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fits. He was known to everybody as Fitty Gunthorpe, but he was also known to be quite harmless and very fond of animals. At times I had met him in the wood, and he aroused no fear in me. He had a little dog forever at his heels they said the dog was never parted from him night or day. It was the sight of the dog that inspired the wish in me to have one of my own, and I had mentioned this to my father and had received a vague promise of "Aye, I'll look out for one." But it wasn't the dog but a rabbit that brought Fitty Gunthorpe into my life.
    I was never one for lying in bed in the mornings. Often I was out of bed and had been down to the river, just to have a look, while my mother was getting the breakfast ready, and was back in the house before Ronnie stumbled downstairs, his knuckles in his eyes and his mouth agape. And when I would say to him, "Oh, Ronnie, the river's lovely this morning," he would reply, "Oh, you, you're barmy, up all night."
    Some mornings I went into the fields or the wood to pick flowers to take to my teacher. There was always something to be picked at different times of the year, cowslips not butter cups or daisies, they were too common catkins, wood anemones, ferns, bluebells and may, beautiful scented white may.
    This particular morning was bright golden, and soft and warm, and the birds were all singing. I could distinguish some of them by their song: the lark, of course, for its voice shot it into the heavens, and I could tell the difference between the thrush, the blackbird, and the robin. But this morning I did not run up the street or hug myself and leap from the ground at the sound of the bird song as I sometimes did, but went into the wood and made my way to the place where yesterday I had been with Don, for it seemed to me that I would find something there that would bear out that I had spoken the truth, and then my Aunt Phyllis would believe me. But the only evidence that I found was three blackberries lying close together on a clear piece of sward.
    They were laden with dew and were sparkling like jewels. They should have been able to prove in some way that Don pushed me into the bushes and upset my can, but I knew that they couldn't, and I turned away on to the path. And there I saw Fitty Gunthorpe. He came up to me, his mouth agape and smiling a welcome. The dog was at his heels. He wore no hat, and his hair was longish and brown and wavy like a girl's. It did not seem part of him, but looked like a wig.
    "Ha... hallo," he said.
    "Hallo," I said.
    "Lo ... lovely m... morning."
    And I smiled at him and said, "Yes, it is."
    The dog took no notice of me, and they both passed by, taking the path by which I had entered the wood. This was the lower path. It started above the last house in our street and if you kept to it you would come out on the hill that looked down on to Bog's End and the spare piece of ground where the caravans were. I did not want to go that way this morning so I took a side track which led to the upper path. I think we children had made many of the tracks in the wood, and we knew them as well as we did our own backyards. The wood itself was a continuation of the hill on which Fenwick Houses stood, and the hill was tree-studded to its summit and way down the other side, too. The upper path ran in a zigzag fashion towards the top of the hill. In parts the trees were sparse, and where they let in the light the grass grew and rabbits sported. We called these various open spaces bays.
    There was the little bay, the big bay and the tree bay. The tree bay was my favourite, for it was the smallest sward of grass and was set in a complete circle of trees, not in rigid formation, but nevertheless enclosing the space in a rough ring. It was an enchanted place to me, and I liked it best when I could come here on my own.
    When I was with the lads we were never quiet.
    I had to cross the second path to get to the tree bay, and it was when I reached the path that I heard the cry. It