A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Number 66 Albany Drive where it all began
I had in me the mean’s of becoming a wee Guy Fawkes. A match flared and lit a paper fire between the beds. No stinging ear would deter me in my pyrotechnic quest. I collected firewood from Lennie, whilst he let rip raspberries, flying and farting for my delight. Lennie, hired by my father to peel and chop chips, smiled his uneven, yellow toothed, smile, whooped his pleasure in the innocence of not being too bright. (Later, much later, his elder brother, Sid Tritten, who shone in my eyes like a hero, would take on that particular role, and years later would be struck blind as a mole. His waitress wife, Lou, would lead him like a child: lead him towards the light of conversation and people. He would stand with his white, collapsible-stick, talking and laughing, becoming the Sid we knew of old.)
Then on collecting my bundle of fuel, I would steal to my seaside and light a fire on the pebbled beach. My father drove past in his car and on spotting me, eye to eye, parked the car whilst I kicked the evidence into the stones and in my pretence casually threw pebbles at the sea. The Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! of my father’s feet and the sting of his hand made itself known about my ears. He dragged me up the beach, slung me into the car, my sobs leaving no mark on his anger. Then home. Slaps about the legs. More tears. Then left alone in my room for what seemed hours.
The smell of chicken soup came up the stairs together with my father. ''Are you sorry, son?'' he said. I nodded. ''Come down stairs and have some soup.'' I nodded my hot, tear stained head again. This was my father’s way of saying sorry: ''I’ve told you time and time again not to play with fire. Now, drink your chicken soup.''
Even then I would not, could not, leave fire alone. I saw a live match lodged in the crack of the floor of our home in Albany Drive. I poked it out. All I needed now was something to strike it on. In those days all I had to do was look in waste paper bins dotted along the seafront for an empty box. I found one. And soon I had a bon-fire blazing on the piece of waste ground opposite my house. My parents didn't know that it was I that started the blaze, even though I came in stinking of smoke like a freshly smoked kipper. "I was just pokin' it," I said.
In that same field some workman had left a pile of wet cement and some brand new bricks. I decided to build a house, a house just big enough to get my head in. I constructed the simple shape, cementing as I went, and when I had finished I lay down and put my head in it. It was as though I was living in my own home. I lay on my back and drifted off. I felt safe. I felt the velvety warmth of home inside my head. Later, I found my home destroyed. The workmen had returned. A portent of the future?
Snippets of memory: my mother chopping down a young Christmas tree on hallowed ground. The image of a flat–capped farmer: his shotgun pointing at the small of her back. My father, winking his pleasure at the farmer for being caught, as if to say: ‘not my fault. It's the wife.’ While us kids - silent in that moment and the moments after - were frozen in time.
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