‘You’re not bored?’ I said.
‘Can’t wait.’
I handed it to him and let him open its three zipped and velcroed pockets, to lay the contents again on the bed. Although the pouch itself was waterproof, almost every item inside it was further wrapped separately in a small plastic bag, fastened with a twist tie; safe from sand and insects. Gareth undid and emptied some of the bags and frowned over the contents.
‘Explain what they are,’ he said. ‘I mean, twenty matchbooks are for lighting fires, right, so what are the cotton wool balls doing with them?’
‘They burn well. They set fire to dry leaves.’
‘Oh. The candle is for light, right?’
‘And to help light fires. And wax is useful for a lot of things.’
‘What’s this?’ He pointed to a short fat spool of thin yellow thread.
‘That’s kevlar fibre. It’s a sort of plastic, strong as steel. Six hundred yards of it. You can make nets of it, tie anything, fish with it, twist it into fine unbreakable rope. I didn’t come across it in time to put in the books.’
‘And this? This little jar of whitish liquid packed with the sawn-off paintbrush?’
I smiled. ‘That’s in the Wilderness book. It’s luminous paint.’
He stared.
‘Well,’ I said reasonably, ‘if you have a camp and you want to leave it to go and look for food or firewood, you want to be able to find your way back again, don’t you? Essential. So as you go, you paint a slash of this on a tree trunk or a rock, always making sure you can see one slash from another, and then you can find your way back even in the dark.’
‘Cool,’ he said.
‘That little oblong metal thing with the handle,’ I said, ‘that’s a powerful magnet. Useful but not essential. Good for retrieving fishhooks if you lose them in the water. You tie the magnet on a string and dangle it. Fishhooks are precious.’
He held up a small, cylindrical transparent plastic container, one of about six in the pouch. ‘More fishhooks in here,’ he said. ‘Isn’t this what films come in? I thought they were black.’
‘Fuji films come in these clear cases. As you can see what’s inside, I use them all the time. They weigh nothing. They shut tight. They’re everything-proof. Perfect. These other cases contain more fishhooks, needles and thread, safety-pins, aspirins, water purifying tablets, things like that.’
‘What’s this knobbly-looking object? Oh, it’s a telescope!’ He laughed and weighed it in his hand.
‘Two ounces,’ I said, ‘but eight by twenty magnification.’
He passed over as mundane a torch that was also a ball-point pen, the light in the tip for writing, and wasn’t enthralled by a whistle, a Post-it pad, or a thick folded wad of aluminium foil. (‘For wrapping food to cook in the embers,’ I said.) What really fascinated him was a tiny blow-torch which shot out a fierce blue flame hot enough to melt solder.
‘Cool,’ he said again. ‘That’s really ace.’
‘Infallible for lighting fires,’ I said, ‘as long as the butane lasts.’
‘You said in the books that fire comes first.’
I nodded. ‘A fire makes you feel better. Less alone. And you need fire for boiling river water to make it OK to drink, and for cooking, of course. And signalling where you are, if people are looking for you.’
‘And to keep warm.’
‘That too.’
Gareth had come to the last thing, a pair of leather gloves, which he thought were sissy.
‘They give your hands almost double grip,’ I said. ‘They save you from cuts and scratches. And apart from that they’re invaluable for collecting stinging nettles.’
‘I’d hate to collect stinging nettles.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. If you boil the leaves they’re not bad to eat, but the best things are the stalks. Incredibly stringy. You can thrash them until they’re supple enough for lashing branches together, for making shelters and also racks to keep things off the ground away from damp and animals.’
‘You know so much,’ he said.
‘I went camping in my cradle. Literally.’
He methodically packed everything back as he’d found it and asked what it weighed altogether.
‘About two pounds. Less than a kilo.’
A thought struck him. ‘You haven’t got a compass!’
‘It’s not in there,’ I agreed. I opened a drawer in the chest of drawers and found it for him: a slim liquid-filled compass set in a clear oblong of plastic which had inch and centimetre measures along the sides. I showed him how it aligned with maps and made setting a course relatively easy, and told him I always carried it in my shirt pocket to have it handy.
‘But it was in the drawer,’ he objected.
‘I’m not likely to get lost in Shellerton.’
‘You could up on the Downs,’ he said seriously.
I doubted it, but said I would carry it to please him, which earned the sideways look it deserved.
Putting everything on top of the chest of drawers I reflected how little time I’d spent in that room amid the mismatched furniture and faded fabrics. I hadn’t once felt like retreating to be alone there, though for one pretty accustomed to solitude it was odd to find myself living in the lives of all these people, as if I’d stepped into a play that was already in progress and been given a walk-on part in the action. I would spend another three weeks there and exit, and the play would go on without me as if I hadn’t been onstage at all. Meanwhile, I felt drawn in and interested and unwilling to miss any scene.
‘This room used to be Perkin’s,’ Gareth observed, as if catching a swirl of my thought. ‘He took all his own stuff with him when they divided the house. It used to be terrif in here.’ He shrugged. ‘You want to see my room?’
‘I’d love to.’
He nodded and led the way. He and I shared the bathroom which lay between us, and along the hallway lay Tremayne’s suite into which he was liable to vanish with a brisk slam of the door.
Gareth’s room was all pre-adolescent. He slept on a platform with a pull-out desk below and there were a good many white space-age fitments liberally plastered with posters of pop stars and sportsmen. Prized objects filled shelves. Clothes adorned the floor.
I murmured something encouraging but he swept his lair with a disparaging scrutiny and said he was going to do the whole thing over, Dad willing, in the summer.
‘Dad got this room done for me after Mum left, and it was top ace at the time. Guess I’m getting too old for it now.’
‘Life’s like that,’ I said.
‘Always?’
‘It looks like it.’
He nodded as if he’d already discovered that changes were inevitable and not always bad, and in undemanding accord we shut the door on his passing phase and went down to the family room, where we found Tremayne asleep.
Gareth retreated without disturbing him and beckoned me to follow him through to the central hall. There he walked across and knocked briefly on Mackie and Perkin’s door, which after an interval was opened slowly by Perkin.
‘Can we come in for five mins?’ Gareth said. ‘Dad’s asleep in his chair. You know what he’s like if I wake him.’
Perkin yawned and opened his door wider though without excessive willingness, particularly on my account. He led the way into his sitting-room where it was clear he and Mackie had been spending a lazy afternoon reading the Sunday newspapers.
Mackie started to get up when she saw me and then relaxed again as if to say I was now family, not a visitor, and could fend for myself. Perkin told Gareth there was Coke in the fridge if he wanted some. Gareth didn’t.
I remembered with a small jerk that it was in this room, Perkin and Mackie’s sitting-room, that Olympia had died. I couldn’t help but glance around wondering just where it had happened; where Mackie and Henry had found Nolan standing over the girl without underclothes in a scarlet dress, with Lewis — drunk or not — in a chair.