red sacred heart, emblem of the blessed St Gunnhilda, that burns so tantalizingly, so ambiguously, on the breast pocket of her school blazer). Yet he knows – he has evidence – that Mary Metcalf is no demure convent girl. And Mary Metcalf knows that although Tom Crick has a Platonic disposition and a brainy head …
Thus the Great Eastern Railway which brought these two young people into twice-daily contact – she in a rust-red uniform, he in inky black – is to be held responsible for loosening inhibitions which, without its nudging and jostling, might have stuck fast, and for a merging of destinies which might otherwise never have occurred. For while the shadow of the engine – westward-slanting in the morning, eastward-slanting in the evening – rippled over the beet fields, the unattainable was attained. Certain notions were gradually (and not unpainfully) dissolved, certain advances made and, less falteringly, encouraged, and, at last (but this was the work of two years’ railway travel), an undeniable intimacy mutually – but always circumspectly – achieved.
And why were we so circumspect, beyond the normal discretion in such cases, on these schoolward and homeward journeys? Why did we choose our carriage and compartment with care and last-minute changes (which nodoubt earned us more attention)? Why did we sometimes, on the return journey, deliberately miss the ten-past-four from Gildsey and pick up the next train from Newhithe, thereby not only avoiding the usual carriage-loads of passengers but allowing various fondnesses to occur on the walk from Gildsey, across the mud-grey Ouse, past the decaying lighter wharves of Newhithe, along the tree-screened fringes of celery and onion fields?
Because on that four-ten train might be Freddie Parr and Peter Baine and Shirley Alford, not to mention other contemporaries from Hockwell and Apton, pupils, for the most part, at the Gildsey Secondary School (blue uniform) and the Gildsey High School (dark brown and green uniform).
But Freddie Parr above all. There was no suppressing Freddie Parr. Freddie lacked subtlety, had a crude tongue. Freddie was often drunk at four-thirty in the afternoon on secret supplies of whisky stolen from his father, who in turn procured it, by nefarious means, from an American air base. Freddie, at sixteen, had the mind of an advanced roué and a complex about the size of his penis – which was average. I might have been intimidated by Freddie Parr were it not that I knew, at least, that I could swim and he could not – a distinct failing in a watery region. But there remained Freddie’s leering eye, and his talent for gossip. For, no doubting it, Freddie would have hastened to tell my brother how Mary and I always sat together (and not just that) on the Gildsey train. Because, by the summer of 1943, it was a well-known fact (how well I knew it) that Dick Crick often took solitary evening walks along the banks of the Hockwell Lode in the direction of Polt Fen Farm.
Freddie would gladly have implanted in Dick’s mind the seeds of revenge for the thwarted designs that he, Freddie, had on Mary; were it not that he feared that Dick might suspect him; that he spurned the ignominious role of pander; and were it not that he stood in awe, in any case, ofmy brother. Because Dick Crick, it was generally rumoured – even his own brother was unable to refute it – possessed a penis of fabulous dimensions. And had it not been my opinion that even if Dick had had a penis like a marrow he would not have known how to use it; had I not innocently believed that brothers, after all, are brothers; had Freddie Parr not curbed his tongue; and had I not wanted to keep Mary so much that instead of taking jealous exception, I myself had already pandered to her fascination with Dick (for she couldn’t resist a mystery), not least with his much wondered-at parts – I might have been afraid of my brother.
As afraid before as I was after that day we pulled
Thus the Great Eastern Railway which brought these two young people into twice-daily contact – she in a rust-red uniform, he in inky black – is to be held responsible for loosening inhibitions which, without its nudging and jostling, might have stuck fast, and for a merging of destinies which might otherwise never have occurred. For while the shadow of the engine – westward-slanting in the morning, eastward-slanting in the evening – rippled over the beet fields, the unattainable was attained. Certain notions were gradually (and not unpainfully) dissolved, certain advances made and, less falteringly, encouraged, and, at last (but this was the work of two years’ railway travel), an undeniable intimacy mutually – but always circumspectly – achieved.
And why were we so circumspect, beyond the normal discretion in such cases, on these schoolward and homeward journeys? Why did we choose our carriage and compartment with care and last-minute changes (which nodoubt earned us more attention)? Why did we sometimes, on the return journey, deliberately miss the ten-past-four from Gildsey and pick up the next train from Newhithe, thereby not only avoiding the usual carriage-loads of passengers but allowing various fondnesses to occur on the walk from Gildsey, across the mud-grey Ouse, past the decaying lighter wharves of Newhithe, along the tree-screened fringes of celery and onion fields?
Because on that four-ten train might be Freddie Parr and Peter Baine and Shirley Alford, not to mention other contemporaries from Hockwell and Apton, pupils, for the most part, at the Gildsey Secondary School (blue uniform) and the Gildsey High School (dark brown and green uniform).
But Freddie Parr above all. There was no suppressing Freddie Parr. Freddie lacked subtlety, had a crude tongue. Freddie was often drunk at four-thirty in the afternoon on secret supplies of whisky stolen from his father, who in turn procured it, by nefarious means, from an American air base. Freddie, at sixteen, had the mind of an advanced roué and a complex about the size of his penis – which was average. I might have been intimidated by Freddie Parr were it not that I knew, at least, that I could swim and he could not – a distinct failing in a watery region. But there remained Freddie’s leering eye, and his talent for gossip. For, no doubting it, Freddie would have hastened to tell my brother how Mary and I always sat together (and not just that) on the Gildsey train. Because, by the summer of 1943, it was a well-known fact (how well I knew it) that Dick Crick often took solitary evening walks along the banks of the Hockwell Lode in the direction of Polt Fen Farm.
Freddie would gladly have implanted in Dick’s mind the seeds of revenge for the thwarted designs that he, Freddie, had on Mary; were it not that he feared that Dick might suspect him; that he spurned the ignominious role of pander; and were it not that he stood in awe, in any case, ofmy brother. Because Dick Crick, it was generally rumoured – even his own brother was unable to refute it – possessed a penis of fabulous dimensions. And had it not been my opinion that even if Dick had had a penis like a marrow he would not have known how to use it; had I not innocently believed that brothers, after all, are brothers; had Freddie Parr not curbed his tongue; and had I not wanted to keep Mary so much that instead of taking jealous exception, I myself had already pandered to her fascination with Dick (for she couldn’t resist a mystery), not least with his much wondered-at parts – I might have been afraid of my brother.
As afraid before as I was after that day we pulled
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