But I was soon to find out that it could. One morning, early in the school holidays, I arrived at the shed to discover that a white envelope had been pushed underneath the door. It was addressed to me, in my father’s handwriting. It was my first letter.
The Nuttall Farm Residents’ Association,
Poultry Place,
Much Clucking in the Yard,
Cropshire.
19 July 1960
Dear Mr Owen,
May I just say, on behalf of all my fellow-residents, how delighted we are that you have decided to take up the tenancy of Mr Nuttall’s vacant cowshed.
This news has caused general rejoicing all over the farm. Some of the animals have even come out in goose-pimples, and can’t wait to come and have a gander at your new house, while the cows are simply over the moon. As for the horses, they, of course, are especially pleased to have acquired a new neigh-bour.
You may find at first that some of the smaller birds have a tendency to grouse, or even snipe. But you must bear in mind that many of these animals, far from being as educated as yourself, can only be described as pig-ignorant. In short, I hope that you won’t be cowed by any of the remarks you may have herd.
Don’t hesitate to drop round for a chat whenever you like, as my wives and I are always happy to receive visitors. We get sick and tired of being cooped up in here, as the atmosphere is positively fowl.
Yours sincerely,
Bertie Rooster
(Cock of the Walk).
The next dream that I remember is the briefest of the three, but was so vivid and frightening that it had me screaming at the top of my voice until my father came running from his bedroom to quieten me. When he asked me what was wrong, all I could say was that I’d had a nightmare, in which a man had been bending over my bed, staring into my face so intently that I was sure he was going to kill me. My father sat down beside me and stroked my hair. After a while I must have fallen asleep again.
There was one other thing I might have told him — except that I didn’t really grasp it myself at the time — to explain why the dream had been so terrifying. The truth is that I had recognized the man bending over the bed. I had recognized him because it was me. It was me, as an older man, staring back at my own young self, and my face was now ravaged with age and grooved like an ancient carving with the traces of pain.
Photography was one of my father’s hobbies. He had a little, leather-cased box camera and a home-made flash unit, and in lieu of a darkroom he would cover up the bathroom windows with black paper and fill the bath with developing fluid until one day he miscalculated and burned off all the enamel and my mother forbade him to use it ever again. Before that happened, though, he came down to Mr Nuttall’s farm to make a photographic record of Joan and me at the height of our domestic bliss.
Yes, we were now living together. Or at least, writing together — for I had warily agreed to embark upon a collaboration, in which my Victorian detective was to be transported back to the Tudor period in order to solve a murder mystery at the behest of Henry VIII himself. (This whole scenario, I seem to recall, was largely inspired by The Time Machine, which my father had been reading aloud to me at bedtime.) For this purpose another chair had been obtained from Mrs Nuttall, and we now sat opposite each other, writing alternate chapters and passing them back and forth along the workbench, in between breaks for refreshment and inspirational walks around the miniature garden. Needless to say, the venture was not a success: we never finished our story, and when we found ourselves reminiscing about it more than twenty years later, neither of us could remember what had become of the manuscript.
None the less, it was during our brief period of creative partnership that my father took his photograph. It caught us in characteristic poses: Joan sitting eager and upright, a trusting, toothy grin lighting up her face, while I half turned away from the camera, a pencil held to my lips, my head inclined at an introspective angle. My father made two prints from the negative, and gave us one each. For many years, she told me, Joan kept her copy in a secret drawer, where it occupied a special place even among her most prized possessions. But I chose to have it on show in my bedroom; and before very long, as so often happens with these childish treasures, it was lost.
Barkers Bank Ltd,
The Counting House,
Lucre Lane,
Shillingham.
23 July 1960
Dear Mr Owen,
We were most interested to hear that you have recently received a rise in your pocket money to the tune of 6d a week. With your weekly income now totalling 3s, we thought you might like to hear of some of our new savings opportunities.
May we recommend, for instance, our Bonanza Budget account? This package combines minimum investment with maximum growth. In fact one of our customers, who only opened his account last month, has already shot up to more than 6′ 6″.
Failing that, as a farm-dweller you may like to consider our Piggy Bank Special. We supply the pig, you supply the cash — and you might end up saving more than your bacon! At the end of the year, you could find yourself with a lump sum of more than £1 IS (or a ‘guinea pig’, as we like to call it) simply by depositing sixpence a week: we wouldn’t suggest anything rasher.
Incidentally, as one of our most valued customers, you are now entitled to join the bank’s social club, which meets every Tuesday at ‘The Quids Inn’ for an evening of capital entertainment and first-class cuisine: whether your taste runs to bags of dough, some royal mint or just the occasional bit of lolly, we’d be glad to have you along.
Yours in the pink,
Midas Touch,
(Manager).
There is one other dream that I can remember clearly, and it dates from several years later, when I was fifteen. On Wednesday March 27th 1968, in the early hours of the morning, I dreamed that I was flying in a small jet plane which suddenly and for no apparent reason began to plummet to the earth. I can still hear the quiet hum of the engine turned to a throaty splutter, and see the wall of dense grey cloud appear out of nowhere. The window shatters loudly and in an instant there are shards of glass hurling themselves at me, spearing my arms and shoulders, and now there is a mighty rush of air, throwing me backwards into bruising collision with the fuselage, and now we plunge, hurtling downwards at unthinkable speed, and I am hollow, my body is an empty shell, my mouth is open and everything that was inside me has been left way behind, way up in the sky, and the noise is deafening, the terrible whine of engine and airstream, and yet above it all I can still hear myself talking, for I am repeating a phrase, either to myself or to some absent listener, evenly and without emphasis, I repeat the words: ‘I’m going down. I’m going down. I’m going down.’ And then there is the final scream of metal, the piercing laceration as sections of the fuselage start to tear themselves apart, until at once the whole plane breaks up and shoots off in a million different directions, and I am in freefall, diving, unshackled, nothing but blue sky between me and the earth which I can see clearly now, rising up to meet me, the coasts of continents, islands, big rivers, big surfaces of water. I am no longer in pain, I am no longer afraid, I have already forgotten what it means to feel these things: I merely notice that the shadow of the earth has begun to swallow the delicate blue of the sky, and this transition from the blue to the black is very gradual and lovely.