Breaking and Entering

by Wendy Perriam

  Lungs bursting from the strain, he catapulted up again, through water changing rapidly from black to slate to sapphire; then exploded into warmth and light as he broke the silver surface. Gasping in relief, he trod water for a while, too exhausted for more effort, screwing up his smarting eyes, shaking his wet hair.

  At length, he swam slowly to the shore, let himself dry off in the velvet-fingered sun, then scrambled back into his clothes. He was still cold, despite the sweaters – cold and starving hungry, his stomach rumbling shamelessly. He careered back up the path and across the brow of the hill, startling the stolid sheep which went skittering away. His seven-league boots seemed still in perfect order as he raced along the track, relishing the glow of warmth returning to his body, the blood pounding in his veins. He was surprised how soon he reached his ‘house’, panting to a halt outside it, and only now seeing it as the sturdy serviceable shelter it was, rather than a prison. It was the only one of the cottages with all four walls relatively intact – the others were pathetic heaps of stones. He felt something close to pride in it as he knelt inside to fold the rugs and sleeping-bag, gazing through the window-frame at the stupendous view, which reduced his Wandsworth garden to a diminutive cabbage-patch. It suddenly occurred to him that he had indeed slept soundly like a child, despite all the discomforts and the intensity of his fear. And the sleep had done him a power of good, since he had actually spent the morning living in the present – not anxious, not self-judging, not brooding on his problems or those of the Third World, but enjoying simple pleasures, which for him was quite remarkable. In short, he’d been a child again.

  ‘The child you weren’t allowed to be.’

  He stood up so sharply his head grazed the tarpaulin roof. That brief but disturbing phrase had brought his apprehension surging back. He would have to face a man who had seen him sob his eyes out, whom he had clung to in hysteria. And he would have to rejoin the others, overcome his shyness and unease. Automatically he looked at his watch, then cursed his naked wrist. He’d lost all track of time, had no idea how long he’d been out walking, but Penny must be wondering where he was. She and Pippa had probably come up here to look for him; returned mystified or worried.

  He pulled off his two sweaters, then emerged into the sun again and trudged dutifully downhill towards the camp. His disquiet increased with the noise – screams and shouts from unruly children playing round the tents, and the yapping of some obstreperous dog shattering his new-found peace. He wrinkled his nose at the stench of the latrines, which were sited on this westward side of the camp – the most primitive of earth-closets and surely a health risk in themselves. He simply couldn’t bring himself to use them. They turned his stomach, put him off his food.

  The lack of privacy reminded him of school – having to share his most intimate smells and noises with less fastidious boys, perched side by side in a row of chilly cubicles, separated only by the thinnest of partitions. And there was the same distasteful sense of humanity en masse: being lumped together with people he hadn’t chosen as his companions, and didn’t necessarily like, but who had to be put up with since there was no chance of avoiding them.

  His steps began to falter as he reached the outskirts of the camp. He dodged from tree to tree so that nobody would see him, then skulked behind the bushes until he had rustled up his courage. Now he could see faces, recognize the people he’d met yesterday – that pigtailed girl who believed in reincarnation and hoped to establish a permanent community on the lines of an Indian ashram; the middle-aged woman losing her sight (who would actually look more at home at a suburban coffee-morning); the two young gays, whom he suspected might have AIDS. How in God’s name had he landed up in such eccentric company and living in such a tip? The once grassy field was a sea of viscous mud, churned up by a dozen cars and vans. And the tents themselves were mud-splashed, dotted untidily around the field, each surrounded by its flotsam: washing bowls and gumboots, pushchairs, broken toys. Washing-lines were strung between the trees, festooned with socks and pants (and a few weird and wonderful outer garments), while a row of polythene bags dangled from another string, for the different forms of rubbish – paper, glass, compost, metal, plastic. The whiff of rotting food was overlaid with less obnoxious smells: paraffin and woodsmoke, the aroma of a simmering onion stew. A meal was being prepared by half a dozen would-be chefs, squatting on their haunches around the communal fire, poking various messes in blackened pots and pans.

  He edged a little closer, looking out for a blaze of carrot hair, but there was no sign of Penny or Pippa. Perhaps they had set out on a search-party and were halfway up the hill. He scanned the slope behind him, but could see only the inevitable sheep still mechanically cropping the grass. He turned back to the camp, suddenly glimpsed the familiar red hair, with a darker head behind it – Penny emerging from their tent, followed by the healer, who was stripped to the waist and displaying a luxurious pelt of body-hair.

  Daniel clutched at the tree-trunk, nails digging into the bark. What the hell had they been doing? Did the man go on his nocturnal rounds from sleeping-bag to sleeping-bag, first soothing motherless schoolboys, then inveigling his way into the tents of husbandless wives? How long had they been together, and what were they up to now? They were still standing disturbingly close to each other, deep in conversation, the healer’s fanatic gaze boring into his wife’s blue eyes.

  He couldn’t shift his own eyes from the fellow’s naked torso and those whorls of coarse dark hair. He himself could boast little more than half a dozen puny hairs sprouting round his nipples, and Penny had once upset him by her tasteless jibe that he buy a sack of lawn-seed and sow it on his chest. The healer wouldn’t need such help – his chest was thatched already – and his skin was so tanned from his healthy outdoor lifestyle, he made most boring city-dwellers seem pallid and unwell. Even without the mane, he looked much more disturbingly masculine than he had done in the middle of the night, when his voluminous robe had disguised the curve of his rump, now brazenly defined by tight blue jeans. And his long effeminate hair was tied back in a ponytail, revealing a strong jaw. Yet he had no height to speak of, no broad and burly shoulders, and was certainly no muscle-man. So why did Penny seem so fascinated – practically flirting with him, for heaven’s sake – her face glowing as she hung on his every word? And he returned the compliment; totally absorbed in what she was saying in reply, then suddenly placing both hands on her shoulders.

  Daniel blundered towards them, tripping over a guy-rope in his fury. What right had this man to paw his wife, hypnotize her almost? His angry words aborted in his throat as the healer moved from Penny to embrace him in his turn. He stood rigid and embarrassed, recoiling from the smell of sweat, from the warm and hairy nakedness pressed against his chest. Too shaken to resist, he waited for the ordeal to end, then ran a nervous hand across his shirt, as if trying to remove the healer’s traces. Penny smiled a greeting – so casual and perfunctory, they might have been parted a mere hour or two, instead of the whole night.

  ‘I was beginning to think you’d run away,’ she laughed.

  ‘No, I … went for a long walk.’

  The healer laid his hand on Daniel’s arm, as if he found physical contact a necessity, and had no objection to starting on the husband once he had softened up the wife. ‘I’m glad you slept so well, Daniel. It was already past eleven when you woke.’

  ‘Eleven?’ Daniel sounded incredulous as he shook off the hot hand. Never in his life had he slept so long – even half-past seven was late for him, and nine was truly decadent. But perhaps the man was bluffing. How could he be so precise about the time when all watches were forbidden, or see through stout stone walls from four hundred yards away? Unless he had some bugging device trained on the ruined shack. Whatever the truth, it made him feel uneasy. In some way, he was being watched; his very mind open to inspection. He immediately tried to quash his thoughts before they too were scrutinized; adopted a less hostile tone. ‘Well, I only hope I haven’t mis
sed lunch. I’m absolutely ravenous.’

  ‘No, we always have lunch late. Everything takes longer here – preparing food and cooking it, chopping wood for the fire. You’ll have to do your bit, Daniel. We live as a community and aim to share everything – our experiences and states of mind as well as just the chores.’

  Daniel said nothing, feeling both resentful and rebuked. It was also beginning to annoy him that the fellow should keep trotting out his name – Daniel this and Daniel the other – when he had no name of his own beyond ‘the healer’. Yesterday, at lunch, another of the new arrivals had asked what they should call him, and he had answered ‘Anything’, then gone on to explain that he deliberately avoided one restricting name, because he aimed to be a different person for each of them; becoming male or female, child or sage, according to their individual needs. The girl in question had then insisted on addressing him as ‘master’, which must have been most gratifying when he was probably a Joe Bloggs. There was no trace of a Welsh lilt, and the voice, though soft and caressing (dangerously so, as he had found to his own cost), was basically South London – hardly a sign of exotic ancestry. The whole story of his descent from Merlin seemed more and more preposterous. More likely he was just a dropout, or perhaps someone who’d been made redundant and was now seeking a new role, a new source of self-esteem. It must give him quite a buzz becoming ‘guru’ or ‘master’, in place of a mere number on a social security form.

  ‘Where’s Pippa?’ Daniel asked brusquely, turning back to his wife.

  ‘In her element! Stephen put her in charge of a sick dog.’

  ‘Who?’ He didn’t remember a Stephen. There had probably been an influx of new invalids or hangers-on – more smells to pollute the privies, more faces to get straight.

  Penny indicated the healer, flashed him a coquettish smile. ‘I’ve decided to call him Stephen.’

  Daniel frowned his incomprehension, mouthed a silent ‘Why?’

  ‘My father’s name, of course.’

  Why ‘of course’, he wondered? The healer was nowhere near old enough to be a father figure – though when he came to think about it, he had no idea of his age. Last night he’d seemed ageless and eternal, as his mother had done herself during the first decade of his life. But today he had shed that gravity and appeared younger altogether – a lover, not a father. He supposed he should be grateful that Penny hadn’t opted to call him Phil.

  He asked again about Pippa, anxious at the thought of her running around with a pack of unknown dogs. The Alsatian, in particular, seemed alarmingly fierce, and even the spaniel had already nipped a younger child.

  ‘She’s quite all right. Don’t worry. She’s in Rainbow Lodge with Esther and Doris.’

  He noticed how quickly she had picked up the terminology. Apparently tepees were called ‘lodges’, and Rainbow Lodge was the big communal tepee where he’d spent his first extraordinary night. Its name derived from the rainbow painted on the canvas, though the once-brilliant spectrum of colours had been so assailed by the elements, it was now little more than a smudged and faded motley.

  ‘But what about the dog?’ he pressed.

  ‘Oh, he’s in there as well – along with the other invalids. The poor thing’s got a really nasty leg. He tore it on some barbed wire and although their vet in Yorkshire stitched it up and gave him penicillin and stuff, the owners say it just won’t heal. It shows how your fame has spread,’ she added, turning to the healer with another radiant smile, ‘when people travel two hundred miles for the sake of the family pet!’

  ‘Hey, Penny!’ someone called – a low-pitched breathy voice.

  Daniel saw the pigtailed girl approaching them. She was dressed in a bikini top and brief blue denim shorts – incongruous with her heavy rubber boots.

  ‘Pen, we’re going to build a labyrinth for the new-moon celebrations. I wondered if you’d help?’

  ‘Yes, ’course I will, Corinna. What d’you want me to do?’

  Daniel hardly registered the reply. That brief exchange was enough to disconcert him. He had been separated from his wife for just one night and a morning, and already she was ‘Pen’; already on intimate terms with the healer, and throwing herself into the activities of the camp. How could he suggest they leave, when both she and Pippa had settled in so rapidly and were evidently enjoying their new roles? Yet the thought of having to participate in some whacky new-moon junket made him still more nervous.

  He realized he was staring at Corinna’s ample breasts, which threatened to overflow her skimpy top. Guiltily he looked away, only to encounter another girl in a low V-neck, worn without a bra, the clingy fabric outlining her nipples. Almost everyone he had seen so far seemed in a state of half-undress, and his own conventional shirt and trousers looked completely out of place amidst the shorts and caftans, the cropped jeans and the swimming trunks. Only Margot, the woman with the eye problems, still stuck to her neat uniform of navy pleated skirt and gingham blouse, though even she had resorted to wellington boots to cope with the thick mud. Daniel glanced down at his own spattered shoes and trousers. He would be better off in a diving-suit, he reflected with an ironic shrug. Not only would it spare his clothes, but he could remain thankfully anonymous behind the mask and goggles.

  He started at the sepulchral sound of a conch-shell – the signal for their meals. It was being blown by a small mousy girl, who, he’d heard, had changed her name to Happy, after the healer had cured her of ‘cancer of the mind’. She refused to use a surname, because she insisted she was neither her father’s child nor her ex-husband’s wife, and claimed that her efforts to fulfil both roles had caused her health to break down in the first place. She had returned to the camp as a sort of acolyte, assisting with the laying on of hands. Both she and Corinna had made the place their home, and it was obvious both were besotted with the healer. He had an arm round each of them as they sauntered towards the fire to join the other campers, who were perched on wooden crates or sprawled on groundsheets or black dustbin-bags. Daniel wished the healer would use his magical powers for something truly philanthropic, like conjuring up a proper table and chairs. He found it very awkward eating off his lap, while the damp seeped into his bottom and his back ached from the strain. Penny took his arm and steered him in the direction of the food, asking how he was feeling.

  ‘Okay,’ he answered guardedly. ‘Hungry more than anything.’

  ‘Well, I can guarantee you won’t starve. I spent half the morning peeling enough potatoes for an army, and chopping a mountain of leeks and swedes.’

  And the other half being mauled by the healer, Daniel thought tetchily, his spirits sinking lower at the mention of so many dreary vegetables. What he needed was a pound of best rump steak and a pint of beer to wash it down, but both meat and alcohol were forbidden at the camp. ‘Isn’t Pippa coming too?’ he asked, recalling his daughter’s revulsion at last night’s lentil hotchpotch.

  ‘No. She’s eating in the lodge. Esther and Doris aren’t well enough to sit outside, so they have all their meals in there, and Stephen thought it best for Pippa to join them, at least until Bernard’s settled down.’

  ‘Who’s Bernard?’ he enquired. Would he ever memorize these names? He certainly hadn’t met a Bernard. Fellow males were thin on the ground, outnumbered by roughly three to one.

  ‘He’s the dog – the one with the bad leg. He’s really gorgeous. A boxer.’

  ‘But is he – you know – safe?’

  ‘Oh, yes. All slobbery and soppy, with big brown pleading eyes.’

  Daniel contented himself with a grunt. The description seemed more appropriate for the ‘master’ – or JB as he’d decided to call him: a respectful-sounding shortening of Joe Bloggs – but he and Penny were now in earshot of the others, so he was obliged to hold his peace. He lowered himself to the ground, trying vainly to get comfortable on the rough-textured wooden plank which had been laid across the mud, and watching with impatience as the contents of the cooking pots were slowly ladled out
and handed round. Everyone was so laid-back and disorganized, the food was cold by the time he got his portion. On this occasion, he was eating out of what looked like a dog-bowl – Bernard’s possibly – while Penny had been given a chipped enamel plate. He took a cautious mouthful, gagging on a slimy lump of something unidentifiable, then made a manful effort to force it down. Whatever it was, it must be intrinsically healthy, since JB insisted on ‘natural food’ in the same way as ‘natural time’. Additives were anathema, refined food strictly shunned, sugar and white flour regarded as hardly less horrendous than nicotine and booze.

  He tried to keep his mind off steak and kidney pie and treacle tart, swatting crossly at a wasp which had alighted on his doorstep of black bread. (The bread here was so coarse and heavy it might have served better as building bricks, for the construction of more solid quarters than flimsy canvas tents.) All meals were shared with God’s creation – wasps and flies, bluebottles and midges. It was best not to ponder on hygiene, or to wonder if those cooking the food remembered to wash their hands between the privies and the saucepans. Actually, there was little chance for reflection of any sort in the ceaseless buzz of conversation, and he was finding it a strain to answer intimate personal questions at the same time as demolishing his stew.

  ‘Are you in therapy, Daniel?’ asked a girl whose name he’d forgotten, her long greasy hair dangling in her food.