Arden

by Nick Corbett

  Arden

  The Journey Home

  Nick Corbett

  TRANSFORMING CITIES

  First published in Great Britain by Transforming Cities in 2011

  Copyright © 2011 Nick Corbett

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.transformingcities.co.uk

  But let justice roll on like a river,

  righteousness like a never-failing stream!

  Amos 5:24

  1 Tribe

  The universe opens over the warm earth. Sky and earth merge as one. Stars dance upon water. Primordial silence. Ripe fruits are testimony to a long, hot summer. Beside a sandy beach, a rowing boat sways. This is the Forest of Arden. Trees have grown here since the retreat of the Ice Age. The air has a woody freshness.

  Deep within the forest comes a rushing sound of wind. A red fox darts into the undergrowth. The wind becomes a screaming engine. An Audi Quattro hurtles down the dirt track, towards the water. Headlights dazzle through the trees and flash across the pool, revealing an island with two stubby trees. The car skids out of control, dangerously close to the water. Black dust engulfs the scene.

  For a moment all is silent; then a second engine roars from within the forest. The box shape of a Mini springs from the trees. It is being throttled to its limits in a low gear, bounding down the dirt track, in hot pursuit. The brakes have locked. It is on a collision course. Three men pull themselves into an emergency brace position, eyes tightly shut, expecting the impact. Miraculously, the Mini stops so close to the Audi’s back bumper, it looks as if the two cars are kissing. Dust settles.

  Two young women stagger out of the Audi. They run to the water’s edge, laughing, breathless, giddy. They lean forwards, hands on knees, catching their breath, a giggling heap of blonde and red hair.

  The three young men clamber out of the Mini and stand in amazement, pointing at the tiny gap between the cars. The excitement of the race injected a fierce energy into all of them, but now they are all relieved that no damage has been done. The adrenalin rush has passed. Joe shakes his head.

  “I can’t believe we missed it Luke, the mighty Mini survives again!”

  “I know mate, I really thought we were going to crash - again.”

  The young men are anxious to save face because they have lost the car race from town to the pool. They’ve never lost a race to the girls before. They scratch their heads, searching for an excuse. Their other friend, Archie, looks very pale; in fact, he is turning green.

  “Maybe we should say we had to slow down because he was being sick,” says Luke.

  Archie is bent double, leaning against a wall of the boathouse.

  “Are you being sick again Archie?” shouts Luke.

  Archie retrieves a finger from down his throat and wretches; nothing comes out.

  All eighteen years old, Joe, Luke, and Archie are best mates. Joe is dark and a bit of a dreamer. Luke is a fair-haired golden boy. Archie is ginger and the girls say he is a “loon”.

  “We won! We won! I beat you Luke, at last!” cries Cathy, the driver of the Audi, from the water’s edge, hands firmly on her hips. A slightly plump, pretty red head, Cathy is a little powerhouse. She has an artistic temperament and is constantly changing her hairstyle, much to the discomfort of her parents who are rich and live in a grand house on the edge of town. Tonight Cathy is dressed in dandified regency, copied from Adam and the Ants, plus lots of jewellery; a true New Romantic.

  Standing beside Cathy is her best friend, Hannah; tall, thin, blonde and beautiful.

  “So who’s the fastest now? Face it Luke, you’re never going to beat the ace Audi again!” shouts Hannah, holding aloft a victorious clenched fist.

  “Didn’t you see me flashing my lights at you? Archie was being sick, we slowed down ages ago!”

  “That’s a lie, imbecile, and you know it!” snaps Cathy.

  What follows is an ill-tempered discourse on the girls’ lack of care for Archie and the boys’ lack of fair play. They all take it very seriously.

  “Oh, come on, I need to get away from these little boys, they’re absolute imbeciles,” says Cathy.

  “Hey, what did you call us?’ asks Luke.

  “Imbeciles!”

  “Oh, that’s alright then.”

  Cathy grabs Hannah’s arm and escorts her off to the little beach.

  Archie joins his mates. “I really do need to make myself be sick. I know I’d feel better if I could just throw up.”

  “Blimey, your face is completely green!” says Joe, alarmed. “Are you alright? Do you want me to punch you in the stomach?”

  Archie shakes his head with a worried look on his face. They turn and notice that Luke is already strolling off, nonchalantly, towards the water’s edge. They turn on their heels and follow in his wake, as they often do.

  “How come we always follow him, Joe?” mumbles Archie with a grimace.

  “I’m not following him. I just want to look at the water too.”

  Luke is popular and handsome. Joe and Archie often find themselves in orbit around him. He has star quality and a strong gravitational pull. He is self-contained and can happily go a week without seeing the others, while they want to be in almost constant contact. Luke rarely makes phone calls. He knows his friends will make the necessary social arrangements and that he’ll find himself in the middle of it all. In their sports lessons at school, Luke would always be one of the first to be chosen out of the line. He wasn’t much better at football than Joe, and yet Joe would always be in the lowest quartile to be chosen, usually around thirtieth. He had less gravitational pull. Poor old Archie, meanwhile, was often the very last to be chosen, especially when Greenie, the year group’s weakling was off sick. On one occasion, when Archie was the last boy standing in the line, the two team captains actually argued about which one would have to take him. He stood there, humiliated, looking at the ground, feeling like toxic waste. But all that is in the past now; school is finished.

  At the water’s edge, breathing deeply, Joe smiles at Luke.

  “It’s all over now. No more school, ever! It’s weird, isn’t it? It’s going to take some getting used to.”

  “Oh, I’m used to it already. I’ve been waiting years for this. No more tyrants!”

  “That’s true.”

  “Freedom!”

  All five friends stand together upon soft sand at the edge of the pool. A fragrant, warm, forest breeze blows over them; their tempers are soothed. They drink in the silence and absorb the wonder of the night; hush.

  For each of the friends, their teenage years brought a degree of estrangement from their families. They found a degree of sanity and security in each other. Over the previous eight hours, they’ve been to several pubs and parties with their wider circle of friends, a convoy of cars making its way from one venue to the next. Cathy and Luke, both driving, have been more or less sober all night, but the others have been very drunk. Now they are sobering up again.

  They stand, gazing into the shallow water. William Shakespeare and his friends had stumbled upon the same pool nearly half a millennium ago, but now this Forest of Arden belongs to Joe and his friends. This is their time. Joe looks over the p
ool; he is at one with the world, feels he is merging into the water. He wonders if the others can feel the same urge to be submerged. He turns to look at them. These are the people he is most at ease with in the world; nobody is missing. He nods almost imperceptibly at Hannah and she smiles back, approvingly. She kicks off her red shiny high-heeled shoes. The boundaries are few between the friends, and the boundaries are few between the friends and this old forest. Joe breaks the silence.

  “Oh come on! No time to worry about wobbly bits!”

  He takes off his shirt and trousers. Cathy stares at his athletic body. Hannah looks away. Her attention is drawn to the solitary rowing boat, tethered to a dead tree a few metres from the shore. She takes off her jeans, folds them neatly, then deposits them on the beach. She paddles out into the water, cautiously to begin with, and then more confidently, her smooth brown legs striding through the dark water.

  “Where’s she going?” whimpers Archie.

  “To get the boat,” replies Luke.

  “Oh, right. Hey, she’s had a lot to drink, you know. That red wine we were supposed to be sharing, I hardly drank any of it.”

  The others ignore Archie and strip off.

  Hannah, balancing herself carefully, reaches forward and grabs a slippery rope that ties the boat to the dead tree. The water is cold around her ankles. She grapples with a frayed knot. Something distracts her. Water is tinkling and tumbling behind her. She turns around. The stars are bright but it is still dark and difficult to see. Hannah can just make out the faint outline of a stone archway under the boathouse. Beneath it flows a stream of water, overflowing from the pool, passing over large stone slabs and then disappearing into the blackness. Hannah regains her focus. Nothing is going to delay her further from getting that boat and taking it out to the island in the middle of the pool. The knot unravels. Hannah grabs a handful of rope, oblivious to the green grime that coats it and now her hand. She drags the heavy boat into deeper water. A v-shaped ripple flows in its wake. Little waves wash over the sandy beach where the friends have stripped down to their underwear.

  “Come on you lot, I’ve got it!” yells Hannah.

  “Coming Hannah!” replies Cathy, stepping into the water before letting out a squeal.

  “It’s freezing!” She runs out again.

  “No it’s not, come on!” says Luke, manfully.

  They all paddle through the shallows and then wade into deeper, darker water, where they climb aboard Hannah’s heavily swaying boat. They are five laughing teenagers, splashing around on a pool in the middle of the Forest of Arden, under a numinous sky.

  “The mission’s to get to the island and back before sunrise, alright?” says Hannah assertively.

  “Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll row!” says Cathy, and she paddles the boat surprisingly well, using a small oar, found under the seat.

  Steady progress is made on their outward journey to the island, a small hump marked by two stubby oak trees. Joe lies back with his head resting upon Hannah’s legs, soothed, comforted, warmed. He looks up, marvelling at the night sky. He has never seen the sky illuminated like this, millions of pulsing stars stretching from horizon to horizon.

  “Are the wispy bits the Milky Way?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” murmurs Hannah sultrily, as if she knew.

  Cathy doesn’t look happy. Desperate to interrupt whatever is happening between Joe and Hannah, she interjects with the first thing that comes into her head - a question about Joe’s underwear.

  “Why on earth are you wearing paisley Y-fronts, Joe? I thought you’d be the kind of guy to wear trendy boxers.”

  The wind is taken out of Joe’s sails. “All my other pants are boxers, actually, and it’s just that my grandad hasn’t got around to doing the laundry yet,” he answers, clearly rattled. He refuses Cathy’s request to help her row the boat. He regains his comfortable position resting upon Hannah, and he stares again at the sky. Cathy remains huffy about Joe and Hannah being so close. The group continues its journey to the island in silence. Archie surreptitiously looks at Cathy’s large breasts, which wobble in her black bra as she paddles. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Luke stands up, shakily, and with one hand holding his Calvin Klein boxers, he dives into the black water, as cleanly as an otter. He leaves behind a heavily swaying boat.

  Over the last summer whenever the friends have been together beside water, Luke has always been the first to get into it, and the others have followed. And so it is now. Remnants of drunkenness are swept away by a second wind. Being eighteen, the friends are no strangers to lethargy, and yet, at other times, they get these wonderful bursts of bouncing energy. One by one they enter the water, but all less impressively than Luke. The water is deep and cold, bracing. Archie is the only one left in the boat.

  “Come on, Archie, you wimp!” splutters Cathy, treading water after swimming a few strokes.

  “Come on Archie!” echoes Hannah, and then she screams. “Agh! I can’t touch the bottom!” She disappears under water, emerges again, laughing.

  Joe does a valiant front crawl, catching up with Luke who is treading water about ten metres away from the boat.

  Meanwhile, Archie remains unconvinced. His complexion has returned to its usual white, rather than alarming green, but he is not a strong swimmer and he fears the dark water. He is also very short-sighted, so taking off his glasses is a risky business. His large, thick, tortoiseshell spectacles cost him a lot of money, which he earned himself by working on a boring summer job, stuffing envelopes. He mulls the situation over, evaluating the risks: Could I actually wear my glasses in the water? If I leave my glasses in the boat, will I be able to see the boat when I’m in the water? Would the others help me? Would they duck me? If I become submerged, could I forget which way is up? Are pike a threat?

  After an agonising minute, Archie’s desire to join his friends in the water is greater than his anxieties about self-preservation. He places his spectacles under the wooden seat in the boat and steadily prepares to launch himself. Suddenly, he slips on the edge and for a split second he is flying through the air with a panic stricken grimace. There is an impressive backwards summersault, legs pass over head, and then he plunges into the water, with a very loud splash. Water rushes up his nose, stinging. There is cheering and hysterical howling from the others. Joe punches the water with delight. In the blackness, some instinct tells Archie which way is up, and he emerges gasping for breath, shocked, disorientated. His nose hurts, but he is exhilarated, grinning inanely.

  After a few more minutes of swimming and fooling around, the friends clamber back into the security of the boat, dripping and laughing. The pool becomes still and silent again. The leaves rustle on the stubby oak trees. One by one, the stars renew their dance upon the water. After a brief rest, Cathy again paddles the boat, very gently. Slowly, they resume their journey to the island.

  For the boys, it’s been a summer of discovery; drinking to excess, fumbling with girls at parties, one-night stands. They have fire in their bellies and sex on the brain.

  “You’re staring Archie,” whispers Joe with a wink and a nod. Archie turns away from Cathy and he crosses his legs tightly.

  With Cathy pursuing a steady course, the boat soon pulls up beside the island, but only Joe can be bothered to get out. He climbs up the earth mound and leans against one of the oak trees. He claims the island for himself and his friends. The others lay content and restful in the gently swaying cradle of the boat. Cleansed of all worries, they are at peace with the world and with each other.

  “Shooting star… just went by,” says Archie with a disinterested yawn.

  Luke is more excited, he points up at the night sky.

  “Hey! There’s loads of them!”

  “Where?” asks Hannah. “I want to see one. I’ve never seen a shooting star, where are they?”

  “Just look up there,” replies Luke.

  Hannah sits upright and her eyes follow the line of Luke’s pointing finger.

  “Wow!
There’s lots of them, look Joe!” she calls over to the island. Joe moves away from the trees and looks skywards. His jaw is agape as he counts one, two, three, four, five shooting stars darting across the firmament.

  These shooting stars could be portents of change. The living has been easy for the friends over the long, hot summer, but their time together, at least in this place, is coming to an end. Tonight is the climax of their season together and a new day is dawning. Short bursts of birdsong are already breaking out from within the forest. The vulgar squawk of a crow echoes over the pool.

  On the journey back, the dawn chorus gains momentum. Joe looks up at the changing sky. He feels his spirit lifting on the growing crescendo of warbling, whistling, chirping and cooing, until every atom in the air is resonating with birdsong. As he helps Cathy paddle the boat with his arms, his eyes follow frenetic blackbirds, darting across the pool, rejoicing in their territorial claims.

  Cathy and Joe continue to paddle, Joe lunges his arms fearlessly into the dark water. The boat glides in the direction of the boathouse. After a while, Archie is the first to speak. He moans about his new job, which annoys the others, and so the girls tease him about his growing beer belly; then they tease him about Tanya, his educational one-night stand. Archie skilfully shifts the conversation to Joe and his embarrassing cricket skills.

  They have soon covered half the distance between the island and the boathouse. Archie speaks again, but in a more serious tone.

  “It’s time for me to go away. I’m not sure where yet, but I want to leave...”

  There is a pregnant pause.

  “You're going to have to walk on water if you’re leaving us now mate,” chuckles Joe.

  Archie continues unabashed. “I wish I could take a year off like you Luke, and go around the world, then study…what is it you’re doing, again? Fishing studies?”