Kids Don't Always Bounce

It’s a sunny afternoon when mum collects me from school. We walk along the narrow path towards the town. When we reach the road mum insists I hold her hand as there are no proper pavements until we reach the town centre. We make our way in a line of mums and children strung out along the route. There’s hardly any traffic and I am restless. I’m fed up with holding hands and impatient to walk by myself, but mum just tightens her grip and flashes me a look that I know too well. “You hold my hand,” she hisses, “or you know what will happen. I won’t tell you again.” The “I won’t tell you again” part I understood perfectly and was well aware that if I continued to play up, a slap across the back of my legs would come swiftly. I fell in line. You could only push mum so far and this afternoon she was already at her limit.

Once we were in town mum’s anxiety seemed to lift and she led me into ‘Mary’s’ the sweet shop where she treated me to a lollipop. Outside on the street people were lingering here and there, chatting to each other under the influence of summer. We made our way to the town square and past the building that displayed ‘Civil Defence’ on a brass plate next to the heavy green door.

I told mum about a poem the teacher had read to us. It began “The moon has a face like the clock in the hall, she shines on thieves on the garden wall”. I couldn’t remember any more but I knew mum was impressed that I’d learnt the beginning at least. I went on to say that the teacher had let us look at her book as long as we were very careful with it. In the end, she had gathered us around her while she turned the pages. There were beautiful illustrations, and I just wanted to keep staring at them, urging the teacher not to turn the page just yet.

                                                        Me aged five years old.

No more words were spoken and suddenly we had merged with a much larger group of homeward bound mums and their children, making their way over the level crossing and up past the Priory Cafe on the left and the fish and chip shop on the right. Just past the chip shop was my friend’s house. It was like a small castle with pointed turrets. It wasn’t like any other house in the area, and it had the same large windows as the houses along the street approaching St Peter’s. The same mysterious dark interior broken here and there with glimpses of highly polished furniture. David, my friend, had told me that his house had a cellar. One with steps leading down to it and large enough to walk around and play in. Every time we passed that house my imagination ran wild. Turrets and a cellar. Vivid pictures were forming in my mind when a long loud screech, like the amplified scrape of a fork on a dinner plate, stopped everyone in their tracks. The screech was followed by a thud. Some mums broke free from holding little hands and ran forward, up the hill. Others clasped their hands over their mouths, turning to one another, their eyes widened with fear and knowing. I noticed that some mums were weeping. My mum was calm. She took her time to look both ways before leading me to the other side of the road, making sure that she walked on the outside, closest to the kerb. Halfway up the hill a group of people were gathered around a car that was parked crookedly in the summer heat. It was blue, just a shade or two darker than the cloudless sky. One or two figures were crouching down on the far side of the stationary car. Mum told me not to stare, so I immediately turned my head in the direction of the incident and the gathered people. A man edged sideways and a pair of legs became visible, laying horizontally, twitching slightly. One of the legs was crooked below the knee. The socks and sandals were exactly the same as mine and those of every other boy at school.