Communal Effort

The thing about living in a commune is that it seems to attract a lot of misanthropes.

Janine had moved in after her husband had an affair with the neighbours. On both sides. Lonnie had read about what the FBI were up to on the web and didn’t like the way his neighbours looked at him at all. Andreas had left Greece because he couldn’t stand the people; his neighbours were prying busybodies who always asked him when he was getting a job or a girlfriend. Tina had taught in a comprehensive school for 45 years and could neither stand being around folk or away from them, and Tom and Marcus felt folk spurned them due to their free love lifestyle, and craved a more open-minded loving kinship with folk who weren’t ignorant wankers like most people.

Trey was different. The last to join, Trey moved in because he believed in community. He took joy in getting in deep with others, he WANTED to share his worldly chattels, he even washed other people’s dishes.

The commune was not vastly different from a holiday park in some respects. Nine static caravans stood in two rows, four one side, five on the other, with a brick building at one end, aspiring to be the hub for shared living. Dubbed “The Heart”, possibly due to the presence of a stainless steel kitchen at one end of the large room which took up most of the building, the most well used part of it was the laundry room. None of the seven residents had been a founding commune member, but no one felt they had the authority to alter the rules, printed on a laminated sheet and hanging over the “library” in The Heart.

1. We are responsible for ourselves and one another

2. Solutions abound when problems are shared

3. Every member will contribute according to their abilities

4. Every member will attend Reflection

Tina led Reflection, every Sunday evening at 5pm. At some point, someone had decided on 5pm so that members could cook and share a meal together afterwards, but as it was not in the rules, the current contingent tended to disperse after an hour of bickering in order to watch TV in their own units. Until Trey joined.

*

The commune was looking for members. Only six members hardly seemed like a commune at all, and with four units empty, each person’s share of the land rent was higher than they would like. Trey had been the only person to apply. Andreas had expressed misgivings – Trey had seemed nosy, asking personal questions in the interview, and he didn’t think a man who wore trainers to an important interview was likely to be a good fit for the group. Lonnie too, voted no. Tina had seemed disinterested in the whole process, and said she didn’t care either way. Tom, Marcus and Janine, however, all voted to take him, and so Trey was given the keys to unit four and an information pack Tina had put together to show him around the place.

He had moved in on a Wednesday early in the month, an absurd day for a new beginning, and by the end of the month, he was dead.

*

The brief time he lived in the commune had not been easy for Trey. When no welcome party had been staged for him, he put on his own, inviting everyone to The Heart for a meal. One, he thought, that would be the first of many. Tina had arrived punctually, though sulkily, and had actually helped by laying the mismatched communal crockery on the brown Formica table.

“You’ll find” she said, before the others arrived, “that people prefer to keep themselves to themselves here.”

But they all came. Marcus and Tom arrived with warm welcomes and wine, and Janine, Trey’s third sponsor, brought a ceramic vase as a housewarming gift. Lonnie didn’t eat, but he came, and asked a lot of questions which had not been on the interview schedule, and Andreas asked nothing in particular, but despite his misgivings, chatted amicably with Trey as they ate.

Later, with everyone back in their caravans, the commune WhatsApp began to ping.

Janine: I’m sorry, if I had known I’d have said no.

Tom: Same. What was that stuff about an allotment???

Janine: I didn’t hear that, but games night?

Lonnie: You know he’s pro-vaccination, don’t you.

Tina: I’m pro-vaccination. So what? The point is, he didn’t read the welcome pack at all.

Janine: Well I am not having him wash my smalls along with his. No amount of saving water makes that ok.

Andreas: He can wash my under wear!

Andreas: He cooked a good dinner.

Tom: He told me that he thinks everyone should be able to vote, even people who are in prison.

Lonnie: Reckon we all know how he uses his vote, too.

Andreas: I didn’t like him I think.

Tom: I don’t want to be rude, but just shoot me if we have to do that again.”

Janine: I agree.

*

For a few weeks, Trey kept making an effort, and the others kept fobbing him off. “We did think of a pond, but it would be hard to get permission from the council.” “I’m rather busy on Tuesday, actually. And Wednesday.” “Well, no one else has any musical instruments so it wouldn’t work.” “And invite local people? We would need a license, surely?” And then he wound up dead. His body was found by a dog walker in a small clearing in the woods about quarter of a mile from the commune. Curled up on the ground on his side, Trey had perished, it seemed, wearing only a white robe, with his stomach full of Death Cap mushrooms. He carried no money or phone, and nothing to identify him whatsoever, but the commune were quick to come forward and claim him as their own, and naturally, the police investigation started there.

*

Lonnie:

“It’s all Tom’s fault, he told him where to gather mushrooms! It was irresponsible!”

Marcus:

“I blame Lonnie, he should never have invited him to the ceremony, he was too inexperienced, it was an unanswerable misjudgement if you ask me.”

Janine:

“He asked me you know, what time we began the ceremony, and I told him 10 and he said that Andreas had said 9 and if there was uncertainty he would rather be early. If that hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have been alone, Andreas is so unreliable.”

Tom:

“If Janine had just waited for me to go foraging with her she wouldn’t have picked them, let alone left them lying around.”

Andreas:

“He was impatient, he should have waited for us. But it was Tina changed the time.”

Tina:

“I’ve always said it’ll end in tears, and now it has. I told Marcus not to show him the place until we were all ready.”

*

In the end, the coroner recorded an accidental death. At Reflection the following Sunday, the mood was vaguely jubilant.

“I took magic mushrooms once,” said Marcus. “I felt really sick, and I thought Jesus was coming to kill me.”

Janine looked aghast. “That sounds awful, I’m glad I was never tempted.”

“Bad enough feeling like that in the first place without having to prance around chanting or somesuch” added Tom.

Marcus looked amused. “The robe was an interesting choice, where did that come from?”

“I imagine that’s the sort of thing he was into,” said Tina, “he seemed quite keen.”

“Well, I for one am sorry it happened” offered Lonnie. “Whatever I thought of him, I wouldn’t want anyone’s death on my conscience”.

“Nor I.”

“Me neither.”

“Couldn’t live with myself.”

“Not me either.”

“Can you imagine living with that?”

The group sat for a moment in silence, a peaceable lightness swirling through currents of suspicion in the spaces between them. Janine had the disquieting sense of connection with the commune for a moment. “At least we’ve seen we can achieve something together” she said, rising to her feet, her voice strident in the quiet room. With nods and grunts, the six commune members followed suite, rose from their assorted tattered chairs and retired to their respective caravans to watch a bit of television.