Leaving The Man Behind (short story)

I grew up before the invention of the internet. When making a phone call meant walking to the end of the street to use the phone box. When the biggest craze was the yo-yo and we all had bicycles. We had one rule to abide by; get home before it gets dark. We didn't spend hours on the x-box or PlayStation. Instead, we built swings in trees and raced our bikes through the woods.

My best friend was James Davies. Jimmy to me and the rest of the kids in school. We lived on opposite ends of the same street - he lived the posh end, close to the park. I lived the other end, closer to the school and store. His Dad was a Captain in the RAF. Mine was a steel worker in the factory. His Mum wore Chanel lipstick. I once caught my mum carefully rubbing a pickled beetroot on her lips.

We were chalk and cheese, but we were also joined at the hip. Summer break meant weeks of adventure time; hunting rabbits with air riffles, chasing sheep in the fields, building tree houses. We read comics and The Secret Seven, dreamed of changing the world and inventing something spectacular. We wondered over Apollo and even built our own space ship out of cardboard boxes and tin foil. 

Jimmy's Mum and Dad put up with me, but I knew that I was not the kind of friend that they wanted their precious James to have. They were proper middle class, I wasn't. Jimmy should have been in a boarding school somewhere, but he said that as long as his father’s invalid parents lived in the retirement home, they couldn't afford to send him away. The only time I ever saw the serious side to Jimmy was when he talked about how scared he was of his grandparents dying. As soon as they did that, he'd be sent away.

When we were nine, I saw the marks on Jimmy's back where his father’s belt had been. Jimmy said that he'd deserved it, and that it hadn't really hurt, but I could tell he was lying. Captain Davies had been in the Second World War and said that as a fighter pilot, he'd dropped hundreds of bombs on the Germans. But Jimmy told me that he'd heard him talking to his Mum one evening, and that he was actually a supply pilot, and had only ever flown around the country delivering stuff to the troops. But regardless of that, Jimmy feared his father. When he heard the boom of his voice down the street, he’d drop whatever we was doing and run as fast as he could to get home.

As carefree as Jimmy appeared, he still obeyed his father’s every word.

It was the summer of '72 and we were twelve years old. It had taken a hell of a lot of work, but we'd managed to persuade our parents to let us go camping overnight in the fields just a few miles from home. 

Jimmy had a two man tent. Nothing special, and smaller than our outhouse, but for two intrepid explorers, it was our mansion. My mother had packed us some food. A lot of food. Tinned pork sandwiches, apples and banana’s, 4 bottles of pop, and even a pack of ginger snaps. Jimmy’s mother had also supplied us with 2 water canteens and even more sandwiches. Jam sandwiches, as it turned out. Perfect fuel.

We set up camp on the edge of the field, on a rise. From under the leaves of the huge tree, we could see all of the land stretch away before us. The sheep and cows, the road cutting the landscape in two with a dark grey slash of tarmac. We were kings of our land.

We built our tent, and stored our food and blankets inside so the pretend wolves wouldn’t get to it. We then proceeded to have a great battle, with thousands of pretend troops fighting for their freedom and their lands. Jimmy won.

We talked about the girls in school, and how their bodies were starting to change before our very eyes. Jimmy admitted to kissing Edith Good behind the bike shed at lunch time. He said it was like kissing a dead fish because she had breath that smelt like a dead fish. I laughed so hard I rolled myself down the hill in exaggeration.

When the sun started to set over the horizon, and the sky burned orange, we stopped running and laughing, and sat down under our tree to eat our dinner. Silence descended on us as I tucked into my apple, but Jimmy only nibbled on his sandwich. “I wish we could stay here forever.” He said.

I knew why. “Does he hit you every night?”

Jimmy shook his head, “Not every night. Mum says that because he was in the forces, he’s used to people obeying his every word, and when I do something wrong, he lashes out in frustration. She says he loves me.”

“My Granddad was in the army,” I said, “but he didn’t hit my dad.” I didn’t know that for a fact, but I’d seen my dad without his shirt, and he didn’t have scars like Jimmy did.

“When I’m bigger and he hits me, I’m going to hit him back.” He frowned in anger, but it dissipated quickly. Quietly, he added, “I do love him, though.”

I didn’t reply. There were no words.

We scrunched up the newspaper that our sandwiches had been wrapped in, and lay back on the grass just as the stars started to twinkle in the cloudless sky.

“I want a telescope.” I said. “I’ve been saving up for one and have over two pounds so far.”

“You’ll have to keep saving until your forty at that rate.” Jimmy’s mood hadn’t lifted.

“I borrowed a book on stars from the library once. And even listened to Patrick Moore on the radio once, too.”

“If I join the forces, like my dad, I’d like to go into space. Just like Neil Armstong in ’69. I want to walk on the moon.” Jimmy grinned up to the stars, “Maybe, by the time I grow up, we’ll be in space all of the time.”

“What will you do up there?” I asked.

“I’ll fight spacemen and aliens!” he laughed, swishing his imaginary sword around above him. “We’ll have lasers and stuff to fight them with, so it’ll be easy to frighten them away.”

I laughed, not believing a word of it, but thinking how amazing it would be if it really happened. We were adventurers and we dreamt the same dreams. At twelve years old, we had the whole of our lives in front of us, and thought we’d be friends for life. Jimmy would go in to space, and as much as I wanted to go up there with him, I secretly wanted to become a teacher. Of course, I didn’t tell him that. Being a teacher wasn’t cool.

When the sky went black and the moon lit up the ground with its blue tint, we lay back and pretended that we knew what the stars were called, making up the names of the ones that we didn’t know. Giggling after naming one Edith (it was perilously close to a group of stars we’d earlier named as Jimmy’s Tongue), we both noticed the shooting star.

Silently, Jimmy pointed to it. It shot out from behind the moon, soaring slowly across the sky in a downward arch. But seconds later, something changed. Instead of shooting beyond the horizon, it changed direction, getting bigger as it went.

“What?” I asked, sitting up suddenly and staring.

“It changed direction!” Jimmy yelled, jumping up to his feet and running down to the field to watch its progress, “Did you see?” he yelled back to me, “It changed direction!”

I was more nervous than excited. It didn’t feel right at all. “What is it?” It was still growing in the sky, and though I knew it must have been hurtling through space as a ferocious speed, it looked to be moving so slowly from our vantage point.

Jimmy, now a hundred yards away from me, had stopped with his head craned back, and in the light of the moon, I could clearly see he was grinning. I made my way down to him slowly.

“It’s orange!” Jimmy said as I approached, “Look!” He pointed up and I followed his finger. “As it gets bigger we can see what colour it is. And it’s an orange light.”

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“Could be a Russian spy plane,” he laughed, “but I think it’s a space ship.”

“One of ours?”

Jimmy laughed, “We don’t have proper space ships!”

“I meant is it our spy plane?”

“Who knows!” He was spinning around with his head still up, so excited and alive. Jimmy lived for moments like this when he was a boy. That moment of discovery, or learning something new. He thrived on it.

It was still growing in the sky above us, its light now seemed more blue than orange. And then, suddenly, there was a great blue fire behind it, bleeding into the night sky and leaving a scar across it. It was entering the Earth’s atmosphere, but we thought it was exploding in front of our eyes.

And in that split second of shock, that moment when we expected a great fire ball in the sky, we held our breath. The trail of blue fire stained the night sky, but the light kept growing, now leaving that scar behind it.

Then it changed direction again. It cut a 90 degree angle in the sky above our heads, forever growing in size. And it felt as if it were coming straight at us.

I put my hand on Jimmy’s arm as I started to walk backwards back up the rise to our tent. Jimmy felt my nervousness and started to step back with me. Our eyes never left the phenomenon that was flying toward us, ever growing.  And suddenly, its light began to reflect off the grass in the next field, and that helped us judge its size. It was probably no bigger than a car, but rounder and flat. And its speed had dropped off completely. It felt as if it had seen us in the neighbouring field, and was watching us.

I noticed the silence then. And the stillness. The sounds of nature at night had stopped and the light breeze had ceased. It was as if everything had held its breath, including Jimmy and I.

And then it was over the hedge, less than a few hundred yards away from us. This close, you could make out small twinkles of red and orange within the bright blue light. Silently, it flew to us.

Shocked, afraid and in awe, we had stopped walking away. As it approached slowly, we were bathed in its light. And for the briefest of moments, it felt warm. Safe. Comfortable.

I breathed out, and with the release, came a grin. I felt Jimmy do the same next to me. I reached my arm up to touch it, but as I did, it seemed to cower somehow, lifting so it was out of my reach. But it was beautiful. A rainbow of colour in a dark world. My head felt full and fit to bursting, goose flesh bubbled up across my skin, but it was a warmth that filled my heart. Having a wonder so close, lighting up our grinning faces. And then it was gone so fast that the whizz of the air blew us both off our feet. A streak of light charted its’ unbelievable speed across the land and over the horizon.

The breeze and natures sounds came back all at once, suddenly so loud in our ears. We sat there, our legs out before us, our heads searching the sky above us. It took a long while before either of us could speak again.

“Not a Russian spy plane.” I said, surprised to hear a shake in my voice.

Jimmy shook his head. “No.”

“Did we just see a space ship?” I asked.

Jimmy turned to look at me slowly, “I don’t know.” He said. Then he got up, walked to the entrance of the tent and picked up a sandwich package. “I’m starving!” he said. And I was too. Famished. Like I’d not eaten in years.

We finished off our sandwiches, the fruit and the whole box of biscuits. We ate our breakfast for the next morning and even drank our pop. And like sulky children, we went to sleep with grumbling bellies and wild imaginations.

When the morning light woke us up, we didn’t say a word to each other. Silently, we packed up the tent and our rubbish, and walked slowly back into town.

I can’t speak for Jimmy, but I felt that I had grown up overnight. I realised how small we are, and what greater powers there are out there. That night had set me on a path for the rest of my life, taking the boy away from me, and leaving the man behind.