Madison Woodes is sixteen and perfect. Perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect body. Madison Woodes would always get picked for a beach volleyball team. She would always get picked for anything.
I would pick her too, if I was one of the beautiful people.
In front of us now, Madison Woodes plays beach volleyball in a red bikini. Bouncing and flouncing over the sand; jumping for the high ball; diving, legs splayed, for the low ball, somehow awkward and graceful all in the same moment.
We are on a bench seat overlooking the bay, just above the staked out volleyball court. A laminated sign has been taped to the back of the seat. It declares this a place for meditation or prayer. Wispy seagrass reaches up through the slats of the seat and tickles my legs.
We hold our Bibles open and meditate on Madison Woodes. From time to time we turn the pages to give the impression that we are reading, and discussing the good word.
Tom has a New Testament and can only turn as far as Romans. The next chapter in his Bible is Rothmans.
‘You think God loves them more than us?’ I ask.
He considers for a moment. His eyes flick from me, to Madison, and back to me.
He laughs. ‘When God was picking teams, he picked them.’
Madison picks herself up after a sprawl, laughing, bright teeth shining like a glint of sunlight off the ocean. She shakes sand from her hair. Her breasts surge from side to side.
‘Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall in the girls’ showers tonight?’ Tom says. He grins at me, a lopsided, gap-toothed smile.
‘What d’ya mean?’ I know totally what he means.
‘Every night, straight after evening service,’ he says, ‘Madison goes for her shower. I seen her, last couple of days. One night I’m gone to sneak in and hide out somewhere before she gets there.’
‘Pervert,’ I say, but I add a bit of a smile. I don’t want to lose my only friend on this island.
Anyway I know that Tom isn’t ‘gone’ to do anything. He isn’t that kind of person. He is a talker, not a doer. I recognise it in him, because I see it in myself.
Madison jumps and spikes a hard ball down into the opposite court.
‘Triffid,’ Tom says.
Madison notices me at lunch. I can hardly believe it.
It affects me in ways that I don’t expect.
It changes me.
There are many kinds of beautiful people, but Madison is the worst kind. The kind you can’t dislike.
I am late for lunch and I see her talking to Hannah, the fat girl, who leans backwards as she walks, her hands around her stomach as if carrying a heavy load of groceries. Madison has just placed her tray on a table and has one hand on Hannah’s upper arm. I don’t know what they are discussing, but I can see the caring in Madison’s eyes, in her body language.
Madison might be one of the beautiful people but she does not seem to realise that there are boundaries. She alone, of all the people in the camp, does not differentiate. She loves everyone. She alone does what Jesus would do.
Madison gives you no reason to hate her, and I hate her for it.
Until she smiles at me.
She finishes talking to Hannah and sits with her friends, an empty seat next to her.
By now I have worked my way along the lunch line, and have my plate of mac ’n’ cheese. I search for a place to sit, but all places are taken. I look for Tom, but can’t see him. Where is he?
I stand in front of the serving counter, a steaming plate of food in front of me, and I’m feeling stupid and useless. I am hungry, but cannot sit. I cannot sit so I cannot eat. I feel that everybody’s eyes are on me.
Madison turns, and her eyes light up. She even waves, just a small movement of the hand that is holding the fork.
I am not sure how to respond. I return her smile with a small nervous one of my own, and acknowledge her wave with a dip of my head. My hands are not free.
She sets down her fork and beckons.
This is the only spare seat in the dining hall. A seat at the table with Madison Woodes and her beautiful friends. A seat on the inside of the circle. But I can’t move. My feet have found two holes in the wooden floorboards.
I hesitate, and it saves me.
There is movement behind me and Kris brushes past. I had not seen him enter the hall. Kris is tall and athletic. He is beautiful. He takes the seat next to Madison and puts his plate on the table before giving her a brief hug.
I stand by the serving counter and wait for someone to finish.
I stare at a thin, dried circle of tomato on the cheesy crust of my food. It looks like a nipple. My plate grows cold.
It changes me.
My watch is a sports Swatch. It is expensive and stylish. It was a gift from my uncle. I wear it proudly, hoping that someday someone will notice it, and comment on it.
The hands on my watch tell me that evening service still has ten minutes to run, but I have slipped out.
I avoided Tom and sat near the back, on my own. During prayers, when everyone else had their eyes shut I silently stood and slithered through the flap of the huge tent they use as a church.
No one heard me. No one saw me. I am a ghost in the night. I am ninja.
The laundry room is part of the shower and toilet block. It is the centre of the long, grey concrete bunker, with the boys’ bathrooms on the left and the girls’ on the right.
The third day of camp I took all of my dirty clothes and washed them in one of the old washer/wringer machines. I have not seen anyone else do laundry. Not even the camp leaders.
Did they all bring enough clothes for a week? Or are they wearing the same clothes, the same underwear day after day? The thought gives me the shudders.
I close the door to the laundry room but do not touch the old brass light switch, even though the sun has already withered away behind the trees on the hillside. It is still light outside, but not for long.
Even with the door shut there is plenty of light in the laundry. It spills over from the bathrooms on either side through an air-gap at the top of the walls.
Am I a talker, or a doer?
I think of Madison’s surging breasts and the dried tomato nipple on my cold mac ’n’ cheese.
I am a doer.
I grasp hold of the sides of one of the old washers and hoist my knee up onto the edge. It is harder than I thought, and the edge digs into my shinbone as I wriggle and eventually manage to pull myself up onto it.
Carefully now, I bring up my other leg. I hold onto the wringer, then the wall, as I manage to stand on top of the machine, one foot on either side.
I keep an eye on the door. This would be hard to explain if anybody entered just now.
But I can still hear talking from the big tent.
The top of the wall is above my head, but I know what to do. I have seen this already in my mind.
I place a foot on top of the wringer, testing it carefully to see if it will take my weight. I think it will.
I stand on it with one foot, lifting myself higher, feeling around at the top of the wall for something to grab.
My hand closes on a metal pole. A strut that holds up the roof.
It is difficult, but I am determined.
I pull myself higher, and hook my elbow around the pole. My foot scrabbles for purchase on the wall until I can raise it up and hook it over the edge. My arm begins to shake with the effort. I’m no athlete. My muscles are not sure what to make of this treatment, of the demands being placed on them.
I lever my knee up onto the ledge that is the top of the wall, and scrape and slide the rest of my body after it.
I’m not prepared for the muck. A thick pancake of grey coated grime and dust, years of it.
It crumbles where I have touched it and the dust rises up. I try not to breathe it in, but it is impossibl
e. It smells like the dead seagull on the beach.
But I can see down into the girls’ bathrooms.
At the far end a row of toilet stalls lines the wall, opposite a long stainless steel sink dotted with hot and cold taps like little silver mushrooms.
Below me a long pipe runs around the wall at head height. Tributaries run off it, to shower heads, and lower, a set of taps.
This is the communal girls’ shower, an exact copy of the boys’ shower on the other side.
I lie in the darkness at the top of the wall, above the hanging Chinese hatted light bulbs. Invisible. Undetectable. Totally ninja.
Any nerves I had about this operation have gone. The hard part is over now.
The thrill of anticipation fills me like waves rushing into the beach. Madison, perhaps some of the other girls also, but mostly Madison. I can see it already. Turning on the water, testing it with her fingers, stepping into the spray, picking up the soap.
A strange scuttling sound disturbs me.
There it is again.
Something is alive in the darkness.
I draw into myself, scanning the shadows on top of the wall, listening for further sounds.
Something black and scaly runs across my hand. I let out a yelping sound like a puppy in pain and jerk my hand away. It sounds girly. It is totally not ninja.
I hear a scratching sound as whatever-it-is lands on the floor of the laundry and scuttles away.
I am frozen in fear, imagining armies of spidery alien creatures swarming up inside my clothes, when the door to the girls’ bathroom bangs open below me.
I twist my head around to see Monique Wilson disappear into one of the toilet stalls.
She is slim and elegant, with china doll features and flowing, silky hair like a shampoo advertisement.
She is a close friend of Madison, and sometimes girlfriend of Kris. At least that’s what I’ve heard.
I check the time. Evening service has been over for nearly ten minutes, yet there is no sign of Madison.
After a while I hear flushing and Monique emerges, washing her hands under one of the taps and drying them delicately on a beach towel that is draped around her neck.
She stops as she reaches the doorway, lifts one leg, and farts noisily.
I almost fall off my perch.
I didn’t know girls did that.
Minutes tick by on my Swatch. The sounds of the creatures that share my nest have gone. For now.
A few people come and use the toilet stalls, but no one uses the showers. Madison doesn’t use the showers.
My leg is cramping and I try to stretch it out, but it’s difficult in this confined space. I can’t understand why Madison is a no show.
My leg is spasming now, sending shuffles of dust over the edge.
Even so, I wait a few more moments, unwilling to give up on the dream.
Finally, the shuddering of my leg and the pain in the muscles of my fingers have become overwhelming.
That can’t be right. There are no muscles in your fingers. I read that somewhere.
But muscles or not, my fingers ache.
There is a sense of loss, as though a favourite pet has just died.
I ease my way over the edge and stretch a leg down towards the washing machine.
I am in that position, clinging to the wall like Spiderman, when the door bangs open and the light crashes on.
I am frozen. Stone. I wait for the shout, for the discovery, the humiliation.
But the light crashes off again and the door slams shut. I realise in that instant that I have been above the cone of light from the single bulb with its Chinese hat.
There is a sliding sound and a click and now a wave of panic hits me.
I reach downwards with my foot, but I am in a hurry and my hand slips on the top edge of the wall.
I am falling.
I think this over and over in the fraction of a second that it takes for me to smash into the wringer, the wall, a shelf with a box of laundry powder, the edge of the washing machine, the wall again, and finally the floor.
Nuuunnnng! All the air bursts from my lungs.
There is a cracking sound as my head hits the concrete and later that will worry me a lot, but not yet.
‘Gwurfle,’ I say.
I roll onto my back and look upwards. A long dark streak runs down the side of the washing machine, brown in the half-light. It looks like a long skidmark, like you sometimes find in your jocks, but I know it’s not.
The wall too is painted with strokes of muck and blood.
Everything hurts, but I ignore the pain and try to get to my feet. My left leg doesn’t work and I find myself again facedown in the spilt laundry powder.
Footsteps outside recede along the concrete path.
The powder presses into my face. I think I can feel each fine grain. Some has got onto my tongue. It’s bitter and burning and I try to spit it out, but that seems to make it worse.
On the floor, under the washing machine, I see a lost sock. White, patterned with kangaroos. I stare at it stupidly, then it disappears completely into blackness and I realise that the lights in the bathrooms next door have been turned off.
I am alone in the blackness.
Time passes. I don’t know how much. I’ve checked my watch, but the face is cracked and the luminous hands are not moving. I think I caught it on the edge of the washing machine, but I’m not sure.
I lie still. The pain is less that way.
Scuttling noises now in the darkest corners of the room. Louder than before, or is that just my imagination? There are things alive in here, things that only come out at night.
That thought finally pushes me up off the floor, clinging to the side of the washing machine.
A slatted wooden bench runs the length of the wall. I remember this and feel for it in the almost total darkness.
My thigh finds it before my hand does, but the pain is minimal, compared to what I am already feeling.
I roll onto the bench and wipe soap powder from my cheek.
I should bang on the door and shout for help, but I can’t bring myself to do it, to face the humiliation.
What the hell did I think I was doing?
I am a talker, a thinker, not a doer. The universe knows this. God knows this. I stepped out of line and I had to be put back into place.
Time passes. I don’t know how much.
There is a metallic scraping noise in the distance and my eyes open. I look at my watch but it does no good. The noise comes again. Clearer now, someone blowing into a loud-hailer.
‘Richard! Richard Nicholls! Can you hear me?’
‘It’s Rich, you dumb bastard,’ I mutter. Nobody calls me Richard.
Other voices have joined in, calling my name. Half of them probably didn’t know it an hour ago. Now it’s on everybody’s lips.
They do a head count at bedtime, and clearly I have been missed. It almost makes me feel wanted.
There are footsteps now, small groups of people on either side of the shower and toilet block. I hear muttered voices and the regular shouting of my name.
Voices right outside the door now. The handle rattles and a voice says, ‘Locked.’
I think I recognise the voice. I think it’s Kris. Tall, athletic Kris. He says, ‘You check the girls’ bathroom, I’ll check the boys’.’
‘Yeah, like he’d be in the girls’ bathroom.’ Monique, I think, the noisy farter.
‘Check it anyway,’ Kris says, and footsteps diverge.
Lights snap into life on either side. For a short while I can see the extent of my prison in the light cast from above and it fills me with dread.
The lights flick off again and I am alone in the darkness.
Not absolute darkness. Some light sneaks through from outside, enou
gh to turn the washing machines into dim bulges in the night. A mirror above a stainless steel tub reflects a little of the night sky, caught in a narrow slot window above the door. The mirror paints the image with grimy blotches and spidery cracks.
I have always thought the night sky was a magical, musical horizon, a window onto infinity, but in this mirror it is a dark glimpse of the underworld.
For the next hour I hear people moving around me. Walking right past me. Never seeing me.
This has always been my life. In the middle of everything, but apart from it.
I move among the people of this world, but am somehow not one of them.
It is as if I occupy another dimension, adjacent to this one, but no more than a shadow in their reality.
For now, however, I am not part of anything. I am trapped in a cage of my own desires.
Occasionally I hear a vox-pop of conversation. A grab of some verse, meaningless on its own, but put together with others I can form a picture of events.
Police have arrived. Their voices stand out from those of the happy campers and Christian Youth Leaders. They sound strong, authoritative.
They have search and rescue teams on standby, to start at first light. The campers will assist with this in the morning, but for now they are being sent to bed. There is little that can be done in the middle of the night. There are risks, dangers in continuing the search now.
I know I could end this at any time.
But I can’t.
It is silent outside now. Occasionally I hear a car up on the road. More police coming or going, I suspect.
There are some old rags at one end of the bench, and I gather them into a pillow.
Everything hurts, and there is a pounding in my head. I think about concussion. I remember the actress who hit her head skiing, and died the next day of a brain swelling.
I think this might happen to me, and it doesn’t seem so bad.
I sleep, despite everything. It is an awkward, uncomfortable wakelessness full of despair and self-hatred. But it is sleep.
In the middle of the night I wake to the sound of scratchy claws on the floor of my world. Larger than before. Louder. At first I think it is part of a dream, but I quickly realise it is not. I think of giant spiders the size of kittens, and black scorpions, and I know it’s probably rats or possums, but that doesn’t help.
Stubborn Seed of Hope Page 5
