LITMIR.BIZ

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already understand, that our planet, throughout the eons, has been constantly bombarded by comets, meteors, asteroids and assorted bits of rock.’

      You had never before heard anyone use the phrase ‘our planet’ for the Earth. It seemed to weaken you, to make your legs tremble.

      ‘All that time,’ you murmured.

      ‘From time immemorial up to the present day.’

      ‘But it is important, Sir,’ you insisted weakly.

      ‘No. Not in itself. It’s been recorded. Rock fragments have been analysed and their iridium content noted. It’s now an item in a ledger in the Paris Institute of Geology.’

      ‘Coo, I’d like to find something like this myself, Sir! What’s iridium?’

      Loftus went on to explain that the metal iridium was rare on the surface of the Earth, but abundant in the meteoritic dust arriving from space. You found it hard to tell from his attitude whether he believed you knew more of such matters than you did, or whether he thought you a complete ignoramus on whom further explanation was wasted.

      You were entirely taken up by this connection between ‘our planet’ and the objects which arrived from distant places beyond your most fervid imagining. You were seized by a glimpse of the solar system as a whole. A new light, you felt, was lit in your intellect.

      Yes, I think I did feel that.

      I’m telling you, you did.

       If only that light had not failed throughout many years of my life … Isn’t such knowledge, well, cleansing?

      In some cases, yes.

      Mr Loftus had pronounced the little crater to be without importance. But for you it was important; it set you on what was eventually to become your future career. You were not much interested in disinterring Roman villas; you wished to concentrate on the drama of battered ‘our planet’ itself, and of the creatures cast up on the beaches of existence upon it – for instance the creatures to be found in the old red sandstone.

      As Mr Loftus extended a hand to help you out of the dig, you stammered your gratitude to him for bringing you to this remote spot, which chthonic activity had raised high above the ancient sea bed.

      ‘You may care,’ said he, in his dry voice, ‘to remember the dictum of Goethe, who says, “Think in order to act, act in order to think.”’

      ‘Please, Sir, who is Goethe?’

      ‘Why, he is the great German thinker, boy. Johann Wolfgang Goethe.’

      Boy-like, as the two of you descended the hill, you again following the legs and the boots, you managed to assure yourself that you had discovered the importance of thought – of thinking about everything – long before this Goethe fellow came upon the scene.

      Also at your school was a cousin of yours, by name Thomas Sidney Wilberforce. You never knew him well and rarely associated with him. Something about him you found disturbing; boy-like, you did not attempt to discover what it was.

      Sidney was known to his class as ‘Sad Sid’. He had suffered much as you had done; whereas you had soon grown out of it, Sid never managed to do so. His parents, Jeremy and the skittish Flo, rather like your mother, had not wanted a son. Flo had ill-advisedly set her heart on a girl, a little girl she could dress in frilly petticoats and fancy dresses, to be an image of her own, younger self.

      Jeremy, gloomy by nature, became even gloomier at the sight of baby Sidney. He felt he had failed Flo. Indeed, his sense of failure had deepened during the war, when he had done nothing heroic, had never been in action. His war service had been spent on Salisbury Plain, organizing troop movements.

      Sidney soon became aware he was unwanted; he drank in that impression with his mother’s milk. He got up to mischief in order to draw attention to himself; the effect was merely to inspire further disapproval. In the market place one day, he happened to see a small girl in a pushchair, clutching a doll. Sidney snatched up the doll and ran off with it.

      Now began a painful performance where Sad Sid endeavoured to act the part of a little girl, pretending to make a fuss over the doll, which he christened Dribble. Flo and Jeremy, entirely without understanding, were disgusted by this display. Sidney hated the doll. Dribble became a symbol of his degradation. For that reason, he took it with him everywhere. When laid horizontally, Dribble uttered a faint cry and closed its staring blue eyes with a click.

      One day, you were invited over to play with Sidney. You did not wish to go, but Mary and Flo insisted you should be friends with Sid. You were baffled by Dribble. You would not hold it when Sid invited you to. Sidney dropped the doll on a hard floor. Dribble’s china head broke open. The crude mechanism operating the eyes was revealed.

      Sidney was appalled by what he had done. His face turned as pale as ashes. You stared down at the broken head in horror, thinking of your sister, Sonia. It was almost as if a murder had been committed: you asked to go home.

      There followed a row in the Wilberforce household, about which you heard only remotely. Your parents spoke of it in a whisper. It was Sonia who found out about it and told you. Sonia was quite excited. ‘Naughty!’ she said, eyes gleaming. ‘Shuggerybees!’

      Sidney had done what he could to sort out his sexual confusions. He had persuaded a small girl called Rose Brackett to come into the garden shed with him. Sid had kissed Rose and she had pulled her panties down. Sidney had his shorts off, when the shed door opened. Jeremy stood there, forehead drawn in a frown.

      ‘You dirty little tacker,’ he exclaimed. Grabbing Sidney by the collar of his shirt, he dragged him from the shed – poor Rosie Brackett was quite ignored and ran home crying – dragged him up the garden path and into the house, calling angrily for Flo.

      As Jeremy explained briefly what he imagined was taking place – shaking Sidney by the collar meanwhile – he gave the boy the odd cuff. With each cuff, he asked, ‘Where did you get that filthy habit from?’

      ‘It wasn’t filthy,’ cried Sid. ‘I never even touched her.’

      Another cuff.

      Flo, in her apron, wrung her hands as she had so often done over her problem son, asking him, glaring down at him, ‘What are we to do with you?’

      What they did with him was send him to public school. That meant he would be away from home for most of the year.

      One great interferer in family affairs was Claude Hillman. Claude had married your father’s sister Ada, your neat little Aunt Ada. It had been another of those post-war marriages. You had heard Claude say once, when in his cups, ‘Marry in haste, repent in leisure.’ Both of your parents looked askance at Claude; their motto might have been, ‘Judge in haste, disapprove in leisure.’ But you liked lumpish old Uncle Claude, with his forced jollity, as with any jollity, however forced.

      On this occasion, you thought he came out well, by saying, ‘Sid only wanted a feel, didn’t he? What’s the harm in that?’

      To which your mother had responded, ‘The trouble with you, Claude, is you are mucky-minded.’

      He laughed, unoffended. ‘That’s true, m’dear.’

      You too could see the attractions of getting Rose Brackett into the garden shed and ‘having a feel’, as Claude put it.

      But poor Sidney was in disgrace for some while. Jeremy drove Sidney through the college gates. To Sid’s eyes, the great expanse of parade ground and forbidding buildings, all seemed to swarm with noisy boys, some running mindlessly about, some fighting, some standing still and moving their arms as if in semaphore.

      Sidney, being brave, not crying, turned to give his father a farewell embrace. Jeremy became involved with the car’s gears, staring ahead.

      ‘Well, toodle-oo, old boy! Off you go!’

      Sidney went.

      Sidney had a troubled and delayed

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