AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN

The garden was long. How long? How should I know? I was a small child at the time. Things seem different. How small? I don't know - can I work it out? Five? Six? No. Probably older. Old enough, as they say, to have known better. Old enough to know what school was like. Old enough to know I didn't like it. Not the learning. That was all right. It must have been, otherwise I wouldn't still be doing it now, would I? It was the other kids. The way they formed groups. The way they formed gangs. Psychologists have done experiments proving committees are always more extreme in their decisions than the individuals that compose them. They egg each other on. Playground committees. Sub-committee for mocking children with different clothes. Specialist working party for making clever kids' life hell. Sub-group with special responsibility for shoving heads down toilets. Mini-task force for meeting the kid who's new to the village in a narrow empty lane and waving a knife under his nose. There were three of them involved in that. I'm sure they all had good psychological reasons. William Golding does a whitewash job.

And then there are the individuals. The leaders, sometimes. Or the people you avoid, because they scare you, because they do everything they've been told not to, precisely because they've been told not to do it. They fascinate you. Like snakes. Like the stoat and the rabbit. You can't tear yourself away. But I did. Just. Fortunately. And I still remember it. Sometimes it comes back in dreams. And then I don't sleep any more that night.

My mother was visiting her best friend in her new house for the first time. A posh house in a garden suburb. That's why the garden was so long. Trouble was, it ran right back to the edge of the council estate. And there was a path along the back fence. All kinds of things got thrown into my mum's friend's garden. That's what she was telling my mum about, while I sat there with my colouring book and my first reader and my comic. Of course, I've been back that way since, as it happens. Even driven through the council estate, when I took a wrong turning. It's laid out just as nicely and generously as the garden suburb. The variety of house-styles is a bit more limited, but the workmanship isn't noticeably shoddy. It's just that nobody ever lets the trees grow. They snap them off when they're saplings, uproot the supporting stake and chuck it through someone's window. I'm sure they're not all like it, but it doesn't need very many. So it's all extremely bare, and exposed, with great howling empty spaces.

What time of year was it? Winter, I think, maybe the Christmas holidays. Chilly, but bright, with a wind that blew the clouds over, and every now and then a colossal shower that drummed on the windows.

'Why don't you let him go out and play in the garden?' said my mother's friend. 'He looks a bit peaky. He could do with the fresh air.' From the vantage point of my present experience of life, I assume they wanted to talk to each other about some private matter - husbands, or sex, or contraception or fertility. Whatever it was, it doesn't matter. Except that it meant I was out in the garden on my own. I was mostly on my own. An only child, and quite happy about it. I had a ball to bounce, and a woolly hat on, that I wouldn't have dared to wear to school, but on my own it didn't matter and it kept my ears warm. I wandered down the garden as far as I could go. Right at the end, just in front of the wooden fence, there was a shed, quite a large one, with a padlocked door. It made a good wall for me to bounce my ball against. The windows were at the side, and there were only shrubs and grass in front, so I couldn't do any damage. I actually thought about that. You can see what a grown-up little kid I was.

I wasn't very good at ball-bouncing, so I had to concentrate hard, which was why I didn't notice the arrival of the other boy. All of a sudden, he was there, and in two shakes he'd intercepted my bouncing ball and grabbed the hat off my head. He waved it in my face and laughed. I knew that kind of laugh from the playground. It meant that there was nothing I could do. If I pleaded with him, he'd only taunt me more. If I walked away from him, he'd dance round me and wave it in my face, until I just had to try and grab it, and then he'd probably take my outstretched arm and give me a Chinese burn, or push my fingers back till I thought they were going to break. I knew it all in advance. It wasn't just imagination, it was also memory. Finally, he'd throw the hat somewhere completely inaccessible, probably after he'd rubbed it in the mud or torn it, or soiled it in some other unspeakable way, and then, at last, he would go away, and after I'd made sure he'd really gone I would be free to sit down and cry, for ages and ages. Sometimes I wonder how I ever got through my childhood.

To start with, though, he didn't do any of those things. He just looked at me. And then it began to rain, big, heavy drops, but quite scattered.

'Got a key?' he said, nodding towards the shed. I shook my head. He laughed, fished a piece of wire out of his pocket and had the padlock open in seconds. We both dived into the shed as the heavens opened.

Why did I go in there with him? Was I afraid of getting wet? That must be silly. It wasn't far back to the house, even if I thought the garden was long. Do I really not know? Or do I just not want to say? Make up your own mind.

The shed was dark, despite the window. It was a very small window, and partly blocked with all the jumble in the shed. A lot of it seemed to be cans of something. Maybe it was the time of the Suez crisis - I don't know - that's a later reconstruction - and they were hoarding petrol, just in case.

I assume it was because the shed was dark that he pulled out the box of matches and lit one. Maybe it was just because he knew he shouldn't. I told him - it didn't take any courage - it was just an automatic response - as the rain drummed on the roof, louder and louder, I said, 'You shouldn't play with matches.' Of course, he just laughed, and lit another one.Then he said, 'You try.' Well, that surprised me - being given the chance to join in his game. It was almost - friendly, and I certainly wasn't used to that. 'No, thank you,' I said, with that awful priggish politeness that only the very young and very self-righteous can muster.

But he kept his eyes on me while he struck another, and watched it burn down, dropping it just before the flame reached his fingers. 'Go on,' he urged, 'it's exciting, and no one'll see, if that's what you're worried about.' After long hesitation, I put out a hand, expecting him all the while to do something dreadful to me.

But he didn't. He just offered me the box, and I took a match out and struck it. He was right. It was exciting, even though I felt guilty. Perhaps because I felt guilty. I watched the flame for quite a while. I watched it too long, because it burnt my finger, and I dropped it with a scream, somewhere on the floor. He laughed and took the box back from me. 'That's not the way you do it,' he said, 'it's like this.' And he lit one and threw it at me. Then he threw another and another, and I dodged, and they fell on the floor and kept on burning. Then he pulled out my hat, which he'd stuffed in his pocket, and set light to it, and waved it round in front of my face. I backed away, and found I was against the door, and I fumbled the catch without looking, and slipped out and slammed it behind me - and then I pushed the hasp back over its metal loop, slipped the padlock back in place and snapped it shut.

It was only then - I swear it was only then - that I noticed the smoke and the flames and the screaming. There was nothing I could do, so I ran back to the house, as fast as I could. But it was a long garden, a terribly long garden, and before I had covered even one third of the distance, I heard an explosion behind me. I turned, reluctantly, and saw no shed at all, just a mass of flames shooting into the air. The rain had stopped, but it would have made no difference at all to that inferno. Out of breath - I was never a very fit little boy - I trudged back to the house, wondering why my mother and her friend hadn't heard the noise and come at once to my rescue.

As I opened the back door, my mother fell on me with a typically maternal mixture of anger and concern. 'Come in,' she said, 'you must be drenched! You'll catch your death! Where did you get to? I went out to see where you were when that rain came, and you weren't anywhere to be seen! I've never known you to be disobedient before - you didn't go out of the garden, did you? You didn't go into the road?'

'Don't fuss, Meg,' said my mother's friend, 'he's not wet at all - look - dry as a bone!' And of course I was. I'd sheltered in the shed. My mother paused for breath. She knew something was wrong, knew it because I knew it, too. There's a danger in being too close to your mother.

'Where's his ball?' she said. 'Where's his hat?'

'They must be in the garden somewhere, Meg,' said my mother's friend, all reasonable. 'Let's go and look.' Well, I wasn't too sure about that. It was a miracle they hadn't heard the explosion, and I was beginning to feel responsible for it, in a funny kind of way. But they were bound to find out what had happened sooner or later, so I thought I'd better get it over with. I didn't say a word, though. I just followed them.

When we got to the end of the garden, there was no sign of smoke or flames. Just a large black patch where the shed had been, and a charred area on the fence behind. The shrubs had a kind of lopsided air, as though they'd been pruned a bit savagely on one side only, but they all looked healthy.

'What on earth happened here?' asked my mother. 'Bonfire get a bit out of hand?'

'No,' said my mother's friend. 'It was rather a nasty incident. Happened in the summer - before we moved in. Some lad got in over the fence from the back - you know - from there - and broke into the shed - he must have lit matches to see if there was anything worth stealing - and whatever was in the shed was very inflammable - he was killed, poor boy - quite a big explosion by all accounts - there it is!' She had found my hat, caught on the branches of one of the shrubs, and on the ground beneath it was the ball, neither of them the worse for wear. I was beginning to wonder if I hadn't just let my imagination go too far. You know what solitary children are like for making things up.

'There's a lesson for you,' said my mother, as we walked back to the house. 'Never play with matches.' She took me by the hand, and we were both surprised, I think, when I cried out in pain. On one of my fingers, a large blister was slowly becoming visble. 'How on earth did you get that?' she asked, as we entered the kitchen.

'Oh, Meg,' said my mother's friend, slapping a dollop of butter on my hand, 'don't enquire too closely - when will you ever learn that boys will be boys?'

Did she ever learn that? No, I don't think so. But did I learn anything from my adventure at the bottom of the garden? Yes, I did. While my mother and her friend went off into the front room to continue their private discussion, I licked off all that butter until my blister hurt again, because I'd learnt that pain is the guarantee of truth.

20th December 2000 8.30pm to 11pm (first idea and first para 10/12/1997)