2. THE RUINED CASTLE

Getting to know the group and then a shock as they arrive at the ruined castle

“It’ll be just like the old times,” grinned Joanie as we rattled along in a camper-van that stretched the imagination when you thought there would soon be three mature adults sleeping in it.

That was one thing I wasn’t looking forward to: sleeping in a crowd, and I was pretty sure that three in this van would constitute one hell of a crowd. Especially when two of them were married and still, after too many decades for it to ring true, all lovey-dovey most of the time.

It was Joanie who helped me out.

“We brought a tent for you,” she said, “in case three’s a crowd. A nice little tent, it is, one we’ve had for years. You’ll like it. You’ll be all cosy on your own, and who knows? You might pull if there are any unattached ladies anywhere near!”

At my age? I ask you! Though when you think about it, it doesn’t take much to switch the mental clock back and be young in the mind again. Them all things are possible!

It was time for me to lie again. “I thought of bringing a tent myself,” I said, “but kind of let the thought drift away to where thoughts sometimes go...”

“You’ll be okay in this,” grinned Joanie, “the kids played in it when they were in their teens...”

Scabby and Joan had twins, one set, and that had been enough for them to shelve their original plan, of having enough kids to form a pop group when they were old enough. They had left it at a duo, and in their turn that duo had settled down with their respective wives (when they found them) and become sensible citizens. So that ended their dreams of a musical dynasty with them at the head. But then, all dreams must fade….

Me? I’d had no such highfaluting ideas. There had been Penny, I’d met her and married her not long after the Sparklers decided they were never going to have any hits and I got a job in the council offices instead of enjoying world-wide fame and riches, and then she’d gone into teaching after three years at college as a mature student, and subsequently fallen in love with someone else, divorced me and that had been that as far as my love-life was concerned, if you forget the odd brief encounter on my way to old age and decay.

Now I was going to live in a tent. I groaned.

It was Joanie who’d had the idea for a reunion. She’d been the main vocalist because, and I hate to remember this, but she’d had the voice of an angel and could twist a fellow’s heart with any syllable you cared to mention. We all wrote the odd song and the original idea was that I could play the a bit of lead guitar in between verses, and sing. But her voice was what it was and even I had to admit she made our little group. So she was singer-in-chief and I just plinked and plonked with my guitar.

We hadn’t been at all bad, but there were hundreds of similar groups who weren’t that bad either, and we had nothing special enough to raise our heads above the crowds. So we were never noticed.

Anyway, here we were on our way to a reunion and it promised to be quite an experience because I hadn’t played a note in years, and I doubt the others had either (Jed a wizard with a recorder, Crin on a variety of drums when he could get his hands on them and Scabby on rhythm with Joanie helping out rattling a tambourine).

It was a Tuesday. That made it an odd day in my mind, to start with, but it did give us time to remind ourselves of what we had done in our long-haired youth and try to regain some of what may or may not have been bordering on brilliance.

“Had a text from Jed,” said Scabbie, “weather looks ace, sun shining, castle’s atmospheric. Not much, bit it sets the scene.”

“I love you,” Joanie told him, and I groaned.

“When are you going to grow up?” I asked, “we’re old timers now and you’re not supposed to be on cloud nine still, but throttling each other!”

“If I decide to throttle him it won’t be his neck I’m squeezing...” grinned Joanie, and I groaned again.

“We’ll be there soon,” put in Scabbie, changing the subject. “The other two reckon they’ve got a van just like this one. Two vans and a tent. Quite sixties!”

“We were young then, and more flexible,” I told him, “and the van seemed bigger than this one.”

“The same size exactly, mate,” said Scabbie, “same model and just about the same year! It took me an age to find this on Ebay. Then they wanted an arm and a leg for it.”

“So how did we manage?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at the cramped conditions behind us.

“Goodness knows,” sighed Joanie, “and you had that lass with you, what was her name?”

“Crikey, I’d forgotten her!” And I had. It was before Penny and hadn’t lasted for long. What had her name been? I couldn’t remember.

Scabbie could.

“Josie,” he told me, “Josie Cartwright. Brunette, brown eyes, lovely face, very white teeth, quiet and shy!”

“Ah, Josie,” I sighed, “I remember. I wonder what happened to her? I could have, you know...”

“But you were too innocent back then?” laughed Scabbie. “I remember you, always the gentleman, that’s why your songs were the best. Because you were respectful to the ladies!”

“She died,” said Joanie, frowning.

That put a downer on my heart, and the forest of Gloom’s breeze started blowing through my cerebellum again.

“Cancer,” she added. “A couple of years ago now.”

“I’m sorry,” I managed to sigh. And the sod of it was I was genuinely sorry. I hadn’t loved her, hell, I’d forgotten her name, but I hadn’t forgotten the her behind her name. And the honest truth is there had been moments over the years when she had somehow crawled into the vaults of my memory and teased me into thinking of this or that little thing about her.

Josie Cartwright. Deceased. So very, very sad. The last time I’d seen her she’d been twenty and alive. Very alive.

“I might have loved her,” I sighed.

“But you didn’t,” said Scabbie.

And he was right. Sadly. It takes time to love someone and I hadn’t given it enough of that.

The Castle, when we got there, was no more or no less ruined than it had been all those years ago when we’d been there and serenading a large group of Japanese tourists. There was an atmosphere about the place, the kind of atmosphere that was probably built up of layer upon layer of history. It was deep and sombre, melancholy even, evoking as it did mental images of a long time ago and savage battles on the very grass that Jed and Crin’s camper-van was parked on as we approached it.

I’d felt it before, and I felt it now.

It was as if something dire, something truly sickening, might happen any time. It even smelt that way. The air from a long history, whirling around, twisting one time with another, like a deadly fog.

Jed tried to run with his walking stick towards us, his face twisted.

“It’s Crin!” he shouted, “he’s been killed, and he’s bloody dead!”

© Peter Rogerson 10.06.18