Andy's Fears

1992 

Bed

At bedtime, Mam sitting on John’s or my bed and singing provided a sense of reassurance which helped me to fall asleep. However, this effect was noticeably lessening. After twenty minutes of songs, while John had fallen asleep, I remained awake. For long afterwards, either Mam or Dad would remain in the room, in aid of my elusive relaxation. 

I came to regard the approach of ten o’clock with sorrowful dread. As I lay in the semi-darkness, the world around me was climbing further into the savagery of night; a time when even adults had to go to sleep. My inability to escape into sleep frightened me. 

Forlornly, I wondered why I alone inflicted this on my parents - why could John fall asleep, but not me?

One night, when it was Dad’s turn to stay in the bedroom, I asked what time it was.

“Ten o’clock,” said Dad.

While sobs didn’t quite come, my distress was such that I almost managed to force them.

Mam eventually resorted to lying beside me on the bed. This worked, but only after many minutes. 

2000

Slugs

With Miss Ordway absent, Mr Logan took a Science lesson. Through the fire exit at the front of the large, gloomy classroom, he sent us onto the school field, in search of live specimens. Equipped with plastic white boxes, we wandered the rear slant of the huge field. 

Sean and I peered between blades of grass in search of slugs and beetles. When we found them, I couldn’t bring myself to touch them. I didn’t quite dare the shock of invasion of my flesh by such exotica. 

While disheartening and baffling, the shame was manageable. 

Sean did the work of picking them up.

Adrian Wilson got wind of my inhibition. He and his friends shared a few wry chuckles – nothing nasty, just a gentle ribbing. 

Word reached Mr Logan that Andrew was scared of touching creepy-crawlies. With the class quietly seated, Mr Logan stood behind the front bench, cupped a beetle in his hands and, with his edgily playful smile, invited me to touch it. 

Trying to make light of the situation, I airily declined.

Mr Logan’s smile broadened. He coaxed me further.

I forced a smile and tried to humourise my repeated refusal.

The beetle held in his cupped hands, Mr Logan took a hasty stride towards me. I swapped decorum for self-preservation, stood and hurried backwards. Proffering the beetle, Mr Logan followed. I led him in a lap around the tables. 

The class laughed. I tried to make my flight seem like an appeal to Mr Logan’s renowned sense of fun, but I really was that desperate not to touch a beetle. 

Scared of shouting, scared of jumping into water, scared of getting hit in the face with a ball, and scared of creepy-crawlies. My disorderly appetite and bulk, yet again, were matched by my inordinate timidity. With numb despondence, I supposed that I must be what was commonly called a wimp. Not for the first time, I recalled Enid Blyton’s short story “Boo! Boo! Boo!”, in which Uncle Jim scorns eight-year-old Harry’s cowardice. 

The term “coward” implied something not just laughably feeble but immoral, an infantile retreat from responsibility. 

In assembly, Mr Patrick, on the projector, showed us a propaganda image from the First World War, in which a young woman scornfully offers a young man a white feather. Even if, in retrospect, the image’s message was implied to be contemptible, its power prevailed. 

I sought to prove my valour elsewhere. One weekend visit to Barrowburn, John and Sean jumped, quite easily, over the stream. 

For something like half an hour, I stood over the two-foot ledge and stared into the clear, flowing depths. Three feet away and two below lay the opposite bank. I desperately sought the will to jump, but the threatened turmoil of brief adjacency to such a drop decisively overwhelmed me.

2000

Firstlings

My lifelong cautious regard for electronics had by now mounted to frequent guilty fears that I, with careless intent, had moistened an electric socket, either by brushing it with my foot or spitting on it. I was overall persuaded that this hadn’t in fact happened, but fear of the prospective guilt pressured me to do my utmost to ensure safety. 

As I eased my way through heaving corridors, I would stoop over an electric socket, sometimes for nearly a minute, and repeatedly touch it with my fingers in desperate pursuit of undoubted dryness.

As my form class dispersed, I joined the crowding procession, which filed into the corridor and across to the stairwell.

As I neared the stairs, I found myself directly behind softly-spoken Lilly Rogerson.

I lifted my foot. I suddenly found myself arrested by a fretful, reckless urge to flout safety, and to drive my foot so swiftly as to risk its contact with the back of Lilly’s heel. I envisioned a scene in which such a nudge might trip her, perhaps even fatally, down the brief flight of stairs. My desperation to avoid such horror was overruled by an addled, self-punishing recklessness. I drove my foot blithely on.

Unable to stop myself, I willed the lowering of my foot to pursue potentially fatal contact. 

At most, my toecap nudged fractionally against the heel of her shoe.

I was now, I feared, guilty of attempted murder. 

While never unmanageable, the guilt stifled me, for weeks, with awed sorrow.

Desperate to believe I hadn’t really meant Lilly to fall to her death, I clung to the possibility that my irresistibly affected malice hadn’t really been an attempt at murder. Perhaps eased by the absurdity of the allegation, my conscience gradually relaxed. 

The evenings darkened. From the bus stop, I descended the pavement past a sloping row of attached houses. Through a brightly lit window, I saw the relaxing head of an elderly woman. 

With fearful caution, I pondered how easily it would be to bang on the window. If the elderly woman had a heart condition, doing so, I imagined, might prove fatal. If I wasn’t careful, I could kill someone. 

As I walked downhill, I feared my horrified fascination might rouse me to bang on the glass. On one occasion, the ease and danger of doing so were sufficient to persuade not my logical memory, but my emotive imagination, that I might indeed have banged on the window without fully realising it.

For weeks, I carried the fearful guilt. Not a stark panic, but a murky, mournful dread. Again, the allegation succumbed gradually to logic and ran out of steam.

In English, Mrs Willis took us through Macbeth’s soliloquy, in which the murderous king vows henceforth to act on impulse. By this point, surmised Mrs Willis, Macbeth has acclimatised to his guilt – it’s basically worn off. 

I regretted not having been able to avoid incursions of guilt, but eventual desensitisation to them was a relief. I dared to wonder if the guilt was even deserved. I clung to the possibility of my innocence.