There was of course no socialization between us peasants and the castle, not even in the old feudal sense: no Christmas parties for the estate staff, no village fêtes in the castle grounds, nothing like that. Sir Leon was a good and fair employer, but his wife, Lady Kira, my dear ma-in-law, called the shots at home.
Scion of a White Russian émigré family, Kira was more tsarist than her ancestors in her social attitudes. She believed servants were serfs, and anything that encouraged familiarity diminished efficiency. For her the term servant covered everyone in the locality. In her eyes we all belonged to the same sub-class, related by frequently incestuous intermarriage, and united in a determination to cheat, rob and, if the opportunity rose, rape our superiors.
I dont think anyone actually doffed their cap and tugged their forelock as she passed, but she made you feel you ought to.
So when Sir Leon suggested to my dad I might like to come up to the castle one summer day to play with the young uns as he put it, we were both flabbergasted.
It turned out they had some house guests who between them had five daughters and one son, a boy of my own age, and Sir Leon felt he needed some male company to prevent his spirit being crushed by the monstrous regiment (Sir Leons phrase again).
I didnt want to go, but Dad dug his heels in and said that it was time I learnt some manners and Sir Leon had always been good to me and if for once I didnt do what he wanted, hed make bloody sure I didnt do what I wanted for the rest of the summer holidays and lots of stuff like that, so one bright sunny afternoon I clambered over the boundary wall behind Birkstane and walked through the forest to the castle.
As castles go, its not much to write home about, no battlements or towers, not even a moat. It had been a proper castle once, way back in the Middle Ages, I think, but somewhere along the line it got bashed about a bit, whether by cannon balls or just general neglect and decay I dont know, and when the family started rebuilding, they downsized and what they ended up with was a big house.
But thats adult me talking. As I emerged from the trees that day, the building loomed ahead as formidable and as huge as Windsor!
Everyone was scattered around the lawn in front of the house. With each step I took, it became more apparent that the Sundaybest outfit that Dad had forced me to wear was entirely the wrong choice. Shorts, jeans, T-shirts abounded, not a hot tweed suit in sight. I almost turned and ran away, but Sir Leon had spotted me and advanced to meet me.
Uggh grrr, he said in his pretended wolf-speak. Wolf, my boy, so glad you could make it. You look like you could do with a nice cold lemonade. And why dont you take your jacket and tie off bit too hot for them on a day like this.
Thus he managed to get me looking slightly less ridiculous by the time he introduced me to the kids.
The girls, ranging from eleven to fifteen, more or less ignored me. The boy, stretched out on the grass apparently asleep, rolled over as Sir Leon prodded him with his foot, raised himself on one elbow, and smiled at me.
Johnny, said Leon, this is Wolf Hadda. Wolf, this is Johnny Nutbrown. Johnny, why dont you get Wolf a glass of lemonade?
Then he left us.
Johnny said, Is your name really Wolf?
No. Wilf, I said. Sir Leon calls me Wolf.
Then thats what Ill call you, if thats all right, he said with a smile.
Then he went and got me a lemonade.
I got no real impression of Johnny from that first encounter. The way he looked, and moved, and talked, he might have been a creature from another planet. As for him, I think even then he was as unperturbed by everything, present, past or future, as I was to find him in later life. He took the arrival of this inarticulate peasant in his stride. I think he was totally unaware that Id been brought along to keep him company. I cant believe that being the sole boy among all those girls had troubled him for a moment. That was Sir Leon imagining how he might have felt in the same circumstances.
A tall woman, slim and athletic with a lovely figure and a face whose features were almost too perfect to be beautiful came and looked at me for a second or two with ice-cold eyes, then moved away. That was Lady Kira. The ice-cold look and the accompanying silence set the pattern for most of our future encounters.
Ive little recollection of any of the other adults. As for the girls, they were just a blur of bright colours and shrill noises. Except for Imogen. Not that I knew it was Sir Leons daughter to start with. She was just part of the blur until they started dancing.
Most of the adults had moved off somewhere. Johnny, after two or three attempts at conversation, had given up on me and gone back to sleep. The girls had got hold of a radio or it might have been a portable cassette player, I dont know. Anyway it was beating out the pop songs of the time and they started dancing. Disco dancing, I suppose it was it could have been classical ballet for all it meant to me the music scene, as they term it, was an area of teenage life that entirely passed me by.
But presently as they went through their weird gyrations, one figure began to stand out from the half-dozen, not because she was particularly shapely or anything in fact she was the skinniest of the lot but because while the others were very aware of this as a competitive group activity, she was totally absorbed in the music. You got the feeling she would have been doing this if shed been completely alone in the middle of a desert.
The difference eventually made itself felt even among her fellow dancers, and one by one they slowed down and stopped, till only this single figure still moved, rhythmically, sinuously, as though in perfect harmony not only with the music but with the grass beneath her feet and the blue sky above, and the gently shimmering trees of the distant woodland that formed the backdrop from my viewpoint. Unlike the others, she was wearing a white summer dress of some flimsy material that floated around her as she danced, and her long golden hair wreathed about her head like a halo of sunbeams.
I was entranced, in the strictest sense of the word; drawn into her trance; totally absorbed. I didnt know what it meant, only that it meant something hugely significant to me. I didnt want it to stop. I wanted to sit here and watch this small and still totally anonymous figure dancing forever.
Then Johnny who, unseen by me, had woken and sat up, said, Oh God, there goes Imo again. Turn on the music and it sets her off like a monkey on a stick!
His tone was totally non-malicious, but that didnt save him.
I punched him on the nose. I didnt even think about it. I just punched him.
Blood fountained out; one of the remaining adults maybe it was Johnnys mother had been looking our way, and she screamed. Johnny sat there, stock-still, staring down at his cupped hand as it filled with blood.
I just wanted to be as far away from all this as I could get.
Again without thought, I found myself on my feet and heading as fast as I could run towards the welcome shelter of the distant woodland.
My shortest line took me past Imogen. She had stopped dancing and her eyes tracked me towards her and past her and I imagined I could feel them on me still as I covered the couple of hundred yards or so to the sanctuary of the trees.
That is my first memory of Imogen. I think even then, uncouth and untutored though I was, I knew I was hers and she was mine forever.
I just wanted to be as far away from all this as I could get.
Again without thought, I found myself on my feet and heading as fast as I could run towards the welcome shelter of the distant woodland.
My shortest line took me past Imogen. She had stopped dancing and her eyes tracked me towards her and past her and I imagined I could feel them on me still as I covered the couple of hundred yards or so to the sanctuary of the trees.
That is my first memory of Imogen. I think even then, uncouth and untutored though I was, I knew I was hers and she was mine forever.
Just shows how wrong you can be, eh, Elf?
ii
Ive just read over what Ive written.
It strikes me this is just the kind of stuff you want, Elf. Childhood trauma, all that crap.
Except maybe I havent made it clear: I enjoyed my childhood. It was a magical time. Do you read poetry? I dont. Rhyme or reason, isnt that what they say? Well, Im a reason man. At school I learnt some stuff by rote to keep the teachers happy but I also learnt the trick of instant deletion the minute Id spouted it. The only bit thats stuck doesnt come from my schooldays but from my daughter, Ginnys.
It was some time in that last summer, 08 I mean, it was raining most of the time I recall, perhaps thats why Ginny got stuck into her holiday assignments early.
At her posh school, they reckoned poetry was important, and one of the things she had to do was write a paraphrase of some lines of Wordsworth. She assumed because I was a Cumbrian lad, Id know all about him. A father doesnt like to disappoint his daughter, so I glanced at the passage. A lot of the language was daft and he went all round the houses to say something, but to my amazement I found myself thinking, this buggers writing about me!
He was talking about himself as a kid, the things he got up to, climbing steep cliffs, moonlight poaching, going out on the lake, but the lines that stuck were the ones that summed it all up for him.
Fair seed-time had my soul and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.
That was me. I dont mean fear of being clouted or abused, anything like that. I mean the kind of fear you feel when youre hanging over a hundred-foot drop by your fingernails or when the nights so black you cant see your hand in front of your face and you hear something snuffling in the dark, the fear that makes your sense of being alive so much sharper, that lets you feel the lifeblood pounding through your heart, that makes you want to dance and shout when you beat it and survive!
Do you know what Im talking about, Elf? Or are you stuck in all that Freudian clart, where everythings to do with sex, even if youre dealing with kids before they know what sex is all about?
Me, I was never much interested in sex, not even after my balls dropped. Maybe I was leading such a physical life, I was just too knackered. Of course my cock stood up from time to time and Id give it a pull and I enjoyed the spasm of pleasure that eventually ensued. But I didnt have much time for the dirty jokes and mucky books and boasting about what theyd done with girls that most of my schoolmates went in for.
Not that I didnt have the chance to learn on the job, so to speak. Despite me ignoring them as much as I could, most of the girls seemed more than willing to be friendly, but I couldnt see any point in wasting time with them that I could have spent scrambling up a wet rock face!
So what youd likely call significant sexual experience didnt come my way untilwell, let me tell you about it.
Or rather, let me tell myself. Im not at all sure I shall ever let you see this, Elf, which means I can be completely frank as Im reserving the right to tear it all to pieces, if thats what I decide.
So lets go back to me taking off into the woods, leaving Imogen staring after me, Johnny Nutbrown bleeding from the nose, his parents puce with indignation, Sir Leon hugely disappointed and Lady Kira flaring her nostrils in her favourite what-did-you-expect expression.
Of course Im just guessing at most of that, apart from Johnnys nose. What Im certain I left behind was the jacket and tie Id taken off at Sir Leons suggestion.
He came round to Birkstane with them that evening.
I was in my bedroom. Naturally Id said nothing about the events of the day to either Dad or Aunt Carrie, just muttered something in reply to their question as to whether Id had a good time.
I heard the car pull up outside and when I looked out and recognized Sir Leons Range Rover, I thought of climbing out of the window and doing a bunk.
Then I saw there was still someone in the car after Sir Leon had climbed out of the drivers seat.
It was Imogen, her pale face pressed against the window, staring up at me.
For a moment our gazes locked. I dont know what my face showed but hers showed nothing.
Then Dad roared, Wilf! Get yourself down here!
The time for flight was past. I went down and met my fate.
It wasnt as bad as Id feared. Sir Leon was very laid back about things. He said boys always fight, its in their genes, and he was sure my blow had been more in sport than in earnest, and Johnnys nose wasnt broken, and he was sure a little note of apology would set all things well.
Dad stood over me while I wrote it.
Dear Johnny, Im really sorry I made your nose bleed, I didnt mean to, it was an accident. Yours sincerely Wilfred Hadda.
Dad also wanted me to write to Lady Kira, but Sir Leon said that wouldnt be necessary, hed pass on my verbal apologies.
As he left, he punched me lightly on the arm and said, Us wolves need to pick our moments to growl, eh?
I expected Dad to really whale into me after Sir Leon had gone, but he just looked at me and said, So thats a lesson to us both, lad, one I thought Id learned a long time back. My fault. Folks like us and folks like the Ulphingstones dont mix.
Because theyre better than us? I asked.
Nay! he said sharply. The Haddas are as good as any bugger. But if you put banties in with turtle doves, youre going to get ructions!
And that was it. He obviously felt in part responsible. Me, I suppose I should have been delighted to get off so lightly, but as I lay in bed that night, all I could think of was Imogen, and why shed accompanied her father to Birkstane.
I found out the next day. She wanted to be sure she knew how to get there by herself. I left the house as usual straight after breakfast, i.e. about seven a.m. Dad got up at six and so did Aunt Carrie. Breakfast was the one meal of the day she could be relied on for, so long as you were happy to have porridge followed by scrambled egg, sausage and black pudding all the year round. If I decided to have a lie-in, the penalty was I had to make my own, so usually I got up.
It was a beautiful late July morning. The sun had been up for a good hour and a half and the morning mists were being sucked up the wooded fellside behind the house, clinging on to the tall pines like the last gauzy garments of a teasing stripper.
I hadnt any definite plan, it might well turn into a pleasant pottering-about, basking kind of day with a dip in the lake at the end of it, but in case I got the urge to do a bit of serious scrambling, I looped a shortish length of rope over my rucksack and clipped a couple of karabiners and slings to my belt.