The Comrade Summer

By Peter Deadman

Unlike much of my childhood, the summer I was eleven stands out clear in my memory. It seemed to be hot for months on end. The tarmac oozed as the roses wilted and the cropped grass turned brown. It was the summer I lived on my bike, like a cowboy in the saddle.
      Something had happened to me in the spring of that year. Close to the old brick wall at the end of our back garden grew an apple tree. One morning I climbed it and sat on the wall with my head right among the blossom, just as the sun rose over the roofs of our suburban cul-de-sac. I'd never really noticed apple blossom before, with its fragile pinks and whites and secret reds. The sun glowed through the fresh leaves and warmed my face and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of beauty and peace, an absolute sense of my place in the world and of my life stretching thrillingly before me.
      The excitement stayed with me as the long summer holidays began. I would wake hours before my parents, jump into shorts, t-shirt and sandals, and go out into the cool garden to eat my bowl of cereal. Then I would hurry to leave the house before my parents appeared and made everything ordinary.
             Most mornings I would cycle to the swimming pool and wait for the doors to open. I loved racing through the empty roads and diving and somersaulting in the echoing pool, and I loved the memory of chlorine that hung on my skin all through the day. I would be back home, with my mother frying eggs, when my father was still in his pyjamas.
             "Here he is at last, my fish of a son," my mother would say. "Come and eat," but all I wanted was to drop my wet things and rush back into the sun, to ride up and down the road until Malcolm had finished his chores and would come out the front door of number eight on the other side of the road.

       I am in the saddle, one foot on the kerb, the other stretching to the road, rolling back and forth, watching the front tyre score patterns in the black silt of the gutter. It edges closer and closer to the giant stag beetle lying on its back, legs waving feebly. The tyre nudges the beetle, biting at its crisp body.
      "Go on then," says Malcolm and gives me a push, and the tyre rolls over the beetle and crushes its shiny, ribbed shell. An orange mess squeezes out.
      Malcolm laughs. "That's just what the insides of sea urchins look like," he says. "We saw them in Lloret del Mar last year. They pull out the spines and eat the guts with a spoon while they're still alive. I bet you can eat stag beetles like that."
      I shudder. Next to death and nuclear bombs, stag beetles scare me the most, with their great barbed horns and the way they suddenly take off and clatter unpredictably through the air.
      "Beat you," I say, and standing on the pedals I race to the green, the oval patch of grass that forms the bulb end of the cul-de-sac. The green is small and the turns are tight; take them too fast and you skid. Our bare knees are always scabbed from grating on the gravelled road.
       When we get tired of racing we go down the alley, an unpaved track that winds round the back gardens of the houses, past the wooden fences and gates that smell of creosote in the hot sun. Nobody else ever seems to come down here and it's heavy with the scent of greenery, and hot and still but for the buzzing of insects and the distant grumble of a lawn mower. On the side of the track opposite the gardens is a crumbling brick wall. Here there are wild patches with clumps of hot stinging nettles full of caterpillars, and dark corners piled with bottles and rags and rusting cans.
       We throw our bikes down and start picking caterpillars off the nettles and putting them in a dirty glass jar.
"Hey look," I hear Malcolm say.
      It's a dead thrush. When I turn it over with a stick I can see the crawling maggots and a sweet, rotten smell pours off it.
      "That's what happens when you die," says Malcolm. "Your eyeballs burst and the maggots and worms crawl in and out of the sockets. They try and make the coffins so thick the worms can't get in, but it never works."
      "It's much better if they burn you," I say, half-remembering something I've heard.
      There's a silence then Malcolm says, "How can you be resurrected if you're just a pile of ash?"
      "I don't know," I say, suddenly on shaky ground.
      There's a lot I don't know. Not long before school broke up, Mrs Bailey asked our class to tell her what was special about next Saturday. Everyone but me thrust their hands to the ceiling.
       "Don't you know what day it is Daniel?" she said.
      I felt my face getting red.
             "Tell him Amanda," and Amanda Eggerton, sitting next to me, said, "It's the Queen's official birthday miss," and everyone turned and stared.
      I'm always denying things too, like when Savidge came up to me in the playground and said, "You're a jewboy aren't you."

      "Your dad's a Communist," says Malcolm.
      "No he isn't," I say.
      Malcolm is a year older than me and goes to the grammar school where my dad teaches maths.
      "He's a Commie," says Malcolm, "Everybody knows. I don't care though. I don't even know what it means. My father says they should all be shot."
"It means everyone should be equal," I say quickly. "The working class are the best because they make things. And Russians. And black people in America are good. There shouldn't be rich people or poor people, everything should be shared out the same."
       Malcolm looks at me. "So can we share your bike then?" he says.
       I try to laugh but my face won't move. I look down at my red bike lying on its side, shining in the sun, the bike I waited for so long and finally got for my birthday two months ago, the bike I still polish and oil and grease nearly every day.
       "Only joking," he says. "Let's make a fire."
       Malcolm always has matches and caps and cap guns and bangers, even when it's nowhere near November.
       We tear the labels off old tin cans and scrunch them up and pile twigs on top. Then we light it and squat either side watching it burn. Once we made a fire close to the wooden fence and you can still see the scorch mark.
       "The school I was at before," says Malcolm, "There was this boy Dimmock who blew two of his fingers off playing with fireworks."

We're back in the road, doing nothing, sitting on the kerb in the sun when I hear my mother calling.
       "Daniel, Daniel, it is eating time."
       I wish she wouldn't do that but I can't stop her; she sounds so foreign and stupid with her Russian accent and everyone in the road can hear her.
       "Sorry," I say to Malcolm.
       My mother is always trying to feed Malcolm but he's not allowed to eat with us. He has to make his own lunch and wash everything up afterwards. His mother doesn't go out to work but she lies down a lot during the day.
       I park my bike, the tyre tight against the kerb, and run inside our cool house that all this summer has smelled of paint as my father, wearing his old army shorts, has whistled his way round the windows and doors.
       "Can I take it outside?" I say.
       "No. Go and wash your hands, top to bottom," my mother says.
       "Please," I say, and I'm already out the door with the triangles of sandwich and a dill pickle. I ride down the road, as far as the green, then sit and eat them in the saddle.

My parents don't allow guns or television. At four o'clock Malcolm and I go to his house, which is full of dark wood and smells of polish.
       Malcolm's house has fitted carpets. When he opens the front door with the key that hangs on a woven leather strap clipped to his belt, his mother is already standing in the hall.
       "Shoes," she says, and Malcolm has to change into his slippers. As I take my shoes off I see that my socks have holes in them.
       "Please may we watch television?" Malcolm says to his mother.
       We can watch children's television in the sitting room but only Malcolm's mother can open the shiny doors of the wooden cabinet and switch it on. We sit on the carpet with Malcolm's guns and shoot the Indians who leap out on the Lone Ranger and Tonto as they ride through rocky passes.

My dad was an athlete and a boxer at university. Malcolm's father is big and fat. His head is shiny and he has a ginger moustache and a red face. His stomach pokes out of the khaki cardigan with leather buttons he always wears at home. On weekdays he wears a suit and spends ages fussing with his Morris Traveller before squeezing himself into it and driving off. Malcolm says he's in insurance.
       "It was eight years before he would so much as nod his head to us," my mother often complains. "He would never have opened his mouth if he hadn't had to eat his humble pie and talk to your father about Malcolm at Parents' evening."
       Malcolm's father builds miniature steam engines in his shed and when he's in a good mood we can go and watch them working, the brass pistons pumping away, red-painted wheels spinning. The rest of the time the shed is padlocked.
       He comes in when the pistol shots are ricocheting through the valley and says, "Turn that thing down." Then he sits in his armchair and reads the Daily Express.
       "Bloody trouble makers," he says, "Ought to be rounded up," and Malcolm's mother who is passing in the hall says, "Gordon, shush."

We are Communists and we read the Daily Worker. Some Saturdays I go out with my dad, delivering it to party members. We walk up front paths that look just the same as everyone else's but I know the people in these houses are comrades and are different. Some of them are foreign, with thick accents like my mother's. Others, usually in smaller houses on the estate, are what are called the proletariat like Dick, one of my dad's best friends. He's a bus driver and always lets us off at the end of our road, even though there's no bus stop there. Anyway, we never just push the paper through the letter boxes of these houses but have to ring the bell and then my father stands on the doorstep and talks for ages and ages.
       They meet in our house in the evenings. Sometimes I sit at the top of the stairs in my pyjamas. Mostly they all talk at once, but the one voice I hear clearly is my dad's. When he talks everyone goes quiet, maybe because he's a teacher, and even when there's long pauses and I know he's fussing with his pipe, they wait to hear what he has to say about people like Krushchev and Stalin, and the Labour party. The smell of his pipe tobacco fills the house and gets right into my bedroom.
       Other evenings we sit together in the living room. Sometimes my mother, who used to be a concert pianist, plays the piano and we stand around and sing Scottish songs like Over the Sea to Skye. Or we listen to records. All of us like Paul Robeson because he's black and a Communist and is treated badly by the Americans, but my dad likes opera best. In fact he likes opera so much that he's wired up speakers all round the house so he can hear it even when he's in the toilet. He plays it so loud that Mrs Bouvier from next door keeps complaining.
       "I really must draw your attention once again to your music," she says. "It's far too loud. I've asked you before. Especially on Sunday mornings."
       When she's gone, I prance round the room with my chest puffed up and my nose in the air, and say, "It's far too loud, I must complain," and my parents laugh.

Just there, next to the broken paving stone, is where Malcolm hit the kerb, face first.
       We were racing round the green and he'd got in front. Whenever I tried to get past, he'd block me. I know I clipped the back of his wheel but I didn't mean to. There was blood and bits of white tooth coming out of his mouth and he lay there without moving and with his left arm twisted. A builder who was working on the roof of number seventeen came down the ladder really fast. He got Malcolm up and kept saying, "You're all right lad, you're all right," and Malcolm started crying so loudly I was scared. Mrs Stokes came out with a tea towel and the builder held it to Malcolm's mouth as he helped him over to number eight and rang the bell. Malcolm was cradling his arm. I saw Malcolm's mother white faced at the open door.
       There was a small crowd of people now and someone said they'd called an ambulance. Mrs Stokes, who is old and smells sour, like she doesn't wash much, came up to me as I was standing to the side.
       "It was you," she said. "You knocked into him."
       "No I didn't," I said. "He skidded."
       "You brought him down," said Mrs Stokes. "I know your sort."
       I felt my face grow hot and I ran home, leaving my bike lying in the road. My mother was in the kitchen holding on to the washing machine that always juddered across the floor when it was on spin. I told her what had happened, with my face pressed into her apron. I didn't tell her it was my fault though as she stroked my hair and called me 'bubeleh'.
       I didn't see Malcolm for several days. I kept to the house and the back garden. I was terrified that Mrs Stokes would say something to Malcolm's parents.
       A few days later my mother and I were walking down the front path on our way shopping for new school clothes. She was behind me as usual, thumping my shoulders with her hand to get rid of the dandruff and stray hairs. I saw Malcolm's father walking over, his face redder than ever.
       "You kids need to be a bit more careful on those bikes of yours," he said, and then to my mother, "You want to keep an eye on him."

The next time I saw Malcolm he had stitches on his forehead, a bruise right down one side of his face and his left arm in plaster up to the elbow.
       "You can still see my blood on the pavement," he said and grinned. There was a gap where one of his front teeth was missing.
       "Do you want to play down the alley?" I said.
       "I can't," he said.

The holidays seemed to last forever and then suddenly they were over. I had brand new everything - blazer, cap, coat, pencil case, satchel, all smelling fresh from the shop. I wished I was going to the school that Malcolm went to; we could have gone on our bikes. But because my dad taught there I had to go to a different one that was two bus rides away and where I didn't know anyone.
       When I got home that first day I dropped my bag and blazer in the hall and went into the kitchen to make a cheese and honey sandwich. It was one of my mother's weird mixtures that I always pretended I didn't really like.
       I could hear my parents talking in the sitting room with the door closed, which was strange as my father always got home much later than me. I went in. My father was sitting in the armchair and my mother was on the arm of the chair with her hand on his head. I'd never seen him cry before. I stood there furiously concentrating on twisting and turning the sandwich to stop the honey dropping on the floor till my mother told me to go out into the garden.

My father had been suspended. They said he'd been using his maths classes to spread Communism.
       Dick came round the next day when we were having breakfast with a copy of the Wickham Advertiser folded to the letters page.
       "You've got to bloody hear this," he said. "'Dear Sir. Most right-minded people will be shocked to hear that Communism is rife in our local schools. Our children are being indoctrinated by the very people who are supposed to teach them right and wrong.' Then he says we should all write to our MPs - that's a joke - and it's signed Gordon Simmonds. Isn't he that neighbour of yours?"
       Though the letter didn't mention my father, there was a short piece on the front page saying how he'd been suspended and everyone could work it out.

The comrades rallied round. They came to share their outrage and the cakes and pots of food they'd made. I got my hair ruffled and my cheek pinched more than ever. Some of the neighbours were all right too; people he'd lent his lawnmower to or whose kids he'd helped with maths. But others, like Mrs Stokes, crossed to the other side of the road whenever they saw us. Mrs Bouvier next door turned her head and went back into the house and shut the door if any of us went out into the back garden. If Mr Bouvier didn't follow her, she'd stand at the kitchen door calling him in with her shrill voice.
       I know my father tried hard to appear normal but he'd stopped whistling and he didn't play opera any more. A reporter from the paper came to the house to interview him, "so you can put your case," but my father wouldn't speak to him. When the reporter rang for the third time my mother took the call and said, "He doesn't want to talk to anyone; he would rather pull his leg off," and slammed the phone down.
       The night before his hearing with the school board he went out for a long walk.
       "Your father is very worried," my mother said.
       "What happens if he doesn't get his job back?"
       "It will kill him," she said.
       I went out and sat on the wall at the end of the garden. There were only a few apples and most of them were wrinkled and small.

"I think it's going to be all right," my father told us when he came back from the hearing. "They've done the whole thing properly. They spoke to all my kids with their parents present, and none of them said they'd heard me talk about anything except maths and opera. It was Malcolm's father who made the complaint. The Head told me after the hearing that he'd turned up on the first day of term demanding that Malcolm be dragged out of his lesson and they sat in the Head's study and Malcolm's father kept saying, 'tell him Malcolm,' and Malcolm didn't look up once and just mumbled into the carpet that I was always going on about how the people would rise up and overthrow capitalism."
       "I never say things like that even in my own house," said my father, though I was pretty sure he did. "Anyway I'm sure it's all going to be OK."

But it wasn't. The letter came two days after the hearing. They had the highest opinion of his teaching, the governors said, but the school had come under a lot of pressure and their responsibility was to be seen to do whatever was necessary to restore its reputation. Reluctantly they had decided they weren't able to give him his job back. They would, however, provide excellent references and they were sure he would be made welcome at another school.
      
       It didn't kill my father, of course, but he wasn't ever quite the same. He was very proud and he'd never really failed at anything before. But it was my mother who seemed to take it the worst. I remember sitting upstairs in my bedroom, doing my homework, hearing her shouting at my father that she should never have come to this horrible country and why had he brought her to a place filled with such cold stuck-up people. She was yelling so loud I was sure the Bouviers must have heard. Six months later we moved house when my father got a job as head of maths in a big north London comprehensive school.

I only remember seeing Malcolm once after that, though I must have done. I suppose he just became somebody I didn't know any more.
       I was cleaning my bike on the pavement outside our house. I'd turned it upside down and taken the chain off and laid it in a white enamel pan that I'd filled with pink paraffin. I was scrubbing the black grease off with an old toothbrush when I saw Malcolm come out of his house and hang about his gate. Then I heard him walk over.
       I didn't look up though I could see his legs. He shuffled from foot to foot and kicked at a few bits of gravel.
       "What are you doing?" he said.
       I didn't say anything.
       "Shall I get my bike for a bit? My parents are out."
       I stood up.
       "That time you smashed your face on the kerb and broke your arm," I said.
       "That's all right," he said quickly.
       "It was my fault," I said.
       "I know," he said. "But you didn't mean to."
       "I did mean to," I said. "I did it on purpose and I'm glad you got smashed up," and I lifted my bike and carried it through into the back garden. Then I came back for the pan and emptied the paraffin, black now, into the gutter where it flowed through the dark silt and down the drain grating, down amongst the gum wrappers and cigarette ends and wooden ice lolly sticks.