Then, as Now (Part 5 of 5)

confessions of a ten-, thirty- and seventy-year old

Part Five: all the ages I have ever been

Dusk

It is still warm. It’s almost too dark to see. I’m running as fast as I can, keeping low, almost bent double as I gallop in and out the yew trees along the edge of the back garden. I’m holding a silver rifle with a white handle and a trigger guard that I can move as if I am loading a real gun. We are playing cowboys chasing baddies.

The house is “out of bounds” for our game but we have all the outbuildings with their rickety wooden doors and rusted tin roofs, looming shapes in the fast fading light. My big brother is the sheriff, naturally. Me and my sister are not quite sure if we are baddies or cowboys but we are escaping, anyway. We don’t do much of this sort of play together. My brother, a lot older, is mostly beyond such games. My sister is older too but we spend a lot of time together. Some days I am her constant companion. Until she tires of me. Then I go off on new adventures with my own friends.

The hill where our house stands slopes down here, giving way in a shoal of soft soil and sharp stones as it drops back to the big field below. Somehow a cow has climbed up here and is looking thoughtfully over the fence. I point the rifle and shout “Bang!” loudly. My skin is still prickling from the day’s sun. I can feel the cooling of the wind on my bare legs and the damp of my tee shirt against my chest. I’m happy to be sweating and drying at the same time.

I like being here with them both, having fun, belonging, at home. Tonight, I will sleep safely and soundly, not crying silently. I won’t wake up from my recurring nightmare of some bright dark thing so impossibly huge and at the same time almost invisibly small, in a dormitory full of boys I don’t know and who don’t like me in a place I don’t belong at all.

Tomorrow we will all go collecting blackberries from higher up the hill. Even Dad is coming. Mum will take some of the apples I’ve collected earlier and make more jam, crumbles and pies.

It will be a whole year before they find me a new boarding school.

ºººº

I almost missed it as dusk settled towards night. I’ve been asleep in the chair, with a third bottle of wine half empty on the table beside me. Chateau Goodenough now, of course, no point in drinking more than one bottle of the expensive stuff. I’m an expert by now.

Their laughter upstairs floats down and I realise this happiness is what awoke me from my snooze. Sounds of splashing and gurgling and sloshing and joy are filling the house. I’m heaving myself out of the chair and I’m smiling as I go to join them.

The reality may set in tomorrow: I’ve resigned with immediate effect, I have a year’s salary by way of compensation for an early end to my contract and I’m confident I’ll find another job before the money gets tight. She was so supportive and so obviously relieved herself, telling me how she has felt powerless to help while she watched me grow grey with the stress of working under this young, incompetent and immature boss, all the while talking a good game, how it will work out, how things will get better. She knew it was wrong.

She also knew I had to get there - here - in my own time. So we had eaten a fish and chip supper, drank too much wine, or I did, anyway. And we talked of a new beginning, more time for us, and how we’d make sure we never got into this situation again. She is kind. She used “we” a lot but I know it was down to me, my choices, my desire for some illusion of success.

We all sit on the bed, both of us cradling this little one between us as she slips into sleep. The night is warm. Sheep bleat sporadically. A tractor comes by, late, to the farm next door. I think we are The Waltons.

We don’t know yet that in less than four months’ time, lured once more by the trappings of the executive high life, I will convince us both that we should do it all again.

ºººº

And here we are, at the last.

I’m scribbling. I look down at the single, long sentence I have just written and wonder if I should break it up.

"I won't forget you, I said, didn't I, way back on that Saturday afternoon when you'd sneaked out down the road outside the fence at the front of the school and walked down the pavement where ordinary people who went home at night walked and you'd stopped by the iron five-bar gate that was always locked and ran your fingers along the top rail noticing the warmth from the sun and the rough from the rust and you were silent, safe, alone and I said, didn't I, that I will never forget you and you know what - I haven't."

Getting here, today, as dusk falls and the village settles down to night, has taken a divorce or two, a serious illness with the prospect of death before sixty, severe mental ill-health, depression and a descent into a Smirnoff-fuelled hellhole before I groped my way back to the effortless, joyful life of a ten year old in a yellow house on top of a hill in Devon whose only anxiety is being found out over a stolen Mars bar.

We have laughed over dinner, now all cleared away. There is no wine these days, for which I am mostly glad and she is hugely relieved. Ziggy, the small but perfectly formed dog, is asleep, on his back, his Tyrannosaurus front legs waving gently as he snores. Words have been worded, posts have been posted, conversations have been conversed and life has been lived for another day.

The world, the day, the light, relaxes. In the garden, shadows merge into deeper shadows and solar powered light bulbs come to life.

I confess I am more content than I have any right to be after all the lost relationships, lost daughters and a life I could have lost so many times.

But for now, however I came to be here, I am here.

I am content to stay and content to leave.

Whichever happens, I am home.

Part One - Dawn

Part Two - Sunrise

Part Three - Noon

Part Four - Sunset