The Boy Who Was Afraid of Butterflies - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Foundations Quake

The next few days have a curious dreamlike quality. Sometimes I dream I am awake. At other times, reality has a blurred edge; it is as if I stand outside myself and watch my form go through the motions of living. I catch myself taking pity on the bleary-eyed boy, thinking, ‘I wonder if passers-by sense something different about him, do they know he has just been bereaved?’ My digestive system refuses to function properly. I feel heavy and lethargic. It is odd. My sister seems quite normal, even mother and father show no signs of stress. They deal, of course, with practicalities. I begin to think, ‘Am I the only one who feels so sensitive?’

About a week later at breakfast, mum says:

“We’ve just heard on the wireless. Woolworths in Kingston burned to the ground last night.”

I look up in bewilderment.

“What?”

“Woolworths. In Kingston. Apparently there was a fire last night. It was destroyed.”

“How do you know?”

“They just said so, on the radio.”

“What, our Woolworths?”

“Yes.”

“The one we go to every Saturday, where we buy ice-creams?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Oh!”

I’m stunned. I stare at my boiled egg and begin to crush the bread and butter fingers into the yolk until the yellow globules ooze all over the shell. Mother begins to chide me, then busies herself checking the things I have to take to school. I don’t hear her. I stand rooted to the spot between the table and the kitchen door, so that everyone has to take a detour round me. Only when mum points out that if I stand there a moment longer I shall miss my train, do I jerk myself out of my reverie and try to make up for my inaction by panicky overreaction.

I broach the matter with Uttley at school. My friend displays a flicker of interest, asks if anyone was killed; how many fire engines were in attendance. Then, getting no answer - because I don’t know - he grows bored and changes the subject.

After school I saunter down to the station on my own. My friends are occupied, I think, with a band practice. I scuff my feet on the uneven tarmac of the descending path, hop over the cracks, count the iron railings until I come to the one that has broken off, leaving a rusting jagged wound. I pause as I hear the muffled whoofling sound pulsing behind me and I let my eyes follow the lurching black monster belching soft flabby smoke, heavy with moisture. I let myself be enveloped in the rich smell and brush the cinders from my quiff.

The platform is nearly empty. The 4.13 has just departed, I can see its retreating box-like end merging into the gloom. On my left the familiar sounds of clanking coal wagons assail my ears; I watch as the silhouette of the venerable locomotive spews drifting dirty smoke into my face, then stand fascinated as the huge driving wheels spin uncontrollably on the greasy uneven siding, tearing sparks from the metal and hurling them off like a demented Catherine Wheel. Tonight it is the usual beast, the Drummond Goods 4-4-0, 30406. Sometimes there is a surprise, perhaps an even more ancient K10; once, mischievously, the incongruously polished malachite green royal T9. I’m glad of 406 tonight - as it shuffles through its absurdly inefficient wheezing routine. I am so mesmerised by its leisurely to-ing and fro-ing, the glow from the open firebox door reflected in the oozing escaping steam, that I don’t hear my own train coming in. A sixth sense makes me look up suddenly and then I’m running full pelt up the platform and hurling myself into the first compartment just as the whistle blows.

I overhear the six o’clock news that night. Usually after Children’s Hour, I let the grown-ups listen while I dig out my homework from my overcrowded satchel. As I’m about to walk away, however, I catch the first sentence of the news and prick up my ears. The ‘Queen Mary’ is missing. My heart skips a beat. The great liner is overdue in New York. There have been storms in the Atlantic. No communication has been heard from the ‘Queen Mary’ for over twenty-four hours. Planes, even now, are searching off the Newfoundland coast, but the weather is poor and visibility very limited.

The newsreader then passes to another subject, but I’m riveted by the headline. I’ve never seen the liner, but it is as familiar as Uncle Vic’s Ford V8 or the coalyard shunting engine, because it holds pride of place on the frontispiece of ‘1001 Wonders’. It’s the holder of the Atlantic ‘Blue Riband’, the picture shows it towering over the Southampton Dock quay, her three scarlet and black funnels bedecked with bunting; that image is etched in my imagination. And now it is missing! I can’t believe it. Great ships like that don’t sink, it couldn’t. I’d never heard of one sinking - perhaps in a war, but not now. When I go to bed that night, I cannot get to sleep. I even get out of bed after mother has gone downstairs, and say my prayers again, including a fervent prayer for the great ship; I say it quickly and quietly so only God can hear me.

In the morning, of course, I hear it’s all a false alarm. Storm damage had put the radio out of action. And a minor fire in the engine room had caused the liner to hove to in the North Atlantic, while temporary repairs were enacted. Then I feel silly that I have prayed to God about it and I apologise to him under my breath when no-one else is about and cringe in embarrassment at what God must think of me.

At school that day I have a double-period art lesson. I love drawing, I’m a meticulous draughtsman. “I want you all to paint an industrial scene,” briefs ‘Lanky Forbes’, the art master. “A coalmine or steelworks, plenty of soot and grime.” The class looks blank in front of the pots of powder paint. “Come on, I know Surrey is not renowned for its industrial landscapes; but use your imagination. Surely you’ve been to the Midlands or the North? Or even seen photographs,” he adds with decreasing confidence as the class fails to indicate even a flicker of interest.

Slowly we all unwind ourselves from our desks and begin to lay out the coarse grey paper and the bolder among us slash or drip swathes of jet black across the virgin sheets. I know what I want to do. I visualise a photo in one of my railway magazines, a small shunting engine puffing clouds of white smoke against the mine shaft, the great pithead wheel against the backcloth of barren moor and lowering angry skies. I take a pencil and begin to sketch the outline, then, becoming absorbed, draw in the spokes of the wheels, the details of the engine and the wagons, the clumps of weeds and debris in the foreground of the scene. When I’m satisfied, I lay down my pencil, and begin to search for suitable poster colour paints. In some ways it seems a shame to spoil what I’ve drawn. My first few brush strokes are very tentative, in pastel shades - pink and lemon, so I can still see the pencilled outlines through the paint. I need a paintbrush with a finer tip. I walk over to Uttley, see a spare brush - just the sort I want - and ask if I can borrow it.

“Maidment,” thunders a voice, “stop nattering and get back to your painting.”

I blush bright pink and snatch the brush, retreating hurriedly to my desk. The others look up in surprise, some in ill-concealed glee as it is rare for me to receive any public criticism here at Surbiton. Forbes stands behind me, staring at the paper only flecked with a few initial dabs of paint.

“What have you been doing with your time, boy ? You’ve hardly started. You’d do better if you spent more time painting and less chattering to the others.” So saying, he bends over my shoulder and scrawls C+ on the bottom right-hand corner. I feel humiliated. I’ve never had a ‘C’ before on anything, least of all in art. It is so unfair, I’d worked extremely hard. I just hadn’t noticed how the time had flown.

“Leave your paintings on the desks. You can have half an hour to finish them off next time. Dismiss.”

I brood on the unfairness of it all. I can’t concentrate on my homework and make silly mistakes. I am brusque and even less communicative than normal with my mother. A viciousness creeps into the teasing of my sister that leads inevitably to tears and recriminations. The following day, when the paintings are returned, I set to with a vengeance. I slap on the blacks and browns, so that the pinks and yellows of yesterday become piquant spots of irony, the Rosebay Willow Herb that gains a toehold on the wasteland.

“Yes, Maidment,” says Forbes puffing a pipe over my shoulder, “that is quite a painting now. A pity you didn’t get down to it sooner.”

But he doesn’t change the mark.

On the next Saturday I accompany my mother to Kingston. Before we do any shopping, I nearly drag her to Woolworths. I stare transfixed at the gaping hole between two shops whose existence I’d hardly noticed before. There is just debris. Charred paper, refuse, like a smouldering rubbish tip. The wooden beams from the mock Tudor store, black and blistered, lie at unnatural angles where they have fallen. My eyes search for the ice-cream machine, but it has gone.

At Monday morning’s assembly I feel sick with nerves. The opening devotions, the news of the school team’s sporting triumphs at the weekend, wash over me, unheard. At last the headmaster commences to call the class standards:

“Class 2C: average mark, B+. Packman A, Maidment A-, Lomax C.”

I breathe a sigh of relief, then begin to shudder. Uttley, standing next to me, becomes aware that I am shaking, but even as he cocks an eyebrow in puzzlement, I pull myself together. I’ve made it. That C+ has been offset by sufficient A’s to maintain my record, even though my class rival has beaten me this time.

Perhaps the bullying started then. My classmates may have noticed how much it matters to me to have the staff’s approval. The incident with the painting may have indicated to them how vulnerable I am and shown them how much they’d enjoyed my discomfiture; emboldened them to reconstruct humiliating circumstances, to taste their power.

The muttering starts after the assembly. ‘How much did you pay them, then?’ ‘Poor old Lanky, they all ganged up on him’. Two or three jeer at me when they are out of earshot of the prefects. At first the ill-feeling is expressed only in verbal assaults, taunting in the school lavatories, knowing winks and nods in class when my work is praised.

One bitter February morning as we disperse from assembly, a few flurries of snow swirl around the playground. During the subsequent maths lesson, we alternate our attention between Mr Watkins’ boots and the thick pall of snow now falling from the leaden sky. At lunch I stay indoors with one or two others doing some of my evening homework. When the afternoon classes finish, the earth lies under a good five inches of crisp clean snow, gleaming in the early darkness. Even as we are lifting our chairs onto the desktops, Uttley is leaning over to me, whispering a warning:

“I’d make yourself scarce if I were you. They’re out to get you tonight.”

“What do you mean? Who is out to get me?”

But Uttley has already said too much, he notices others looking at him; averts his eyes and distances himself from me.

Not knowing quite what to expect, I get away as quickly as I can and make deep footprints in the crunching snow, clinging onto the railings to keep my balance. I feel the snow seeping into my shoes, saturating my socks; my knees are pink and frozen. At the concrete side entrance to the station, I stamp my feet in the echoing hollow hall and show my pass to a preoccupied ticket collector at the barrier.

The 4.5 has gone, despite the weather. I have nearly twenty minutes to wait. I stand under the footbridge sheltering from the biting wind and try to keep a lookout, but the footpath from the school is practically obscured from view. I hear them first. The clatter of leather soles on concrete steps, the shrill laughter of twelve year olds; overexcited, hysterical. I retreat behind the lift-shaft, onto the carpet of snow at the London end of the platform. For a moment there is an unearthly silence. I peer out from behind my cover and see them - five of my classmates, and more behind them. They see me at the same time and with a whoop of triumph, scoop up and hurl a volley of snowballs in my general direction.

I retreat further towards the end of the platform, flushed out into the open and am now trapped by the oncoming boys. The missiles are beginning to hit me, and I try to throw some feeble shots back, but they fall short of my targets. My five assailants have now blocked off all escape routes and are advancing inexorably on me. I can now longer fend off their exploding wet projectiles; they are playing with me, advancing at leisure. As they close in, one snowball, packed hard, catches me full in the face and blinds me. The pain stings and I drop my guard, turning my back to my tormentors as I try to push the snow from my eyes. Then they are all over me, my arms are pinioned, as handfuls of freezing snow are shoved down my neck; someone is wrestling with me, ripping my coat open, pulling out my shirt. Fistfuls of wet ice and crystalline snow are pushed into the small of my back and down into my trousers. As I squirm to try to evade their grip and flinch from the shock of ice on my flesh, someone manages in the melee to undo one of my fly-buttons and yank my shorts to half-mast, plunging a ball of snow down the front of my pants. I shriek in shock and my peers hesitate, then withdraw, looking anxiously up the platform to see if anyone is taking an interest in their antics.

I still can’t see properly, my shorts round my ankles, moisture streaming down my face - whether from melting snow or tears is difficult to tell - and I’m frantically trying to scoop the mushy snow from my pants. When I realise that my tormentors have retreated, I become acutely aware of my exposure and pull up my trousers over my sopping underclothes, standing forlornly isolated, legs squeamishly apart. When I am eventually able to see, I am vaguely aware of Uttley and Miller hovering a few feet from me. In silence Uttley hands me my satchel, holding it at arm’s length by the strap. He had rescued it from where it had been thrown in deeper snow. I take it without a word, undo the buckle and glance inside. They have put snow in my books. My homework is ruined. I say nothing.

Embarrassed by the silence, Uttley and Miller begin to excuse themselves, interrupting, talking over each other.

“…..we couldn’t do anything; they would have done the same to us….”

Still I say nothing. I look reproachfully at them. I am hurt. But I don’t dare to voice my disappointment in them. Perhaps my best friends would abandon me as well. I need their friendship too much to risk offence.

All the way home I have only one preoccupation. How am I going to explain my state to my mother? I am lucky. I do not see her face to face, she is upstairs in Jill’s room. I slip noiselessly into my own closet and strip, teeth chattering as I feel the freezing air on my bare skin. I find fresh underclothes, but have to call out for dry trousers.

“Why?”

“We had a snowball fight.”

“You’ll find some in the airing cupboard. What about your other clothes? Are they
wet?”

“I’ve changed them already.”

And when I’ve changed I extract the contents of my satchel and lay them beside the fire to dry, find some fresh paper from the sideboard and begin my homework all over again.

Some days it is not too bad, but I am wary now. I seek safety in the crowd, preferably within sight of a prefect or master. I stay friends with Uttley and Miller but I never feel I trust them totally again. More than ever I feel the need to excel at classwork as if that is the only way to stop my world disintegrating. If I excel in all subjects I will be inviolate; they cannot touch me.

It is during the following months that I invent a game that comes to obsess me. One morning, on the electric train to school, I notice that a train bound for Hampton Court passes us later than usual, the other side of the junction with the mainline. That day, fortuitously, is a good day for me. I do well in my tests; the weather is too wet for rugby so we have cross-country instead; no-one says anything unpleasant to me. The following day the down train passes me much sooner, approaching Thames Ditton station; I only get B+ on my French vocabulary test, because I’d prepared the wrong chapter. And I got told off by a prefect for running to join the dinner queue. By the end of the week I have worked out a system of predicting my fortunes for the day. If the down train passes my own before departure from Thames Ditton, the day will be disastrous; between the station and the mainline junction will be average; after the junction will be most auspicious.

The following week I refine my system to give it a cruel and more suspenseful tweak. In the section of countryside between Thames Ditton and the junction is a short cutting with a stone retaining wall, which magnifies the sound of the train as it passes. I decree to myself that if, by mischance, the down train passes during the passage of this short section, my day will be doubly disastrous. I codify the sections; before Thames Ditton departure - C; to the retaining wall - B; then D; back to B again until the junction; and a final, relief providing A. I even toy with allocating B+ before the retaining wall and B- afterwards, but that is too confusing, because I can’t make up my mind whether to will the train to pass before the cutting, or to hold it back until the junction. In any case, each day I still have a difficult choice to make. Shall I go for a B before the cutting, playing safe, or try to postpone the passing train with the risk of incurring a D between the retaining walls?

What began as idle curiosity and play, becomes an issue of life and death. When my train is standing in Thames Ditton station, I am willing the waiting passengers to join quickly while my ear is straining to hear the oncoming train. If I sense it coming, I am willing the train to start. A few inches is all that matters; I will count that as ‘departed’ and give myself a B. When we reach the cutting, I screw my eyes shut and try to block out all sound, while I count aloud the frantic seconds until I’m safe. During this period I summon all my strength to hold back the oncoming train. And it seems to work. Although the train most frequently passes in the next section before the junction, I manage to avoid it ever crossing in that fatal passage; I always fear that the next day the law of probability will exert its revenge.

Let me share with you some of the tension I experience. It may seem foolish, a stupid fetish, but for over a year it becomes a dominating emotional pressure at the start of each schoolday. We - my friend Uttley who joined us last term from his former home in Yorkshire and now lives in Tudor Road - are in an empty compartment in the first car of an eight coach train: that will give me the best chance of scoring well. At Thames Ditton we unsnap the leather strap and drop the window, peering back along the train. A few passengers are joining, they should not be long; but there is a blind man, he is slow. I rush to the other side of the carriage and drop the window light there also. The wind is rustling in the bare branches of the trees, glistening in the overnight rain. I strain to hear, but the only sound is that of our own motor, ticking over impatiently. The last door slams, we begin to move, imperceptibly - but I let my breath out, almost unaware that I have been holding it since stopping at the station. The first crisis is over.

Under the suburban road at the platform end, past the preparatory school playing field to the timber yard; then the bush-strewn bank begins to rise and fall, in rhythm with the telegraph wires that dip and suddenly flip from view as each post flashes by. There is still no sign of the down train. I now tense. My palms are sweaty and I feel slightly sick. I take a deep breath and clench my fists and push all sensations from my brain into suspension; the roaring echo from the rails screams stress. Nearly, nearly through. I count; the noise abruptly stops. I scarce hear the normal comforting rhythm of the train. A lightness overtakes me, I look down on dripping copse and muddy pool, we are going to make it to the junction now. I turn a moment to see if I can glimpse the distant lines, then: ‘wham’; the windows are buffeted with the shock waves of the passing train. It is only a ‘B’ today after all. I failed to believe with sufficient intensity. I am safe, though. At least I’ve avoided catastrophe. My friend has no inkling of what’s been going through my mind.

Do I really believe all this mumbo jumbo? I only know this; I’m petrified of what will happen if the signs are wrong. Whether I believe or not, my heart still pounds until the train has passed. I’m not yet twelve. Why should I not be superstitious? Many people much older than me are. Why should I not believe in a supernatural God who orders trains about to reveal my day’s destiny? It is no less effective than consulting the entrails of slaughtered chickens or counting tea-leaves or reading newspaper horoscopes. And because I believe, who is to say I don’t then act in such a way as to bring about my prediction?