by Tom Hoyle
‘Get over yourself, George Fleet,’ Nick shot back angrily. ‘What a prick!’
I think things would have turned nasty if Jason hadn’t opened the door right then. ‘Jeez, well done, team!’ he said, apparently oblivious to the tension.
It took about half an hour for us all, Reg included, to assemble on the logs, by which time it was beginning to get dark. It was still very hot, though, and some of the group were only wearing shorts. That was how I noticed Alastair’s scar.
While we ate curry, Toby gave us a lecture about the need to work together – and that Ultimate Bushcraft could only be a success if we worked as a team. He did the usual thing of asking for someone to apologize for hiding Reg’s stuff, but no one owned up, obviously.
‘I’d like to say that I think it’s unfair a certain bastard,’ Nick said, glancing at me, ‘is accusing me of doing something when I’m totally innocent. It’s humiliating.’
‘OK, Nick,’ I said. ‘If you didn’t do it, then I apologize.’ That was the best I could manage, given I was sure he was guilty, almost certainly alongside Peter.
‘Let’s move on,’ said Toby. ‘I think you know the general pattern of these expeditions. We have four training days first, and then we start our challenge. You’re all on the Ultimate Bushcraft Gold Star Challenge, which means we’ll be trekking through remote territory inland from here. This isn’t about five-star hotels, you’ll be really experiencing the great Aussie outdoors, making your own fires, cooking your own food, sometimes camping outside. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something closer to nature – living on the edge.’
‘It all sounds a bit scary to me,’ said Luke, evidently both excited and worried.
‘I’m sure there’s a structured plan,’ said Lee.
‘Yeah, it’s all organized. There’s no mobile reception where we’re going, no Wi-Fi or public toilets, but we have to be at a set point each night and the cabins all have a radio or a telephone.’
‘What if there’s an emergency?’ asked Luke.
‘Like a broken fingernail?’ muttered Peter.
‘We’re never more than ten miles from a contact point, and never too far from farms and roads. It’s a radical trip, but it’s all been checked out and risk-assessed. Keeping you safe is our number one priority.’
I looked over at Reg, who had been silent since getting his clothes back, and promised myself that I’d look out for him. He was one of the good guys.
‘And finally,’ said Toby, ‘about tomorrow: we do some of our challenge in canoes down a river, so we’ll be training in the sea. I presume everyone’s happy with that?’
There were a lot of enthusiastic noises, but Lee looked serious and put his hand up.
‘Yeah, Lee, shoot,’ said Toby.
There was silence for about three or four seconds while Lee breathed in and out through his nose deeply. Then: ‘I’m afraid I can’t swim very well. I defy the laws of physics,’ he said.
‘What, mate? You can’t swim?’ Jason said. ‘Everyone can swim. You said that you could on the permission form.’
Lee was red-faced. It was the first time I’d seen him unsure of exactly what to say, but he quickly gathered his wits. ‘I suppose I can swim underwater, given that that’s where I normally end up. OK, I formally confirm that I can swim like a fish.’
I thought that was a clever way out of it, but my chuckle got lost in the laughter and insults.
‘I think you’ll be all right,’ said Toby. ‘We’ll all be wearing life jackets, and we’ll start with some training about how to move around in the water when you have one on. Jase and I will be there in single-man canoes. Don’t worry, mate, we’ll keep an eye on you.’ He stood up. ‘Now, we’re all shattered after the journey, so grab some food and then head off to bed.’
While we grabbed food off the barbecue, Peter asked about the girls who were in another, similar, house nearby.
‘Yeah, the girls have to join us for some of the training and there’s a barbecue with them tomorrow night,’ said Jason.
There were whoops and comments about this, all positive, mostly rude. Reg, happier by the minute, even said, ‘Bring it on!’
‘Yeah! Let me at ’em,’ said Nick. ‘I’ve got a lot to offer a girl.’
‘Where’s their house?’ asked Peter.
‘It’s through the trees, before the next inlet,’ said Toby. Perhaps there was a little amusement in his voice, but I couldn’t be sure. ‘But it’s time for some sleep now. Shake off that jet lag. No one’s to leave the house. You’ll need all your energy tomorrow for the canoeing.’
‘And for the barbecue the girls will be having with me.’ Nick smirked.
Soon after, we drifted inside. I remember turning just before the door and looking out to sea, listening to the sound of waves gently lapping in the total black of the night. Two people were visible on the very edge of the light that was thrown out by the house.
Just for an instant I saw one person holding the shoulders of another and whispering in his ear. One of them tall and thin, the other shorter and unable to stand still. I didn’t stop to think about it; I was so tired and it didn’t register as important at the time.
[Here ends the sixth part of George’s statement]
THE OTHER CHAPTER 6
(SAID IN THE HOUR BEFORE):
HIM
I remember how you were given a room on your own. Typical. Bias. I can’t stand favouritism. I’ve been around the world, me, and I’ve seen that everyone is EQUAL. Until they make themselves unequal.
And some of us are more than equal.
The snivelling apologies to you on the bus. Oh, Georgey, I love you and I’m sorry. Oh, Georgey, I love you and want to have your babies. Favouritism.
Typical of Georgey to have such a pathetic puppet. You were always trying to humiliate people.
I couldn’t resist taking the clothes. It served Reggie right for taking up so much space. No one admired Reg’s body. Not even Reg. But I’m sure I saw you admiring my body – I’m right, aren’t I?
HEY – YOU. Don’t drift away from me. WAKE UP.
. . .
Look at me now.
WAKE UP.
WAKE UP.
IT MAKES ME SO BLOODY ANGRY WHEN YOU DON’T DO WHAT I SAY.
Please. Don’t. Make. Me. Do. Something. You’ll. Regret.
Now.
Beautiful scar, isn’t it? It’s shaped like a rainbow. Isn’t it?
You know how I got that?
That was my dad. The thing that absolutely makes me kill myself laughing is that this was a complete accident. All the times that bastard hit me and hurt me and he didn’t leave a mark, and then this was a slip on the floor and a smash of the glass and . . .
THAT HAPPENED. Scarred for life.
Blood spurted across the room.
Someone at school told me there’s a line in a poem by some old geezer about how parents screw you up. I bet your parents were all soft, soft like the inside of an insect. My parents were METAL. And MENTAL.
Anyway – you are ALWAYS distracting me, and we don’t have forever.
Taking the clothes was a job very well done, don’t you think? Just the right place to leave them as well. Rubbish with the rubbish. A work of genius.
And that’s what I am – an absolute genius!
Think of everything I’ve achieved: only a GENIUS could have done all this.
I suppose you think that I did it all on my own. You still don’t know who my accomplice was? It was the start of a very useful partnership. You’re so thick in the head. STUPID.
And by the end of the day I had another very useful puppet, with fear as my strings. Someone who could not resist. Someone to serve me, just as Georgey had servants to assist him.
You make me angry, Georgey. And when I get angry I need to hurt someone.
But I want to preserve you for a little while longer.
STATEMENT #6
ANDREA BROWN
I can confirm that t
he room arrangements at the Thorpe Cove boys’ house were as follows:
George Fleet was sharing with Matthew Lough (after the latter’s arrival)
Lee Andrews was sharing with Luke Bertrand
Alastair Boyd was sharing with Reginald Sanworth
Nicholas McGregor was sharing with Peter Emsworth-Lyle
Toby Jones and Jason Bayne had separate rooms at either end of the building.
I have been asked to restate for the record that Toby Jones was sometimes out of the main building and with me in the girls’ house, about half a mile away, and that I visited the boys’ house a few times, sometimes with the girls’ group and sometimes on my own. But this didn’t happen all the time. Toby was always very serious about his duties.
CHAPTER 7
(SIX DAYS BEFORE):
THE SEVENTH PART OF GEORGE’S STATEMENT
I sent some texts home but was so soundly asleep two minutes later that I didn’t hear the pings of the replies. The next morning I was still fast asleep when Luke was sent in to wake me up.
‘You must have been having bad dreams,’ he said, shaking the side of the bunk. ‘You twitch a lot in your sleep.’
‘Morning,’ I mumbled, cloudy with sleep. ‘Is it time to get up? I don’t remember any bad dreams – something about swimming, maybe?’
‘It looked like a nasty dream to me. Probably something to do with spiders or snakes.’ Luke stared into my eyes. ‘Jason told me to tell you that it’s time for breakfast.’
Toby was talking as I arrived outside at the logs. ‘. . . no further than the headland, and the tide would bring you in. Hey, George, mate, you’ll be happy with this news: Matt’s joining us this arvo.’
I smiled. ‘Good.’
‘Fancy some breakfast?’ said Reg. He handed me scrambled eggs with doorstep-sized toast, and said, quietly: ‘Thanks for trying to help yesterday. I got stressed cos I was annoyed. But you and Alastair have been really nice about everything.’ Then, not much more than a whisper, ‘I can’t help being fat, you know – it’s a medical thing.’
‘I did say I wanted us to be mates,’ I said, and we shook hands.
Peter interrupted at this point. ‘He’ll let you give him a kiss if you ask nicely.’
Then it was Nick. ‘Probably let you do more than that.’
Peter, straight after, laughing: ‘Especially if he loses his clothes again.’
‘Now come on, guys,’ said Toby, trying, I thought, to cajole Peter and Nick into being pleasant. ‘We’ve got a massive day in front of us. I’ll do a bit of land training with the canoes first, then we’ll head out into the bay and get some practice. It’s harder here than down the river, where the current takes you and you just have to steer away from the rocks at the side. Now, get inside, slap on the suncream, and come out in trunks in half an hour. Helmets and life jackets are in the crate.’
As everyone wandered inside, the sun already throwing down heat, Toby called me back. ‘Hey, George,’ he said. ‘There’s an odd number and I wondered if you’d mind taking a single canoe out. They’re a bit more inclined to flip, but I gather you’re a –’ he paused to make the most of the backward compliment – ‘a half-decent swimmer.’ He was smiling when he said it, being really nice as usual.
I said that wasn’t a problem and smiled back. Jason watched us, not looking very happy, even tutting a little, but I wasn’t sure why. Toby had come to me, and not the other way round, after all.
We really did start with the basics: putting on the life jacket and what to do in an emergency. Of course, when the emergency did happen that afternoon, none of the procedures were followed, but that wasn’t Toby’s fault and he did what he had to do to the letter.
Then we sat in the canoes on land. I got some hassle about being in a canoe on my own (‘George is in a canoe with all his friends’), but it was only from Nick and Peter so it was easy to shrug off.
Reg put up with some banter about whether the canoe would float with him in it, but Lee went on about the boat dropping lower in the water and being more stable, which I think was meant to be kind.
‘Low in the water is about right – probably about thirty feet underwater,’ was Nick’s quip. He was really beginning to annoy me, but that was nothing compared to what happened in the afternoon.
(I want to tell this in some detail.)
Matt hadn’t returned by lunchtime (I was hoping that he would suddenly arrive so that we could share a boat), and Jason split up the canoes so that they weren’t based on dorms. That seemed sensible as it broke up Nick and Peter. Reg went with Luke, and Nick with Al (I felt that Alastair didn’t want that, but that was just a belief at the time because I had taken against Nick). Reg and Luke were messing about, pretending to be Olympic athletes limbering up.
The really important bit was that Peter, who declared himself a good swimmer (bring it on! I thought) went with Lee, who was still really sensitive about not being able to swim much, if at all.
We all clambered into the boats and played around near the shore. Steering was difficult at first, but I soon got the hang of the single boat and the others figured out how to work together rather than hindering one another. Toby and Jason weaved between the boats, shouting instructions and encouragement, as well as doing a fair bit of mocking, comparing our efforts to what their mothers and grandmothers could achieve.
There were races between the two-man boats, but as Nick and Alastair won by ever-increasing margins, enthusiasm for competition evaporated.
It was after this, when Toby said that we could have some free time with the boats, that things began to go wrong. All of us, including Toby and Jason, drifted further from the shore and therefore out of the bay – it was just a few hundred yards but that made all the difference to the size of the waves. Reg started using his paddle to splash Nick’s boat, but Nick and Alastair were quick and retaliated by swooping in, splashing, and then paddling away really quickly. Even Lee became more and more confident on the water. It was good fun while it lasted.
All the time, we floated further round the headland and towards the rocks outside the bay.
We probably would have avoided problems had someone not spotted the girls on the rocks. There were eight of them with two leaders – I could just about make out Andrea as one of the adults. This added showing off into the mix. I’ll admit to joining in and paddling a bit harder. Who wouldn’t? Some of the girls were in bikinis. I think we all wanted to be noticed ahead of the barbecue.
Toby then tried to call everyone back, but Reg and Luke weren’t listening, and the other two boats had the alpha-male edge of Nick and Peter.
‘Get back, now!’ he shouted. But no one listened.
Nick and Alastair then rammed Peter and Lee’s boat. Nick was obviously the one egging Alastair on. ‘Ram! Ram! Ram!’ he shouted. It wasn’t exactly the collision that capsized the other boat – that was caused by Peter and Lee reaching out to retaliate, but it would never have happened without Nick’s stupidity. With a shout and a muddle of arms and legs that looked like a fight in a cartoon, Peter and Lee capsized.
Lee flailed his arms around in wild panic, sending himself further out to sea. He was shouting so loudly and was in such a state that it was impossible to get any message through, though both Toby and Jason tried to as they raced off to try to rescue him.
The bizarre and unexpected thing was that Peter, who no one was very worried about, didn’t resurface for ages, and then when he did it was without his lifebelt and in a completely different place. He was splashing around and gurgling, in a total panic, nowhere near his boat.
Stupidly, I just sat there for about five seconds before I realized Peter couldn’t swim either. The idiot had told us a pack of lies about how good he was. There was no hope of him returning to his boat and using it for buoyancy, which was the logic Toby had drilled into us.
I paddled over really quickly, but there was nothing I could do from the boat. Every time I got near, Peter’s whirling arms pushed my canoe
away.
I still don’t know what the most sensible thing to do would have been, but it probably wasn’t taking off my lifebelt, which is exactly what I did (my mind was racing – I thought the lifebelt was an obstacle that would get in the way of swimming properly). I capsized the canoe, which was harder than it sounds, and slid out underwater. It actually only took me five or six swimming strokes to get to Peter, who was still thrashing around.
As I reached out to try to help him, one of his arms smacked me round the ear, and then another punched me in the lip (I realized that this was unintentional).
I had to swim behind him and, as he weakened, I somehow managed to hold both his arms to his side while keeping us afloat by kicking my legs.
‘Just stop moving and I can help you! Stop moving! Come on – I’m trying to help you!’ I swore at him really badly which was unusual for me – I suppose I was worried he would whack me round the head and knock me out.
Eventually he stopped moving and I could use one arm to start moving us and use Peter’s buoyancy as a strength, but it was still the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in water. Peter was tall but thin, more bone than muscle, despite his boasting. I kept on dipping underwater and rising up into a confused salty spray. I could hear the roaring of the waves and shouting – possibly at me, maybe at Peter. Sky and sea and land all came in random order as I concentrated on kicking with my legs and stretching out with my free arm, just as I had practised in the pool back at home. But it was so much more difficult in the sea, straining against the current, worrying that Peter would slip away and sink like a stone.
Peter was silent now. I still shouted at him when I could, waves and breathlessness permitting, wanting to know that he was still conscious.
Then we entered the relative calm of the bay and I yanked Peter towards the bay kick by kick. Every thrust brought a deeper ache of tight muscle; every pull of my arm strained my shoulder. I dipped under the water and tasted salt. It wasn’t fun.