A Midsummer Night's Romp

by Katie MacAlister

  I peeked out the door to eye the tent next to me. It bulged and rocked in an alarming manner. Unlike my tent, though, this one resembled an orange and white hippopotamus with its butt in the air, and its front end wallowing in the water. Worse were the noises coming from it.

  “Gran, no, that’s not helping! You’re pulling my hair.” That was a very young-sounding American woman’s voice.

  “Well then, what about this?” answered a much more dignified, definitely British older woman’s voice.

  A side of the tent bulged outward.

  “Ack! No! Balls, now the other end is going!”

  There was a metallic snap, and gently, as if it were a giant orange and white butterfly alighting on a flower, the far end of the tent wafted to the ground, leaving beneath it two squirming forms.

  I stood outside the now collapsed tent, hesitating before asking, “Hello? Hi! I’m Lorina, your neighbor to the south. I can’t help but notice that your tent appears to have deflated. Is everything all right in there?”

  The squirming stopped for a few seconds.

  “Oh, hi, Lorina. I’m Cressy. Cressida, really, but everyone calls me Cressy. And we’re fine, Gran and me, that is. Gran and I? Whichever, we’re fine, but the tent is totes sucktastic.”

  “Perhaps the lady might unzip the door to allow us out?” came a gentle voice.

  “I’d be happy to, Mrs. . . . er . . . Cressy’s gran, but I’m afraid I don’t see a zipper.” I pulled up a long length of flaccid tent hunting for it. “Are you sure it was closed?”

  “Gran’s name is Salma Raintree, and yes, we’re sure. We were trying it out to see how much light would be let in with the door closed. But then I tripped, and fell into the side of it, and broke one of the thingies that goes around making the curved part, and then Gran tried to help me put it back together, and my hair got caught when we snapped the rod together, and then I got a charley horse in my leg, and I couldn’t get it straight, and Gran said I should walk the charley horse off, but my hair was still stuck to the rod, so I couldn’t, and then I had to wee, so Gran said we should just take the rod out of the little pocket it sits in, and then it just all went horribly wrong.”

  “You don’t have to explain any more,” I interrupted, laughing despite the note of desperation in Cressida’s voice. I dug around in more of the tenting, searching for the collapsed entrance. “I can see that it just went downhill from there. Are you still attached to the tent rib?”

  “Not anymore,” came Cressy’s sad reply.

  It took five minutes, but at last I extricated both Cressy and Salma from the remains of their temporary prison. Cressy emerged red-faced from the exertion, her T-shirt rumpled, and her shorts creased and grubby. She was an inch or so taller than me, which had to put her at six feet, with butt-length straight brown hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Despite her experience with the tent, she grinned at me, quite cheerful as she stuck out a hand. “Hi, again.”

  “Hello,” I said, shaking her hand, then glancing down at my hand in dismay.

  “Oh, sorry, I should have warned you that my hands are sticky.” She held up a pair of hands that were grubby in the extreme. “Had a candy bar in my pocket, and I forgot about it, and it melted all over. It ran down my outer leg, but I licked it up. You wouldn’t happen to know where the bathroom is, would you?”

  I refrained from commenting about the dubious act of licking chocolate off one’s own leg, and confined myself to pointing at the barn, where I’d been told that the production company had set up not only a row of portable toilets but makeshift showers for the use of the dig crew.

  “It really wasn’t her fault,” Salma said, brushing herself off to stand beside me, watching as Cressy galloped off in that way that only long-legged, six-foot-tall teenage girls can. “Cressida meant well, but she’s at that awkward stage where her mind doesn’t quite realize where her limbs are.”

  “I went through that phase,” I said with a bit of a grimace. “I was forever falling down stairs, or tripping over my own big feet. Luckily, it stopped by the time I went off to college.”

  “Cressida is only seventeen, so I suspect she has a few more years before mind and body are one.” Salma frowned at the tent. “I don’t trust this contraption.”

  We both eyed the remains. Salma was what I thought of as a Miss Marple sort of Englishwoman—early sixties with a beautiful complexion, perfectly styled white hair, and gentle blue eyes surrounded by a mass of tiny lines that bespoke character. She wasn’t the least bit rumpled despite the tent experience.

  “The tent does look like it’s a goner,” I said. “But maybe it can be repaired?”

  She sighed. “I have an uncomfortable feeling that it can.”

  I couldn’t help but give her a doubtful look. “Perhaps there’s somewhere else you can stay if life in the tent would be too hard—”

  “Oh, no, no,” she interrupted gently. “I wouldn’t dream of discommoding anyone. Really, I’m just happy to spend the time with Cressida, since my daughter seldom allows her to visit this country.”

  “And is Cressy a fan of archaeology?” I asked, amazed at a grandmother who would tolerate roughing it for a month just to be near her grandchild.

  “Not really, no. Her father is, though. She’s here to see him, and I’m here to keep an eye on Cressy, and enjoy her company. And there is the fact that my husband was a historian, so I have a fondness for all things historical.”

  “That really is dedication to want to stay in a tent for a month,” I said with a nod toward the blob of fallen fabric.

  She sighed. “Yes, I will admit that I hadn’t anticipated this accident. I cannot help but worry about the structural stability of the mechanism now that it’s been . . .”

  “Mauled?” I asked.

  “Compromised,” she corrected with another of those Miss Marple smiles, the one that made me think of having tea with shortbread cookies.

  I reminded myself that her problem wasn’t mine to fix, and that I had more than enough on my plate without worrying about whether the tent was going to give way onto the nice old lady.

  Which is why it surprised me to hear myself offer, “If you like, we can swap tents. I did a lot of camping when I was a child, so I’m used to tents being a bit temperamental. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have a stable structure.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, but I couldn’t think of putting you to such trouble.”

  “What trouble?” Cressy asked, galloping up to us with another of her blinding grins. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you? I’m such a trial.”

  I couldn’t help but giggle a little at the sorrowful way she said the last sentence. “I doubt if that’s true at all. I offered to let your grandmother and you have use of my tent, since it appears to be hale and hearty. I’m sure I could beat your tent into submission, or as much as would be needed for me to stay in it for a week or so while I document the dig.”

  “You’re a journalist?” Cressida asked, scrunching up her nose as she looked over at my tent. Her scrunch faded as a pensive look swept over her face. “That’s really nice of you, but my dad would kill me if he thought I broke a tent and then dumped it on someone else. He’s always telling me that I have to own my problems. Oh, I know!”

  Her expression changed in a flash to one of jubilant triumph. “Gran can have your tent, because she’s old and my dad said she looks like she’d break into a million pieces if a big wind blew.”

  “Cressida,” Salma objected.

  Cressy patted her grandmother on the arm. “He meant that nicely.”

  “I’m sure he did, but regardless—”

  “You wouldn’t really mind if Gran had your tent, would you? I’ll move your stuff to our tent, and her stuff to yours, so no one will have to lift a finger. That way I won’t worry about Gran, and yet I’ll still have to suffer with our tent,
so no one can say I’m taking advantage of you, right?”

  I hesitated for a few seconds, trying to think of a polite way to tell her that I’d prefer being on my own—it was very difficult being the instrument of justice if one had a seventeen-year-old stumbling over one’s plots and connivings.

  But at that moment, I looked at Cressy, and caught the hint of uncertainty in her eyes, a painful awareness that I all too well remembered from my own awkward teenage years. She was trying to put a brave face on it, but it was evident that if I refused, she’d take it as a personal comment about rooming with her, rather than my own desire to be alone.

  “That sounds like a lovely idea, as long as you don’t mind sharing the tent with an old fuddy-duddy like me.”

  “Cool!” she said, giving me a grin. “You’re not old at all, and if you fuddy-duddy, I’ll simply go bother Gran in her tent, and Gunner won’t be able to say boo about it, right?”

  “Gunner?” I asked, confused.

  “He’s my dad,” she said, tossing a cheerful smile over her shoulder before she dived into the collapsed tent and began hauling out their luggage. “He was a mistake like me.”

  “Cressida,” Salma objected, giving me a little shake of the head. “Just because you have taken advantage of Miss . . . ?”

  “Liddell. But do please call me Lorina.”

  “Such a pretty name. Just because you have taken advantage of Lorina’s generous nature does not mean you must blight her with irrelevant details of your life.”

  “She’s a journalist, Gran. She lives for those sorts of things. Don’t you, Lorina?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, ignoring the twinge of guilt at the fact that this innocent young woman had taken my lie to heart. “I love talking to people about their lives. But I’m also going to be very busy—”

  “See?” Cressy threw herself under the wad of deflated tent, and emerged with two suitcases. “It’ll be just fine, Gran. Lorina’s cool, and I promise to not bother her, and Gunner can’t say I wasn’t being nice, and everyone is happy!”

  There are just some people that it’s very hard to get through to, and Cressy was clearly one of their crowd. So in the end I helped her transfer Salma’s belongings to my tent, and mine to the grass between the tents while we struggled to resurrect that structure. After an hour of swearing, sweating, and seeking assistance from two passing diggers, we finally got the tent resurrected, fortified by a judicious use of duct tape.

  “Good as new,” Cressy announced when I stood back with our two helpers to admire our handiwork. “Dibs the bed in the back. I know you’ll probably want the one nearest the door so you can go potty in the middle of the night.”

  “Cressida!” Salma said on a horrified gasp.

  “What?” Cressy paused at the door, shooting her grandma a puzzled look. “I don’t see why you’re wearing that ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe what Cressida has said now’ face when I didn’t say anything wrong.”

  “You implied that Lorina has a bladder that can’t make it through the night, and that, my dear, is insulting.”

  “It also happens to be true,” I intervened with a smile at Cressy, who sighed in relief, and plunged into the tent to arrange her air mattress and belongings.

  Salma looked vaguely distressed. “Regardless, Cressida should learn when things should be spoken, and when they should be confined only to thought.”

  I tossed in my suitcase and shoved the bag with the extra camera equipment next to my air mattress, which Cressy was thoughtfully inflating for me. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not in the least bit offended. . . . Oh, hello.”

  The woman who leaned her head into the tent was one of the diggers. I wasn’t quite sure of her name, but thought it was Florence. “I’ve been asked to tell you that Roger would like you to go to his caravan. He said something about wanting to discuss a project with you.”

  “Project? What project?” I sat back on my heels. “Oh no! It’s the Roman reenactments, isn’t it? Look, I’m as willing to help out as the next person, but I have a gag reflex, and if I see people barfing, I’m going to barf, too, Florence.”

  “Fidencia,” she corrected, and gave me a scornful look. “I’m afraid I don’t know why Roger wants you for a project when there are so many more qualified people, but he asked me to bring you to him. If you are ill, I suggest you visit the doctor.”

  “I’m not sick. I just meant . . . oh, never mind.” I sighed and got to my feet, doubling over to exit through the doorway, and hurrying out to follow Fidencia. “Just shove my things out of the way if they bother you, Cressy. I’ll be back later to finish unpacking.”

  I found Fidencia a few tents down the line, speaking rapidly into a walkie-talkie.

  “—don’t know what happened to the potable water, but it’s not my problem, and I resent you treating me like I’m a lowly production assistant. I have better things to do with my time than to run around worrying about water for Roger.”

  “Roger,” came a staticky reply.

  “That’s what I just said!” She slapped one hand on her leg in an irritated manner.

  “Sorry, I got caught up in tent drama,” I apologized softly.

  “I know you did. I was saying ‘Roger’ in acknowledgment,” said the person on the other end of the radio.

  “Oh. Well, that’s just confusing. Stop it,” Fidencia said before punching a button on the radio and attaching it to her belt. “Evidently I am to play nursemaid amongst other indignities. Are you ready? This way.”

  “Are you sure Roger’s not going to ask me to be a servant?” I trotted after her, worrying unduly about anything that would get in the way of my plan. “Not that I’m not a team player or anything, but honestly, I don’t think I’d be good vomit-scraping servant material. If I have to be a Roman, couldn’t I wear a long gown and pretend to play a lyre? I used to know how to play a guitar, so I could mime playing pretty well.”

  Fidencia evidently had other thoughts on her mind as we hurried out of the tent village and toward the line of RVs. “What? What are you saying?” she snapped. “I don’t have time for this!”

  “Sorry. I’m just grousing to myself.”

  A static burst from a walkie-talkie had Fidencia pausing, listening intently for a few seconds, then responding, “Oh, for the love of . . . no, I do not know why someone is trying to move the portable toilets. I’m an archaeologist, not a lackey! Ask Roger what’s going on.”

  More static, this time with a testy note to it.

  “Look, just because I agreed to be a liaison between Roger’s people and the CMA doesn’t mean I am everyone’s bitch. Roger’s not paying me enough to run around and fix everything!”

  “That’s exactly what you are being paid for,” the disembodied voice said out of the radio. “And if you don’t want the job, we can find someone else—”

  “You push me any harder, and you’re going to have to! I’ll see to this, but it’s the last straw, do you hear me? I have digging to do this afternoon!” Fidencia viciously turned off the radio with a little snarl. “A waste of a perfectly good education . . . I can’t stay to babysit you,” she said, giving me a shove toward the line of RVs. “Evidently I must now go deal with some sort of issue catering has with the grills. I swear to god, no amount of money is worth this aggravation.”

  “Sorry. I’ll find my way to him just fine. You go deal with catering.”

  She stormed off, muttering rude things under her breath. With a growing sense of worry, I hustled my way to the RVs, which were lined up nose to tail. I whipped around the farthest one, intent on things I would say to Roger if he insisted I do some playacting for the camera, but the sight of a man on a scooter about to mow me down drove all thoughts from my head.

  “Ack!” I yelled, and tried to leap to the left, but the man jerked the handlebars at the same time, with the result that he drove right over t
he top of my foot.

  Chapter 5

  “Bloody, buggery hell!” I shouted, clutching my poor abused foot, and hopping in pain.

  Tears pricked in my eyes, which is probably one reason for what happened next. The aforementioned propensity for escapades is another, and lastly, the scooter driver’s decision to circle around was the final nail in the coffin of my supposed grace and elegance. In midhop, my ankle twisted, and when I landed, I listed to the side, about to fall hard on the ground, except the man on the scooter was in the way, which meant I ended up draped across his lap, and clutching his shoulders to keep from sliding off.

  “Hullo,” he said, and wrapped both arms around me to hoist me up so I was sitting across him. “I can’t apologize enough for running over you. You just seemed to come out of nowhere, but that’s no excuse. How bad is your foot? Is it broken? I hope not, because I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that a broken foot is the very devil. Can you wiggle your toes?”

  It was the brother of the owner, the very man with the long hair, chiseled jaw, and sexy profile who had Daria drooling. I gazed up into his pale blue eyes, absently noting that they were ringed in black, which made them quite noticeable. And attractive. Oh, who was I fooling? He was downright gorgeous, and his driving skills notwithstanding, I almost enjoyed sitting so intimately across his lap, with his arms around me, and those stunning eyes peering concernedly at me.

  “Foot,” I said, unable to get my brain working. “Hurt.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “I knew it. I did hurt you. I’ll take you up to the house and we’ll call a doctor. Just stay where you are—assuming you don’t mind sitting on my lap, that is.”

  “Foot,” I said stupidly, but as the scooter jerked forward, my wits suddenly returned and I realized that I was being transported toward the castle. “Oh, man alive. No, you don’t need to take me to a doctor—I’m fine, really. Your tires are pretty big, and although my foot does hurt, I don’t think anything is broken. See? I can wiggle my toes.”