Barclay.
Jeans, bare feet, t-shirt, flower garland . . . holding a triangle. My eyes went wide and my mouth dropped open. Mum shook her tambourine to get everyone’s attention.
“Eyes on me, ladies,” she told everyone. “And gentlemen. I must say I’m pleased we managed to encourage so many chaps this year. We’ll start withAn Ode to the Forest.”
Barclay and I were staring at each other. I frowned at him, my eyes flicking down to his triangle. His face split into a wide grin and, just like his brother, hewinkedat me. Everyone started singing the natty folk song that we kicked things off with every year. Even Barclay was singing.
Barclay . . . was singing a folk song.
And playing his triangle. In fact, he had a white-knuckle grip on said triangle and a look of fierce concentration every time he struck it. Seeing that look on his face was enough to break through the shock and tension. OfcourseBarclay would take playing a goddamn triangle seriously. Of course he’d want to do it perfectly. I felt my own grin forming, and it wasn’t long before I was shaking with laughter. The serious look on Barclay’s face gave way to another grin. Something that looked strangely like relief flashed through his features.
“So, my darlings,” said Mum as the song drew to a close. “This year we have another man wanting to bond with Mother Earth, wanting to free himself of his misogyny and step forward into the light of feminism.”
I had a very bad feeling about what was coming next. Last year, Geoff had been ‘freed from his misogyny’ (likely because he’d been having it away with his secretary for the last few years and his wife, Bev, had found out and threatened to divorce him). This had involved Geoff stripping off to the waist (not something to ever be encouraged in Geoff’s case) and being ‘cleansed with Mother Nature’ – or, in other words, covered in mud and ‘lightly brushed’ with foliage. Bev’s light brushing had been enough to leave welts on poor Geoff, but then the bastard probably deserved it and, to be fair to him, he took it like a man.
“Barclay,” she said. My heart sank. “Over to you.”
“Thanks, Sheena,” Barclay said as he started undoing the buttons on his shirt. I heard a collective intake of breath from the assembled women. As far as they were concerned, this was a much better turn of events than pot-bellied, sixty-five-year-old Geoff shedding his clothes.
“I’ve always been worried about doing the right thing, about being in complete control, about appearing a certain way, and I’ve always been a proud, stubborn bugger,” he said, starting on the rest of his buttons. “But then I lost the woman I love – someone who doesn’t give a toss about appearances, someone who’s happy to be out of control once in a while, someone who taught me how to live in the moment and justbe. I buggered it up because I let pride and my rules get in the way of my feelings. I took a free spirit and I tried to make her my kind of controlled – the kind that I thought she should have been. I tried to squash her personality to suit me. I confused her free spirit with being aimless, and I let it blind me to the determined, hard-working, kind, altruistic woman she is.” He looked up at me, his eyes burning into mine and his expression fierce.
“I used to think that onlymyway of saving the world was the right way. But there are lots of ways to make a difference. They don’t all have to come in a suit and be able to vote in the Houses of Parliament. So, I’m begging her . . .” he fell to his knees and his shirt fluttered to the ground. His muscular chest and six-pack had the whole circle riveted. I saw Bev start to drag a huge bundle of foliage towards him, including some alarmingly large branches. He focused his blue gaze on me. “I’m begging you, Kira, to forgive me. Even if it’s just so that we can be friends. I won’t ask for more.”
“Lovely speech, dear,” Mum said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Now we can progress to the mud cleanse.”
Barclay picked up the bucket in front of him and dumped the contents over his head. Thick mud saturated his perfect hair and down his face onto his chest and back. Bev had picked up the nearest branch, which looked suspiciously like part of a blackberry bush, thorns and all.
That was it for me.
Nobody was going to bashmyBarclay with a bloody blackberry bush.
I dropped Henry’s and Rosie’s hands and shot forward into the centre of the circle, skidding to my knees in front of Barclay.
“SB, what are you doing, you daft article?” I lifted my hands to his muddy face and pushed the gunk back from his eyes and mouth. “Back off, Bev,” I snapped as I saw her approach from the corner of my eye. He smiled at me, his teeth bright white against the dark brown of the mud.
“I’m trying to apologise.”
“There are other ways to say sorry than stripping half-naked, covering yourself in mud, and letting a load of ageing hippies beat you with undergrowth.”
“I tried the other ways,” he said, looking so vulnerable that I couldn’t help but rest my forehead on his, despite the mud. “None of my ways were working. I had to tryyourway. This is the most Kira-esque apology I could think of.”
I let out a short laugh and rolled my eyes. “You mean this is the most fucking nuts way of apologising you can think of?”
“Yes, that too.”
“You hurt me,” I whispered. He closed his eyes slowly. When he opened them again, the pain there was so stark I almost regretted telling him the truth. But hehadhurt me. I couldn’t leave it unsaid.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered back, his voice aching with regret.
“Don’t do it again,” I whispered back. Then, in spite of the mud, the hordes of post-menopausal ladies armed with foliage around us, or the fact that his mother was standing right next to us, I collapsed into him and he kissed me. The forest faded away, the cheers around us were blocked out – there was nothing but him. When we finally did break apart, he hauled me up to my feet and was grinning.
“You know I heard some camera phones going off,” I told him out of the side of my mouth. This was another side to New Kira – I was more wary now. “Maybe we should . . .”
“If the press want to print a picture of me and my girlfriend covered in mud in the middle of a feminist Wiccan rally, then they can have at it,” he told me, and he sounded so happy about the prospect that I believed him. He kept hold of me as we were swamped on both sides by friends and family, and he tried to get as much mud as possible onto his brother. In the middle of the crush he whispered in my ear again.
“You are . . . you are my girlfriend, aren’t you?” he asked, and his voice was so unsure, so hopeful, that my heart melted just that little bit more. I turned to him again, went up on tiptoes to kiss his muddy cheek then whispered into his ear.
“You betcha, Sex Badger.”
