Wednesday 2nd November:

Marta:

And she remembers the dreams that the books inspired, too: especially the recurring one of being chased around the outside of a logs and candy canes Hansel and Gretl-like cabin by a razor-toothed bear while her feet gradually melted into the ground and she slowed and toppled over, the death-giving bear closing remorselessly on her. She would wake up in the darkness with her heart pounding, disoriented and wide-eyed, feeling the dusty itch of darkness on the glossy exposed surface of her eyes. She remembers this so clearly, even at age thirteen, and her consciousness of that past terror, and at how distant it now is, and yet so clear, makes her smile with self-ridicule/irony.

She thinks of that old fear (which was the deepest fright she knew as a child) when the Guides reach the end of their final hill climb and break out of the shadows and into the last of the afternoon sunshine, on the south shore of the high lake, with the grey water stretching away to the empty moorland beyond. The wind has dropped, and the sudden stillness and openness, the bare rocky land and the silver-grey water stretching away to the misty grey horizon and the pale blue sky above, make a chill run through her; a chill of exposure and sudden loneliness and vulnerability. The forest, compared to this barren emptiness above it, was comforting, somehow dense with structure and relatively secure familiarity; the forest, with its trees and undergrowth, the greens and the greys and oranges and browns, with its needles and lichens and fungi. Up here, there’s only the cold revelation of the wide open sky and the bare land, and the realisation – suddenly more concrete – that this is where they will be spending the night under canvas. It’s already cold, and the light will be fading soon.

All the while that they’re struggling to put the tents up (a mixture of incompetence, overpoliteness, and growing irritation and impatience) Marta is wondering what the other girls will talk about once they’re all secured in their tents after the light has gone. She’s never slept in a room with a group of girls before, and she knows from the conversations she’s overheard at school (especially in the toilets, or in the changing room before her gym class) that other girls talk about all sorts of things that she’s uncomfortable discussing: partly this is because she thinks that the other girls know much more about these adult/bodily/love-related subjects than she does, and that she’s thus embarrassed by her naivety and lack of informed opinions; partly it’s because she doesn’t want to reveal anything about herself that could reveal her as a subject of ridicule; and partly – and most faintly – it’s because she suspects, just a little, that some of the other girls are bluffing too when they talk with apparent authority about these things. Sometimes it will be a girl’s breezy confidence that gives her away, or the ring of inauthenticity when she repeats something she’s heard an adult say (Marta can just tell that it’s a received opinion that the girl doesn’t know in her heart). And she’s aware at these times that some of the other girls are probably thinking the same thing, especially when it’s Karin, the most dominant and vindictive of the girls, who’s speaking; no-one says anything, and none of them allow their eyes meet, but Marta just knows, from their body postures and the suddenly deep nature of the listening silence, that some of them share her belief in the emptiness of what Karin is saying; and so there’s that added layer of embarrassment – that implied shame that they’re all letting this go on, letting it pass uncommented, even though they know that it’s not true: their fear of Karin’s fists and pinching fingers, and their fear of humiliation and ridicule, freeze them into their conspiracy of denial and silence.

Marta sometimes still sleeps in the same bed as Ivan, when it’s very cold, or when he’s frightened, or when mama and papa are away for the evening. When they do share a bed, Marta loves to read Ivan his bedtime story, sitting next to him, both of them with a tick prop of pillows behind them, Ivan’s left shoulder tucked in against her ribs, her right arm encircling his other shoulder, holding the story book in front of him while he clasps his little hands in front of his chest. She can see his eyelashes blink against his cheek as she looks down past his fair hair and his downy forehead, and hear his breath lisping through his nostrils and his rosebud lips. It’s impossible not to love him at these times, and, as she reads, she can feel her arms tightening around him, wanting to pull him against her and make him safe, safe, safe – and loved. When he falls asleep, she gently rests her cheek against the top of his head, listening to his shallower breathing, feeling the drag and undertow of it resonating through his delicate skull, smelling his soap-bathed skin and his sweet night breath. She feels so close to him, and so protective of him. She wishes that she could keep him like this, and that they could be together like this, safe and static, for ever.

Her little group’s tent is pitched now, and all the girls’ fingers are chilled, raw and chafed from the unaccustomed contact with wooden tent poles, metal screw threads, and the stiff, rough canvas of the tents. The troop leaders have been building a fire and, as the dusk finally settles and the girls’ breath starts to smoke, the kindling takes light and makes flames. In the growing darkness, far away from their accustomed warmth and comfort, the girls gravitate towards the light and heat like a natural wave.

After a supper of stick-toasted bread, cold meat and cheese, and weak coffee, the girls are sent off to their ablutions at the campsite’s wooden utility block. There are no lights, so they only have their own inadequate torches to toilet and wash by: some of the girls take it in turns to hold their friends’ torches for them, while others play the weak lights into corners and into the dark spaces between the roof’s exposed eaves, exposing drifts of spider webs and the dry carapaces of long-ago devoured insects. Inevitably, there’s a spate of ghost noises and giggling, but one girl takes the joking badly and starts to cry, and is met with the usual split response of solicitous sympathy and sardonic amusement. Eventually one of the officers comes to fetch them all and hurries them back to their tents under a black sky that’s impossibly complex with stars and million mile swirls of gas.

(c. 1130 words)