The Summer Before The Summer Before

That was the first time it happened, or let’s put it this way – this was the first time I became aware of it happening. 

It was Assembly.  I was 14; that precarious age caught in the headlight’s beam between childhood and adolescence, and not really sure which I was comfortable in; on the one hand wanting to be a grown up but knowing I was completely inadequate; how on earth would I cope – and yet I knew I was no longer a child.  A new world was beckoning, but was that finger calling me on a warning too?  I had had a poor start, burned too many bridges, got myself a reputation as a trouble-maker, a liar, a bit of a joke, and yet I felt a sense of knowingness, an awareness that some aspects of this World I had been dropped into, unasked and uncared for, was a huge game.  I wasn’t certain of the rules, most of which I saw as a challenge, to be broken or bent.  But I felt that it was all a performance.  As if we had all been allotted roles, given our scripts to learn before we were sent out to play our pre-ordained part in the drama which someone else had written.  But enough of me, as everyone would soon find out.

This was the summer before the summer before.  The summer after the summer after was when I truly escaped and became the writer of my own drama – no less dangerous, no less stupid, but at least the words were mine. But ever since this happened in my mind, my own timescale, this was the starting point – the summer before the summer before.

It was Assembly; that morning ritual we were forced – no, went willingly actually, to attend.  Girls at the front in neat rows, a production line of pony-tails as they gazed up to the sunlit stage.  Us boys behind them in serried rows, a bit of joshing, flicking ties or bored shoe-gazeing.  A hum of whispered conversations slowly subsided as Sam Chivers, deputy-head and ex-army, took two paces forward and as if by magic and a slight downward motion of his palms and a stern glance above his bristling moustache and cruel mouth calmed the hordes.  Not until complete silence and all eyes to the front was achieved would Naylor, the head, make his appearance.  Tall and white-haired, his black cloak billowing behind him, he walked briskly and took his allotted place centre stage behind the small wooden altar upon which he placed a single sheet of foolscap paper.  Looking up – not at us, but to his imagined maker and master he said ‘Let Us Pray’.

It was at this precise moment that it happened; that slight pause before the chorus of voices united around the words ‘Our Father’.  Suddenly the World stopped.  I was enveloped, not in those familiar words but in a blanket of silence.  I looked around and yes, everyone was repeating the old mantra, some as if they meant it, others blankly uttering the words, much as they would their times tables, a format of words everyone knew and none questioned.  But here is the strange thing.  Not a sound did I hear.  I was wrapped up, enveloped in silence.  A stillness that I had never experienced, even in those early waking moments when part of your mind can’t quite let go of the dream, there is still a consciousness of the world.  Now there was nothing.  I felt I was alone in the Universe.  I felt that time had stood still.  And for me, it had.

I realised at once that I was on my own, that I had maybe slipped the bounds of human existence, that I had escaped Time itself.  Everyone else was reciting the familiar words but I couldn’t hear them.  I saw their mouths moving, I could lip-read the words and yet I heard nothing.  I felt an immense almost unbearable lightness.  I was soaring above this material world looking down on the assembled school, on a different plane completely. 

And then, just as suddenly it stopped.  Time returned.  My ears were full of the sound as ‘for ever and ever, Amen’ rang out.  And here is the strange thing, I was also aware of my own voice, clear and yet in concert with everyone else, saying those well-trodden words too.

I looked around me wondering of course if it had happened to everyone else as well as me; but I knew with a certainty I had rarely felt that this had only happened to me.  I had stopped time.  Of course, I knew that I hadn’t stopped Time itself; the world kept turning, the whole school had continued as if nothing had happened.  Indeed, one part of me knew that I had continued reciting the words while at the same time for me Time had stood still.  At least the only part of me that mattered – my mind, had stood still, had slipped the bonds of Time itself.

 I was exhilarated and scared in equal measure.  I mean, I always knew I was different.  I had overheard my Grandmother telling a neighbour that I was adopted.  That word, heard at five years old had stuck in my mind, an un-shiftable stone that I used as an excuse for my bad behaviour as a defence against a World I wasn’t really part of.  I was in the wrong play; the wrong script was in my hands.  I lay awake at night dreaming of my ‘real parents’ who for reasons unknown had abandoned me, given me away.  And a distance grew between me and my adoptive parents, who I only learnt at sixteen were not exactly that either.  My mother was my birth mother but my Dad had adopted me when I was four.  But nothing had ever been explained, I was never told – or if I had been I had never understood.  But there it was – I always knew I was different, and this incident, this stopping of Time I had achieved only confirmed it. 

I had stopped Time.  Of that, I was sure.  And it happened again later that same day.  It was maths; algebra – a subject I struggled to comprehend, where I loved the beauty, the symmetry of Geometry.  Norman Phillips, the maths genius but hopeless communicator, was scribbling formulae on the revolving blackboard with one hand while rubbing out earlier meaningless scribbles with the other.  And it happened again.  Time stood still.  I was again wrapped in that silence.  I could see him scribbling but not hearing the scratchy sound it made, I could see my classmates, either bored or trying to concentrate; I could even see a bee outside the classroom window repeatedly flying into the invisible pane of glass – but I knew I was alone again.  I was flying above the class now, looking down on them.  No-one could see me because I had stopped Time.  I flew out of the window and out of the school completely.  Free at last I soared like an eagle over the small town that was at the same time my whole world and my prison.  And I had stopped Time.  The cars still crawled along the roads, people – heads bowed – went in and out of shops and I was flying above them, free as a bird.

This time my Time stoppage lasted for me what seemed an hour or so, but when I returned to my body it may only have been minutes, or seconds even.  But it was so real for me.  It was my secret.  I told nobody.  I knew anyway that no one would believe me – they never believe us children, do they?  But that is a different story for another day perhaps.  It didn’t matter.  This ability was mine and mine alone, I didn’t need to share it with anyone else. 

This phenomenon lasted only a few months.  I seemed to have little control over it.  It came and went of its own accord.  But it excited me, it became my reason for living, my way of escaping the world I was trapped in.  I was capable of stopping Time.  This wasn’t mere daydreaming.  This was realer than real, far more clear and meaningful than mere existence. 

I Thought I knew You

I thought I knew you very well

I could read you like a book

But turning around

For a second I found

You’d changed in the time it took

And I Was Simply Lost Without Her

And I was simply lost without her, my sister, or so it seemed to me at the time.  I was just going through the motions, behaving as if nothing mattered when all the time there was this emptiness, this great big hole inside me.  And the strange thing was that nobody noticed, they all thought I was fine, they all thought nothing had really changed; only I knew that it had.  Never again, I thought, would I be that confident young girl I had so successfully managed to appear alongside my sister.  And though I still outwardly performed, still went to parties and laughed with the rest of them, I was hollowed out, empty inside and everything seemed such a sham; I was acting every day and crying every night.  Crying for myself and for the sister I was losing, because I was certain I was losing her and that I might never really find her again, and though she came back for holidays and for quite a few weekends she was different, and I knew deep down what we once had was slipping away already.  She had new friends, and talked of new bands she had seen, and her classes, and the lectures she went to, which I had no way of sharing, and I knew it was over.  In so many ways Stowmarket had been too small for her, even Suffolk was too limited a stage for Harriet; she needed the world.  And she was visibly bored with us now, bored with our old friends, with the Mikado, our very own coffee shop with its’ formica-topped tables and shiny juke box, it all seemed so provincial to her now; and worst of all she was bored with me.  She didn’t have to tell me of course, it was obvious and though she still smiled, it wasn’t her old smile; it was someone else smiling; not the Harriet I knew.  This was a smile that, like in the song, ‘she kept in a jar by the door’, it was too sparkling, too affected, too instant, and I saw through it straightaway.  What I didn’t see though was the reason, why she had changed, because it wasn’t just University, it wasn’t just the new friends, the new music, all the new experiences and stuff she was learning. It was something else that had taken my Harriet away from me, and I would find out soon enough. And learning had never meant that much to Harriet anyway, it had always been too easy for her, and she had never loved knowledge for knowledge sake, she just excelled at it so easily and all the reflected praise, the gold stars, the prefecture, being made head girl, it had all seemed an end in itself.  Not the pursuit of knowledge so much maybe as the knowledge of pursuit.  She excelled because excelling made her popular, because that was what Harriet lived for – to be liked, well – adored, really.  The centre of the circle, the it-girl, the one we all looked up to, that was what Harriet had craved and for as long as I could remember.  And don’t get me wrong, I had loved that as well, because alongside Harriet, as her sister I was adored too and when I was with her I became the second most popular girl, the most coveted friend, I was someone too. 

But now it all seemed so brittle and false, it was as if we were two actors; Harriet putting on a show for me and everyone else that she was the same old Harriet she had always been, and me pretending I was still the same happy-go-lucky sister of Harriet that I had been too.  But I think we were both desperately unhappy inside, and of course the stupidest thing was that neither of us was being honest with each other and simply admitting it.  If only we could have just let down our masks and been our old selves again, if we could have just been open and honest about how we were feeling then maybe it would have been alright, maybe we could have recovered the situation and maybe sorted ourselves out. In just those few short weeks we had forgotten how to talk to each other, we who shared everything, the sisters who were so close had now drifted apart; the famous Wilkinson girls, who were going to conquer the world couldn’t even conquer our own inability to communicate. We were like strangers on different platforms, we could see each other and wave if the mood took us, but we knew that the trains we were waiting for were taking us away on different tracks.

I had only ever really had Harriet to talk to and after she left for University I felt so bereft of any purpose in life that I just drifted around, putting in my appearance at school every day but not really being there at all, hanging out at the Mikado, accepting invites to parties, getting dressed and putting on my panda-eye make-up; then turning up and being bored and leaving early, accepting petty advances from boys but feeling nothing, no thrill at all in those kisses, and too bored to even stop the octopus hands trying to grope me.  I felt nothing, so nothing really mattered.  Oh don’t worry I never did that, a bit too much sense, or fear, deep down, to do that.  

I remember though once it nearly happened, it was January and bloody freezing.  It had been snowing for a couple of weeks and had built up quite deep drifts everywhere, the huge grey ruts in the road frozen into towering ice cliffs that the not too heavy traffic failed to break down, and everywhere there were these huge pillows of drifted windswept snow where no footprints had been, just the occasional bird tracks or scurried paw-prints.   I went to the youth club dance, the fortnightly pre-cursor to what would later be called a disco, and is now known as clubbing.  As usual we had a few drinks in the pub next door first, and I was a bit tipsy that night I must admit.  I remember dancing with this boy in my class who was the class clown, the clever but stupid kid who always mucked around and got caught but was just smart enough to avoid any real trouble.  We were especially entranced by the current Traffic hit “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush“, I don’t why, just something about the song. The infectious chorus maybe, ‘Here we go, round and round, Mul–ber-ree’ but we were dancing and laughing and spinning round and round in a circle, and then as the song changed and a slow number came on we were kissing.  Kissing hard and desperate as if tomorrow kissing would be banned, and I knew it was stupid, he was in my class after all, that was just something you didn’t do, go out with boys in your own class.  But before we knew it we were out on the street and both running for all we were worth and screaming into the night, to the snow, the full moon, the booze and the music.  And we were laughing with the sudden thrill of it all, the sense of freedom and being young and anything possible, and it was half past ten and no-one was around, and there was a full moon giving just enough light between the desolate street lamps, and we just headed for the rec, the recreation ground where everyone hung out, one of the places we all met but now, late at night and with the freezing weather, there was nobody there at all, too late even for the solitary dog-walkers – we had never seen it so silent or so deserted.  It had been snowing all day and a fresh layer of virgin snow had blurred out the footprints, and all around us were these smooth fluffy expanses of pure white snow glistening in the moonlight.

We ran and ran and tripped and fell and dragged each other around in all this cold wet freedom.  I had no fear, no cares at all – it was as if the gloom that had descended on me in the last few weeks had suddenly lifted.  The cold and wet had soaked through my thin coat and even my skirt was soaking and so so cold.  But it didn’t matter, the cold didn’t matter at all, in fact it made me feel alive as we rolled around in the snow, and then we started kissing again.  Grabbing each other’s snowy hair and snogging really hard, cold lips seeking out and finding each other as we drank down our kisses. Those hot hot kisses and the ice cold snow soaking through my coat and even my blouse too was wet, I fell and he toppled on top of me, my hair cascading in the snow, and his hands just undid everything, and as he peeled back the soaking wet layers and as the freezing air hit my flesh it all seemed right.  This biting cold air at least felt real, and he undid my bra and exposed my breasts and as he grabbed handfuls of snow and rubbed them all over my body it felt electric.  The cold wet snow and his hands and his kisses felt so real, it was as if I had suddenly come alive after weeks of being asleep.  Then before I knew it my knickers were around my ankles and he was piling snow on my pubes, soft wet snow all over my tummy, and his hands were patting it down so it started to freeze hard for a moment and then his hands plunged through my knickers of snow, spraying ice and snow in the air, and he was rubbing, rubbing and rubbing with both hands as the snow melted and his fingers touched me there.  And I couldn’t get the words of the song out of my head, “Here we go, round and round, Mul-ber-ree – here we go round the mulberry bush”.  That was all I could think of, no more memories of Harriet and me, no more feeling miserable and on my own.

I suppose I must have been drunker than I had thought, but suddenly, drunk or not, I came to my senses just as he was getting his thing out of his jeans, and I struggled to my feet, slipped and nearly fell, yanked up my sodden knickers and started to run back home.  He was all apologetic, and running behind me, imploring me to stop, but I felt I was running on air, despite my soaking wet and freezing clothes flapping around me and my quite close encounter, I was in control now, I was running but not away from him really, there was no danger from that direction at all.  I was free, more free than I had ever been, nothing mattered anymore, even my apparent abandonment by Harriet meant nothing, all that mattered was the snow and my running and making fresh footprints in the deep damp snow where none had been before, I just needed to keep putting one running foot in front of the other, planting newborn little babies in the snow, and all the time I was running I had the delicious remembered excitement of ice-cold snow on my noonie, and his fingers, and my breasts out in the open air, just so exciting and I still had not done it, I was still in control, still intact, still virgin Jane, that was the wonderful feeling I had. 

JET

Jet

Your obsidian net

Captured me right from the start

Jade

Don’t ever fade

For it would break my heart

A CHRISTMAS PRESENT

Christmas 2013

“And this one’s for you Dad”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have.  What is it?”

“Open it and see, Dad.”

“Oh. It’s a computer, is it?  You know I know nothing about computer’s, I’m not sure I will ever get the hang of it.  Sorry to disappoint you Laura.”

“John and I have thought of that already.  It’s an i-pad and it’s really easy. John will set it up for you later.  We have also bought you a mobile router so you can use the internet – and we have paid the first year’s subscription too.  And if you need help we have spoken to young Andy in the village.  He says he will help you if you get stuck.  You only have to ask him.”

“That’s very good of you, but I don’t expect I will really use it that much.”

“Look Dad.  It’s been two years since Mum died, you barely go anywhere or do anything.  You’re becoming something of a hermit, you know.  I know we are busy in London and only see you every couple of months but you can facetime us now.”

“Facetime?  What’s that?”

“John will show you later.  It’s like a phone call, but you can see people.  And it doesn’t even cost anything. You’ll be able to chat with Charlotte and Jason too, even though Charlotte is in Hong Kong and Jason at Uni.  It really will open up a new world for you Dad.”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe I am just too old for all this malarkey”

“You are only 75, Dad.  That’s not even old these days.”

 Christmas 2014

“So Dad, how are you getting on with the i-pad?  You still don’t really facetime us.  Only when we ring you first and remind you to switch it on.”

“Oh, not so bad.  I can check my bank account on it – not that there is much to check really.  And I have found a site for old friends of Stowmarket.  Quite a lot of people I went to school with are on it.  After all these years.  Some are dead of course, but a few were even in my class.  They look a bit different now though, I can tell you.”

“Well done Dad.  I knew you’d find something you liked.  You should get out and meet some of these people.  Ever since mum was wheelchair-bound you hardly went anywhere.”

“It was too difficult getting it in and out of the car.  Nearly ten years she was in that bloody thing too.  You know, I hated pushing it.  First thing I did when she died.  Took it down the dump and threw it in a skip.  Good riddance too.”

 “Well, those days are long gone now.  I know how devoted you were to her.”

“Devoted?  I had no bloody choice.  I was married to her, wasn’t I.  I couldn’t turn my back on your mother when she was too poorly to walk anymore. You youngsters don’t understand what marriage means.  Look at you, getting divorced as soon as things got difficult.  If you want to know what difficult is, you should have been married to your mother. She was practically an invalid for the last fifteen years.  I was her nurse-maid really.  Devoted?  I wouldn’t have chosen the life we had I can tell you, but I had no choice.”

“Okay Dad, don’t get aireated.  And – you have no idea what my marriage was like.  So, don’t be giving me any sermons either.  Anyway, I’m happy now with John.  He’s a better father to your grandchildren than Geoff ever was.”

“Well, I suppose it’s all in the past really.  Sorry girl, I didn’t mean to lash out, but nobody knows how tough it was all those years pushing your mother everywhere, running up and down stairs for her all day long – and barely a thank-you either.  It was just expected.  Oh well, I suppose it is all in the past really.”

Christmas 2015

“I’ve got to tell you Laura, we have a guest for Christmas lunch today.”

“Oh?  Who is that then?”

“An old school friend actually.  You know I told you about that website for old schoolfriends.  Well, Sheila was in the year below me.  I hadn’t seen her in nearly Sixty years.  Turns out she only lives a few miles away.  Now, don’t get worried.  There’s nothing in it.  But we go out for a meal occasionally, she’s good company.”

“Well, that is a turn-up for the books I must say.  As long as you are happy Dad.”

Christmas 2016

“So, this Sheila and you are an item, are you Dad?”

“An item?  What is that supposed to mean?  We are going out and well… if that’s what you are getting at?  I don’t know if we’ll ever get round to marrying.  We probably won’t live that long anyway. All we want is to grab a bit of happiness while we still can.  And I can tell you, it’s been a bloody long time since I felt any sort of kindness in my life.”

“Well, that’s nice.  This is your only daughter you are talking to.  You know, the mother of your grandchildren.  Charlotte and Jason?  Didn’t we show you any kindness down the years?  And what about Mother?  I know she was ill for a long while, but there must have been a time – not that long ago either – when you loved each other.”

“Love?  Don’t talk to me about love.  I loved your mother alright.  Once.  But after you were born, and she blamed me for the hard time she had of it too….well, to tell the truth Laura, she shut the door on love.  Didn’t want to know any more – in that way, if you get my drift.  That was over forty years we had with not even a kiss or a cuddle.  No kind touch, not a suggestion of real love in forty years.   You didn’t know that did you?  And I didn’t mean to ever tell you either.  Wish I hadn’t really, it’s none of your bloody business.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry Dad.  I never knew.  I know she was a difficult woman.  I had my differences with her, heaven knows.  Well, if you are happy now what harm can it do.”

“Don’t worry.  You’ll still get the house, if that’s what you are worried about?  Sheila and I have talked about that. I won’t take what’s hers from her kids and she won’t have what yours either.”

“That’s not it at all Dad.  I just want you to be happy.”

 Christmas 2017

“Come in and sit down Mrs Johnson. Can I call you Laura?  I’m glad you could manage to see me before the Holidays”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Mr. Williams will do.  Now, as you know I was your father’s solicitor.  I dealt with his few shares and I even managed the conveyancing when he bought his council house, oh back in 1988 I think that was.”

“Okay, I know all of that Mr Williams, I just want to know what was in my father’s will, now that he is dead.”

“Yes.  Well to tell you the truth Mrs Johnson, …er Laura, he never got round to changing his will after your mother died.  I met him once or twice in town and he said he would pop in and do it.  But he never did.  Besides it was really just a formality.”

“What do you mean a formality?”

“Well, since your mother died you were naturally the sole beneficiary, being the only child.  But as you know, your father re-married a couple of months ago.”

“How does that affect me though?”

“Well, it is rather complicated.  Legally his wife, his new wife that is – Mrs Sheila Jones, in the absence of any new will has a valid claim on your father’s property.”

“But she’d dead too.  They both died in that car crash.  Driving home from seeing me in London, too.  That was when they told me they had got married.  It was awful.”

“Yes. Tragic, I must admit.  But you see – your father died immediately, he was at the wheel when the lorry…Sorry.  His wife actually passed away two weeks later in Hospital.”

“Oh my God.  So, where does that leave us?  Dad always meant the house for me.  He even said that Sheila and he had agreed that whatever happened the house would be mine.”

“Yes, but sadly neither are alive now to confirm that.  In the absence of any specific will, and the old one, superseded now by his later marriage, named your mother, and you of course – his current wife would normally inherit his estate.  But she too is now dead so her estate falls to her children.  Well, we will have to contest that, of course.  I assume that would be your intention, you do have a valid claim as you are mentioned in the only will we have.  Mrs Sheila Jones had two sons and they have already applied for probate.  I must warn you that this could cost quite a lot, and there is no guarantee of success. The most we might reasonably expect is 50%, we would be very fortunate to get everything.”

“Oh, my goodness.  What a Christmas present that is for me.  I’ve not only lost my Dad, but maybe my inheritance too.   And all because of that wretched i-pad.  That was a Christmas present too.”

Thoughts From Within

Thoughts from within

Break, as your skin

Opens to smile

The space between

The places we’ve been

Closes all the while