Stranded

by Sarah Goodwin

  There is precious little meat on a wild rabbit when divided between seven people. Especially on a rabbit excluded from the best grazing, the better territory. They don’t have the security, the luxury of getting plump. Still, to me it was definitely cause for celebration. We made a soup, extracted Zoe’s portion, then cooked the rabbit in the stock. The meat slid off the bones, making the soup richer and more flavourful than anything we’d eaten in weeks.

  A holiday mood filled the camp and, for the second time, we broke out the booze. Maxine made some effort to convince us it would be best used in preserving – but was overruled. Some comforts were to be treasured. I felt like my body finally had enough energy to replenish itself. There were more smiles around the fire than I’d seen since the early days. When I caught Duncan’s eye he raised his mug, and I raised mine.

  I suppose we were all feeling more human after a good meal. It was very much a case of rabbit soup being good for the soul. After dinner Zoe broke out her marshmallows to celebrate. I guessed she felt a bit left out of the rabbit feast, having just the same old soup. She took sticks from the kindling pile and we stuck the large mallows on them like teens in an American film.

  ‘Now we just need a campfire story,’ Zoe said, wafting her marshmallow in the direction of the fire. ‘Who knows a good one?’

  ‘I know one about two girls that go skinny dipping,’ Shaun offered.

  ‘Pass,’ Zoe said drily. He grinned.

  ‘Come on, someone has to know a scary story,’ Zoe said, looking around the group.

  ‘I have one,’ I said, almost without thinking.

  ‘If it’s about a man with a hook for a hand, I know it,’ Shaun said.

  ‘It’s about a witch,’ I said, ‘one that lives on this island.’

  There were various sarcastic ‘Oooos’ around the fire. Mostly from Shaun and Andrew. I ignored them.

  ‘Let’s hear it, Maddy,’ Zoe said, settling against Shaun’s side.

  I cleared my throat. ‘While we were waiting for the boat to come and pick us up, I asked a fisherman about Buidseach and he said that the island is called that because a witch lives here. A witch that sinks ships and traps people here.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Andrew said. ‘Not very long, was it?’

  I clenched my teeth together. It was true that I hadn’t found out much else from the man on the dock. I thought about Auntie Ruth and her stories of fairies and gnomes at the bottom of the garden. What would she say?

  ‘Well, years ago, when he was a young man, he and a friend decided to spend the night on the island. See if they could find the witch. They knew if she existed, she had to live somewhere.’

  ‘What happened?’ Zoe asked, eyes round above the molten marshmallow she was trying to bite into.

  ‘They took a small boat and managed to land between the rocks, like we did. All that day they went about the island having fun, scaring each other. They didn’t find any trace of a house, but they hadn’t really thought they would. It was just a game. But the woods, which had been fine during the day, were very different at night. The two of them got split up and even though the fisherman called out, he couldn’t hear an answer from his friend.’

  No one was laughing now. I glanced around and even Duncan seemed to be caught in the spell of the story. I was making it up as I went, yet I felt I could see those two young men in my mind, running scared through the woods. Afraid of the witch.

  ‘After a while, the fisherman realised he was very lost and had no idea how to get back to their camp. But then he saw a fire through the trees and thought he must have ended up there by accident. Only, it wasn’t their fire. When he got closer, he saw a house. A house they hadn’t come across before. It was very old and made of branches. On the outside were bones and skulls, taken from the sea where the boats had been wrecked. A cauldron sat outside and from it came a smell unlike anything he’d ever smelled cooking before. And over that cauldron stood the witch, all dressed in black, her face hidden by a hood. As he stood there, frozen, she turned to him and said, “Won’t you sit down and share a bite with me?”

  ‘Well, that was all it took. He ran. He didn’t stop running until the sun came up and he could find his way back to the beach. But he did not find his friend there. And though he waited until the sun was high, no one came out of the woods.’ I stopped and plucked a marshmallow from the bag, threading it onto a stick.

  ‘That’s not the end,’ Zoe said in disbelief. ‘What happened to the other guy? Did the witch get him?’

  ‘No one knows,’ I said. ‘When he came back with a search party there was no sign of a house, or a fire, or of the witch. Only an empty bowl and a spoon, left on a stump where someone might have sat for a meal from the witch’s cauldron.’

  Zoe cuddled up to Shaun and he squeezed her tightly under his arm. ‘That was really creepy,’ she said.

  Shaun laughed. ‘He probably got off with whatever weirdo was living there and they went off to have weird kids together.’

  Andrew laughed, and then started telling a story he remembered from a book, about a staircase that went down without ever ending. While he spoke I sat and thought about the story I’d just made up on the spot. It was rather a good one. I’d surprised myself and was glad the others had liked it. Maybe I’d been worried about nothing; I was starting to fit in after all.

  What a fool I was.

  Chapter 9

  With a wet spring at our backs, the weather began to improve. The wind had lost its teeth and the formerly grey and brown landscape appeared suddenly green and vibrant. It was a much-needed boost to morale.

  Unfortunately the start of summer brought its own unique problems. The first and most crushing was the loss of our shellfish. May marked the beginning of the off season for mussels. The warmer temperatures meant all shellfish were off the menu until September. With them went our most plentiful source of protein. We were left with only Frank’s occasional catches of tiny fish. The second problem was of our making. We had depended a lot on the staples from the cache and our own supplies. These supplies were now almost gone.

  One evening, after a dinner of soup containing half a cup of rice, some wild greens and a tablespoon of fish, the subject was raised. Andrew put aside his tin cup and cleared his throat.

  ‘We need to talk about the apricots.’

  A general tenseness spread around the fire. The theft of the apricots had been at the forefront of gossip for the last few days. Zoe and I had talked of nothing else during a whole morning of digging clay. Glancing at Andrew I saw how stringy and lean he looked now. We had all lost a lot of weight. Seeing each other every day it went unnoticed, but sometimes I caught a glance at someone and was shocked at the raw-boned appearance of them.

  ‘We all know that there’s been some nicking,’ Andrew continued. ‘We’ve all had our snacks and stuff out from the food stores. But this is getting stupid. Dried fruit is a pretty essential part of our diet. It also makes this shit’ – he gestured at the pot on the fire – ‘the watery fucking porridge and the endless fucking soup, marginally more interesting.’

  Duncan nodded. ‘The odd protein bar is one thing, but this is our food supply. We can’t just keep dipping in when we feel like it.’

  ‘We are basically out of everything now,’ Maxine put in. ‘There’s a bit of rice, some flour and other bits, but if that’s going to last another month, until July when we start getting stuff from the allotment, we need to be more careful with it.’

  ‘I think we need to put someone in charge of the food,’ Duncan said.

  ‘How’s that going to work?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘We’ve got a couple of luggage padlocks from our bags – I say we punch a few holes in the box and lock the food up. One person has one key, one person has the other.’

  ‘Like a nuclear weapon,’ Shaun laughed.

  ‘Is that going to keep anyone out though?’ Maxine said.

  ‘Well, if they really want to they could smash the crate, but at least this
stops the casual picking. If someone wants to steal, we’ll all know about it,’ Andrew reasoned.

  ‘So who gets the keys?’ I asked.

  ‘Andrew’s sensible, he should get one,’ Duncan said immediately.

  I glanced at Maxine and she was already looking at me. We were both thinking the same thing; Andrew and Duncan had a tendency to not be around when it was their turn to cook. Either they’d go out early to ‘chop wood’ – aka smoke in the forest – and we’d all end up getting our own breakfast. Or they’d hike off somewhere to ‘look for supplies’ and not come back until late, usually wet from swimming. Usually it was Maxine and I who made dinner on those nights as I had foraged food and Maxine was the better cook.

  ‘Do you not think we ought to give the keys to the cooks?’ I said.

  ‘We all cook,’ Duncan said with a frown. ‘I don’t get what you mean.’

  ‘We’re all rota’ed to cook,’ I said slowly, taking the time to pick my words with caution, ‘but sometimes people aren’t around when it’s time to cook, so other people fill in. So … it doesn’t really make sense to give the only keys to the food to people who might not be around when we need to access it.’

  ‘Do you want to name some names, Maddy?’ Duncan asked.

  ‘I’m not accusing anyone, I just—’

  ‘You’re just saying that you’d rather me and the rest of the guys were here making soup instead of chopping wood, so that you can do … what exactly?’

  ‘I never said it was an issue. If you don’t want to cook, fine, whatever – but if you’re not going to, let’s have it out in the open and not have you guys off on the other side of the woods with the keys to the food store,’ I snapped.

  ‘Don’t get upset,’ Andrew said.

  ‘I’m not upset. I just wish you guys were doing what we all agreed to in the first place with the rota.’

  ‘We can’t cook if we don’t have any wood.’

  I gave up. ‘Can we just decide on the key thing, please?’

  ‘We should draw for it,’ Maxine said. ‘That way it’s fair.’

  She plucked up some bits of dry grass while the rest of us watched. I was seething. The cooking rota was an irritation, but it had been getting to me of late. Duncan and Andrew’s reaction was as expected. It was everyone else I was annoyed at. I knew Maxine and Zoe were as sick of it as I was, but they didn’t want to get involved in an argument. They were too tired and hungry to do more than complain in private.

  We drew sticks. Andrew and Gillian got the keys. I went to bed.

  *

  The next morning, at breakfast, I decided to try and put it behind me. It was exhausting trying to be the person attempting to get everyone to do their jobs. I decided I needed to do something positive. Of course if I’d known then how horribly wrong it would all go, I’d have kept my foolish mouth shut.

  Shaun and Zoe were on rota to cook and had made our usual thin porridge with dry fruit and nut butter. Our teabags had been used and re-used so many times that the brew was more a memory of Tetley than anything else.

  ‘I was thinking,’ I said, as we ate our small portions of porridge. ‘We’re getting into the prime season for forage now and with food stocks so low, it might be worth having one of the work parties go out and look for food.’

  As it stood the work parties had been all but abandoned. Currently the only work party activity was carrying logs from where the guys were felling trees further back in the woods. This only lasted an hour or so, after which we all just went our separate ways.

  Frank, usually silent as a stump when in camp, nodded. ‘No shellfish to gather, might as well have a go at the seaweed.’

  ‘Does anyone else already know anything about plant identification?’ I asked.

  Maxine raised her hand. ‘We did a bit with the guides. Mostly about berries though.’

  Surprisingly Shaun was the other person to raise their hand. ‘Done a bit when I went on a game prep course. They showed us what greens went with what.’

  ‘I’ll go with Shaun,’ Zoe said. ‘I need to let my clay settle anyway.’

  ‘Is that a good idea?’ Maxine asked.

  Zoe glared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That perhaps if both of you keep to your separate tasks you might have more success,’ Maxine said, her cheeks turning a bit pink.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll manage,’ Zoe said coldly.

  Maxine only shrugged. Point made. Inwardly I sighed. The two of them were my only friends within the group and I desperately did not want to get involved.

  ‘Anyone else?’ I asked. ‘I have a book that can help with some tips, and I’ll go over everything when we’re done so we don’t accidently get poisoned,’ I laughed.

  On the edge of my vision I saw Duncan shake his head and walk away.

  ‘All right then,’ I said with forced brightness. ‘Shaun and Zoe, you take the book – go check the grassy bit on the other side of the woods. Maxine and I can take the dunes and Frank, you probably already know where the most seaweed gathers.’

  Zoe went to do a quick check on her clay. She’d commandeered two buckets and had mixed the dirt with water to start filtering out the heavier clay particles. Maxine and I donned our backpacks and headed for the dunes.

  ‘I don’t know what she thinks she’s going to make with all that muck,’ Maxine said once we were a decent distance from camp.

  ‘I think the idea is to make extra bowls and things to store what we gather,’ I said, keeping a neutral position. I was surprised that Maxine would be so negative about Zoe’s project. OK, so pottery wasn’t the most pressing thing, but at least it didn’t take up any resources other than dirt and water, both of which we had plenty of.

  Maxine huffed. ‘Not what you’d call essential work though, is it? More of an art project. And I needed one of those buckets for something that’s actually useful.’ I was shocked at the amount of spite in her tone. Usually Maxine was disapproving of Zoe, not outright hostile. I guessed their little standoff had annoyed her.

  ‘I tried to get her to help me with the rabbit skin – I’m building some frames for stretching them for curing, so they don’t go to waste. But she wasn’t interested.’

  ‘She’s veggie,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Exactly why she should want to use every part of the animals we kill, even if she isn’t eating them,’ Maxine snapped. ‘Squeamishness is not a characteristic we can afford to have.’

  I hummed, non-committal. I saw her point, but I also saw Zoe’s. Besides which, if pottery was a non-essential I couldn’t see how preserving rabbit hides was something we had to worry about.

  ‘She’s just wasting time,’ Maxine continued, voice rising as we moved further from camp. ‘And the way she’s carrying on with that boy. This is meant to be a serious experiment, not some rubbish about who’s sleeping with who. Have you seen she’s still wearing makeup? Makeup, in the woods, I ask you!’

  ‘Maxine,’ I said, sharper than I intended. She turned to face me and there was colour in two high points on her cheeks. She was furious. ‘I really don’t think you’re being fair. We’re allowed to have fun. She’s allowed to have fun. And if she and Shaun want to get together, if she wants to wear glitter and make pots – I don’t see how that hurts you, or the rest of us for that matter.’

  Maxine’s lips pressed into a thin line, almost invisible. She’d never looked as much like my mum as she did then. I could almost hear her patented huff, that ‘well then’ that seemed like a reflex whenever I contradicted her, stood up for a book or song or skirt that was deemed ‘inappropriate’. When it became clear Maxine wasn’t going to say anything I started walk­­­ing again, only to stop when she suddenly found her tongue.

  ‘She’s not your friend, you know. She calls you boring. When you’re off on your walks.’

  I turned back, trying not to let the deep hurt she’d just inflicted show on my face.

  Maxine swallowed, had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘She tol
d Shaun she thinks you’re probably autistic.’

  I wasn’t, nor did I think it was such a terrible thing to be called. It hurt though, that Zoe had discussed me behind my back, called me names to Shaun. Maxine didn’t seem to be lying. The worst part was that I could imagine those words coming out of Zoe’s mouth.

  ‘I thought you’d want to know,’ Maxine said primly, walking past me and on down towards the beach. I kept my face blank and followed.

  We made it to the dunes and I set to picking what we could find along the shore and in the more protected areas. It was the beginning of the season for rock samphire and there was a bit of it around. Mostly I just wanted to avoid Maxine, who was gathering further away and not speaking to me.

  I wasn’t sure Shaun and Zoe would find anything. Thinking of them off alone sent a pang of hurt through me. Perhaps even now they were talking about me. Theorising about my weird ways. I shook my head and told myself not to be stupid. That they wouldn’t be as interested in me as they were in time alone together.

  We sat down for our midday meal beside our spoils for the morning. It seemed as though Maxine was adopting a technique my mother used after an argument; she spoke stiffly and without looking at me, as if I’d done her a great wrong. While we ate half a protein bar each she looked out at the sea. There was nothing between us and the horizon, only the grey-green water and the tips of rocks. No boats, no land, not even a plane scudding trails in the sky.

  ‘I hope my girls are doing OK,’ Maxine said at last. From this I understood that the argument was over and that if I mentioned it I would be even further in the wrong than I already was.

  ‘What is it they do?’ I said, begrudgingly taking the olive branch.

  ‘Lydia runs a bed-and-breakfast in Devon and Felicity owns a riding stable in the New Forest. We used to talk on the phone every week. I completely missed Mother’s Day, back in March. We would have gone to the pub for Sunday lunch.’ She sniffed and produced a handkerchief from one of her pockets.