Arden

208 Pages·2016·0.95 MB·English

by  Corbett Nick

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 pool; 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