Time for a Child

Two windmills stood sentinel still on the hills above the football
pitch. From miles away you could see their punctuation of the shallow
green wave on the horizon. But from here you could see all the black
and white wooden body and sweep detail.

I had come from hundreds of miles away just the night before. It was a
weekend in the old home visiting family and Friday's late night arrival
became sleep became a Spring Saturday morning's sun and mud cub
football. My nephew had asked especially that I attend this league game
that he was playing in. It was a must see.

During the week my sister had mentioned to me on the phone that a local
child had died. A diabetic, he and his mother had a routine where he
would have a biscuit whilst he had a bath. This time he decided not to
have the biscuit. Whilst his mother was out of the bathroom he went
into hypoglycaemic shock and drowned. My sister had seen the helicopter
flying away as paramedics tried in vain to bring him back to life. I
must admit that caught up in the melee of the remaining week in my own
world many miles away I had mainly forgotten this by the weekend.

Excited 8 - 11 year-old boys in black and white striped kits raced out
from the dressing hut kicking footballs over the slightly damp
green/brown turf. Being there reminded me of when I had played in the
same league twenty years before. The size and ability of the players
was much as the same as in my time it's just that now all the boys wore
top label boots and their shirts had sponsorship from local business.
Also, when they weren't in the team strip they would invariably be
wearing Premiership replica kit.

Now and again during the practice a few balls would be kicked out to in
my direction. Put on the spot I would nervously but surely pass back
with the outside of my left foot, aware that in the heat of battle I
was only marginally less hopelessly left-footed than when I was their
age. "Who do you think you are? Liam Brady?" a parent had asked a
nine-year old me. I wasn't sure how to take it at the time but to be
compared to Liam Brady, even just for his footedness was really quite a
compliment.

The shrill blast of a whistle woke me from my reminiscence. The coach,
who was about to referee the game called both teams around the centre
circle whilst spectators, my sister, my niece and myself included,
stood on the touchline.

The coach announced that we were about to have a minute's silence for
the child who had died. The child had been a member of the team. I felt
a slight rush in my head and a sick clarity which made my throat warm
and tighten. Far from being an unconnected story, a mere aside in a
telephone conversation, I was in fact being warned that I was stepping
into the heart of a genuine local tragedy.

Throughout the autumn and winter leading up to that particular time
we'd got used to observing minute's silences, mainly for a dead
princess who none of us had known. She had died in her armoured
Mercedes along with her playboy boyfriend and their drunken chauffeur.
There was one silence, days after their death which had made sense to
me. It was at a professional football match. The visiting team were
owned by the boyfriend's father. That evening it felt right to show
your respects to a grieving father. But the rest of them - I spent my
time thinking "what am I supposed to think about?". It got to the point
where it felt like you'd spend a third of you life sleeping and half of
it in silence for this particular ex-royal.

However, in front of me were fourteen boys who'd lost a team mate and a
friend, to either side were parents who had known the boy and before
me, a coach I found afterwards was berating himself for not having
allowed the lad his last game on the previous Saturday. It had been an
important cup match and usual policy of giving everyone a game had not
applied.

The whistle blew, a circle of dead silence surrounded the pitch. I
looked around - the boys, my nephew included, looked forward
determinedly at the metre of turf in front of them, uniform stances of
hands neatly behind backs, the other team did the same. The coach was
visibly restraining his natural reaction, his lips pursed. It all
seemed so unfair, it wasn't supposed to happen.

The silence was momentarily visited by the caw of crows in surrounding
trees and ducks in a faraway pond. An impatient driver tore up the main
road which ran alongside the playing field, a more invasive sound than
the distant rumble of the other traffic which continued to pass the
collective grief. How could they? Why couldn't they stop? Didn't they
sense the upset like I could? Why couldn't they see?

An aeroplane rumbled overhead before banking in the circular queue for
the local international airport, indifferent to our sadness.

I turned to my sister, my "bigger" older sister, her eyes were swollen
and red, I'd not often seen her like this. I went to lift my left arm
and put it around her but stopped myself; it seemed inappropriate. We'd
collectively slipped into our own thoughts, our own grief.

The coach blew the whistle again, we clapped our hands and cheered to
make ourselves feel stronger and to urge our thoughts on to the game
about to start.

I don't really remember the result although I'm fairly sure "we" won.
The game was played with no less tenacity than usual and was enjoyable
to watch.

With the game over, my nephew reemerged from the hut changed but muddy
and ready for a shower at home. We made our way to the adjacent car
park, across a side road from which was another, less noticeable
sentinel. The parish church which had stood for centuries, dark and
indifferent to yet another funeral in which would follow in a matter of
days. Its emerald graveyard awaited its next young arrival.

We jumped in the car, another Saturday awaited, we raced towards the
world which the crows, ducks, cars and planes had never left:
Normality.