Arden

by Nick Corbett

  “That’ll be ocean science, at Portsmouth University,” replies Luke. “Hey, why don’t you come with me on my gap year?”

  Archie is genuinely flattered, but he hasn’t got any savings and he hasn’t got rich parents like Luke. His bright ginger hair is cropped short because the real world of work has arrived early for him. He had hoped to be going away to university like his friends, but he didn’t get the A-level grades required. Universities aren’t too impressed with one grade E and three “Unclassifieds”.

  Joe steers the conversation towards what each of the friends will be doing in ten years time.

  “So, what’ll you be doing then, Archie?” he asks.

  “Oh, I’ll be in New York, in a penthouse apartment, where the thinkers live,” Archie replies snootily.

  “Pompous carrot,” mutters Luke with a half smile. “But what will you actually be doing Archie?”

  “Oh, I’ll be in advertising, with loadsa money!” Archie gestures with his hand as if he’s got a big wad of cash. “And I’ll have a bevy of beauties waiting for me back in the penthouse.”

  “Where does he get it from?” Cathy asks, turning to Joe who shrugs his shoulders. Joe turns to Hannah. He speaks in a gentle voice, he is very fond of her.

  “What about you, Hannah? What’ll you be doing ten years from now?”

  “Oh, don’t ask me, Joe.” Hannah brushes off the question initially, but then she continues. “Well, I did read this book recently about a woman who travelled to Africa and worked with children with AIDS. I’d like to be like her.”

  “I don’t believe AIDS does you any harm. It’s ignorance that kills you,” states Archie alluding to the recent television advertisement campaign. Hannah looks over to Cathy for affirmation of her career choice, but Cathy’s face is blank.

  “So, how about you Cathy?” asks Hannah.

  “Well, as much as I’d like to be with you, I couldn’t possibly work in Africa because of the flies,” she replies with a smile. “Instead, I’ll just have to be the editor of a fashion magazine. Oh, and I’ll marry a very rich man. We’ll have a big house, a cleaner, two Porches and enough babies for you lot, because I can’t imagine any of you will ever get married.”

  This comment about marital status leaves Hannah looking worried. Cathy then turns to Joe.

  “Okay paisley pants, you started this, what’ll you be doing ten years from now?”

  “He’s going to be a journalist, I reckon,” says Luke. Joe looks baffled. Luke continues. “Well, you’re always getting your letters published in the local newspaper aren’t you? You’re like disgusted of Tunbridge Wells!”

  Archie steps in. “You need to be careful about that, Hitler started off with letters to the local newspaper.”

  “Oh, thanks for the warning,” replies Joe. “I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. I’d like to save the rain forests… but, I’d like to be rich too. It’s boring being poor. So, maybe I’ll be a property developer.”

  Luke rolls his eyes, but Joe continues.

  “I don’t know where I’ll be doing my developing, maybe in the South of France. Yeah that’ll do. I like French women.”

  “Well, why are you doing gardening or whatever it is at uni, dick head?” Archie’s surprisingly agitated; he goes on. “Anyway, you’ll be living back here in ten years time with a bossy little wife, and you can forget about her being French. No such luck. Oh, and she’ll have very small tits.”

  “No she won’t! She’ll be French, gorgeous, and have juggernormous baps!”

  Joe gets a laugh with his new word but he is clearly a bit flustered by Archie.

  “I know you’re mentally handicapped, but it’s landscape architecture I’ll be studying, not gardening!” he says. “There’s a big world out there waiting for me too, Archie!”

  Joe takes a deep breath and then, turning to Luke, he forces a smile.

  “How about you Luke, what’ll you be doing ten years from now?”

  Before he can answer, Archie interjects again, with a loud whisper to Cathy, followed by a furtive look down her bra.

  “He’ll be working for his dad.”

  “I won’t be working for my dad, that’s for sure, ginger pubes.”

  “Why not?” asks Archie, ignoring the insult.

  “I’ll be doing my own thing...” Luke takes a moment to think about what he wants to do most in the world. The previous year he went sailing around Cornwall with his dad and his cousin Jamie, in his uncle’s fifty-foot yacht. When they were a mile offshore they saw a pod of killer whales. For Luke, that was a mind-blowing, life-changing, spectacle.

  He continues with his train of thought. “Marine research or, maybe, I’ll just be painting boats in Cornwall. I like it down there. I could be a lobster fisherman!”

  The boat glides back to the shore. The friends clamber out, legs unsteady. The sky is distinctly lighter now, bereft of all but the brightest stars. Luke wades through the water, pulling the boat by its sodden rope. He ties it to the dead tree with a proficient sailor’s knot, which later mystifies the boat’s owner. The others make for the beach where their clothes are piled on top of each other. Hannah beckons Joe to join her. She smiles and presses her body against him. He feels her pert breasts against his chest. Their lips meet in a long kiss. Hannah meant for this to be a quick friendly farewell, but she and Joe are taken by unexpected passion. Hannah manages to break off, she stares into Joe’s eyes.

  “We all love you, you know that don’t you?”

  Cathy dresses quickly. She walks over to Hannah and Joe, carrying a large bundle of clothes under her arm. Ignoring their intimate embrace, she grabs hold of Hannah’s arm, roughly.

  “Come along please! I’ve got your clothes here. We need to go right now. I’ve got to get that car back!”

  Hannah only has time to smile at Joe before she’s escorted off, still in her underwear. Sitting back in the Audi Quattro, she lowers the electric window and shouts to Joe.

  “See you!”

  Cathy settles into the driver’s seat and turns the stereo on. It’s her favourite song, the number one in the charts: The Only Way is Up! by Yazz and the Plastic Population. She turns it up, full blast, shattering the peace of the forest. The car pulls off with a wheel spin. Hannah blows Joe a kiss out of the window. There is a cloud of dust. Joe is motionless, standing there in his worst pair of paisley underpants. All around him are trees, water and burgeoning birdsong.

  When Joe eventually returns to Archie and Luke, they are already dressed and waiting for him expectantly on the beach. Archie stands with his hands on his hips, looking like a parent waiting for an explanation from a naughty child. Luke just gives Joe a knowing nod.

  “Who’s a big boy then?” says Archie. “That was a turn up for the books wasn’t it? Have you got off with her before - without telling us?”

  Joe smiles, but then he lets out a yell.

  “Aaaargh! Cathy’s got my clothes! No wonder she raced off!”

  Either for a lark or maybe by accident, Cathy has taken Joe’s clothes. He is left feeling angry and cold.

  “We’ll call at my house, it’s on the way, you can borrow some of my clothes,” says Luke reassuringly.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Joe tries not to sound too pleased, but going to Luke’s house is always a treat. Lullingdon Manor, Luke’s home, is a very old and special place, right on the edge of the Forest of Arden. The friends were last at Lullingdon for Luke’s eighteenth birthday party. What a brilliant night that was; party games, a barn dance, and Luke’s intriguing, entertaining family. Joe anticipates borrowing some particularly cool clothes from Luke. The three friends climb back into Luke’s Mini. They race up the dirt track with U2’s Joshua Tree blasting out of the windows.

  2 Wellspring of Life

  Shafts of light penetrate the canopy giving the woods a mysterious glow. Green and gold trees shroud the road; dappled light and shade. The Mini speeds through. The windows are down. “Turn the music up!” shouts
Joe from the back seat. It’s his favourite U2 track: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. Bono’s voice, the speed of the car, the wind, freedom.

  They are on the main straight road through the forest. Luke accelerates to almost seventy miles per hour. He always drives fast, despite a history of minor crashes. Archie sits in the front passenger seat, occasionally looking at Luke. Archie was present when the last crash happened. He has noticed that Luke always has a mad look about him when he is driving too fast.

  “He’s got that look again,” says Archie, turning back to face Joe, but he doesn’t get a reply. Joe’s feet are up on the back seat, knees tucked into his body. He looks like a naked hostage in the confined environment of the back seat; he is smiling serenely as he stares out of the window, lost in the music. Archie finds Joe’s unintelligible smile as troubling as Luke’s manic grimace. He scratches the back of his head and mumbles on about slowing down.

  Joe can’t put into words just how happy he is feeling. He has shed an old skin; he is emerging into the first day of the rest of his life. An electric riff emerges from harmonious chords. Then the electric guitar storms in, like an attack helicopter; Joe feels the power. He is totally free. He doesn’t need to know where he is going; he doesn’t need to go home again. It is as if the car’s racing him to a bigger country, where he can stretch his wings and soar. For the first time, he is excited about going away to university, but then what of this new possibility with Hannah?

  The forest becomes copses, meadows, hedgerows, fences, paddocks and ancient red brick garden-walls. Dark green cedars of Lebanon with unfurled trembling arms, herald the arrival of Lullingdon Manor. It is glorious Warwickshire, all under a pale blue, ever-lightening, sky. The car slows down.

  “Okay, windows up and music down,” orders Luke as they turn off the forest road. They pass a picturesque brick-built lodge house. The car rattles over a cattle grid. Lichen covers granite gateposts. On more than one occasion, Luke returned home from school to find nervous, giggling girls waiting for him at these gateposts. They turn a corner and cross a bridge over a moat, then up a steep gravel drive. There it is: Lullingdon. The ancient manor stands on raised ground at the edge of the forest. Luke pulls up beside the grand entrance.

  “Come in for a drink,” he says with a wink as he gets out of the car. Joe looks pleased but Archie looks ill again. His face is so white that his ginger hair, by contrast, appears radioactive.

  “I’ll wait in the car… feeling a bit queasy,” he says.

  Joe is smiling, lost in his own sense of well-being. He steps cautiously upon the crunchy gravel with his bare feet. In the past, he has struggled with the fact that Luke lives in such a grand mansion, but tonight they have all been through so much that he doesn’t think twice about past insecurities. In fact, as he makes his way to the house, he has forgotten he is only wearing his paisley Y-fronts.

  There is an all-pervading sense of peace at Lullingdon. Joe savours the quietness of the place, which unsettled him on his first visit. That was when Joe and Archie were passengers in another friend’s car. Luke was being dropped off and he invited them in for a coffee. For Joe, a teenager living on a council estate on the edge of Birmingham, the beauty of Lullingdon and the Forest of Arden had been overwhelming. Archie was very drunk on that first visit and, embarrassingly, he had sworn a lot in front of Luke’s father, David Rogers, who had been reading on the garden terrace.

  David Rogers’s life is quite a story. Growing up in the back-to-back tenements of Birmingham, he went on to become a self-made multi-millionaire. He speaks with a Home Counties accent. His wife, Annie, Luke’s mother, has a completely different story. She is from an established, well-to-do family, grew up in a Georgian rectory near Guildford in Surrey. Her only sister, Rosalind, married a Labour Peer and they have one son, Jamie, who is seven years older than his cousin, Luke. Jamie, a former day-boy at Charterhouse School, has followed his father into politics. Joe and Archie met all of these people at Luke’s eighteenth birthday party.

  Lullingdon stands serenely in the pale morning light, surrounded by long, timeless shadows. Joe stares at the white stucco house and recalls a conversation with Luke’s father, who had said the house was unusual, architecturally speaking.

  “The main part of the building’s classical, dating from the eighteenth century,” Mr Rogers had explained as he took Joe on an impromptu tour of the property.

  “The building has various idiosyncrasies, a steeply-pitched slate roof, which doesn’t fit with the classical idiom. The stucco, heavy cornices, full height pilasters, tall sash windows, all an attempt by a Georgian to make the place look grand. Fortunately, they’d been restrained by budget; simplicity won the day.”

  Now, many months later, Joe ponders that Lullingdon Manor really is a fascinating amalgamation of different styles. His eyes rest upon the jewel of a timber-framed building that is attached to the main part of the stucco house. Like the main house, it has two levels, but the upper storey projects forward of the ground floor. Luke’s father had said that it was “jettied”. This was the original “hall house”, a very ancient manor built from great oak trees at a time when wolves roamed Arden.

  Red bricks, glowing crimson in the morning light, are set between ancient timbers, turned silver-grey by many centuries. Some distance beyond the timber-framed building, and on the other side of a lawn, lies a range of farm buildings, under gables and rusty red corrugated metal roofing. Black paint has peeled off large tongue-and-groove doors. A stable block has been converted into garages. This is where Luke’s father keeps his collection of cars, including a stunning black 1969 Bentley. When he was a boy, Luke would fall asleep on the back seat of the Bentley, with a blanket thrown over him, on long adventurous journeys. But he hated being stared at, especially by poor people on buses. It made him feel guilty. He always wanted to shout back, “I’m just like you!” Joe had always been baffled that such a fine car was kept in a rather dilapidated building.

  Massive stones underpin the walls of one of the old barns; these stones have been reused in many buildings through the ages. Bales of hay are stacked against them, fodder for the wild ponies that live in the forest. Centuries ago, the ponies were cross bred with Arab horses to produce strong, fast animals, used in the logging industry, but now everything is mechanised, so the ponies run free. One of the walls of a barn has partially collapsed, bricks are left in a heap upon the dew soaked grass. Joe likes the fact that these outbuildings are almost derelict. It is comforting for him to think that Luke’s parents can live with something that has failed.

  Joe and Luke enter through the wide, oak front door of Lullingdon. Luke whispers.

  “Joe, keep quiet, I’ll get you some clothes, everyone’ll be in bed, just follow me.” Joe follows cautiously, tiptoeing, as if he were a burglar. He follows Luke up the grand oak staircase, onto a wide panelled landing, past an ornate doorway. They are walking on a thick cream carpet, with grubby bare feet.

  “Wait in there. I need a piss,” whispers Luke.

  He pushes Joe, quite hard, through an elegant doorway. Joe lands in the room, his feet thud onto the floor, he almost falls over. He turns to scowl at Luke, but he has already gone. Joe pulls himself together. He has never been in this room before. It is as high as it is wide; a perfect cube shape, all in opulent shades of green and cream, with a grand stone fireplace as a focal point. Joe’s mouth is wide open with surprise; he has never seen a room as splendid as this, at least not in a private house. His attention is immediately taken by the view from the three large sash windows. Through irregular, wavy panels of glass, he sees a moat – overgrown with reeds, and there are meadows. Beyond, is the vast green forest, merging into a golden horizon. Joe is mesmerised by the view.

  “Blimey,” he mutters to himself, resting his elbows against the windowsill. Suddenly, there is a cough from behind. Joe, startled, jumps; turns around.

  “Oh! Is that you Joe?” David, Luke’s father, stands before him clutching a large
leather-bound tome in one hand as if he is about to swat Joe with it.

  “Eh? Um, oh, yeah, good evening Mr Rogers.”

  “Well, it’s morning actually. Are those leaves that are stuck to you?”

  Joe looks down and sees several bits of aquatic plant are attached to his underpants. He is also alarmed to see that his body is covered in smears of mud, and that his feet have marked the cream carpet.

  “Oh, sorry! We’ve been swimming.” Joe tries to say this in a-matter-of-fact kind of way and he adds a beguiling smile.

  “Oh, yes, where? I can’t imagine the municipal pools are open at this time, are they?”

  “In the lake, in the forest” replies Joe.

  “Swimming in the lake, in the forest?”

  After a thoughtful pause, David smiles, and then he allows his large, bear-like frame to fall back into the old battered green leather armchair. Soon comfortable, he tries to find his page again. Joe has disturbed his time of early morning study, and now he feels awkward in sharing his space. Surely some further explanation for my presence in underpants is required? But apparently it isn’t.

  David is aged sixty, but he looks considerably younger, dressed in casual blue jeans and a blue hooded sweatshirt; similar clothes to what his son Luke might wear. He is a cool, slightly Italian looking man, with a sharp, hooked beak of a nose. He goes sailing and skiing with Luke a few times a year. Joe likes David because he always seems to be so relaxed and down to earth. It is confusing to Joe that Luke’s family are so easy to be with, and yet they are so rich. He doesn’t normally feel particularly comfortable with the better off. But then, Luke’s family are in a league of their own, at least compared with anyone else that Joe has ever met. Although Joe likes David, he is relived when Luke barges in waving a pair of jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt.

  “Oh… so you’re up Dad?”

  David looks up from his book; a bushy eyebrow is raised. Luke continues.

  “I’m going to make us a drink Dad, do you want a coffee?”