David Weaver
gone but not forgotten
‘The Secret Garden’
David Weaver ã
He wasn’t really sure where ‘Smithereens’ was, but if Ernie had gone there he couldn’t do anything to change it no matter how upset he felt. But nonetheless, he still wanted to say goodbye to him and remember the fun times they’d had together.
There’d be no more twitching of Ernie’s fierce moustache that would have made any walrus waddle proudly across the ice, nor the bushy eyebrows coming together in a frown, as he lectured the boy on the terrible human waste on the battlefields of ‘The Somme’. But worst of all there’d be no more free gobstoppers to suck, whilst hanging around his cobblers shop listening to other hair-raising stories from the Great War. Come to think of it there’d be no shop left to hang around in.
But he needed to visit, for one last time, the place where he’d shared so many of the old soldier’s adventures, to remember the stories of the tanks rolling over the barbed wire, crushing it flat so that brave men could make heroes of themselves in a futile bayonet charge. The knee-deep sludge of the trenches, the biting lice that drove men mad, the savage rats that ate things he dared not think about and only rotten food for months on end.
Ernie had been a brave man, his wheezy breathing a testament of the yellow clouds of mustard gas that left him with a terrible legacy of a never-ending fight for breath. He deserved better than that but received nothing other than the admiration of a small boy who would never forget him.
There’d be no more leaning on his workbench, watching gnarled hands work miracles with a pair of worn out boots. All those clinging smells of leather and sweat would be a thing of the past, andthe tapping of shiny tacks being driven into a pair of brewer’s clogs consigned into the boy’s memories. Gone were hobnails hammered into thick soles, to clatter noisily on the bluestone pavements,; echoing around the narrow alleyways or along the hard shale paths near the canals where huge Clydesdale horses plodded along the never-ending towpaths heads hanging down as if half asleep, the heavily laden coal barges sluggishly wallowing in their wake through the narrow waterways of the grimy city. Scruffy barge dogs trotted at the feet of their masters as they strode with determined steps towards the next lock for a pint of best ale at the canal-side pub, names like ‘The Dog and Partridge’, ‘The Fox and Hare’, and ‘The Hangman’s Noose’, still plying their trade as they had for three centuries.
For those were the back streets of the boy’s childhood in Birmingham. The slums he loved more than any outsider, not born to them, could ever understand. They were his dreaming places where he wrestled with his brother on the dirty cobblestones, and rolled in rain-soaked gutters. This was where there was a real sense of belonging, a place he could always return to and feel at home no matter how far he travelled. Even the gangs of dangerous thugs would nod in recognition, for deep down they knew he was one of them, even though he walked on the other side of the street for safety’s sake.
Through the dark tunnels into the back yards of the terraced houses, was forbidden territory for a small boy. A heavy bombing raid had destroyed much of the area, and his father’s ruling had been, ‘Stay away from the deep craters, Son, they are very dangerous and some bombs didn’t explode.’
He crossed Church Lane, but instead of following his father’s orders walked into the forbidden world. A sign stood before him proclaiming in large red letters,
‘DANGER–UNEXPLODED BOMBS–KEEP OUT’
Behind the sign was a large bomb crater, with steep sides of crumbled brick and concrete.
But something over to the left caught his attention. It was an old bombsite and as if by a miracle, amidst the desolation, there was a small garden that had survived the previous attacks. White alyssum contrasted sharply with the lovely crisp blue of lobelia, whilst yellow marigolds bobbed their heads in the slightest of breezes. Butterflies danced their frenzied dances of procreation as if their time on earth was running out, and flitting over a discarded yellow sink, from a destroyed washhouse, shimmering blue dragonflies were performing pirouettes of love low over the water.
He was stunned to see tiny tadpoles sunning in the warm water of the blocked sink, and realised that life goes on despite the horror. Some already had the small buds of growth at the base of their tails that would soon, miraculously, turn into legs. The sink was slightly off balance, so the boy scrambled down into the crater and dug some loose bricks from the sloping wall. He then levelled the sink to give more area for the tadpoles to swim in. Without realising it, he was helping nature’s relentless fight-back against the destruction of man.
Staying in the garden for as long as he dared, and swearing a solemn oath to return tomorrow, cross his heart and spit three times, he nodding silent goodbyes to his new found friends; the original goodbye, to an old friend quite forgotten. He retraced his steps through the tunnel and stepped back into the dangerous world of harsh reality. Walking slowly home he worked out the lies that would cover his disobedience, and decided to say nothing about the secret place.
The air raid that night was terrifying but the fear of joining Ernie was softened by the knowledge of the tadpoles. At least there was something to look forward to in the frightened mind of the boy from the slums.
The following morning he returned to the bombsite, but there was no danger sign to greet him. The crater had been replaced by a larger one, and the secret garden had vanished into a cloud of acrid dust all that had survived had gone forever. He searched, in vain, for the slightest chance of finding even one of the tadpoles but there was nothing. Feeling responsible for leaving his friends to die alone he tried not to cry, for tough street kids don’t do such things, but the tears wouldn’t listen to reason and neither would his heart.
Many years have past since those days, and that little boy is now an old man living in a town, in Australia, called Mullockgoolie. He walks around a nearby lake at night, and watches the wildlife in all its diversity, listening to the frog’s chorus, awakening old memories long forgotten. As he peers into the lily pads for signs of tiny tadpoles he remembers an upturned yellow sink and the sky blue of the dragonflies.
This beautiful oasis is far away from those dirty streets, in that other land across the world. Sometimes the old man wonders why he was spared, to write his stories, when many others were not so lucky, and sometimes he remembers his secret garden and asks himself why it had to be sacrificed like his friend Ernie, for no apparent reason. But worst of all he has a guilty secret that will never be answered. Was it a falling bomb that detonated the waiting death beneath the rubble, or had it been patiently waiting for the footsteps of a small boy to trigger off its timing mechanism?
END
