there’s sexual intercourse. You don’t do it in biology till the third year. A diagram in a textbook of an erect penis in a vagina is one thing, but actually doing it, that’s another. The only actual vagina I’ve seen was on a greasy photo Neal Brose charged us 5p to look at. It was a baby kangaroo-prawn in its mother’s hairy pouch. I almost vommed up my Mars Bar and Outer Spacers.
I’ve never even kissed anyone.
Dawn Madden’s eyes are dark honey.
A conker tree’d erupted out of the earth and’d flexed out millions of strong arms and strong legs. Someone’d hung a tyre-swing off one bough. The tyre spun gently as the Earth spun under it. Rainwater’d pooled inside but I tipped it out and had a go. Weightlessness orbiting Alpha Centauri’d be best, but weightlessness on a swing isn’t bad. If Moran’d been there too it’d’ve been an ace laugh. After a bit I shimmied up the frayed rope to
see how climbable the tree was. Once you were up, it was dead climbable. I even found the ruins of a tree house. Donkey’s yonks’d gone by since it’d seen active service, mind. Higher up, I crawled along a branch and peered out of the green bell. You could see for miles. Back towards Black Swan Green, Dawn Madden’s farm silos, a spiral staircase of smoke, the Christmas tree plantation, St Gabriel’s spire and its two nearly-as-tall redwoods.
With my Swiss Army knife I carved this in the ribbly bark.
The sap on my blade smelt green. Miss Throckmorton used to tell us that people who carve things on trees are the wickedest sorts of vandals ’cause they’re not only making graffiti, they’re hurting living beings too. Miss Throckmorton might be right but she can’t’ve ever been a thirteen-year-old boy who met a girl like Dawn Madden. One day, I thought, I’ll bring her up to show her this. I’d do my first kiss with her. Right here. She’d touch me. Right here.
Round the other side of the conker tree, I looked at what lay up the bridlepath. A lane snaking to Marl Bank and Castlemorton, fields, more fields, a glimpse of an old grey turret rising above the firs. Line of pylons. You could pick out details on the Malvern Hills now. Sun flashed off cars on the Wells Road. Termite-sized walkers crossing Perserverance Hill. Underneath, somewhere, ran the third tunnel. I ate my block of Wensleydale and broken Jacobs crackers, wishing I’d brought some water. I climbed back to the tyre-swing rope and was just about to shimmy down when I heard a man’s voice and a woman’s voice.
‘See?’ Tom Yew, I recognized straight off. ‘Told you it was just a bit farther.’
‘Yeah, Tom,’ answered the woman, ‘about twenty times.’
‘You said you wanted somewhere private.’
‘I didn’t mean halfway to Wales.’ Now I saw Debby Crombie. Debby Crombie I’ve never spoken to, but Tom Yew’s Nick Yew’s older brother, on leave from the Royal Navy. I could’ve just called out ‘Hi!’ and come down the rope and it’d’ve been fine. But being invisible was fun. I retreated back along the bough to a fork in the trunk and waited till they’d gone.
But they didn’t go. ‘This is it.’ Tom Yew stopped right by the swing. ‘The Yew Boys’ Very Own Horse Chestnut Tree.’
‘Won’t there be ants and bees and things here?’
‘It’s called “nature”, Debs. You get it a lot in the countryside.’
Debby Crombie unspread a rug in a dell between two roots.
Even now I could’ve (should’ve) let them know I was there.
I tried to. But before I’d worked out an excuse without a stammer-word, Tom Yew and Debby Crombie’d lain down on the rug and started snogging. His fingers undid the buttons up her lavender dress, one at a time, from her knees to her sunburnt neck.
If I said anything now, I’d be dead meat.
The conker tree swished, creaked and rocked.
Debby Crombie stuck her finger into Tom Yew’s fly and murmured, ‘Hello, sailor.’ That made them giggle so much they had to stop snogging. Tom Yew reached for his backpack, got out two bottles of beer, and flipped off their caps with his Swiss Army knife. (Mine’s red. His is black.)
They clinked bottles. Tom Yew said, ‘Here’s to…’
‘…me, gorgeous me.’
‘Me, wonderful me.’
‘I said it first.’
‘Okay. You.’
They swigged their brown beery sunshine.
‘And,’ Debby Crombie added, seriously, ‘a safe tour of duty.’
‘’Course it’s safe, Debs! Five months cruising round the Adriatic, the Aegean, the Suez and the Gulf? Worst that’ll happen to me