Page 13 of Little Wing
‘Son. It’s your dad. I’m just phoning. You’re not in. Just phoning to say hello. And it was nice, aye, to chat the other day. So. Your da. Yes? OK! OK! Bye now.’
And as Dougie hovered his finger over the erase button, his eyes rested upon his great grandfather’s map. And just then, he felt desperately homesick again. He’d lived in London with relative swagger all these years, defiantly called it home within months of arriving – but not tonight. Right now he knew he was but one of the millions of disparate fragments making up this frantic city; an unspectacular dull little detail in the vast mosaic of dirt and noise, of dreamt-up watercolours and Friday-night regrets.
Dougie replayed his father’s message and didn’t delete it. He just stood in silence and Colliers Wood had nothing to do with anything. He longed for Scotland, for Harris, for the place of his birth, to be back home.
February 1969
I don’t know how it happened.
But I do know how it happened.
It’s the swinging sixties after all and sex is neither a mystery nor a sin.
I don’t know why I went that far.
I do know why I went that far.
Because oh! I felt so free, so alive, so happy – so real.
We’re living in the moment, my tribe, and we’re to love life and ban the bomb and make love not war. That’s what we’re about! We’re teenagers. They call us a new breed as if they’re frightened of us, as if we should be tamed. Being a teenager in 1969 – nothing comes close! I feel sorry for other teens past and future.
It’s the best.
Or – it was the best.
But now – just now it’s not so good.
I went to find Peter. He has gone.
The whole world shuts down over Christmas – and I’ve always loved that. But when it opened up again, and cars were on the roads and shops were open and decorations were being taken down and new bicycles had scuffs and puppies were becoming tiresome, that’s when I crossed the park to the beautiful houses, to where Peter and his family were staying. I knocked at a couple of doors. Well, four actually. Not here, everyone said. And ‘not here’ is not the same as ‘not in’. There were more houses than I thought.
I gave up and walked back across the park to Joan’s and asked her.
She told me, oh – they’ve gone. They were just staying in a house over the park during the Christmas break.
I asked Joan, where can I find him?
And Joan said New Zealand or Australia – one of the two – and she thought this was hysterically funny. When I didn’t laugh so much she gave me a hug and said yes yes, he was cute – but.
And I thought if she says plenty more fish in the sea I’ll scream.
She didn’t.
She said oh dear – you have a big old pash on him, don’t you?
And at the time I just said yes I do and I rolled my eyes at myself and we laughed about it. I put on a stupid jolly tone to Joan when really it hurt my heart and messed with my head knowing that he had gone before I could see him. That, actually, he’d gone without trying to see me again.
And I didn’t even know then what I know now.
But soon it was back to school. Back to stupid irrelevant school where they force you to feel incapably young and they treat you like you can’t possibly have any views that are worthwhile or any feelings that are true. I daydreamed about Peter all the time and I was told off for not concentrating. I tried to drop his name into conversation with anyone who’d been at Joan’s that night but I started to realize that no one really knew him at all. In a roundabout way, I chatted to Martin and Gerald, trying to find out what I could, about how they knew him, if they knew where he was. Martin said they’d met him in the park the day of the party and he’d offered them a cigarette and they’d invited him along. Gerald said they knew Joan wouldn’t mind – she’d told everyone to bring their friends, to make it a night to remember.
And over and over again I’ve replayed that night I’ll never forget.
I realized how that night was last year already – though it was only a month or so ago. It’s odd – the fact that so short a time has passed but last year is now a long time ago. It’s passed. It’s past tense.
I think of how, when I was fourteen turning fifteen, if I was asked my age I’d say well! I’d say, I’ll be sixteen next year!
I wanted to skip ahead – I wanted to leap into the future. I wished time away.
