The sound of heavy rain falling on a tin roof remains one of my fondest memories. On this particular Saturday, it had started raining in the early hours of the morning, and did not finally abate until midway through the afternoon. At that point Mum said that I could go out to play if I wanted, but not to get all muddy, and to return home straight away if it started to rain again.About a hundred metres up the road from us, and on the opposite side, was a large expanse of waste ground I had informally christened ‘The Dump’. It was an ideal playing area, rendered all the more attractive to me on this particular occasion by the existence of a large number of rain puddles, one of which must have measured a good five metres by three. Ignoring my mother’s injunction ‘not to get all muddy’ I had soon miraculously transformed myself into a prehistoric duck-billed dinosaur, and was happily splashing about from one primeval lagoon to another.
At first, I had the entire Dump to myself, but it was not long before another boy arrived, looking uncannily like Paddington Bear, in a blue sou’wester, bright red Wellington boots, and yellow rain hat. He seemed about my age, or perhaps slightly younger, and he was stooping down beside a rain puddle, apparently examining something.
I went over to investigate. “What are you doing?”
He looked around, and up at me. He had a thin face, with a pronounced hooked nose, large brown eyes topped by immense, bushy dark brown eyebrows, and a pointed chin surmounted by a small mouth that seemed to be slightly off-kilter. “I’m making a boat,” he said, and showed me a long, thin, vaguely boat-shaped piece of wood that he had been whittling away at with his pen-knife. His accent sounded American, but he seemed friendly enough. “Let’s see you sail it then,” I said, and, after contriving a few final refinements with his pen-knife, he obliged. Soon he had fashioned a boat for me as well and we were racing them across the rain puddles.
“What’s your favourite dinosaur?” I asked.
His mouth became even more uneven, and he screwed up his face slightly. “I’m not particularly interested in dinosaurs,” he informed me.
It was my turn to screw my face up as I attempted to come to terms with this incredible confession. Finally, in an attempt to reassure myself that I had not heard correctly, I blurted out, “How do you know when a brachiosaurus is asleep?”
The look he gave me suggested that he neither knew, nor cared.
“By the dinosnores!” I announced triumphantly, and erupted into laughter.
Once I had calmed down, the boy, who had steadfastly refrained from reacting in any way to my joke, got slowly to his feet, and said, “Let’s race our boats across that big puddle, shall we?” He began to wander off.
“Er…OK,” I said, running after him. As we squatted down next to the large puddle ready to start our race, I endeavoured to re-establish my credibility by asking him his name.
“Charlie Brown,” he said, “ and don’t laugh.”
“Why would I laugh?”
He looked discomfited. “You know – ‘cos of Peanuts.”
He had lost me completely by this point, but reluctant to diminish myself still further in his eyes, I laughed and said, “Oh….. yeah – of course……”
But he could tell I was still confused. “Haven’t you ever read Peanuts? Charlie Brown is the main character.”
I thought how clever and grown-up he seemed, using big words like ‘character’, which I was not entirely sure I understood. In the circumstances therefore, I felt it best to admit that no, I had never read, or even heard of, Peanuts.
Charlie, it emerged, was actually almost a full year older than me. He was not from America, although his accent was still suggesting as much on the day I last saw him, almost seven years later, but rather from Glasgow, in Scotland, where his parents and multifarious siblings still lived. He had come to Australia with his grandparents, and lived directly opposite The Dump, in a house just three doors along the road from ours.
“Why don’t you live with your mum and dad?” I asked.
“I like living with Gran and Pops,” he replied, in a tone of voice that made it clear he was not willing to explore the subject any further. Charlie remained an important part of my life throughout my stay in Australia, but I scarcely learned any more about his past than I did on that occasion. However, as already alluded to, he was not exactly a physically prepossessing specimen, and over the years he intermittently suffered from some quite debilitating bouts of ill-health, occasionally requiring hospitalisation; I therefore strongly suspect that the reason his parents were willing to consign him to the care of his grandparents was that a warmer climate had been recommended for him, for health-related reasons.
That first day, we played together happily for several hours, until it was beginning to grow dark. When an ancient-looking, child-sized woman with white hair appeared at the gate of one of the houses opposite, Charlie suddenly got to his feet, and announced, “I have to go – see ya!”
After walking about ten metres away, however, he slowed down, then stopped completely, and turned back to look at me. “Triceratops,” he said.
He certainly was a strange one, this Charlie Brown, I thought - and not for the last time - unable to hide the puzzlement from my features.
“My favourite dinosaur,” he explained. “It’s triceratops.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed, feeling both relieved and reassured. I grinned widely. “Mine’s allosaurus,” I announced proudly.
I went home myself soon afterwards, content in the knowledge that I appeared to have made a good friend. As I was soon to discover, however, friendship could sometimes combine with perplexity and antagonism to produce a ménage-a-troi calculated to unnerve, unsettle and infuriate.
