Open Writing

Every week I bought two comics - 'Film Fun' and 'Knock-out'. I used to go down to the newsagents on a Wednesday and collect them. This particular Wednesday I was walking back home, looking at the front page when I bumped into Raymond Naylor, an older boy who lived next door but one at number fifteen.

To me he was very much an unknown quantity. He wore long trousers, was about fifteen and went to the local grammar school. There was no Mrs Naylor, I don't know if she was dead or had left his father. Anyway divorce was practically unknown in those days, except amongst film stars and rich people. All I knew was that there was only Raymond and his father living at number fifteen.

"Oh! You like English comics then?" I said I did and he asked me if I'd ever seen any of the American comics, which he preferred. "You'd like those, they're coloured and the stories are much better - more exciting. Would you like to borrow some of mine, Betty?"

I was quite flattered; he'd never spoken to me at such length before, let alone offering to lend me comics, American ones too! "Yes, I'd love to. Thank you very much, Raymond."

"Right, Betty, come round tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock. Don't tell anyone else, or they'll all want some."

I laughed, "Alright, it's our secret. Thanks a lot." And I ran happily up our back yard and into the house.

The next afternoon, happy and excited, I opened the gate of number fifteen and walked up to the door and knocked. Raymond opened it and stood smiling at me, "Come in, Betty."

I followed him into the living room. He wasn't alone. A boy called Johnny Kay, an absolutely awful boy from a particularly disreputable family, was sitting sprawled upon the sofa, with his upright penis exposed and an egg balanced upon the end of it.

I was suddenly more frightened than I'd ever been in my life and made a dash for the back door. Raymond Naylor grabbed hold of me. Then I remembered what Tid had told me and I brought my knee up sharply. Not sharply enough apparently, he hit me on the side of the head. "Oh no you don't. You'll pay for that, you little bugger!'

I was so terrified I thought I would die. Then I opened my eyes very wide and shouted: "It's my mother; she's in your back yard." Raymond Naylor let go of me as if I were on fire. I made a dash for the back door and hared off up their yard and out through the gate, as if all the devils in hell were in pursuit, then in through our gate which I locked behind me.

I sat in the lavatory with my head in my hands to help recover my equilibrium. My heart was thumping fit to burst. I said the Lord's Prayer twice over and then said, "Thank you Lord Jesus." I never told anyone. Raymond and Johnny probably did - though their version I imagine - to all the other boys, but I knew what the truth was and that mattered more than any lies they could possibly tell about me

Eva had a baby boy. She lived with her parents for a while, and then when her husband was posted abroad she went to live with her cousin. I never saw her again. At the end of the war she became a G.I bride and went to live in Texas, with her husband's family. She had another baby, again a son, and I hoped she was happy in her new country.

Several years later my mother told me what really happened to Eva. It was an appalling story. She wasn't accepted by her in-laws, who were the poorest of the poor, and her husband treated her cruelly. She died of cancer of the cervix at the age of twenty-three.