CHAPTER 12
Nana ran us up by Eskdale Moor and Burnmoor Tarn the next day, sticking to the track and the footbridges, but there was still bog, and I understood her insistence of doing without socks as the mud splashed my legs and soaked through the canvas of my shoes.

“Aye, it’s grand up here!” she yelled against the wind, as we trotted along the level bit under Raven Crag and past the old cairn. It was indeed, and I felt free and fit as I bog-trotted the occasional really wet bit and we wound our way to our prize–the view out over Wasdale Head. Nana talked me through some of the features on the skyline, and described those hidden behind the sprawling bulk of Sca Fell. Then we picked up the Mite stream and descended, in a bent-kneed scurry at times, through Bakerstead and Low Place to Eskdale Green, where we ducked into the café for a hot chocolate and a cake. We ducked straight back out when they saw the colour of our legs, but they had tables outside where they happily served us, and I pulled on the tracksuit I had wrapped in a polythene bag in my rucksack. Nana was still in her three-quarter length cotton trousers, her only concession to the halt an old worsted wool sweater. She was grinning happily.

“So good to get out wi’thee again, lad! Tha’s running well, and if I’m not wrang tha’s a bit longer in the leg”

“I’m on growth juice, Nana, I get a weekly injection and some pills, but I don’t think it’s soon enough to be growing. I’ve had a few twinges in my bones, but I think that’s it all starting up. Em says it sounds like growing pains”

“Em?”

“I have a girlfriend, Nana. She’s called Emily, she’s in my class at school”

“Is she pretty, Stevie?”

No, not really. “I think so, and she’s all mine, so I’m happy”

“So has thy Mam stopped all this silliness about thee being a queer?”

“No, she hasn’t. I don’t know why that Vi woman told those lies, but Mam seems to be believing her over me. It’s not true, Nana, he’s just a nice man that’s had some bad times. He’s good to talk to…is it true people like him used to get locked up?”

“Aye, and worse. Was the same wi unmarried mothers, those lasses that got themselves caught, in trouble, they used to put them in the loony bins”

“That’s what they did to him, Nana, and worse”

She gave me a sharp look. “Worse? How, exactly?”

I told her, and part way through my account I realised I was actually discussing sex with my mother’s mother. She listened quietly, and then very quietly swore.

“I know I am in the right place, tha knaas, when I hear stories like that, as far away from folks and towns as I can get. There are some bastards about, lad. Tha don’t pick and choose how and when to fall in love, and….”

She sat in silence for a minute, clearly upset. Then. “We fought a fucking war again folk like that. Sorry, Stevie, language. No excuse, but thy granda died to stop such things. If thy Mam, or that doctor tha mention, start doing anything odd, anything scary, tha leave, tha leave right away and tha come to me. Now, an end to that sort of talk. More cake is needed, and then we shall have a very short ride on the Ratty as me legs are seized up”

A run on the high fells, hot chocolate, two slices of jam sponge and a ride on a steam train. That was Saturday, and that was a good day. Nana rode down to the coast with me on Sunday, and we had Sunday lunch in a pub, and before and after she showed me how to name the birds on the mudflats by the estuary, with the help of a small telescope she produced from the front pocket of her cotton duck smock.

Of course it was raining, it was the Lakes on a Sunday! She saw me off on the train back to Maryport with a hug, and exacted two promises, the first being what we had already discussed, the second that I should see if Emily could come one weekend. There would obviously be no running, but there was plenty else to do, and I felt that Nana was starting to see how much control she could get back over her daughter’s behaviour.

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I had another examination, and another dose of growth juice, and Mitchell pronounced himself more than happy with my scars. The running had done them no harm, and me much good, allowing me to blow some of the town’s air from my lungs. More shops were closing, and more men seemed to be idle each day, and the place felt stale, like an old sandwich starting to dry out and curl at the edges. That was how Maryport, and the other towns along the coast, were going. There was no depth to them; once the pits and the dock work went, it was like a film set, nothing behind the façade. It was worse to the East and the South, where Tyneside and Merseyside were staring into the abyss, but the confrontation with Heath had done enough to take away people’s safety nets.

The weeks went by, and the juice fizzed in, and the pills went down, and Mitchell’s fingers probed as his eyes ate my soul. I was definitely showing some growth, up an inch in a month, and it was clear to me that whatever problems the man had, he had certainly managed to kick start my body. I itched, though, in my chest, and around my John Thomas, where I was elated to finally see a few hairs arrive. I was becoming a man, I thought, and checked each day to see f my balls had dropped, as they were supposed to.

You see, nobody had ever told me what they had done to me. I had been told, in Singapore, that it was a hernia, then in England that they were just sorting out a complication. No bastard ever told me that I had been castrated, not for years, not until it was too fucking obvious to hide.

I started to argue with Em, and then make up, tears flowing, and one day she said to me, very quietly, “You’re as changeable as a girl, you know”

Hindsight, don’t you just love its clarity. Despite our odd little arguments, that blew up and faded away just as quick, we managed to get her parents’ permission to have a weekend together at Boot, and we were excited as all hell by it. I felt particularly grown up: I was going away for a weekend in the country with my lover (I had tried one of her books…) and I was getting hairy, at least on my todger. I had a moment of dreaminess as I wondered whether Em was hairy down there yet, and then I thought of ginger curls…

Most of the coast was spent snogging or cuddled up while we each read our own book, and then I had the delight of watching Emily’s face when she saw our final transport.

“It’s so CUTE!!”

Nana was waiting at the usual place, and gave Em a huge smile and hug, and that was really how the weekend went. Nana had dragged her old Morris Traveller out of the garage for what seemed like the first time that year, and though she seemed ill at ease driving she did her best to let Em see some of the delights of Wasdale, where it rained, and Coniston, where it didn’t. We walked partway up from the copper mines until Emily ran out of steam, then just sat and enjoyed the view, and then had sticky toffee pudding in the village as the Gondola chuffed down the lake.

Such a good weekend, such good times.

Mr Robson was on my back, in a nice way, the next week. He had been pushing me on the track, and trying to get me to commit to a race, and finally I caved in and agreed to do one of the early cross-country events, representing the school in Year Three as well as overall team points. It was a short event for me, only five miles running seven laps out by Roseghyll Mill. No hills, just steady pacing, and Mr Robson insisted I should look at controlling the race. Take the first lap steady, get a feel for the other runners, and then see how they played it on the second, where they would know the course. Third, fourth and fifth laps take it up, cruise the sixth to recover, and then attack the last lap. I’m sure he thought he was talking to a runner in the Olympics, but never mind. He had even found some spikes in my size to lend me, so I wouldn’t be running in plimsolls. This man was serious!

The gun went, and the big lads were off. Most of them at least a foot taller than me, I couldn’t cover the ground anything like them, and, besides, I would see f they were still sprinting in a couple of miles. I settled into the pack, doing my best to avoid the shoving, and found my zone of peace.

The second lap came, and the early hares were being reeled in steadily, apart from a couple of lads who seemed to be from some different species to the rest of us. They actually ended up lapping much of the field, so I ignored them and settled into my own race.

The early boisterousness of the pack had faded as lads found their own pace, and as Mr Robson had suggested I started to lift mine on the third lap. Soon, there wasn’t a pack, but a series of clumps, as boys tried to shelter from the raw wind on the back leg and use it on the outward. My coach indicated I was tenth as I went past (yes, he really did have a little chalk board for that) and I stretched it a bit more for the fourth and fifth, leaving only five people ahead of me as I eased back a little and shook my arms out. I kept that position till the bell, and then started to stretch out. I wasn’t just running for the year, now, the first six finishers for a school of whatever age counted for the overall team win, and I wanted that, I wanted to be the Man, the Hero. I could feel my pulse in my face as I wound it up for the last four hundred yards, and closed in on the last of the five in front of me. I thought of Iain, and his tales of being taught how to sprint for football, of using the arms as if pulling oneself in on a rope, and my head went back in the last two hundred yards and I sprinted for the funnel. I wanted that last scalp…

He heard me coming, and kicked himself, and as we hit the funnel he dipped and just, just beat me, and we staggered to a halt, lungs screaming, hands on knees, and he looked at me and said, from his five foot nine or so, “Fuck me, lass, but you can run!”

There was a moment as his brain worked out what was wrong with that picture.

“Sorry, pal, it’s just the hair and that. Well run, though, I really thought you had me! I’ll have to watch you when you get bigger”

“Who are the two boy wonders?”

He laughed. “I’m Danny, and don’t even think about racing those two, they’re already in the national Under-16 squad. How long you been racing?”

“I’m Steve. This was my first race ever”

“Fucking hell, Steve, on second thoughts, DO think of racing those two! Let’s go and get changed before we freeze our bollocks off”