Naked Truths

by Karen Botha

  Fields.

  And more fields.

  Hmm...

  He hands me my suitcase and throws his ruck sack over his shoulder, slams the lid shut, and he’s off. What?!?

  Screaming at him is not the way to start this weekend, so I clamp my teeth into my tongue, tasting blood. My suitcase catches as I tug it over the uneven grass. My pace is slow in a bid to save a broken ankle.

  ‘Come on,’ he shouts briefly turning, all smiles and burgeoning excitement.

  I grit my pearly whites. My hair that hung in manicured curls when I left home a few short hours earlier, is now flying around in the breeze, getting in my mouth and my eyes as I struggle with my lump of a case. Anger; literally pure anger is spiralling from my stomach. The heat soars through my chest. I clamp my jaw tight to hold the fire ball inside.

  Sweat is starting to drip down my neck.

  I wonder how my hair looks...

  And then I see it. A homemade picnic table.

  A homemade picnic table surrounded by an arc of twelve bell tents.

  Large, beige, bell tents, each set about two metres apart from the next. Is he seriously expecting our first romantic weekend away to be in a tent surrounded by twenty-two other people? I stop dead and stare.

  ‘Lucy, quit lagging behind,’ he shouts.

  That is it. ‘Would you mind helping me please? I’m not exactly dressed for this terrain,’ I manage without screaming at him. I think I did admirably. I even smiled although I'd be willing to bet it didn't meet my eyes.

  ‘Sure, why didn’t you ask?’ I just look at him, biting down on my response - again.

  He’s checking out the laminated numbers on the side of the tents. Ours is number seven, he informs me.

  ‘Lovely,’ I’m reeling. This is not lovely.

  ‘Here we are, home.’

  ‘Yep.’ Home? Is he kidding?

  Now had we been heading off to a festival, and had I been informed in advance, and had this not been our first trip away with all that awkwardness; this accommodation would be more than adequate. However, we are not. We were, I thought, headed off for a romantic weekend break.

  ‘Look there’s a double mattress,’ he throws his hand into the tent as if I’d not noticed not only the double mattress on a makeshift bed frame, but the double sleeping bag too. And then it hits me, something I’d missed until this point. We’ve not slept together. We’ve not done anything together.

  ‘Where are the loos?’ I ask, feigning calmness.

  ‘There’s a separate shed outside with a toilet in,’ he points with his finger.

  ‘So, we'll get to know each other quite well then?’ I manage to throw him a fragment of a smile.

  ‘I guess so,’ he’s totally missed it, he’s grinning; chuffed with himself, and I sigh, the air cools my lips. I choose to leave it.

  ‘So what’s happening this weekend, can you tell me now or is it still a surprise?’

  ‘Sure, you will love it, it’s a health and wellness weekend,’ and I get the impression, if he could have unveiled that with a ‘ta-da’ he would.

  Health and wellness in Giles speak I am now fully aware, does not mean, spa, massage and a luxurious robe. It means, a diet class with additional exercise and movement advice. Then we have mountain walks, outdoor fitness training and wait for it, a gorge walk followed by waterfall power walking. Joy!

  ‘Are you not keen?’ He chews on his bottom lip.

  You need to ask this? But instead I hear, ‘I’m not sure whether I have the right shoes.’

  ‘Oh you girls and your shoes.’

  I snap. ‘Really, would you fancy, waterfall power walking in these?’ I tilt my right foot up and to the side to indicate the height of the heel, resisting the urge to stab at them with my index finger. His eyes are wide and his mouth quiet, I suspect, more in response to my tone than my shoes.

  I’m here now so I may aswell get on with it and so the evening comes and goes without incident. We have a collective campfire BBQ washed down with our own alcohol, and chat to our neighbours. They're OK; I’m just not in the mood. It’s a long slog, but at last, it’s time for bed; I’ve been dreading it. Whilst these tents have their own decking out front, their own home made picnic bench, deck chairs and an indoor fire, they do not have a changing area. There’s no light in the toilet shed, and so where am I to change? What am I to wear? I don't have one suitable item. Being the height of summer, I have nothing snuggly. I could kick him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Giles enquires as I rummage through my suitcase with one hand whilst I hold the light from my phone in the other.

  ‘Searching for something to keep me warm during the night,’ isn’t that obvious?

  ‘I’ll keep you warm,’ he smooths and comes up behind me, slipping his arms around my waist, pulling me close.

  Oh, you’re going to try that now! I move away, intent on finding something to wear. I have a silk pair of pink pyjamas. They’re strappy with lace trim so not totally suitable, but I have a matching wrap so that should keep me warm enough. I pull them out, trying not to crumple my other largely un-required items and stomp off to the toilet shed.

  ‘Do you have a torch please?’ I turn back, ‘funnily enough, I didn’t think to pack one.’ He runs his hand through his hair and passes me a torch of a suitable size.

  He’s in bed when I've changed so I crawl in beside him. This is just awkward. Surely the first time you sleep with someone it should be all bells and whistles. I lie on my back and he rolls over resting his arm over my stomach. And then he’s asleep.

  Now I know I didn’t want sexiness tonight, and I know I’ve been moody, but he's asleep already, without so much as trying anything? Ugh! I lie awake for a few hours, frustrated and struggling to make sense of this ambiguous man snoring next to me.

  We wake as dawn breaks. I’ve not slept well. It was cold - and damp. Incredibly damp - and cold. Whatever I touch is wet. And I need a pee.

  The whole effort of extrapolating myself from knotted bed wear, locating the exit, finding something for my feet to protect against the morning dew, combined with heading out into the cold and then reversing the whole saga upon finishing, means it’s game over for sleep.

  I decided last night I would try to wake up in a better mood. So when Giles rouses, I smile sweetly, trying to look happy and carefree even though I'm still as grumpy as yesterday. However, having had many hours to contemplate our situation, I can see he booked this with the best of intentions. It’s just not gone quite to plan and I expect that’s as much of a disappointment for him as it is for me.

  Breakfast is satisfying. It’s cooked on the open campfire. There's a collective rallying within the crescent of tents stimulated by the alluring smell of fat dripping onto smoking wood.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Giles asks during our morning nutrition course.

  ‘Yeah, I’m good, you?’ I'm actually rather bored. It would be rude to say, so I’ll ride it out.

  Lunch is a most unadventurous salad. Not what I expect prior to exerting myself. My mind ambles to the lunches I’d imagined. Admittedly something light, but more along the smoked salmon and blue cheese route, or perhaps some toasted walnuts and pears with Parma ham. All accompanied with a glass of champagne and without the vigorous exercise of a supplemental hill walk.

  I sip my bottled water.

  I surprise myself by being thankful when we finish lunch and ready ourselves with rucksacks. At least my lack of preparation means Giles takes on the role of my pack-donkey.

  The assemblage divides into small fractions based on fitness, each chats amiably. We plod along stopping to take a few selfies. I’m particularly pleased with one in-front of a powerful waterfall, the spray from which artistically distorts the picture. When we reach the summit, it’s dazzling. The clouds are rolling in beneath us and the peaks of the other hills poke above them in the distance.

  ‘I wonder if there is anyone standing waving back at us from over there,’ I point to the opposite fell.<
br />
  ‘Probably,’ Giles replies as he puts his arm around me. ‘Steph would have loved it here.’

  Oh, you are kidding me! I tense unintentionally; my jaw tight. I understand your wife died, and I understand it was tragic, but really, now?

  ‘Mmm,’ is all I trust myself to utter.

  ‘Yeah, she loved being outside like this; out in the wilds.’ He carries on!

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, well actually this would be a bit tame for her.’

  ‘OK.’ I really have no idea what he expects me to say.

  He’s unaware, ‘yeah, she loved experiencing life. It changed when she got sick.’ I get the impression he’s not talking to me, more that he’s processing.

  I ask, ‘what changed?’

  ‘Oh,’ he looks as if he’d forgotten I was there, ‘they say you experience your mortality when you get older, well I guess that came to her sooner. She became scared of the things that had previously made her happy. She lost herself a bit. Actually, a lot...’ he tails off again.

  I change the subject. Enough of Steph, this is our weekend. I do however make a mental note to get a grip and start trying to enjoy this properly. I can’t be outdone by his dead wife.

  It’s more of the same that night, but where the day has been warmer, so is the evening. I’m batting away mosquitoes like someone deranged. I can’t enjoy the time like I’d promised myself, whilst being eaten alive. Bug repellent was not on my packing list.

  I'm reminded of this when I wake in the morning. I’m not even out of bed and my ankles itch, the evidence of last night’s feasting clear for all.

  The gorge walking should have been gorge scrambling.

  ‘Put these on,’ we’re instructed.

  We’re shown into a small, hot room. Different bins contain particular sized wet suits, life vests and safety helmets. This is a warning. I pull out one of the clingy wet-suits. It feels dirty, like sleeping in someone else’s sheets. I inspect it, and glance around to see if anyone else is having similar thoughts. I’m on my own.

  I tug the sticky suit up my legs sighing as I ensure the crotch doesn’t hang too low; or too high. Once accomplished, I move onto squelching in my torso, pulling up the wretched zip that catches on fat I didn’t realise existed.

  I find selecting a suitable bright red life vest no easier. They’re all too big, so once I fasten the plastic clips, the shoulders sit up around my ears. I look ridiculous and I haven’t even got as far as wearing the yellow helmet.

  After a brief safety talk, I’m thankful for the unflattering equipment. It is essential. We scramble up severe rock faces, grabbing at crevices and slipping on surfaces smoothed by years of flowing water. We cross waterfalls, ignoring the cold battering our helmets. We slide down the rapids, bumping our wayward limbs as we fall, finally gasping for air in plunge pools.

  ‘You’re starting to have fun then,’ Giles grins as we poise, ready to leap off the top of a twenty foot ledge.

  I stretch my mouth widely back, lips upturned at the edges, showing glowing teeth between ragged breaths.

  ‘Yeah, I am,’ and put my arm round his waist as we both fling ourselves off the cliff. Totally free, but totally together. Bursting into a freezing pool. The cold catches my breath and squeezes my lungs. My brain sends messages which shoot my arms and legs in all manner of directions.

  As the quiet hum of the deep lagoon pops into the buzz of life on the surface, I smile at Giles again. He smiles back, gasping, water dripping down his cheeks, into his open mouth. His lips are hard from the cold as he kisses my wet face. My body is freezing, but my heart warm.

  The waterfall power walk was nothing in comparison and so the rest of our last day passed relatively uneventfully.

  Until the evening campfire.

  We’d been through quite a bit with the other guys now and they're starting to feel like new friends. We sit, eat, drink, I bat away more pesky mossies and conversation gets onto how we ended up on this weekend break.

  ‘My wife and I came on one of these trips,’ I heard pop out of Giles’ mouth. I do a double take, re-running his last sentence through my brain. There’s a collective gasp of confusion, including mine. The group raise their eyebrows wondering who I am. Realising his error, Giles continues, ‘Lucy isn’t my wife, my wife died a few years ago.’

  ‘OK.’ A unified sigh of relief, they're not embroiled in a dark secret.

  I fling Giles a stare, but he’s not sure what he’s done.

  Why did he think it was OK to bring me to a carbon copy of a place he went with his wife, especially on our first weekend away? I suspect it’s to see how I measure up. If I’m being brutally honest, I’m not too sure I measured up that well. If I’m being even more honest, I need to take a long think about whether I want to after this. People say it’s hard to step into a dead person's shoes, but surely no-one literally expects you to fill their exact same pair of shoes?

  PAULA

  The sun rose with an orange glow of promise. We often spend days like this in Lucy's fenced off garden with Boob running wild, happy to explore a different space. We’re on our second jug of Pimms. A horn blazes on the main road, accompanied by angry shouting which filters into our oasis. I rarely notice it anymore even when we’re relaxing outside enjoying the break in the clouds as we are today, it’s just white noise.

  ‘I love Pimms,’ Lucy states the obvious.

  ‘Haha, really?’ I tease.

  ‘You’re drinking it too,’ she retaliates. There’s something wonderful about Pimms, it's a sign of summertime and all things good. We sit for a while contemplating tendrils of wispy cotton candy drifting above us. We’d started on the hard garden chairs but progressed to loungers as we, well, became more lounge-like. She’s been filling me in on her weekend with Giles whilst we broke to chop more fruit for our refreshed jug of summer optimism.

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘I know…’ Lucy replies half shaking her head as we retire back outside.

  ‘Did that make you feel weird?’

  She pauses, and after some consideration, ‘I’m not sure, yeah at first, but then when I thought about it...’

  ‘OK, so let’s break this down,’ I watch a bird lands in the tree whilst I plan my thoughts. The branch moves a fraction as this delicate gray and blue creature pecks at the food. ‘He took you away, so he wants to spend time with you.’

  She interrupts, ‘does he want to spend time with me though, or is he trying to shoehorn me into being Steph? Is he after a carbon copy?’

  She has a point, no-one who grasps Lucy would imagine this weekend away to be her perfect surprise gift. From what I've learnt about Steph already, Giles was right in saying she would have loved it - before becoming sick. But Lucy isn't Steph.

  ‘And we’ve still not had sex,’ she hisses in a loud whisper!

  ‘Whoa, it’s been weeks now!’

  ‘I know...’ she’s growing louder. ‘I was all set to give him the knock back when he tried it on in the tent, but I didn't get the chance.’

  I half sit up from my lounger and study her; this is unchartered territory. Is this my moment to broach the subject of whether Giles is all he seems to be?

  ‘Look, are you sure this guy is worth it?’ I cringe, waiting for a backlash. There isn’t one. Instead she is contemplative. I give her space to consider this, whilst I watch the planes overhead, wondering where they are going. When I see a flight, I initially imagine happy thoughts, only initially though. It’s difficult to forget once you’ve been on the job how many people fly back to countries for sickness and deaths. As my mood becomes more macabre, Lucy answers.

  ‘I expected a rocky road when he said his wife had passed, you hear about this all the time, the new girlfriend never being good enough; not measuring up, either for him or even his family; but I’ve not experienced any of that until this weekend. So now I’m confused, is this a one off? Or because we spent longer together, did his true colours come out? I was under the impressi
on he wanted to be with me.’ She tails off. ‘Thing is, I really like being with him.’

  That’s not an answer. She’s puzzled. This may be the wrong time, but I go for it anyway, picking my words. ‘Listen, I was talking to Mo the other day after the ball.’

  ‘OK,’ she sighs.

  ‘Yeah, he recognised Giles from when Steph died.’ I keep my volume low and my tone soft as if coaxing an upset child.

  She juts her head up sharply, ‘Hmm…’ Her eyes flash lasers at me.

  ‘He mentioned how different Giles was at the garden party to the one he saw being interviewed.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Apparently he was closed down in the police interviews.’ I study her, judging whether I should continue. She’s unmoving, listening. It throws me off, the nerves in my fingers rap flesh against the table top. I sip from my glass and consider my next move.

  ‘What are you saying?’ she snaps.

  ‘Well, I’m not saying anything, except that you don’t really know him that well do you?’

  Her face sets, her eyes become mere slits, considering what I said. ‘Just come out with it Paula!’

  So I venture, ‘Do you think he’s genuine?’

  ‘Huh? how do you make the leap from him lagging behind in the bedroom department to him not being genuine?’

  ‘OK, look at it this way. His behaviour is odd. If his actions don’t have consistency, that’s probably because they’re not authentic. So for example, him not sleeping with you yet is a sign of him showing you respect, of him trying not to overstep some mark that could hinder your future together. However, after Steph passed, he was cold and calculated as though he had no sorrow for either her, or the process of her passing. That doesn't seem like a character who would be so in tune with his emotions about you that's all.’