14 An idea of fun
Steph had come with them to the
forest one year and ended up absolutely hating it. Phobic of wasps and spiders,
she seemed to attract them wherever she went. Eating outside with her on the
rickety, light, fold-up tables in the warm twilit evenings had been a nightmare
because she'd started to scream every time a wasp got near her or the food.
Once Elisha had clapped her hand over her mouth to stop her squealing. She
could tell that, although her father was at first amused by Steph, he was by
then getting a little impatient, especially with the screaming.
'Stop
waving your arms around. You'll just antagonise it,' warned Elisha, shaking her
head at her dad who was rolling his eyes at all the drama.
'I
hate it here, I hate it,' moaned Steph, through Elisha's fingers. The wasp
dive-bombed her again so that she panicked, tore her friend's hand away, let
out a high-pitched scream and ran back inside the green inner tent, zipping it
up behind her.
The
Goodmans all looked at each other and laughed for a minute before Elisha's mum
went in with a jam tart and some instant custard to cheer Steph up. Then it was
quiet except for the sounds of the dusk - a low, reassuring humming, or maybe
more like a ticking, like the forest breathing. Her dad said it was the sound
of all the grasshoppers rubbing their back-legs together but Elisha thought
that unlikely.
They
were camped quite a distance from any facilities so her dad had put up their
own toilet tent. He always used to muck about and walk around inside it so that
the tent looked like it was moving by itself. It had made both girls dizzy and
breathless with laughter earlier, especially when he made funny sounds too so
the tent seemed to walk and talk by itself. He was almost as good as the
cut-price aliens on kids' TV shows. This time he made it walk a little too far
and stumbled into a ditch, nearly toppling into a load of gorse bushes before
the girls ran over and righted him.
Unfortunately,
the diet of instant food wasn't what Steph was used to; and she'd had to go to
the loo in the middle of the night. This was a bit of a palaver, especially as
it was raining. It was always raining if you needed to go in the middle of the
night - it was like an unwritten camping law. Like one of the house laws was
that, as soon as you turned the light off and left a room, you immediately
needed to go back in and find something tiny on the table in the dark.
The
sound of the rain drumming steadily on the canvas made Elisha feel protected,
all cosy and safe as she snuggled deep into her electric-blue sleeping bag with
the neon-orange interior. The colours meant that it even looked warm.
It could be pitch black in the
forest at night, a solid darkness you never got in town, with all the
streetlights and cars and stuff. When she'd first experienced it, Elisha had
found it spooky. But now she relished it. Breathing cool night air redolent of
grass and trees and heather and mist - damp and fresh and earthy. Opening your eyes
and not being able to see a thing. Sometimes she felt like her camp-bed was
floating on a river ... But Steph was still at the spooked-out stage and
insisted on having a light on in the outer tent.
She
heard her friend fumbling around for a torch and bumping into things, swearing
under her breath but just ignored it and tried to go back to sleep. Steph had
to put on wellies, grumbling the whole time. And, once outside, Elisha heard
her trip over a guy rope and yelp. Elisha had to stifle a giggle. Poor Steph.
But
this was nothing compared to the ear-splitting, banshee-like scream that came
from the toilet tent two minutes later. Her dad was up in seconds and out of
the tent flap with a torch. She and her mum pushed themselves up on their
elbows in their camp-beds, wondering what on earth could have happened now.
Steph stumbled back in, mumbling something incoherent as she struggled out of
Elisha's yellow wellies and almost fell onto her bed, with such force and so
unevenly it nearly collapsed under her. Elisha had tried to explain that you
had to be gentle and careful with a camp bed. If you plonked yourself down on
one end, the bed would catapult up into you.
'What
was it, hon?' her mum asked, as her father strode in.
'There
was a hornet by the light in there,' he explained. 'And then a spider landed in
her hair.'
'Oh,
poor Steph,' said Elisha, looking across at her friend in sympathy and feeling
rather guilty for having laughed. An encounter with a hornet and a spider would
have made her scream too.
'I'll
heat some milk for hot chocolate,' her mum suggested, getting out of bed and
pulling a long, ruby-coloured, woolly cardigan round her. Her dad got a carton
of long-life semi-skimmed milk out of the cooler bag and started to shake it.
'Oh
goodie.' Elisha went over to her friend. 'It's all right, Steph.' She found the
little red torch lighting up a long triangle of tartan blanket and switched it
off.
Steph
sat up and groaned. 'I want to go home tomorrow. I don't like camping.'
Elisha
glanced anxiously at her father as he raised his eyebrows in exasperation. He
was lighting a calor gas lamp to supplement the small one they were keeping on
through the night for Steph.
'It'll
be better tomorrow, you'll see. It's not going to rain tomorrow.' She hugged her
friend, stroking her hair over and over to comfort her, like her mum sometimes
did for her when she was upset. 'And we're going to have hot chocolate now.'
'I
can't stand it here another day,' wailed Steph miserably. 'It's horrible. I
don't know how you could even call it a holiday.'
So
it seemed camping wasn't everyone's idea of fun.
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