Summer, 1939
It was the end of summers.
The sun beat down on the Cheviots and the North Tyne ran cool and sparkling
and we ate egg and cress sandwiches on the riverbank.
Someone made a raft and I fell off where it was deep
and I could hear the bubbles going past my ear to where I could see the sunbeams,
remote and faraway up there where the sky had suddenly gone dark
and I thought I was going to drown.
Then I surfaced, coughing and spluttering
and the raft was still there
and I grabbed ahold of it and they pulled me to the bank
where I was full of it,
how I nearly drowned
and everyone laughed but I didn't care because I knew it was true,
I'd felt that angel of death touch me and then pass on,
because it wasn't my time.
Not yet, anyway.
And we hiked over the Roman wall to a lake we knew,
all the grown-ups veiled in clouds of flies,
carrying big leaves like rhubarbs to wave them away
but it wasn't any use.
And I marched along the top of the Wall where it ran along the crag,
that beetled down to a lough a long way down,
pretending I was Julius Caesar,
and there were rowan trees growing out of cracks in the cliff,
with curlews crying high and lonely in the cloudless,
going curlew-curlew-curlew-curlew, faster and faster,
and skylarks bubbling up like ginger pop,
out of the heather under our feet.
And the water was shallow and sandy-bottomed,
and it didn't matter that I didn't know how to swim,
because I could sit on the sand and swoosh my hands back and forth,
like angels in the snow,
and my cousin came behind to duck me but she let me off,
and I wondered if she had hair growing in unusual places like my sister had,
and if she would explain if I asked her,
and not go all shy and quiet like my sister did,
and she never took her clothes off in front of me again.
And men were making hay in the fields
and they let me ride on the cart, with the seeds getting up my nose,
and the stink of the cows as we went past the byre
made my stomach heave
and I thought that fresh air had smells I never smelt in London.
Some of the houses had earth closets,
and middens out back that were worse than anything the cows did,
and I hoped I'd not have to use one because I knew I never could,
the train toilets were bad enough, especially when we'd all been sitting there,
all the way from Kings Cross.
But there were no toilets
when we'd taken the little puffing train from Newcastle
that went right across the country to Carlisle
and I'd had to jump back and forward from one foot to the other
and hold myself to keep from doing it in my pants
but my mother told me that was rude,
so I just had to bide my time.
When we got off the train she let me climb down a hedge
to where the mud was black and rich
and I made a little stream trickling down
to join the Tyne on its way to the sea
so far away.
And it was nearly time to go home
and everyone walking around with serious faces
and a pin-striped grey voice on the wireless saying it was going to be war.
I remembered the marches we'd been on,
milk for Spain,
and waiting in the playground a year ago for the trains to take us away
but he came back waving his little piece of paper
and I'd lain awake at night waiting for the time
when the sky grew black with bombers
because everyone said he'd just put off the evil day.
The sirens went shortly afterwards
and we all went running down the road to the only house with a cellar
and an old man got all confused and started putting his gasmask on
and a woman was hugging her baby tight to her and started crying.
But it was a false alarm and we all went home for tea
and I imagined the sparrows swooping down over the hedgerows were Spitfires
and their wing-bursts were machine guns,
brrrrrrr – brrrrrrr – brrrrrrr.
The next day, it rained.
It was nearly a year before the bombs started falling in earnest
but it seems like they've been falling ever since.
May 19, 1998
