As Christmas neared, my focus narrowed. It was now too raw and dismal for golf, the short days so bleak as to have compelled even a brief adjournment from rugby. The pitch was a drowned moonscape of soupy dirt, more suitable for raising barnyard stock than for scrums and tackles. We woke each day to thick, hard frosts. From off the black ocean, the wind careened with piercing dagger-points. No longer was there loose and easy conviviality as we gathered at the bus stop outside our gate; now we pressed our arms close to our bodies, hunched our shoulders, and begged silently for the bus to arrive. When finally it appeared, we gratefully rushed aboard, to luxuriate in its warmth. Then, thirty minutes later, as we crawled into the parking lot beside the Grammar School, we wound our scarves tight around our necks, screwed our caps down around our ears, and poured out again into the cold.
It was at this point that the ordeal of winter truly began – for thus has it shaped itself in my memory.
As we exited our buses, the schoolmasters funneled the boys peremptorily around behind the main building, where we collected and milled about waiting for the doors to open. The girls, on the other hand, proceeded directly inside, where we could see them through the windows of their cloakroom, laughing at us pitilessly as we froze.
It was an agonizing ritual, repeated every morning. We waited and waited in the Siberian freeze, huddled closer and closer against the cutting wind, shivering and stamping and snorting like a congregation of elk or musk ox stranded on the tundra. The girls – brutal, merciless creatures - made faces at us from the sanctuary of their cloakroom, folded their arms around their chests in mock shivers, stuck out their lips and rubbed their eyes as if weeping in sympathy. Meanwhile, we boys clumped ever closer together and stared dumbly, our mental functions slowing. The cessation of life approached. We began to bid our private, personal goodbyes to this wretched world. We grew numb in the extremities of our limbs. The afterlife beckoned – maybe it would be warm, warm, warm, however … such a dreamy, tantalizing prospect. Then finally, at the last possible moment before the flicker of life expired, the schoolmasters flung open the doors and the mass of freezing flesh surged mindlessly toward the warmth, ears red and burning, noses runny and crusty, teeth chattering like castanets, eyes glazed and stupid. Once inside, we wandered and stumbled like mummies to our classes. Eventually, after the passage of an hour or so, our senses returned, and we remembered those who had made such sport of our torment, whereupon we glared hatefully at the girls who, from the coziness of their cloakroom, had found such high mirth and glee in our suffering.
It would be cruel and indefensible under all accepted norms were this barbarous scene to occur one time only. But no, oh no – the fiendish regimen repeated itself throughout the long, desolate winter. The bus ground to a halt in the parking lot. The girls marched smugly inside the school. We boys scurried like rodents around the back. The wind howled savagely. We hugged ourselves and turned blue in the face, as the girls chortled from their windows, until we became simply one large, insensate organism, desperate for a single spark of heat. There was no talk. No horseplay. Not an ounce of gaiety could be heard, nor the slightest wisp of jocularity. There was, in fact, scarcely any sign of life at all, other than a collective husky wheezing and the malignant drone of low, steady curses, more slurred than spoken, for our frozen lips could barely move.
Then, just as the weaker stock began to fail, the doors burst open, and the entire gelid blob quivered into motion, squeezed itself into the building, then broke apart and dissipated as we lumbered, each to our different classrooms, and slowly regained once more the capacity to think some thought other than simply surviving the next five seconds of glacial cold - colder, it seemed, than the embrace of death could possibly be, colder than the coldest water at the deepest bottom of the deep, deep Haven itself, colder than any place on the Earth or above or beneath it – but not as cold as the ghastly cold hearts of the girls, who warmed themselves in comfort each morning in their cloakroom and gloated at our misery.
Such was our morning ritual as autumn gave way to winter, and winter deepened.
End-of-term exams were approaching – but I gave them precious little thought. As I have mentioned, my focus was narrowing. I must confess, however - “narrowing” is a grossly inadequate word, far too clinical and dry. I should also be more specific, for my “narrowing” focus had a definite cause and object, in a very human form. The truth is that by December, I had become blindly and unreservedly consumed with a girl whose desk in our Third Form class sat one row to my left and two seats back. And “consumed” is still too bloodless and tame a word; it will have to suffice, however, for I do not know that a word exists for the single-minded fixation, near-demonic possession, that ruled me now, in the grip of which I was as limp and helpless as a rag in a hurricane.
I search now in the clouds for some sublime phrase, some magical trick of language – my efforts bear no fruit, however, and yield only flailing, flaccid characterizations, extracted from the imagination of a worldly adult more than thirty years removed, who is striving, but failing, to convey the howling wind, so hot it burned like fire, louder than a hundred cannons, which had once enveloped a young boy captured by his first serious attraction to a pretty girl.
We stole glances during class and contrived to find each other during the lunch break. If I observed her talking to another boy in the hallway, I was devastated. We found reasons to exchange words between classes, or walking to the bus after school. If we missed each other, I bitterly surmised that she secretly despised me and was probably at that very moment locked in carnal embrace (of which I had only the vaguest picture) with one of my imagined oafish competitors. Her hair was a shade of amber, with a lucent underglow of blonde, in something of an elfin cut, and she had an elusive way of looking me in the eye then glancing down, with a dimpled smile faint upon her lips, timorous at times, ironic at others. As if she was carrying on some amusing private conversation with herself, or perceiving some double-meaning in whatever I happened to be saying. Never could I figure it out, and it worked upon me like a spell. I felt her eyes – which were unusually blue and bright - tickling on my back. I turned and smiled when the teacher called her name aloud – Adelyn Anderson - and she stood to answer. I sought her aid with math problems and French grammar, and thought about her constantly. One day, in a bold move, I sat down beside her at lunch. After a wary moment, she asked about my life in Florida.
“Is it very hot?”
“Very,” I assured her. “Very hot.”
“Do you know how to surf? I saw it on the telly, it looked great fun.”
“Well, a little. I was just learning when we left.”
“Do you like it here? Everything must be so different.”
“Yes,” I said, “it is different. But I like it, so far anyway.”
“What does your Dad do?”
I told her he worked on the Gulf project, and she said her father worked for a fish brokerage.
“Do you have a telephone?” I asked, aflame with the notion of calling her.
“No,” she shook her head. “My Mum wants one but my Dad says we don’t need it.”
She seemed embarrassed, and I changed the subject, because I didn’t want her to think I was one of those Americans who believes himself better than people who aren’t Americans. My father had told me about those kinds of Americans. I dropped the subject of the telephone, therefore, and we chatted about which teachers we liked and which we didn’t, and I said I wished she could help me with math because I didn’t understand a bit of it, nor French either.
“And you’re so good at French!” I exclaimed. “You always know the answers! How did you get so good?”
She smiled in what I had come to recognize as her ambiguous, secretive way. “I just like it. I want to live in France one day. That's my dream. I wouldn’t mind helping you, though I don’t know I would be any good.”
“Well, you couldn’t make me any worse, could you?”
“No,” she smiled, shaking her head playfully. “You do have the worst accent I’ve ever heard! Quite the worst! Dreadful, really!”
We agreed to begin meeting in the library. She made me promise to take the work seriously, however, which I did promise. Of course, I would have agreed to recite verb declinations backwards, on my head, had she so demanded.
As we spent more time together, my absorption deepened. I took to laboring obsessively before the mirror in the morning, desperately attempting to craft my wayward hair into just the right dapper configuration – no small task, given my unruly thatch. I cultivated support among her friends, and sought to divine the true meaning behind every word that fell from her lips, every random wave of her hand, the most minute movements of her eyebrows, and generally poured enormous quantities of time, and vast mental resources, into plotting strategies within strategies for winning her affections; daring to hope I might kindle in her something like the red-hot inferno that was searing me within from top to bottom.
Then, as the end of the term approached, the entirety of my feverish fixation concentrated itself upon one single event; an event so large as to blot out and render utterly meaningless all other matters – the Grammar School's annual Christmas dance, held every year on the final Friday of the term, just before the holiday. And I approach the subject reverently even today, for still do I experience the remnants of its tug upon my emotions, feel the residue of its gravitational pull, and recall with a kind of wonderment the way it drew in the whole of my being back then.
These mundane school events come and go, of course. I had convinced myself, however, that this particular occasion, this one Christmas dance, presented a rare and unique opportunity, a special confluence of circumstances, which would never again present itself – and which I would rue forever should it pass.
It had dawned upon me that Adelyn would doubtless be walking home after the dance - and it therefore might be possible, just the slightest bit possible, if fortune smiled and all benign forces aligned harmoniously, to approach as she emerged from the girl's cloakroom and ask if I could walk her home – and Yes, Yes, there was even a chance she might smile shyly and glance to the ground and nod her assent, at which point I might be able, actually, even, God-willing, gloriously, to take and hold her hand. And at this juncture in my speculations, everything dissolved into a kind of dreamy delirium, as my imagination wallowed voluptuously in the vision of the two of us walking hand-in-hand beneath the cold, starry sky, walking and walking, walking and walking, and the dream did not end but simply resolved itself into something like a puffy cloud, drifting in a warm sky.
It was a prospect, a reverie, to which I submitted completely.
In the fullness of time, the final day of the term did at last arrive. I had swept through my exams barely conscious of whether the subject at hand was biology, history, or English literature. Why would I care? Why would anyone care? She sat behind me, one row over to the left, wearing a tight navy blue sweater over a fresh white shirt open at the collar. If I glanced back, I could discern the light playing on her heathered hair and her brow pursed in a frown, as she pondered the process of photosynthesis, explicated the origins of the War of the Roses, or the psychological depravity of Lady Macbeth. Perhaps, if I glanced back often enough, she might raise her eyes from her paper and meet my gaze – a breathtaking possibility, which loosed an electric jolt!
If I glanced back too often, however, the teacher could suspect me of some clever form of cheating. And that kind of thing would result forthwith in a trip to the Headmaster and several swift strokes of the cane upon the palms of the hand – a painful outcome much to be avoided. Indeed, my palms throbbed with the mere thought – three other miscreants and myself having had an unfortunate experience with the cane just recently, on wholly trumped-up charges.
It was vital, therefore, my still-tingling digits warned, to be wily and careful, and to peek back at my young siren as often as possible, but pull up just short of the danger point. Perhaps it would help if I glanced back in a different manner each time – once with a quick backward jerk of my head, another time gradually raising my arm as if stretching and then peering through my armpit; the next time by just barely turning my head but swiveling my eyes to the side until they hurt. Followed by feigning a cough and flailing my head in her direction while hacking and spewing - mayhaps to catch her gaze.
At some point, I would have to scribble something down on my exam paper. Till then, however, there was plenty of time to devise new means of stealing a glimpse of her angelic visage without drawing undue attention. The days were truly dwindling till the great event, and I was not about to permit all my hopes and plans to founder on something as meaningless as school exams – it certainly wasn’t Shakespeare who I was desperate to walk home from the Christmas dance!
I counted down the seconds, minutes, hours, and days. The twist and turn and churn of the waiting grew excruciating.
Then, however, suddenly, with a frightening swiftness – the day was here, it had arrived, full upon me, staring me in the face! And I was unprepared! Somehow, it had completely snuck up on me! I trembled with the sick and queasy certainty that something was bound to go wrong, that surely I must have overlooked some vital detail in the labyrinthine workings of my designs. I spent the afternoon in a dither, reviewing my plans again, front-to-back, and making certain all the accoutrements were ready. Once more, I went through all the possibilities and permutations, this time back-to-front. As evening approached, I showered, washed my hair, brushed my teeth, applied the merest dash of cologne with an insouciant flick of the wrist – such as I imagined a practiced roué might employ - carefully assembled and reassembled my infuriating and insubordinate hair, donned my reliably stylish black turtleneck and brown corduroy jacket, and convened at half-past six with a small cadre of friends and confederates - McAllister, Dunn, Hugh, Morgan, and Jenkins - in front of Johnson's store on Waterloo Square.
The hour was nigh.
Night had not yet fallen full, and the weak remnant of the departing sun was like a stubborn stain on dirty fabric. The waters of the Haven were a film of gray, and the surrounding docks and warehouses loomed and rose around us as indistinct and hulking outlines. It was a rare windless evening, but crisp already, so we hunched our shoulders, wrapped our scarves, and set off briskly for the Grammar School.
I was marching toward a destiny – or so I felt to be true, hyper-alert and tingling in every cell, with every stride, with every breath.
As we advanced, our footsteps resounded on the damp pavement. My companions yammered and chattered, but I had no interest. Whatever it was they were going on about – well, I could not have cared less. And I had no intention of speaking, myself. Should I open my mouth, I feared, only her name would emerge – and I dared not lay her name before this assemblage, knowing their talents for crass insult and mockery as I did. It was a rigid silence, therefore, which I kept. We crossed Victoria Bridge over Hubberston Pill, into Milford, and the prattle receded momentarily as I heard the gentle lap and murmur of the waters flowing below. We climbed Hamilton Terrace as it rose above the berthed trawlers and above the docks, passed the War Monument, picked up Alan Zelinski at the Marshal (I glimpsed his spectral father through an open ground-floor window, bent over a table and scrutinizing something), then turned left onto the Great North Road, following it out of town till it became Steynton Road. The temperature was dropping. My breath clouded in the air. We were buzzing with excitement, all of us, whirring like little engines, yet, at the same time, terrified; for one of the great secrets of the world is that there is nothing more tender and vulnerable than the heart of a boy before the crust of age begins to form.
The grand talk of my cohorts in hope and folly grew ever more ridiculous, the better to cloak their escalating trepidation, their terror of failing abysmally at whatever romantic fancies were throbbing within their own addled minds. Still, I held my tongue. They prodded my ribs and banged me with their shoulders, cackling and croaking like a pack of crows. The entire trek, however, I maintained a mute and monkish discipline – a reverential and adoring hush, her image hovering in the frosty twilight before my eyes.
Finally, at long last, we arrived at the Grammar School; warm and panting from our exertions, red-cheeked and flushed and, in my case at any rate, a bit woozy. In fact, as we entered the building, I suddenly felt slightly faint, as if I might pass out. Several deep breaths, however – and I had righted the ship.
“Ready, lads?” queried Morgan. “Let's not make fools of ourselves.”
Together we hung our coats and smoothed our hair, preparing to enter the arena of the great Christmas gala, steeling ourselves for a desperate, adolescent, Darwinian struggle for female favor.
And what followed was an evening of glittering youthful glory, which remains vivid and brilliant in remembrance, undoubtedly because such moments come so few and far between, and contrast so against the drab humdrum which congeals as the years wear on. And words are, for those rare times, an inadequate medium.
When I was younger, I aspired to be a writer. Two or three years after leaving Milford, I began to pen stories and sketches of my time there. Looking back now, I came upon several short sentences written during that period, a few years after this evening which occupied so much territory in the land of my memory: Above all, it was a place of first things. A girl's hand in his. After the Christmas dance, he had waited for Adelyn outside the girl's cloakroom. He felt giddy and unsteady. She emerged out the door and glanced at him for a moment, then turned her head away. Stiffly, he walked to her and mumbled, “Can I walk you home?” She smiled, nodded shyly, and then they were holding hands and walking down the long tree-lined hill. It was very cold and she had her mittens on, but one was loose. “Your mitten's falling off,” he said, and she pulled it off and shoved it into the pocket of her coat. Then he held her real hand, soft and warm. And later, when they reached her house, he pulled a tiny bud of mistletoe from his pocket and, beneath the yellow porch-light, brushed her lips with his.
I never became a writer. I became something else, went a different way. In this brief snippet, however, I captured as true as I ever could the girl who first unlocked the door of my affections, the first girl who opened to me the door of her affections, the first girl I ever kissed. And in capturing it - my lips brushing hers in the pool of yellow light, my huge, fragile, boyish anxiety dissolving into something new and calm and ardent - I somehow preserved it unmarked and inviolate in my memory, while a thousand other events have long been forgotten and slipped away into nothing.
All of this – the odious Beeker, our daily winter ordeal outside the school, my first girlfriend, the magnificent holiday dance – sloshed around my mind as I stood upon the tee-box of this sly and duplicitous fourth hole. I felt giddy beyond words to have returned, and briefly considered telling Hugh so – till out of the corner of my eye I saw him yawning a cavernous yawn. You’ll be seeing her tonight, I told myself - and struck a smooth 5-iron to the middle of the green – a neat and tidy shot. Well, I thought, maybe all this mushy meditation is good for your game?
Unaccountably, Hugh then hooked his 4-iron left into the tangled purgatory of gorse. I stared impassively after his ball. It was really quite a poor shot. Any mistake by Hugh on the course was unusual; an error of this magnitude, however, was almost incomprehensible, as unlikely as his three-putt on the first green. The immensity of the blunder immediately refocused my attention. Had my luck on this unkind hole inverted itself? Beneath his mask of unnatural tranquility, was the rekindling of our competition rattling old, imperturbable Hugh? Had the magnetic poles of the Earth reversed? Were all the fixed patterns of life unraveling?
Hugh threw me a quick glance, evidently expecting some sort of smart quip. I had resolved, however, to tiptoe passively past this sinister hole, and feared that remarking upon the peculiar fact that my ball was on the green while his was not might tempt fate too far, and cause me to four-putt like the star-crossed Beeker. I merely shrugged my shoulders, therefore, and kept my silence as we trod to the green, where I two-putted and, in contravention of all precedent, won the hole to go two up.