F

Being the youngest - at the time, and at the time four years was centuries – I was always Fritz.

“You vill pay, Englischer pig dog!!!” I’d say, in my very best Commando Comics impression. Then dffdfdfdfddffff you and M would serve up a salvo of mouth-machine-gun fire and I’d clutch my chest dramatically with both hands and shout

AIEEEEEEE

Because it was the end of the war for me, Fritz Old Chum. 

Then you and M would go around the corner into the car park, and when you came back you’d say, “Did you see Fritz? He was here just now but we bally well showed him a lesson.” And I would shake my head and say “No, I missed him,” and so the game continued until you or me or M got bored and went looking for conkers or just crawling through the trees trying to avoid dogshit, but inevitably one of us would – oh god, I can feel it still, and smell it, sticky, sweet, foul – put our hand straight into a fresh one and puke.

You didn’t remember any of this when I asked you about it last year, and I won’t be able to jog your memory now with the other thing I remembered, which was that – being the youngest, at the time – I could fit into the coal hole thing by the Big Red House where the Whispering Lady lived, and I could come up again with a few nuggets of smokeless posh fuel and bring them home to put on the fire.

“We found them near the coal hole,” I’d squeak uncertainly. “The coalman dropped a few.”

Of course, we all knew that was false, but we were quite skint and a couple of hours’ free heat was fine indeed. Mum and Dad didn’t approve really. We always got by without shonky fooling like that, and we always had warmth and always had food no matter what, and the roof above our heads was always – somehow, just about – paid for. 

Funny isn’t it, how these little vignettes crop up when you’re not expecting it. There were holly trees and ivy crawling up old stone, and hundreds of skittish little squirrels, but most of all I remember three brothers – at the time – playing together and really, really believing in the tableau.

Fritz got the bad deal in all this. He was only there so we could win. Or, so you and M could win. I always seemed to be just a minute too late to fully appreciate the power of our unity.

And the future seemed endless.