The Willow Pond. Mervyn Linford
At any moment messages of fight or flight would be communicated throughout our bodies from a million and one as yet unsuspected ductless glands. The stomach would lose its pound of flesh and take on a ton of lead as compensation, and the heart like a manic balloon would expand to the point of bursting in its prison of rattling ribs. By the south-porch a freshly dug grave with its attendant mound of excavated earth waited for that band, of by now, somewhat dispirited ghost-hunters. Secreted within that macabre chamber our unanticipated assailants were prepared. At the prearranged instant they arose wailing in unison from the grave, each with a writhing Medusa-like crown of turf attached to his loutish skull. Nothing I could say now could possibly describe the shock of that chimerical moment. Me and my, for once, struck dumb as well as dumbstruck companions were, in accordance with the myth, petrified. Having neither the courage nor the requisite magical accoutrements, when blood, adrenalin and everything else necessary for the revivification of the frozen metabolism had returned to its rightful place - we legged it into the night.
Even before Halloween, nay, even before the very end of summer itself, Guy-Fawkes was already being planned, prepared for and discussed. September, that sweet and sour, sloe-black, mellowest of months found us after school and at weekends foraging the hedgerows like a tribe of ragamuffin pygmies. It was the land of the blackberry. Of dew-webbed and spidery early morning grasses, where hawthorn and brier, blackthorn and bramble, were crystal diademed and shot through with misted watery sunlight. If asked to chose a favourite month there would of course be twelve near equally praised contenders. But September, that equinoctial, pivotal world between light and darkness, garlanded with flowers, bulging with fruit and illuminated by the kindled fires of autumn leaves, wins by a wisp of gossamer. Nothing burns quite so gently as the pallid candles of the wayside toadflax. No lanterns glimmer with a more pale and feathery light than those of the wild-hop. What diffuse glow of summer in retreat could compare with the smoky heads of a field of scabious? What is more seasonally satisfying than to see on the looping staves - of the as then - high-tech, telegraphic wires, the crotchets and quavers of gathering swallows adding their valedictory music to the year’s unsung lament?
Into that dreamy, moist-eyed eclogue of romantic idealism marched Pitsea’s answer to the Seven Dwarfs. Hi, Ho, indeed, was the order of the day. Axes, single and double-headed, saws, single and double-sided, ropes and Powerful Pierre mentalities were ready to be swung, drawn and tugged into lumbering action. Into that rustic idyll the most environmentally unfriendly brotherhood since the demise of the dodo itself, was about to be unleashed. Trees of all species and sizes, that had done no harm to anybody - other than as monstrous anthropomorphisms from the pens of demented fairy-tale writers - were about to be decimated. This yearly, uncalled for, unskilled and unsupervised pollarding reduced some of the most precious of nature’s gifts to but quivering shadows of their former selves. Bonfire mania spread throughout the neighbourhood like an outbreak of rabies. Hydrophobic adolescents, foaming at the mouth, could be seen dragging their intractable cargoes from all points of the compass. How the countryside ever managed to survive those perennial ravages is beyond comprehension. Suffice it to say, that survive it did, if only at a later date to be covered by brick and concrete and surrounded by ring roads and flyovers. But that’s another story.
In the large field bordering our estate two of the most important bonfires in the area grew, like wigwams, from late September right up to the emblazoned night itself. One, for the sake of clarity, we will call Linford’s. The other - at the opposite end of the field - we will call, in deference to its eponymous builders, Bates’. Wigwam was the appropriate metaphor. Usually on friendly terms, at that particular time of the year the tribes divided into two separate warring factions. The pilferage of hard won timber and the likelihood of premature ignition were constant hazards. Any forced absence from the danger zone entailed coming to terms with the neuroses creating symptoms of uncertainty. At school, concentration on the ‘Three-R’s’ - always difficult - was next to impossible. Bedtime - that plague of all right-minded infants - become worse than the little death it was already reputed to be. One wanted, and needed to be on perpetual guard. The honour of the clan was at stake. There was a difficult problem to resolve concerning those autumnal proceedings so beloved by the pyromaniac. One of my most special friends belonged to the opposing camp. Eddy Bates, now there’s a name to conjure with even after all these years. At the risk of mixing my already mixed metaphors even further, I would have likened us to the infatuated offspring of rival ranch-owners. You’ve all seen the movie. You know the scenario. The difference in our case - as you’ve no doubt guessed by now - is of being of one and the same gender. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t turning into a story about rampant youthful homosexuality. We’d been known to indulge in the trousers round the ankles, willy-waggling bit. What healthy young buck of the wildwood hasn’t? We had even - in the sight of one and other I must add shame-facedly - experienced the wide-eyed, breath-convulsing guilt of un-climaxed masturbation. “Forgive me father for I have sinned.” But I can say in all honesty that our relationship was of the good old-fashioned dib-dab-dob, help an old lady across the road, platonic variety. Those of you looking for more spice would do better to find a second-hand copy of this book. The relevant pages will become instantly apparent owing to their dog-eared, dowdy, well-thumbed accessibility!!! No, the problem was simply the one of reconciling our year round blood brotherhood with that seasonal breakdown of tribal relations. Somehow we managed to. Nothing could stop us coming together in the name of such unutterable delights as penny-for-the-guy, pseudo begging, and in my case profanity to boot - or the equally enjoyable but far more dangerous pursuit of gunpowder, treason and pre-festivity pyrotechnics. In general the guy was a sorry looking affair, something of a cross between a drunken scarecrow and a pile of dirty laundry. Artistic endeavour and sartorial elegance were not on the agenda. The sole function of that poorly trussed bundle of rags and screwed up newspaper was an extortive one. We trundled that lolloping sprawl of an effigy on the top of the rusty chasis of a squeaky wheeled, tyre-less old pram, down to the local hostelry. There, in the dark, dank, alcoholic fug of beer-swilling, smoke-billowing autumn, we set up shop. “Penny fer the guy mista!” “Piss orf!” came the slurred retort. Undeterred we kept up a barrage of persistent banter in the face of every insult imaginable. In the end - as we always knew it would be - victory was ours. Those, half-cut and teetering on the borderline of sobriety, were soon to become imbued with the spurious bonhomie long associated with the company of John Barleycorn, and stagger merrily across the Rubicon. In that newfound state of stupefied philanthropy, pennies in the bright alchemical wonder of bleary moonlight were miraculously turned to silver. Those once insensitive, hostile brutes were themselves transformed into earthbound Agnus Dei - Whatever the plural for that is in Latin! Along with the money, an unquenchable shower of crisps and lemonade came tumbling from the hands of saints. “Hallelujah Eddy! Hallelujah!"
What was to be done with the accumulated bounty? Sweets were always an option and would be succumbed to, but the futures to be most invested in were fireworks. Legendary names at the forefront of the market - then as now - were Paynes, Brocks and Standard. Whether in boxes with star-spangled, volcano erupting lids, or under glass and loose in irresistible rows - like lessons in a multicoloured Euclidian geometry - they were the prizes valued above all others. In the middle of a tumbledown parade of shops, in what was euphemistically known as the High Road, there stood an emporium of dusty old-world splendour known by the less than politically correct name of The Jew Boys. The proprietor, a long-suffering, skinny, rheumatic wheeze of a man, was the living denial of the oft-cited, much fabled, symbiotic relationship between wealth and Jewishness. There, there was poverty in extreme. And what did the cowardly multitudes of local reprobates do about it? I’ll tell you. Like the very plagues of Egypt itself, we descended upon him. We mercilessly tormented that man at every available opportunity. And worse - like the voracious locusts that we were - in one way or another we took the unleavened bread out of his deserving mouth. If anything in my despicable past should sentence me to the thermal depths of eternal suffering, the treatment meted out to that poor, defenceless upholder of the Sabbath should be at the head of the list. The details of our many taunts and jibes shall, out of a sense of shame and genuine atonement, remain unspoken. All that needs to be related here are the bare incriminating facts of our sweets-cum-fireworks subterfuge. Expensive fireworks were kept in a display-cabinet at the front of the shop. For some unknown reason, squibs, jumping-crackers and tuppenny-canons were stored in tin boxes behind a curtained door leading on to his living quarters. He tried his