Pitching In St. Ives

Bank Holiday Weekend. He wanted sun and surf. I fancied seafood and
cider. St. Ives was the compromise.

The only campsite with space was a little out of town. The sort of
place with a cage full of plastic balls for the kids in reception and
Karaoke at seven. Essentially it was just a field with plots marked by
sparse picket hedges but we didn't mind. Lack of privacy gives rise to
maximum opportunity for people watching.

It had become obvious over our camping years that there were varying
degrees within the camping classes. That weekend we were neighboured by
a household who were obviously far further up the canvas food chain
than we: not so much tents, they'd pitched a couple of Tardises next to
their gas powered barbeque and had a mini TV. We had a jar of Nescaf?
and a couple of chipped wine glasses.

She was a treasure, although she didn't have much reality about her. He
was a large man in a pair of union jack Bermuda shorts and a tee shirt
cleverly sporting a lager logo with stains to match. As we pitched we
realised, swiftly checking the wind direction, that this guy was a
veritable dictionary of disgusting bodily functions. They had two
dough-faced preteen daughters who wore fleshy miniskirts and wedding
shoes, and a little boy with a gold hoop shining proudly in his left
ear.

***

We stumbled back from the pub at midnight, looking forward to slippery
sleeping-bag sex and the dregs of a bottle of Jim Beam. The site was
shedding its last rumblings of wakefulness: a dog barking, a baby
crying, sounds of people going about their late-night ablutions in the
communal washrooms. I could hear our neighbours moving around: the
girls chatting, the domestic murmurs of Treasure and her man bedding
their family down for the night.

***

Soon after one, I woke to a noise. A crack and a crunch as a beer can
was crushed in an angry hand and the raw clatter as it hit the ground.
A human whimper.

Even sleep-drunk and naive, I sensed what would follow.
"W*hore," he roared.
I heard her answer, but not her words; whispering desperately to save
herself the humiliation of bringing her domestic battles to a field
full of strangers.
More expletives. A thump and a sickening slap as palms met
tarpaulin.

One of the girls began to cry quietly. The youngest clearly seeking the
comfort of her big sister. The little boy slipped silently from the
tent and cowered behind the family Volvo. Somewhere to my right, I felt
him try to control his breathing so that he could hear and yet not be
heard. I did the same.

The guy ropes on the Tardis strained as seven stone of taught human
female bowled into the side of the canvas. More angry words and more
wordless pleading.

Then the squeak of a deckchair being folded, although whether for use
as weapon or protection, I didn't want to know. An object, perhaps a
shoe or a toy, slammed the side of the Volvo. A gasp jumped out of the
little boy.

And then nothing. I, like almost sixty others around me, clutched my
sleeping bag to me and listened for more until I realised that all I
was listening to was a tent crying in varying shades of pitch. Much
later I felt a whisper of nylon as the little boy crept back to his
bed.

***

In the morning the sun rose and the sea mocked us with its sequins from
behind the Happy Chef. The only thing that shone that morning was
Treasure. She pottered around, removing cereal bowls and folding
clothing with immaculate hair and pink slicked lips. As she poured her
troops into the Volvo for a day of happy families, she gave me a little
wave.

The rest of us happy campers had difficulty making eye contact. We
cleaned our teeth while staring into plug holes and didn't hang around
for breakfast. The Boy and I pulled down our tent and beat a sheepish
retreat, neither one of us speaking in the car, each wondering if the
other too had witnessed the activities of the previous night.

***

I couldn't help wondering why it was that no-one did anything. Would we
have found it easier if we'd witnessed it from behind our bricks and
mortar, our double glazing and our doors with their numbers on? Would
we have intervened then, or called the police? Were we scared for
ourselves, or were we worried about humiliating a proud woman? Sticking
our noses in where they didn't belong? I think perhaps we just hoped
that as every second passed, the action would stop. That we would be
able to nod off and forget that anything had happened. Hope that it
hadn't?

On that drive home I thought about a hundred different ways that I
would have stepped in. In my cowardly imagination I was the greatest
hero.