Night of the Glow Worms

“Mum, can we …..” Any number of thoughts crowded into Nicola’s head before her daughter Leanne finished her question. She ought to say MAY we. Well, never mind, she could leave that to her English teacher, though come to think of it, Leanne probably did say may when Mr Compton was there to hear. So far as 10 year old Leanne was concerned, Mr Compton was the world’s greatest authority on such things. She would probably have to say no. It wasn’t that she was an especially strict mother or Leanne an especially demanding child, but precocious as she was in some ways, she still hadn’t quite grasped what the word recession meant, nor that going pony-trekking was not nearly as easily fixed up as it was in books, nor that despite what other mothers did, Leanne going into town by herself for the concert really wasn’t going to happen. But the third thought was that she had said we and not I – and that piqued Nicola’s interest. In that strange state of suspended animation she waited for Leanne to finish the sentence. “….go camping out in the garden? Just for a couple of nights?”

     Well, why the heck not, thought Nicola. After all, it certainly doesn’t look like we’re going to get a holiday of any kind this year, and the electricity’s off half the time anyway. And it’s very mild for the autumn, but that won’t last forever. Life was full of fraught decisions. Should she say “I’ll just have to ask your Dad?” or not? She most certainly didn’t want Leanne to grow up thinking that you had to have a man’s permission to do things, but she also wanted to teach her about good manners and consideration for others – and, to be fair, they had reason to be proud of their daughter in such matters. “I’ll have a word with your Dad,” she compromised, thinking it would be a mere formality.

     “Well – I don’t know if I’m sure about that,” Mark said. “I mean – of course, if you two want to but – camping is a bit over-rated in my opinion.”

     “Oh, come on, Mark,” she wheedled, thinking that she adored him, of course she did, but at times he could tend to out-think himself. “What did we get the tent for if we didn’t mean to go camping?”

     They both, of course, knew what had happened. They had got it two years ago, and just before they were due to depart, Nicola had slipped and badly sprained her ankle. Mark had been wonderful about it. Come to think of it, hadn’t he been just that tiny bit too wonderful? Leanne had been disappointed, but probably no more so than she would have been about any postponed holiday. At that stage in her life she appeared to have no strong feelings about camping one way or the other. 

     “I mean – you don’t have to like it,” Nicola said, “But it won’t be nearly as much fun for Leanne without her Dad joining in, and you have to admit, she’s been very good about all the things we haven’t been able to afford this year, even though she’s still too young to really understand why.”

     Once more, that strange sensation of time standing still. Then Mark said, “Okay. Like you say, we don’t want to let her down. But we have to do it properly. Make sure we have all the equipment. I mean, if you …have to keep going back into the kitchen and all that, it won’t be like the real thing at all.”

     As the days passed, Nicola began to have a nasty feeling that making sure we have the equipment and doing things properly might just be a delaying tactic, and finally she put her foot down. “Mark, we have all the equipment we could possibly need for a trek up Mount Everest, let alone a couple of nights in the back garden, and Leanne is a patient child for her age, but she had her limits. And it’s not long off October. This good weather won’t hold forever.”

     “May as well got it done with, then, I suppose,” he said, which Nicola couldn’t help thinking wasn’t a gracious way of looking at things at all, though, credit where it was due, he didn’t show that particular face and that particular tone of voice to Leanne.

     Despite his reluctance when it came to camping, Mark proved himself efficient in the matter of putting up the tent. That didn’t surprise Nicola, knowing there wasn’t much he couldn’t turn his hand to. Though he had a desk job, he had a strong practical streak, too, and she remembered once hearing his father, of whom she was very fond, who was a builder, say, “I’ve no problems at all with Mark not following in my footsteps. He loves his work and I’m proud of him. But I was determined no son – or daughter, for that matter! – of mine would grow up having to call someone in for the slightest thing!”

     So he put up the tent, and they unrolled their sleeping bags, and Mark made a little fire, though being careful it wasn’t blowing towards their neighbours. Nicola still wasn’t entirely convinced about cooking things over it, but chose things that would not be likely to cause the revenge of the gut if not properly cooked. Chicken was definitely off the menu! Leanne wasn’t really a picky eater, but like most children, she could be a bit fussy on occasion, but Nicola worked on the principle that she’d been so keen to camp that anything would taste good round a campfire. She seemed to be proven right as she enthusiastically tucked into somewhat burned sausages and somewhat lukewarm hot chocolate.   Actually, this is fun, thought Nicola. I’m not going to pretend it’s as good as a “proper” holiday, but Leanne isn’t the only one who’s enjoying it. The lights inside hadn’t gone off yet, but there was at least a fifty-fifty chance they would, but outside they had their campfire and their torches, and to Leanne and Nicola’s delight, a few glow worms put in an appearance. Thank God they’re not moths, thought Nicola. She was determined not to bring Leanne up to be scared of any creature, but suspected the child had already guessed she was decidedly uneasy about moths. If they were doing what moths were supposed to do and fluttering around a light, that was one thing, but when they came near her face, it was another. “We have to sing!” exclaimed Leanne. Yes, of course they did. True, a campfire trio was hardly the optimum, but all three of them had good voices, and none of them were self-conscious. Thinking that the obvious was much maligned, Nicola struck up “Kumbaya”, and then, though they weren’t that religious a family, “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning”. But all too often, the putative trio was a duet, and Mark’s pleasant low tenor played no part in the singing. “Come on, Dad!” Leanne cajoled. 

     I must do my best, thought Mark. I am with the two people whom I love most in the world, and who have never been unkind to me. This is not the same. This is not the same at all. 

     After a pause between singing to “wet their whistles” as Mark’s dad always said, Leanne said, eagerly, “Can’t we have a story?” To her parents’ delight though she had been able to read fluently to herself for years, she still enjoyed being told stories. And if ever there was a place for stories, it was round a campfire.

     Mark drew a deep breath, and then he began, “There was once a little boy, who lived in a warm and happy house with his Mum and Dad. He had life’s small annoyances and upsets of course, but very little of any real importance came to trouble him. He got along pretty well with his schoolmates, and when their teacher said there was going to be a camping trip, and they were to ask their parents’ permission to go on it, they said that of course he might. The first night was wonderful, and they all loved sleeping under the stars. But on the second night, or on the second evening, things started to go wrong. It began with the silliest thing, the way things often do. They had been eating toasted cheese, and the little boy dropped his toasted cheese onto the grass beneath him. He wasn’t the first one to have an accident like that, and they all just picked it up and ate it, saying it was part of the fun. But too late he realised that he had accidentally eaten a bug that landed on it. He felt a bit sick, but it would not have been too bad, if another boy hadn’t started saying that this was a special kind of bug that only lived in this area, and it would eat his insides out. The little boy told himself not to listen to him, he was a bully, after all, and didn’t everyone say that bullies were really cowards? But that night he had a terrible nightmare, but it was the worst kind of nightmare, the kind when you don’t even realise, at least for a while, that you’re having a nightmare. He thought he could see the bug, only a thousand times bigger, and feel it eating away at his insides. He woke up with a scream and quite sure that the bug was there, both inside and outside. But then – he realised there was no bug there at all. There was a beautiful woman and a beautiful little girl, and he felt a huge sense of peace and calm and knew that they would look after him, and that they loved him, and that they were stronger than he would ever be. And you know what happened to the bug? It just shrunk into a tiny little bug, like millions of other tiny little bugs, that would never do anyone any harm at all, and he felt quite sorry for the tiny little bug he had accidentally eaten. But it got even better. Before his eyes, some of the bugs turned into beautiful glow worms, the kind of creature that fills you with joy, not with any kind of fear.”

     The beautiful woman and the beautiful little girl were silent for a couple of minutes. At first Nicola had been a bit worried by his tale. She knew that, like most children, Leanne was far hardier when it came to horror stories than adults liked to think, and knew that Mark would never set out to truly spook her, only to give her a delicious little frisson. But for a while she wondered quite where it was going – and quite where it had been. 

     “Oh, Dad, that was such a lovely story!” Leanne exclaimed, throwing her arms round his neck. “And it was a true story, wasn’t it?”

     “It was a true story,” he confirmed. 

     The lights had come back on, they could see, but they had no urge to leave their little campfire. They ate more burnt sausages, and drank more lukewarm hot chocolate, and sang more songs, and told more stories, before finally curling up in their warm, soft, safe sleeping bags, and dreaming dreams that were kind and magical as the glow worms kept watch over them until the first glimmer of the autumn dawn.