As Generations Go

A story of love that is timeless

It was the sort of day when a lad like me, Ricky from the council estate, back when I was a lad, that is, and not a geriatric piece of flotsam like I am now, would want to wander into the woods past the old mill and even beyond the stream where he might have played as a nipper, and into the warm peace of solitude that was a wonderful crowd of trees..

And that was what I did back then, because the heat was becoming oppressive at home with mum fretting about most things and my soul itching for loneliness and the sort of solitude that wiped out the worst of the world.. And there was nowhere like the woods with the haphazard assortment of this or that trees and no other people to interfere with my spirit. Not even a lass with flaxen hair and a shape that could suggest an angel because, at that age, what was it? Sixteen? I had yet to learn about the magic of the fair sex.

But then, one magical heart-thumping moment I met Amy.

How old had I been? No longer in short trousers, so I felt quite the boldest of men, but still inside was the small boy getting purposefully lost in the woods and dreaming of magical and forgotten corners where dreams might come true and angels walk… Maybe sixteen years young, memory doesn’t record our pasts with exact precision, does it?

There had been other girls in my world, I new too well… those who shared my days at school, teased me for getting so many things wrong, mocked me for not having a father at my back and not caring that he died for them, during a war, that he’d had his flesh torn to shreds fighting for something he could never think his life was worth so little, but dying anyway.

There had been Amanda Green, a sour-faced pony-tail swinging lump of human mockery, full of verbal bile and taking the masses with her as she made up stories to diminish me. And they did follow her, those masses. They did bow down before her and spit at me. They were frightened no to.

So the woods were a release, the bullied boy able to seek a kind of isolation among the trees and hedgerows and copses where he loved to wander.

And out of the blue, unexpected and for a few moments unwanted,, there was Amy

And she saw me at the exact moment when I saw her for the very first time, and her face lit up into such a smile. I knew there was none of the Amanda Green bitterness and mockery in that smile, none of the sour asides meant to insult and diminish me, as she added one word to that smile.

“Hello,” she said, her voice musical and her smile so… desirable, lovely, calming, everything a wonderful smile should be. And that was how I saw it.

“Hiya,” I replied, and I did my best to smile at her.

“It’s nice here,” she added, and she walked up to me until she was so close I could smell the fragrance of her and see, when I looked, deep into her eyes, the sweetness that was Amy.

“I love it,” I told her, “I come here quite a lot.”

“Not many boys like nice places like this,” she told me. “And if they do like trees it’s because they want to chop them down.”

“I always have liked it,” I assured her, “I like being here more than I like being with other kids.”

“I think I might get to like it too,” she confessed, “my, boyfriend, he fell out with me because he’s a thick peasant, and here I am, miles from home while mum is in hospital.!”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said with supreme honesty, “I never have. Girls don’t seem to like me.”

“But you look quite nice,” she said, open eyed, “you obviously don’t meet the right sort of girls.”

Amy was the right sort of girl. I knew that in that instant, and for the first time in my life I voluntarily reached towards her and took one of a girl’s hands in mine as if it as the best thing to do in the whole world.

And she let me!

“Are you being forward?” she asked, “the sort of boy the grown-ups warn a girl about?”

That made me let go of her hand and take a step away from her, there in the woods, there where the angels sang their songs when I was so alone and unhappy like on mos other days. Did adults warn girls about boys holding their hands? I didn’t know, and if they did, why was that?

“Don’t be silly!” she laughed, not mocking me like Angela Green and her gang would but honestly, humorously and sweetly. And to show me how silly I was being she retraced that step towards me and reached out to me. And when her hand touched mine, she grasped it, squeezed it, smiled in my face.

And kissed me!

“It’s nice to have friends,” she said, “It’s special, like being here in the woods, like looking at the lovely trees, like seeing someone worth kissing.”

And I knew what she meant because it was exactly how I felt now that I had a friend.

oo0oo

The years have long passed since then and it saddened when I thought how brief that friendship had been. Just a few days, and Amy was gone, back to her parents and, she told me, a new baby. I never knew why it had to be, just that for a few days my life was in a brand new place, one that despite all my best efforts it would never find again. But those days!

She taught me everything. Holding hands was nothing. She met me by arrangement the next day and she was dressed in the prettiest green shorts I have ever seen and I could tell that she might well be a teenage girl but she was knocking the door to womanhood, Her shape told me that, all of it, and I actually found myself staring at her. Yesterday I hadn’t noticed her bosom, today I could ‘t help it. And those legs! Until I saw hers that day legs had been no more than a mechanism for supporting the body, but hers were far more than that. They invited, beckoned, demanded, and I responded as I rested one hand on her knee.

“Amy,” I told her, “you’re better than special.”

“And I like you,” she said, “but I wonder…”

“What?” I was lost. What might this girl I’d barely known wonder, that I might be able to answer.

“Do you ever wear shorts?” she asked.

“I’ve got my old PE school shorts at home…” I stammered, “that’s all, and they’re nowhere near as nice as yours…”

“I tell you what,” she smiled, “wear them for me tomorrow”

“If you like,” I said.

“I do,” she laughed, “It’s nice, with the breeze on our legs, all fresh and cooling, and I don’t want to seem to be greedy by getting all the fun to myself.”

oo0oo

So the next day I sorted out my old pair of shorts from my PE kit. We no longer needed them at school, going into the sixth form, though some boys in the rugby team still wore their shorts for games. But I did history instead because that was to be my chosen strength according to the history teacher, though Amanda Green spread the rumour it was because he fancied me. I doubt if he ever thought one nice thing about me, but rumours tell foul untruths, and this one, much to Amanda’s delight, did just that.

But I wore those shorts anyway: anything to please the wonderful Amy, and we wandered ever further into the forest, hand in hand because there was no other way for to like us to go until Amy took me into a quiet clearing and slipped her own shorts off.

Back then I’d been innocent, but not foolish or ignorant, and I must have shown the shock on my face when she grinned at me and said how lovely the breeze felt, on her legs, and why didn’t I enjoy it to?

“But…” I stammered, “I can’t… you’re a girl…”

“And you’re a boy,” she smiled, “come on, Ricky, I know what you are and it won’t hurt you! And we don’t have very, long together. I go home from granny’s the day after tomorrow and we might never see each other again because I don’t come to stay here very often, only while my mum’s having a baby. Just kiss me, only once… And I know there’s a quiet clearing past those trees,” she pointed at a couple of firs, ”over there.”

So I did as she asked, and for the next hour she had me venturing to places I’d never dreamed of ever going. And I won’t say I didn’t know what I was doing, because I did.

All of it.

Every delightful dark moment. Every extended kiss. Every thrust.

oo0oo

And here am I now, remembering and almost recapturing with my mind the last treasured most powerful moment before we finally said goodbye and I returned to the Amanda Greens of this world and the sly jibes and unkind taunts.

So I wandered in these later years on this summer’s day to the little clearing where I had lost my virginity and Amy told me honestly and proudly that she had lost hers, and I sat down, not wearing shorts but in my trousers, but on the spot where Amy had encouraged my innocence to fall from me like autumn leaves.

“I was told I would find you here,” said a quiet voice from just behind me, and I turned round to see who it was, moving my ancient neck as quickly as my age and infirmity would let me. And I was shocked.

“Amy!” I exclaimed to the young woman in green shorts.

And there could be no doubt, the figure was my Amy! It could be no other!

Was I seeing a ghost?

“Grandma told me that if you were anywhere it would be right here,” she said with that wonderful smile that had stayed with me down the years, “Hello granddad!”

© Peter Rogerson 14.03.25