THE TEENAGER

Oliver's reached his teens and is noticing girls for the first time

Oliver found the leap from childhood to his teens to be a quantum one. One minute he was twelve and occupied with the normal bow-and-arrow toys of twelve year-olds along with the playground intrigues concerning Mr Thomas and Miss Wilson, and the next he was ogling the girl next door and wondering why parts of his lower body reacted almost unexpectedly to the sight of her as she walked almost but not quite primly past his house on her way to the shops.

And that sight was suddenly worth ogling at.

She wasn’t much older than him, but she looked as if a generation separated them. Maybe it was her clothing " it was summer of 1979 and she was dressed for it in a fairly short (but not very short) cotton skirt and a breezy top in lilac. But it wasn’t the fashion details that interested him but the whole. Her hair, her complexion, her confident walk past his house, the cheerfulness oozed from her with every step she took. And yet he’d never spoken properly to her, not more than the odd “hiya!” which was little more than an automatic response to seeing her, not talked properly once in all the years they’d lived next door to each other.

Bert still lived next door on the other side, good old Bert who’d guided him through a great deal of his childhood with a mixture of wisdom and morality (not to mention the angling), and it was Bert who first noticed the look on his face as his eyes tracked the progress of that lovely girl.

“Quite a sight eh, Olly?” he asked quietly from his own small front lawn, and though many an older man might have said it with a snigger in his voice, Bert didn’t. Bert meant it. All right, he was probably middle-aged and certainly a widower, but he knew what was going through Oliver’s head and he knew that it was only natural and in his own way was glad to see evidence of it.

“She’s pretty,” acknowledged Oliver when he was quite sure that the girl wouldn’t hear him.

“When I see lasses like that it makes me wish I was young again, and then when I think about it I’m glad that I’m not,” murmured Bert. “Lasses like that put a strain on a lad’s spirit, they do. I remember years back when I met Jocelyn for the first time ... and I was older than you are by a good half a dozen years ... it was on a day like this and it was early in the sixties and she wore almost nothing as she played on the street...”

Oliver couldn’t imagine the woman he’d known wearing almost nothing. She’d been dead a year or two by 1979, but he could remember her goodness like he’d seen her yesterday. Then he remembered he’d been told that lasses back then had invented the mini this and mini that and were famous for their legs and flashes of underwear, and he nodded.

Maybe the girl next door on the other side, the one who had just walked by, should have more leg about her. But it didn’t really matter and if she did it might prove to be too much for his teenage heart.

And all these thoughts made him cringe inside like he’d never cringed before. It was as if something in his spirit had been awoken, and he both wanted to revel in it and beg it to go back to sleep because, quite simply, he suddenly couldn’t cope.

“Want to come down the lake, Olly?” asked Bert. “I was thinking of going after that big pike again. It’s time he was caught and put out of his misery.”

Oliver had always liked going fishing with Bert even though Bert was a grown man with a dead wife and he was still only a kid. Or was he? He was thirteen, after all, and that was getting on for being grown up.

And he didn’t want to go fishing. He didn’t want to go and sit in glorious silence on the banks of the lake, or talking in low voices low so as not to disturb the fish they rarely caught, with Bert, who had a lot of interesting lines of conversation, though they rarely touched on girls.

“Not this time,” he said quietly.

And Bert understood.

“I know,” he said, “I recall when I was in my teens, though we didn’t call it that so much back then. It was the time before the Beatles changed everything with their mop-top hair-styles and cheeky grins. It was like the fifties had dragged on for ever and were even daring to venture into the sixties… and now, soon enough, it’ll be the eighties and I’ll be in my forties, and goodness knows what that will bring.”

“And the girls wore short skirts?” asked Oliver.

“Not to start with,” admitted Bert, “but they soon caught on, they did. Back then I learned that one thing is more important than any other and that is to treat a lass with respect. No, not just treat her with respect, but respect her. Then you might find yourself enjoying those lovely long legs they invented with their miniskirts from quite a close perspective and a nice long time.”

“You ought to find yourself another woman,” suggested Oliver. “I’ve wondered a couple of times what it is about that lake where Mr Pike seems uncatchable that makes it better than meeting another woman.”

“There was only ever going to be one Jocelyn,” said Bert, shortly, looking suddenly more ferocious than Oliver had ever seen him look.

“I’m sorry, Bert,” mumbled Oliver, realising he must have overstepped an invisible mark. “I didn’t think...”

“At your age you wouldn’t,” conceded Bert, “and who knows, one day I might bump into another skirt that reminds me of Jocelyn and we might set up home together. Who knows? But she won’t be Jocelyn. You know, lad, as time passes your get to realise that the only good people in the entire world besides yourself and the lad as lives next door are lovely ladies, and maybe Old Man Pike...”

“You’ll meet someone,” murmured Oliver, “you’re too good not to.”

“That’s as maybe,” grunted Bert, “and if you’ll pardon me I’m off to the lake and that sad old pike.”

But, thought Oliver watching him go, “it’s not so much a sad old pike as a sad old Bert...”

And he sat on the small garden seat that Ian Birtwhistle, his foster-father, had built especially for his wife Edna to sit on when she wanted to be out in the sun and watching the world pass by like she sometimes did, and got to think about Bert.

And then, after such a short time thinking he might have only got to thinking half a thought he impulsively stood up and ran, scattering the world around him, and caught Bert up. Bert needed him, that’s what he’d thought, and who was he to ignore a fellow human who needed him?

“I’m coming, Bert,” he said.

“I was hoping you would, Olly,” said Bert. “Now come on and let’s waylay him and surprise the life out of him.”

© Peter Rogerson 18.12.16