Freddie from the river with a new bruise and an old bruise on his head …
But in the school holidays, when the Great Eastern Railway no longer provided us with a travelling rendezvous, we would meet in the late afternoon by the stump of the old windmill, near the poplar spinney, by the bend in the Lode, out of sight of the farmhouse of Polt Fen Farm.
Why here? And why at this particular hour?
Because it was here that one day in August 1942 (defeat in the desert; the U-boat stranglehold) we first explored, tentatively but collaboratively, what we called then simply ‘holes’ and ‘things’.
Hesitantly, but at Mary’s free invitation, I put the tip of my index finger into the mouth of Mary’s hole, and was surprised to discover what an inadequate word was ‘hole’ for what I encountered. For Mary’s hole had folds and protuberances, and, so it seemed to me, its false and its genuine entrances, and – as I found the true entrance – it revealed the power of changing its configuration and texture at my touch, of suggesting a moist labyrinth of inwardly twisting, secret passages. The dark curled hairs – only recently sprouted – between Mary’s thighs, on whichat that moment broad Fen sunlight was genially smiling, had, on close inspection, a coppery sheen. I dipped one finger, up to the first, the second knuckle into Mary’s hole; then a second finger alongside it. This was possible, indeed necessary, because Mary’s hole began to reveal a further power to suck, to ingest; a voracity which made me momentarily hold back. And yet the chief and most wondrous power of Mary’s hole was its capacity to send waves of sensation not only all over Mary’s body, but all over mine; and this not by some process of mental association but by a direct electric current which flowed up my arm, flushed my face, and gathered in the part of me to which Mary was simultaneously applying her hand.
For just as inexorably as I explored Mary’s hole, Mary explored my thing. Indeed, she was the bolder of the two of us. It was she whose fingers first got the itch and were at work before I dared, and only then at her prompting – her grabbing and guiding of my hand, her pulling up and pulling down of clothing – to use mine.
Mary itched. And this itch of Mary’s was the itch of curiosity. In her fifteen-year-old body curiosity tickled and chafed, making her fidgety and roving-eyed. Curiosity drove her, beyond all restraint, to want to touch, witness, experience whatever was unknown and hidden from her. Do not smirk, children. Curiosity, which, with other things, distinguishes us from the animals, is an ingredient of love. Is a vital force. Curiosity, which bogs us down in arduous meditations and can lead to the writing of history books, will also, on occasion, as on that afternoon by the Hockwell Lode, reveal to us that which we seldom glimpse unscathed – for it appears more often (dead bodies, boat-hooks) dressed in terror: the Here and Now.
When I had finished exploring Mary’s hole, Mary continued our homage to curiosity by verbal means. She spoke of hymens and of her monthly bleedings. She was proud of her bleedings. She wanted to show me when shebled. She wanted me to see. And it was as she spoke of these mysteries, and of others, while the sun still shone on coppery hairs, that I thought (so too perhaps did Mary): everything is open, everything is plain; there are no secrets, here, now, in this nothing-landscape. Us Fenlanders do not try to hide – since we know God is watching.
Within the windmill by the Hockwell Lode curiosity and innocence held hands. And explored holes. Within its stunted, wooden walls we first used those magic, those spell-binding words which make the empty world seem full, just as surely as a thing fits inside a hole: I love – I love – Love, love … And perhaps the windmill itself, empty and abandoned since steam and diesel power encroached, and the Leem Drainage Board in its wisdom
But in the school holidays, when the Great Eastern Railway no longer provided us with a travelling rendezvous, we would meet in the late afternoon by the stump of the old windmill, near the poplar spinney, by the bend in the Lode, out of sight of the farmhouse of Polt Fen Farm.
Why here? And why at this particular hour?
Because it was here that one day in August 1942 (defeat in the desert; the U-boat stranglehold) we first explored, tentatively but collaboratively, what we called then simply ‘holes’ and ‘things’.
Hesitantly, but at Mary’s free invitation, I put the tip of my index finger into the mouth of Mary’s hole, and was surprised to discover what an inadequate word was ‘hole’ for what I encountered. For Mary’s hole had folds and protuberances, and, so it seemed to me, its false and its genuine entrances, and – as I found the true entrance – it revealed the power of changing its configuration and texture at my touch, of suggesting a moist labyrinth of inwardly twisting, secret passages. The dark curled hairs – only recently sprouted – between Mary’s thighs, on whichat that moment broad Fen sunlight was genially smiling, had, on close inspection, a coppery sheen. I dipped one finger, up to the first, the second knuckle into Mary’s hole; then a second finger alongside it. This was possible, indeed necessary, because Mary’s hole began to reveal a further power to suck, to ingest; a voracity which made me momentarily hold back. And yet the chief and most wondrous power of Mary’s hole was its capacity to send waves of sensation not only all over Mary’s body, but all over mine; and this not by some process of mental association but by a direct electric current which flowed up my arm, flushed my face, and gathered in the part of me to which Mary was simultaneously applying her hand.
For just as inexorably as I explored Mary’s hole, Mary explored my thing. Indeed, she was the bolder of the two of us. It was she whose fingers first got the itch and were at work before I dared, and only then at her prompting – her grabbing and guiding of my hand, her pulling up and pulling down of clothing – to use mine.
Mary itched. And this itch of Mary’s was the itch of curiosity. In her fifteen-year-old body curiosity tickled and chafed, making her fidgety and roving-eyed. Curiosity drove her, beyond all restraint, to want to touch, witness, experience whatever was unknown and hidden from her. Do not smirk, children. Curiosity, which, with other things, distinguishes us from the animals, is an ingredient of love. Is a vital force. Curiosity, which bogs us down in arduous meditations and can lead to the writing of history books, will also, on occasion, as on that afternoon by the Hockwell Lode, reveal to us that which we seldom glimpse unscathed – for it appears more often (dead bodies, boat-hooks) dressed in terror: the Here and Now.
When I had finished exploring Mary’s hole, Mary continued our homage to curiosity by verbal means. She spoke of hymens and of her monthly bleedings. She was proud of her bleedings. She wanted to show me when shebled. She wanted me to see. And it was as she spoke of these mysteries, and of others, while the sun still shone on coppery hairs, that I thought (so too perhaps did Mary): everything is open, everything is plain; there are no secrets, here, now, in this nothing-landscape. Us Fenlanders do not try to hide – since we know God is watching.
Within the windmill by the Hockwell Lode curiosity and innocence held hands. And explored holes. Within its stunted, wooden walls we first used those magic, those spell-binding words which make the empty world seem full, just as surely as a thing fits inside a hole: I love – I love – Love, love … And perhaps the windmill itself, empty and abandoned since steam and diesel power encroached, and the Leem Drainage Board in its wisdom
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