by Anthony
Toole
Pirates. Buried treasure. Exotic lands. The things we would do
and the places we would see when we grew up.
The ‘smugglers’ cave’ was an old drift mine that burrowed for twenty
feet into a crag sliced from the hillside by men of a hundred years earlier. It
could have been lead or iron, for both had been sought around our scattered
town, in those days.
Johnny found a stone near a heap of rubble, and called us to
see it. We swung down from the masts of our ship, which reverted to the
branches of a beech tree, and clustered around to examine his find. Mick’s big
brother had a book about rocks and volcanoes and things like that. He’d tell us
what it was. But that would have to wait until Mick went home. In the meantime,
a map was brought out of a pocket and a new feature added - Gold Mine - and
with a stroke of a pencil, a gang of six-year-olds realised the dream of the
alchemists.
I can picture Johnny McCracken’s shock of curly, blond hair,
and his red cheeks, as he shows us his stone. A grey flannel suit and a red tie
are there also. That is all. His features and his voice are lost. Yet Johnny
was my best friend. I cannot recall how he became such, for he lived at the far
end of the town, in one of the ‘new’ houses, and there were twenty other boys
in the class we shared in the Infant School.
We asked our harassed teacher, one day, if we could sit
together to read a comic. She readily agreed. That would eliminate, for a short
while at least, two of her problems. But the afternoon was almost spent, and we
huddled over the comic for no more than three pages, oblivious of the ambient
pandemonium. Then we charged out into the sunlight, and Johnny took his comic
home with him.
It was a tiny school. Three classrooms, into each of which were
packed over forty children, products of the post-war bulge. A full-time teacher
for each class, and a stern headmistress, who terrified us all.
The playground sloped down from the back of the school. The
fence was broken in places, and gave access to swampy ground, beyond which
fields rose to a hill in the distance. The swamp was out of bounds, except when
a football had to be retrieved, but we frequently slipped through the fence to
find a bird’s nest, or when we had secret plans to make. The only other subdued
place, when not in use, was the corrugated metal toilet, which we shared, quite
without embarrassment, with the girls. Elsewhere, the scene resembled an
effervescent liquid, its molecules banging about in unceasing, random motion.
Collisions were frequent, and when they occurred, the excess energy was usually
dissipated in a brief squabble, in which many threats were hurled, but few
blows. But blows fell occasionally, and friends would polarise until a bell
ended the conflict.
I remember running across the yard, pursued by three or four
others I had somehow annoyed. I ran at full speed, but not in fear, for help
was at hand. Calling me on, with fists clenched, ready to defend me to the
death, were Johnny McCracken and Mick Dawson. My pursuers fell back, while my
rescuers threw their arms about me, and assured me that no one would hurt me
while they were around.
Johnny was by best friend.
On an afternoon in summer, our teacher took us out into the
garden to read us a story. There was a tree in the centre of the garden. The
rest was well trampled grass. The teacher had her back to the shady side of the
tree. The pupils sat in concentric semicircles around her. The story was long,
and the afternoon was long. And hot. And ended in near silence, with us all
scattered about the lawn in small, whispering groups, or asleep.
Johnny and I lay on our stomachs, arms around each other’s
shoulders, heads touching. We confided secrets, and watched a black beetle
crawl through the bleached grass. And we waited, without impatience, for home
time.
It was on this lawn that we had our sports day. Races and
games, with a half-time break for biscuits and lemonade. The boat race proved
the most dangerous event. About half-a-dozen of us stood astride a clothes prop
and ran backwards for the length of the garden. When one of my team collapsed,
so did the boat, and I found myself being dragged from a heap of screaming
bodies by the ever solicitous Johnny, who was so worried lest I might be hurt.
He gave me a sweet, to cure my pains, and five minutes later, I partnered him
in a wheelbarrow race.
Yes. Johnny McCracken was my best friend. I am sure of that.
Yet I remember nothing else about him. Only those few wispy fragments of a
dream that is now lost amid other dreams.
Johnny was absent from school. We said prayers for him. But
that was normal. We prayed whenever anyone was sick. That always brought them
back to school quickly. But this time, it did not work. The news was conveyed
to us, one day, that Johnny had died.
Something new, and not fully understood, crashed into my life.
I cried all the way home. And I cried at home. How could Johnny
have died? Only old people died, and they were born old. My mother tried to
explain to me that God must have needed Johnny to help Him in Heaven, and that
I would meet him again when I got there. But I cried. And then I cried some
more. Then I stopped crying.
The whole school attended Johnny’s funeral. We filed silently through the church grounds, past the grotto built by miners from the local ironstone, from which Our Lady of Lourdes smiled reassuringly down upon us. And stood under the pine trees as our friend was lowered into the earth. Then we went home. To forget. Because we had before us the blank pages of the future on which to write our own lives.
A few days ago, I passed Johnny’s mother in the street. I
greeted her, and she smiled back, but her smile held no recognition. I imagine
that she must think occasionally of her loss. Of the grandchildren she might by
now have had. Of what might have been. I wonder also if she knows that there is
someone else who has memories, if only fleeting and indistinct, of the same
bright cloud touching the edges of a half-forgotten dream.