by Gill Mather
I run towards the building and blessedly I see a shadowy shape huddled on the grass against the blackness of the building. It’s gasping a little but it gets up on seeing me. Its face is covered with a dark liquid which looks suspiciously like blood and its clothes are ragged and torn but it smiles widely at me and, unaided, walks in my direction.
“Thank God Justine. You’re all right. Well….” I examine her face and see a nasty cut on her forehead, the source of the blood.
“We’d better clean that up and get a bandage on it,” I say.
“Not likely,” she says. “You’ve obviously forgotten that all our stuff has been covered in crap. I don't want to die of blood poisoning thanks. Don't fuss. It’ll soon stop bleeding.”
I aim my little torch at her and look more closely. I see that indeed the blood is already congealing around the wound. She flaps me away.
“Does it hurt much?” I say. “You must have hit it hard on something. You might have concussion.”
“Stuff that,” she says. “Nearly drowning was the most difficult bit. I almost got pulled under at the bottom of the water wheel. I only just managed to catch hold of a bolt or something sticking out of the wall and hang onto it for dear life and then I found some others and hauled myself out of the water. Otherwise I reckon I’d be dead now.”
“Well, there’s a little wooden bridge just along the stream,” I say. “We can cross over there. Come on then if you think you’re OK.”
“I’m fine. A near-death experience is always reviving.”
We walk on. “You’ve had one before then have you? A near-death experience?” I’m dubious about that.
“Oh, quite a few,” she says airily. You can't win with Justine.
I go ahead of her at the bridge. It’s only one person wide. It has steps at both ends, quite slippery with algae or something. Justine stops to tighten her bootlaces so I’m over the other side before she steps onto the bridge. I look ahead and I’m not sure but I think I may see smoke in the distance with the orange glow from a fire beneath it. My spirits lift. It could be our destination. If it is, then we would should start to encounter others with unfriendly….
I hear a bit of a commotion from behind and Justine screams shrilly. Turning, I see that she’s on the ground on her back, nursing one bent leg with both her arms. She’s groaning as though in great pain.
“Stop messing about,” I say. She doesn't reply so I go over.
“OK,” I say, “I know I’m obviously pretty credulous, but you can't fool me now. Look we’re almost there. Come on. Get up and get moving.” I kick her leg gently with my foot. She screams again and I draw back a step.
“I’ve broken my leg,” says Justine. In fact she’s sobbing.
“You can't have. You’ve just come through a waterwheel largely unscathed. How then?”
“I came down the steps too quickly and slipped.” She says this between gasps.
“Yes but….I mean….it’s ridiculous.”
“For God’s sake stop pissing about. It’s bloody agony.” She stops and whimpers. “Don't you know that more accidents are caused in the home by people falling down stairs than anything else. Stairs and steps are lethal.”
I shake my head. It’s completely barmy. “All right then. Can you get up and walk?”
“Oh, yeah. `Course I can. I’m ready to run a half bloody Marathon. What do you think!” Tears are coursing down her face, washing some of the blood away. I can't believe this is happening.
“Er, right then. I’d better go and get help. Will you be OK here on your own?”
“I’ll have to be.”
“All right then,” I say again. “Try to keep quiet in case any of the others hear you and come and do something to you.”
“Gee thanks! Just hurry. Please.”
“D’you want to be left with the Martini and lemonade?”
She nods and I hand it to her. I fish about in her rucksack for one of the hand axes.
I take off. Needless to say the ground is uneven and humpy and I keep tripping up. I start to see some others and they see me. Like a mother bird I hope I’m drawing them away from Justine and I reach for the knife in my pocket. It comes out with about a pint of faeces. I brandish it in one hand and the axe in the other.
I carry on running and soon there are some people only yards away from me as we race towards the orange glow of the bonfire. A man, I think it’s a man - it’s big anyway - cannons into me but fails to floor me. He then tries tripping me up. I swing my axe at him, but he backs off, a look of disgust spreading over his face. He doubles up coughing and retching. I had been about to rush him, knife and axe held aloft while emitting a loud roar. But there’s no need. “Oh, God!” he groans as he frantically brushes faecal material from his clothing. He reels away from me holding his nose. I seize my opportunity and run on. Others however take no notice of me. In fact they re-double their efforts to beat me to the finishing line. Justine and I must’ve been ahead of the field. If the silly cow hadn't gone and injured herself in such a thoughtless, negligent fashion, we’d probably have won.
Damn! I hadn't realised I cared. But of course we wouldn't have won anyway. We’d have been disqualified by my not going through the waterwheel. I run on hoping, in view of what Justine said before, that the organisers won't heartlessly ignore my pleas for assistance. If so, I’ll tell them I’m a solicitor and threaten to sue them. That’s bound to make them quake in their boots. I don't think. I’ll just have to think of something.
HURRAH! IT’S OVER! We've done it. It’s finished and we’re both still alive. The event is a lot better organised at this end than Justine indicated it would be. OK there’s the huge campfire and heavy metal belting out from some speakers. But there are large tents offering different food and beverages. The booze is mostly homebrew but it’s not just a dive-in-and-drink-as-much-as you-like affair. People are serving the booze and ensuring no-one has too much. They determinedly offer coffee after a few pints. There are loads of people here, all hyped up and in high spirits; everyone’s so relieved it’s over. There are a few walking wounded but not many.
But there are also older people, quite a lot of them, who didn't do the orienteering tonight. They are previous contenders who so enjoyed their experiences in earlier years that they’re prepared apparently to cough up the full one-fifty just to be here on New Year’s Eve.
Further there is a campervan but not a beaten up old Volkswagon. This is a super-big long shiny white motorhome, wherein Justine is, even now, being attended to by Dr. Phil. When I arrived on the beach breathless, filthy and in a panic, the organisers wasted no time despatching two men with a stretcher to the mill according to my directions, one of whom was Dr. Phil. I just hoped at the time that he was a real doctor and not some fringe medical practitioner, a quack who would try to treat her with crystals, joss sticks and chanting.
However I was so relieved to have the problem taken from me that, after making a few enquiries about any spare garb on offer, I threw off my stinking attire and raced into the sea. By gum it was perishing, but I’d been mightily impressed by my inner heat asserting itself after my immersion in the stream earlier on. I think I could get hooked on this cold-water swimming. It starts a trend and others do likewise and soon the sea is full of hooting, cheering, naked people jumping up and down.
Having washed the animal dung off my body and out of my hair and every little other crevice, and having vigorously towelled myself dry, I am now togged out in a ski suit issued to me, one of the old-fashioned all-in-one sort. It’s obviously “pre-loved” but it’s clean and ideal for the situation. OK you have to more or less strip off every time you go to the toilet (or you do if you’re a woman), but I’m warm and toasty inside it and I now feel up to going to the medical van and seeing how Justine is getting on.
Pretty well it transpires. Dr. Phil has got her cleaned up and into a bathrobe. She has steri-strips across the gash on her forehead. He’s splinted and set her leg and is binding it up
thickly with gauze. As I enter after knocking, he looks up at me and smiles. Beatifically. Like an angel. I of course return the smile and say hello but I’m fascinated by his appearance. The first word that springs to mind is “ladyboy”. He has short hair and isn't wearing makeup or jewellery or anything like that. But his eyes are large, his features are feminine and his skin is smooth. Is he I wonder a transvestite, or just a cross-dresser even.
My internet service provider always opens with news items, if you can call them that. Some are serious news but there’s lots about Katie Price and Kim Kardashian and their ilk, and their uninspiring goings-on. One day recently it opened with an item about love dolls. I’d heard of sex dolls but never love dolls. Intrigued, I looked them up on google and they were astonishing. Silicone full-sized, lifelike models of beautiful girls in skimpy clothing and all sorts of poses. You could just see the mould lines down the legs or arms of some of them. They were said to be fully anatomically accurate without going into detail. They were ludicrously expensive though, I reflected, possibly cheaper than a proper girlfriend.
Further searching brought up male versions which weren't so lifelike as they seemed to have been adapted from the female ones but with bigger muscles and short hair. They had large eyes and smooth faces like this Dr. Phil and so they looked rather strange. Like Dr. Phil does. However the effect he appears to be having on Justine is dramatic. Allowing for the fact that he may have administered morphine or some such to get her on the stretcher and back here to the trailer, she seems totally fixated on Dr. Phil. She’s gazing up at him raptly as he gently carries on binding up her leg, explaining that he can't put it in plaster since she ought to go to hospital and have it X-rayed to make sure it’s been set properly. He will, he says, take her himself quite soon in the motorhome once he’s been round and checked that no-one else needs medical attention.
Probably unsurprisingly I suppose, his voice sounds like Julian Clary though his manner isn't obviously at all camp. Well now, I think, Justine could do worse. I’m having a lot of fun though and decide to stay on myself. I haven't had my full share of homebrew and the full English breakfast is yet to be served. Everyone’s friendly and wants to dance with everyone else. Now I’m here, I want to see this thing through to the end.
I ask Justine if she minds. She tears her eyes from Dr. Phil for a second, shakes her head and tells me sweetly to enjoy myself. The transformation is incredible. It has to be love. If I were to tag along with them, I feel I may well be de trop. I check out Dr. Phil’s left third finger and see no ring. I cast an eye over him again. He is looking at Justine. He puts out a hand, actually quite a masculine hand, and smoothes her hair. It looks promising. We’ll have to await developments.
Chapter 16 Markus The Work Experience Lad
IT’S A WELL known, well established fact that men can't iron clothes in general and shirts in particular. They have a genetic predisposition to create scorch marks and are incapable of laying a shirt out in an orderly fashion on an ironing board so as to avoid unwanted creases. Everyone knows this. It’s etched into the DNA of ninety nine point nine percent of males. If you ever meet a man who says he can iron shirts, then check closely to make sure he has real human blood running through his veins and not some fluid resembling cobalt blue printer’s ink; that he’s not a silicon-based life form that’s just dropped in from the other side of the universe.
So when I notice that our young and rather lovely work experience lad Markus appears to be quite scruffy with black marks round the cuffs and collar of his shirt and rather obvious underarm stains, not to mention that said garment looks as though it hasn’t been near an ironing board since coming off the shelves at Harrods (in his case), I offer to launder his shirts for him. I seem to have plenty of spare time these days and no shirts to iron myself so it’s the obvious solution and he jumps at it. Though I ask him out of curiosity whether his mother doesn't do his washing and ironing for him which after all is what mothers are for - well mine was anyway - but he says he’s dossing with a mate while doing this work experience and his family live too far away for a laundry run to be made at regular intervals.
When I found out that Markus was coming to be with us, before he went off to do his degree at Oxford, and heard that his parents were mega-loaded so that he didn't need to get a job during his gap year, I was a bit put off. I thought he’d be posh and haughty and superior. Actually he is very well-spoken but in fact he couldn't be nicer. He’s not sure what he wants to do and is spending a few months at a time with different types of businesses to see what he’s most cut out for. His father knows the senior partner from his own university days and that’s how young Markus has unwittingly landed in this maelstrom of chaos masquerading as a legal practice. I have little doubt that a few weeks with us will put him off the law forever. I wish I’d done the same thing instead of getting through all my exams first before hardly setting foot inside a solicitor’s office when I was nine-tenths committed and it was too late.
Markus is spending time in each department at our office and it was decreed that I should be the one to give him a rudimentary insight into residential conveyancing because “you have a way about you when it comes to handling men”. I was surprised to be told this. I’d always thought it was the other way round, i.e. that men for the most part had their way with me before I worked out what was going on. And I don't particularly mean sex either. Just being rather ambiguous and/or vague in their dealings with me. Though of course there was Justine too who very definitely did try to have non-consensual sex with me but I have of course forgiven her. And she did save my life - though she also got me into the mess (literally) in the first place. I don't know if I’d be quite so ready to forgive a man for trying to rape me whatever mistake of fact he might have been labouring under or whatever amends may have been made. But with another woman, it’s different.
So I am charged with trying to give a positive spin to this unsuspecting young man and at least make his time with us tolerably pleasant. In days gone by, the pupil/trainee used to sit at a small desk in a corner of the room of the trainer absorbing knowledge by the dubious hit and miss method of listening to the telephone conversations of the trainer. Sometimes the phone would be put onto speak or the trainee could listen into an extension so as to prove that the trainer really was laying it on the line to the other party’s solicitor and wasn’t mindlessly ranting away at the speaking clock or the dialling tone in an effort to impress.
Nowadays, most communications are carried out by email because it doesn't cost anything and is less hassle than looking up peoples’ telephone numbers. Gone are the days when you could call the receptionist and say: “Get me so and so.” We don't have a regular receptionist any longer. We have our own extensions and calls come straight through to us. We have to fumble about ourselves to find telephone numbers if we haven't efficiently marked up the files already with all the necessary contact details.
So blessed silence rules the day mostly. Even estate agents generally demand updates by email.
Therefore in some desperation I set Markus to answering a proportion of the mountain of emails I now receive, resulting only in counter responses within a few minutes wanting more information and so on with the result that in the end I usually email clients saying “Just call me!” Otherwise Markus and I spend our time chatting to one another. I must says that for a nineteen year old he’s very mature. He tells me about his previous girlfriends and there seem to be a singularly large number of them for one so young. It doesn't quite come to having lost his virginity at the age of thirteen to the buxom chambermaid but pretty close.
Naturally I have to reciprocate with an account of the Arsehole’s betrayal plus a few of my recent experiences. I’m not sure he believes some of them and of course I don't tell him about Justine, but I do let on that I have an unrequited passion for a gentleman I’ve met since the Arsehole left me and who now features large in my hopes and dreams though with very little probability of coming to any serio
us fruition.
It’s truly incredible how much personal information can be imparted during slack periods in a residential conveyancing department, January being a quiet time when most people are fully engaged recovering from the Christmas and New Year excesses and are feeling too poorly to want to bother about house sale and purchase.
Regarding my deepest hopes and dreams, Markus says enigmatically that if the object of one’s desires isn't immediately available, perhaps some temporary substitute might make a reasonable alternative. I’m not sure what he’s getting at here but it’s five pm Friday evening and I’m sure a lad of Markus’s age has numerous fish to fry over the weekend. Accordingly I shut up shop for the week and walk with Markus to our cars where he heaves a huge bin bag out of his boot and deposits it in mine. I must say it looks awfully full and heavy for a few shirts and I fiddle with the strong nylon cord securing it but the several knots are too tight and complicated for me to take a quick peek. Markus smiles at me winningly and I slam the boot shut. I give him my address and we agree a time on Sunday afternoon when he’ll come over and retrieve his hopefully spotless, creasefree shirts ready for next week.
I WOULDN'T SAY I've exactly lost my touch with shirts but I'm definitely not as deft as I used to be. Not to mention underpants, socks and chinos. He's even included several changes of bed linen in the bag. In fact what he managed to stuff into one highly aromatic, bulging bin bag, I've had to employ three bags to accommodate after being carefully laundered and neatly folded. It's a bit of a cheek I reckon to land me with his whole wardrobe and everything else since he came to this town, especially his smalls. You could well be put right off a man, particularly one you don’t really know well, by having to wash his smalls, but Markus is so young and lovely and charming that I couldn't say anything. I admit that I feel quite motherly towards him. I suppose that at a stretch, I could be his mother. I could have had a baby at sixteen. I expect I'd have made a terrible mother at that time but it would have been possible certainly.