Stepping Outside

The abandoned ruins of the castle stood on the hill. The surrounds were an overgrown eclectic mixture of gorse bushes, broom, silver birch, a sea of bluebells in the season. A canopy above that was not too dense, space to move among the mixed woodland, nettled stingers to be avoided, muddied ditches in the wet. All was accompanied by the world weary petulance of peacocks sounding in the near distance.

All the environs were owned by ’The Gang’. It was their territory. They could spend hours there without seeing another soul. If indeed they came across a dog walker, a tweed-suited pipe smoker, a game keeper they would have wondered why they were there, would have resented their presence and would scatter away so as not as to be near the encroachment. The boys were on the edge of teenage hood.  The first twelve years of their life were slipping behind them quickly. They saw before them endless days of roaming free, their play had a strange mixture of purity and cruelty. Both characteristics came together in an odd sort of innocence. They saw the world in black and white, the wrongs were obvious, the rights were clear. They knew that they would grow to adolescence because they had seen it in their older brethren but, to them, that was 100s of years into the future.

Dawson Henderson rose from the thick grass. He had been trying to master the art of signalling by holding a green blade to his lips and blowing. His hair was tousled, his bare knees were muddied, his knee length socks hugged his ankles, his freckles contrasted with his green shirt.  Anyone watching from a short distance would have witnessed four more characters suddenly stand up and put their heads above the long grass. Two were wafting sticks with sword like cuts, windfall they had found nearby. One was wiping his nose with the sleeve of his sweater and closely studying the snot. The last arose with handkerchief trying to control a bloody nose.

The summer holidays were upon them, endless acres of freedom with an end a far horizon, They had spent the morning attacking the ruined castle which sat atop the hill, they had besieged it, stormed its walls, stood on its dilapidated turret and  cast superior eyes over the landscape near and far, They were now bored with the venture and just a little hungry.  Discussion was about which house to return to, which mother would provide the best food, which would cause the least fuss. They settled on Mrs. Henderson.

It was laundry day in the Henderson house. Bettie Henderson was out in the back garden hanging the washing on the line. Baby Margaret Henderson was sat in her playpen on the back lawn. The sun shone but there was a cool breeze, the better for the drying, Mrs. Henderson reflected. It had been a busy morning so she was looking forward to the cup of tea and biscuit which was cooling on the outside table. She had just pegged the last corner of the last of a dozen nappies when they appeared.

“Mum, we’re hungry.”

Five scruffy faces, five expectant smiling appetites,  five unheeding, unaware, carefree, self-centred bodies of buoyant boyhood. Puppies in the guise of humans.

Mrs. Henderson sighed, glanced over at the tea and biscuit and said,

“Nothing for you lot, until those hands and faces are washed thoroughly and I’ve had my cuppa tea,”

They grinned and disappeared into the house.

“And don’t make a mess’.

Forlorn hope. Getting clean and tidy was a messy business. They appeared from sink and soap to find Mrs. Henderson in the kitchen with baby now in her high chair.

“Hands,” She demanded.

5 sets of hands appeared before her palms up.

“Over”.

They flipped them over. They sat down at the kitchen table where 5 glasses of orange juice were before them. Mrs. Henderson was cutting vegetables. They noticed that the toast was already  buttered.

“So what have you been doing?”

“Playing at the castle.”

Dawson glanced angrily across at Michael. That was too much information.  Mikey Chandler had nearly been thrown out of the gang on many an occasion because whenever an adult asked what they had been doing, he told them.  That was not how it was supposed to be.

“Beans on toast. Eat up, wash your hands and out you go.  I don’t want to see you, Dawson Brodie Henderson, until 6 o’clock and I’m sure that all your mothers feel the same.”

Bettie Henderson looked at them and smiled.  She went and picked up Margaret and took her outside and popped her back in the playpen.  She disappeared into the garden shed, came out with some tools, knelt down and proceeded to weed the border. She heard the bang of the front door and assumed the boys had left.

“Let’s go to the beach and look for crabs.” Gareth Morgan was scuffing his shoes along on the dusty path. They were walking down off the golf course where the path was almost unseen beneath the prickles of the bramble and the hedgerow which formed a leafy bower. It steeped its way downhill to the sheltered muddy bay where there was no sand but plenty of rocks to roll over.

“Your mum is nice,”  Eric Farnworth didn’t speak very often but when he did he said the weirdest things.

Dawson frowned and shook his head, then said wisely.

“Trouble is that she has nothing to do all day.”

The others nodded in agreement. On the rare occasions they thought outside of themselves, they felt sorry for Mrs. Henderson. She had nothing before her but staying in the house, drinking endless cups of tea, dozing in a chair, listening to the radio, reading a book while the baby slept. She was a prisoner to leisure. Not one of them considered the clothing, the endless stream of diapers that had to be washed and rinsed, hung out on the line, the gardening that was necessary for the potatoes that they ate, the baby who had to be fed, the food they had just eaten. No, Mrs. Henderson did nothing while they had to play in the castle and were now engaged in the important business of exploring under rocks on a lively littoral. Life was immediate and present. They did not know it then but every stick they picked up, every piece of grass that they blew, every turret that they climbed, every rock that they overturned was important.  How they came to manage their adolescence, their adulthood, the vicissitudes of life’s uncertainties depended on the skills that they were practising in these moments of curiosity and imagination. John Wooden said, “Little things make big things happen”. The safe boundaries and limits of a good childhood are instrumental in managing an healthy adulthood, all those little things contribute to a whole and a future. “Wandering and wondering have long gone together,’ as Robert Macfarlane would have it.

Dear Reader, this little tale is something of nothing, but it does represent a period when the world had many problems but that youth still had something unfettered, something naïve, something wonderful, that is the ability to roam outside at will. If there is anything good to come out of the Covid quarantine it would seem to be that educators in particular and people in general have come to recognise again the value of being outside. They have renewed their acquaintance with the outdoor life.

Let me finish with these words from Stephen Graham,

“As you sit on the hillside, or lie under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.”

Thanks for reading.