The Bare Necessities (Non-Profane Edition)

by John Harding

  Something told him that his father was most displeased with him.

  * * * * *

  Jack felt the warm body of Paige against him as he stirred; they had gone to sleep with their backs to one another, but Paige was a restless sleeper and had turned repeatedly in the night. He was not used to sleeping in the same room as someone else, let alone the same sleeping bag, and she had disturbed him repeatedly.

  He could feel her naked body heat against him, and he opened his eyes to see the side of the tent. She mumbled something and put her arm around him as she adjusted her position and Jack froze. Pressed up against his back was her bosom and he saw Claire look across at him. “You two look comfortable,” she teased.

  “It's snug,” he replied, and his voice caused Paige to wake and stretch. “Morning.”

  “Yeah, morning,” Paige muttered and moved her body away from her friend. “You snore,” Paige moaned.

  “I don't. It was Claire,” Jack replied and readjusted himself in the sleeping bag. “And my neck is all sore.”

  Claire objected to being accused of snoring, but the three friends wandered down to the small café with their towels to get breakfast. Jack was nervous about going nude, and tried to use the cool morning as a reason to get dressed, but Paige dragged him away from the tent, and he paid for breakfast for all three of them.

  They had to discuss finances as neither Paige or Claire had an excess of cash, but Jack promised to pay for the petrol – at least initially – and they would get accommodation and expenses from their first few venues, and some payment from others.

  After breakfast, Claire got dressed and walked to the small convenience store in the neighbouring village. Paige and Jack offered to accompany her, but she asked for some time alone, and Paige took Jack for a naked swim in the site's tepid pool.

  Jack was still openly reluctant about being naked, but as scores of families joined them in the water and as the site became awash with bare people of every shape and size, his anxieties seemed to vanish.

  Paige was able to swim away from the naked rugby player easily, and her slight body gave her an agility Jack did not possess. They openly swam and played loudly in the pool, before Paige joined in a teenage game of water volleyball.

  It was clear that by lunchtime, Jack was more comfortable with his surroundings, and as their dinner settled and the three of them went for a walk in the neighbouring woods, Paige began to see broad grins from her two friends. “This really is so … relaxing!” Jack surmised to his friends as they ambled down the small hill to their tent. “It's fun!”

  Paige giggled and held her hand out for her friend to take. “It is,” she agreed, and Claire pulled out a small bag of food when they arrived back at the tent. The pre-prepared salad with cold chicken and fizzy drink on paper plates was gratefully received by her two friends.

  The three of them spent the evening playing cards in the tent before they wandered to the pavilion on site and spoke to a handful of the families. Jack was a little disturbed that a sizeable number of the campers knew who he was, and the three musicians were asked repeatedly for their autographs.

  The following day was very similar and the teenagers swam in the pool, walked in the woods, before they drove Jack's car to the open field on the edge of the site where they were playing. They noticed that the site became a lot busier as a number of guests arrived in the late-afternoon and Paige joked that they had all come to see them play!

  Claire spoke to the site owner, and two long power cables were provided as Jack set up the equipment and a small crowd gathered. “I saw you on the Internet,” a child's voice cried as an eight year old came up to Paige.

  “Did you?” Paige said with a smile, crouching down to the child's level. “Was I any good?”

  “Mummy says you are a star, and I think you were OK too,” the girl replied and smiled. “But I think The Wanted are better.”

  “Shall I let you into a secret?” Paige answered with a smile. “I think The Wanted are better too.” Claire laughed behind her, and the girl ran back to her parents. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Claire answered as Paige grabbed the microphone and introduced herself.

  Tomorrow they would be in Dorset, and the following day Cornwall, and as the assembled crowd clapped, the eight year old came and sat at the front. “Do you want to come and sing with me?” She asked, and the cheeky girl could hardly contain her excitement. “Shall we sing Hot N Cold?” The girl nodded and climbed onto the stage with Paige's help. “Hey, and I bet The Wanted don't let you do that!”

  * * * * *

  Paige laughed as she grabbed the microphone. “I can't believe this is a naturist site,” she teased the audience. “One, two, three, four, five, six bare people and the rest of you … you're a disgrace! Back in Hampshire on Tuesday, we didn't have this. I had an eight year old on stage naked singing with me. They must be made of sterner stuff up there!”

  Paige got some good-natured heckling. “It's bloody cold,” a voice cried.

  “Not next to these heaters, it's not.” The naked Paige giggled and introduced her band before they started with Bad Reputation. Paige sang with passion and conviction, putting energy into her rock songs as she danced on stage. She took time to give a brief explanation about each song, and hauled a couple of identical twins from the audience to sing Hot N Cold, with her; it was their most well-known of covers and everyone knew the words to it.

  Paige was cheeky, when she asked Jack and Claire to play their instruments, and then passed her microphone to the two sisters and walked into the audience. “I think I'm redundant,” the girl joked as they the two naturist children did their best to sing Katy Perry's classic.

  Paige returned to the set, to sing Don't Leave Me, a powerfully understated song that had her audience silent as they listened to her hit some very difficult notes. The band got another standing ovation and were asked to repeat a handful of songs which they were only too happy to do.

  Tired, the three of them put their equipment into Jack's car and went to settle in their tent when a voice from behind the canvas dome called. “Jack, Jack!”

  All three band members turned to see a naked Lucinda emerge from the shadows, and she shivered. “It's cold here.”

  “Lucinda!”

  “You can wear something in the evenings,” Claire remarked, and Jack's aunt nodded. “Ignore what Paige says, she's just a fundamentalist!”

  “Yeah, I know. But I wanted to blend in.” She looked at her nephew. “Your father says 'you are to return home at once and stop messing about.' I trust you have a suitable message to give back to him.” She looked at the stunned faces of Claire and Paige and smiled. “One that ends in 'off' I hope.”

  “You can tell him that I am happy here and will be staying with my friends.” He looked at Paige, clearly hoping to get approval and she nodded.

  “Excellent. I hoped you'd say that.” She looked across at Claire and Paige outside the spacious family tent and rubbed her hands. “Is it OK to go in? I got a tent, somewhere over there, but I wouldn't mind seeing my nephew before he leaves the site.”

  Jack was grateful that Paige passed his Aunt Lucinda a T-shirt to cover herself, but Paige was half the size of his aunt, and the garment had to stretch to accommodate the voluptuous woman. Lucinda sat down on the groundsheet of the tent that contained two sleeping bags and Jack spoke. “What are you doing here?”

  “What, you'd rather your father came here? You posted a schedule on your webpage, Harriet found it. He wanted someone to go there and give you a rollicking. Which is me.”

  “But you don't want him to go home,” Paige said, a little perplexed by the 47 year-old woman. “Do you?”

  “Do I bollocks!” Lucinda replied. “I told him to come. But his father thinks I am on his side, not your's.” Paige chuckled as Jack shook his head.

  “So what was he doing?”

  “Oh, and that message about Harriet. It wasn't nice.”

  “Yeah, but's true.” />
  “Yeah, I know. But very sneaky. I thought my nephew had more class than that. And anyway, the thought of his heir to the family firm running away with … commoners … well let's just say that a bit of cocaine was nothing.”

  Jack shrugged. “She was callous to me. I just …”

  “Well I thought better of my nephew,” Lucinda lectured, and she sighed. “He was furious, and he blames you two.” She waved her finger at Claire and Paige. “Thinks you two are harlots and are leading him astray.”

  “I am not!” Claire thundered, and Lucinda cocked her head.

  “Then you must try harder, my dear,” Lucinda teased. “Because someone's got to. So anyway, as it's a naturist venue, your father just wanted to call the Police. I don't know why he thought that was a good idea or what the rozzers would say, but I suggested that I go along and see you. To talk some sense into you.”

  “Right. And then tell him that I am not coming home tomorrow.”

  “No. I intend to stay here for a few days. I will ring him and tell him that you are considering what I am saying and then in a week's time, I'll go home. By which time you will be somewhere else. And hopefully my brother will have calmed down.”

  “You're staying here?” Jack asked, and she giggled.

  “Oh don't look so surprised. One of my husbands was a naturist. My first husband, and the one I wished I had kept.”

  “Really? I didn't know you were a naturist.”

  “Yeah well, to be fair, I've had twelve husbands, so I've had just about every hobby and profession going.” Lucinda looked at Jack's companions. “Girls, avoid doctors. Sex is just a biology lesson. Fishermen are boring. As are wine experts. I tell him to pick up a bottle on the way home and I just it's life history when he gets to the house when all I want to do is drink the bloody stuff.”

  “Aunty,” Jack interrupted.

  “Oh the naturist, young Robert. I can still see him. Married at eighteen. Divorced at twenty. Just got cut off from my social circle and he couldn't cope with the problems it caused. He ran away. There's not much naturism in the Rees-Montague world.” She looked at Jack and smiled at him. “And it may happen to you. But don't let it worry you. Life's too short to let other people run it.”

  “He won't,” Paige told her. “Well he better not. We had a chat.”

  “Excellent. Now, I'm off to bed, I've had a long drive down, and I have a cheeky 18 year old Speyside to have a gobble of, and I shall see you in the morning. My future stars.”

  “Yeah, and thank you,” Jack told her.

  “No worries. Anything for my favourite nephew,” she said with a smile. “And when this is all over, you owe me a bottle of 25 year old firewater.”

  Jack laughed. “Sure.”

  “Something classy mind. Like a Laphroaig. I don't want any old rubbish.”

  * * * * *

  “What's up?” Paige asked as Claire returned to their tent with an angry look in her eye.

  “The music pub in Weston. They cancelled.”

  “Oh!” Jack moaned. “Oh well I guess we just go straight to the festival. There must be a camp site nearby for a day or two.”

  “No, you don't get it. They rang to cancel because of us.” She crossed her arms and held out her phone. “The Police have been to see them because a member of the public has put in a complaint that they will be hosting a sex show.”

  “What's that got to do with us?”

  “We are the sex show,” Claire moaned and sighed. “The guy was genuinely sorry, but he thought that the Police would try and take his license away if he went ahead with it. So he's rang to cancel.”

  “But why would a member of the public care about us?” Jack asked, and Claire sighed. “I mean, who knows?”

  Claire shrugged. “I know there are videos on the Internet, and I guess someone must have seen them when they put a poster up saying we were coming on Thursday. I don't know.”

  “But … we aren't that popular are we?”

  Jack took his phone off charge from the electrical hookup and opened the browser. Paige looked over his shoulder as he navigated to the popular video sharing site and scrolled down the list of the most popular videos, and he didn't have long to go before he started seeing “Naked Band” and “Bare Necessities.”

  “Look! We are above Dancing Kittens,” Paige cried. “Fourth most popular video this week. That's … like four million views.”

  Claire snatched the phone from Jack and looked at the tiny screen. “How did that happen?” The screen went black as a telephone call came through and Jack pressed “off” on his phone.

  “Four million views,” Claire muttered. “Hey we are famous. Or notorious.”

  “So that's why they cancelled.”

  “Are we going to have this everywhere?” Paige moaned. “Are we going to have problems just playing our music?”

  Claire sighed. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. I've only heard off the pub in Weston so let's hope it's a one-off.”

  The three of them loaded their car in silence. On one hand, them being on the front page of one of the most popular sites on the Internet was good, but at the same time, the notoriety it was bringing disadvantages.

  Jack turned on the radio as they pulled away from the site, waving to the delighted owners and then accelerated down the country lane. Paige moaned when a boy band came through the speakers and pressed a button to find another station.

  “And another caller, what's on your mind?”

  “Not Peter Moran,” Paige moaned.

  “I want to talk about some filth in our society,” the woman announced.

  “Of course she does,” Claire mocked. “Get it off.” Paige went to press the button when something made her stop.

  “That I am outraged by. My son saw a naked band online called The Bare Necessities, and it was clear that they are just using sex to try and sell their music.” Paige laughed and looked behind her at a horrified Claire sat on the back seat of the car.

  “Yes,” the ex-newspaper editor announced. “I think we've all seen the clips.”

  “And I don't think that should be allowed. Someone should tell them to get their clothes on.”

  “I agree,” the host announced.

  Claire and Paige looked at each other ominously as the radio show host launched into a bitter tirade against them, referring to the two girls as “strumpets” and their shows “disgusting.”

  Jack laughed as the bitter man reached the end of his rant and looked at them. “What? We've upset Peter Moran. Come on, it means we must be doing something right? Don't you think?”

  “He's a powerful man,” Claire muttered.

  “He's washed-up,” Jack replied. “Wasn't he the one that blackmailed a child for a newspaper story or something. No-one pays any attention to him. Do they?”

  * * * * *

  “Paige,” an excited voice shouted down the phone. “You're all over the Internet.”

  The lead singer laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

  “No. Like all over the Internet. And all my friends are talking about it. It's like … wow!”

  “You sound better,” her sister told the bouncy sixteen year old.

  “Yeah … had a visit from the CPN. It's fine. I'm fine. But what's going on?”

  “Our set was cancelled in Weston and I have been called a strumpet on the radio,” she said with an upbeat lilt to her voice. “And I am now in a tiny camp site, and because it's textile I've got to wear clothes.”

  “Oh,” Hazel muttered. “That's a bit crappy.”

  “Yeah. But the tour's been good. I'm really enjoying it. How's Mum and Dad, and Jeremy?”

  “Mum and Dad found out about your band being naked today and started asking lots of questions. I was like, I don't know much, but they want to talk to you.”

  “Oh great,” Paige muttered. “Claire spoke to her parents earlier, and they were well shocked about her success. Jack's parents are going mental at him.”

  “Mum was well excited,”
Hazel said in a dramatic voice. “Kept saying that you are going to be the next Whitney Houston. Dad was just shocked.”

  “And Jeremy?”

  “He's said nothing,” Hazel said and then dropped the volume of her voice. “I think he got into a fight, but he's said nothing. But 'e knows. You sure it's all fine? OK with that Jack?”

  “I'm good. I told you,” Paige repeated. “And Jack is fine. We've forgiven him and we are sharing a sleeping bag!” Hazel sniggered. “But Jeremy … I didn't think he would care. What's your friends said?”