Joe Dunthorne - Wild Abandon

They sat breathing on the cork-topped bench, wrapped up, Kate’s towel tucked above her breasts, their backs making wet patches on the floral wallpaper.

After a while, Albert spread his towel out in the middle of the bathroom floor.

“Albert, please don’t do this.”

He crawled into a ball on the towel, his head between his knees. Goose bumps spread across his arms and legs.

She counted the teeth of his spinal column.

“What am I?”

“Too old for this.”

“What am I?”

“Annoying.”

He shivered a little. “ No . What am I?”

“A bomb?”

“Nope. Try again.”

For Kate, it was these moments after showering that were the real problem. He still behaved and looked like a child, but somehow she could sense puberty’s greasy palm on his shoulder. She was damn sure she didn’t want to be sharing a bathroom with her brother when it took hold. This would have to be the last time; she couldn’t do it anymore.

“A tumor?”

“Guess again.”

“A sack of bones?”

“No.”

“An empty shell?”

“No, sir.”

“A failed experiment?”

“Nuh-uh.”

Plus there was the thought of what the boys at her college would say if they knew this happened. You get soaped up with your brother? Is that how they do it in the commune? Dark …

Fuck you, don’t you dare judge me , she thought, making a mental note to carry that resentment into her morning classes. For the last seven months she had been studying at Gorseinon College, finishing her English, politics, history, and sociology A-levels, since there were no adults in the community whom she considered sufficiently “specialist” to teach her. Prior to that, all her schooling had taken place in the community — with her brother — and, not unusually for home-educated children, they were substantially ahead of schedule, academically, compared to their state-educated peers. She had arrived at college with the expectation that it would be entirely populated by sexual predators and intelligence-hating dullards and, as a result of this, she had spoken to almost no one. Her first term had been characterized by walking fast between classes with a fearsome lean, bringing her own intimidatingly Tupperwared vegetarian lunches and working really hard. As a result, no one spoke to her either. By the start of her second term she had conditional offers from Cambridge and Edinburgh and an unconditional from Leeds, all of which confirmed her belief that she had been right not to make friends. The downside was that she had no one to whom she could actually say: Fuck you, don’t you dare judge me .

“Oh no, hang on,” Kate said, pretending to puff on a pipe. “Are you … a boulder?” He was always a boulder. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t like her to guess too quickly.

“Alright. Are you the last remaining human?”

“Not yet.”

“Or are you a boulder?”

“Yes!” he said, and he stood up, putting his hands in the air, his nipples like freckles. “I’m a boulder!”

She picked his towel up and wrapped it round him.

“Great. Now get out.”

Albert pulled open the door and ran into the corridor. She put on her dressing gown and attacked her hair with the towel. There was a thuk thuk thuk sound coming from next door, her parents’ bedroom. She knew what it meant: the community had recently held one of its open days to find new members. On these occasions, the farm was awash with all kinds of lost and cheery wayfarers as well as, quite often, an “undercover” journalist pretending to be a primary school teacher. To become a full-time member you had to volunteer (and do shit jobs: cleaning tools, turning compost, infinite weeding) then have an initial short interview, which, if approved, was followed by a minimum two-week stay (recommended six weeks), then a cooling-down break of at least one month, then another, more involved interview to decide on full-time suitability. It was an undoubted power trip for the panel — particularly Kate’s father, Don Riley, who, still stinging from a failed Oxford interview when he was eighteen, took great pleasure in devising questions.

Q: If there’s a power outage and it’s cold inside and out, how do you dry your clothes?

(A: Washing lines in the polytunnels.)

Q: If you were to cook a communal meal using seasonal ingredients, what would it be?

Arlo Mela was, famously, the only person who, having made elaborate culinary promises in interview, produced, as promised, a game-changing chocolate mille-feuille.

“New members must have realistic expectations of us, and of themselves,” was how her father put it. “Beware strangers promising bouillabaisse .”

The combination of a ruthless selection process and a high likelihood of mental illness among applicants had, over the years, produced some interesting correspondence. The community sent a primly bureaucratic template response to all abusive letters. Thank you for your generous feedback … Their father, however, was thin-skinned when it came to criticism of the community — he took everything as a personal attack — and liked to write replies, even though he never sent them. The typewriter allowed for maximum release of tension. Thuk thuk . In a similar way, everyone knew if Kate and Albert’s mother was upset because a pile of newly chopped wood would appear in the barn.

The community had a guestbook and a detestbook, the latter containing choice quotes from twenty years of occasional hate mail. Highlights included a drawing of the barn in flames and a comprehensive list of unflattering anagrams of residents’ names (only one of which stuck: Patrick Kinwood, a no-work dick-tip). Both books were on public display in the entrance hall to manage the expectations of new visitors.

But when Kate pushed into her parents’ bedroom, she found that it was, in fact, her mother at the desk in the corner, fully dressed, writing at the beige Smith Corona. Her dark hair ran down to her armpits, parting over her shoulders. She was wearing a woolen jumper the color of margarine. Kate watched her forefinger locate a letter on the keyboard, hover above, then drop. Noticing her daughter behind her, Freya stopped typing and rested her hands on the desk.

“What’s going on?” Kate said, and massaged her mother’s tightly upholstered shoulders. She read the letter, if it could be called that. There were just two words, Dear and Don .

Kate turned to look at her dad, who was in bed, sitting up against the headboard. He always kept two pillows under his right foot because he said it needed “to drain.” He had a thick castaway’s beard — badly maintained — a trophy of unemployability. His children had no way of knowing whether he was strong or weak chinned.

“Dad, why aren’t you up?”

“I am up,” he said, which was the same thing that Kate said when she wasn’t up. He was in his pajamas.

It was not unusual for her parents to fight; it was unusual for them to do it quietly. Even if Kate had somehow slept through the original row (not easy, given the thin shared wall between their bedrooms), then she would have expected her mother to come next door and wake her up, just to tell her about it. Ever since Kate had hit puberty, her mother spoke to her with total transparency — this extended both to her parents’ relationship ( Mum, can you please not call it a relationship? You’re supposed to be married ) and to the community at large. It was from her mother that Kate had learned that Patrick Kinwood, who she had always believed was penniless and possibly ex-homeless, was a former greetings card franchise regional manager and, since the community had a pay-what-you-can system, he made by far the largest monthly contribution. Such disclosures were part of why Kate and Freya were actual friends. Being actual friends with her own mother only started to worry Kate after she saw other South Wales mothers and daughters walking ten paces apart through town.