At the ripe old age of four, I fall
head over heels in love for the first time. It is a sobering experience and in
later life I will try hard to avoid such dilemmas, though, in retrospect, they
caught up with me now and again, usually with disastrous consequences. My hero
is blond and has a florid complexion. He is stodgy and wears short grey flannel
trousers and scratchy, hairy, hand-knitted, gaudily Fair-isle patterned
jumpers. His name is George. He is as shy and inhibited as I am, so we do not
talk about our mutual affection. In fact, I never actually find out if he loves
me with the same breadth, width and depth as I love him.
"It’s wasn’t him, Miss!" I
protest, as poor George makes for the door, hands in his grey flannel pockets,
his shoulders hunched and his moist eyes firmly fixed on his metal toe-caps.
Clip-clap, clip-clap retreating at a snail’s pace, his feet at an angle of
about forty-five degrees inwards, he has to endure Auntie Ada’s sharp ‘Hurry up
boy, you’re wasting my time,’ shouted in his wake. ‘For heaven’s sake straighten
up and don’t turn your feet in!’ His shame is stunting his exit, made awkward
by his reluctance to take one had out of a pocket and open the door.
“Miss, it wasn’t him,” I insist.
"You stupid girl, how do you
know?" Miss Jones snaps in the voice reserved for wrongdoers and me.
"You’d better go outside, too!"
I am humiliated. My brave but
ineffectual attempt to achieve justice has fallen on deaf ears and to make
things worse, I am now to be punished for my trouble.
I slink ashamedly to the door. George
leaves it open for me and I go past him close enough to hear him sniff.
"And mind you don’t talk or
there’ll be worse punishment to come."
Auntie Ada’s triumph
is out of all proportion to her achievement. Her stentorian tones echo
down the long corridor.
“And close the door, will you, will
you, will you!”
George shuts the door with a bang that
makes him shrink even further into his pullover.
Fear is united with
apprehension. I am apprehensive, and George is fearful. How will she know if we
talk, when we are the other side of the closed door? Is there any truth in the
saying that walls have ears? I desperately want to explain to George that I
defended him because I love him, but the words will not come out. My throat is
stuck together and my eyes are too dry even for the tears of fury I tend to
shed when all else fails.
George stands next to the door, his
hands jammed into his pockets, salt-lake-city tears streaming down his flushed
face. I think he’s a bit sissy, crying like that. I
move to the other side of the corridor to be quite sure nobody thinks we are
together. He still has my sympathy but I am certainly not tearful. I am defiant
and indignant at the injustice of my own fate. Love is not on my mind at this
moment.
Even love of George has its limits.
I reach a decision. Ignoring poor,
snivelling George’s distress, his tears having now dissolved into little sobs
and sniffs, I surreptitiously desert the school precincts and set off down the
main road, not towards home, but into town.
How can smelly Miss Jones do this to
me, her own flesh and blood, I am thinking, and my footsteps increase in pace
and take on a momentum of their own. How I hate her.
She is a hag, a gnome, a dwarf, a spider, a boil, an ogre. She is a
buck-toothed dragon in disguise. She roasts little children on toasting forks
and eats them up. She is the witch in all the fairy stories. She is wicked and
horrible.
I hate her. I hate
her. I hate her.
When I look around me, I realise that
I have walked as far as Church Street, where all the main shops are. I feel
really proud of myself. I’ve never been allowed to do this on my own because
there are a lot of wicked people around here and even if Mama doesn’t show me
much affection, she does protect me as well as she can, usually by frightening
me with vague stories about undefined evils which await me if I stray.
I remember walking down the road between the greengrocer’s
and the butcher’s one day. Mama always paused to look in all the shop windows.
That day she was wearing a fur coat and dawdling a lot with me hanging on to
her as usual by hitching my arm through the space between her sleeve that
contained an arm bent to hold her bag, and the coat. I looked up. The coat was
on someone else, a complete stranger. Mama had either forgotten me or left me
behind deliberately. I must have screamed, because soon a little crowd had
gathered round me. The woman wearing the coat looked confused. After a couple
of minutes Mama came out of a shop to see what the row was all about. I got a
smack, though I had done nothing wrong. I think she should have smacked
herself. What a good job children are forgiving.
The church clock strikes two-thirty.
If I wander around the shops for a bit, I’ll get back home again at exactly the
same time as I usually do. I have forgotten all about my aunt and her rusty
bicycle scraping homewards.
I decide to take a detour round
Woolworth’s sweet counter. I do not, however, escape
notice.
"Well, little Miss, lost our
Mummy, have we?" a gruff voice asks.
Looking upwards, I see who the voice
belongs to. It is the local bobby in his uniform with brass buttons and a
helmet that makes him look like a giant. My heart misses at least one beat.
With great presence of mind I smile at him quite normally.
“My Mummy’s over there," I lie,
pointing to the farthest corner of the store.
"Ah. Then I’ll take you to her,
shall I?" he offers, looking around.
In an instant I know what I have to
do. I dart for the freedom of the street. I run as hard and fast as I can, not
daring to look behind me. I run and run and run
until I reach the churchyard, where I curl up small behind the pompous stone
memorial to the dead of World War I. Surely he won’t find me here and arrest me
for loitering?
I wait with baited breath. Silence. I am safe. But I’d
better stay where I am for the time being.
Rolled up in a ball, I soon fall
asleep with exhaustion from running from the law and holding my breath and
being furious with George and Auntie Ada and the rest of the world, and only
wake to the sound of bell-ringers practising. It is seven thirty in the
evening, and I have been missing for five hours.
I‘d
better go home.
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