1952
We left london and returned to Tilty and, for a short while at least, to our old school, Thaxted Primary School. In an attempt to improve our education, though, Mum decided to send all four of us to boarding school. When she told us I was heartbroken. The Victor Ludorum would now never be mine. I lost all appetite for playground races and tag, and watched the girls instead. It was my last day at Thaxted. Jackie was at the head of a line waiting to skip. The long heavy skipping rope was turned at the ends by two girls who had defaulted in the game. It was now Jackie’s turn and she approached the whirling rope, getting her body as near as possible by rocking her torso backward and forward as the rope whipped by her chest. She then expertly sprang into the vortex. As I was in the kitchen Doing a bit of knitting, In came a burglar And I ran out! She sang prettily as she double-skipped. The whirling rope smacked and thrashed the tarmac, but it never caught her spotless white ankle socks. Then, on the word, she expertly sprang out. She never had to turn the rope. A stab of sadness overwhelmed me, as thought I would never see her again. She neither knew nor cared. She was now faster than me and that was all she needed to know. As I leaned against the low playground wall, sizzling in the roasting summer sun, I felt a lump come to my throat. Perhaps I could swap the blue paper twist of salt from the packet of crisps I was eating for one of the Kirby grips from her blonde hair sticking out on either side in sweet little plaits. Did I dare? In my memory this longing slowly fades 1952 158 159 as it meshes with the popping sound of a single-cylinder motorbike engine behind me. It gained speed as it came up the hill from central Thaxted to the divide in the road opposite the school playground. The high road led to Dunmow and London, the low road to the Thaxted council estate suburbs . The spluttering cough of the four-stroke quickly became a clearthroated howl as the bike gained speed. Instead of a gear change there came a squeal of demented rubber, a split second of ominous silence and a hollow boom. I vaulted the low playground wall and followed the tire marks freshly seared into the road. They pointed to a new gap in the hedgerow between the dividing highway. Burrowing through the undergrowth with increasing dread I stumbled onto the crash site. The motorbike had slewed sideways into the vertical trunk of a huge fir tree and I couldn’t make out the mangled man from his machine. The air was heavy with the stench of petrol and burning rubber. The sight of a perfectly clean white bone sticking through the side of a leather boot reminded me of one of our now more frequent half-carved Sunday joints. The last thing I remembered as I fainted was how the sun had blistered the tar in the road as it rushed up to meet my face. I never did find out what happened to the unfortunate motorbike rider, but I do remember trying to fight my way out of the hands of the paramedics as they loaded me into the back of the ambulance. That acrid smell of blistering road tar in high summer still mingles with flashbacks of black motor oil rivulets curdling with blood and I shudder. If I eat plain crisps, I always get a headache. Georgina and Rose went off to ballet school and Bashie and me were prepared for private preparatory school. The two Roberts helped us pack the trunks for our first term at Tyttenhanger Lodge in Seaford, probably knowing we were heading for a shock. MacBryde kept up the cheerful teasing as he crossed items off the endless clothes list. Valiant deeds on playing fields sprang readily to mind, colorfully informed by the Billy Bunter cartoon strip. I held the rough serge of the blue-and-yellow-checkered football shirts to my face in wonder. New football boots with toe caps and long white laces—refinements I had never enjoyed. And rugger and Latin and the cane. What were they? With horror I remembered Bunter’s ample backside so often lashed with a bendy walking stick in the comic. [3.139...
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