by Ruth Thomas
At one stop, a young mother with a little girl of about five got on and sat in the seat behind Julia and Nathan. The little girl had a nasty cough, and she whined and grizzled a great deal to begin with, but when she noticed Nathan in the seat ahead of her, she seemed to cheer up. Tentatively, she reached out of her own seat and stretched one hand round the back of Nathan’s, to touch his springy hair. Nathan jumped when he felt her hand on his head and the little girl drew back into her own seat, sniffing and coughing again. But a few minutes later she was back, this time stroking his bare arm. Embarrassed, Nathan tried to hitch away.
‘Leave the little boy alone, Cheryl,’ said the mother sharply. ‘He doesn’t want you touching him.’
‘That’s right, I don’t,’ said Nathan.
At the sound of his voice, Cheryl was apparently quite enraptured. She slipped out of her seat altogether now and squatted in the aisle, gazing adoringly into Nathan’s face. And presumably because she was less trouble like that, her mother left her there. The unwelcome attentions of Cheryl rather spoiled the rest of the journey for Nathan, and there was even worse to come, for when the bus finally reached its destination, and the child’s mother tried to drag her away, Cheryl managed to plant a great wet parting kiss on Nathan’s cheek.
‘Ugh!’ said Nathan, wiping off the kiss with the back of his hand.
‘She had spots too,’ said Julia. ‘Coming out all over her face, didn’t you see? I think she had measles?’
‘Which shall we get first?’ said Nathan as they climbed out of the bus, ‘the bicycles or the tents?’
‘Another cap first,’ said Julia, ‘to cover your hair.’
Black people were really conspicuous, it seemed, in this country place. Apart from Nathan himself, they hadn’t seen any so far.
They bought a cap in Marks and Spencer’s, then they found a cycle shop without much difficulty, and spent a happy half hour making their choice. When he saw they were serious, and they really had the money to spend, the owner of the shop was most attentive. They had both had birthdays, they said, and Julia said they lived in Taunton because it would perhaps seem odd to be buying bicycles in a place where they were only on holiday. She was cunning enough to have judged that Taunton was quite a big town, so that shop man would not be surprised that he had never seen them before, even if they did live there.
When they emerged once more into the sunlight, Julia and Nathan were each proudly wheeling a shiny new cycle, complete with front and rear carriers, chains and padlocks for locking the bikes against thieves, and panniers for carrying extra luggage. Julia explained that they belonged to a club for going camping. She had thought that one up on the bus, and had the story ready. It would do for the tent shop as well, she thought. In an uneasy moment she reflected that she had never told so many lies in her life. When she was grown up, she decided, she would tell the truth all the time, to make up for it.
The children could not wait to try their new bikes. Nathan jumped on his first, and pedalled inexpertly along the road, wobbling and swerving as he went. The traffic in the shopping street was quite heavy, and several cars hooted Nathan as they passed. Julia was alarmed. She pedalled quickly to catch up, and shouted a warning at Nathan. ‘Keep in to the pavement – you going to have a accident!’
Nathan was annoyed at the criticism. ‘All right, all right,’ he called back, and pedalled harder to show off. Julia followed anxiously. Nathan was going at great speed now; Julia had a job to keep up with him. Unfortunately, a car with a bad driver in it was going even faster. The car passed really close to Nathan, hooting as it went. Startled by the loud horn, and the feel of the car whooshing past him, Nathan swerved. His front wheel touched the car’s retreating bumper, and Nathan, with the bicycle on top of him, crashed to the ground. Julia, sick with dismay, pedalled as fast as she could to where Nathan lay under the bicycle, a crowd already beginning to gather.
‘You all right, son?’ someone asked.
Nathan lay silent, raging inwardly. There was a sharp pain somewhere, but he was mostly angry. The indignity of it! To fall off his bicycle – him, not Julia! Julia was supposed to be the clumsy one, not him. Julia was the one who had accidents all the time.
‘I reckon he’s really hurt. Better get an ambulance.’ This was a kind-looking man in the crowd.
‘Yes, better phone.’
Hands were lifting the bicycle off Nathan, and Nathan was registering what the voices were saying. An ambulance? Hospital? Questions? No! A vicious pain stabbed through his wrist as he sat up, but Nathan stifled the yell he wanted to make. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘I don’t want no ambulance.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked the kind man. ‘That was a nasty fall you had, there might be something broken.’
‘No, I’m all right,’ said Nathan, struggling to his feet to prove it, and biting his lips to keep from wincing as the searing pain tore through his wrist again.
‘Yes he is, he is, he is all right,’ claimed Julia, coming out of a shocked stupor and stepping forward to grasp Nathan’s arm. She was half afraid Nathan would fall down again, and the kind man would fetch the ambulance after all.
‘He’s hurt his arm though, hasn’t he?’ the kind man persisted.
‘No he ain’t,’ said Julia, emphatically. ‘You ain’t hurt your arm have you, N— have you, Charlie?’
‘No, it’s all right,’ Nathan repeated, wishing they’d all just go away, so he could suffer the excruciating agony of his wrist in peace.
‘Can you move it?’ said the kind man.
‘Yes, I can move it easy.’ For the benefit of the little crowd, Nathan flexed his injured arm at all the joints, and words would never tell how much it cost him to do so.
‘Well . . . ,’ said the kind man, doubtfully, ‘if you were my boy I’d want it X-rayed. Just to make sure there’s nothing broken.’
‘Oh no,’ said Julia, ‘there’s nothing broke. Is there, Charlie?’
‘Well, I don’t know what you’d know about it,’ said the kind man, regarding Julia with some coolness. But he went, anyway, and so did the rest of the crowd.
‘Does it really hurt?’ asked Julia, anxiously.
‘Course it hurts,’ said Nathan.
‘Let me see.’
‘Nah – it’s all right.’
‘You’re very brave,’ said Julia.
‘I’m stupid, innit. I fell off.’
‘Never mind that. Can you still ride?’
‘Don’t know.’
Nathan was actually quite shaken, and the last thing he wanted to have to do was to get back on that bicycle. ‘I think I’ll just push it for a bit.’
‘Let’s find a caff and have a cup of tea.’
‘Tea?’
‘Yeah, with lots of sugar. That’s what they give people when they’ve had a shock.’
To Nathan’s surprise, the thought of hot sweet tea was quite attractive, though in the normal way he would have chosen Coke every time. His wrist hurt badly, and it was beginning to swell, but he could manage to use it just enough to steady the bicycle, while taking the weight with the other hand. The children fastened their bicycles with the new padlocks, and went into a small café for tea. They filled up with beefburgers and sticky cakes while they were about it, and when they had finished, Nathan was feeling a little bit better. His wrist still ached and throbbed, but he was getting used to the pain, it was getting to be part of him. ‘Let’s go and get the tents now,’ he said.
The third passer-by they stopped was able to direct them to a camping shop. It was quite a way to walk, pushing their bicycles along the pavement, but a real Aladdin’s cave when they reached it.
‘Look at this, Ju,’ Nathan marvelled. ‘Shall we have one like this?’
He was looking at a large frame tent, big as a house, with an arrangement of separate compartments inside.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Julia. ‘How we going to get something like that on our bikes?’
They settled in the end, on
the shopkeeper’s advice, for two tiny one-person tents, complete with groundsheets, and two featherweight sleeping bags which rolled up into nothing at all. There were other things they needed, like backpacks and a mallet to knock the tent pegs in – besides the camping stove, run on a special gas cylinder, the pan to go on it, the torch for when it got dark, and the plastic plates and cutlery, and the tin opener. Most wonderful of all, in Nathan’s eyes, was an all-purpose scout knife, the sort you were not, on any account, allowed to bring to school. He would have enjoyed the knife a great deal more if his arm had not, at that point, started violently throbbing and aching again. The pain made him feel angry and irritable.
‘How far is it to Exmoor?’ Nathan asked the shopkeeper.
‘Exmoor? Oh – twenty mile, I reckon. Yeah, a good twenty mile for certain.’
Twenty miles! Nathan knew he could not push that bicycle twenty miles. He glared at the shopkeeper, as though it was his fault that Exmoor was so far away.
They would have to find somewhere nearer to put up their tents. First though, they had to load everything on the cycles. Julia had to do most of the work, of course, and Nathan watched her sullenly, criticizing every mistake, although in his heart he had to acknowledge that she wasn’t doing too badly. For someone with such clumsy feet, she was really surprisingly good with her hands. She was really making a passably neat and sensible job of packing everything and stacking it into place. But because the pain was making him so irritable and short-tempered, Nathan could only find fault.
‘That’s no good. . . . What you put it there for, stupid? . . . Do it like this!’
‘What are you so grumpy for?’ said Julia, at last. ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘My arm hurts.’
‘I know it hurts. It ain’t my fault you fell off your bike.’
‘It was your idea to have bikes.’
‘So?’
‘If we didn’t have bikes I couldn’t have fallen off, could I? Come on.’
Nathan took his loaded bicycle and began to wheel it with his good arm. Puzzled and hurt, Julia trailed behind.
In a gloomy silence, the children proceeded in single file through the streets of Taunton. Neither had any idea where they were going. When it looked as though the town with its supplies was about to be left behind, Julia stopped at a small grocer’s shop to buy tins of baked beans with sausages in them, and some bread. She called out to Nathan that she was going to do so, but he was so far ahead he didn’t hear her. She saw his small surly figure stumping on, the feet dragging a bit now, and she thought, serve him right if he thinks he’s lost me. He wouldn’t get very far with that arm, not very fast anyway. There was no danger of her losing him.
When she came out of the shop, however, there was no sign of Nathan in the road ahead. Julia stowed her groceries in one of the bicycle’s panniers, then climbed on and pedalled. It was good to be riding, instead of all that wearisome pushing. She found Nathan sitting on a grass verge at the side of what was now a country road, the bicycle beside him, a picture of abject misery.
‘I thought you was gone,’ he greeted her.
His brown eyes were full of misery, like those of an injured dog, and Julia, who had been feeling resentful at his treatment of her, relented and forgave.
‘Is it your arm?’
‘Course, what do you think?’
‘Let me see.’
He held it out gingerly, for inspection. The wrist was very swollen now, and there was a puffy blue-black bruise. The skin was not broken, though.
‘It needs a bandage,’ said Julia.
‘How do you know?’
Julia shrugged. She didn’t know how she knew, she just instinctively felt that the wrist needed strapping up.
‘Anyway,’ said Nathan, bleakly, ‘we haven’t got a bandage.’
‘I could cycle back and get one,’ said Julia. ‘Won’t take me long. I’ll find a chemist.’
Nathan watched her as she rode off, ungainly on the bicycle but a competent rider, and felt sorry that he had been mean, and rude and unfair. She returned before long, with a bandage, some cotton wool and a can of lemonade. ‘You owe me one pound thirty-eight,’ she said.
‘Let’s have a drink then, I’m thirsty.’
‘The lemonade ain’t to drink, it’s to put on the cotton wool to make it cold. Because we haven’t got no water. The chemist said to put something cold on your arm. The lemonade’s been in the fridge, so it’s icy.’
The lemonade cold compress made Nathan’s wrist feel better immediately, and the support of the bandage took away some of the throbbing. He thought Julia might have strapped it just a little too tightly, but he wasn’t complaining. For someone with no experience of first aid, she really hadn’t made a bad job of the bandaging at all. She had some idea that the arm ought to be in a sling, and wanted to improvise one out of Nathan’s spare tee-shirt. But Nathan said no, his arm was feeling so much better with just the bandage, he thought he could manage to cycle a bit as long as he had the use of both hands.
Progress was much faster now. If only they knew where they were going! Nathan hoped they were heading towards Exmoor, but there didn’t seem to be anyone to ask, and in any case it was out of the question to cycle twenty miles today. What they wanted was a nice field, any field, with a river in it for washing. And no houses. No one to spy on two runaway children putting up their tents.
They were passing fields now, but there were still houses in sight, and no rivers visible. Besides, the road they were on was busy, with a lot of fast traffic, and the children needed all their concentration to keep well in to the left, out of any further trouble.
Presently they came to a crossroads. Straight on was to somewhere called Barnstaple. Nathan and Julia read the word together. The road to the right was signposted Minehead, and Nathan thought they should take that one, but only because it was going to a place he had heard of, and the familiar sound of the name was somehow a bit comforting.
After a bit, Julia declared she was sure they were on the same road the bus had taken them that morning. She recognized one particularly pretty pink cottage, she said, with a thatched roof and a mass of flowers in the garden. Nathan said they didn’t want to go back to Watchet, did they, and Julia said they must be still miles and miles from Watchet, but in any case they were clearly on a main road, and wouldn’t it be better to turn down a side road next time they came to one, and really start looking for a field with a river in it?
They took the next turning to the left, a narrow winding road between high ragged hedges, and now they were really in deep country. It was fields all the way, and hardly any houses. They peered over every gate they came to, but there were no rivers. They pressed on, hoping each time that the next gate would be the right one.
The sun was hot and the hills were very steep. Even in low gear it was impossible to cycle up some of them. The children had to keep getting off their bikes to push and it was hard work. They were getting hungry too, and very thirsty, and there was nothing to drink.
‘You should have got some lemonade to drink, as well as put on my arm,’ Nathan complained.
‘All right,’ said Julia, sharply, ‘You can’t expect me to think of everything.’
‘Not everything, but you could have thought of that.’ Nathan’s wrist was nagging him again. He was exhausted and in pain, and he didn’t think he could go much further.
‘Oh shut up,’ said Julia, whose own legs were now aching unbearably.
And then they saw it. Through the bars of a gate they saw a bright meadow, speckled with buttercups and daisies. The meadow was like a sea, flowing in great waves down to a tiny stream, far below. The stream snaked between trees, gleaming darkly. Beyond it the ground rose steeply again, and on that further hillside was a wood, a dense screen that might have been put there just for Nathan and Julia – a fortress of green, to keep them safe from prying eyes. It was perfect.
The children pushed open the gate, and wheeled their bicycles into the fie
ld. They ran with their bicycles down the undulating slope, and although every step jarred poor Nathan’s arm, his spirits were rising with Julia’s. They dropped the bicycles on the grass, and threw themselves full length on their stomachs to drink from the little stream. At least, Julia threw herself – Nathan’s lowering was more cautious, and accompanied by several grunts and sharp intakes of breath. But the result was the same for both, they drank until they could drink no more.
‘You can hear the water sloshing about in my tummy,’ said Julia, bumping up and down on her bottom to illustrate the point.
‘I wonder if it’s really clean enough to drink,’ said Nathan, too late.
‘We’ll boil it next time,’ said Julia, who had heard somewhere that that was what you did with water of doubtful purity. ‘It looks clean though, you can see every little stone on the bottom.’
They lay on their backs, and the warm sun’s rays soothed their aching bodies.
‘I’m too lazy to put up the tents,’ said Julia.
‘Is there anything to eat?’ said Nathan.
‘Only bread, until we get out the cooking stove,’ said Julia.
They ate dry bread, and it had never tasted so good.
‘My arm hurts,’ said Nathan. So Julia put another cold compress on it, using water from the stream this time. It wasn’t as cold as the lemonade had been, but it helped. ‘That’s better,’ said Nathan. ‘Let’s put the tents up now. Where shall we put them?’
Julia considered. ‘Further along,’ she said. ‘Over there by those trees, where they can’t see us from the gate.’
Neither child had ever erected a tent before, so it took quite a while to work out the procedure, and matters were not helped by the fact that Nathan had effectively only one hand. But eventually the tents were up, after a fashion, end to end along the bank. They sagged a bit, and some of the pegs kept coming out, but Julia did not think they would actually fall down. She crept into hers and lay on top of the sleeping bag. The space inside was tiny, and as the sides had not been properly stretched, they collapsed inwards so that they almost touched her where she lay. Furthermore, the ground was sloping, so Julia had to brace herself not to roll over and crash against the walls of the tent. It was not going to be a very comfortable night.