by Gill Mather
"Why don't we go for a drink down the Queen Mary and I'll tell you all about it," says Justine.
The Queen Mary is the pub frequented by all the gays in the town, male and female but, I think, why not. I'm not bigoted.
"OK. I'll stand you a pint," I say.
"Actually I'm more of a Martini and lemonade freak myself," she says unexpectedly, "but yes that'd be great."
So we get our thick winter coats and repair to the Queen Mary.
As we settle into an alcove, I ask her about the potholing. I can't think of any around here.
"What's potholing got to do with it?" she says.
"You said underground. I assumed potholes. Or caves or something."
"No," she laughs. "Underground doesn’t mean subterranean. It means illegal. As in underground rave."
I've never been to an illegal or underground rave. But then Justine is at least six years younger than me. In fact about the same age as the Backside, which figures.
"Hmm. Illegal how?"
"You know. Places you're not supposed to go. Like private property and firing ranges. Atomic power facilities, old mine fields, wolf enclosures. That sort of thing. Tomorrow's all about crumbling cliff faces. Plus possibly some unstable ground. And a few swims across prohibited reservoirs and weirs."
I sit there looking at her not knowing what to say. She's cool as anything. Not a spike of hair out of place. Her leather jacket unzipped with the collar up round her neck. One leg is crossed over the other so that one Doc Marten is on the floor and the other is up level with her thigh. Her thighs in her skinny jeans look taut and muscular.
"I mean," I say, "it sounds dangerous."
"Oh yes. That's the point."
"How far away?" I say.
"I'm not entirely sure. It usually starts near the coast somewhere or possibly on an estuary. We'll be given a compass, we'll have any mobile phone or similar devices removed. We're given a compass bearing that we have to stick to and we have to go in that direction, whatever obstacles we come across. We have a tracker strapped to us so that they know we stuck to the route we were given. And we end up on a beach where we'll have a bonfire and a barbeque and some dancing. Every pair starts somewhere different and we all end at the same point."
"But," I say, "without a mobile phone or anything, we couldn't ring to get help if we're hurt or something goes wrong or…." I stop there not knowing what other example to raise.
"That's right," says Justine, knocking back her Martini.
"But if it's dangerous, what happens if anyone's injured? Or, well, dies."
"We all disclaim any knowledge. We weren't there."
"What about forensics these days? They can detect almost anything."
"Well sea and weir water washes most of it away. And on land, a lot of stuff is very difficult to detect."
"Actually I didn’t really mean how would we get out of it. Any liability. I meant….well….what if I, say, actually died?"
"Same thing. We'd deny any knowledge."
This is most reassuring.
"I'll have to think about it," I say. "Can I phone you later? Can you email me some information in the meantime so I can be looking at it."
"You're joking of course. There's no way I can create an electronic trail about this. As I said, it's the orienteering equivalent of an illegal rave."
Just a hundred times more dangerous, I think to myself.
"But where is it then?"
"If you decide to come, we'll find out when we get there. Call me."
"OK," I say with a frown. We get up and leave the pub. As we walk back to the office car park, she says:
"Oh. And it costs a hundred and fifty pounds to take part. Cash only. Used notes."
One fifty I think to risk death or serious injury.
Daring isn't very obviously my middle name, but I can feel the adrenaline start pumping, my body coming properly alive. In the mists of my imagination, fuzzy visions float before me of a quagmire, narrowly missing quick sands, diving into a freezing pool and being pulled under by eddies and hidden currents, standing on the edge of a hanging cliff with previously fallen sections littering the beach below. Of a hearty companionable fried breakfast on a beach at the end of it, loud heavy metal pumping out of a Volkswagon campervan, toasting our collective good fortune to have survived the night's ordeal.
Justine goes to her car, waves and gets in. Suddenly I break into a trot and she winds her window down.
"You're on!" I say. "What sort of clothes should I wear."
"Warm, waterproof. Sturdy footwear. That sort of thing. Thermals would be good. Bring them to work. We'll go straight from work. And bring some more to change into for the barbeque. If we have to sleep on the beach, the organisers'll sort out tents and sleeping bags etc. You'll love it."
I walk away from her car. "Oh, by the way," she yells at me, "there's a prize for the first one to reach the destination." She laughs. "They're usually a competitive lot. Don't be surprised if anyone tries to impede us during this event. I mean seriously impede." She drives off.
Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Still, a bit of rivalry, counteraction is no bad thing. And we can give as good as we get presumably. I think of my unmanning of Ebden Andrews and my defence of my female honour resulting in Justine's damaged jaw. I'm convinced I can overcome any normal reasonable opposition.
But I don't suppose that it’ll be outright warfare.
I GO HOME with my brain reeling. I'm sure this will be the best New Year’s Eve ever. Like last night I don’t sleep well, but not because of despondency. I'm so excited. I get up at midnight and pack a rucksack with all the necessary stuff and only after that can I fall into a slumber. I sleep like a baby until seven forty when I wake up and then have to rush around getting ready for work. The rucksack sits on the floor of my kitchen. One or two doubts try to force their way into my brain but they are swept aside by the sheer excitement of the prospect of running through the night like a wild animal, overcoming danger and opposition. Being exhilarated rather than afraid.
I leave my rucksack in the car. I smile at Justine who arrives in the front office about the same time as me. She winks back at me and scowls at Ned who is chatting up the office junior Posy. He raises an eyebrow and looks at Posy in an "I always knew it" way. I don’t care what he thinks. I'm on a mish tonight. I'm going to overcome the elements, brave the dark and the cold, mamba-like I'm going to slither unnoticed through the grass and take out opponents as necessary. If my partner gets into trouble, I'll defend her to the death. Well, as far as humanly possible anyway. I shall in any event enjoy myself tonight. I just know it.
EVERYONE KNOCKS OFF early. Only half the staff are in, but there's an air of anticipation about the place. A new year is approaching, it's a Bank Holiday on Monday making it a long weekend which always cheers people up and everyone's going out tonight. Unless you count Sheila who skulks furtively in the ladies.
"You going anywhere nice tonight Sheila?" I say to her.
"No fear," she says.
"Everything all right?" I ask.
"Well I hope so. Don't tell anyone, but I want a little sister or brother for Samson. And I'm having to take my temperature every thirty minutes to choose the best time to shoot up." She pats a rather large bum-bag round her waist.
"Oh," I say.
"Yes. Wherever I am, when the time's right I have to be able to inject life's essence into my reproductive organs to start things moving."
It’s a little off-putting to think that she obviously has some man’s sperm stashed in her bag. I wonder where she got it from. Hopefully it’s securely sealed in and won't burst open and squirt all over the lavatory floor at an inopportune moment.
"Well," I say, "you're lucky if you've got anything to get moving. I'm not sure I have!"
Sheila looks at me. I don't think I've ever figured with her previously but now she's taking an interest in me.
"Well. Don't give up on yourself," she says, "it might have been him not
you. And some yins and yangs just don’t go together anyway."
"Unfortunately, I don’t have a yang to connect to my yin at the moment but thanks anyway."
She watches me as I walk out of the washroom. But tonight I've decided I'm going to have fun and nothing can divert me from that.
OUT IN THE carpark, Justine tells me to follow her. This is it, I think. But instead, she stops off at her apartment building and we have to cart our rucksacks into the ladies changing room on the ground floor and climb into our warm outer wear ready for the adventure. I can hardly get the toggles of my ski-ing jacket done up, I'm so excited. Justine looks with interest at the sleeve of my jacket. It has a Recco Rescue System device sown into a pocket on the outside. It's so you can get located in the snow in the event of an avalanche or accident or some other disaster.
"That might prove useful," she says. I agree but recall vaguely that it’s actually only ski resorts and mountain rescue teams who use detectors that send out a search signal. Still it can't do any harm and I don't want to put a dampener on things. Anyway I hope we won't need it. She carries on: "But they wouldn't start looking for us until the event's finished and we're late arriving at the target."
"How late exactly?"
"A couple of hours probably. When the barbeque finishes and they want to start taking everyone back to the rendezvous point."
Oh is that all. Just long enough to be overcome by exposure and die of one's injuries.
We leave before the heat from the nearby sauna becomes too oppressive in our padded anoraks and I follow Justine in my car.
It’s a nice moonlit night I notice for the first time. I hope this will help.
HAVING DRIVEN about twenty miles from Justine's building to the rendezvous point which worryingly was totally deserted and dark apart from the moonlight, we are now in a minibus which is bumping along quite quickly. Whatever route it's taking, the road is obviously in need of maintenance. I assume it must be back roads; that the council haven't got the money to fill in the potholes.
Said minibus roared up within half a minute of our arrival. Some black clad men wearing balaclavas jumped out and between them they hauled us unceremoniously out of our cars. They wasted no time palming our cash. I had plundered the Arsehole’s stash again and checked that the notes were indeed used. No chance that sequential numbers will lead to and identify the organisers. They grabbed our rucksacks and checked through them, took our car keys to the vehicle, blindfolded us and then frisked us very thoroughly and our mobiles were removed. They didn’t even speak to ask for the mobiles, they just found them and confiscated them. However I have several kitchen knives secreted about my person, for purely defensive purposes of course, which they must've noticed but which they left. Should I be relieved or worried by this?
We were led to our seats in the transport. They didn’t help us much and still remained silent therefore I have bruised shins already from bumping into the steps of the minibus. To top it all, they tied my feet together and my hands though oddly they applied the safety belt after pushing me down onto the seat. It seemed an odd thing to do as we're going to take part in an illegal and probably dangerous exercise but maybe they simply don’t want people falling all over the minibus causing them extra effort. I have been trying to work out which way we've gone and which way we're going but it's proved impossible and I have no idea where we are.
I could vaguely make out others already in the minibus when it arrived and now hear low mumbling but I can't tell what they're saying or whether they're male or female, young or old. I think Justine is next to me so I lean towards her and whisper:
"Do you know those men who came and put us in here?"
"What made you think they were men?"
"Well I….just assumed. They looked….big."
"You shouldn't stereotype." She sounds a bit aggressive. A bit pumped up. I wonder if she's taken something. But I know better than to let her bully me so I ask again if she knew the people - I assume they were human beings at least - who dragged us onto this vehicle.
"No," she says.
"Right," I say. "Thanks anyway."
"You're welcome."
Then a voice rings out, a male voice. "I need to take a slash." The pace of the minibus doesn’t slow and there's no apparent response from the driver or any of his/her associates.
"Piss off and wait," says a male voice, another passenger. I tend to agree with him. I want to get this journey into the unknown over with, get out into the night air and find out what hazards await us. If there are any other girls on board, they have the sense to keep schtum.
Chapter 15 New Year’s Eve
A PIERCING SCREAM tears through the night.
I hear the minibus drive away. A receding voice shouts: "I told you we'd know if you took your blindfold off." And he laughs. It's most definitely a male whatever Justine may choose to believe.
"Shut up!" Justine hisses. "You'll let the others know where we are and they'll slaughter us." I realise that the scream was my own. I am standing about half a centimetre away from the edge of a cliff which has no apparent structure beneath it but, contrary to my earlier imaginings, there’s no beach below strewn with evidence of previous falls or otherwise. In fact there's just a black void. Almost nothing is discernible in the dark. I can perhaps just make out the reflection from some water below but I’m not sure. The formerly inky but relatively clear bright sky has clouded over completely hiding the crescent moon and the stars reducing visibility to a few feet. Help.
I wonder whether to fall flat to the ground as you would if you were trying to spread your weight on thin ice. But the need to remove myself from this situation as quickly as possible causes me to stay upright and back slowly but steadily away from the edge until I hope there can't possibly still be any void beneath where I'm now standing. In fact I've nearly reached the barbed wire fence around the grassed area atop the cliff. I see a board attached to the other side of the fence. I climb gingerly through the strands of barbed wire and reach into my rucksack for my small torch. They've let me keep that. The sign says: "DANGER. DISUSED QUARRY. UNSTABLE. DO NOT ENTER". So not a sea cliff. Justine had said we'd be dropped at the coast but….
"For fuck's sake come back," yells Justine.
"Are you mad?" I yell back.
"If we go too far from the drop off point, when we set the compass, we'll be heading in the wrong direction. Come back."
"Surely a few feet won't make any difference."
"Well it might. Magnetic north varies with place and time."
"Oh really. OK then you take the bearing and work out which way we should be going and I'll join you when you're not in danger of plummeting fifty feet. You can be the hero."
"OK. But stop raising your voice."
"Yeah like you didn’t just then either!"
Justine doesn’t reply. I can make out that she’s checking some paperwork and pulling a device out of her rucksack. She told me earlier when we were changing that she has a far more sensitive compass than those handed out by the management and that it's legal to use it.
"Legal!" I said at the time. "What do you mean legal when the whole thing's completely outside the box."
"Well you know. It's within the rules."
"OK. I get that."
So now I can just about detect Justine's shape walking diagonally away from the cliff edge towards the fence further along and she's flapping her hands at me. I squint at her and realise that she's beckoning me. I walk along the outside of the fence to a point where our paths converge and help her through the barbed wire. She has with her an OS map of most of East Anglia. We open it and with our torches we scrutinize this together.
“Do you know where we are?” I say.
“No. Do you?”
“Not really. There are loads of quarries in this areas. Probably lots of old disused ones. During the Ice Age, there were glaciers right down to this latitude and it made the ground stony in many places so….”
“Thanks.
I’ll take the geology module some other time. And for God’s sake whisper from now on. Your voice sounds like a foghorn out here.”
“You should listen to yourself.”
“Come on anyway. It’s that way.” She points directly ahead of her, folds the map roughly and takes off at a trot. I follow looking down all the time in case of rabbit holes or other features waiting to trip me up and break one of my legs.
We run across the open field, nothing to obstruct us, it's dark and freezing cold but the way before us is open and….
Suddenly a high fence rears up before us. It's about seven or eight feet tall. It's just a black impenetrable wall. We draw nearer to it and I see that in fact it's a hedge. Well, I think, we should be able to get through a hedge without any trouble. We stand two feet or so from it and regard it.
"Come on then," I say.
"Do you want to get ripped to shreds?" says Justine.
"It's just a hedge," I say.
"Yes. A thick, hawthorn hedge."
"So?"
"So, they're used to keep livestock in. You know, big, strong, four legged things with thick hides. Not small, feeble, puny female humans with skin like gossamer and…"
"That's really poetic," I say.
"Well. You'd better hope that if there's any cows with calves the other side, that they're asleep and don’t attack thinking we're about to harm their offspring."
"What?"
"It's what animals do."
"I'll take your word for it. So how do we get through this thing? To the other side."
"Well we hack our way through it, of course."
"Impossible."
"So what's your suggestion then?"
"Obviously, we go round it. The hedge."
"We can't. You know the rules. We have to stick to the bearing."
"OK then. Since it's impossible to get through - look at it - one of us has to get to the other side and have the bearing….instrument or whatever it is handed to us by the other and then the other person has to walk round to the other side too! Simple."