The end of innocence

"Ralph wept... for the dark heart of Man and the fall of the one true friend, Piggy."

I sat in the train and for the first time realised that this was it. I was finally off to the big school - public school, Goring.

I was 13 years old. I was small, very small - less than 5 foot tall. I sat lonely on my chair in the train, an insecure child, pre-pubescent, desiring kindness and intimacy.

An ache was in my chest. Something was dying within me. Was it my heart? No, not yet. Was it the death of innocence? No, it was not something directly philospohical. It was not a principle. It was an emotion. It was the death of happiness, simply happiness. I had been happy.

Now I sat on a train and I knew that it bore me to a new land. It bore me to a world of abuse and mockery. It bore me to where the "me"-ness of me was not welcome, was perhaps even to be despised. It bore me to a land where the bully walked dominant, supreme, where the only principle left was survival.

The messenger shares in the news he brings and this was true of the train. Even the station as I came to it seemed dark and sad. But the train itself was touched with cruelty. It bore me on, as in a dark vacuum, an emptiness. There was no kindness in that train. But there were the boys, the boys of Goring already there, already in groups, already in mocking groups, with their conventions of harsh language.

So I sat alone, in a lonely place, my chest aching. Despite all this I was still hoping the journey would never end. But it did.

And so the journey of survival was to begin. It was to last 5 years.