CHAPTER 60
The tent Maz had bought was, to be honest, rubbish. It was light enough for me to backpack, but if it had encountered a bit of wind, or rain, we’d have ended up sleeping under the camp shelter. What it did have as an advantage was simple: the inner tent was largely netting. Leaving the fly sheet off meant a view of the sky.

“I have a Salewa tent like this, love. Top of the inner is mesh. Saw a picture of one, once, in a book by a round the world cyclist, and went, ‘Ah! I recognise that tent’. Sad person that I am”

“Would it have fitted both of us?”

“God, no! Like a coffin, that tent. Called a Micra, for good reason. Certainly not a two person tent unless said persons were stacked vertically, and put your mind away on that subject”

She chuckled happily at either the thought or the recent memory, and settled her head closer to mine as we looked up at the stars, various creatures making occasional odd noises. I was used to noises at night in Scotland or Wales, but that was mostly the whine of midges, those horrible little bastards. I was just going to make a comment about night-flying bloodsuckers when I realised the sun was up, I was alone .and I had clearly just fallen asleep as we chatted. What great company. She was quickly back, though, with two fresh mugs of tea.

“Morning, Sleepy!”

“Sorry about that”

She snorted round her grin.

“Thing about the tropics, and I mean where I was born, is that the day goes from light to dark very quickly, not a long twilight thing like you have in Europe. First time I’ve seen it in a person, though. You said something about mosquitos, and then you were off. I don’t know how you can sleep in such a flimsy shelter”

“Didn’t you sleep?”

“Yes, but that was different. I had a Mike with me, made all the difference. Drink your tea, and there’s a red-capped parrot in the tree over there”

“You think about birds all the time?”

“Girl needs a hobby…”

Suddenly, her head tilted away in that gesture I was coming to dread, as her self-confidence vanished in an instant.

“You okay, love?”

That was deliberate, but the word was getting easier to use each time it emerged. She shook her head, then smiled again.

“I was going to make a rude joke about not thinking about them all the time, girl needs a hobby, but women can multitask, and then it all went stupid with the voices again. My parents’, that time”

“Shame and dishonour?”

“Harlotry”

“Sorry?”

“One of Mum’s favourite words. Sort of books she reads”

I couldn’t help the laughter, and she simply stared until it had run its course.

“And?”

“Sorry, but it was a lesbian friend of ours, someone took exception to her on an on-line forum. Called her ‘an harlot and an abomination before the Lord’, in those words”

“AN harlot? With an N? Seriously?”

“Yup. Some sort of religious nutter. She wound him up something rotten before he got his account locked”

“Tell more”

“Well, as an example, she said that as a Sapphic, she was a bit out of practice with the harloting, but if he’d like to pop round one evening, she could fancy a bit of abominating”

That brought the laughter I was hoping for, so I hugged her, after setting down both mugs, and then slithered out of the tent to see said new type of parrot and say ‘g’day’ to the other campers. That made me smile yet again, remembering Maz and her very Aussie comment that something was ‘common as’. Ripper, bonzer, she’ll be right, as Kul would no doubt say.

I found the day reprising the standard hillwalker’s dilemma, where there is reluctance to start the downward leg because being high is a delight, and after expending so much effort, why hurry to undo it? The campsite was basic, and the surroundings scruffy, but it still held that wildness and complete lack of traffic.

“Penny for them?”

“Oh, just a mountain thing”

I did my best to get the concept across, and caught her smiling.

“I can understand that. Get as big a reward for the effort as you can. Profit motive in a nutshell, Mister MBR!”

I took a deep breath. Dive in, get the shock of the water over.

“There are other ways, like taking a tent with you, making it a multi-day walk”

She was staring at me, her smile almost there.

“You are talking about you and Caro, aren’t you?”

I dropped my gaze to my knees.

“Yes”

“Go on”

“Ah, there was one walk…”

The memory was there, in full colour.

“There’s a waterfall near the coast in North Wales, Aber Falls. Path cuts across the downfall and then goes out onto the hills, as well as into them. Really wild area, and some of the highest mountains in Wales, and on the top before the highest of them, not the HIGHEST highest in Wales, just in that range, there’s a little shelter, very basic. A rock crevice, really, roofed over, with a door. Just enough room for two people, if they’re very close”

“Like your tent?”

“Bit more room, but not that much more”

“So you walked in, sleeping in the shelter?”

“That was the plan”

“What went wrong?”

“Ah, not wrong as such. Someone else was already there. We had to pitch a tent”

I found myself smiling, to my surprise.

“Caro was never really a climber, but she loved the mountains, and she especially loved really good lightweight kit, so the tent was a wonder. The other couple were older; Pat and Rob. Wedding anniversary tradition for them, they said. And then…”

I astonished myself by bursting into laughter. Maz just waited until I was done.

“Sorry, love: just a silly memory. I’d sneaked a couple of bottles of wine into my rucksack, for a proper evening in the shelter, and so had Rob, but the funny bit is that he’d bought his in the same shop I had bought ours, and he recognised me, and it was all so bloody perfect, even though they’d snaffled the shelter”

I was still grinning when Maz took my hand.

“Thank you, Mike”

“Eh?”

“That’s the first time you’ve really shared a nice memory, one about you and Caro. Thank you”

“Well, it was a wonderful evening”

“Cling to that thought, my love. Rather like the time Alan took me to his Dad’s house”

“Where was that?”

“Singapore. Alan had some black and white photos of the place, and there we were, standing on the street as he lined up a camera to see how the view compared, and suddenly there’s an old Chinese man screaming at us in Cantonese”

She gave her own funny story, of how the man turned out to be a gardener, and how his shouting brought the obvious lady of the house, who took a very different attitude, inviting them in for refreshments and a scan of Alan’s old photographs for her own family’s history.

Maz started laughing again.

“I have no idea of how much that house is worth now, but when Alan showed me some other photos, of some of his grandparents’ married quarters in the UK, well, no comparison. Ooh! Varied sitella!”

I listened for the voices, but for once they were silent, and I was left wondering, rather than dreading, how Caro would have taken to Maryam if that had been possible, and then my own words spoke to me yet again. Not ‘if’ she would have taken, but ‘how’. Knowing my lost love, and thinking of that comment about going for a pint, then yes, beer would have been involved.

We packed up ready for departure, but left that till later in the afternoon, Maz filling her time ticking off and snapping more birds, including a soaring eagle, until it was time to start the amble back to the trailhead. I could just about see me walking the whole trail some day, but shuddered at the thought of how much water we would need to…

‘We’.

Our return was a comfortably slow stroll, the Doctor doing its best through the open woodland as we made our way back to the Weir, and a last ‘al fresco’ cuppa together while we waited for Kul.

A beep of a horn, and a bearded grin, along with a cheeky enquiry as to the remaining levels of my precious bodily fluids, and we were on our way back to Joondalup, or so I assumed.

“Think the boy would like that, Mike?”

“I was thinking about doing more of it, mate, which should answer your question. Just need to carry a lot more water than we would in Wales”

“Mike, we always carry water in Wales, just in a different way: dripping off our waterproofs rather than sitting in bottles”

“Fair point, Mr Butt”

“I thang yew. Now, Geeta’s been cheeky, and in your room. Just for your cossies, okay? We’re eating out tonight, and when I say ‘out’, I mean the public barbie at the beach. Just need to pick up a few last bits on the way, and yes, I am assuming you’ll want a swim. No booze; back to the greasies tomorrow. Murdo’s got us another whale-watcher outfit for Green Dream on Wednesday and…”

If there was a moment I finally decided to say a final farewell to the United Kingdom, that was it.