There are moments that are locked into memory. The door opens onto a crisp, bright morning. Overhead the clear blue sky is coldly still. The hoar frost has driven all nature to a cosy hideout. The low sun reflects off the icy whiteness and dazzles the eyes. The grass is laden down with crystal frost and beckons enticingly to be disturbed. The cold air assaults the boy’s face and he quickly wheezes out a breath. The vapour rises in the still air. The slight drip on his nose starts to freeze. He wipes it with his coat sleeve and sniffs.
Standing on the doorstep he pauses for a brief moment. The concrete path leads outward to the yard shed. When he looks at this path he not only sees the patches of pure ice that have formed in the potholes, he also sees the warmth of a summer day when he rushes out to chase the hens into the long meadow. He sees the dog relaxing in the tall overgrown grass verge, panting in the heat. It is a pathway leading to the secret sanctuary. It leads to the mysterious countryside that remains outside his small explored world. All association with the path is one of reaching out for safety and escape from fear.
Now he stares in the direction of the back fields and yearns to be free - to head off into the welcoming unknown. He shivers and feels internally sick at the prospect of the coming day. The glorious weekend of freedom is over. All night he had fretted at the thought of the morning coming too soon. He had tried to stay awake as long as possible to prolong the night. He believed that time passed very slowly when you were awake. If he closed his eyes he would wake in an instant and then school would beckon. But inevitably sleep overpowered his feeble will.
He didn’t have nightmares but always had a disturbing recurrent dream. It was hard to visualise the dream that was closer to a feeling. He dreamt of an image like that of a rope with neither beginning nor end. It stretched out horizontally in the dark and seemed to be progressing onward from the past. The overall effect was one of entrapment in a hopeless and featureless world. There was a sound too - a constant drone like the hum of a malfunctioning speaker. Everything in the dream was constant - there was no end, no way out. He always awoke in a panic from the dream and always to the sickening realisation that it was yet another school-day.
As he pulled the kitchen door closed behind him he felt the cold air sweep round his body. He shivered again and for a moment thought of heading off along the path. He dreamt of the joy of the day spent in his friendly lair. He could nestle down in his nest under the dense briers, safe from the world. From there he could peer out safely on the morning scene. The sun would soon start to thaw the hoar and the white would change to green. Then the birds would come out and there would be song in the air. Foetus like, he curls up under the now dripping branches and hugs his arms tightly around himself. He is his own best friend. There are no evil enemies to harm him. He doesn’t feel the dampness make its way to his skin. He doesn’t feel the creeping chill. It is only base hunger that will drive him from his cocoon. He will stay there all morning. Judging time by the sun’s height in the sky, he emerges and listens for the distant sounds of other children coming home for lunch. Then he covers his school-bag in dead grass and makes home for lunch. Here he wolfs down some bread and tea and saying nothing rushes off as if eager to get back to school early. But it's back to the cocoon. He backs his way into the brier hideout and feels safe again from the world. As the afternoon sun begins its wintry descent, a sickening feeling enters his stomach. He shakes in anticipation at the fallout from his deception. He knows that word will soon get back that he was not at school. He fears his mother’s frustrated response and already is loathing the scene in the next morning’s classroom. He tries to put these things from his mind and once again cuddles himself tightly. By now his pants are wet through and he is cold. He ignores the long drips from his nose. His coat sleeve is now also saturated. He is cold everywhere. He longs for emotional warmth and dreams up cosy images of living in a warm underground home. A small fire smokes away and there is a little table set with a dainty chequered cloth. Mama Bear is serving a steaming hot broth to her family. He feels her warmth and her love. This is what life should be like. He hears her call his name. Then louder and louder. He wakes up and hears the angry frustrated shouts from the back-door. He knows that the news has broken.
He stares longingly at the pathway but knows that that is not an option today. He turns left and makes his way around to the front of the house. The large expanse of white lawn causes him to shield his eyes. The white earth and blue sky are so inviting compared to the greyness of the schoolhouse. To his left workmen have started their day’s toil on the new house being built alongside. Two carpenters are perched aloft in the rafters and are banging away regularly with their hammers. The boy’s eyes rest on them enviously. He loves driving nails into wood. How glorious to be able to spend your day out in the clear air banging at nails for all you’re worth. That was heaven. They had no fear. They were not constantly watching the clock willing the day to be over. They did not end one day fearing for the next. Mondays to them were the start of another happy week. They didn’t feel like crying or running away. Their hands only shook from tiredness not from the vicious, sharp pain of a stick. They had only the friendly foreman’s eyes to look at them - not the tyrant eyes of a white collared tyrant. They did not cringe at the sound of a sharp male voice. They did not shiver at the intense silence of a frightened class.
The banging resonated in the still morning air. It was a solace to know that not all the world lived in fear. Maybe it was necessary to pass through this phase and that at the other side there was this - happy men working merrily on a roof on a bright frosty morning.
His feet dragged along the pathway to the roadside gate. There were small imprints of his rough shoes on the frost-covered paving. Here and there, there were good stretches of ice. Were it the weekend, he would run at these and slide along, shouting in delight. Now he hardly noticed them, so taken up was he with the thought of going to school. As he closed the gate he looked longingly towards the sanctuary of the field at the back of his house. He looked up again at the lucky workmen. With huge reluctance he turned and headed down the road toward school.
The road was quiet at that early hour on a cold winter’s morning. There was reluctance in his pace as he made his way toward the town. His home was on the outskirts of the market town. Recently the footpath had been extended past his house out as far as the brow of the hill. This had made the road seem more a part of the town and houses had sprung up along the route. Out of some of these houses other young children emerged shrieking happily in the frosty morning air. They ran straight out onto the car-free road and started to make impromptu skating runs. Lower down the road where the Council houses were, the children had been more adventurous. Buckets of water had been thrown along the pavement and the ice made a perfect slide. Boys were taking it in turns to run at the slide with great speed and then glide along the ice sometimes landing on their backsides laughing and cursing at the same time. All this gleeful activity seemed to go unnoticed. His mind was thoroughly preoccupied with the dread that awaited him in class. He passed the playing children without casting them a glance. His head was down and his eyes followed the line on the gutter with its frozen water. He had started to count the joints in the concrete path and realised that each one brought him that much nearer the hateful school.
His school bag was slung carelessly over his shoulders. He began to worry that he had forgotten some book or other. This would entail a barrage of vitriol and an inevitable volley of slaps to the head or if luckier on the hands. The worry was too much so he had to meticulously chec
k that each book and copy was in its proper place. As he opened the bag the smell of school emerged and he felt nauseated. He wanted to cry out in despair but couldn’t. He knew there was no release from this nightmare. He relaxed a little as the count proved that each book and copy was accounted for. His cold fingers struggled with the buckles as he closed the flaps. As soon as he had finished he suddenly thought of his ink pen. The nib was bent and was causing blobs of ink to mar his writing copy. He panicked. He did not have the few pennies needed to buy another before classes began. His face went pale. He knew the