Three Year Old Legs

 

One of my earliest memories is of running towards a group of lads gathered neared my boxed up toys at the lower end of a concreted yard and thinking that I would chase them away while we waited for the removal van.

I was three.

I still haven’t learnt from that experience. I still do it. I still try to chase away groups of gathered lads.

It happened only yesterday.

For some reason, perhaps a gravitational anomaly, or a rare juxtaposition of stars, or the beating of a butterfly wing in Outer Mongolia, a group of lads who’d been walking up the road suddenly stopped outside my house.

Hidden safe from view behind the net curtain, I spied on them from my settee, . When they didn’t move on I then felt the same protective urge rising in me that I’d once felt long ago when I was only three. This must have been the same impulse that caused people long ago to build their hill forts and fortifications: an urge to defend. Perhaps this was why dogs were tamed to bark at aimless lads from other tribes that loitered close.

One lad was picking at the mortar between the bricks of my house as he listened to his mates. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. There were two who were talking and the rest were simply stuffed shirts listening with  gaping mouths. Then the sound quality of these voices changed. Whoever held their awe and attention had shifted his position. This ringleader had stepped onto my step just under the porch using it as a podium as he addressed the others; and  I instantly felt it was time to run at them pell mell, like I had when I was three. Running as if to scatter them like sheep, running to send them fleeing, running to protect my own. Determined to chase them away, I got my keys and walked to the door.

The door suddenly opening surprised them. The lad on the porch step-stepped away. I’d then expected them all to move on, but they didn’t. Instead they formed a half-circle with me in its centre; though they had all taken a couple of steps back. I’d expected them to shift and drift like freed wood further down along the bank of terraced houses, but they didn’t, they held their ground fascinated by this new diversion and then closed in.

I stepped through them to my car which for once was parked just outside my house. I was trying to look purposeful, as if I was on some sort of mission. They probably thought I was going to drive off somewhere, but of course I had no desire to go anywhere; and instead I pretended that there was something I needed  from the boot. I opened it. Of course there was almost nothing much in the boot, except for an empty plastic bag and the bicycle rack that I had left stored there.

“What’s that!” one of the lads exclaimed to one of his mates.

I must confess it did look like some form of medieval torture equipment with its black metal and black straps; and perhaps it did have its antecedents in the rack, the thumb screw and manacles that had once furnished the wettest dungeon.

They were all pressing closer to see this and anything else that I may have left  hidden in the boot. I realised then that any chance of scattering these lads was not going to work; and I sensed rapacious hands reaching out as if for a teddy bear in an opened box.

Then one of them kicked his football hard against the side of my house.

Thud, thud thud.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

He’d been on the periphery of the group, one of the gaping-mouthed ones. In a raiding party against a stronghold he’d have been the one to watch. The one who was the most dangerous and unpredictable. The one who’d never say much but should he be the one to capture you would sling you into the ditch without your life.

Behind us one of the others began a sport’s commentary, “Oh, she doesn’t like that!”

“Why not?” the football lad asked with slack jawed insolence.

I’m surprised that he can speak.

“Because it’s my house.”

“I didn’t realise that kicking a ball against bricks causes any damage.”

There was probably a golden age when whenever anyone was asked not to do something by a person older than themselves bedecked with grey hair (and I do have a few strands, well more than a few to be honest) then they would have quickly said, ‘Sorry,’ and then that would have been an end to it. They would have moved on slightly embarrassed and ashamed; but no, that doesn’t happen anymore here in deepest darkest England.

“You can’t kick the ball Jake it’s her house, ” the commentator gleefully comments. His tone revealing his bias towards his mate.

“I didn’t realise  kicking a ball against bricks would cause any damage.” Jake say again, repeating his words in a mumbled drone, as if my request is preposterous.

“It’s not that,” I say.

I’m wanting to outwit him. I want to say something that will sort him out for all time, something brilliant that will re-establish world order, and set everything right in the land, but I’ve never in all my life been able to think of the right thing to say. My words always sheer off target like a misaimed snowball, and slide impotently down a windscreen before melting  away into nothingness. I await  inspiration, but all that comes is, “because someone inside is asleep.”

He blinks at this, but it is meaningless to him. It  makes no sense to him at all; and I’m now angry and cross with myself, for this is an empty lie. There is nobody inside the house fast asleep, and I hate myself for this falsehood.

I grab the plastic bag from the boot, and slam it shut. Anybody once asleep in the house would now be fully wide awake.

As I return to the house, the lad with the ball bounces it loudly on the pavement as close to me as he dares. He looks at me waiting for my reaction

I glare at him.

He stares back, and bounces the ball hard yet again, making a sound like a fist pounding against a shield.

A battle cry goes up.

“Ohm, she’s looking at you, Jake,” says the commentator, as if we are about to circle and swing our maces at one another.

“Yeah, she fancies you Jake,” another sneers.

They all laugh.

I wheel away. I go inside. I close the drawbridge and shuttle down the portcullis. I’m trembling. I look down at my weapon. I’m holding a plastic bag. My heart is racing. I am mad. And I’m so, so cross with myself for the lie I told, for I hate lies. And I’m cross that my simple presence, which I’d wanted to be silent was not enough to shift this gang from this spot and get them moving further along. And I’m mad because now I’ve brought the worse out of them, and I’m besieged.

My heart is pounding, and within it I can feel the pounding of a three year old heart.

I feel such a fool.

Eventually however, the lads outside do drift away.

But now I’m afraid. I’m afraid they’ll come back. That I’ve become a target. That my house and car will be marked in some way. So that they will return with grappling hooks and cannon.

I do see them later. They are walking down the middle of the road, a straggling group no longer held together with any cohesion. Perhaps  broken apart by calls or text from mothers asking them to come home for their tea.

Then two younger lads pass by my car from another direction. I know them. They are neighbours. They live three doors up from me. As they pass my car they hit the wing mirror hard. It springs back into place, and they look back at it in surprise. My wing mirror has often been bent the wrong way as if it has met some hard collision, and now I know the culprits.

I look at the car. It has scratches through the paintwork which have been there now for some time. Someone’s key was held along the bright red paint and dragged. I look at the hubcaps wondering how long they will remain there, they have been stolen twice. However, the car is old now, and I have long learned not to care too much about such damage.

I don’t like the way I’m feeling. The adrenaline is still rushing through me. I try to counsel myself. Next time I’ll ignore them. Next time I’ll go into another room. Don’t run towards trouble with three year old legs, I tell myself, just let them drift away.

I fear I have set myself up as a potential crone for future torments and teasing merriment.

And then I remember that when I ran that time long ago, when I was only three, across the hard backyard where the lads had gathered that they too had stood their ground and laughed.

Next time… I’ll walk away I say…but I know that a primitive part of me still wants to protect my castle and fight for the safety of its toys.