Mesozoic Era Musings

"The Mesozoic Era lasted a hundred and twenty million years,” I recited. “It was split into three periods – the Triassic period, the Jurassic period, and the Cretaceous period.”

Arthur ventured a brief nod. “When did the first birds come about?” he asked.

“Some time between the last years of the Triassic period, and the first years of the Jurassic.”

“What was the first bird called, and what does its name mean?”

“Archaeopteryx, and its name means ancient wing.”

“OK, now it’s my turn – ask me about dinosaurs.”

Arthur and I were reclining on the grass in a secluded corner of the school playing field. If Richard Allen was the nearest thing I had to a brother when I was at home, Arthur Holty was his equivalent at St Thomas More’s. Thinly built, with prominent nose and chin, and ice-white, spiky hair, Arthur, like Aloysius, came originally from Holland. He lived in Elizabeth Downs with his parents and baby brother Johann, and for the first two and a half years of my time at St Thomas More’s we were inseparable. Our principal shared passion was ‘How and Why Wonder Books’, which we collected and read avidly, often memorising entire sections and then testing one another on them.

Every few weeks we would be allowed to spend the weekend together, either at Arthur’s home or mine. At night, lying toe to toe in the same bed, we would endeavour to ward off sleep for as long as we could by insectivorously picking away at choice aspects of the arcane knowledge in which we both delighted.

“Which would have been harder to kill, ankylosaurus or stegosaurus?”

“Which planet would you most like to go to?”

“What book d’you reckon you’ll get next? I can’t decide between ‘The Polar Regions’ and ‘Lost Cities’.”

“I’ve already got ‘The Polar Regions’. You can borrow it if you like. Did you know that the Aurora Borealis is yellow and pink, but the Aurora Australis is green? I think I’m gunna get ‘Explorations and Discoveries’ next, or maybe ‘North American Indians’.”

And so on and so on, deep into the night, until one of us – usually Arthur – finally fell asleep.

My recollections of those weekend sojourns are closely tied up with memories of important and dramatic historic events. I was staying at Arthur’s when news came through of President Kennedy’s having been shot in Dallas. Likewise, I can recall sitting in Arthur’s living room watching grainy black and white TV coverage of Winston Churchill’s state funeral. In his thickly accented but fluent English, Arthur’s dad enjoined us ‘never to forget this moment’; the world, he said, was bidding good-bye to one of the greatest heroes of the twentieth century, if not of all time. Whether or not I agreed with this assessment, I have forgotten neither Mr Holty’s words, nor the setting in which they were proffered.

Childhood friendships can seem almost intractably intense and all-consuming, and yet ultimately they are as precarious as a house of cards. When Arthur and I were in grade five, Arthur’s parents decided to remove him from St Thomas More’s and send him instead to the local state primary school in Elizabeth Downs. After spending more time with Arthur during the preceding two and a half years than I had with almost anyone else, and having got to know him on as deep a level as I was probably capable of doing at the time, I was only ever to see him once more. That was on a Sunday afternoon more than two years later, when his parents paid an impromptu visit to mine. The intervening years had wrought considerable changes in both Arthur and me, and we were awkward and uncertain with one another, scarcely knowing what to say, or even what physical posture to adopt. In the end, I was relieved when he left, conscious perhaps at some level that, as is almost invariably the case in the end, the woolly bear caterpillar of our friendship had been peremptorily squashed beneath the jackboot of arbitrary circumstance.