Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

The boy’s entire previous life was crammed into that tin. Maybe he very rarely opened it, but at least he had brought it with him into his new life. It was useless for him to pretend that memories of his past life held no value for him. The evidence said differently.

‘So what are you doing here on your own?’ said Cal. ‘Where’s the heavy mob?’

‘I just wanted to talk. I thought I might be able to help.’

Cal snorted. ‘Bullshit. Since when did the cops help the likes of us? You’re employed by middle-class, middle-aged folk with their property and comfortable lives to protect.’

‘People like your parents, you mean?’

‘Yes, people like them.’

‘Well, we’re here to protect everybody.’

‘Stuff that. I don’t pay your wages. I don’t pay any taxes. So why should you bother about me?’

Cooper hesitated while he considered the answer. Everything depended on saying the right thing.

‘Hey,’ said Owen. ‘I’ve just realized — that means you don’t pay my wages either. Well, what a revelation.’ He started to get up, brushing down his jacket. ‘That’s that, then. I’ll be off. I can’t be wasting my time with a couple of dirty, idle gypsies. I’ve got nice, clean middle-class people to look after.’

‘Yeah. Fuck off, then,’ said Cal, popping the ring-pull off a can of lager.

Owen stood over him. He didn’t say anything. Cal looked at Cooper. ‘I hate this bastard in the red jacket,’ he said. ‘He thinks he’s my dad or something.’

‘We all know you never had a father, Calvin,’ said Owen.

‘And if you call me Calvin again, I’ll set fire to your fuckin’ beard.’

‘Get the matches out then, Calvin.’

Cal’s eyes glittered. He offered a can to Cooper, who shook his head. Then he held it up above his head, and the Ranger took it.

‘We both came for the solstice,’ said Cal. ‘That’s how we ended up in this quarry. There were loads of people parked down here then. It was like a real community. But the van broke down, and I had no dosh to get it repaired. It’s something to do with the drive shaft, they reckon. Coming down that slope knackered it.’

‘And you’ve stayed ever since.’

‘Everybody else drifted off and left us.’

‘Did you and Stride come together?’

‘No, we didn’t know each other until then. He’d been camping over the valley there — the place they call Robin Hood’s Stride. There’s a cave there, some kind of hermit’s place or something, where he was sheltering. He didn’t know anything about the Nine Virgins, but he wandered over to see what was happening. That’s how we met up, and that’s why we called him Stride. We just seemed to hit it off. He had nowhere else to go, you see.’

Cooper realized he was being watched. He had forgotten Stride for a moment. He had been so still and quiet he could have been camouflaged by an entire forest of trees instead of sitting there in full view a few inches away. His eyes were open now and he was looking at Cooper.

‘Nowhere else to go,’ he said.

Stride’s paleness was worrying. Cooper wondered what medical attention the two youths had access to. None, he supposed. In an earlier age, Stride would have been described as sickly and consumptive. Cooper would have liked to find out how he came to be camping in a hermit’s cave in the Peak District in the first place. But it seemed too big a question to ask.

‘You went to university, didn’t you?’ he said.

Stride nodded. Cal passed him the tobacco and the Rizlas, and he began to roll a cigarette.

‘What degree did you get?’

Stride smiled. ‘Did I say I got a degree?’

‘It’s usually the reason for going to university.’

‘Only if you finish the course. Otherwise they get a bit stuffy about giving it to you.’

‘I see. You dropped out.’

Now Stride laughed. ‘You might call it that.’

‘So what were you studying?’

Stride stared at him, a sudden gleam in his eye, his hand fluttering to his mouth in that curious gesture. Energy seemed to visibly flow through him. From an almost catatonic state he was transformed into a ball of vitality.

‘You really want to know?’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

‘What?’

He was excited now, tugging at Cooper’s sleeve like a puppy wanting him to come out and play. Cooper looked at Owen, who just smiled and nodded affectionately at Stride.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You might learn something.’

They jumped out of the van, and Cooper scrambled up the path after Stride to reach the top of the quarry. The chimes were moving slowly in the birch, jingling gently. One of them turned and caught the sunlight, and Cooper could almost make out the words scrawled on the silver foil in felt-tipped pen.

Stride turned to him at the top of the quarry face and held his hand to his ear, like a bad actor miming his reaction to a knock at the door.

‘Can you hear it? We’re right on the edge.’

‘The edge?’

Cooper listened. All he could hear was the wind which caught at him now they were on the plateau. It carried a whispering in the bracken and the jingle of the chimes. He listened more carefully. He heard several types of bird call — finches twittering nearby, a robin singing in the birches, the jackdaws in Top Quarry; and something else further away, possibly rooks and a blackbird. There was nothing more. Cooper looked up. There was a kestrel hovering over the rough grass on the edge of the quarry, but it was absolutely silent.

‘Do you hear it?’ said Stride. ‘That’s great.’

‘The edge of what?’

‘The reality zone. From here on, all that stuff down there disappears.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of Matlock and the A6.

‘Not for me, it doesn’t.’

Suddenly, Stride threw himself full-length into the damp bracken. For a moment, he disappeared completely as the brown leaves closed over him. Only his laugh could be heard from somewhere in the dripping depths.

‘Look at this!’ he said. His head appeared. He wiped a bracken leaf across his face, smearing the rain water on his skin and licking the moisture off his lips, closing his eyes in ecstasy. Bits of foliage and fragments of dead heather were clinging to his hair and shoulders; the sleeves of his jacket were soaked.

‘I suppose you think this is just a weed. Farmers tear it up and burn it, because it’s a pest. But bracken is a miracle. All ferns are a miracle. Look, look.’ He stroked a tiny, furled leaf. It would probably never open now — it was too late in the year. ‘Each of these produces hundreds of spores. They’re spread around by the wind or animals. I’m doing it now. Look!’ He rolled over on the ground, laughing breathlessly. ‘I’m part of the process! I’m part of nature!’

Stride plucked a larger leaf and held it in front of Cooper’s face. ‘Every spore that lands grows into a little disc. And do you know what? It has both male and female sexual organs. It’s a bisexual. Humans will tell you that isn’t natural. But it is!’

He thrust the leaf into Cooper’s hands. It smelled damp and green and broken. Cooper held it lightly, not sure what to do with it, reluctant just to walk away, too intrigued by the performance to stop it.

‘The male organs release sperm. Oh, yes. We know about sperm, don’t we? But ferns. . their sperm use the rain water. See? The leaves are always damp up here, in the autumn, so the sperm can travel through the moisture to reach the female organs and fertilize the eggs. And then a new plant grows. A new fern. More bracken. More and more of it. And you know what else? Ferns have been doing that for three hundred million years.’

Stride stared at Cooper wildly. ‘Pre-historic tree ferns grew to over a hundred feet. They’re way down there now, under the ground, still there. Fossilized tree ferns. We call them coal.’ He snatched the leaf back from Cooper as if he wasn’t worthy to hold it. ‘So which is the most successful species? The cleverest? The most efficient? The most useful? Humans?’ He laughed. ‘I studied botany. They tried to tell me it was a science; they tried to make me study mycology and phytopathology. They wanted me to look at diagrams of a monocotyledon or analyse the process of hydrotropism. They wanted me to see pistils and radicles and calyxes. But all I saw were miracles everywhere. Miracles of life.’