12. AN ESCAPE FROM A SCHOOLBOY

She was only ten whens she revisited herself

There was a wonderful multicoloured swirl as Elaine found herself in the middle of a confusion of colourless colour and soundless music, as if someone had pulled the plug of a fairground ride and it had ground to a motionless halt on a confusing night.

“I remember this,” whispered or shouted or moaned Elaine, “I was a child…”

And she had been, and there she was!

Sitting in her chair half-way to the back of the classroom, there she was.

“I’m over there,” she pointed to T***y, who had somehow joined her on a joyless joy ride down to her own past.

“I know,” grinned or wept T***y, “It was me who did it! What you must remember that it’s virtually unknown for anyone to visit their own past, but if they happen to be with someone who’s gone there then it happens now and again!”

“I want Elaine to read her story,” announced Miss Baker.

Miss Baker had blonde hair piled up on top of her head, and bright red lips.

She, the child Elaine, stood up and she, the deceased Elaine, gasped.

Had she really been that pretty? Had her hair really been that long? Had her face really been so smooth and soft? Had she really worn such a pretty skirt with its pleats and tartan pattern?

Had she really been so perfect?

“Of course you were,” whispered T***y, “Had I been around then even I could love you!”

The child Elaine held her exercise book in front of her, standing nervously as she opened it, and then she read what she, aged nine, had written.

When I dream of dying I see a black room filled with shadows, the child Elaine read in a voice that was both quiet and clear. “I see myself with all my family, all dead with me, all wondering why they had to be killed. But there was a war and people got shot and killed, and we had been at home when the aeroplane dropped its bomb, the sort that had been dropped on Hiroshima and that had destroyed so many lives. I see them in the blackness of my room, glowing figures weeping and bleeding before wandering off into a sun that never sets…”

“Very good, Elaine,” smiled Miss Baker, “very sad, but also very imaginative, drawing as you have from tragic events in the real world…Has anyone any questions they’d like to ask Elaine?”

“Was it a dream?” whispered or bellowed T***y, “was it a glimpse into your own future?”

“I’d forgotten it, though the idea of bombs has always haunted me” confessed Elaine, “but look: I hadn’t forgotten him!”

The him she referred to was Malcolm Elliot, a boy she’d forgotten until this very moment, though he must have lingered somewhere in what passed for her mind, or how had she recalled his name with such clarity?

The boy had his hand up, and Miss Baker, smiling, indicated he should ask his question.

The boy looked nervous, scared almost. He was scruffy in a clean way, his shorts were almost unpressed though someone had put creases down the sides rather than down the front. His shirt tail was hanging out and his tie, yes, even at that age he wore a tie, was crooked. He sandy hair was dishevelled but he had what Elaine thought must be a nice face.

“Malcolm Elliot,” she whispered to T***y, “I thought I’d forgotten him.”

“Was he your boyfriend?” giggled T***y.

“I was only ten!” protested Elaine, “though I did like him. But then, if I remember things correctly, I liked most of the kids in this class. They were a good lot. Quite friendly.”

“Well, Malcolm?” asked Miss Baker.

The boy stood up. “I want to say … if Elaine is going to be killed I want to be killed with her,” he said nervously, and sat down, blushing furiously.

The rest of the class burst into a spontaneous laugh, and Miss Baker smiled at the boy.

“I see where you’re coming from, Malcolm,” she said, “it’s a sign of real and true friendship to say a thing like that.”

Then somewhere a bell rang and Miss Baker announced the end of the school session.

“It’s dinner time,” she said, “will those going home for dinner line up by the door…”

The child Elaine stayed in her seat and the boy Malcolm stood up and wormed his way along the row of chairs until he was right behind her on his way to the door and its queue of a dozen or so children.

“It’s true,” he whispered, oblivious to the curious sneers and cackles from the children close enough to hear him, “I do love you, Elaine…”

Then he and the rest of the children and the class evaporated. Elaine and T***y found themselves back in The Past, just two souls amongst a swarming mass of others, a mass that stretched beyond understanding in every direction.

“So you had a boyfriend even back when you were a kid?” giggled or wept or announced T***y.

“I’d forgotten,” sighed Elaine, “but now that I think about him I can see that he was a decent enough kid. I suppose that in a way I liked him. But when you’re as young as that you don’t understand such things as love.”

“He said he loved you, though…”

“I shouldn’t think he knew what he was saying,” decided Elaine, “children say things that are beyond their understanding. He loved his mum no doubt, kids do, but he only thought he loved me because… I don’t know why, maybe because I reminded him of mummy!”

“Or because you were pretty,” T***y suggested, “because you were smart and clean. Because of that long hair?”

“No,” came a new projection or voice, or whisper from just behind them, loud in the chaos of voices that filled The Past.

“What’s that?” asked Elaine.

“It’s me,” came the voice, “it’s Malcolm, and when I said I loved you I really did. Both then and after then. After we left that school and went on to the secondary modern, I loved you. After you married that wastrel William who everyone knew was a junkie, I loved you. And then you disappeared and I knew what had happened to you.”

“You did?” asked Elaine, momentarily stunned.

“I did. A light had gone out of my world, a light that came from you. I went to the railway station… I bet you can guess the rest?”

“You caught a train?” she suggested, dreading the truth that shone from every pore of his none-body as he stood or hovered or melted behind her.

“I jumped,” he said, “in front of the 3.40 for Rugby. And I came here, and I still love you…”

Elaine was lost for thoughts. Why hadn’t she known? He’d been a nice enough boy, much nicer than William could ever have been. But he’d been only ten.

But ten with an obsession she hadn’t suspected.

“You still love me?” she whispered or shouted or cried out aloud.

He nodded the head he didn’t have, but she knew alright. And it was time for the truth to be born.

“And I love you,” she said.

© Peter Rogerson 04.09.21

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