The Fair Folk Pt. 06

The Fair Folk

Chapter 6: The Light

Monday

After breakfast, TCB and I rang our respective workplaces, and we let them know that we'd come down with a nasty bug, and would not be able to make it back until Thursday.

Then, TCB (and I, in my new capacity as her emotional support human) sat with Gwen and Gav and Chris and T. J. and Lola, who was another of Gwen's crew that could really use a camera, and they started to devise a camera setup, while I watched and learned.

Since Gav and Lola would not be getting muddy but would be operating cameras, there were only two moving cameras. But Studio MudFaery had a lot of smartphones with good cameras, so there would be several carefully placed static phones on tripods, because TCB usually used static cameras, and Gav and Lola would be handheld, and would have freedom to roam around us, getting close-ups and suchlike.

'I think it could look amazing,' T. J. said. 'Like, all these figures in a landscape at dawn.'

'Yeah,' Gav said, 'we could go from quite tight to really wide, get the river in, get the fields in...'

Lola nodded enthusiastically.

TCB listened with a half-smile on her face, and looked at Gwen.

'Yeah,' Gwen said. 'It's absolutely beautiful down there at dawn, I'd love to capture that.'

TCB waited to see if anyone else concurred, and then I saw her do a strange thing.

She looked down, and looked intensely puzzled, then seemed to say something to herself, which she then agreed with.

She looked up again.

'Mmm,' she said, nodding, 'I, I, I love the creativity, I do, but I'm really glad we're having this discussion... 'cos that's the absolute last thing I want. Figures in a landscape.'

She smiled apologetically.

'No offence,' she said earnestly to Gwen, 'I know it's fuckin' beautiful down there. But... I don't care. It can be beautiful in the background. I don't want Stanley Kubrick. I want lots of tight shots, of faces and hands and bodies. And I want before, and I want after. And I want to come back to people when they're covered, and see how they're getting on. If it's not about the people doing it, and what's happening to them, I'm not interested. Sorry.'

She bit her lip anxiously.

Gwen seemed to take this in, and then it was like it was dawning on her what TCB intended to do; which was, to be honest, more than it did on me. A slow smile came over her face.

'Ahhhhh,' she said.

'Also,' TCB said, 'there's not a lot of us, and I don't want people to be so far apart that they can't, y'know, check in on each other. If we spread everyone out just to get a really nice shot, it's gonna look like a fuckin' installation, or, or...'

'A video for "Eleanor Rigby"?' I said, starting to get her point.

'Exactly,' she said, pointing at me. 'See, that's why I keep him around. Sorry, but if it's just about all the lonely people, that's, that's, that's just gonna kill it.'

I looked at Gav and Lola. Gav looked slightly miffed at losing his epic wide shots, but Lola was nodding.

'I mean, I'll be movin' around checking on people but, as far as you can, just forget about me,' TCB said to them. 'You can get me at the end when I've joined everyone else, but this has to be about the cold and dirty ones.

'So I'd like the static cameras up pretty close, and head height for at least everyone who's said yes so far, and if anyone joins in on the day, I want them to get the same treatment. And if that means adjusting the statics on the fly, I can do a bit of that, 'cos you two'll have more than enough shit to do. Is that okay? You don't mind?'

Gav and Lola seemed to appreciate this, and they agreed.

I thought how, a couple of days ago, TCB would have been raging that they were all lightweight idiots who were fucking with her idea, and now she was talking like a leader.

What had happened to her?

'You're the director, C-Roach,' Gwen said.

TCB blinked.

'Excuse me?'

'Harper said that you gave them exclusive permission to make up nicknames for you, based on your name,' Gwen said, fighting back a huge grin, 'and they've got tired of "Croachy", so the current one is "C-Roach".'

TCB looked resigned.

'Yeah,' she said, 'it's gonna become "Cockroach", isn't it.'

'I'm so sorry,' Gwen said, giggling. TCB shook her head and glanced at me.

'You still respect me, right?' she said.

'Babe,' I said, 'don't worry. I've got your exoskeleton.'

I mean, I had to, right? It was just lying there.

TCB sat through the ripple of innocent merriment that followed this with a patient smile on her face.

'I will have my revenge in the morning,' she said. 'Right. Um, we do have exact sunrise timings, yeah?

***

When we had carefully plotted out places for people to stand, and places for cameras to go, Gwen looked at all this and nodded, and then looked up at us all.

'Something does occur to me,' she said.

'Yeah?' TCB said.

'Normally,' Gwen said, 'we have two cameras, max, for a script lasting maybe fifteen minutes. So maybe... thirty, forty minutes footage? For this, we've got...'

She looked down and looked up again.

'Twelve cameras,' she said. 'And we don't know how long it's gonna be. That's gonna be hours of footage.'

TCB nodded.

'We're happy to edit it for you,' Gwen said, 'but if you want to, then...'

'I think I do want to,' TCB said.

'Good, cause I think you should,' Gwen said, 'but, then, I think you also need to tell your employers that you're pretty fucking ill. Cause, I don't see you getting back home till after the weekend.'

***

That Monday afternoon, during the pre-dinner drinks, everyone gathered in the back room for a briefing from TCB.

She laid out what was going to happen, how tight a time-frame existed for it to happen in, and where she wanted everyone to go, to get it done as efficiently as possible.

It wasn't like the usual cheerful buzz of a Studio MudFaery cocktail hour. Nobody was drinking much. Everyone was watching TCB to see if she showed signs of rage or nerves or blowout.

But she was calm, and in control.

'All right,' she said, 'just a couple of things before I stop.

'I've done this before, and you haven't, and it's gonna be cold, and you're gonna be uncomfortable, and you might well want to stop doing it before we've finished, and if that's how you feel, do it. Don't even hesitate. Just... wave your hand, and if I don't see you, Gav or Lola can alert me, and I'll just stop and get you out and make sure you're okay.

''Cos, this is not gonna be fun. I promise you that. You're not gonna have a really good time. It may or may not do for you what it does for me, but you're gonna be cold and naked and muddy and blind, and nobody's gonna give you an orgasm to make up for it.

'One other thing,' she said, looking down. 'I've usually done on this me own. That was the whole point, really, to be alone and like this. Once, I did it with someone else.'

This got some knowing smiles, because everyone she had to be talking about us two coming back to the house completely filthy. She looked up at us again.

'When you're with someone else, I found that, 'cos you can't see what's going on, you get afraid that they might have fucked off and left you, which is obviously, against the whole point of doing it with them, so, I suggest you do it within touching distance of someone you trust, 'cos being able to touch them, makes it... a lot better.'

I looked at her. She was looking down at her handwrittten notes.

'Fuck off, Cal,' she said, not looking up, but smiling slightly.

***

Dinner was earlier than usual and quiet, and then we all went to bed early so as to get a good night's sleep before having to get up in the pre-dawn.

TCB and I lay together, naked and cuddled up to each other.

'You think it's gonna be all right,' she said.

'All you have to do is make sure everyone looks good and gets through it okay.'

'I think I can do that.'

'I know you can.'

'Why?'

'Because you did it for me. And you weren't even sure that you liked me.'

'What makes you think I like you now?'

'Are you fucking kidding me. Basically every interaction I've had with you since then.'

'I suppose the evidence does point that way, yeah.'

'So do you want people to know that we're in some sort of relationship?'

'Oh, fuck off,' she said, wrapping her legs tighter around my left leg. 'They know.'

That made me smile.

'Anywhere in particular you want me to be, tomorrow?'

'Uh, matter of fact, yeah. Stand about six feet to the right of Gwen.'

'Okay.'

'Night, Cal.'

'Night, Peggy.'

We held each other for a bit longer and then, warmed up, we disengaged and lay on our sides, face to face, and slowly fell asleep.

*** 

Tuesday

We were woken by our phones, about five hours later. It was three a. m. and still dark.

We got dressed and went downstairs to find the whole crew assembling: Gwen, T. J., Harper, Jill, Gav, Elaine, Lola, Chris, and a few people whose names we hadn't caught but who'd been around all weekend. It had been agreed the night before that anyone of the crew who thought like they might want to join in could come along, and make up their mind on the spot. Harper was yawning.

'Is this everyone,' Gwen said, and she was at her most serious.

'Think so,' T. J. said. She was in a puffy black quilted coat and leggings and wellingtons. Elaine looked pale and a bit tired in a hoodie and jeans, her laptop bag over her shoulder.

'All right,' Gwen said. 'Anyone who wants to come in the Land Rover, come with me. Everyone else, go with Elaine in the Kia. We've only got about three hours till it's fully daylight. Paul has kindly made us a fuckton of coffee, to warm us up.'

'I think it's technically a fuckgallon,' T. J. interjected.

'I stand corrected,' Gwen said. 'Right. Peggy, you good?'

TCB nodded, silent and unsmiling.

'Let's go,' Gwen said, and we trooped out into the darkness.

We drove steadily down the track and pulled off at the mud. Gav hopped out and immediately started setting up lights. Lola and Elaine placed the cameras according to the diagram on Elaine's laptop. The rest of us stood about drinking coffee.

Such was the efficiency of Studio MudFaery that the whole site was ready to go in about thirty minutes, but it was still pitch dark. A wind was blowing and the occasional drop of rain fell. It was not a night in which anyone felt over-eager to get naked and covered in mud.

Except maybe Harper.

'This is gonna be amazing,' Harper said cheerfully, bundled up in an anorak and a hoodie, a scarf around their neck.

'Harper,' TCB said, 'I'm a bit worried that, you're like, the size of a small teenage boy, and you've not got enough body mass to stay warm. Who's your trust person again?'

Jill raised her hand.

'I will make sure Harper is fine,' she said. Harper took Jill's hand and smiled up at her.

'I run hot,' they said. 'Don't worry.'

'It's really kinda shitty out here,' Gwen said, coming over to us, smiling ruefully. 'These your perfect conditions?'

'Bit hard to say,' TCB said. 'I'll know when it's lighter.'

Gwen nodded. She paused and looked at us all for a moment, pale and nervous, like she was about to be locked into an interview room with a bad cop.

'Well,' she said, 'I'm gonna get ready.' And she plodded back to the Land Rover.

TCB watched her go, and then turned to us.

'Can we start shooting,' she said.

'You don't want to wait till she's in place?' Gav said.

'No, I'd like some stuff of her coming out and getting ready.'

'You got it, Cockroach,' Gav said. TCB smiled to herself, and turned to Elaine.

'Can we get all the static cameras going?' she said. 'Sorry.'

'No problem,' Elaine said, and she tapped a couple of keys on her laptop and all dozen or so phones on their tripods winked into life simultaneously.

'Brilliant,' TCB said. Elaine just shrugged.

'Bluetooth,' she said.

The sky in the east was grey. Gwen came out of the Land Rover in a big puffy coat and wellingtons. Her legs were bare. Gav followed her with the camera, and she just glanced in its direction. She came up to TCB.

'Okay,' she said. 'Ready when you are.'

TCB nodded. Gwen took a deep breath, and unzipped her jacket, and TCB took it off her. Gwen stepped out of her wellingtons and walked, naked and shivering slightly, to the mud. TCB went with her.

It was a tense atmosphere. It was cold and dark, and Gwen was the only one of us who'd got naked so far, and she looked awfully cold and vulnerable. She was going to be in the mud the longest, and as soon as she was naked the clock was ticking.

We'd worked out an order of who should get covered, based partly on willingness, partly on dramatic effectiveness, and partly on an estimation of how long people could probably stand to do it. Gwen was first, and only when she was almost completely covered would she be followed by Jill, then it was my turn, then Harper, and then anyone else who fancied it.

Gwen stood still, facing out to the river. TCB stood in front of her and bent down and lifted a double handful of mud.

Normally, in videos of naked people being covered head to foot in gunge, the eyes are left until last, because the point is sexual humiliation.

In TCB's case, at least in this video, that wasn't the point: it was about vulnerability and trust.

Gwen looked at TCB and TCB looked back at her for a moment, waiting for Gwen to signify that she was ready.

Gwen stared at that cold mud, like a boxer finally facing a feared opponent, then she looked up at TCB, nodded and closed her eyes.

TCB smeared the mud over Gwen's eyes and nose, very carefully, and then took more mud and put it on Gwen's face and hair. Gwen's chest rose and fell, her arms by her sides, breathing through her mouth.

Her facial features disappeared under inches of mud. TCB made sure Gwen's mouth hole was clear and plastered more mud over Gwen's eyes. Gav hung on, shooting them tight, getting TCB's fingers as she smoothed and caressed the mud onto Gwen's head until it was a big ball of featureless mud with a small hole at mouth level for Gwen to breathe through.

Then TCB started working on Gwen's shoulders and chest. Gwen had let her know that she was fine with TCB touching her anywhere, and knowing TCB I knew that her thoughts right now were miles away from anything sexual.

She worked the mud into Gwen's breasts and upper arms and back, as it got slowly lighter and lighter, and then smeared it onto Gwen's stomach and hips and buttocks and groin, and soon Gwen was a featureless black figure in dawn twilight, like a sculpture by Antony Gormley, still and patient, as TCB quickly covered her thighs and calves.

Then Jill came forward to a spot several feet away, naked, and bent over and picked up a handful of mud and pushed it into her own face, and TCB, having finished with Gwen, went over to her and started doing Jill's legs, murmuring the occasional bit of encouragement: That's great, that looks really good. She gave Jill handfuls of mud for Jill to put on herself, and did the back of Jill's head and her shoulder blades and upper back, and Jill did the rest of herself, and soon Jill was a smeared black figure, with a blank muddy face with hole to breathe through.

By then, I'd got naked and I stepped up to my spot six feet to the right of Gwen, and I reached down and took a thick handful of mud and straightened up and smeared it into my own face.

I couldn't see anything after that, so most of the rest of this account of what happened is taken from the footage.

As I was finishing my own face, TCB came over and said quietly 'Yeah, that looks great,' and she handed me more mud, and I covered my head and chest and stomach and groin, and she did my back and also my arse and legs, because we both understood that she didn't need my permission to touch me.

And it really was pretty fucking freezing, but this is what we were doing, and I gritted my teeth and thought about hot coffee, and friendship and trust, and lying in bed naked with TCB, and the taste of her, and the sound of her, and her spirit and her worries and her passion, and about how weird love is, and, again, about hot coffee, which to be honest was the main thing I was thinking about. A fucking enormous black Americano with two sugars.

Harper, meanwhile, had got naked, and was next to Jill and smearing their face with mud, and when I was finished, TCB went over to them and helped them.

It was around this point that Lola's camera caught Elaine, sitting on the grass with her laptop, turning to T. J., who was standing behind her, observing things with her usual impassive expression.

'Should we do it?' Elaine said, grinning.

'What?' T. J. said.

'Ah, let's do it,' Elaine said, 'come on.'

She closed her laptop and shoved it into its bag.

'It's against my religion,' T. J. said, slightly annoyed.

'You don't have any religion,' Elaine said, grinning, taking off her sneakers and her jacket and socks, 'Come on.'

T. J. stood, hesitant, watching Elaine strip, and as Elaine took off her bra and ripped down her panties and stepped naked into the mud, T. J. said 'Oh fuck it, fine,' and took off her glasses and put them in her coat pocket, and unzipped her coat and got her boots off, and removed her coat and jumper, and socks and jeans and underwear, and stomped after Elaine, and by the time Elaine was almost finished covering her own face, T. J. had drawn alongside her and was bent over and picking up the mud and smooshing it into her own eyes.

By the time it was full daylight, there were eleven people, standing at the edge of the river, naked and blind and coated in mud, and TCB was still moving among them, covering up bits here, saying a few encouraging words there, making sure everyone was okay.

Finally she came back to Gwen and myself.

At this point, I'd gone beyond the need for coffee. I was in a place much more removed from ordinary human... whatevers.

I could faintly hear Gwen's teeth chattering: she'd been standing like that for about forty minutes, and there was a stiff breeze coming from the east.

TCB quickly stripped off and leaned over and took some mud and covered her face. Then, because she had practice, she was able to cover the rest of herself without help from anyone else.

Then we all stood, and I remember wondering how long, exactly, we should stand there. The mud was still wet between my thighs and in my eyes and in the crack of my bum and under my armpits, and I knew it was like that for everyone else.

But it took everything else away.

I concentrated on breathing, and on staying standing, because the mud beneath your feel was so slippery, and not being able to see meant your sense of up and down was all skewed.

Then, Gav's camera caught TCB reaching out to her left and touching Gwen's hand, and holding it, and Gwen's fingers curling around TCB's hand. Gwen was shivering quite a bit, at this point, and TCB reached out with her other hand and took mine and tugged me leftwards, and I sidled to the left as TCB carefully stepped behind Gwen and pressed herself to Gwen's back and put her arms around Gwen's shoulders.

Gwen stood still, and I felt with my hand that the two of them were standing together, with TCB trying to warm Gwen up. Then I felt Gwen's hand tugging me towards her and I moved slowly until I was, I reckoned, standing next to her, then she carefully pulled me into her so that I was standing in front of her, facing her, and she was sandwiched between TCB and myself.

Gwen's head rested on my left shoulder, mine was over her right shoulder, and TCB's was turned to the right and resting against the back of Gwen's, so that Gwen was facing blindly to the left and we were facing blindly to the right. We were all pressed together, but there was so much mud on our bodies that there was practically no proper skin-to-skin contact, except TCB's and my fingers holding tight to each other's arms.

Gwen let out a long breath and stopped shivering quite so much. TCB and I stood with our arms wrapped around Gwen, warming her up.

Meanwhile, Jill had pulled Harper into her arms and was standing behind Harper. Elaine and T. J. were standing with Elaine behind T. J., her arms around T. J.'s waist, hugging her, T. J.'s hands on Elaine's bare hips.

All of us blind, featureless, muddy nobodies.

The other guys, too, had gone from standing alone to holding onto each other, for warmth and comfort.

It got lighter and lighter, and then the clouds got darker, and it started to rain.

The static cameras were enclosed in cases and Elaine's laptop was in its bag, so Gav and Lola continued to shoot.

I stood with my arms around TCB and Gwen, listening to them breathing.

Then Gwen murmured, 'Your call.'

TCB nodded.

'Cut!' she cried.

TCB and I let go of Gwen. I wiped the worst of the mud off my face. Gwen stayed motionless, almost as if she didn't want it to end.

TCB pulled the mud off her own face and blinked and looked at me.

I nodded at her: You did it.

She took a deep breath and looked around to check that everyone was still on their feet.

The rain started to really come down, and we saw Gav and Lola running clumsily in the thick mud to get all the static cameras out of there.

Gwen slowly wiped her face and looked at us both and grinned. The others were stickily separating from each other and wiping their faces and looking relieved and pleased, and a bit embarrassed.

'Fuck,' Gwen said, shaking her head. 'Fuck. That was... fuck me. Yeah.'

'Do you get it now?' TCB said, precision-wiping the traces of muck from her eyes with her middle fingers.

'I think so,' Gwen said, shivering but alert, putting her hand on TCB's back. 'I think so. Mmm. Thanks.'

The rain was now pelting down, and there was a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder. I noticed that Lola, thoroughly soaked in her anorak and hoodie, was still videoing us scrambling out of the mud and towards the grass as the rain washed more of the mud off our bodies.

Elaine, muddy and naked but also dedicated first AD that she was, was carrying an armful of cameras as she hurried back to her own clothes lying in the grass. T. J. looked up at the sky, exasperated, and when Gwen saw her, curvy and naked and covered in mud, Gwen's jaw dropped in delight and surprise. T. J. saw her and shook her head and gave Gwen the middle finger and hurried towards her clothes.

'I thought she never got naked,' TCB said, grinning.

'She doesn't,' Gwen said, teeth chattering. 'It's crazy. But she did.'

'Isn't it against her religion?' I said.

'Oh, she's not even really a Muslim,' Gwen said, rolling her eyes. 'She just loves trolling people.... Although, hang on. Maybe she is. I can't remember. Anyway, I'm fucking freezing.'

'Yeah,' TCB said, putting her arm around Gwen, 'let's get you warm.'

'Ooh, yes please,' said Gwen, and she put one arm around TCB's shoulders and the other around mine, and we walked like that back to the grass.

It was raining so hard that nobody wanted to stand around, so Gwen wrapped herself in a towel, put on her wellingtons and got behind the wheel of the Land Rover, and Harper and Jill and T. J. and TCB and I got in with our clothes and belongings in our arms, sitting on top of each other, and we drove back to the house, Elaine, similarly towelled, driving the others in the Kia behind us.

It was still only eight o'clock in the morning.

Once we were back, we all went to our various rooms and then we had to queue to use the bathrooms, because there were only three between all of us.

Gwen wanted to lead from the back and wait until everyone else was clean, but because she'd been in the mud the longest, and was colder than everyone else, TCB ordered her to have the first shower and warm herself up.

TCB and I sat on the floor of our room with a blanket around us, wet and dirty and naked, shivering, waiting our turn, she between my legs with her back to me, cuddling for warmth.

'You did it,' I said. 'You made a video with them.'

'I bet you half the cameras will have got wet and shorted out,' she said.

'That's it. You're just Miss silver lining, aren'tcha.'

'I gotta say,' she said, 'I saw what it looked like when everyone was just standing there except me, and it did look pretty fucking good.'

'I can't believe T. J. joined in.'

'I know. Do you think she and Elaine are a thing?'

'I dunno. I thought that she and Gwen were a thing, but Gwen seems to be not in a thing with anyone, unless she's in a thing with everyone.'

'I've got to hand it to her,' TCB mused, 'she took it like a fucking pro.'

'That was a great idea, to hug her.'

'She was so cold. You feel her shivering?'

'Yeah.'

'Well,' she said, 'it's done, anyway.'

'Still got to edit the fucking thing. But I think you might have made the first messy video that can make people cry.'

She turned her head slightly, a faint smile on her face.

'You really think so.'

'Maybe.'

'Gwen said our videos made her cry.'

'Gwen probably cries at detergent commercials.'

TCB chuckled.

'"Everyone's so relieved about the laundry!"' she said in an imitation of Gwen's voice.

'I was thinking more about the way everyone was so happy at the end.'

'Happy that it was fuckin' over,' she said. 'I could have done twenty more minutes.'

'Yeah, but you're TotalCoverageBitch. You're not like ordinary mortals.'

She was silent for a bit, her face still half-turned to me.

'Still. That's one of the nicest things anyone's said to me,' she murmured.

I held her a bit tighter.

'Can I give you a kiss,' I said.

She nodded.

'I think,' she said, 'you can pretty much always give me a kiss. At least in private. Don't have to ask. Until further notice.'

She turned her head more towards me and we kissed.

There was a knock on the door. 'Bathroom's free,' came Jill's voice.

TCB and I got up and scurried to the bathroom.

After we were clean and dry, we went back to our room and got dressed and came down to the kitchen.

T. J. was there, having somehow restored herself to her usual immaculateness, laying out plates. She gave us a look through her glasses.

'Good job,' she said to TCB in her flat voice.

'Thanks.'

'By the way,' T. J. said, stopping what she was doing, 'I'm sorry I assumed you'd been mean to Gwen.'

'I think it was, um, reasonable,' TCB said, 'given what a fucking bitch I'd been.'

'Well,' T. J. said, 'I mean, yeah.'

'I'm sorry I was such a fucking bitch.'

'It's fine,' T. J. said. 'You've already apologised for that. But, I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions.'

'Did you have a good time,' TCB said, nodding at the outside, where the rain was still pouring down.

'"Good time" wouldn't be the term I would use,' T. J. said. 'But I'm glad I did it.'

'I have to ask,' I said.

'Go on,' she said.

'Are you really a Muslim?'

She smiled.

'Why's it so important to you,' she said.

I thought about this.

'I dunno,' I admitted. 'It's not, really.'

'I'll just leave that with you, then,' she said.

Elaine came down the stairs, her hair damp. She smiled at us.

'Hi,' she said, and went over to T. J. and stood behind her, her arms around T. J.'s waist, like they'd been in the mud. T. J. folded her own hands on top of Elaine's. Elaine kissed the top of T. J.'s head.

'Are you two...' TCB said.

T. J. nodded.

'Did you just...' TCB said, pointing to the outside. 'I mean, did, that...'

'Fuck, no,' T. J. drawled. 'We've been together for three years.'

'Yeah,' Elaine said. 'This was possibly the least sexy time I've ever had while naked.'

'So...'

'Everybody else was doing it,' Elaine said. 'Had to see what it was like.'

'And I knew if she did it and I didn't, I'd never hear the end of it,' T. J. said and looked up at Elaine, who grinned at her and kissed her.

*** 

That was a memorable breakfast.

Nearly everyone at the table had got naked and muddy, and the few who hadn't, hadn't wanted to anyway.

The tea and coffee kept coming, and there was loads of bread and butter and not-butter, and jam, and honey, and then there was a lot of scrambled eggs, and then more scrambled eggs, and other breakfast-y things which, as a non-vegan, I have to admit I didn't pay much attention to, and by ten o'clock, we were all pretty mellow.

Gwen sat up and prepared to say something. TCB, next to me, saw her doing it, and gulped some coffee, and sat up straight.

'Um, Gwen,' she said. 'sorry, before you say anything, do you mind if I...'

'Go ahead,' Gwen said.

'I'll keep this short,' TCB said, staring at the table as she always did, hating to look people in the eye.

'Thank you all for this morning. I'm so fucking impressed that so many of you gave it a go, and even more that nobody gave up halfway through. That's fucking hardcore, guys. I'm very grateful to've had the chance to direct it. I haven't seen the footage yet, obviously, but I did have my eyes open for most of it, and, and, it looked fucking amazing, what I did see, and, uh, I just kinda assume that Gav and Lola captured the rest. That's all. Thank you.'

There was a polite ripple of applause, but as I looked around the table, people seemed to be genuinely appreciative of TCB's newfound... something or other. Calm? Focus?

Gwen smiled at her, and at me.

She paused.

'So,' she said, 'anyone got any news to share?'

Nobody did, apparently.

'Good,' she said. 'Great. Well... just, on a personal note...'

She paused.

'For anyone who wasn't here, Sunday was not the best day of my life.'

Silence.

'Not really because of anyone here,' she said. 'There's one person here who, um, didn't make things great, but, I understand a lot better where she was coming from, and as far as I'm concerned, that's all done with.'

She paused.

'Some of you know, by now, that my dad called me on Sunday night, while he was having a full-blown episode, and he talked to me in a way...'

She paused again, and carefully picked up her tea mug and had a gulp.

'In a way that I found very hard to handle. Partly because, it was new? He's got serious mental health issues, but they'd got way worse than usual, and what with our... history, he knows how to push my buttons, he knows how to hurt me, and he really gave it a proper go, on Sunday night, and, I lost it.'

She cleared her throat and paused.

'And it so happened that Peggy overheard all this, and when I was feeling... really, like absolute shit, and I was hurt and I was embarrassed and ashamed, she, um, she found the right things to say.'

She looked at TCB.

'You were there,' she said. 'You didn't bullshit me or try to jolly me out of it. I really appreciated that.

'And that's why I wanted to make a video with you, because... why the fuck not. We, here, we've worked out our way of doing things, and you have yours, but doesn't mean we can't learn from each other.

'And, obviously, we all went out this morning, at fuck off o'clock, and we got naked and cold and muddy and uncomfortable, and it wasn't sexy and it wasn't fun, or at least, I didn't find it sexy or fun.

'But I don't know if I've ever felt closer to everyone here, than I did when we were finished.'

She smiled around at all of us.

'I mean, this was a challenge. I thought Harper finger-fucking me was a challenge, but this was not playtime.'

Harper grinned and blushed.

'So what I'd like to do,' Gwen said, 'before anything else, is ask: how was it for everyone? And, did anyone have a really shit time, this morning? Just let's be totally honest. Cause I'd love to hear what it was like for everyone.'

TCB reached for my hand under the table and squeezed it. I squeezed back.

After a long moment, Jill raised her hand.

'Um,' she said, 'okay. Not totally shit, no. I'm glad I did it. But, it's not what I like to do. I already feel pretty close to the people I love. I don't feel like I went up a level in empathy, or anything.

'I will say one thing, though,' she added, and looked at TCB.

We waited.

'I think I see better why you like it,' Jill said, 'and all I can say is: fuck. And, don't take this the wrong way, but if you need to do that... I feel like it must suck a bit to be you.'

She and TCB looked at each other.

'I mean,' Jill said, and it wasn't without sympathy, '... does it?'

TCB looked thoughtful.

'I dunno,' she said. 'I mean, has it ever sucked to be you?'

Jill looked nonplussed for a moment, and then smiled.

'Yeah, it has,' she said. 'There've been times.'

'Well, there you are.'

'And this is how you handle it,' Jill said.

TCB thought again.

'This is how I have handled it. I'm still working on it.'

She squeezed my hand under the table again.

'Fair enough,' Jill said. 'I mean, it was worth doing, but I'm never fucking doing it again, sorry.'

'I totally understand that,' TCB said, smiling.

'I'm kinda with Jill on this,' Harper said. 'I was mostly, just, fucking freezing and uncomfortable, and I had no idea how long it was going to last. I...'

Harper stopped, which was quite un-Harperish.

'I'll have to think about it,' they said. 'It was... weird. I'll have to think about it.'

'I thought it was great,' Elaine said.

We all turned to her. She beamed.

'I mean, you were all so totally up for it, and it was killing me that I was just sitting there doing nothing in particular, and then I thought, fuck it, anyone can join in, I'm gonna, and I, y'know, got naked and covered myself, and I finally felt totally involved, like, yeah, I'm a part of this.

'Cause, I'm usually on the edge of things, I mean I did a couple of videos when I was in the States, but, I don't have... a ton of great memories of that. But here, I usually have too much to do, during a shoot, but this time, we were so prepared, I didn't, and I so wanted to put myself through that. And also...'

She smiled at T. J., who rolled her eyes.

'Fine,' T. J. said. 'Yes. As soon as Elaine was doing it, I knew I had to. Because...'

She paused, and she and Elaine exchanged a look.

'Because love,' Gwen said.

'Yeah,' T. J. said, with her heavy-lidded look and her flat drawl. She reached out and took Elaine's hand. 'Because love.'

*** 

The discussion went on until just before lunch, and the only definite conclusion I took from it was that everyone who'd taken part had definitely felt something about it, but only a few people had taken away the sort of calming, soothing, spiritually-easing thing that TCB got, and I got, and Gwen seemed to get too.

Nobody stood up and angrily denounced TCB for getting them all dirty and freezing, but the general feeling was that, while it had been interesting, it wasn't for most people.

I felt bad about this.

I felt like TCB was going to take it as a negative verdict. And as we all broke up and started to finally wash up the breakfast things, so that we could re-lay the table for lunch, I looked at her.

She didn't look depressed or angry. She looked intent.

'You okay,' I said.

'Yeah.'

'You sure?'

'Why wouldn't I be?'

'You're not worried that more people weren't into it?'

'Nope,' she said.

'But, I mean, it was supposed to be a video like your videos, and...'

'Yeah,' she murmured, as she dried a bunch of forks with a towel. 'But, I'm not worried.'

'How come you're like this?'

'Like what?'

'Like, unexpectedly chill.'

She glanced at me.

'I'll tell you later,' she said.

She paused and frowned.

'Fuck,' she said calmly.

'What?'

'You know what I should've done?' she said. 'I should've recorded all that.'

After a moment, she shrugged, and got on with drying forks.

*** 

Lunch was fairly light, because breakfast had been so protracted, and TCB grabbed a sandwich and then approached Chris and conferred with him and disappeared off with him.

I didn't see her again for seven hours.

This was odd. But I realised, after a while, that she had to be watching all the footage.

She turned up at dinner and sat next to me, and smiled at me, and made little conversation but occasionally squeezed my hand or my arm, and drank a glass of wine, then as soon as dinner could be said to be more or less finished, she vanished off again.

I didn't see her again until midnight. I spent my time hanging out with Gwen and T. J. and Harper (whose immense knowledge of messy porn provided plenty of fuel for the conversation), and Gwen and T. J. were often vanishing off to do various bits of admin.

Finally, at midnight, TCB came into the back room bearing a large glass of wine and flopped down next to me.

'You been busy,' I said.

'Lotta footage to watch,' she said.

'How's it looking,' Harper said.

TCB paused.

'We'll get there,' she said.

She and I went to bed about an hour later, and in what was now a very welcome bedtime ritual, we got naked and hugged for a bit and then went to sleep.

***

Wednesday

When I woke up next morning, TCB was gone.

I took a shower, dressed and went downstairs, and found Gwen sipping coffee and examining correspondence.

'Hey, Cal,' she said. 'Peggy is deep in editing.'

'Still?'

Gwen nodded.

'Chris says that she's very exacting, but that she knows what she wants.'

'Sounds like her,' I said. 'When I made that video of her, she sent me five pages of notes.'

'Well, she wasn't wrong,' Gwen said, scanning a bill. 'It's fucking beautiful. Which, obviously, is also a testament to your respect for her opinion.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'I just hope she doesn't... go off.'

Gwen looked up at me.

'Mmm,' she said. 'That is possible.'

'I mean, I love her,' I said, 'but...'

I overheard what I'd just said, and felt disoriented, and looked at Gwen.

'But,' she said patiently.

'I've never told anyone before that I love... someone,' I said.

She looked at me for a moment.

'You didn't need to,' she said. 'It's been obvious from the minute you got here.'

'Has it? It wasn't to me.'

'Oh, Cal,' she said sympathetically. 'You two. Honest.'

I stood there for a moment, feeling like an idiot, but not in the worst possible way.

'How's your dad,' I said, wanting to change the subject.

Gwen paused, and I could see her dropping the MudFaery mannerisms: the perkiness, the good cheer. She shrugged.

'He knows he did a wrong thing,' she said. 'I talked to my mum about it, and we've talked to his doctors. He's agreed to go back on his meds. I don't know, to be honest, I really don't. It's a process. I think it's probably the same with all parents, more or less, I mean, it's more pronounced in his case, cause he's been ill for years. I mean, do you find that, with yours?'

'What?'

'Just, that they get older, and slower, and it's upsetting even when... they're not, like, mentally ill?'

'Not really.'

'Oh?'

'Well, uh... they died. When I was twenty-five.'

She stared at me.

'What of?'

'Cancer. Lung, in his case, and, ovarian.'

Gwen got up from her seat and came around the table, and she hugged me.

'For fuck's sake,' she muttered in my ear. 'I'm so sorry.'

'It's fine,' I said, feeling a little puzzled, as I always did when I told people my parents had died when I was twenty-five, and they behaved as though I'd been orphaned at ten.

'D'you think that's why Peggy gets you so much? That she's never had a dad, and you lost your folks?'

'Uhh,' I said, feeling suddenly rather guilty, 'to be totally honest...'

She pulled back from me and stared at me.

'Oh, god, Cal, you have told her?'

'Not totally sure,' I said.

Her face fell.

'Cal,' she said, and it had two syllables, like CAH-al....

'Well, before we came up here, our whole thing was that we weren't really in a relationship, and so...'

'Oh my god,' she said, closing her eyes.

'We were talking about your dad,' I said.

'Yeah, and my dad's alive, and horribly problematic, and I can't fix that, but in the meantime... your parents are dead, and you haven't told the woman you love, yet, because, why?'

'Because I'm a dipshit,' I said, annoyed.

Gwen, to her credit, did not deny this, but sort of shrugged, like Well, obviously, but remained silent.

I felt like an asshole. And a coward. And an idiot, for not saying anything.

But, I had taken my cue from TCB.

She didn't want us to be too intimate, so I hadn't been.

But now we were. Intimate, that is.

But it was over a big empty hole of non-communication, like we could magically go from being friends with muddy benefits, to lovers, without having the Big Chats.

And it was the Big Chats that had fucked up every relationship I'd ever had.

Like, when the person I was into found out that not only did I not have any parents, I had few friends, and one sibling, who lived in Australia, and so they were basically going to be my main social and emotional contact in the world, and if they dumped me, I'd be all alone.

And, not wanting that kind of pressure, they'd very wisely decided not to get together with me.

Hence, me being shit at relationships.

I took a deep breath.

'The thing with me,' I said, 'is, I don't have a lot of close friends.'

'Okay.'

'I mean, there's the people I went to uni with...'

'Sure.'

'But then I moved away, and we lost contact, I mean we're still on Insta and stuff, but where I live now, I live by myself, and I don't do a lot of ordinary social media, and I have this job I don't really like, and I'm not friends with people there, and...'

'You don't like them?'

'They're all right. They're just, you know, older than me, and kinda right-wing, and...'

'Right.'

She guided me over to the kettle, and started to fill it.

'And the way it ended up, making videos has been my main social life.'

'But it's all online,' she said, 'and it's just you.'

'Yeah. Until I met her. And I think it's the same for her. But, when I meet someone I like, and I say hello, and they find out that I'm like this... they fuck the fuck off, and, I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to go out with me. Who wants to go out with someone, when you're their only friend? It's too much to put on someone.'

Gwen put the kettle on the Aga, because of course they had an Aga, and took down two mugs, and put teabags in them.

She stood for a moment, looking at the wall, and then turned to me.

'I get it,' she said. 'I mean, by the normal standards of... dating desirability, whatever, objectively, I can see how you would be considered a fucking loser.'

I actually flinched.

To hear that from her.

Gwen, so nice, so cheerful, so understanding.

'Cal,' she said, leaning forward, emphatically, 'I say this with huge affection, and I can't say it strongly enough, but, in your case: fuck, the normal, standards.'

I stared at her. She stared back, urging me to understand.

'So what if you don't have any other close friends,' she said. 'You and she met by a completely bizarre accident, which was nevertheless because you had this one thing in common, and you lived in the same city, and you were nice to her, because you recognised her, because you liked her videos.

'You suggested that you and she make a video, and you stepped up first to be in one. You've been standing by her, and, trying to apologise for her, and... interpreting for her, and looking after her, since you got here.

'And she's gone from being a ball of rage to the, fucking, Leni Riefenstahl of messy video editing.'

She looked at me with such a weird combination of fondness and pity that I was kind of pleased and annoyed at the same time.

'She bloody needs you, Cal, and you need her. And she may have pissed off nearly everyone else here, but we all still think you're this nice, fairly chill, funny dude who's mysteriously her boyfriend.'

'... Leni Riefenstahl?' I said helplessly.

'You've heard of Leni Riefenstahl.'

'Of course I've heard of Leni fucking Riefenstahl.'

'Yeah, well, she was a Nazi and an egomaniac and a liar, she was all flaws, but she was a fucking beast of an editor. She had two hundred and fifty hours of footage of the Olympics, more than a million feet of film, and she edited it down to under four hours, and it took her two years, partly because the sound was unusable and they had to redo it from scratch. On fucking optical track, Cal.

'And your girlfriend is taking about sixteen hours of footage, and editing it down to no more than half an hour, and she's got three days in which to do it, and she's not melted down, she's been fucking crushing it, according to Chris, and I haven't had a single complaint. And, I very much doubt that she'd be doing that, if you hadn't somehow made her feel safe enough, and loved enough, so that she could speak up, and ask for what she needs, without completely losing her shit.

'And this,' she added, getting even more righteously angry, 'in spite of the fact that you two morons had a fucking fight with each other, three nights ago, which what the fuck was that about, by the way?'

'It's hard to explain,' I said.

'Try me,' Gwen said, her big brown eyes somehow blazing.

'It's stupid and it's complicated and messy and embarrassing.'

'But?'

'But we had to do it.'

'And did actually it make things better?'

'Yeah.'

Gwen paused, and I think she was a bit stunned at the idea that having a fight with someone would actually make things better.

'Well, great, but... do you think you're gonna do it again?'

'No.'

'Good. Thank you. I don't want to think that my friends are off somewhere beating the shit out of each other.'

I blinked. She caught it.

'Yes, Cal,' she said, putting her hands on my arms, 'for what it's worth, I absolutely consider you and her to be friends of mine.'

'Cool,' I said. 'So...'

It was weird, seeing Gwen come as close as I'd ever seen her come to losing her temper. She sort of puffed out a breath, and nodded at me, and calmed down, and patted my arms, and rubbed her nose, and looked aside.

'So,' she said.

She picked up the kettle and poured boiling water into the mugs and put them on a tray, and added a small jug of milk and a teaspoon, and even a little bowl for the used teabags. She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek, and handed me the tray.

'Go and be her boyfriend, kid,' she said.

I nodded.

'I will,' I said. 'Thanks, Gwen.'

She smiled, paused, and then jerked a thumb to the passage off the kitchen.

'Down there, second door on the right.'

*** 

I edged my way into the editing suite and found it quite dark, with TCB hunched over a computer with four monitors.

She looked over her shoulder and looked vaguely peeved.

'Oh hey,' she said. 'What's up.'

'Brought you some tea,' I said, putting the tray down on a table near the door.

'Thanks,' she said, and went back to watching the four monitors.

'How's it going.'

No answer.

'Yo,' I said. 'How's it going.'

'It's fine,' she said absently. 'Just going through stuff.'

'You've watched all the footage, right?'

'Yeah.'

'So you're making decisions, right?'

'Of course I'm fucking making decisions.'

'Good. So, where are you.'

'I'm about a minute in.'

'Okay.'

'There's a lot of footage.'

'How many hours?'

'Twenty-one.'

'Fuck me.'

Pause.

'Can I see what you have?' I said.

'Cal.'

'I'd just like to see it. I'm a fan.'

She looked pained.

'Fine. Um, okay.'

She fiddled with various controls, and showed me the first minute. It began with Gwen standing there, naked, TCB smearing the mud into her eyes.

'I thought you wanted to show before,' I said. 'Like, her getting ready and stuff.'

'Yeah,' she said, 'I...'

'What?'

'I thought it didn't look...'

'There was... is it okay if I ask something?'

She glanced at me, irritated.

'Sure.'

'There was this look between you and her,' I said. 'I know that Gav and Lola got that. Would it be okay if I saw it? Since you've binned it.'

TCB looked at me and stood up and stretched and wound her neck and sat down again, and looked at me.

'So you're gonna save the video,' she said, 'by magically bringing me back to myself, by your sheer masculine presence. The indecisive woman, shall...'

'Yeah,' I said. 'That's exactly it. You have no clue what you're fucking doing, but simply by having a penis, I recall you to your native womanly blah blah and you recover your blah by means of my sacred...'

'All right,' she said. 'Fuck off. Your sarcasm has been noted.'

We glared at each other.

'D'you need a kiss,' I said.

She considered this.

'Yeah,' she said, 'but, just to annoy you, I'm gonna deny meself.'

She flicked through various folders and pulled up the clips of Gwen looking at her, just before TCB smeared mud into her face.

We watched them.

'Is it good, though,' she mused.

'I really, really like it,' I said. 'I think it's a trust thing. She's like, oh shit, here we go, but when you actually do it, you're so sort of tender?'

We watched as TCB carefully smeared the mud into Gwen's eyes, and Gwen flinched slightly, opening her mouth, and gasped minutely, and then recovered herself.

'Yeah,' TCB said. 'I see it, the little sort of brace-up with her shoulders...'

'Yeah.'

'It's not too much?'

'I really like it.'

'Okay,' she said, 'okay. Fuck a duck. You're right.'

'Where's Chris?' I said.

'Oh, he said he was going for food, and he hasn't come back,' she said abstractedly, as she began to dupe the clips, and import them into the master, and cut them and trim them.

'So, you've got nobody to bring you food and drink, or bounce ideas off.'

'No,' she said airily, still editing. 'I'm that much of a pain in the arse.'

'Well,' I said, 'I reluctantly accept.'

She stopped and turned to me.

'Editorial Assistant?' she said.

'Assistant Editor,' I said. 'That, or "Assistant to Ms Trafaglio".'

She grimaced.

'Oh, fuck no. Assistant Editor.'

'Cool.'

'Okay,' she said.

She sat back and closed her eyes and exhaled.

Then she opened them, and thought.

'Number one priority, I can't do this on tea. Can you get us coffee, like, strong coffee. Number two, I had the before stuff all put together, but I went over and over it, and I lost confidence and I went a bit wobbly, and I binned the whole thing. I've still got it, but I could use some eyes on it.'

'All good,' I said.

'Number three,' she said, 'give us a kiss.'

I went forward, leaned over her and kissed her. There were tongues involved. It was good.

'Right,' she said, disengaging. 'Let's go to work.'

*** 

Wednesday/Thursday

I can't claim any special contribution to the editing of the video. TCB was the one making the choices and moving the clips around and choosing durations and fiddling with the colour grading and sound levels.

What I did, apart from fetching and carrying refreshments and occasionally looking up Elaine's meticulously compiled shot list, was be with her, and wait until she expressed doubt, or asked me what I thought, and then I gave an opinion, and she weighed it up, and if she agreed, she went with it, and if she didn't, most of the time she realised what she really wanted to do, and did that.

One of the things I noticed was that, when she was doing shots that involved her covering someone else, or touching them up, she eliminated herself as much as possible, until she was just a pair of hands, or a quick blurry movement in front of whoever was the real focus of the shot.

Gradually, it began to emerge: a portrait of a group of people getting naked and dirty, and putting up with themselves being covered in cold mud, and standing there in silence, shivering and breathing (it was cold enough, that early in the morning, that you could see our breath), and bodies wobbling a bit, and heads being held up.

She could have cut herself out completely, but then it would have been a series of static tableaux of people in mud, and she wanted us to see people getting the hang of being in mud.

There were little moments when people's personalities came through. When Jill first smeared the mud in her eyes you could see her mouth grimacing with how cold it was, and later on, when Jill pulled Harper in to keep them warm, the mud on the lower half of Harper's face stretched as if Harper, underneath an inch of mud, was giving a smile of relief.

Again and again she came back to Gwen, visibly getting colder and colder, and straightening herself up from time to time, and Lola and Gav's cameras got close enough that you could hear Gwen give the occasional tiny whimper of discomfort.

With me, she let herself be on camera a bit more, as she knelt by me, slathering my naked legs and arse with the mud, rubbing it in with this tiny smile on her face.

'Fanservice?' I said. 'From you?'

She smiled.

She skilfully avoided showing T. J.'s face, until it was covered; T. J. had quietly asked that she not be identifiable. But there was a definite sense of companionship in the way Elaine held onto T. J., and pushed her own body into the back of her lover's.

She dealt with her own muddy body with no more or less attention than she'd paid to anyone else. There was a great shot of the muddy heads and shoulders of Gwen, TCB and I, standing in a row, shot from the side, with me blurry in the foreground, and TCB a bit sharper in the middle and Gwen farthest away in crisp focus, the three of us just standing and breathing in and breathing out.

Then, when she and I were standing with our arms around Gwen, there was a long, long closeup of us from the waist up, with just Gwen's blank, muddy face showing, because our faces were turned away, Gwen's chin resting gently on my shoulder, breathing, her body trembling slightly and the trembling slowly ceasing as she got warmer.

The 'after' bit was cut with lots of quick shots; everyone disengaging, wiping the mud off our faces, smiling with relief; the rain starting to come down; Elaine and Gav and Lola grabbing the static cameras, Elaine incongruously naked and dirty; TCB and Gwen and I looking off to one side and laughing (we had been laughing at T. J. flipping the bird at Gwen); Jill and Harper wiping themselves down, and Harper said something to Jill, and you couldn't hear Jill's answer but from the look on her face and the movement of her lips it was obviously a fervent Fuck, no, which TCB thought was hilarious; everyone scrambling out of the mud as the rain came down; the raindrops splashing into muddy pools; a final shot of the empty mud where we'd once been standing.

Friday

I woke up early on Friday morning, to find TCB gone from the bed, as usual. I dressed, made us coffees and grabbed a couple of bagels and went to the editing suite.

Two hours later, she showed me the first cut.

Not gonna lie, I felt a bit teary.

'Is it all right?'

'Do you know you're really fucking good at this?' I said.

'Yeah.'

She smiled.

'Cal,' she said, 'I work for a media company. I edit video for a living.'

'Explains a lot.'

'When were you gonna tell me your folks had died?' she said softly.

I was struck dumb.

She waited, and it pretty soon became obvious to both of us that I didn't have an answer.

'I worked it out,' she said. 'You've got pictures of them in your flat, but you never talk about them, and you never call them, and they don't call you. And you don't moan about rent.'

I sat for a moment.

'Sorry,' I said. 'I was gonna.'

'It's all right,' she said. 'Didn't even occur to me till the last few days, and then I was falling asleep last night, and thinking about you, and your flat, and I thought, hang on.'

'You're not angry?'

She stared at me and shook her head.

'Why would I be angry.'

'Because I wasn't honest.'

'You didn't lie. Maybe you thought I didn't wanna know. Maybe I didn't wanna know. We didn't have that sort of... friendship, when we came down here. But, now we do. And, I worked it out. And I'm sorry. It must have been shit.'

'It was, yeah.'

'Were you close to them?'

'Yeah.'

She got up and came over. I was sitting down and she was standing up, and she put her arms around my head and leaned over me.

'Well,' she said, 'that fuckin' sucks.'

I nodded.

After a moment she let go and knelt down next to me.

'You want to tell me all about them, some time,' she said.

'Yeah, that'd be nice.'

She smiled sadly and nodded. Then she gave me a kiss.

'Shall we get back to work?' I said.

She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

'Yeah,' she said, and sat down again at the computer.

'You know what this needs,' she said.

'What?'

'People actually talking. Not talking heads. Just people saying what it was like, audio. It's why I should've recorded the big talk after breakfast on Tuesday.'

'Yeah.'

She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote on it.

'What are you doing?'

'This is how I'm gonna meet 'em halfway,' she said. 'Could you grab people and ask them these questions, and record the answers? Just if they want to. Gwen, and Jill, and Harper, and just anyone who says yes, really. You know where's got really good acoustics? The toilet down the corridor. You could do it in there.'

'Sure,' I said, 'but why don't you ask them?'

She glanced up at me.

'Because they actually like you,' she said.

She handed me the paper.

'I'll see what I can do,' I said.

'Thanks,' she said, and turned back to the screen.

*** 

TCB had written four questions.

1. Why did you agree to do this?

2. What were you thinking and feeling, while you were doing it?

3. When it was over, how did you feel?

4. Do you think it was worth doing, or not?

I asked Harper, and Gwen, and Jill, and T. J., and Elaine, and Gav, and Lola, and the other people who I still hadn't really met, and I spent the rest of the morning going with most of them one by one into the little wood-panelled loo down the corridor from the editing suite, and recording them on my camera. It was easy that way for TCB to lift the audio track off the clip and use it in the edit.

I ended up with about two hours of clips, which I was afraid would drive TCB up the wall with the extra workload.

But I came back to the suite just after lunch, with a sandwich for her, and gave her my phone, and gave her a quick rundown of what everyone had said, and she listened while eating, and she shrugged, and I stayed with her and we worked all afternoon, late into the night. We skipped dinner and I made us more sandwiches. We argued about the Elaine/T. J. stuff, on ridiculous points of detail.

She came to feel that the 'after' stuff went on too long and I begged her to reconsider, because I thought you needed the space, and very reluctantly she watched it again, and then she made a dupe of it and told me to do my own cut if I thought I was so fucking smart, and she stomped off to the back room to have a drink and cool down, and I did my own cut.

And she came back and watched it, and thought, and decided that while I wasn't right, neither was I entirely wrong.

And we went back to work.

By midnight, we had got to the last thirty seconds.

She was peering at the screen and jiggling with sound levels on the voice-over, to a degree that I couldn't even hear. She was trying to find the right balance between the talk from the shoot and the voice-over, and she kept going back and forth between two options.

'Nobody can hear the difference,' I said.

'I can.'

I paused, thinking very hard.

'You know I love you, right,' I said.

'Eh,' she said, shrugging, and then she glanced over her shoulder at me. So I knew it was okay.

'Have you ever considered that, just maybe, you might have hyperacusis, and so you're not the perfect judge of what's too loud?'

She paused, again like she actually froze, for a few seconds.

'How dare you,' she said quietly.

I froze.

She turned to me, looking sly.

'Yeah, that actually makes sense,' she sighed. 'You have a go.'

She got out of the chair and I got up, and we exchanged seats. I rewound, played the sequence, and adjusted the volume levels, then went back and played it again.

She watched it, slumped in my seat.

It ended.

'When you're right, you're right,' she said. 'Can we stop now?'

'Why are you asking me? You're the fucking boss in here.'

'Oh, I am, aren't I,' she said, looking around, puzzled. 'Yeah. Close it up. Let's have a fucking drink.'

We closed up the suite and went through to the back room.

I think we'd lost track of time, because I know I was looking forward to having a nice quiet drink with her, but of course, it was Friday night.

When we entered the kitchen, it was humming, and when we entered the back room, it was positively buzzing with young people who were a bit drunk.

TCB sort of glommed onto me, slightly. I tried to offer her my crooked elbow, to look smart, but she seemed to not get the point and just grabbed my arm.

Gwen looked up at us.

'Guys,' she said, radiating positivity. 'How's it going.'

'Oh,' TCB said, 'it's, we're, yeah, we're getting there, we, uh...'

'We'll have a cut to show you by eleven a. m.,' I said.

TCB turned and stared at me. I looked back at her.

Then I looked at Gwen and the others.

'Peggy doesn't think we will,' I said, 'but we will.'

I turned and looked at TCB.

'Because she's great,' I said, looking at her, 'and she's done a fucking great job. And it just needs going over, couple more times, but it's all there.'

I looked back at Gwen.

'It's just that you miss things, because you get tired, but we'll get a good night's sleep, and we'll go over it again in the morning, and anything we missed, we'll catch.'

I turned and looked at TCB again.

'Because, you're on this,' I said. 'Right?'

She looked at me, like: You wanker.

'The perfect is the enemy of the good,' Gwen said.

We both looked at her.

'It's your thing,' she said to both of us. 'I'm just dying to see it. Can we? It's just, you're gonna have to go home, and...'

I didn't want to go home, really, and I sensed that TCB didn't either, but she looked at Gwen and she softened.

'Yeah,' she said. 'Eleven a. m. tomorrow. We'll show it.'

'Thank you,' Gwen said, doing her prayer gesture.

'In the meantime,' TCB said, 'can I have, like... all the wine?'

Jill grabbed a bottle of wine and two glasses, and came forwards.

*** 

About two hours later, Cal and I were lying on the same bean-bag (how the fuck did I get into bean-bags, this week, it's so weird), and my arm was around him, and he was, like, My Guy, which was a nice feeling.

And it was so odd, but I had this secret private feeling that, for once, I hadn't totally failed to do something.

Or else, that I'd done something, and it was so weird and private that nobody would like it.

I'd somehow managed to get people to do my thing, and they'd done it, and I'd made it into...

Or had I.

Because then the doubt kicked in.

I didn't know.

I couldn't tell until they watched it. Cal had watched it, and he liked it, but he was so like me that it didn't count.

It would only count if Jill or T. J. watched it, and didn't think that it was weird or sleazy or stupid or whatever.

I had been off in my own thoughts for ages, and I'd lost track of time.

'So, what's it about,' Jill said to me.

I looked at Harper, and T. J., and Elaine who was sitting with her arm around T. J., and Gwen who was on the floor in the lotus position, which five days earlier would have annoyed the fuck out of me but which I now found adorable, and Gav, who was sitting with a guitar in his hands and making nice noises on it, and Lola, who was cuddled up next to Chris, and everyone else in the room, who was wondering what the fuck I'd been up to the last few days, taking up their editing suite with my weird standing-still-naked-in-mud video.

I looked at Cal, to see if he could help.

He didn't say anything, he just looked back at me like he knew I knew the answer.

And, that calmed me down enough that I did know it.

'All my other videos have been about me,' I said. 'Or, him.' I indicated Cal.

'This one's about you,' I said, looking at them all.

They looked back at me, and...

... yeah, I wasn't totally surprised that Gwen looked like she had total faith in me, and Elaine beamed, and...

... the rest of them looked, what's the word?

Patient.

'Cool,' Jill said. 'Look forward to it.'

'Yeah,' Harper said. 'I'm sure it'll be great.'

Harper, at least, bothered to look like they felt a bit sorry for me.

Oh fuck, look, I dunno, I'm shit at reading people. Jill probably felt sorry for me too, but we know, by now, that me, humans, etc.

'Whatever it's like,' Gwen said, leaning forward and looking at me, very pointed, 'I'm sure it'll be bloody brilliant.'

I smiled at her.

God, she was so fucking nice.

I wished I could be that nice.

I leaned back in the bean-bag, and Cal held me, and I stopped worrying so much.

*** 

We went to bed about an hour later, like three in the morning, and I'd had quite a lot of wine, and I set my alarm for six-thirty, because I knew that if I didn't put in at least four hours of work on the video, I'd go nuts.

Cal watched me.

'Don't worry about it,' I said. 'Just gonna get up early, last minute stuff.'

'Hey,' he said.

'It's fine,' I said.

'Hey,' he said sharply. I looked at him.

'Please don't get up and leave me alone, and go off and do stuff, because you think you don't need me,' he said.

And then, being him, he doubted himself.

'Unless, you really don't. Um.'

I watched him.

'In which case,' he said, 'um... okay. Yeah, wake me up, but, tell me that you definitely don't need me, and then let me know that it's okay for me to go back to sleep, unless you're not totally sure, in which case...'

'Cal,' I said.

'In which case,' he went on, 'ask me if you need me to...'

'Cal,' I said, 'it's okay. It's fine. I'll just fucking wake you up.'

'Oh, yeah, that's way simpler.'

'Yeah,' I said, patting him on the shoulder.

He's such a dork. But, etc.

I turned out light, we, naked, sleep, etc.

*** 

Saturday

TCB woke me up at who-gives-a-fuck o'clock the next morning, and to save time and space we showered together (which is not sexy in a 16th century farmhouse early in the morning, in case you were wondering), and we got dressed and went downstairs and fired up the computer.

At seven-thirty, with nobody else up yet, apart from the guy who fed the geese (his name was Stewart, I found out later, hi Stewart), I made us coffee and toasted bagels.

At nine we were still dithering about clip lengths.

At ten, TCB was fretting about colour grading in the 'after' section. She had decided that I had authority over sound levels, but I still checked everything with her.

At ten-thirty, after three cups of coffee, we were wired as fuck and out of fuel.

She looked at me, and I looked at her, and she nodded, and I nodded, and she hit 'send', sending it to Gwen's personal email.

We got up and stood there for a moment.

'Can I just say something?' I said.

'Of course.'

'If they don't like it, they're dicks.'

TCB looked off into a corner of the room, smiled a bit, and looked up, and looked at me.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Trouble is... they're not dicks.'

We walked towards each other and embraced.

Then we let go. I went to the door and opened it, and she went out, and I followed her.

We walked through to the kitchen, to find what appeared to be the whole gang cheerfully eating brunch.

I mean... brunch.

What the fuck is the point of brunch.

TCB and I sort of slotted ourselves onto the end of a bench, and we listened to the blur of conversation, and only now and again did we notice that some of them were glancing at us and maybe slightly wondering what the video was like. I was feeling simultaneously sleep-deprived and over-stimulated, so having focused on the video for four hours already that morning, I was a bit blurry.

My stomach was pretty chaotic after three large, strong coffees, and so was TCB's. I think we each went to the toilet about three times in the course of that interminable brunch.

But, as I waited and looked around, I noticed that Gwen wasn't there. I looked at TCB and she looked around and frowned.

Then Gwen came in, and she looked around and caught our eye across the room, and came around the table to us, and we made room and she sat down on the end of the bench.

'Hey,' she said quietly.

We looked at her, fearing the worst.

'Thanks for sending it on,' she said. 'I watched it.'

We waited.

She looked up at us.

Usually, you could read Gwen's expressions right off her face. She was so expressive and so natural.

Now, I couldn't.

She rose to her feet.

'Guys?' she said. 'Guys?'

The chat fell silent.

'We have a video of Tuesday morning,' she said, 'and I've watched it, and we're gonna show it on the big screen in the back room, at half eleven, okay? Do please come if you can.'

She looked at us.

Peggy reached under the table and squeezed my thigh. I winced.

'Sorry,' she muttered.

'It's fine.'

Gwen looked down at us, and smiled, and I thought, what? You're gonna hang us out to dry, like...?

Gwen did the 'prayer' thing, when she pressed her palms together, and held them to her lips.

Then she looked at T. J., who got up, and the two of them left, talking.

'Well,' TCB muttered, 'now I really am shitting myself.'

*** 

Everyone was gathered in the back room.

The big screen was set up.

The curtains were half-drawn; the sun wouldn't be in here until later, but it was better for watching something.

TCB was next to me, clutching my hand.

Elaine had the laptop. She pressed a key.

The screen went black. She pressed another key, and the screen went to an image, but it was so dark that you couldn't see much. People moving about, at night.

Then, it caught Gwen walking across the frame, in an anorak.

TCB's voice, a little hesitant:

'I've always liked the dark. Y'know... um, darkness, silence. They make me feel safe.'

Gwen taking off her anorak and stepping out of her boots, and walking naked into the mud.

Gwen's voice, cheerful:

'I like getting dirty. To me it's like, the ultimate in playing. It just makes me feel happy. Getting totally filthy with people I'm fond of.' She chuckled.

TCB smearing mud into Gwen's face.

Gwen again, more serious:

'I was a bit scared, yeah. Normally, I do this with people who I know really well, but that wasn't the case here, and I didn't know what it would be like.

'And it was not like playing. It was really cold, and it was the early morning, and I had no clothes on, and I wasn't supposed to move or talk or do anything. Just stand there and let someone cover me in mud.'

TCB's hands smearing more mud over Gwen's breasts, and stomach, and pelvis.

Gwen:

'And after a while, you realise that, you've got no option, but to trust the people around you. That they're not gonna let anything bad happen to you.'

Gwen's mud-encased head, wobbling a bit, her breath visible. TCB working mud into Gwen's arse, smearing it down her bare legs.

Gwen standing there, a featureless mud person.

'And when I was finally covered, I felt... like I just had to let it happen, just bear up and, and be in the moment, and trust people.'

Jill with just her face covered in mud, holding out her hands, TCB handing her more.

Jill's voice:

'Once I started doing it, I knew, oh fuck, this is really fucking cold and I'm not gonna enjoy it.'

She laughed.

'And so I just decided to think of it as an endurance test. Like, I will not be defeated by a, a fucking fen.'

She chuckled again.

'Yeah. I've come through worse things before, and I'll come through this.'

Jill covered in mud from head to knees, TCB kneeling at her feet, finishing her calves.

Harper pushing the mud into their face.

Harper:

'I like doing stuff with people, and one of the interesting things about this was that we all started off, basically, alone. I mean, Peggy was helping us put the mud on but then we were supposed to just kinda stand there, but, there was no law saying you couldn't do anything else.'

Harper standing naked, covered in mud from the waist up, TCB working it onto their back.

'When you're rolling around in the dirt with someone, you have a sense of where the earth is, and the sky, and which way up you are, but here... it was pretty disorienting after a while, and I kinda thought... "Remind me why I'm doing this?"'

Harper laughed gently.

'But, yeah, as I got used to it, I, I... I didn't hate it. I felt very exposed, though. Normally I'm kinda playing a character, but this was just me. Buck naked. Covered in mud. Feelin' cold. Took me a while to learn to be okay with that. But I got there.'

Jill wrapping her arms around Harper, and the mud on Harper's face moving as if they were smiling.

Then there was me, smooshing the mud into my eyes.

TCB's voice:

'There is something very sensuous about mud. Maybe sensual, for some people. It clings to you.'

TCB kneeling next to me and rubbing the mud over my hips and genitals.

'The original idea was that it would just be me doing it, like I do in my own videos, but I said I'd do it if, if Gwen joined me.'

TCB blurry in the foreground, working on me; muddy Gwen in focus in the middle distance, standing there patiently.

'Aaaand... then all the others asked if they could join in, so... this is all on them, haha.'

TCB working the mud into my ass, me standing there patiently.

TCB:

'One thing I did find out was, how much you want people to get something out of it. Like, get what you yourself get out of it. But also recognising, that, I mean, maybe they won't. So, yeah. It, it definitely became like, a lesson, for me, in, um...'

A shot of Gwen, standing there, shivering, but very still...

Jill, standing there, and even with all the mud you could tell that Jill was keeping it together with an effort...

Harper, standing there, breathing heavily...

Me, standing there. All of us cold and plastered in mud.

TCB:

'In, um. In looking after people.'

I looked around the room, and Jill and Harper and the ones who I thought would be really not into it, were really watching it.

I couldn't tell if they actually liked it, but they didn't look like they were sitting there, waiting for it to be over, so that they could fuck off.

They were watching themselves; or rather, they were watching TCB look at them, trying her best to show how they felt and thought about it all.

'I loved it,' said Elaine's voice on the soundtrack, and we suddenly had Elaine joyfully undressing and stepping down into the mud and plastering it on herself with little gasps and laughs.

'Yeah,' Elaine's voice went on, 'uh, I'm usually behind the camera, but they'd said that anyone could join in, and once people were really doing it, I felt like, I've got to give this a go, I mean, I'm sure it'll be cold and uncomfortable, but I'm always making these videos happen, and I'm never in them, and this one time, I thought, god, no, I've got to be in this one, this is just too crazy to not get involved.'

Her voice chuckled happily, as we were watching her smear mud on herself, hopping from foot to foot and actually laughing while she was doing it.

'And I know everyone didn't have the best time, but, for me, I'm so glad I did it, cause, yeah, it wasn't exactly fun, but nobody ever said it was gonna be fun. But, I felt like I was truly, you know.'

Elaine, almost totally covered in mud, breathing deeply, and an indistinct mud figure in the foreground, who we knew was T. J.

'Truly, eh... truly, at least, sharing the same experience. A bit. Which, for me, is kinda the whole point.'

And then, there was T. J., by now totally covered, standing next to Elaine, her face and body obliterated by a thick coat of mud.

'Yeah...' came her voice, and I had no idea how TCB had got her to talk, because she'd politely declined to answer the questions when I'd asked her.

T. J. standing there, still, her head a ball of mud with only some of her thick black hair hanging out the back, breathing.

And then Elaine fumbling blindly for her hand and pulling her towards herself, and T. J. visibly giggling a bit as she let Elaine pull them both together.

'There are times,' T. J. drawled, 'when you can't allow your lover to have total bragging rights.'

This actually got a laugh.

*** 

I'm not gonna recap the whole thing, but what came across, in the end, was the degree of attention TCB had paid to everyone.

It's like, having been challenged to make her own kind of video, she'd let everyone else join in, and had then, coolly but with tenderness, made it with an attitude of Really? Okay; well, see how you like it, and had observed all of us with the same care that she'd always applied to herself.

And so, whereas her videos had been only about her experience, or the one she made with me about my experience, so this one was about everyone else's experience, and not her trying to pretend that we all felt about it the way she did.

Instead, the 'after' sequence blossomed, because most of us really hadn't enjoyed it that much.

And TCB showed that.

Gav's camera had not been on her, as she cried Cut!, but it had been on Jill, and the relief and pleasure on Jill's face as she wiped the mud off was almost physical.

With the others, the end was differently satisfying, such as Spencer and Dan (two guys, I think lovers, who'd been keeping each other warm), who parted sort of reluctantly but then looked around at everyone else; and Julie and Pete, who had been so mud-covered and so into comforting each other, that their faces had basically glommed together, and they slowly eased themselves apart and then hugged.

The vibe of relief and fondness and general camaraderie that was in the 'after' section was so strong that I bit my own knuckle. And that was even though I knew how it worked, because of how we'd edited it, and how we'd chosen the music.

And then, there was a new shot I hadn't seen before, from when Gwen and TCB and I were sort of putting ourselves back together after T. J. had made us laugh. Gwen was talking and I was listening to her and smiling and TCB was just watching us and glancing around at the others.

It was just our heads and shoulders, you could sort of tell we were naked but there were no nipples in it. Gwen was scooping mud out of her hair but TCB was apparently unbothered by all the dirt on herself.

And, filthy as we were, barely recognisable as we were, and other filthy people were crossing before and behind us, TCB looked so calm. Like she was just enjoying standing there, watching us, smiling a little, hanging out.

Then, TCB added Gwen's voice.

'The thing is, I love light.

'I love space, I love the feeling of freedom, the feeling that you can do anything.

'But it's a very rare feeling. And it's precious, and I mean, it's definitely not something everyone gets to have.'

Jill's voice:

'Most of the time, almost all of us know that we, actually, can't do much. And, that the idea that we'll ever be able to do much, is way off in the future. If it's there at all. Which seems... very fucking distant. It's other people who get to make changes. The perfect people. Who are always, beautifully lit, and powerful, and wealthy, and, yeah. The... the wankers.

'And the strange thing is... they seldom seem to want to make things better for the rest of us.'

Gwen:

'One thing I took from this is that I wasn't alone.

The image faded back to Gwen, standing there, alone and covered in mud, trembling

'I was standing there, and I was absolutely freezing my tits off, and I couldn't see, and I couldn't hear that well, because my head was so covered, and I could barely stand up, and I was kind of... you know the old saying, "at the end of my tether", it was like, shit, turns out I've got a tether, and I'm at the end of it. And I'd been trying to be all stoical, and not make a fuss that I was so cold, but I just couldn't do it any more. I had to sort of whimper a bit. It made it better.

'And then I felt someone take my hand and put their arms around me, and someone else did the same thing, and all of a sudden, I was a bit warmer. Like, against all odds, someone looked out for me, and it was maybe because I'd let them know that I needed help.

'And so, when we admit to each other that we're fucked up, and that we're losing it, only then do people see that we need help. That's when we get together and do something worthwhile.

'If we don't do that, it's impossible. You should able to say, I fucked up, or I don't know what I'm doing, and we have to be able to forgive people's mistakes.... as long as they're, whatever we collectively feel like forgiving. As long as we can do that, we can live with each other. Otherwise we're just alone.'

The last bit was visually unchanged from the first cut: a montage of everyone scurrying into the vehicles, and the empty mud, and the rain falling in the morning light.

Harper:

'It's so easy to be incredibly hard on ourselves, because there's such pressure to present yourself as perfect and wonderful. But, you've got to be allowed to be weak. I think that's maybe what I took from this. You've got to be allowed to be, quote unquote, flawed.'

Gwen, again, over a shot of the empty space where we had all been, with the morning light filling the huge sky over the mud and the river:

'It's like how music only makes sense if there's silence. Light only makes sense if there's darkness.

'You have to let the darkness in, sometimes. Just to remind yourself that, it's been in you the whole time. It keeps you honest. Got to get down in the mud.'

And then, unexpectedly, TCB's voice.

'Yeah. You gotta get dirty.'

'Yeah, you do,' Gwen replied, and clearly they were in the same room as each other.

'I mean,' TCB added, and you could hear her smiling, '... maybe not this much.'

'Maybe not this much,' Gwen said, laughing.