After he calmed Archie down, Mr Palfry had his talk with Mark and Eddie. He was cold and angry, and Mark and Eddie were apologetic and desperate not to be misunderstood.
I closed my eyes, so Mr Palfry would know I wasn’t involved.
“We’re really really sorry, Mr Palfry,” said Eddie. His voice was limp with sincerity. “Really sorry. We were just having some fun, weren’t we, Mark? We didn’t mean any harm.”
“Yeah,” agreed Mark. “We were just having some fun.”
Eddie put a hand on Archie’s shoulder. “We never meant to get you so upset, Archie,” said Eddie. “You’re our friend.”
It was enough to break your heart.
Archie swallowed hard. “I know we’re friends,” he mumbled. “I know you were having fun. It’s just that it was my dad’s mess tin…” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps I reacted too much.”
“You did,” said Eddie. “You reacted much too much. You took it all wrong. It was just a joke.”
I opened my eyes. I was almost tempted to interrupt this heart-wrenching scene with some pointed remark of my own (something like, Yeah, a joke like World War II was a joke), but I managed to resist.
“You know, just a joke between mates,” Eddie went on. “We’re really sorry, Archie,” he repeated. “We won’t do anything like that again.”
I nearly laughed out loud at that. Yeah, sure, I thought. Not until the next time.
Mr Palfry, however, didn’t share my cynicism.
“Well, I should hope not,” said Mr Palfry. “I expect this to be the end of it.”
“Say you forgive us,” pleaded Eddie. His hand jutted out between me and Archie. “Say we’re still friends.”
Archie reached up and shook Eddie’s hand. “Friends,” agreed Archie.
I closed my eyes again.
Camp Wyndach was as like Disneyland Paris as a milk float is like a silver Porsche. There were no bright lights, no rides, no Mickey Mouse, no nothing except for vegetation. My mother would have loved it. It was stuck in the middle of what Mr Palfry described as a picturesque valley.
“This is a very picturesque valley,” said Mr Palfry grandly. He gestured towards the trees, and the mountains, and the mud. “It’s a favourite spot for photographers and painters.”
It was unfortunate that there weren’t any painters or photographers on the bus with us. Despite Mr Palfry’s enthusiasm nobody else looked particularly excited as we churned down the narrow, muddy trail.
Ariel pointed through the windscreen. “Is that it?” she asked. She sounded as if she’d been hoping for a little more.
Way down at the end of the rut we were in, you could see a few rustic hovels huddled in the shadows of the mountains. From where we were, they looked like they were probably left over from some prehistoric settlement.
Mr Palfry nodded happily. “That’s it! Isn’t it terrific?”
No one – not even one of the other teachers – actually answered this question one way or the other. Ariel wasn’t the only one who’d been hoping for a little more.
As we got closer you could see that the rustic hovels were several small wooden cabins and two larger stone lodges.
In her pink tracksuit and pink anorak, Ariel looked like a Barbie doll that’s just suffered a major disappointment. “Does it have indoor toilets?” she asked.
“Of course it does,” Mr Palfry assured her. He laughed. “And electricity.”
“Well, thank God for that,” said Ariel.
Personally, at that exact moment I wouldn’t have cared if we had to dig our own trenches and rub two sticks together to get a fire going. I had other things on my mind. The calm after the bomb scare had started me brooding and the horrible truth had finally dawned on me. Despite what I’d told her about me and Eddie, and despite what I thought we’d agreed, Kuba Bamber had set me up. She’d never intended to sit with me on the bus. She’d probably had a pretty good idea all along of what might happen between Archie and Eddie, and she’d expected me to intervene. Me! It was the sort of devious thing angels do. The fact that I’d managed to stay invisible despite her interference made me feel almost proud, but I could see that I was going to have to make a very firm stand – to state my position clearly – before she did something else to get me involved.
I was one of the first off the bus. I wanted a quiet word with Mr and Mrs Bamber’s adopted daughter before she disappeared into the girls’ lodge and I lost any chance of talking to her alone.
You’d think Kuba knew I was waiting for her, the amount of time it took her to get off the bus. Everyone else gathered round the luggage hold while she made a big production of checking under the seat and up in the rack to make sure neither she nor Ariel had left anything behind.
“Oh, I don’t know…” Kuba was saying as she and Ariel finally came slowly down the steps. “I think it’s really interesting here. Try to picture it when it was a Roman outpost.”
“It still looks like a Roman outpost,” said Ariel. “And anyway, what’s the big deal? The whole of Britain was a Roman outpost.”
I grabbed Kuba’s arm.
“I want to talk to you,” I said. I smiled.
“Not now,” said Kuba. “We can talk at supper.”
But I wasn’t going to be fooled by the old “we can talk at supper” ploy.
“No,” I said firmly. “Now.” I yanked her round to the comparative privacy of the front of the bus.
Kuba straightened her hat. “What’s the matter with you, Elmo? I don’t want to be the last to get my bag.”
“Never mind your bag. You and I have something to discuss.”
“Oh, really?” I could tell she was acting because she looked so totally blameless and surprised. “And what’s that?”
I told her what it was.
“What’s the big idea?” I demanded. “First you beg me to come so you won’t be on your own, and then you stick me with Archie Spongo.”
“I didn’t stick you with anyone,” said Kuba, calm as a stone. “Mr Palfry’s the one who told you to sit with him.”
But I knew her too well to be fooled by that.
“Hah!” I said. “Mr Palfry had nothing to do with it, and you know it.”
“Elmo,” said Kuba, sounding like the most reasonable person on the planet, “they’re getting the bags out – Ariel’s waiting.”
I was still holding her arm. I tightened my grip.
“I am not here to protect Archie Spongo,” I told her. “I do not want to be involved in his problems. I do not want to be involved with Eddie and Mark. I want to stay as far away from the lot of them as I can get.”
“You’re a free agent,” said Kuba. “You can do what you want.”
“I want you to promise that you’ll stop interfering,” I said. “As of now.”
Kuba gazed at me with the innocence of a violet.
“Me? You know I don’t interfere, Elmo.” She smiled shyly. “It’s not allowed.”
“Just promise that you won’t,” I insisted. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“So don’t have any.” Kuba turned to go, but I held tight.
“Promise. Say the words. Say, ‘Elmo, I promise you I won’t interfere in your life any more.’”
Kuba sighed heavily. “Elmo,” she said in a sing-song voice, “I promise you I won’t interfere in your life any more.”
As promises go, it lacked warmth and spontaneity, but it covered the main points.
I let go of her arm. “Good. I just want to have a peaceful, boring time like everyone else.”
“Boring?” Kuba’s smile was amused. She gestured to the old huts and the dark old woods, not a neon sign or souvenir shop in sight. “How could you have a boring time here?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m looking forward to finding out.”
As luck would have it, my bag was the last one to come out of the hold.
I watched the driver’s feet wave up and down as he lay on his stomach and shone his torch into the darkness.
“There it is!” he cried. “Right in the corner.” He gave it a tug. “I don’t know how it got back there,” he grunted as he pulled it towards the opening. “Those rough roads must have shifted it.”
Everyone else was already inside by the time I got to the lodge. They were all sitting on the floor. Mrs Smiley was sitting on a bench that looked like a log, giving everyone the usual lecture about working together and co-operating and not giving the teachers or each other a hard time. Then she started going through the details of daily life in the wilderness. Everybody looked pretty bored.
Kuba and Ariel were up at the front, so I slipped in at the back next to Carl and Jamal.
Mrs Smiley said that the two lodges would be known as A and B, and that the girls would sleep in A, the one we were in, and the boys would sleep in B.
“There are four beds in each room, and each lodge has two loos,” said Mrs Smiley. She clapped her hands together. “Since we have a few people absent with the flu, it works out perfectly.”
Ariel raised her hand. “Are there showers or baths?” she wanted to know.
“Metal tubs and a big kettle,” called Eddie.
Mr Palfry said, “Shhh!”
Mrs Smiley laughed good-naturedly. “Showers,” she informed Ariel. And she told us where they were, and where the kitchen was, and where the dining room was.
Then they split us up and Mr Palfry started giving out the boys’ rooms while Mrs Smiley gave out the ones for the girls.
Things went smoothly until he got to Mark and Eddie. Mark and Eddie wanted to share with Archie and Jamie.
Mr Palfry shook his head. “No, Eddie,” he said. He put on his stern, no-nonsense face. “Not Jamie. Jamie just eggs you and Mark on. You’ll have to find someone else.” His eyes ran round the room. “Does anyone want to bunk with Eddie, Archie and Mark?”
The boys who didn’t have a room yet all looked at the floor. There were knots in the wooden boards that made it look as if it was smiling back at me.
“Come on, you lot,” urged Mr Palfry. “Who’s going to volunteer?”
If you asked me, it would be like volunteering to walk into a nest of vipers.
Mr Palfry tapped his pen on his clipboard. “Let’s remember what Mrs Smiley said about team spirit and working together,” urged Mr Palfry. “Who wants to swap with Jamie?”
The face in the floorboards agreed with me; it looked as if it winked.
“Elmo!” Mr Palfry was the happiest he’d sounded since the bomb scare. “Brilliant. At least someone understands about teamwork.”
I looked up, my mouth open. “But—”
Mr Palfry’s eyes were on his clipboard. “That’ll be Elmo, Archie, Eddie and Mark in room 3B.”
“But Mr Palfry!” I shouted. “Mr Palfry, I didn’t volunteer.”
Mr Palfry’s happiness vanished as quickly as it had come. “Of course you did,” he snapped. “You put your hand up.”
This was wrong. This could not be. In my worst fantasy about the class trip, I’d never considered this possibility for a second – not even for less than a second.
“But Mr Palfry—”
Mr Palfry’s attention had returned to his clipboard. “So that means Carl, Jamal, Andy and Jamie are in 6B.”
“Can you believe it?” said a voice a lot sweeter than honey behind me. “Ariel and I are in 3A.”
I looked round. Kuba and Ariel were passing by with their bags, headed, I assumed, for room 3A.
Kuba’s smile was so sweet I felt as if I was stuck to it.
“It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?” said Kuba.
“Yeah,” I said, my heart sinking somewhere round my toes. “It certainly is.”