A Wee Story

Guide Camp Loch Lomond 1963


He was eight and the sun was uncomfortable on his neck. They had stopped the car so his father could shout. Understandable, his mother used to say. The war. Look at the scars. The scars you couldn’t see. A door wrenched open and the row receded to a rim of hot tarmac. Beyond their silhouettes, water dazzled. There was the sound of a blow- his father kicking something- the boy could tell it wasn’t a punch. He walked through the trees. The grass was soft like sand or sponge. Cries, like birds, faded as he moved deeper, to where light swam through tall branches. He was dizzy but unafraid.

The wood thinned to a vision: hundreds of girls in a field of flowers. He was passed from one group to another in a sunlit dream. He had hot soup. He was kissed. He was proposed to and he married many times. When his frantic parents came he hid deep in the perfumed pleated skirt of his latest love.

They cried. Apologised as if they had caused the magic that had swallowed him, but for the rest of that day and many hundreds more he didn’t hear a word they said.