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THE END OF INNOCENCE When a smell, a sight, a piece of music, an unexpected event, triggers a memory that has been beyond recall for decades, it is easy to convince oneself that it is untrue, and the ability of memory to distort the truth of an actual occurrence simply serves to reinforce this belief. Thus . . . did it really happen? Do I really remember how it happened? Or do I merely recall being told . . . ? I can no longer remember when it was or whence it emanated. It may have been from Blakesly Street School, off the Commercial Road, in London’s East End, or possibly from Princess May Road School in Stoke Newington. My removal from one to the other was at the age of eight. What I do recollect is that it was a school’s daily outing to Epping Forest which lies roughly equidistant from the two schools. On reflection it must have been from the East End that we travelled by motor coach, as it was certainly around midsummer, and memory suggests that these daily excursions were organised during school holidays in order to relieve parents of the economic burden of superintending their children at the expense of lost wages. That situation certainly belongs to the depressed earlier 1930s, when I lived in the Commercial Road, rather than the immediate pre-War period, when we had removed to (somewhat more up-market) Stoke Newington. Consequently, I must have been no more than six or seven years old. I still recall some of the sights, sounds, and smells of Epping Forest – which was a magical place for me. Far more than a mere extension of Albert Square where I was born [the name later changed to Albert Gardens, being given the “posher” nomenclature as a sop to the sensitivities of its inhabitants, who regarded themselves as being slightly more bourgeois than occupants of some of its neighbouring streets] or the rather larger expanse of the small local park, whose precise name I do not remember (if I ever knew it!) but which we called Itchy Park; possibly a connection with the spikey, sticky balls that dropped from its trees and caused some irritation of the skin. Vivid in my memory remains the walk from the coach’s parking area, near Chingford Station, to the edge of the Forest, where there was a wooden hut that dispensed drinks and comestibles to be consumed on rough wooden benches outside. But we brought our own packed lunches, and I can still, with very little effort, taste the egg sandwiches that my mother regularly provided. At the edge of my memory is a little girl who allowed me to taste something from her lunch package that was ambrosial. I never discovered what it was until decades later, when, first tasting Greek halva, my senses were aroused and my memory titillated and taken back to that little girl’s kindness in Epping Forest in the early 1930s. It may have been the same little girl, or perhaps another, but the most refulgent of all memories from that period, is of the suggestion made – and adopted – of removing our clothing during a game of hide-and-seek around the trees surrounding a small clearing in the forest. It seemed such a marvellous idea – particularly having regard to the heat of the afternoon sun – that the three of four of us playing had little hesitation in adopting it. And we pranced and laughed and felt (without being sure precisely why) wonderfully and wickedly happy. And were then interrupted by one of the teachers demanding to know, in the most angry of voices, what we thought we were doing! I cannot speak for the others, but my instant reaction was a feeling of sinfulness. And, incredibly, I did not know why I should feel that way, although instinctively I must have known that our behaviour was not acceptable. But it was play. It was harmless. It was fun. It was also the end of innocence.
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