Page 6 of The Island in Bramble Bay
‘Not cheesy at all!’ shouted Megan amidst good-natured groans from Josh and Eric and an eye-roll from Charlie, closely observed by Alice.
‘Okay. So, it’s woodland-themed, obviously,’ Maggie said as she rummaged in the cupboard next to the chimney breast. ‘It’s Tree Trivia!’ She flourished the pack of cards like a game show host. ‘Right, so shall we have two teams? I’ll be the question master so there’ll be a team of three and a team of two. Charlie probably has an advantage here so maybe he should be on the team of two. Hey, Josh —’
‘I’ll go with Charlie!’ squealed Alice leaping off the sofa and squeezing herself next to him on the windowsill whereby he promptly leapt up and stood awkwardly next to her instead. Maggie felt bad for a second and then thought that really, Charlie was a grown man who should easily be able to cope with a mooning twenty-year-old. She fleetingly hoped it would be a brush-off rather than anything else and then thought it really wasn’t any of her business and got back to the matter in hand.
After Charlie and Alice had won and then Charlie and Josh had won the second game, they called it a night and the four volunteers headed back to their chalet with the aid of Eric’s head torch, having planned to meet at the office at 9 am the next morning.
Charlie had been in the kitchen the whole time Maggie had been seeing them off and she went in there to find him washing and drying the glasses.
‘You don’t need to do that. Thank you, though.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Are you going to be okay going home in the dark?’
He shrugged. ‘Never done it in the dark before, I guess so.’
Probably never after a few bottles of beer either, thought Maggie.
‘Because if you wanted to stay on the sofa…’
He looked at her for what seemed like minutes, to the point where she started to wonder whether she’d actually spoken the words or just thought she had.
‘Thanks. That might be a good idea.’
She exhaled, having inadvertently been holding her breath as she’d waited for an answer. ‘Great. Let me grab some blankets.’
When she came back downstairs, Charlie was in the kitchen making tea.
‘I do have some English habits,’ he said smiling.
‘The most important one, luckily.’ Maggie rummaged in the cupboard and found a packet of ginger nuts.
They sat at opposite ends of the sofa watching the fire as they sipped their tea. Charlie saying nothing, but raising his eyebrows when Maggie dunked a biscuit.
‘So where did you do your training?’ Maggie had wanted to ask him ever since she arrived but he always seemed so closed off, it had never seemed like the right time. She felt that he could easily take it as criticism in some way, but now that they had both had a few drinks, maybe he would be less guarded.
‘I apprenticed with a guy in Tahoe, I haven’t had any formal training but spent a year in the woods there. You come across pretty much everything over the course of a year. And you know, it’s really about looking at the woodland and feeling how it’s behaving, what it needs to thrive in each little part of itself and you can’t learn that from a book.’ He spoke gently but passionately. Clearly, he loved what he did.
‘I can tell you have a flair for it by the way you’re coppicing. I’ve seen lots of foresters just walk through tagging each tree without a second thought as if they’re following some plan which they apply to every woodland.’
‘Yeah, the guy I worked with lived in the woods and worked them, you know? Really old-fashioned nowadays and the area he managed was a drop in the ocean. But it was beautiful and magical somehow.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘Too much beer. How about you, how did you make it here?’
She could have told him then about how she had needed to leave her old life because she’d alienated everything that had mattered, partly with careless disregard but partly because the person that had meant most to her didn’t want to see her achieving more than him. But explaining that she had been blinded by success and charmed too easily by people who had flattered her inflated ego wasn’t something she planned to do. Instead, she had a brief version of the truth prepared.
‘I started off as a volunteer and eventually got a job at a Trust property in Worcestershire. I started organising bat walks and things like that which is how the Trust Treks started. So, then I worked for head office, travelling around helping set up the Trust Treks in other places.’
‘That was your idea? Man, we did one last summer with a red squirrel trail.’
He pronounced it ‘squorl’ which Maggie inexplicably loved.
‘I wanted to do one this summer looking for signs of animals that are living in trees, you know like woodpecker holes and stuff like that,’ he said.
‘That’s a good one. I think some kind of tree treasure hunt would be great too. We could get the volunteers to help set it up. Speaking of them, did you get a feel for who might be a good sidekick for you over the summer?’Please don’t say Alice, please don’t say Alice.
‘I think Josh is probably the most interested in the woods but maybe I should have each of them for a day and see which one works out? Though a day with Alice might be a bit of a challenge if you know what I mean.’
‘If you keep her busy, she’ll soon realise you’re not interested in…you know.’
