by David Rees
As for those ambitions I outlined the day I went to Abbotstone, some of them I achieved, some I did not. The improvement in my tennis is marginal and my chess is a little rusty, though when I’m with Dad some of his love for both games is contagious and rubs off on me. I didn’t learn to play the harp, alas. Adrian appeared one morning about six months after he’d left and removed it. I don’t think Dad ever saw him again, and I’m pretty certain they haven’t been writing letters. What I have achieved is the will (I don’t know about the ability) to write, and I’ve indulged my Sagittarian taste for wandering. I haven’t revisited Amsterdam, but the week I spent there with Dad really whetted my appetite for foreign travel, and I’m hoping—if I can afford it—to fly with my girlfriend to San Francisco next year. Dad said he may come with us.
She’s Brazilian, and very musical. Last week she persuaded me—I was reluctant at first—to go with her to the Festival Hall where the Wessex Philharmonic Symphony was performing, believe it or not, Mahler’s tenth. The harpist, of course, was no longer a curly-haired young blond man, but a severe-looking middle-aged female with scarlet lips and Mary Whitehouse spectacles. I knew my reactions would not be the same; I was much older, a different person—but I was surprised at how different my feelings were. This was not, I realized, the final creation of a man looking at all the superb sunsets that had gone for ever; certainly it was bitter-sweet, but it was also robust and life-enhancing. The soaring tune in the first movement brought back vividly that night in Bournemouth: the Winter Gardens and a young harpist plucking the strings, eyes intent on the conductor, my father beside me totally involved, his eyes just as intent, but fixed on the man and the instrument producing those exquisite sounds. Not death that music, but a vision of the ideal, and a knowledge that the ideal is an illusion.
I haven’t been to Alresford for years, but I don’t suppose it’s changed. Marigold Welch and I did go out for about six months—and it was very different from my relationship with Miranda. It began a few days after my walk to Abbotstone, but I’m not going to rake it all up now: this book isn’t written for a bunch of peeping toms. Maybe Dad’s right about me being a male chauvinist pig. She also said I was; I only wanted her for her body was her verdict, and it had been a mistake on her part to allow it.
The railway, as far as I know, is still there, and Mr Bowles, the shunting practices, and Colonel Ramsbottom, if he isn’t retired or dead, commuting to work. I have to confess that my childish enthusiasm for railways endures. I enjoy studying maps and timetables, and I read books about trains. When Great Train Journeys of the World was shown on TV I was glued to the set every Wednesday night. But Alton, Medstead and Four Marks, Ropley, Alresford, Itchen Abbas and Winchester, though they may have once been as exotic to me as Chimborazo, Cotopaxi and Popocatépetl, don’t steal my heart nowadays; I plan—if I’m ever rich enough—to travel from Sydney across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth, from London to Venice on the Orient Express, from New York to Los Angeles on the California Zephyr. In the programme at last week’s concert, Mahler was quoted as saying “My symphonies embrace everything, like the world.” I like that, as an ambition: I’m going to embrace the world, too.
I expect, now I’ve left Alresford, that the flowers I planted there have vanished under the weeds. One day I’m going to have a garden of my own—a dazzling riot of blossom. And no messing about with seasonal flower-beds; Aunt Bridie was right—there should be bloom all the year round.
One good reason for that is I’m sure Mum, Dad and I came out of the winter gardens long ago and left them far behind us.
Out of the Winter Gardens
David Rees
Mike, aged 16 finds that the sleepy town where he has been brought up is small and boring. Then his father, who he hasn’t seen for 13 years unexpectedly gets in touch, and the next three weeks that he stays with him change everything. His first experiences with girls, and his first trip abroad show him how exciting growing up can be. And his discovery that his father is gay forces him to change his views about sex - and about the ‘grown up’ world in general.
Full of the insights about childhood and adolescence that we have come to expect from David Rees, this new novel sensitively and humourously describes how it feels to be a boy on the edge of adulthood.
Rees’ crisp, economical writing carries the
narrative along at speed. Incident follows incident
but at the same time characters are defined and
relationships develop.
Times Literary Supplement on The Exeter Blitz, a previous novel by David Rees
£3.50 $6.50 Fiction
Printed in Great Britain ISBN 0-946889-03-1
