Opinion: 1963 and the summer of lost innocence

“Innocence does not find near as much protection as guilt.” Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Like many people, I have been watching a lot of TV recently and have read many books and plays over the years whose themes centre upon the summer of lost innocence in 1914, a period meant to signify the final flowering of life as we then knew it just prior to the five years of trench hell and the mud, blood and human sacrifice that was Flanders.

Don’t worry; this is not yet another attempt to jump on the Great War Anniversary Bandwagon. That is all being done to death by others and I have nothing of significance to add. It has however, together with the latest sordid revelations about Knowl View and Cambridge House, caused the Hardcastle train of thought to reflect upon my own summer of lost innocence circa 1963.

I lived in the area now known as Deeplish but which was then firmly situated in Central Ward. Deeplish did not start until you got to the other side of the railway bridge on Milkstone Road.

In those days, I was a snot-nosed 13 year old with short pants held up by a snake-buckle belt, permanently grazed knees and a thirst for getting into the sort of mischief that fell just short of juvenile delinquency. You know the sort of thing: building bonfires out of season, play-fights with Diana pop-out .177 air pistols, home-made bows and arrows with real pointed tips and the like.

Every day of the school summer holiday seemed to be scorchingly hot and we were allowed to play out all day as long as our mums knew roughly where we were – to the nearest mile or so.

My best mate Duncan lived at 10 Castlemere Street in a big house that used to be the manse of the Methodist church next door. The gatepost still bore the legend Wesley House. His dad owned the Regal School of Motoring based in The Butts. His family were far better off than mine but those things meant little then.

Our sexual awareness stopped at knowing that girls were somehow different but we had only the sketchiest idea how or why. It was of no real interest to us. We had other fish to fry; fights to be had, bits of scrap wood to set fire to, filched spuds to bake and bottles to smash. The usual boyhood stuff.

Next door to Duncan’s house was 12 Castlemere Street known as Cambridge House. It was a Home of some sort or perhaps a hostel where a few boys lived. The lads tended to be a bit older than we were but only by a couple of years so we started to hang around with them. By shinning over Duncan’s backyard wall, we could drop into their yard where they had an enormous, single storey games room to the rear of the house. It contained an old, full-sized snooker table and a pianola; one of those mechanical pianos fed by rolls of paper with punch-holes and played by furiously pumping two foot pedals.

Many of the Cambridge House boys had to go out to work or college during the day but there always seemed to be a couple of them knocking around so we spent the time learning to play snooker or billiards and playing ‘Tipperary’ on the pianola; one of the few tunes we recognised from the stack of paper rolls that seemed to litter the place.

The lads, on the whole seemed a fairly normal bunch but some of them seemed to have had a spot of trouble or turmoil in their lives that meant they could not live with their mums and dads but these things were never discussed.

Sometimes we went into the kitchen where were occasionally given a drink by one of the staff. One fragment of memory that I have retained is of being amazed at seeing a small, free-standing, deep fat fryer; the first I had ever seen outside a chip shop. Strange the things you remember.

As the summer wore on, we got to know the lads better and the banter became less guarded. Every now and then, in the games room, a few of them could be found together, murmuring in low tones out of earshot of any of the staff. During these times, they seemed not to be interested in snooker or the pianola any more but had business of their own to discuss. Private, secret business. Duncan and I were, after all, outsiders.

Gradually, we became vaguely aware that there was something unsavoury going on in the house itself. We caught the odd ribald comment about ‘the fat man’ and invariably, one or more of the boys would blush, get angry or just walk away. Of actual details we knew none but somehow it seemed that a cloud had sneaked into that otherwise endless, blue, summer sky and there was something nasty, dirty and most of all, shameful lurking nearby. Something we could not see or touch but could, upon occasion, smell. Gradually, the allure of endless, free games of snooker seemed to be contaminated in some way and our visits started to become less frequent.

Whatever the ‘something’ was, we somehow felt that it was connected in some indefinable way with the parental warnings of ‘strangers’ or ‘nasty men’. Dirty stuff that only grown-ups knew about and had nothing to do with our fun-filled, boyish lives.

We saw nothing and we knew nothing but we felt and smelt that there was something dark and dangerous there in Cambridge House as if the very bricks and mortar held some sort of threat like some demon-possessed house in a Stephen King novel.

Over the years, more and more stories came out and I have had plenty of time to reflect upon that summer. I did not realise it then but it marked the beginning of the end of my childhood. Early on in the following year as Duncan and I were walking through the cemetery by Church Stile, we found a used contraceptive and in the ensuing ribald conversation, I began a very informal and unscientific education about matters of a sexual nature. A hitherto innocent childhood was slipping through my fingers like so many grains of fine sand.

Nowadays of course, thanks to gangsta-rap, YouTube and all the rest, sexual awareness comes much earlier and the average 14 year old is far more worldly wise than Duncan and I ever were.

Almost fifty years on I often wonder about those boys who I feel guilty about because I no longer remember their names or faces; just their smiles and their boyish laughter. Many will have gone on to lead full and happy lives. For others, it marked the first steps on their own private road to hell.

Childhood innocence is lost soon enough. It should come unhurriedly and naturally in its own time and in its own way. I am not going to go into rant-mode about the evils of paedophilia and sexual abuse but surely, the deliberate and destructive taking away of innocence is an offence against human dignity in the vilest way possible? I do not mean this in the strictly metaphysical sense but for me, the taking of a child’s soul is the very epitome of evil. No amount of prison time can atone for this, which to me, is perhaps the greatest of all sins.

In some small way, I too feel tainted. I had a poor but happy childhood untouched by sexual or physical abuse but still feel a twinge of irrational guilt when I think of those boys and realise, that when I was safely tucked up in my own bed reading the Beano by torchlight, two streets away, some of my pals were screaming for mercy as the few shreds of their remaining innocence were dragged from them, over and over again.

This piece is dedicated to those lads who never managed to escape from it.