|
When he entered the woods, he caught himself checking his pockets. He
smiled. Of course there was nothing there that he needed now, except for
the pear drops and lemon sherbets. Years ago they would have been stuffed
with all sorts of other paraphernalia that was essential: string; compass;
I Spy book of the day; whistle; pocket microscope/telescope bought from
Exchange and Mart; notebook and pencil; and his most prized possession,
a Swiss Army Knife with more blades than anybody knew what to do with.
He had used some of them quite a lot, like the scissors, main blade, bottle
opener, tin piercer and fishing blade, but others always remained a mystery,
right up until the knife had been stolen in a burglary. When he arrived at the edge of the wood, he felt a twinge of disappointment. At the corner there was no longer the broken chain-link fence. Instead, there was a stile that made access to the wood easy but took away the thrill of doing something not quite right. He climbed over the stile and began walking along the perimeter road at the top where it looped round in a circle. To his left, a set of steps led up to the main road and the flats at the top of the estate. Opposite these was the old laundry block, which had now, he saw, been abandoned. It used to house several industrial washing machines and driers that could be used by people on the estate. He used to climb in through the window to get a drink of water from the tap when he played on the estate. Smiling, he carried on, remembering the way the estate maintenance men used to tie their petrol mowers to ropes and let them run down the hill to cut the grass before pulling them back up to cut another strip. The small wood to the left blocked the view of the old Police College. In those woods, one of his cousin’s friends had cremated his white rat. Obviously too bad a character for the hallowed ground of All Saints’. He turned left, following the line of the wood towards a block of garages. Between the wood and the garages was a gap of perhaps fifteen feet, filled with grass cuttings and other detritus dumped by the estate maintenance men. He stopped, remembering the yells of joy that used to echo around when he and his friends used to climb onto the garage roofs, run along and jump as far as they could off the end, into the giant compost heap. That was not allowed, of course, and they were always being chased away by adults out to spoil their fun. But they always returned later. |
He
automatically popped a pear drop into his mouth, and took the first footpath
that bore left from the main path through the woods. It was the one that
led round to the edge of the housing estate. At the corner of the wood,
where it bordered the estate, there used to be a chain-link fence next
to a brick wall. Children used to climb onto the wall, then step on the
fence and leap into the woods. This meant that the fence was nearly always
broken and you could squeeze through the break. Even adults could do it
if they tried.|
|
|
