Open Writing

“It’s Stan’s turn now”.

Donald, the unofficial, unelected leader of our gang of five, was quite adamant.

I had been hanging back, wondering if I would be able to pluck up enough courage. We were an adventurous bunch, never ducking out of a challenge, whether it was climbing trees or accepting a dare.

Now I was facing my biggest test. Nervously I stepped forward and planted - though not so much planted as barely disturbing the surface - a kiss on the cheek of the most beautiful girl in the school.

My lips only just brushed her face but I savoured that moment for weeks to come. It was the first time I had kissed a girl outside my family. I don’t suppose it meant a great deal to Mary - that’s not her real name - but it was a very special moment for me.

Over the next few weeks it was to be repeated several times as the five of us continued the ritual of taking it in turns to kiss her - always on the cheek - whenever she joined us on our jaunts in the local woods which became our second home during those long, hot summer days.

We were all around 14 going on 10 where girls were concerned, innocent as a new born lamb; no question of sexual arousal. We wouldn’t have known what that was.

The five of us were inseparable, the best of pals, caring for and looking out for each other, sharing our sorrows and joys and pooling our pocket money if any of us were suffering what we now call a cash flow problem.

And we shared one treasure which we valued above all else. You must remember that the time I am talking about was at the end of the 1939-45 war and to be honest I cannot recall just how Mary - I would not wish to embarrass her by revealing her real name - became our girl - or why.

She really was stunningly beautiful with long brown hair and an oval face and green-grey eyes and maybe she enjoyed the power she had over us, but I like to feel that she just enjoyed being with us.

She never walked out with just one of us; it was always with all of us, even when occasionally we had enough money to take her to the cinema, and, of course, took it in turns to sit by her and hold her hand.

I was devastated when practicing for the school sports day I felt a searing pain at the top of my right leg and fell. An Xray revealed that I had fractured my pelvis and I spent thirteen weeks in hospital, nine on my back with my leg prone between two sandbags and four weeks in a wheelchair.

When they could the gang came to see me bringing Mary with them. With the encouragement of my pals - how generous of thought they were -Mary held my hand and kissed me and when they left she kissed me goodby. I was in seveth heaven. No pangs of jealousy or resentment from the others. No, it was expected; the right thing to do.

Eventually when I left hospital my muscles were so weak I had virtually to learn to walk again.No physiotherapy in those days. I had to do it all on my own and I must have looked like a zombie as I painfully pushed one foot in front of the other.
Gradually my strength returned and eventually I felt able to return to school and resumed the gang’s regular trysts with Mary.

But tragedy then struck. One group of boys at our school in Reigate in Surrey were from London and I suppose we would now call them street wise, but that term never existed then. We just knew that somehow they were different and we never mixed with them. They had been sent to Reigate for the duration of the war and lived in a big hostel.

Then one day it was all round the school. Mary and some of her girl friends had been with them at the hostel. We feared the worst, though we had no idea what that was. But she had been our Mary and we could never look on her in the same way again. We felt betrayed. So what to do about it? Funnily enough it never occurred to us to fight the boys and anyway they were bigger and tougher than us. And for some reason we never had it out with Mary. With self-righteous indignation we just ignored her.

But that wasn’t enough. We would have to organise some kind of protest and it was then that we came up with the idea. One evening in solemn procession we walked together to her home. We formed a circle on the pavement at the bottom of her driveway.

“Are you sure you want to do this? asked Donald. I nodded. I was sure.

Slowly I pulled from my pocket my most treasured possessions. They were the dozen letters Mary had sent me while I was in hospital. Without a word I handed some of them to the gang. Then together we tore them into small pieces and tossed them into the air. We watched in silence as they floated down like confetti and settled on the ground.

Then we walked silently away before breaking into laughter. “That’ll teach her” I said. “Yes”, they echoed, “That’ll teach her”, but really it was just bravado, shielding the sadness we felt inside. Quite what we had achieved I don’t know . We never gave any consideration to what Mary or her parents would have thought when they found the bottom of their driveway littered with bits of paper, though I like to feel that Mary would have recognised them and felt some emotion.

Not long afterwards I left to go to a commercial college in Croydon and lost touch with the gang. I never saw Mary again, though over the years I have often thought about her and the great injustice we almost certainly did her. And those letters? I cannot recall a single word but oh how I wish I had kept them.