Chapter 4
‘Look’s like we’re gonna have to move back in with Mum Bob.’
Bob cocked an ear towards his owner.
‘I know, we’re admitting defeat, but what else can I do? I’ve tried my best.’
It was true that Barry now had no other options left open to him because his
landlord was on the verge of slicing his penniless throat.
‘What do you mean I can’t have my room back?’
Things were going from bad to worse. Maggie had been renting out her son’s
old room and was refusing to let him move back in.
‘I’m making some good money renting it out. I’m sorry, but you’re gonna
have to find somewhere else.’
‘My landlord’s gonna kick me out, I’m gonna be homeless,’ shouted Barry.
Maggie felt she’d endured her incompetent loser of a son for more than
enough time.
‘You’re a thirty-four year old man. You’re no longer my responsibility. It’s
time you learnt how to stand on your own two feet.’
Barry was infuriated. ‘If Dad was still here he’d never do this to me.’
Feeling that it was time to part with a little snippet of information she’d been
hiding from her son since he was a little boy, Maggie said: ‘You wanna know where
your father went?’
‘I know where he went: he went to heaven with the angels,’ answered a
puzzled Barry.
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‘I just told you that so that you wouldn’t feel abandoned. The truth is he felt
certain he couldn’t be the father of an imbecile like you. He believed I cheated on
him, cheated on him with the village idiot! And he believed that you—YOU—were
our filthy little love child.’
Barry’s aggressive mood was ripped from him and replaced with grief, his
bottom lip quivered and his eyes welled up with tears.
‘There, that’s what happened, I’ve wanted to tell you sooner but I just couldn’t
bring myself to do it.’
‘He’s still alive?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since the day he left. He abandoned us
both.’
Barry turned and ran down the street, tears streaming down his flabby cheeks
as they flapped in the wind. He looked like a very large small boy that had scraped his
knee, only this pain was far deeper.
It was a sorry state of affairs: Barry was kicked out of his flat a couple of days later
and had to resort to living in his Volkswagen Golf. Bob, his only real companion was
given to Maggie to look after. The previously close relationship he’d had with his
Mum was severed, and he couldn’t even look her in the eye as he handed the furry
white bundle over.
Buying with the little money he had left a small camping stove and a sleeping
bag, Barry pointlessly tried to pretend he was on a camping holiday rather than face
the reality that he was a homeless bum. It wasn’t a very successful strategy, but he’d
gradually become more skilful at fooling his own mind.
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The Hickey Woods Country Park, also known as the Hickey Hills, or just the
Hickeys, seemed to be the best place to make his new home because they were close
to where he lived and he knew them well.
This picturesque park contains a diverse range of British trees and wildlife,
including the elusive Wangdoodles and equally rare Snozwoggers. It was then sad
Barry’s life would reach such a low point in this beautiful place. In that park though,
amongst the cover of the bushes and trees, he hoped he’d be able to hide away how
destitute his life had become.
Unfortunately because the woods are such a delight on the eye they’re a
magnet for people, and in good weather they’d go there in droves to enjoy the beauty
and tranquillity of nature like some insidious plague. So, picking a secluded spot for
his new home, Barry hoped it would not be discovered by hikers, or the notoriously
tyrannical Park Rangers who patrolled the hills.
Parking his car nearby on a lonely dirt track that ran its way through the
woods, he felt that the best idea was to use it for sleeping in at night, and his Den
inside the park for food preparation and main storage area for the bulk of his
belongings. And to keep the rain off these possessions, he utilized a tarpaulin he’d
borrowed from his Mum’s place.
Another feature in the park that would prove useful was the duck pond, as it
was here that Barry would be able to have a wash. Of course this would have to be
done in the middle of the night when hopefully there wouldn’t be anyone around to
see him.
The mind of Barry was still trying to fool itself, panicking because it didn’t
have a clue how it was going to survive. Rather than worry about the problems reality
was currently throwing in its direction, it preferred to retreat into little fantasy worlds
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where it could then contentedly socialise with itself. And for added fun, when it was
feeling in a particularly good mood, Barry’s mind would make Barry have outbursts
of uncontrollable laughter. When Barry did manage to capture some control back over
his brain, his thoughts processes were something like this: I’m going back to the way
things are supposed to be. Man is meant to live in harmony with nature. The modern
way those people—those sheep live, crammed in flats and houses and cages, that’s
the abnormal way. This is the way it’s supposed to be.
Another voice spoke in Barry’s head. But their cages are heated aren’t they?
You shall freeze you scummy, scummy individual.
No Barry, don’t listen to him. He just wants you to fail—listen to me.
The last shred of sanity inside his mind was very perturbed to now see there
were two Barry’s. It decided it was time to pack its bags and head off into the woods.
It was deep winter and darkness had drawn in accordingly early. Barry
decided he’d be better off getting an extremely early night, from which he could then
unload his possessions from the Golf into The Den early the following morning. He’d
be forced to sleep upright in the driver’s seat because the rest of his car was filled
with clothes, camping equipment and tins of food; he didn’t mind.
The truth was he was scared to get out of the car at night on this lifeless dirt
track, and was willing to sacrifice a good night’s sleep so he could stay in the relative
safety of a locked car. While the woods were a great day out for the hikers that
visited, once night fell they’d also been known to conceal pure, 100% freshlysqueezed evil.
Barry had read the stories in the newspapers and knew all too well what went
on in The Hickey Woods: there’d been murders, rapes, beatings, suicides; all kinds of
horror. Little rascals used those woods just as he was doing now, to hide themselves
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away from prying eyes when they wanted to sin. Barry’s only sin was squatting, but
he thought it very possible there were other people in the Hickeys committing far
darker crimes. His teeth chattered and his heart beat fast; he hoped he wouldn’t be
next on the menu for the local psychopaths.
There were occasions when atrocities had occurred in the park, but Barry
imagined that they happened on a regular basis when in reality they were very rare.
That night he slept uneasily, awaking at every insignificant sound like an owl hoot or
creaking of a branch in the wind.
The following morning brought Barry rest bite from the imaginary demons that
tormented him. Arising early he had a quick breakfast of tuna sandwiches before
beginning moving his belongings into The Den. Even living this miserable existence,
he knew he still needed money to pay for food unless he wanted to try and live off the
land.
Luckily for once he used some common sense and realised he would not last
two minutes surviving on what he could scavenge and hunt in the woods. While he
couldn’t acquire a real job, he did manage to get what would prove to be a lifeline: at
his local corner shop he picked up a paper round.
One drawback of being a paperboy was the embarrassment of standing there in
The Shop and collecting the papers he was to deliver, while the other paperboys
pointed at him and laughed.
‘What you doing a paper round for?’ asked one boy. ‘Shouldn’t you have a
proper job?’
‘I need the money kid. Just leave me alone okay.’
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There were a couple of other adults doing a paper round from The Shop, but
one was a retired pensioner and the other a housewife. Both of them were trying to
earn a little extra spending money, unlike Barry, who was using it as his sole source
of income.
Barry found the actual job itself wasn’t too bad. He picked up a couple of
other rounds to supplement his meagre income, meagre being the apt word as
delivering papers was certainly never going to get him a real address. The other
downside was the name-calling from his pintsized colleagues. He remained; however,
well aware that this new occupation was what was keeping him alive by giving him
the means to put food in his stomach.
After a couple of weeks living in the woods, Barry noticed he began developing an
unpleasant odour that only created more reason for his fellow paperboys to ridicule
him. Even the housewife and the old age pensioner were getting a piece of the action,
slagging Barry down without mercy. It was apparent he desperately needed a wash,
but where? He set the cobwebbed, rusty cogs in his brain into motion.
The first idea he had was to simply wash in a torrential downpour. The second
was to stand beside a giant puddle on a road waiting until a car drove through it.
There was of course one snag: both of these ‘ideas’ relied on the presence of heavy
rain. For the last few days there hadn’t been any and there might not be any for a
while, but with Barry kicking up a vile stink, he needed a wash now.
Eventually his sluggish brain remembered that there was a large pond in the
Hickeys where visitors could sit around and feed the ducks bread. He knew that if he
went to wash there in the daytime it’d be unlikely he’d be greeted as warmly as the
birds. He imagined the Park Rangers would be briskly summoned to escort him off
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the site, where they’d then be obliged to give him a good doing over in the car park.
I’ll have to do it in the middle of the night when nobody’s around.
This solution to his personal hygiene problem scared him immensely, as every
night since he’d been in the Hickeys he’d never once left the safety of his car. One
night when he’d needed the toilet desperately, he’d preferred to urinate into an empty
pop bottle rather than go outside. Sitting in a cramped car in the dark and trying to
aim his urine into the small opening of this bottle proved extremely difficult. On
reflection he was just grateful it wasn’t a number two he had needed.
Barry didn’t want to start venturing into the woods at night, leaving the
protective cocoon of his car, but he had no choice as he simply had to have a wash.
That night he set his alarm to wake him up for two in the morning, the shampoo, soap,
dry towel and a clean change of clothes he’d already set out in preparation for his
departure.
Incidentally the cleaning of his clothes had not been a problem since he was
using the local laundrette, despite it being an added expense he could ill afford.
On approaching the pond Barry looked at it with apprehension. He undressed till clad
in just his y-fronts, and after neatly piling his clothes onto a bench he gave his bath an
observant once over. The water was dark and altogether unclean. He placed a big toe
in it to test the warmth. There was no warmth; the water was freezing; the toe almost
dropped off.
‘I’m gonna become an icicle in this!’
Barry considered retreating back to his car but upon taking a sniff of his
armpit decided that his present, pungent body odour was so bad that if he did get
hypothermia and die, it would do the world a favour.
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Before taking one last look around to see if there was anyone watching,
Barry removed his underwear and entered the water. The icy pond took his breath
away; it was so cold he thought he might see a dead Eskimo float by at any moment.
He scrubbed as fast as possible, not wanting to stay in that water any longer than he
absolutely had to. The ducks meanwhile were shocked to say the least that a man was
washing himself inside their home in the middle of the night. They began expressing
their annoyance by quacking loudly.
‘Shut up you bastard ducks,’ Barry whispered in anger, paranoid of making
too much noise just in case somebody was passing at this unholy hour.
Having finished washing his body, his shaking hand reached out and grabbed
the shampoo. Once he’d cleaned his hair he’d be able to return to his car and be
thankful the ordeal was over. But Barry was stopped from being thankful the ordeal
was over when he heard voices that sounded like those of an approaching young man
and woman.
‘Oh no!’
There was no time for Barry to get out because he’d be seen. Taking a huge
gulp of air, he ducked his head below the water.
‘Michael stop—you’re only interested in one thing. You always get like this
when you’re drunk.’
‘Come on baby just give it a suck; that’s all I’m asking.’
‘I told you I’m not ready.’ The teenage girl sat down at a bench beside the
duck pond. ‘I remember I used to come up with here with my Nan when I was little,
to feed the ducks bread before she died.’ She smiled at the cherished memory. ‘It’s so
beautiful up here don’t you think?’
‘Yeah it is, but not as beautiful as you.’
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Only a few feet away from these two love-struck teenagers Barry’s gulp of air
was fast running out.
‘Hey what are these clothes doing here?’ said the girl, noticing the pile of
garments stacked next to her.
‘Huh, that’s strange isn’t it?’ said Michael.
It was no use; Barry couldn’t hold his breath any longer. Through the murky
water he could just distinguish that two people were sitting on the bench in front of
him, but he had no alternative: he practically jumped out of the pond like an attacking
sea monster gasping for breath, breaking the romantic silence. The two teenagers were
understandably mortified. Michael, thinking fast used his girlfriend as a human shield
to block the onslaught of what he perceived to be some kind of aquatic beast. The two
young lovers then went running into the woods, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Almost having finished his bathing session anyway, Barry felt he’d better
depart before anyone was alerted to the screams and came to see what was going on.
Despite the encounter with the teenagers, he felt that he was beginning to settle into
his new life relatively well considering the circumstances. As he retired (still
shivering slightly) for the remainder of the night into his sleeping bag that lay on the
back seat of his car, he felt a great deal better, and even began to entertain the idea
that he may just be able to make this new life work.
The one thing Barry pined for most over the following months inside the woods, more
than any other modern convenience was not a telephone, (who would he phone if he
had one anyway) central heating or even a flushable toilet—the thing he missed the
most was a refrigerator. He was having a nightmare storing fresh meat and dairy
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products, resorting to making frequent trips to The Shop because he’d been frequently
resorting to storing meat and dairy products inside his belly.
One day, while in The Den inspecting his food stores, he noticed some things
he’d bought only yesterday were missing. Barry knew it couldn’t have been an animal
that had stolen them because the absent items were tinned goods, thus preventing any
woodland creature from realising there was food within. And the thievery didn’t end
there because not only had some little blighter stolen his food, but they’d pinched his
tin opener as well!
It hadn’t occurred to Barry that there might be other people like him living
fulltime in the woods. Now he had a new problem: where was he going to store his
