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History? That’s as may be. It was all in the future for the Jeremy. In the present, ‘cold’ and ‘uninviting’ about summed it up. It was cold, not just because he was naked, but also because, ’twixt conception and delivery, his parents had returned from East Africa to dear old blighty. And it was uninviting because – well who in their right mind could describe the clinical environs of a hospital delivery room as inviting?
“Waarrrghhhh!” he yelled.
The shock of recent events was of galactic proportions in his mind, and on top of that, he was experiencing new shocks, nasty ones which were jostling for pole position in his consciousness.
“Waarrrghhhh!” he screamed again, without any thought for the fact that he was repeating himself – something he would later be taught, somewhat dubiously, is a heinous crime against both literary and oratory style.
“Waarrrghhhh! Waarrrghhhh! Waarrrghhhh!” he shouted.
There was nothing about his new environment which could persuade him there was any more suitable comment to make. These sensations were not pleasant. He’d never felt cold before, and now that coldness had somehow got inside him, apparently through the holes in his face.
“Waarrrghhhh!”
And it was noisy. The gently muffled sounds he’d been used to, had been replaced by sharp, harsh noises which managed to find their way right inside his head. And that could only mean one thing. He had more holes in him.
“Waarrrghhhh!”
Even his ‘Waarrrghhhh!’ attacked him.
And there were completely new sensations. There was this stuff called light which was bouncing around all over the place, and some of it was getting inside him too!
“Waarrrghhhh! How many holes have I got in me?” he wailed, in a state of near panic.
He was shortly to discover there were indeed more, but he would find, to his relief, they were for output rather than input. Much, much later, he would initially be very surprised to find that, for some people, this was not always the case.
What horror would be next? During his teens, he would hear stories about alien abductions wherein strange beings would – amongst other unspeakable deeds – prod, poke and peer at their victims, who were completely powerless to do anything about it. These stories would trigger an uncanny resonance within him.
It took a moment for him to comprehend it, but the next sensation was pleasant. He was nestling on some sort of soft, warm cushion. He could hear reassuringly gentle sounds, and the cushion moved ever so slightly, in a pacifying, rocking motion. There was an attractive smell too. His fear and panic began to melt away, and practically without realising it had happened, he found he was drawing in a warm fluid which had a very pleasing taste.
It was almost as if things had gone back to the way they’d been before. At least, if he concentrated very hard on this latest development, he could very nearly convince himself it was so.
His distraught ‘Waarrrghhhh!’ turned to a contented ‘Mmmmmmm’.
∞
“Mmmmmmm,” he murmured.
What a wealth of meaning in a single, barely spoken word. In the following days, weeks and months, the Jeremy fluctuated, often erratically, between ‘Mmmmmmm’ and ‘Waarrrghhhh!’ From this elemental vocabulary, an eloquent verbal practitioner would eventually grow, but there was an intermediate stage through which he would first have to pass.
Gurgling, in all its varied forms, was his first step on the road to literacy, and soon after the start of his journey, his verbal expertise would expand to include not only ‘Wahraarrrghhhh!’ – an extension of ‘Waarrrghhhh!’ reserved especially for use on any occasion which required extra emphasis – but also ‘Gusk’, ‘mish’ and ‘guck’.
In the meantime, in common with most babies, he displayed an effortless capacity to seize the moment. ‘Seizing the moment’ often meant taking the opportunity, when lying naked on his back, to conduct experiments regarding the capacity of bodily fluids, of the not-so-precious variety, to combat gravitational forces when expelled. Unlike some babies, he had an insatiable appetite for experiments of this type, industriously persevering long after most of his contemporaries had succumbed to the bidding of their mothers.
This behaviour should not be confused with what some say is the dark art of pooping in a freshly donned nappy. While he did indulge in this form of behaviour on more than one occasion, it was merely an example of the natural proclivity of living creatures to dispose of waste material with little regard for the convenience or sensibilities of others.
Whether accidental or deliberate, his pristine-nappy soiling activities provoked his mother to respond, “Oh you naughty boy!”
But although those were the words she used, she always said them as if they meant, “How sweet you are!”
Language comprehension was not his strongest suit at this early stage of his life, which was probably just as well. He would have plenty of opportunities later on to figure out why people say one thing, but mean something else. In the meantime, even though he’d neither understood the words nor that he’d done something ‘wrong’, he was astute enough to decipher the underlying message.
His mother was full of love for him. Given time, he would learn to exercise some control over his bodily functions, but there was an implicit promise in her tone that his failure to do so would not result in any form of punishment. Nothing he could do would make his mother angry. Nothing he could do would make her say ‘Waarrrghhhh!’
His conclusion that his mother doted on him was entirely accurate. Nevertheless, he appeared to test this theory on a daily, hourly or, on some occasions, even a minute by minute basis, but it would be many months before he faced the first hint of his mother’s wrath.
What a joy it was to have the freedom to explore the limits of his world, even if it was a relentless struggle to overcome the barriers to his explorations. Barriers which included, for example, his propensity to poke himself in the eye whenever he grasped an object and raised it with the intention of giving it a thorough once-over.
For the most part though, the Jeremy’s life was everything he could hope it would be. His apparent efforts to test his mother’s seemingly unshakeable love for him had done nothing but confirm the truth of the hypothesis. Consequently, he trusted her with his life. Of course, he had no other choice, but there is a world of difference between absolutely trusting someone because you believe you can, and trusting them because you have to.
∞
Where, you might be wondering, was the Jeremy’s father during all this time? Working of course! And if he wasn’t working he’d be in the pub, or failing that, in his chair, reading the newspaper or listening to the wireless, or perhaps snoozing off the effects of a visit to the pub. Like most British men in the nineteen-fifties, in his view, it was a man’s duty to be the breadwinner and a woman’s place to be at home, looking after the children. Actually, that attitude had begun to change as a result of the war. Women had taken on traditional male roles while the men were away fighting, but it had yet to be fully accepted as normal, especially now that things were back to normal! Men and women knew their respective roles, and woe betide anyone who voluntarily crossed those invisible demarcation lines.
So it was that the Jeremy had the equivalent of an unreliable dial-up line to his father, and an always-on broadband connection to his mother.
∞
There was another face which sometimes appeared in his field of vision. It was curiously similar to his mother’s, but smaller, not only in its physical aspects but also in its capacity to convey the impression it could be consistently relied upon.
Sometimes it smiled and chattered noisily, sometimes the opposite. Sometimes the face would be contorted into a strange caricature of itself, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing. At other times, it would extend its tongue and waggle its fingers while inserting its thumbs in its ears. But its most distinguishing feature was that it appeared at seemingly random intervals, for no apparent reason, did whatever facial gymnastics it deemed suitable, and disappeared again, often without warning.
He’d utilised his entire vocabulary in an attempt to establish a stable relationship with the small face. But the inconsistencies of its responses had defeated all his efforts. Even his trump card, the judicious use of a well-timed ‘Wahraarrrghhhh!’, failed to produce predictable results. Sometimes the small face would attempt to use its diminutive arms to pick him up, more often than not failing miserably, leaving them both in complete disarray. At other times, it would disappear before he’d even finished the second syllable. Its erratic behaviour remained a mystery.
∞
Much of the Jeremy’s world was a source of mystery.