My Animal Life(29)

In the end I could not resist telling my mother. She looked worried and said, ‘There used to be a prisoner-of-war camp in there. You shouldn’t go there. It’s trespassing.’ She told my father, and that was that. No more visits to the Brewers.

But children need fun, and adventures. They need to find the borderlands of what is forbidden. After Pat had faded, Janet Gray became my friend, and was my ‘home’ best friend for the next ten years, until life sent me to university and her to a nurses’ training college. One of the best things about Janet, apart from her love of running and her malleable nature, her kindness to me and her perfect small nose and her tomboyishness, which matched my own, was that her house was the total opposite of mine, full of people, noisy, easy-going. As usual, with very close relationships, there were psychic similarities, too, about our families.

For a start, she, like me, had two brothers, one real and one step, Graham and Dennie. Her stepfather, Reg Leadbetter, a farmhand whose work had given them the house, a big square tied cottage on Billingshurst High Street, would sometimes put his foot down; he seemed strange and old, wiry and weather-beaten, hard to understand with his strong Sussex accent, but he grinned at me, gappily, amiably enough, though once when I stayed one night too many I heard him in the bedroom: ‘When’s that gal going?’ Whereas Janet’s mother Renee (it rhymed with ‘beanie’) was adorable, a pushover. I love her still. I see her in the white overall she wore to work in the old people’s home, her big toothy smile and shallow chin, always pleased to see me, often laughing, short black wavy hair streaked with grey. Kind to me. Loving to Janet. (What do children need? Kindness. Love.) There was a box of chocolates always open in the kitchen, and luscious white bread, forbidden at home. At Christmas, a row of bottles of sweet drinks. They had a small steep garden and a kind of shed where the boys were often doing something with bikes. In the front room the TV was always on. There was a huge dark sofa, into which you sank, and sat in a row in contented silence. Dennie wore leathers and had shiny black hair which he combed in a quiff, and was very handsome, more raffish and less academic than Janet’s real brother, Graham, a gentle, humorous boy who played football. Of course I was in love with both of them, which neither noticed, so all was well.

The forbidden had to do with the bikes. Unable to learn to ride because of my father’s obstinacy, I had done it, in the end, with frantic speed, on my cousin Sue’s bike on Wolverton Rec (pronounced Wreck; I didn’t know it was short for ‘Recreation Ground’) when we were at my grandparents, on holiday. I remember the bike: small, bright turquoise. Perhaps Uncle Lloyd had painted it. And the giddy feeling: cycling furiously forwards, having finally got up the speed to keep going, riding wildly on, unable to steer, unable to stop, until I fell off. I was probably about eight or nine when I learned, and I had had no practice since.

That didn’t matter. Janet had plans for us. ‘Let’s cycle to the sea,’ she said one Saturday. How did she know how to get to the sea? The sea was twenty miles away, and the road already had heavy traffic. ‘We’ve got a spare bike.’ They had; but the brakes were dreadful, and there was no suspension. As a total amateur, I did not notice this. Hurray! For not noticing, for no health and safety! Hurray for two teenagers biking to the sea!

I remember the snacks: Bourneville chocolate and peanuts, and freewheeling downhill, queen of the world, a tiny Janet flying on ahead of me, with round green fields on either side, cool sunny air blowing back my hair and the smooth whizzing sound of the chain for music, unable to brake, soon going so fast that the impetus carried me half-way up the next one — fortunately, as most hills defeated me, and Janet had to wait while I trotted up behind her. The bike had no gears, and the tyres needed pumping, and one of the handgrips was nearly worn away, but it opened up the world, it made us girls heroes, proved we could do more than our parents had told us.

Oddly, I don’t remember if we got there. If we did get there, what did we do? I think it was Seaford, and we were tired, and had one portion of chips between us, and rested our aching calves on cool sand. But it was the riding away that mattered.

What else do children ideally need? Alasdair Gray once wrote that all children need is two adults who cohabit in relative amity. In which case, I didn’t get what I needed, and nor do a lot of other children. I haven’t always given it to Rosa, either. Nick and I love each other to distraction, but the distracted don’t always get on. We are over-reactive, mercurial, rash. When trouble comes, it’s hard to stay calm. I rage and he sulks, or he rages, and I’m fearful, but because of my history, I have to shout back, lest I turn into my quiet, frightened mother. Then something shifts, and we are laughing and tender. Sorry, Rosa, again, for the tropical storms. Though I hope you’ve never had to fear your father would murder your mother, which was my fear, as a child.