Conquering

            1960. It was the autumn Mrs Giggs broke my mother's favourite vase. It was the autumn Charlie Rutherford ran away with the woman who owned the Tower Hotel. And it was the autumn my parents sat glued to the television because of some international row over pigs. I couldn't understand why everyone was getting so worked up about the Russians and some pigs. One evening my mother was even dabbing her eyes as she came out of the living room, and when my father finally switched off the little black and white box, and come out and shut the door soundlessly behind him, it was as though he had closed the door on a funeral.

            I wasn't the least bit interested. I was eight years old and the only thing that worried me about pigs was that Craig and I might not get our bacon rolls on Friday evening when he came round to play Scrabble. We always had bacon rolls and piping hot tea at eight o'clock when he arrived, and if my mother were to go back on that, there would be repercussions. I had no idea what repercussions were, but everyone who spoke about this business of the Russians and these pigs said there were going to be serious repercussions. I had the word in my head the whole time and I enjoyed rolling it round my mouth like a bit of toffee. There were going to be serious repercussions if my mother stopped making those bacon rolls on a Friday evening.

      The only thing that put all thought of bacon and Russians and everything else out of my head was Mrs Murray. She arrived on a Thursday at ten past four for my piano lesson and reversed the Gulf Stream when she came down the front hall. With one look that woman could put icicles on the inside of an oven.

            'Now, Michael, I hope you've been practicing your chromatic scale and haven't been distracted by world events.' She was on about pigs, too! I hadn't been the least bit distracted but that didn't mean I'd been practicing as much as she thought. She put that horrible metronome above the piano and it began tutting away like some disapproving Victorian grandfather. Mrs Murray sat there, her lips pursed and her eyes furious, looking like a kettle that was about to boil over. It was scales and rapped knuckles and tutting for an hour and fifteen minutes. Well, for an hour. That last Thursday of the month I could only half listen to Mrs Murray for the last quarter of an hour because I was listening to something else. The wind was scurrying round the house, wild and rising.



            At school Miss Aston said there were just two things that distracted young children -- the wind and the moon. She said that a full moon was the worse of the two; it wasn't just children that were affected, it was prisoners, too. When there was a full moon they would get angry and riot and even break out, and we sat in our rows in class and saw prisoners with red eyes and bunching muscles, full of the moon.

            The wind was the second thing and that was worse with children. David Scott put up his hand and said his father suffered with the wind but Miss Aston shook her head and said that this wind got into children and made them like kites. They flew all over the place and it was especially bad in the autumn. She said they might as well close all primary schools in the autumn because everything went in one ear and was blown out the other. And we sat with our arms folded watching Miss Aston, believing that if she said it the words must be true. Because it didn't matter whether Miss Aston told us about trees in winter or people in the Stone Age; if Miss Aston said it then it must be true.

            And that Thursday I heard the wind growing and rising about the house and I thought of what she'd said. And Mrs Murray's words faded like a radio that's been turned down. In my mind's eye I saw Russians with red eyes, full of the wind and angry. There were repercussions and they went round and round my head, echoing and thudding, and I wondered if there would be a seriously big storm, one that cut the electricity and meant we had to use the real fire and candles. The metronome went and Mrs Murray went, and the ice in the front porch melted.

            'That woman really does chill the blood,' my father murmured to me sympathetically, out of earshot of my mother, and clapped my shoulder. Then he disappeared back into the living room, to the television and the six o'clock news.

            That night I dreamed of Miss Aston. She was talking about a great storm that was coming, telling us we had to be ready for the great storm. She showed us a map of Britain and said the storm would sweep across the whole country, and across America and Russia, too. We had to be ready for the storm.

            I woke up with a start and remembered the chestnuts. The wind was rolling about the house in long waves and I got up and went to the window. There in the night blue sky was a full moon, and I thought that the prisons would be empty that night, for those were the two worst things there could be, a full moon and a high wind. But at that moment the only thing that mattered was the chestnuts. I thought of the big tree at the top of the hill and my heart thudded in my chest like a metronome. It was four in the morning and I was wide awake; there was no point trying to go back to sleep now.

            I pulled on my clothes and opened the door. The wind and the moon were everywhere; light shone into the spare room, a blue milk light flickered over the floor. The wind was a vandal, a madly exuberant child rushing around corners and chasing down streets. I knew then that Miss Aston was right; I could feel she was right. I had to run myself, right that moment. I had to run all the way to that tree.

            I was blown up the hill. It's the only time I've felt it, the wind behind me almost lifting me off my feet. It was as though a wild horse galloped at my back, then slipped underneath me and lifted me into the saddle. I galloped with the wind; I felt I was part of the wind myself. Everything was chasing and dancing. It was neither night nor day; the world was made of blue milk, but I could have run for miles and never needed a light. I could see the clouds scudding overhead; I could see the trees on the far hill, tossing their heads in a wild, mad sea. I wanted to be up among them; I wanted to climb the highest of them and feel the wind rippling and roaring in the branches. I wanted to be tossed from side to side and to look out from the very top, to see the whole of the storm. This was the biggest thing I had ever known.

            The wind horse set me down at the top of the hill. There was a lull. There wasn't a breath of wind where I was. But I heard other great and terrible booms from other hills, and I realised for the first time that the wind wasn't just one thing, it was many. And it gave me a thrill and I thought how I'd tell Miss Aston. I'd tell her there wasn't just one wind but there were many and she'd be pleased and smile at me and believe me. I listened to the many winds in the woods and I felt the thrill of each one of them. My heart sang and the wind came back into my wood and I closed my eyes and smiled.

            Then I went over the field to the chestnut tree. And for the first time in my life I felt big; I felt as though the wind had made me strong. I wasn't afraid of anything and I decided I was going to go home that day and, whatever else I did, I was going to tell my mother I wasn't going to play the piano any more. Mrs Murray and her metronome would never come back to the house and my life would be utterly happy, for it was the only thing that really got under my skin -- Thursday afternoons and piano. But that one thing cast a very long shadow; by Tuesday morning I was dreading the next lesson. I could feel the days of the week by where I was with that piano practice. And now I was going to be brave enough to say I wouldn't play any more, and at that moment I really believed they'd listen, that I'd win. And I ran across the field and the tree with its great ancient branches got bigger and bigger, that dark green canopy of five-fingered leaves filling and heaving with the might of the wind.



            I got there and I was the first there. They were falling all around me, lacquered things -- they made heavy thuds in the wet ground and I darted from one to the next, filling my pockets until they bulged. But high up was one massive conker at the end of a branch, and that was the one I wanted. All the others were also-rans; they didn't count compared with that single conker. I wanted it so badly it hurt and my hands itched. Nothing else mattered except that.

            I flung up sticks and they tickled the leaves and fluttered back down to the ground. I even threw stones up, something we had been told never to do after Terry McBride got his own stone back on his forehead and a face shining with blood. But even the rocks I flung rolled down and were lost in the bushes. And my heart hammered as I watched that one chestnut rising and falling in the wind. I would have to climb the tree. And I, who was afraid of heights, who had never climbed a wall let alone a tree, went up into the branches that crazy morning before dawn. I was full of the wind, I was part of the wind; there was nothing I couldn't do. I was going to go home and tell them I'd never play the piano again, that Mrs Murray and the metronome were over. I'd tell them that Thursdays were my own.

            And I climbed into the tree and could feel it lifting and breathing with wind. It was as though I was in the rigging of a great ship and I held on till my hands were raw. I fought my way upwards until I held the branch with the conker, and I shook it and rattled it until at last it broke off and I heard it bang down onto the ground. There it lay in front of me, a whole green helmet, and my hands trembled as I lifted it. One edge was open; I could see the polished leather of the conker inside. The shell was big as my hand.

            I opened it and a conker huge as the Kohinoor rolled over my palm. I was too tired to run now; I walked all the way home. But as I walked it was as though the wind blew out of me. The storm was passing and I felt small again; I remembered I was only eight years old. I felt strange and small, and by the time I came to the front door I was not brave any longer. And I thought of Columbus and how it must have been to come back home after finding America.

            But when Craig came that evening my mother brought us bacon rolls. She said that things were better in the world again and I took it that meant the trouble with pigs was over. She said too that Mrs Murray had called and was ill and was going to have to cancel my lessons for the time being, and that meant a thousand times more. I held the conker in my hand and felt happy beyond words. I heard the last of the wind round the house and knew that somehow I had won after all.

Kenneth Steven

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