by Craig Cliff
‘Sad but true.’
The next day he printed out vouchers to hand to all the campers returning home:
Recommend Camp Grant to your friends and go into the draw to win a PS3.
He didn’t show Sophie in case she disapproved of a) endorsing the video games that had led the children away from exercising in the first place, or b) the fact there was no PS3 to give away.
Life at the camp settled into a routine. The meals, which he hadn’t minded at first, began to grate with every reappearance. He saw the screwed-up faces of the new arrivals when presented with a grilled chicken salad and thought, ‘Try eating this every seven days for the rest of your life.’
Then there was the weekly counselling of the counsellors. Another phantom rodent in Holly’s room; Amanda looking for someone to bad-mouth the others to; Emily to regale her weekend exploits one last time.
And though everything was repeating with an uncomforting familiarity, he couldn’t find anywhere to shave a few extra pounds off expenses or squeeze more revenue out of the camp to push it into the black.
Then one day Sophie burst into his office, which was just their cabin’s second bedroom, though it had external access via a pair of rickety sliding doors. ‘Good news, Sour Chops,’ she said. ‘Barry got expelled from school.’
‘Good news?’
‘He’s coming to the camp till they find him a new school.’
‘I’m snowed under at the moment.’
‘He asked to come back here, Danny. You mean something to him.’
‘What’d he do? To get suspended?’
‘Expelled. His mother didn’t say.’
He was drafting an email to ITV, suggesting they film a reality show at the camp, when Sophie brought Barry into his office.
‘Here he is. Danny, say hi to your long-lost friend.’
He was, naturally, wearing the orange hoodie.
‘So, Barry, what’d you do?’
‘What?’
‘To get expelled.’
‘Nothing.’
‘I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted,’ Sophie said.
When she had left, he rolled his chair closer to Barry and asked, ‘What’d you weigh in at this morning?’
‘Fifteen. And a half.’
‘You put it back on?’
‘So?’
‘Hey, I wish they were all like you. We need all the campers we can get.’
Barry looked down at his shoes. They looked new. Black Reebok high-tops. Basketball shoes for kids who don’t play basketball.
The next day they were sitting on a log they had dragged from the forest onto the shingle beach.
‘So, why’d you get expelled?’
Barry just shook his head.
‘What’s that? You missed me?’
‘Shut up.’
‘If I shut up, it’s gonna be pretty quiet out here.’
‘Good.’
‘Fine,’ he said, and folded his arms, only pretending to be in a huff.
They sat on the log — their log — both staring out to the island in the middle of the loch.
‘I wonder what sort of trees those are,’ Danny said, meaning the trees on the island. He counted eight of them, two rows of four, their trunks straight as pillars.
Barry repositioned himself on the log. ‘I could go a Kit Kat.’
‘It’ll cost you,’ he said without thinking. The sort of office banter he’d had with Karen — which he had now decided was not flirting, though she may have believed it to be.
‘How much?’ Barry asked.
‘For what?’
‘A Kit Kat. You could buy me one.’
Danny stood up. ‘Oh, that’s evil!’
‘What?’
‘Barry, I think we just saved Camp Grant. Our souls? Well, they’re another matter.’
Two weeks later, they were sitting on the same log. Barry was still waiting for a new school to take him on, still fifteen and a half stone, still wearing his hoodie, but all the counsellors had noticed a change in him.
‘He really seems to be engaging with the others,’ Sophie had reported. ‘I think you’re finally getting through to him.’
‘How about the others? They losing weight?’
‘Been a bad week. I blame the weather.’
‘Mm, cold snap. Just when you think spring has sprung.’
Danny lit a ladyfinger as Barry unwrapped his Double Decker.
‘Box of Rolos and box of Mars for next week.’
‘The price — it still okay?’
‘Could go to three-fifty,’ Barry said, the nougat forming bridges between his top and bottom teeth.
Danny tried a smoke ring but it was more of a smoke hyphen. ‘Only two per person.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I mean it, Barry.’
‘Why’ve we never been to the island, you think?’
He looked at his protégé, now licking his fingers and rubbing them dry on the front of his hoodie. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Too cold, I guess. Hey, that was a good one,’ Barry said, and they both watched Danny’s perfectly formed smoke ring float out over the water and slowly dissipate.
Later that afternoon he drove to Cranlaw to buy more chocolate bars.
‘You’re from the camp, aren’t you?’ the woman behind the counter asked.
He put down the box of Rolos.
‘I — yes, I’m the accountant.’
‘Right you are then,’ the woman said, tapping her pen on the crossword she was two words into.
‘I’ll just take this muesli bar.’ He placed the bar on the counter, careful not to obscure the crossword.
The woman smiled at him, revealing the giant gap between her teeth. It was clearly something she had learnt to live with and, with time, to use to great effect.
Back at camp he looked over the accounts again, trying to find some other way to make Camp Grant break even.
There was nothing else.
He ordered an assortment of chocolate bars over the internet. Sixteen boxes. If he was going to run the black market, he might as well buy in bulk.
‘I didn’t know what these were,’ Sophie said four days later, suddenly appearing at his door, ‘so I didn’t know where to tell Hugh here to put them.’
A delivery man followed her into the office wheeling — to Danny’s relief — two large, unmarked shipping boxes.
‘Ah. The stationery. In the corner here will be good, thanks.’
Hugh the delivery man narrowed his eyes, but deposited the boxes without saying a word. The smell of chocolate seemed to waft through the cardboard. Chocolate and guilt.
But Sophie didn’t say anything about the boxes. There were too many other things at the camp to keep on top of, he figured.
The chocolate bars were enough to patch some holes on the leaking SS Grant, but Danny knew it was not a permanent fix. It was Barry who suggested letting the campers use the office internet for a tidy fee.
‘You know, Barry, you’re a born entrepreneur.’
‘Nah.’
‘Without you — I don’t know.’
He didn’t have to keep this scheme a secret. Sophie was fine with it so long as there was always someone there to supervise. Meaning Danny. He didn’t mind. He got into a routine of doing everything he needed to do on the computer first thing in the morning while the campers were being driven through their dawn drills. Around nine a.m. he’d turn around the Danny’s Internet Café: Open 4 Biznizz sign, which Barry had made for him at Emily’s afternoon art elective, and relinquish the desk to the teens and tweeners so they could funnel all of their personal information from one fad social networking site to the next.
He commandeered a single mattress from one of the unused dorms and half leant it against the wall, half on the ground. His supervisor spot felt like a hospital bed, except he didn’t get his meals delivered. And there was nothing wrong with him. Facing, on a daily basis, human beings half his age, or less, with chronic arthritis
or type-two diabetes made it hard for him to worry about his own health.
‘You should come for a run with me tomorrow,’ Sophie had suggested on more than one occasion. Sometimes it was a We need to spend more time together thing. Other times it was a You need to blow out the cobwebs thing. Everything had begun to feel like a pretence, though he had no idea what she might really be trying to say.
From his slumped mattress, he read magazines left behind by former campers and short stories he printed off the internet in tiny font to save on paper, occasionally glancing up to check the surfers hadn’t strayed into unsavoury waters.
Slowly, he began to feel pinned in the office again. This time it was worse than at his old job in the city. Now he was free to do whatever he wanted — to read, scribble, doze — but somehow he was sick of everything he wanted to do. No, not everything. He still enjoyed standing on the edge of the loch, but obviously this was impossible while stationed as net-nanny.
‘Had any more money-making ideas, Barry?’ he asked during a rare window of loch-time.
‘Nah.’
‘Chocolate bars still selling.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Maybe we could sell orange hoodies? I hear all the cool kids —’
Barry tossed his Curly Wurly wrapper at Danny’s feet and walked up the track to the camp.
Perhaps it was this mini-tantrum, or Danny’s stirring-craziness, but as he slumped against the mattress the next day he decided to let Barry act as net guardian from then on. Even give him a ten per cent cut of the takings.
‘But he’s the youngest kid here,’ Sophie said when she found out Barry was being left in charge while he drove to Cranlaw, ostensibly for a black toner cartridge.
‘He’s got a good head on his shoulders.’
‘I know you two are friends —’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I don’t think you should give him too much rope. It’s your call, but he’s no angel.’
‘You little shit!’
‘Nah, hold on,’ Barry said, furiously closing windows. The other fat kid, who was sitting in Danny’s swivelly chair and presumably paying for the internet time, crossed his arms as if to prove none of this was the result of his actions.
‘Christ, Barry. You’re only eleven.’
‘Nah, I’m twelve.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I came back.’
‘Oh. Belated birthday wishes.’ He coughed as it was the only way he could think of restoring a serious tone to his voice. ‘You know you can’t go looking up porn.’
The other kid, who had been facing him, swung around slightly to check what was on the screen, and let out an Aw when he found it was just Danny’s wallpaper of Slash during a guitar solo.
‘We wasn’t.’
‘I’m not blind, Barry.’
‘I know, but we wasn’t looking it up. It was an accident. I was looking up your book.’
‘What book?’
‘The one about the lesbians. Sappho and that. Look —’ Barry grabbed the mouse and maximised the web browser. The other kid leant forward so far his face was nearly touching the image of the two naked girls.
‘Easy now, Pee-wee,’ Danny said and spun the seat a half-turn.
There was a slight pause while he and Barry both looked at the image on the screen. Brunette girl in her late teens, small but symmetrical breasts, kneeling on a bed; blonde girl, age and breast size indeterminable, tongue at work between the brunette’s legs.
‘Look,’ Barry said, and clicked the back button twice. The browser now displayed a Google search for Saffo. ‘I just clicked the first one by accident.’
‘Is this true, Pee-wee?’ he asked the other kid.
‘Yeah.’ He sounded disappointed.
‘You spelt it wrong,’ Danny said.
‘What?’
‘Sappho. You probably would have got more porn if you spelt it right, though.’
For a moment he wondered if all this was proof of Barry’s innocence or further evidence of his cunning: the chocolate bars, the possibility of a suitcase full of orange hoodies, the internet café itself.
‘You’re only twelve,’ he said, but the comment sounded weird with none of his previous thoughts to bounce off.
The next day, he didn’t turn the Open 4 Biznizz sign around at all, despite the line of campers outside the door to his office. He spent the morning re-researching Sappho and the thiasos theory. He printed out the translations of his favourite of Sappho’s fragments, and folded them up to fit into his shirt pocket with his cigars and lighter.
While the rest of the campers did their afternoon electives — hair-braiding, charades or clay pottery — he took Barry to the loch.
‘I thought we could test out one of these canoes.’
‘Bit cold,’ Barry said.
‘It’ll always be a bit cold. You want to get to the island or not?’
‘Don’t we need life jackets or something?’
‘We have these.’ He walked behind a bush and picked up four empty plastic milk bottles and a box of twine.
‘Huh?’
‘Buoyancy aids. Tie them around your waist.’
‘Dumb.’
‘But first help me with this.’
Together they turned over the first canoe, revealing a stash of still shiny chocolate bar wrappers that started to dance in the breeze.
He looked at Barry, who said, ‘What? They’re not mine.’
‘Sophie’d have a fit if she saw,’ he said, placing his end of the righted canoe on the ground and dashing after the wrappers. It quickly became clear they were not going to behave, dodging every thrust of his hand like a school of sprats. Barry stood there, laughing.
‘You could help, you know.’
When they’d stuffed all the wrappers into their pockets, Danny decided they needed to check under the other two canoes and the dance of the wrappers commenced again.
With nearly a hundred wrappers stuffed on his person and still more in the front pocket and hood of Barry’s top — intending to bury the evidence of their black market on the island — the two of them pushed the first canoe out onto water the colour of blue biro. Danny stood on the very edge of the beach, using the only paddle they had found to hook the lip of the canoe and ensure it would not drift off — if it didn’t sink first.
It sank.
The second canoe, a light green one — the colour reminded Danny of the toilets at his primary school — was next.
‘It’s not sinking,’ Barry said with high eyebrows.
‘Yet.’
‘I lost two pounds last week.’
‘Good stuff. Your country thanks you.’
Barry frowned and looked down at his Reeboks.
‘Take ’em off if you’re worried about wrecking them.’
Barry trod on a heel and stepped out of the first shoe, then did the same to the other. He wasn’t wearing socks.
‘They’ll never last if you treat them like that,’ Danny said, unsure if he was mocking parents or becoming one.
‘Just get in the boat, Danny.’
He kept his shoes on and stepped into the water, still hooking the canoe with the paddle. It took a couple of seconds for the water to reach his feet through his shoes and socks. Cold, but not icy. Bearable. He placed the paddle inside and held the rim of the canoe.
‘Come on, I’ll hold it for you.’
‘All right, all right,’ Barry said as he inched his toes towards the water. He pulled up short, raised his head to Danny, then hoisted his arms into chicken wings, took two clumsy leaps, splashing water all over Danny — who couldn’t help thinking about David Hasselhoff in slow motion — and lunged. For a moment Barry was perched on the side of the canoe, half in, half out. Surely it’ll tip, but it was as if the water was also caught pondering the physics of the situation, giving Barry enough time to roll onto his back and wholly into the canoe.
‘Christ, Barry.’
‘I’m in, aren’t I?
’
‘Scooch over then.’
Danny noticed how low the canoe was sitting in the water, said a quick prayer and lifted a leg over the lip of the canoe.
‘Hold it steady.’
‘How?’
‘I’m in. I’m in.’
‘Uh, Danny —’
‘Yeah?’
‘We’re sinking.’
‘Fuck. I mean … fuck.’
The canoe had drifted a few feet further from the shore and water was pouring over the starboard lip. He tried to tip the boat back to level, but the water already in the boat swung to port as well and plunged that lip under.
‘Abandon ship!’ he cried, managing to see the hilarious side.
‘Danny!’ Barry cried, still sitting in the canoe, failing to see the hilarious side.
‘Just. Stand up. And. Step out.’
The canoe now resembled a bath, the water filling three-quarters of the vessel. Suddenly the inch-by-inch sinking gave way to a plunge and the front of the canoe hit the bottom. Barry stood up, his feet presumably still on the floor of the canoe. He was just tall enough to keep his head above water. It was surrounded by the flotsam of chocolate bar wrappers emerging from his hood. To Danny, now standing by the shore in shin-deep water, Barry’s body looked like a giant orange underwater.
‘So the milk bottles don’t work?’
A few minutes later he had retrieved the canoe and placed it upturned beside the other two. Barry was sitting clutching his shoulders, shivering.
‘Take that hoodie off. You’ll catch pneumonia.’
‘No-o-o.’
‘Right, well, we better get you back to your dorm then.’ He held out his hand to pull Barry up.
‘I can get myself up,’ he said through blue lips, pushed himself up, grabbed his shoes and trudged back to camp.
When Danny arrived back at his cabin, he was met by Sophie and a man he had never seen before. With his close-cropped curly hair and puffed-out chest he looked like a seventies porn star playing a drill sergeant. All he needed was a Magnum PI moustache.
The man gave him a You’re soaking wet look.
‘Danny,’ Sophie said in her telephone voice, ‘what happened?’