The Age of Aquarius

The boy stared out of the art room window, at the sinuous grey snake of the river Thames. He wanted to be part of the emerging movement mentioned in news broadcasts. He wanted to join those people who were ready to reject the status quo, who were demanding a new world order.

He wanted the world to change. Whilst he was growing up, he had hated to touch other people’s hands, or feel their breath on his face, or to be held or hugged. But he knew he had to overcome those responses to make friends, especially girlfriends. A cold palm pressed against his, or clammy skin brushing against his clothes or, in the worst instances, touching his neck or any other part of him, would still make him mentally shudder.

He learned to negotiate formal greetings, despite the revulsion which accompanied them. Even a handshake, the most innocuous physical touch could send his senses into a panic. Anything he was being told or asked to do, would not register. He would remain standing when asked to take a seat, forget the name of the person who had introduced themselves, and he might even struggle to remember why he was there and what he was doing.

At home there were rules he was expected to follow but they were not written down, not in a form he could study and learn, and they were rarely explained. They were not like mathematics or the sciences, at which he excelled. Dealing with people, even family, required concentration, and a continual processing of sometimes conflicting information. Neither did any of the rules follow a pattern, they could change unexpectedly, without reason or notice.

School was no easier. There was a maelstrom of information to absorb, but he was continually distracted by other demands. There were timetables to adhere to, frequent changes of classrooms for different subjects, and outdoor breaks, shared with hundreds of other students, with another set of rules to consider. There were simply too many bodies, all sharing a rabbit warren of rooms and corridors. It was a constant crush in which he never felt comfortable. He truanted, covering his absence with forged letters, feigned excuses, or careful subterfuge of the registration system. Exams had never been a problem; they were a simple matter of regurgitating information which he had absorbed unconsciously. With passable results in exams, no teacher questioned the ghost that he gradually became.

In the summer of nineteen-sixty-seven, the sun burned so fiercely it softened the tarmac on footpaths and roads. In the afternoons of the hottest days, you could smell the dry heat burning off taller buildings. Grass at the sides of roads turned paper-white, bare earth showing through un-mown lawns, hardened and cracked. Ants ruled every picnic, every discarded scrap of food. The world was changing around him.

Some claimed it was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, the advent of a new social structure, a time of peace, love and understanding. 

His parents were unimpressed and unyielding in respect of those developments in the popular zeitgeist. They were from another era, a generation which still followed archaic rules of morality and manners. They simply didn’t understand his world, or didn’t want to. They had been old when he was born, it was more like they were separated from him by two generations. But he didn’t voice his opinions. 

He knew there was no point in trying to explain how he felt. He wasn’t even sure he knew how to explain. And the rules at home, and at school, were useful sometimes, they were an aid in ordering his life and made it possible to navigate otherwise tricky social situations.

It was during that summer his life changed irrevocably. He had achieved the grades necessary for a place at university, to study pure mathematics but, by a series of unplanned decisions, he had also been awarded a place at an art college in the city centre. Much to the chagrin of his school, which favoured the sciences, and his parents, who thought art a waste of time, he chose the art college. The only downside to his decision was he would have to live at home while studying. The art college was too close for him to be awarded a residential grant. Much as he craved independence, the thought of sharing living accommodation with strangers, sent waves of panic through him.

David became immersed in art during that first year of study. He found both logic and freedom in his new pursuit. All fears were lost and each day started with a promise of new discoveries. He found a passion which had previously been missing in his life. He spent very little time at home and became disconnected from his parents and his sister. But he never truly escaped that familial prison. 

In the early spring of his first year, he returned from college one evening to find his parents conversing in terse, half sentences. The atmosphere in the house was different, although he could never have explained precisely what had changed. It was as though every molecule of air was charged with electricity, and the slightest spark could cause a storm which would see lightning crackling throughout every room. 

He was not told what had happened. His mother would snap at him given the least provocation, but that was not so unusual. His father sought solitude by making wine in their windowless garage or practising magic tricks in his bedroom. His sister, estranged from her life of parties and dancing, had become quiet and uncommunicative.

He couldn’t remember the exact moment when he learned his sister was pregnant, or if the knowledge simply seeped into his consciousness, deduced from fragments of conversations. But he did understand that, without the presence of a husband or a fiancé, she had brought shame and disgrace to the family. Some details, such as the identity of the father, would remain a mystery forever, known only to his sister. 

She was confined to her bedroom, a much larger room than his. All the bedrooms in their house had keys to lock them, hers was now on the outside of the door. It was only later that he learned her passport had been confiscated, and half formulated plans for a new life in Ireland, curtailed. 

At his college, the lecturers treated him as an adult, but at home he was still seen as a child. When he returned home from university for the summer break, he found a job with a company that renovated car batteries and sold them on the forecourts of garages. The owner of the business was the father of a former girlfriend. The job lasted longer than his relationship. Girlfriends presented a dilemma. A relationship where physical touch addled your thinking, was always at risk of faltering.

For the first few weeks in his summer job, he learned how to melt the pitch which sealed the car battery, remove and clean the cells, and reconstruct it ready for charging in a large shed at the rear of the premises. After a few weeks he was promoted. For the remainder of that summer, he spent each afternoon driving the small company van, delivering reconditioned batteries to garage forecourts in the local area. 

By the end of the summer, his sister had been quietly relocated. Neighbours were told that she was staying with an old friend of the family. He doubted that any of them were taken in by the explanation. It must have been, by then, obvious that she was carrying a baby.

Eventually the weather broke, roads flooded, and in the company van, he visited his sister. Both shared an anger at their parents’ outdated attitudes, and a bond grew between them. 

The new child arrived, was named, and taken away by an adoption society, all within a few days. That summer was never spoken of again. He was neither brave enough, nor foolish enough, to openly question his parents’ decisions, and his sister wanted to close the door on an episode over which she had been offered no choices.

The summer of love ended, a baby was born, held once by him before it was wrapped in paperwork and swept away into a stranger’s arms. An illusion of peace and normality returned. The promise of the age of Aquarius appeared unachievable. Love was lost, a child had come, and gone, but would never be forgotten by him or his sister, and he would never come to understand the rules which had governed those decisions.