by Phil Earle
‘Until you can start driving. It’s only two years away. You looking forward to it?’
‘I suppose,’ I answered, not wanting to sound too excited. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d never driven before. Some of the kids I’d drunk with on the allotments had a habit of lifting motors and I’d joined them once or twice. They’d even let me drive one of the smaller ones round a car park. It wasn’t too difficult as long as I didn’t try to change gears. All that led to was kangaroo hopping, mostly into rows of shopping trolleys.
‘You want to do the gears for a while? My lads always loved doing it.’
Course they did, I thought to myself, swallowing hard on the words.
‘Why? Don’t you know how to drive? You want to watch yourself, or they’ll have you off the road.’
Ronnie just smiled and took his hand off the gear stick. ‘Yeah, yeah, very funny. Come on. Quick! Fourth to third before that roundabout gets any closer.’
I joined in, more out of boredom than anything else, and it was a good way of messing with him a little bit, jumping down two gears at a time, making him lurch forward into the steering wheel. But to his credit he took it in good spirit and let me carry on, all the way to the campsite.
The site was actually pretty cool. All the pitches were tucked away in a wood, in their own little clearing, and each had its own fire pit.
The twins were beside themselves after the journey and ran into the forest in search of adventure. I expected Ronnie to yank them back until the tents were set up, but instead he watched them disappear with a smile on his face.
‘Right then, Bill. Fancy helping me get started?’
Before I could answer, he bundled a load of sleeping bags into my arms and pointed me in the direction of the nearest path.
‘Quick as you can. There’s plenty more to carry before we can even begin putting the tents up.’
I didn’t mind. It felt good to be away from home and out of Annie’s grasp, so I kept my head down and watched the Ronnie and Maggie show.
They were like two scrapping rhinos. Both had big personalities and even bigger gobs, and were quite happy to let the other know exactly what they were thinking.
‘Why on earth are you putting that there?’
‘Because it’s in the shade under the tree, so the tent won’t get hot in the morning.’
‘Maybe not, but if it’s windy you won’t be able to sleep for the branches scraping against the sides.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous. It’s hardly going to keep me awake, is it?’
‘All right. I have done this before, you know, but if you want to ignore me that’s up to you.’
To anyone looking on, you’d think they’d been married years, not thrown together because they had no choice.
I stopped sorting out our tent to watch them every now and again, but eventually got right into putting our den together. I don’t know where Ron had got the tents from, but ours was decent enough. It was a big old dome thing, high enough to just about stand up in, and it had loads of room inside. Once I’d rolled out the mats, sleeping bags and pillows, it looked properly comfy in there. I knew the twins would go mad for it.
By the time I’d finished, Ron was giving Mags a hand with her tent, rubbing it in that he’d finished before her. I took that as my cue to make an exit. If she stabbed him with a dirty tent peg, I’d probably end up taking the rap, knowing my luck.
It didn’t take long to hunt the twins down. You could hear them a mile off, their whoops cutting through the trees. I found them by a river, the sort of place you usually see only in films. It divided the wood from a large field and the last of the trees hung over the water. Someone had obviously seen what a cool spot it was and had hung a rope from one of the highest branches, fastening an old tractor tyre to the end of it. Louie was heaving Lizzie over the water below and she was loving it, beaming from ear to ear as she edged closer and closer to the sky.
It filled me up to see them like that, not having to share the swing with eight other lifers, waiting as the scummers persuaded each one to take their turn.
For a second I got a glimpse of what a normal childhood might be like, and hoped that it would not be too late for them.
We spent the next hour catapulting each other across the river, and nothing could burst the bubble. Even when Louie tumbled out of the tyre and into the cold water below, the shock wasn’t enough to put an end to the games. Instead, Lizzie jumped in too, kicking wave after wave on top of him, which led to the mother of all water fights.
Soaked to the skin and out of breath, we collapsed on to the bank, giggling at the mess we’d got ourselves into.
‘Ronnie’s going to do his nut when he sees us,’ Lizzie said, laughing.
‘I reckon we should fetch him down here and get him in the tyre as well. See if we can shake him into the river. Do you reckon we could, Bill?’
‘After what I just saw, I reckon you could do it easy, Lou.’
Their imaginations went wild then as they came up with ways of getting even with Ronnie. It started with putting nettles in his socks and wild mushrooms in his breakfast, and ended up with shoving a nest of vampire ants into his sleeping bag, each idea being greeted with delight.
On our way back to the camp, though, Lou asked a question that I hadn’t expected.
‘Will we still be able to see Ronnie once we’ve gone to live at Mum’s?’
I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing.
‘Will we, Bill?’
‘I reckon so. Maybe he’ll be there when we see each other at weekends and that.’
‘That’s true. He used to drop us off at Jan’s house when you were living there, didn’t he?’
I shuddered at the memory.
‘He used to buy us shed-loads of chocolate on the way home as well,’ said Lizzie. ‘Do you remember Lou?’
‘Course I do. You used to cry like a baby until he agreed to stop and buy you some.’
‘No, I didn’t. Anyway, you were blubbing as much as me.’
‘Cut it out. Both of you. It doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘Anyway, Louie,’ Lizzie said in a told-you-so voice, ‘Ronnie didn’t mind. Just like he didn’t mind sitting outside our room.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, my interest pricked.
‘When you weren’t there,’ said Lizzie. ‘He used to sit in the doorway, like you do. After reading your favourite stories and tucking the duvet under our feet.’
‘He didn’t need telling either,’ added Louie. ‘He knew what to do. And sometimes he sat there all night.’
‘Don’t be soft.’ I could feel the frown snaking across my face.
‘He did, though, Bill. There was one night when I woke up and really needed the loo, and when I came out he was still there. He had all these files and bits of paper around him, but he was still awake.’
‘Did you ask him what he was doing there, Lou?’
‘Why would I do that? He was just doing what you did. He was looking after us.’
And with that, we wandered along the path, towards a fire that smoked gently beside our tents.
CHAPTER 24
There was a lot to like about camping.
The lack of other lifers tearing around, getting in our faces. And no floors for Ronnie to mop, flooding the house with the smell of antiseptic.
But the thing I loved most about it was the abandoning of normal house rules.
First five p.m. came and went without a sniff of dinner, then eight without the briefest mention of bathtime, even from the Colonel. It felt like heaven, although I could see the twins trying to come to terms with the freedom.
‘Don’t we need to get into our bed things yet?’ Louie had asked after clocking the time.
‘No need for that tonight, Lou,’ Maggie had replied. ‘We’re on camping rules tonight. The only rule is that we have no rules.’
I smiled as Lizzie turned her head to Ronnie, checking he wasn’t going to overrule Mags, but he just nodded along as he laid sausages on a grill hanging above the open fire.
Maggie had pulled a blinder on the food front. We had burgers, sausages, kebabs, and spuds cooked in the fire, but when she passed us each an orange and told us we were going to make chocolate muffins from them, we thought she was off her tree.
Man, they tasted good. After we’d scooped out the insides and filled the shells with muffin mix, we wrapped them in foil and shoved them into the flames. For once, it wasn’t the twins who were most excited. It was me. I couldn’t stop myself from prodding at the orange, checking if the mix had set. In the end, Louie had to tell me to chill out, which drew hoots of laughter from the scum.
It didn’t take long to get the muffin down me, and I had to bite my lip hard when Mags offered me hers as well. It seemed fair to let her have it. After all, it was her brainwave.
So we sat and finished our food, or at least the others did, as the conversation drifted to other holidays we’d had as a house. Not a single one of them had been any good, but we were all so high on the chocolate that it didn’t matter. All of a sudden, they were trips of a lifetime.
‘Do you remember when we went to that hotel near the beach?’ Louie beamed. ‘And Tommy Saunders nicked the key to the cleaner’s store cupboard?’
‘I can hardly forget it, can I?’ groaned Ron, as he forced down a smile. ‘I was the one who found all the complimentary biscuits in his case.’
Maggie laughed so hard I thought she might choke. ‘You have to give that boy credit. He might have been a thief, but at least he only nicked the bourbons. The jammy rings in my room were rubbish.’
‘You may well laugh, Mags, but you weren’t the one who had to drive him back there and explain what had gone on.’
‘It was hardly worth the trip, though, was it? It was a few biscuits, not gold bullion.’
‘Maggie! He’d dumped half of his clothes in the bin so he could fit more packets in his case. I could hardly let him get away with it, could I?’
With that, the three of us lost it. We remembered how excited Tommy had been to lift the key from the cleaner’s cart and how many packets of biscuits we’d got through in our hotel rooms before Ronnie rumbled him back home. So many that we’d had to dump the wrappers in bins right along the beach, so the cleaner didn’t catch on.
He may not have been a lifer for long, but Tommy reached legend status with that one.
By the time we’d exhausted the stories, the sun had disappeared and the fire had taken over as our light. I could see that both of the twins were tired, but I wasn’t going to rush them into bed if the Colonel wasn’t either.
In the end, Louie started to nod off in his chair, much to Lizzie’s amusement.
Ronnie, not wanting to see the night ruined by him falling into the fire, bundled Louie over his shoulder and carried him into the tent.
Without being asked, Lizzie followed behind him, but not before asking me, ‘Are you coming to bed as well, Bill?’
I screwed up my nose and shook my head. ‘Nah. Reckon I’ll sit here for a while. See if I can boss Mags into making me another muffin.’
Lizzie looked at me a second longer, long enough to convince me that she was going to ask me to sit in the door of the tent until she slept. But instead she just shrugged and smiled.
‘Don’t expect there to be any room on the mats, then,’ she said, and giggled. ‘Me and Lou reckon that tent’s perfect for two, not three!’
Without a further word, she ducked inside.
I should’ve been pleased that they were happy to settle themselves that night. But her last words got under my skin. It looked like everything going forward was perfect for two, leaving me on my tod. Ronnie didn’t help either when he came out of the tent. He wanted to talk more about the good old days, and that moment had passed. All I wanted to do was sit and stare into the fire.
‘Funny, isn’t it? Remembering all those holidays we had. What about that Outward Bound trip when we got stuck in that lodge in the snow. You were panicking we were all going to freeze to death. Or starve.’
‘Hilarious,’ I deadpanned, my eyes not leaving the flames.
‘Reckon my favourite was that holiday park in Cornwall, though. They had the fastest water slides I’d ever seen.’
I didn’t even bother responding.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him flick a look to Mags, who decided it was time to do the washing-up. Once she’d gone, he shuffled his chair closer to mine.
‘You all right, Bill? You’re very quiet all of a sudden.’
As he asked, he rested his hand on my shoulder, which tipped me over the edge. I shrugged him off as if he was diseased, frustration ripping through me.
‘What is it with you? Why are you always so interested in how I’m feeling?’
‘Whoa down, will you? I thought we’d had a good day. What’s got into you all of a sudden?’
‘Same thing as always. You. You never know when to leave alone, do you? You’re always digging. Always trying to get inside my head.’
‘I’m just trying to look out for you, aren’t I? That’s what I’m here to do.’
‘No, that’s what you’re paid to do. And that sums it up, doesn’t it, Ronnie? That’s what I am. I’m not important to you really, am I? I’m just how you earn your money.’
‘Bill, come on. You don’t believe that, do you? Trust me, this isn’t about money.’ He tried to flash a smile at me. ‘If you saw my wage slip, you’d know this isn’t about money at all. I want to do what’s right for you. Be someone you can trust. We’ve known each other such a long time now. I mean, we practically are family, aren’t we?’
I was on my feet in a flash.
‘Don’t say that,’ I spat. ‘Don’t you dare use that word. Not about me. Not about us.’
He looked confused. ‘What word?’
‘You know what word. Family. You’ve got your family. Your wife. Your precious boys. We see you, counting down the minutes to the end of your shift so you can run off home to them.’
‘Come on, Bill. It’s not like that. Believe me, it isn’t. I think the world of you. I’ve known you longer than any of the other kids.’
‘But I’ll never be your son, so get that straight in your head, will you? I could never match up to your real boys, so don’t even think about it. We all know the sun shines out of their arses.’
I saw a flash of irritation in his eyes as he leaned forward.
‘Well, that just shows how much you really know, doesn’t it?’ He paused and fixed me with his best sergeant-major stare. ‘Do you know the last time I saw my oldest lad?’
‘Surprise me.’
‘Six months ago.’
I rolled my eyes in disbelief, which he didn’t take kindly to.
‘Don’t you look at me like that. Don’t you dare sit there and suggest that I’m lying to you. I haven’t seen him in six months, and then he only came round to tap me up for money.’
‘What’s his problem? You been trying to run his life like you do mine?’
‘It’s none of your business what the problem is.’
From the look in his eyes, though, I knew I wasn’t far away from the truth.
‘And that just makes my point for me, doesn’t it, Ron? You know everything there is about me and I know nothing about you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All those files back home in the office. All those reports. All written by you. All the stuff about Shaun and what he did, you know it off by heart by now. But me, I don’t even know where you live!’
He exhaled loudly and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Well, do you want me to tell you?’
‘I don’t give a shit where you live.’
With that he leapt out of his chair and pac
ed to the other side of the fire. I could see that I’d got to him in a way that I never had before.
‘Do you have any idea how frustrating it is trying to do right by you, Billy Finn? Every day I come into work, hoping I might see a flash of a smile from you, or even get a “good morning” past your lips. And more often than not I don’t. Mostly I get to restrain you, which is the most hideous thing you could ask me to do.’
‘Then don’t do it. Can’t say I enjoy it either.’
‘What do you want from me, Billy?’ He was really angry now, and as the flames snapped between us, it made him look almost demonic. ‘What do you want to know? I tell you that I care about you and you sneer at me. I tell you that I don’t even have a relationship with one of my sons and you throw it back in my face. What one thing can I tell you that would prove to you that I’m not just here to line my pockets?’
The words were out there before I could stop them.
‘Where did you get your scars from?’
He stopped pacing and the flames stopped dancing in front of him.
‘What scars?’
‘The scars on your back. I saw them when we were training.’
I could see that he didn’t want to answer, that I was trying to take him somewhere he didn’t want to go, although he tried hard to hide it.
‘I had an accident in the army. Early on. Nothing exotic. Didn’t happen in combat, if that’s what you’re wondering.’
‘So what happened, then?’ I wasn’t going to let this one go, wanted to test him all the way, see just what I actually meant to him.
‘There are some things, Billy, that are best left in the past. It’s not a pleasant story, you know.’
‘And me being beaten by my stepdad is? Tell you what, then, I’ll leave this alone if you never mention Shaun again, cos some things are best left in the past, you know.’
There was a nervousness to him that I didn’t recognize as he sank into the chair next to me. Maybe it was the fire highlighting every line on his face, but he looked properly edgy as he started to speak.
‘Joining the army was a big deal to me. I’ve never understood why I wanted to do it. I just did, ever since being a kid. So when I joined up I was in pretty good shape. I’d had friends who’d gone in before me and found basic training difficult. They spent more time throwing up and pulling muscles than they did out on parade, so I spent the summer getting myself ready. Basic training was a breeze as a result. There were plenty of others who struggled. I’ve never seen so much sick in my life.’
