Lauren Child - Catch Your Death

‘Just how poor were you Mrs Digby?’ Ruby asked this question not because she didn’t know the answer, but because the housekeeper enjoyed telling her.

‘Not a bean to rub against another bean. Which is why we had to forage. Mostly it was a cornucopia of goodness, but occasionally it was enough to turn a sailor’s stomach.’

Mrs Digby was an excellent cook (though not a fashionable one) and she knew how to rustle up a supper fit for a president from ‘a dried-up onion and a pile of leaves’, if that’s all the ingredients there were.

‘Never turn your nose up at an edible mushroom. They might look like pixie furniture, but I’ve always told you Ruby: eat your mushrooms and you won’t go far wrong – full of protein is what they are. That’s why all these vegetarian types go cuckoo for ’em.’

Ruby checked her book. ‘You’re not wrong. It says here, mushrooms are rich in most vitamins, especially B and C, and they contain nearly all the major minerals, particularly potassium and phosphorus.’

Mrs Digby was a little surprised and, in her own words, tickled that Ruby was taking an interest in the theory of food and cookery, though she would have been more tickled if Ruby would take on the practical side too.

‘Since you’re so interested in cooking all of a sudden, how about you take over stirring this pot,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘while I read the funnies for five minutes?’

Ruby checked her watch. Still thirty-nine minutes before she had to be at the helipad. She rolled her eyes and got stirring.

Back at camp, some hours later, Ruby was busy trying to concoct a stew out of some unappealing roots and some ugly-looking fungi – Colt assured her none of it was poisonous; it was important to get this right since if you got it wrong you might wind up as extinct as the Blue Alaskan wolf.

‘I hope you all have understood the need to be getting au fait with roots and berries and wild growing things,’ said Colt. ‘Things you might not ordinarily want to put under your nose, let alone on your tongue.’

Ruby wriggled slightly in her seat; for all her research, one of her least favourite things about survival training was the whole eating deal. She wasn’t particularly crazy about chowing down on roots and foliage, nor did she like the idea of resorting to grubs when desperation struck. During the hours of training, she longed for her CheeseOs and her Slush-pops, but what she yearned for more than anything was her banana milk, hard to find in the wild.

Today she had spent several hours foraging and several more trying to work out what to do with this unappetising harvest. Now the meal was as cooked as it was ever going to be, she closed her eyes and raised her fork to her mouth.

‘Redfort, I’m guessing you don’t know the difference between a toadstool and a mushroom. . . or perhaps you’re done with surviving?’ The voice was one Ruby recognised from her dive training in Hawaii.

‘Holbrook, if you’re trying to get your hands on my chow, you’re outta luck buster.’

‘You call that supper Redfort? I’d sooner boil up my socks than chow down on what you’ve cooked up.’

‘I’m sure they’d taste good ’n’ cheesy,’ said Ruby.

Despite the way they spoke to each other, they actually got on like a forest fire.

Ruby didn’t poison herself with her stew, though she couldn’t help feeling that Holbrook’s socks indeed might have been less disgusting. Even the cube of Hubble-Yum she spent the next hour chewing on couldn’t quite eradicate the taste of that stew.

She was relieved when the helicopter dropped her home late that night and she could raid Mrs Digby’s larder. She found a tray of fresh-baked cookies with a note from the housekeeper that read: hands off kid.

The following day’s challenge was to build a shelter. Colt spent the morning trying to impress upon his recruits just how important it was to keep warm and dry when out in the wilderness.

‘You get yourself soaked to the skin, and cold as an iced-up river, and you’re exposing yourself to all kinds of trouble. You need to build a shelter and get dry. The act of building the shelter will keep you warm. You don’t get warm and dry and you’re nigh on likely to get sick, and if you get sick in the wilds that makes you vulnerable and when you’re vulnerable you have a pretty fair chance of dying.’

His manner was gruff, no frills, which didn’t matter because survival didn’t require frills.

‘Knives, flashlights, matches, waterproofs, they’re all frills,’ was something Colt might say.

Holbrook and Ruby teamed up for the shelter building; they also worked together on the canoe hollowing: both disciplines took a lot of concentration, not just energy but skill. Once they were done, they took the new canoe out on the lake to see if it would float; it did.

‘You know what Redfort? I take my hat off to you – you’re not the sap I thought you were gonna be,’ laughed Holbrook.

‘I guess that’s lucky Holbrook, because you’re a deal more feeble than I’d expected and I hadn’t expected much.’

This was when Holbrook decided to roll the canoe and dunk them both in the lake. It rolled without any trouble and though Ruby was kind of mad at him for getting the better of her she couldn’t help being sort of proud that this incredible boat had been created with her own two hands – with the help of Holbrook of course; she had to concede that.

Ruby Redfort had always been sure of her mental abilities, but had not realised she could turn her hand to other more practical skills. Right now, sitting soaked through in her hand-carved canoe, she felt like the world was her oyster.

It was a good feeling. But not one that was going to last.

RUBY HAD BEEN OUT AT MOUNTAIN RANCH CAMP on and off, travelling back and forth, for approximately a month and her survival skills were coming along. She and Holbrook passed all their practical tests without a hint of trouble.

Ruby was determined to excel and in a few short weeks had got as knowledgeable as Holbrook ever was, and Holbrook was no slouch. She felt satisfied that she knew the theory of survival, back to front and top to bottom; she was competitive and she was a hard worker, but no matter how much work she put in, Sam Colt would always say the same thing: ‘Redfort, you’re getting stuck on detail and it’s making you miss the whole big picture. ’

Skills that involved patience were not a problem for Ruby Redfort: patience was a virtue she had been born with. She could contentedly sit and wait for single drips of rainwater to fill a drinking glass if this was what it took. She could build a shelter that was really pretty comfortable and light a fire within about ten minutes. With all these tasks, she understood the need for patience and perseverance. This determined attitude was of great benefit to her since patience and perseverance were pretty essential virtues when it came to the tasks of survival.

Strength wasn’t a big problem either; sure, she wasn’t as strong as some of her co-trainees – she was, after all, only thirteen – but what she might have lacked in sheer brute strength she made up for with her technique, learning how to move heavy logs and branches, rocks and earth by rolling, balancing, pivoting. All this theory she stored in her head, confident she had the information squirrelled away for that time when it might save her life.