You mean that after having a go at me, you broke the “no phones” and the “no girlfriends” rules? Classic.’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend, Dave.’

  ‘Can I just make it clear that Si and me were not getting either of our ends away?’ Clarrie said.

  Dave raised a smug hand. ‘I was.’

  ‘Yeah, Gem could probably hear you, mate. She only lives ten miles away,’ Sonny said. ‘Look, I just thought it’d be nice to have the old gang back together, that’s all. I did after that much beer anyway. Not so sure now.’

  ‘Admit it, Sunil.’ Gemma abandoned the baby flames she was fanning and stood up. ‘You’re pleased to see me.’

  ‘That’s just the miniature Swiss Army Knife in his pocket.’ Si came forward to hug her. ‘Hiya, Gem. Nice to have you back.’

  ‘Thanks, Si.’

  ‘My turn now,’ Dave said, claiming his hug. ‘Glad you turned up. We were nearly out of women.’

  ‘Well?’ she said, looking at Sonny.

  ‘Go on then,’ Sonny said with a sigh of surrender. He wrapped her in his arms, eyes pressing closed while he held her.

  ‘We’ll talk later, okay?’ Gemma whispered.