Chapter 4

A Nuisance

In the darkness I was attracted towards the now pathetic sounds of the animal which, close by, was even more pathetic in its similarity to the snivelling of a human child, not a baby as I had originally compared it to.

My small flashlight was primarily useful to determine things inside the tent rather than illuminate anything in the wide expanse of a tempestuous dark night. That was the reason I had so much difficulty in tracing the intermittent source of the noise.

Carefully, I isolated the origin to a low hollow in the uneven ground. Fresh leaves and small broken branches had swept along the ground covering the hollow and whatever was there. I bent down, very wary of a potential angry bite, which I knew even the most friendly looking of wild animals can administer if it is in pain or feels threatened.

Something had been wrapped in layers of a roll of soaking wet material, I started to try to unravel the material my objective whatever was breathing. It was far bigger than I had at first envisaged. Half way through, I understood it was a child and I was cursing whoever had tried to dispose of the almost dead, unmoving body of a six or seven year old.

It was like one of those Russian dolls that when you open it you are surprised to find another inside. There was no second child there, but every minute of careful getting down to the heart of the material I was shocked to discover that the curled up body was bigger than I had supposed. Finally I was forced to be quite vicious in yanking the tightly held wet material away from the arms of a stupid young, but skinny, female who had got herself caught out in the tempest.

I think it was because I was upset that I laid into her, "You stupid girl!" Well, I guessed it was a female not just because of the high pitched moaning but also by the length of her hair. OK, I'm not trying to be sexist and I understand that it could have been long-haired youth but it was more likely to be of the female persuasion. Yes there were other pointers to her sex but I couldn't tell you what they were at this time, my mind was on what trouble this thing was going to cause me.

I was inwardly cursing that now I'd have to call the emergency services, the last thing I wanted to do, drawing attention to myself

Considering the alternative, there was no way I could leave her here. I had to take her out of the increasing wild elements. I leaned over and picked her up, as light as a feather, skinny and bony! "Let's get you some help. We'll take you to the campsite owner. Surely he'll let you get warm in his house."

"No,"

Fuck! The little thing tried to scratch and bite me,

"No, I'll stay here, Leave me alone! No-one!" she yelled in a high pitched screech.

FUCK! Whatever happens now, other people are going to get involved and there goes my privacy! The effort I'd put into running away to conceal my presence had been a complete waste of time and money and all for some stupid bitch who ought to have known better.

I then did the most stupid thing. There was no way I could leave her here; she'd get hypothermia and at the least a cold and then probably pneumonia, she was soaking wet! No way could I leave her, what were my options?

Going to the campsite proprietor, alerting the emergency services? Of course, to preserve my anonymity I did the only thing I could do. As the sheeting rain became more intense I held her in my arms, facing the driving shower and had my mind made up for me. Stupidly I ran with her, slithering and slipping on the wet grass up to my tent.

April showers are meant to be short sharp bursts of rain intermingled with sunny respites, pity nobody told the New Forest that this year!

For the first time I saw how long her legs were, she was no child, she must have been almost my own height, five eleven. It made me even angrier as, at her age, she ought to have known better.

Rushing to get in the dry, I dumped her unceremoniously under my fly sheet and unrolled her from her bundle.

Fucking stupid idiot! She had rolled herself in her tent. Tent! It had red indians painted on it, it was nothing more than a garden toy for six and seven year-olds. And her sleeping bag was no better, it was wet through, having soaked up every drop of water that had filtered through into her hollow. The patchwork shaped sewing had given way and the stuffing had all bunched up in damp clumps leaving vast areas with little more warmth than could be provided with two thin coverings of wet nylon. Bloody nana*!

I wanted to vent my anger, but instead just ripped from her these items, and thrust them under the fly sheet.

Her body, shivering now, I pushed into the tent where I had to stop her crawling immediately into the warmth of my sleeping bag. There was no way she was going to get that soaking wet, like the rest of her stuff. I wanted to keep myself dry.

The clothing she was wearing would just give her pneumonia if she didn't take it off. Within the darkness of the confined space I ripped off her things, partly with her consent. As I held the sleeping bag open for her, my hand brushed over the thick heavy material of the back of her bra' strap which was sodden too. I guessed that the rest of it would have absorbed more water. No way was I having that dampness permeate into my sleeping bag. I'm pretty sure I broke the clasp but then, by this time, my fingers were numb with cold too.

Her whole skin was running damp and, holding her for a moment, I dried her off with my old tee-shirt. Not having had time to make adequate preparations for my camping trip, a towel was one of the things of which I was short. While I rubbed her body as dry as I could, I was aware that she was almost dead on her feet. Still, I rubbed her thighs and long legs dry too as she turned her chest away from me. I had no idea why. My torch was on its last legs so I could see damn little and I was NOT in the mood to be affected by her looks.

One last thing before I let her slip into the sleeping bag was the fact that she was still wearing something completely wet. I unceremoniously pulled off her thin briefs and threw them to the front of the tent near the zipped door.

Within a few minutes I was relieved that she was hunched up either fast asleep or giving a good imitation of a sleeper, her body still trembling with the cold. Any mountaineer knows that in reality I should have crawled naked into the sleeping bag next to her in order that she could benefit from my body heat.

No way! Instead, I lay over the top of one side of the sleeping bag, still trying to let my own body temperature add to her warmth.

I slept. I slept late.

"Rapist! Get off me, you pedo!"

What a way to be awakened! It wasn't as if the sun was out, shining and the birds singing. As if to reinforce her outburst, another squall of noisy wind rocked the canvas structure.

The impact of the rainstorm was bad enough without my being accused, "Who took off my undies? Where are my knickers?"

I immediately saw that all my precautions had been to no avail. It just needed one accusation in front of somebody else for me to be the subject of a lot of attention, it was bad enough to be accused of a sex offence but strangely I was more concerned in remaining incognito.

I had not even been thinking of her. In my half-awake state something had been preying on my mind. How had the gunman known to attack the safe house? How had he even found out about it? The only people who knew about it and the fact that I was there, were the police. I think my time resting had allowed me to consider that fact and I had come to the conclusion that the police or one member of them was a danger to me.

Now, the last thing that I wanted was for her to go to the police. All my efforts to avoid attracting attention would then have gone for a Burton*.

It was now that my own nervousness and fear made me adopt an attitude that was completely out of character. It was not my habit to address anybody forcibly, certainly not a female and one who was upset. I determined I had to stop this wild thing from waving her arms around and pulling my tent down from the inside. She was going to attract attention which, I was starting to realise now, could end up with my being killed.

Why didn't I just run? I have no idea, I started to be very firmly assertive and began to take control of the situation; it was a matter of self-preservation. In no way was I going to have her calling the police onto me.

The adrenaline in my head and brain was running flat-out and I quickly recollected the absolute fear that she had portrayed when I had proposed the idea of contacting the emergency services. She had almost gone berserk at the very suggestion the previous night.

It was obvious she had something to hide and, in doing so, played straight into my hands. My common sense latched onto this fact as if I knew it for a certainty.

Determined to stop her squealing, I could see she was in no state to listen to reason. With my bodyweight I held her down. I squeezed her jaw to stifle the stupid crying and yelling that was coming out of her mouth. There was no way I wanted her to be heard by other campers. Even above the intermittent howls of the wind I was concerned that she might already have alerted somebody to her presence and to mine.

I took the offensive, "You stupid little tart, you are going to get what you want."

I had no mobile with me, but then she didn't know that. Reaching into my rucksack, my hand grasped my lucky cricket ball. I was so used to its being there I knew what the weight in the pocket was without thinking. She knew I had something in my fist. With the overcast sky and the little light got through both the orange tinted flysheet and the heavier canvas of the tent there was crap visibility inside the tent.

"Just you wait here," I said very quietly. "I'm calling the police and you can stay where you are and let anybody see that you are inside the sleeping bag and I'm outside. We shall let anybody see who the aggressor is here. You are so bloody stupid; if I'd wanted to touch you up I've had hours to take advantage of you and it's quite obvious I've done nothing. I'll insist on a complete internal medical for you to prove I've been nowhere near your damned cunt."

Eh, I never liked doctors fiddling about with MY genitals; the idea of that must be far worse for a female. I hoped she responded to my threat by taking the obvious choice.

Success! I could not just sense her nervousness evaporate, I could feel her fear as the whole of her body slumped, signifying that the aggression had seeped out of her.

I still pushed it, "You have a choice: first, I call the police as you appear to want, or, second, you can get up, put on your wet things and go out into the rain." As if to emphasise the consequences of doing that, my offer was backed up by a heavy squall of the on-going storm that rocked the whole structure and made the flysheet crack like a large sailing ship's sails being battered by a tornado.

I let that sink in before offering the last option, "Third; you can just accept the fact that I took off your wet stuff and put you in a dry sleeping bag so that you didn't die of hypothermia or catch pneumonia. You'll see that I've not touched your lanky bones. Just grow up and use some common sense. If I had wanted to shag you, I'd have had no trouble getting my togs off and jumping into that sleeping bag next to your bag of bones. Third," I repeated, "you stay here and behave like a grateful human being and I'll feed you and clothe you and, in return, you conduct yourself with politeness and act sensibly doing as I say."

"I've got nothing on." she complained.

"The only things you have are still sodden. As for having nothing on, the recommended treatment for idiots being found outdoors in weather like this is to strip naked and for their rescuer to lie next to them giving them their body heat."

"You perv... !" she started

I grabbed her jaw again, and sneered, "Get over it. There's no way I'm going to take my own clothes off and the nearest I'll get to you is with the bulk of my sleeping bag between us. I could see you were a hypersensitive nutcase when I found you last night."

I let go of her jaw and raised the other hand with the ball inside my fist. As if resigned to the police option, I started, "You want me to call the police?" I could sense there was no way that was on the cards for her.

I offered her the obvious choice again, "Or are you going to be sensible?"

She went very quiet.

"And cover your skinny chest up. Rather than getting me arrested for molesting you, the police ought to arrest you for indecent exposure of a beanpole." I glared at her, wanting to suggest that there was nothing sexual about her body. OK, I was a bit hard on her, so what?

A bit 'hard'! I had to shift over as the word popped into my head and I recognised my body was reacting to the natural stimulus of seeing her boob. She had revealed one perfectly formed rounded boob that should make any female I knew very happy to be the owner. I didn't let on to THAT.

Suddenly her face dropped in embarrassment and she slipped down into the sleeping bag, for the first time aware that her tits had been exposed. "Where's my bra'?" she simpered.

"Your bra', like all your other clothes is festering in a sodden smelly pile under the flysheet. When you get up, I've a spare tee-shirt you can wear. You're not bringing over-ripe damp things in my tent, not while you're using my sleeping bag, I have more respect for my own health than you appear to have for yours."

No, I was not as self-composed as I may have appeared to be. In my mind's eye was still the image of a pair of tits, the image of which would not leave me. It was all that I could do to persuade one part of my anatomy not to grow any bigger, but to lose its strength. She may have been thin but she didn't appear to be unattractive. Even her hair which I had taken to be dark was now seen to be a ginger colour. She wasn't as unattractive as I had first thought.

Yes, my mind went off at a tangent. Which man doesn't consider such features about a girl, you tell me? I tried to work out how old she was, she could be anything from thirteen to nineteen. She acted like a young teenager but I'm damned if I could work out her age.

I forced myself to concentrate on the important matters. Taking a deep breath, I demanded a response, "Have you decided? I moved my fist slightly, "Do you want me to summon the emergency services, as you want?" I snorted, "They'll probably take you straight after the nearest mental hospital for trying to kill yourself by staying out last night in that gale. For anybody who's grown up, that is a sign of mental derangement. I took a deep breath. I prompted her, "What is it to be; the loonie house or are you staying here 'til this storm blows out, in which case you'll behave."

Mentally I urged her, 'for goodness sake make up your mind, I can't wait all day'. I tried not to reveal my impatience as I saw the cogs in her mind turning over before she came to the only conclusion possible, "Can I stay here? I'll be no trouble, honest."

I tried not to appear to be too relieved, "Hmphh, you'll do what you're told, I'll not have you making the inside of the tent soaking wet or pulling it down. We are both stuck here in this tent, it's my tent and what I say goes. As long as that's understood I'll put up with you until the weather improves."

She muttered something.

Addressing her in very slow measured tones I asked in a less threatening manner, "Well do you agree, or not?" I had to assert myself,

She was quite subdued. I heard a muttered form of agreement and covered up my relief by making for the tent's zip and rooting out some eggs, bacon and a few slices of white bread. Lighting the small stove I started to cook some bacon, then I pushed the cooked bacon to one side and fried a couple of eggs, When they were almost done I poured the remaining bacon fat into another pan and fried the bread.

Finally, when it was ready, I folded bread around the bacon and egg making a bulky sandwich and passed it over to her in the now-cooler billycan lid. I like my eggs runny but once broken and seeping from, a sandwich they can make a lot of mess if you're not careful. I passed it to her and bent to the job of making one for myself.

"This is crap, it's all greasy, even the bacon's streaky and there's no ketchup."

Would it have cheesed you off?

I gave no sign how pissed off I was, but stretching over, I adopted an unconcerned attitude and my outstretched hand requested the metal dish.

Making a point, I noticed she had, as yet, taken only one bite and it was I who took the next one, chewing it very slowly and trying to let her see an questioning look on my face, "Ye ... es," I responded slowly between mouthfuls, or should that be mouths full? "You're right it is fatty, but then a little fat wouldn't harm you. After being out in the cold, there's nothing like a bit of grease to fill your stomach."

I finished it off it off with two more bites before taking a piece of bread and wiping up the remains of the runny egg from the metal lid.

She looked at me gone-out as I took a second large bite. "But that was for me?"

"No tomato sauce on it, not to your taste," I remarked putting the tiny kettle over the flame for a cup of tea

But, I'm hungry, not had anything for..." she stopped suddenly.

There was a broken sentence that I pretended not to notice, "But you obviously didn't like it. You never said, 'thank you', you just complained. Do you drink tea or coffee?" I enquired letting her see a plastic container which I had labelled, 'TEA' and into which I deposited all the contents of a pack of tea bags that I opened.

"Coffee," she narrowed it down, "Nescafe,"

"Pity, I only have tea bags."

I felt her eyes boring into my back as I bent over the stove

There was a dead silence until I dropped in the one lone tea bag that was in the cardboard box and poured out one mug full of water and left it to mash. I think she recognised that the kettle was now empty

"Can't I have anything to eat?"

I turned around slowly, "You never said thank you. You never showed any sign that you appreciated my sharing my limited supply of food with you. You've just asked me for something and never said please. In fact, all you did was complain. I've never heard an apology yet."

Suddenly she burst into tears.

I let her go at it for a few minutes and returned to give my attention to the stove.

After the smell of the bacon sizzling started to grow again she was hesitant, "What are you doing? Is that for me?"

"I'm cooking MY second sandwich; half the first one was eaten by someone else," I responded in an uninterested tone, devoting my whole attention to cracking the second egg.

"Can I have some if I say sorry?"

"You've got it all wrong, you say sorry whether you get breakfast today or not. You don't say, 'Can I have some, ' with a proviso. You say, 'Can I have some, PLEASE?' And if I do decide to cook something you say, 'thank you and can I help by washing the pans afterwards?'

I sat back up and took the first large bite of my sandwich, letting the yolk run down from the corner of my lips and making me very aware of the stubble on my face. It crossed my mind that my appearance could be altered by adopting a short beard.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled

It was a breakthrough and I relented. I passed my billy can over to her, "Want to finish this off?" I glared at her demanding silently that she say, please.

"Yes, please," She said quietly, not sure that I meant it."

OK, she forgot to say, 'thank you, ' and when I reminded her after she had wolfed it all down, she was almost in tears, "I'll wash the things up," she pronounced eagerly, letting the front of the sleeping bag fall away exposing herself again before she hastily scrambled down in consternation under its cover again.

I laughed, wiping all the billy can lids with bread and sharing it with her before simply reaching forwards and depositing them out on the grass well forward of the flysheet, letting them, fill with the contents of another burst of rain that was falling straight out of the overladen sky.

She scrunched down in the warmth as I tidied up, "What do we do now?" She enquired

I laughed, I was used to camping in a British summer, the rain didn't phase me*. After all the excitement I could do with a rest. I needed to think of my next move but considered it might be better just to lie low for a week or so. I was quite sure that we were well hidden away here.

There's something quite comforting about sitting in the wet tent hearing the closeness of the elements around. I'd passed many a day in the Lakes* in such conditions but I must admit, when not on my own, I'd enjoyed the close company of fellow students and friends. Now don't get me wrong, one can be intimate without having any sexual relationship. Close proximity of a two-man tent calls for such familiarity.

The only reason we should have the next day or so to leave the tent would be to make a dived towards the toilet block. I explained. "We will have to share the anorak for the occasional brief visit," I made a note mentally to ensure she took little else, I didn't want her taking a runner with my only waterproof.

As for the stay in the tent, I was not concerned about myself but more worried about my stupid young companions, "What do we do?"

"We stay here and wait for the storm to blow out."

"Here, you and me?"

I nodded, "I can't think of any alternative, can you?"

She went quiet for a few minutes, "You going to fuck me?"

That caught me unawares. I didn't think I'd heard her right. Unfortunately the excitement that her question had raised also raised one part of my anatomy. The evidence was quite obvious.

She sat up again quite noticeably making it clear that she knew her tits were on display. "You want to," she added with certainty with a slight grin in the direction of my groin.

Fortunately I had a good excuse to turn away, I adjusted myself and began to rummage in my rucksack, producing my one remaining dry tee-shirt and threw it over to her, "Cover yourself up."

"You want to?" she repeated, both of knowing that I had been aroused.

"I'm a heterosexual and can be excited as any other red blood red-blooded male. I reckon I get aroused by the sight of any female nudity, dammit I'd probably rise to the occasion if an eighty-five -year-old woman bared her tits in front of me." I didn't want to let on how sexy she looked.

"The fact that I am human doesn't mean to say that I want to sleep with you," I added, trying to work out her motives. Was this the payment that she thought I deserved offering her breakfast? Sex wasn't something that had to be given up by her as a form of payment. I would feel a heel if I took advantage of her.

"I think we'd better get this straight, I might sleep with my girlfriend but I don't go in for one night stands." Even as I said this, I was considering that she could have any STD. Trust me not to think of that first and she mentioned nothing about, condoms, I didn't have any but then I had no use for one.

Another thought crossed my mind, "How old are you?"

"I'm sixteen."

It was the way she said it that made me immediately jump in and demand, "When were you born? What's the date of your birth?"

I smiled as she couldn't work it out and at last knew she was beaten, conceding, "Well, I'm almost sixteen."

"Hmph! You want to put me into gaol? The last time I heard, the age of consent in this country was sixteen, which means YOU cannot have sex before then. Got it?"

"Nobody bothers about that. I've been fucked by older buggers than you."

Watch your language. And if you have then it's all the more reason to be careful. Have you never been tested to see if you've caught anything from them? Are you even on the pill?"

"You'll be carrying around rubbers," she offered with certainty.

"I'm not talking about me, I never carry them a round. I told you, I don't have one night stands. I'm not having sex with you, I'm asking about YOUR health."

"But we're together, here. You'll want to get your end away."

Don't tell me what I want. There are other activities I've enjoyed when stuck in tents in similar circumstances. If I had brought a pack of cards or pocket chess we'd use them."

"What do we do?"

I laughed, you put two students together and some refreshments, they could argue about football, women, politics, life and death, green politics, the soul, probability all that and more. You name it; anything. They went where their minds took them. I was so used to dropping into the union and making conversation and knew it was difficult to break away to get down to work sometimes. I recognised immediately that with this girl things were going to be a bit different.

"We talk."

She looked at me, gone out. "What about?"

I wanted to find out if she was on the run from the police but it was obvious the direct approach wouldn't work, "We talk about the New Forest, about camping, I'll tell you a little about myself, I bet you're so ditzy you couldn't even remember how old I was."

"How old are you?"

"You work it out, I was born in 1982. I'm a student, I've just completed the exams for my Masters."

"What's a Masters?"

"When you got to university you start off by taking a three years' Bachelor's course..."

For the next hour I went around talking about university life to someone about which it was an alien concept. I was careful not mention which university I had attended, I didn't want her to connect with me any dramatic newspaper headline that she might see.

We had a bit of light relief when I took off my pants and ran barefoot to go to the loo block wearing only my anorak.

When I came back I gave her that, the only waterproof I had. It reached down to mid-thigh, "I can't go like this," she hesitated.

Get off with you, nothing gets wet apart from your skin. No-one will see that you having nothing on underneath. They'll think you have hiking shorts on."

The ice was broken when she came back having slipped on the grass and I sent her back with my soap and flannel with my old tee shirt to use as a towel, "But it's the only thing we have to get dry, shake yourself to get off the excess water first before you use it." I warned.

"Them showers, you can stand under them as long as you like and there's no other tents on the site at all." She apologetically passed me my tee shirt, now wringing wet.

"Well there's no more showers for you or me," I commented."Just keep dry," I admonished. But I appreciated the more acceptable odour her body was giving off. I'd not noticed how bad it must have been before.

The ice appeared to be broken now and after a few cups of tea and another downpour, I donned my anorak and slipped out for pee not making the long trek to the toilet block, but slipping around the back of the tent.

"I want to go too," she complained.

I passed my anorak to her, "It's all right for you, it's miles to the toilet block, I'll get soaked."

"You said it. There's nobody else on the campsite. There is no reason why you shouldn't do what I did."

When she came back inside she was giggling, "If someone had seen me squatting down they'd have known I was having a wee."

I think that it was from that time on that she became far more relaxed. She knew that I knew that she had nothing on, no knickers or anything else on under her anorak and she had felt no threat at all by my presence.

It wasn't long before she opened up about herself. Yes, it was quite clear that she was running away from her parents. "You don't know what it's like when your dad doesn't like you and only likes his own children."

She stopped and stared at me, "What's the matter?"

"You don't tell me what I don't understand. I was in the same boat as you and the moment I was eighteen I got out. I felt so bad about having the same name as him that I changed my name."

The thing was that I had never opened up about how bad I had felt before. I tried to be factual about the put downs I'd had, but it was all I could do to not letting her see tears in my eyes. Later, it was only after I had explained some of the events that had occurred whilst living in 'my family' that she began to understand that my life had been no better than hers. If truth be known I felt better after getting a hell of a lot off my chest to somebody who understood.

"I can leave home when I'm sixteen. I'm going to get a job and a place of my own."

It was then I saw how naïve she was, hoping to do this without any money at all. I don't think either of us broke into tears but the emotions were running so high that when it was time to sleep, she slid down in a sleeping bag and I lay on one side giving her one big hug. The very fact that I understood her problems meant more to her than anything else.

As she slept, I was reflecting upon the situation and trying to persuade myself that this was a good thing that we were together. If anybody were following me they would not be looking for a couple. The trouble was that I'm sure that her bright red hair was going to be far too noticeable.