Journey XIV – Spirit journey

I have just a few things to tell about the last part of the journey. The weather was bright and the path was broad and rutted, suggesting that something with wheels travelled this way. When I’d started out the trees had still been leafless and the spring sunshine lit the woodland floor intensely, illuminating the cushions of moss and piles of leaves and the elegant nodding flowers that emerged through them, sometimes in their thousands. Later on I came across massive ruins half hidden among the trees and ferns and I once spent the night in the roofless shell of a vast chamber, under a monstrous tree that had rooted into the wall. I didn’t get much sleep because there was too much murmuring and movement in the stones. It was quieter out under the sky.
I never did tell the others what I’d seen on my way to the retreat. I wasn’t even sure it had really happened. One spring day Jim had taken a party outside around the wall on one of his ‘nature rambles’. I went along as well, for a laugh. He admitted himself that he wasn’t very knowledgeable about plants and animals, but found it fascinating and wanted to pass on some of the observations he’d made over the seasons. He needn’t have bothered. Half the party had gone back before we were even a hundred yards from the main gate and we hadn’t even begun to descend the rocky path down into the trees. The other half were too scared to concentrate. What they imagined was down there I never really discovered. Jim was mystified as well, although he too had been warned of the dangers lurking ‘out there’. He’d never witnessed anything conclusive but swore nevertheless that ‘things’ lived out there. Some days the place was swarming with life and you could hardly take a step without crushing something. Other times, under apparently identical conditions, there was nothing – nothing but the sense of being accompanied by something powerful and unfriendly as he put it. I asked if he believed in God. He said he used to. I mentioned what Joe had told me about the lost spirits and he said he thought that sounded plausible. Some of those bright, silent days, the place had felt very ‘busy’ nonetheless. There was a ‘clamour’ to it we couldn’t explain.
We never really became close, Jim and I. He liked to tell you things, often at great length and mostly you just had to listen and as time went on I got a little tired of that. He was a bit too much like my dad to be honest so in the end I was glad to get away.
And so I walked. The high broadleaf forest covered itself in leaves and then gave way to a flatter landscape of meadows and streams and marshes.

My final encounter with the lost spirits happened a couple of months later. I’d been walking solidly, doggedly determined to arrive at wherever it was. Every day I awoke with the sun, made my coffee, thought a little of Miranda and packed my things together. Then I started walking and I didn’t stop until it was getting dark. That’s how it was. It had been maybe eight years since my death, or more perhaps. Often it seemed like much more. I could barely picture what life had been like.
All around me the land became arid and the heat more intense. The plants were brittle and grey and the air smelt of lavender and pine. I was really very content.
I came across more settlements along the way, as Miranda had told me I would. Mostly they were quiet, gentle communities made up of a few houses or shacks in various styles and with or without gardens or fields. Mostly people were friendly and generous and offered a place to sleep and food if it was available. Some places were lively with music or brightly coloured ornaments and plants. Other places were rather serious and inward in temperament. I usually stayed for just a single night, used the shower, perhaps did some chores and treated myself to a meal but I had no wish for luxury or company. In any case I’d never felt entirely alone even in the most deserted spots. The spirits were everywhere. Some evenings as the sky turned purple I could feel them resting in the stones and the trees around me, aware of my passing but profoundly unmoved by it.
I found a rocky place surrounded by some extraordinary trees with thick grey trunks that branched only at the top, making an impenetrable dome of spikes way above my head. The leaves were like thick grey claws. I found a place where a rock had fallen against the bark and there was blood leaking away, red and sticky. I sat among them for the night and looked across a vast stony plain at the mountains in the distance.

In another place, I found what appeared to be a fortified town, deserted and still. Its thick white walls enclosed a cluster of low box-like dwellings, all built against one another without any streets or pathways in between. In one I found an iron stove, in another, a small ceramic pot. I climbed up through a square opening in one of the ceilings and walked across the flat roofs. The place felt like it had been deserted hundreds of years ago, perhaps thousands. And yet the walls and floors were not silent. All night I could hear them talking among themselves and I had to leave in the dark and lie down nearby in the open until it got light.

Finally there was a place where I sat beside a cool clear pool under some palm trees and took all my clothes off to swim. The spirits there were more tranquil and when they came to join me I sensed they simply wanted to pass the time. I never saw them properly – just from the corner of my eye I would sense a movement and turn but there’d be nothing to see. That seemed to amuse them. They told me things about the world they had come from, the things they remembered. Their memories were mostly of hardship and brutality but they told me about it without any real bitterness or recrimination. It was too long ago. That was just how it had been for them at that time. It was nobody’s fault. I told them what I could remember about the world I’d come from and that kept them amused for a time but none of them seemed to envy me. As I lay there under the night sky I could hear them gossiping to each other about me, patronisingly agreeing that I had a lot to learn about life. By morning they were silent again and I moved on. 
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Voyage XI – Jamming

I’ve started to hang out with Lucy and that lot more. It took a while before I got the nerve to ask if I could sit down with them. It was like a school kid wanting to sit with the seniors. When I finally did, Matt and Damian were really cool about it and Lucy didn’t object, even though I can’t stop looking at her boobs and she keeps having to tell me off for it.

We tend to hang out in the forward lounge – there’s a lot of big sofas there, or up on deck, on the deck chairs. The weather is a lot brighter now, but still a bit fresh for sun bathing if you ask me. Damian is really skinny and pale, but he takes his shirt off and lies there with his sunglasses on nevertheless. I did him in charcoal a while back and Lucy thought it was hilarious – black spikes, white forehead, black shades, white nose, black choker, white ribs, black drainpipes, white ankles, black plimsolls. I don’t think it’s possible to get a tan here. You either have one or you don’t. You don’t have to cut your hair or trim your nails either
I talk quite a lot more with Lucy. She seems impressed that I know who George Elliot and Nina Simone were. We discuss all sorts of things – university, feminism, travel, and sex. We talk a lot about sex. My whole sex education has been my Dad’s Mayfairs and there’s quite a lot they don’t cover. She told me about the clitoris and the female orgasm. She even drew diagrams. I think I’m obsessed with sex, which is funny for a person who is still a virgin at nearly nineteen. All I could think was how I wanted to have a practice on her, and it almost seemed like it might be worth asking but I didn’t. I’d heard of oral sex but I’d never realised what we were aiming for, if you see what I mean, or that there was a thing, exactly, to aim for. I guess I thought you just sort of, I don’t know, licked it, generally.
I think I really envy women now because they have all these different sorts of orgasms that can apparently go on for hours and we just have this one quick spurt and that’s it.
‘A man is just totally fixated on his penis’ she said. ‘All he wants is to get in there as quickly as possible and...’ (She makes this rhythmical grunting noise in my ear – ‘Uh uh uh uh...’ over and over until it’s really beginning to bother me. ‘That’s what it’s like’ she says eventually) ‘and then it’s all over and you’re left with the washing up, as usual. Or, which is worse, you get a guy who thinks he knows all about foreplay, but he just thinks it’s about going on and on and on until you’re both rubbed raw and wondering what's on the telly. You men – it’s just like you haven’t got a clue.’

She’s right, I haven’t. I don’t even really know what foreplay is but I don’t like to ask.
One of her favourite topics is pornography (It’s one of mine too, but in a different way and I keep quiet). The way she talks about it though it’s as if it’s nothing but violence, like it’s all under-age girls being forced to have horrible things done to them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that. Well there was that one thing I found in the lorry park. That was horrible, so I do know it goes on. I suppose it never occurred to me to wonder who all these women are, having their photos taken, or how they feel about it. Most of them just look bored to be honest – just smiling woodenly for the camera and holding their vaginas open. It’s pretty crass. But then sometimes, the ones I like, they look like they’re normal women having a laugh, or maybe even actually enjoying it. I don’t know. I can’t believe they all hate what they do. They must be bloody good actresses. Lucy says you can tell it’s really all about child pornography because they force the women to shave but I always thought that was just because you could see everything better. And anyway pubic hair can be a bit off-putting. I never liked mine. I used to shave it off sometimes and then the stubble got bad so I didn’t do it any more. I know for a fact she can’t stand men with beards anyway so she can’t talk. Maybe she likes young boys, which would be good news for me.

Another time I remember having this heated debate with her about breasts, because she’d noticed me looking – again. Well, hers were quite hard to miss to be honest. I’d find my eyes homing in on them in the middle of a conversation and it was very off-putting. All the blokes commented. She wore these tight, low cut tops too, which didn’t help.
‘My god! What is it with you people?’ she said, amazed, aggrieved and amused at the same time. ‘It’s just a pair of breasts for god’s sake. Men! You’re just like children, just transfixed...’
I looked at my book, embarrassed. We were in the lounge. People were listening. She was talking quite loud.
‘What is it? Tell me, what is so fascinating? They’re just big blobs of fat for feeding babies. Look’ she said and took hold of them and wobbled them about in my face. ‘Fat’ she said again, grinning. She evidently thought it was amusing, making me embarrassed.
I gave my usual considered opinion, that is, I shrugged and said ‘I don’t know.’
‘Look at them’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Look. Get an eye full’ and she pulled her shoulders back and thrust them at me. I still thought they were fantastic.
‘Tell me what you're thinking’ she said, challengingly.
I was struggling to say anything at all. ‘I just...’ and I tailed off, shrugging again. I looked around. Nobody was overtly listening but I knew they could hear.
‘I don’t know why I like them. I just...’ I said finally.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that you’re just automatically adopting this crass stereotypical male behaviour? (She does a thick voice) “Ooh, look, there’s some tits” you say to yourself. “This woman is clearly in need of some ogling.”’
‘I’d never say anything like that.’
She pauses and looks away. She’s taking time to think.
‘Ok. You see a woman in the street and you don’t know anything about her, except she’s got these huge breasts. So obviously you’re interested, but you don’t think “Maybe she’s got a Phd in psychology – I’d love to go and talk to her.” do you?’
‘Well I can’t tell if she’s got a Phd in psychology just by looking at her can I? And any way, I wouldn’t fancy her just because she has big boobs.’
‘No?’ she looks sceptical ‘What else?’
‘Eyes?’ I say, without much conviction.
‘Oh give me strength. You want me to believe that? I’ve never met a man who’s attention extended anywhere above the neck for longer than it takes to – I don’t know – light a cigarette.’
I’m silenced again. But I do like women's eyes. Always have. I loved Camille's eyes. They were a gorgeous olive green colour and they really sparkled. Lucy’s eyes are lovely too but it’s hard to ignore that cleavage for long. In all the excitement her breasts seem to have swelled even more than usual.
‘I do like eyes’ I say, finally, quietly, ‘and hair. I love long hair.’ She appraises me suspiciously, ‘and she wouldn’t need to have big breasts, necessarily, just... nice breasts.’
‘What about no breasts?’
I think about that. ‘Not really.’
‘So you would dismiss a woman completely on the grounds of being flat-chested, no matter what else she may have to offer?’
Actually I think I might. It’s a bit too masculine or something. It’s just sort of weird.

‘I don’t think it’s like that really’ I say after a while.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Attraction. It’s not just about physical stuff. It’s the whole look of her. I don’t know – it’s like the way she dresses or the way she moves. Subtle things. Like the expression on her face...’ I go off into a bit of a dream, thinking how that feels, to see a woman like that.
‘You’re still just working out how to get into her knickers Gabriel’ says Lucy, laughing sarcastically.
I study her face as she shakes her head and goes back to her book. My feelings for her shift slightly. Sometimes she’s not very attractive at all.
‘So why bother to ask me at all if you’re not going to believe me?’
She turns her head and looks hard at me. ‘I thought you’d at least be honest about it’ she says.
‘I am being honest’ I say. She goes back to her book, still smiling slightly. Why is she being like this? What can I say to convince her?
‘We could be friends’ I suggest hopefully. ‘I wouldn’t just dismiss her completely. I just might not want to have sex with her.’
‘I don’t think men and women can be “just friends”‘ she says, which seems a bit sad. ‘There’s always something else.’
‘But if he doesn’t fancy her at all...’
‘Still. There’s always something, sooner or later. Trust me.’ and she looks a little sad. I didn’t really fully realise until much later that she was talking about herself, about her life, about how men had looked at her – her and her breasts and how they’d never really wanted to be “just friends” with her. No, I didn’t realise this until I was at the retreat, but I got my first inkling of it at this moment. She wore her breasts like that, as a challenge – gawp if you dare, fantasise at your peril.
‘I just like looking at breasts. I don’t know why’ I said finally, not looking at her. ‘I mean, why do people like looking at flowers? It doesn't have to be logical.’

Anyway she seems to like my work – I showed her some of my pictures and she seemed really interested. I want to do one of her soon. She said she’ll pose nude for me... I think she said that. Probably she was having me on. Anyway, a few days ago we were all sitting around talking about what we’d do different next time – it’s a common subject with us. Nobody else I’ve met seems to want to talk much about their past life or their next, just stay in the present, but Damian especially can’t shut up about it. He’s got this idea about getting a punk band together by 1974 so he can “be there” when it starts. He wants to call them The Sex Objects. We all think that’s very funny, all except Lucy that is.
He’s a good musician too. He does these really funny rip-offs of old Sabbath and Zeppelin numbers on his guitar, like using the sound but faster and furious-er. It’s ridiculous and really cool at the same time. I asked him if he could do Purple Haze but nobody messes with Hendrix apparently. I think he was impressed by the fact that I knew about Hendrix at all.
Anyhow, I was saying that next time, I would try to lose my virginity a bit sooner, and Lucy just looked coldly at me. Damian said he’d want to fuck a lot more women next time. Lucy said to me ‘What else?’
‘Go to more parties, and gigs’ I said, doubtfully.
‘But you’ll still be the same person’ she said, as if that was a real problem.
‘Yeah, you gotta handle it different next time man’ said Marcus, another guy who was hanging out with us. ‘I mean, you can’t just be your same wimpy self all over again, you know what I mean? Women want you to stand up, make a move for yourself man, not all this hiding in the back.’
‘You’d think some girls would go for such a quiet, sensitive chap as yourself, wouldn’t you Gabriel?’ says Lucy looking at me. I don’t know if she means it but I love the way she says my name, curving her lips around the ‘B’.
‘Nah, that’s crap’ says Damian ‘except for your “Mad Bitch” of course. They’re always on the lookout for the confused and vulnerable.’
‘Damian, you’re a disgrace’ says Lucy sexily.
‘Well if all else fails, your mad bitch’s a distinct possibility. She’s a bit desperate, grateful for whatever’s going, willing to do the leg work...’ Everyone laughs. ‘I mean, she’s the one’ll get off her arse and come to grab you – none of this you plucking up the courage shit – she’ll nag you onto the dance floor and bingo, you’ve scored.’
‘Plus you’ll be up all night with her. She really goes, your average mad bitch...’
‘On the other hand she’ll literally have your nuts nailed to the bed if you try to make a run for it.’
‘Literally?’ says Lucy.
‘Literally. These are not my original pair. These are in fact made of pure new wool. My mum knitted them for me.’
‘I’ll take your word for it’ she says, pouting at him. I sometimes think something’s going on between them. I don’t know. Sometimes, she looks at me, I feel so amazingly light and free. Other times, I just want to drop into the ocean and sink.
‘You should learn to play guitar – be in a band. That’s always a good one’ says Matt. Damian looks doubtful.
‘I might get a car next time’ I say, although I can’t imagine how. I’d have to fork out for lessons first.
‘Nah.’ says Matt. ‘More trouble than they’re worth. You just end up giving everyone else a lift everywhere, so you end up not drinking...’
‘You could smoke.’
‘You could, if you’re a wanker.’ Everyone looks a bit awkward, recalling too late that Matt was killed by an intoxicated driver.
‘Just saying...’
‘I don’t think it’s about what you have’ says Lucy finally. ‘If you want to know the one thing that a woman wants? – every time? – it’s a man who knows who he is and feels good about it.’
‘That’s cobblers’ says Damian ‘I fucking hated myself half the time – and I got plenty.’
‘Yeah, but your self-loathing was kind of like an art form – you really went for it – you did believe in yourself in a way’ observes Matt.
‘I believed in being bad news’ says Damian, nodding deeply.
‘You did. And a woman appreciates that in a man’ says Matt.
‘Some women’ says Lucy
‘Younger women’ says Damian, gleefully.
‘Masochistic women’ says Lucy.
‘Exactly’ agrees Damian ‘Same difference...’
‘Gabe’s not mean enough’ observes Marcus. ‘He’s one of the good guys.’
‘I’ll bet he’s not’ says Lucy, turning to face me. ‘I bet he could be a right bastard if he wanted to, if he had the motivation. If he had the nerve...’
I don’t know what it is – sometimes the way she looks at me. What is she thinking? Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing to her. Sometimes I feel like she wants me – both at the same time.
I look at her. The conversation among them heads elsewhere but I saw her wink at me, I swear.
Sitting beside me I can see her shoulder exposed, soft and milky where her top has slipped, then a smooth curve between her armpit and the start of her breast. The fabric hangs away from them and I can see where the curve goes down, concave to convex. I look up, as if surfacing from a deep dive and register the faces – did anyone see me looking? I can’t tell.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Journey V – Birds and bees

I remember the next part of my journey through the afterlife as a good time. Everything was simpler – the paths were easier to find and lead through a lush upland landscape of rolling hills and wooded valleys. Miranda the nymph as I jokingly called her was something of a naturalist it turned out – she had what seemed like ancient memories of a country childhood, running half naked through the meadows, jumping in rivers, climbing trees, riding ponies, playing with dogs and rabbits and ducks. I asked if she’d ever go back but she didn’t seem to think it was possible any more. She pointed out the birds and the bees, the orchids and the trees and told me how they fed, how they grew and reproduced. She told me to put away my papers and pencils. She said they were coming between me and the world – I was always trying to make a picture instead of looking at what was actually happening around me. She said I should just look, then, one day maybe I’d make something truly worth looking at. I knew she was right. I sat and looked. And not just looked – I rolled about in the long grass, jumped in the rivers and ran up the ridges, usually with her on my shoulders, to see what there was to see on the other side. I got cut, stung and bitten and bruised in the process but it was worth it.
We were bashful about our bodies although we had both been naked when we met and she must have seen me before that, washing and so on. Still, it seemed wrong to just not care. She wore a piece of red and orange silk as a sarong, and I kept my shorts on. Still, I watched her surreptitiously, and she knew it too – she told me later – sometimes carelessly letting her little pink boobs pop out as she moved about. She couldn’t help but notice my response, which was more than half as tall as she was, but we played a delicious game of not reacting.

We talked a lot more as time went on – her revealing more about her past as we went along, but swiftly changing the subject when we got to “the nasty bits”- she'd suddenly get excited about some new insect or flower or fish and set off with remarkable speed and agility after it, then she'd tell me something amazing about its ecology. Other times she would just come out with something ridiculous and make me laugh. We spent a lot of time laughing but there was always something else going on with her – you could see that, something in her expression.
‘Dad really changed when my stepmother moved in’ she told me one afternoon. We’d been swimming and were just sunning ourselves on a ledge. She looked at me. I could see from the expression on her face she was going to tell me something important today and I turned on my side to face her. She turned on her back and looked at the sky. I noticed her take trouble to cover herself up properly, which was not like her at all.
‘She didn’t like me being around anyway’ she continued.
‘How old were you?’
‘Sixteen, seventeen maybe.’
‘What about your mum? Didn’t she say anything?’
She never answered that, just stared at the sky. She’d told me before that her mother had been depressed and drank a lot.
‘It wasn’t him incidentally’ she said, turning to me, ‘in case you were wondering. He never actually abused me, physically.’  Up until then it hadn’t occurred to me at all but now all sorts of possibilities came to mind. I knew she’d been a bit of a wild child and her parents had let her do pretty much whatever she wanted, including losing her virginity at thirteen. I suppose I knew that people abused their children but I’d never really given it much thought.
‘He was a very manipulative man. There was always this thing that me and my mother were interchangeable somehow, and then she got older and I got more... “developed” as he put it... It was always a bit weird but I idolised him. All my girlfriends did. He was really good looking, and charming, my father. Everybody said so.’
I wanted to say ‘So what happened?’ but I knew hurrying her would make her change the subject so I had to wait.
‘I was spending a lot of time in a squat in Brighton at the time. It was all pretty mad...’ and she looked at me again, trying to decide whether to go on, whether I’d be too shocked. I made as subtle encouraging noises as I could and she lay down again. ‘I don’t want to go into it’ she said finally, covering her face with her hands, covering her eyes. I lay back and looked at the sky. I knew what was coming. She’d joked about it – messy, badly lit rooms, the dope and speed and vodka going around, and the sex. I’d found it kind of exciting at first – the thought of her doing that... Then, as I got to know her more I felt jealous. Now, I could see how hurt she was. Maybe I was growing up. Who knows? I reached over and touched her arm and she uncovered her eyes and gripped my finger. I could see she’d been crying.
‘What happened then?’
‘Oh they kicked me out. I had to have an abortion. I got sick, blah blah blah. Oh look I just can’t...’
‘It’s ok, it’s alright. Look...’ and I indicated a space in the crook of my arm where she could curl up and she came over and fell asleep on me.

Another time, when we knew each other better, I asked her why she wouldn’t go back and try again, avoiding all that pain. It seemed to me that the nasty parts should be easy to avoid if she knew when to expect them. She said it’s not that simple and you don’t necessarily remember enough, or anything, of your previous existence next time around.
‘I couldn’t take the risk’ she said sadly. ‘I couldn’t put her through all that again.’
It took me a moment to realise she was talking about her younger self.
‘But you could settle somewhere here couldn’t you? Somewhere, I don’t know...’ I look about at the view, avoiding her eyes on me. I don’t understand, I admit that. How can she just give up? She seems so, I don’t know, lively, and clever. How can she just let herself snuff out?

The landscape around us gradually assumed a more cultivated look as the days went by (How many days? I don’t know. It seemed like about four months, but I couldn’t be sure. Time just swelled and flowed about us). Fields and hedges emerged more often from the wilderness as we travelled, overgrown and unkempt to be sure, but undoubtedly fields and hedges. The paths remained rocky and uneven, but wider. At one point we came across a shed, big enough for cows or horses and still with stale straw on the floor. A fat grey dormouse watched us from the rafters with the shiniest little black eyes. I saw her mood drop a little in there. She didn’t want me to notice, but I did. When she turned around it was as if nothing had happened.
The possibility of being seen by people made me a little more inhibited but she carried on as before and urged me not to worry – we had a while yet she said. I didn’t ask.
She asked me about my past, and in particular about the women in my life. I told her there wasn’t much to tell, skimmed over my adolescent infatuations and humiliations and briefly mentioned Naomi and what had happened there. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea but she insisted and didn’t laugh too much. It all seemed a very long time ago and an extremely long way away. All around us insects were swarming about amid the early summer flowers, and sun sparkled in the dew on their hairy stems. Everywhere, the sheer detail of veins in leaves, in the red stain in the leaves behind the blue petals, and a black fly buzzing there, and a blue spider, sitting, like a crab, in the centre, waiting for it.
‘Actually, birds eat bees’ she said suddenly, looking out across the valley. ‘It’s an apposite metaphor for life don’t you think?’
‘Not always’ I said, although I’d like to have eaten her at that moment. She turned and smiled at me. ‘What are you thinking?’
I couldn’t tell her I was thinking about licking her entire body in one mouthful.
‘About who of us is the bird and who is the bee...’ I said, lamely.
‘Maybe we’re both birds’ she suggested.
‘Except we don’t have wings’ I pointed out.
‘I wouldn’t want to be a bee I don’t think – maybe one of those big fuzzy mama bees with all her daughters hidden in a hole in the ground...’ and she asked me how I’d been bitten. I said I wasn’t even sure if it wasn’t all in my imagination, and I explained about what happened with Lucy – how naive I’d been. ‘I know it’s not exactly the end of the world’ I said finally, tailing off.
‘But you’re so young’ she said compassionately. ‘How could you have known?’ and I suddenly felt like crying because she was on my side and I wasn’t used to that. I had assumed it was probably mostly my fault, as usual, but she didn’t think so.
‘I despise her already’ she said ‘and I haven’t even met the woman.’

We sit and look and think for a while. So much birdsong, a lizard on every available rock, as many butterflies as flowers. Maybe this was what England used to be like, before we humans got our hands on it. Miranda points out a stork, sailing over the treetops opposite. I watch a crow swoop down from behind us into the valley. In a few seconds it is over the stream, in another few it is among the trees where the stork was, maybe half a mile away. What a way to get about!
‘I’d never do something like that’ she says. ‘If I took my clothes off for you, no matter what the pretext, you’d know exactly what I was there for’ and she looks momentarily sideways at me with that bad smile of hers, tongue literally in cheek. I smile and look across the valley again.
‘I think I need to cool off’ I say, getting down off the wall and standing to face her.
‘Very sensible’ she says. ‘You do that’ and she lies down in the sun, and I look back just in time to see her tiny nipples ping free over the top of her sarong as she raises her arm to shade her eyes. Its lower edge comes up to expose almost the full length of her thighs as she bends her right leg up. ‘Don’t be long’ she says.
I bound down the valley side, through the long grass, grasshoppers springing merrily aside as I go.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Journey III – The ridge

My walking at last has brought me out on a high outcrop. It’s bright spring weather and in the short turf, exquisite flowers are scattered about. I’ve never really looked at flowers before, but here among the mountains, under a blindingly blue sky, everything is fresh and new. There’s still snow in the shady hollows (sprouting tiny fringed purple bells), and gullies where the melt water runs clear and frigid (and edged with tiny silk white buttercups, stained with red at the edges). The crevices in the otherwise bare rock are stuffed with tiny green cushions, studded with crystalline wine red stars. I feel sure nothing so wonderful could possibly exist back in the world, although I admit to being dizzy with the clear air and the sun (although it’s still very cold) after all that damp and shade. Mountains, still half clad in snow stretch on forever in all directions. I drink the water and find a sheltered place to lie down naked, and spread all my belongings out on the grass so I can finally dry everything out properly. Tiny birds hop among the outcrops, and a huge furry iridescent black bee savagely molests a nodding jade green, bowl shaped flower, wrestling it to the ground just beside my head (What’s the point in a green flower? What a strange place).
Still, it’s freezing out of the sun and the wind picks up at dusk so I set my tent up just below the tree line for shelter.
I wonder where she is. I can’t bring myself to go back and look. I call for her sometimes but there’s no answer. Partly I doubt she even exists, but part of me knows I’m being selfish. Going backwards is just more than I can stand. ‘I’m sorry’ I call. I hope she’s alright.

Morning comes. I look at the view. My good mood of the previous night has turned sour. Each ridge, exposed above the tree line gives fresh hope, and just as quickly dashes it. Part of me wants to avoid them – to avoid the disappointment of having to re-enter the forest after. But the respite is too good to miss. I love the air, and the light, and the chance to dry off, and the fellowship with other living things. You’d never think a moth could be a kindred spirit until you’ve had the company of nothing but millipedes and spiders for weeks on end. Oh colour and movement my soul! I sit and steam in the sun, or rinse in the rain - either way it’s too good to pass up. And then there’s the snow – so white after so much gloom. Looking at it I can feel my retina burning away and it feels wonderful.
I cast my mind back, and I can’t say how many tree lines I’ve crossed. It all begins to merge and repeat. I have had nothing to eat in a long time and I don’t miss it that much. I would like to arrive somewhere some time soon, but it is remarkable that I’m not going mad for it. I just keep going. That’s what there is to do, so I do it.
It gives me time to think though, which I suppose is the point. Kevin said something about there always being a purpose – a meaning – to what happens here, unlike in life, which I know had come to seem completely meaningless to him after he lost his family. I always used to believe in fate – in destiny (I’ve never been sure what the difference is) because I never really felt like I had much of a say in what happened. Here though, it’s different. This is what it’s really like to feel a subtle presence acting on events, making things happen. I know I’m being tested.
I endlessly go over what happened with Ray and the others, and with Lucy of course and I just feel like punching myself. Why couldn’t I just act like an adult like everybody else for fuck’s sake? What was wrong with me? I should have either had the balls to tell them to fuck off or... Or what? Or been like them? Tried to fit in? Hah! No way.

So what was I supposed to do? If I couldn’t be myself convincingly, and I couldn’t stand to be like them, what was I supposed to do? To be honest I’m not even sure I wanted to do anything much. When I was alive I was happy to stay home, drawing and writing stories in my room, reading, listening to music. Well, not happy, but I could stand it. I knew how it worked. Sometimes I couldn’t even get it together to sign on and I’d have to go in all shame faced and apologise for being crap and fill out a whole load of new forms. Then I got the shop job and I was crap at that too – I didn’t know a hawk from a hacksaw but it got mum off my back. I don’t know. Up until my exam results actually arrived I still thought there might be some sort of miracle. I’d always got through somehow before without doing much work at all. It was a shock, and yet I wasn’t surprised when I found I’d just utterly failed. The staff giving out the result slips just shook their heads and looked away and I went home. Nobody said anything about it.

If you want to know the real reason why I wanted to go to university it was because I wanted a girlfriend. Pathetic isn’t it.
I met Naomi at a family do and started going out with her the autumn after I left school. At the time I don’t think I took her very seriously. She was only sixteen and kind of mad I thought. She made me feel quite mature by comparison.
I didn’t even think she was particularly attractive, not initially, but I did what I thought boyfriends did – went round to her house a lot, even took flowers once. We didn’t do anything much, hardly said anything to each other – just snogged, or I sat and watched telly while she studied for her A levels which she was due to take a year early. Seems strange now. Of course I desperately wanted to go further but she wouldn’t let me – she just giggled and made sarcastic comments. It was only then that I realised she was, of course, absolutely gorgeous. Suddenly her ‘madness’ was really sexy. I spent my days waiting to be with her and my nights fantasising about her. That was when I bought her the flowers – I was that desperate. I told her I loved her.
As with the A level results I saw it and I didn’t see it coming when she finally broke up with me. The fact that she was applying to Oxford and was clearly very bright didn’t make me feel any better. She’d been increasingly unpredictable, playing stupid jokes on me – inviting her friends around on the evenings I was there and excluding me from the conversation, giggling and flirting with the boys, pretending to play fight with me but actually hurting me quite a lot, pinching and scratching, and I had to pretend it was cool in front of everyone because I was more mature or something.
No doubt she was hoping that if she treated me badly enough I’d ‘get the idea’ but of course I didn’t. I now know that this is a cheap and cowardly strategy and probably never works on the besotted (After all – you always hurt the one you love, or so my dad used to sing, and he should know) but at the time I didn’t understand at all. In the end she was the mature one and told me very calmly and articulately one day that she didn’t want to be with me any more because I was still living with my parents and didn’t seem to have a future, and she was very sorry and there was even a little tear. I spent the next I-don’t-know-how-long working on my script to get her back, writing letters I never sent (Thankfully. My common sense hadn’t completely given up on me) and wandering about town aimlessly, half hoping to bump into her, half dreading it. The whole thing lasted about two months.

I know now I wasn’t in love, and we didn’t even have anything to talk about but it doesn’t help. No one else wanted me even as much as she did. How fucking pathetic. I did the right thing that night, up on the Downs, just brought the whole stupid thing to an end – done with it.
And now here I am, trudging through wet undergrowth alone for all eternity for all I know. Terrific.

Actually, the forest can be more interesting than I’ve admitted. The trees are not all one kind for instance and I’ve been collecting bits to compare. Although, like everything here, large numbers are difficult to keep track of, I think there are at least twenty different types, plus miscellaneous climbers, ferns and other weeds, not to mention fungi – especially in the clearings and lesser ridges. The best places (except the high tree-less ridges of course) are where the path runs along the side of a precipice. There you see enormous birds, and streams dropping hundreds of metres into the void. I look from above at the top of a huge tree that has its roots somewhere far below, and watch herons nesting in the uppermost branches. Even on some of the smallest twigs there are tiny ferns and mosses clinging, beaded with moisture and supporting bustling colonies of ants. In some places the trees exude a foam of tiny flowers strongly scented of honey. I tasted some and nearly fell into the abyss in the process.
I don’t want to spend an eternity doing this, but actually, it’ll do for now.

To continue reading either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.