Longshot полностью

‘Yeah, that’s what he says, but he’s been eating what you’ve made, hasn’t he? But I think she used to drive him barmy always inventing weird fancy things he didn’t like. I didn’t care that much except that I never got what I liked either, so when she left us we sort of relapsed into what we did like, and we stayed like that. Only recently I’ve been wishing I could make custard and I tried but I burned the milk and it tasted awful. Did you know you could burn milk? So, anyway, she’s married to someone else now. I don’t like him though. I don’t bother with them much.’

He sounded as if he’d said all he wanted to on the subject and seemed relieved to go back to simple things like staying alive, asking to see inside kit number two, the black pouch.

‘You’re not bored?’ I said.

‘Can’t wait.’

I handed it to him and let him open its three zipped and velcroed pockets, to lay the contents again on the bed. Although the pouch itself was waterproof, almost every item inside it was further wrapped separately in a small plastic bag, fastened with a twist tie; safe from sand and insects. Gareth undid and emptied some of the bags and frowned over the contents.

‘Explain what they are,’ he said. ‘I mean, twenty matchbooks are for lighting fires, right, so what are the cotton wool balls doing with them?’

‘They burn well. They set fire to dry leaves.’

‘Oh. The candle is for light, right?’

‘And to help light fires. And wax is useful for a lot of things.’

‘What’s this?’ He pointed to a short fat spool of thin yellow thread.

‘That’s kevlar fibre. It’s a sort of plastic, strong as steel. Six hundred yards of it. You can make nets of it, tie anything, fish with it, twist it into fine unbreakable rope. I didn’t come across it in time to put in the books.’

‘And this? This little jar of whitish liquid packed with the sawn-off paintbrush?’

I smiled. ‘That’s in the Wilderness book. It’s luminous paint.’

He stared.

‘Well,’ I said reasonably, ‘if you have a camp and you want to leave it to go and look for food or firewood, you want to be able to find your way back again, don’t you? Essential. So as you go, you paint a slash of this on a tree trunk or a rock, always making sure you can see one slash from another, and then you can find your way back even in the dark.’

‘Cool,’ he said.

‘That little oblong metal thing with the handle,’ I said, ‘that’s a powerful magnet. Useful but not essential. Good for retrieving fishhooks if you lose them in the water. You tie the magnet on a string and dangle it. Fishhooks are precious.’

He held up a small, cylindrical transparent plastic container, one of about six in the pouch. ‘More fishhooks in here,’ he said. ‘Isn’t this what films come in? I thought they were black.’

‘Fuji films come in these clear cases. As you can see what’s inside, I use them all the time. They weigh nothing. They shut tight. They’re everything-proof. Perfect. These other cases contain more fishhooks, needles and thread, safety-pins, aspirins, water purifying tablets, things like that.’

‘What’s this knobbly-looking object? Oh, it’s a telescope!’ He laughed and weighed it in his hand.

‘Two ounces,’ I said, ‘but eight by twenty magnification.’

He passed over as mundane a torch that was also a ball-point pen, the light in the tip for writing, and wasn’t enthralled by a whistle, a Post-it pad, or a thick folded wad of aluminium foil. (‘For wrapping food to cook in the embers,’ I said.) What really fascinated him was a tiny blow-torch which shot out a fierce blue flame hot enough to melt solder.

‘Cool,’ he said again. ‘That’s really ace.’

‘Infallible for lighting fires,’ I said, ‘as long as the butane lasts.’

‘You said in the books that fire comes first.’

I nodded. ‘A fire makes you feel better. Less alone. And you need fire for boiling river water to make it OK to drink, and for cooking, of course. And signalling where you are, if people are looking for you.’

‘And to keep warm.’

‘That too.’

Gareth had come to the last thing, a pair of leather gloves, which he thought were sissy.

‘They give your hands almost double grip,’ I said. ‘They save you from cuts and scratches. And apart from that they’re invaluable for collecting stinging nettles.’

‘I’d hate to collect stinging nettles.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. If you boil the leaves they’re not bad to eat, but the best things are the stalks. Incredibly stringy. You can thrash them until they’re supple enough for lashing branches together, for making shelters and also racks to keep things off the ground away from damp and animals.’

‘You know so much,’ he said.

‘I went camping in my cradle. Literally.’

He methodically packed everything back as he’d found it and asked what it weighed altogether.

‘About two pounds. Less than a kilo.’

A thought struck him. ‘You haven’t got a compass!’