There’s Another Georgy Deep Inside
Georgy:
So where shall I start my story? The first time I recognised and managed to say Will’s name? Or when I knew for real that Willie could keep the monsters away from me? Or when Willie first made me a secret den to hide in from the thunder-monsters that frightened the life out of me? Or when he left to do his duty (as he saw it) and I was deathly afraid I’d never see him again? They’re all different kinds of beginnings, all different parts of the story of different parts of my life, but they all tell the same story; that the be-all and end-all of my world, the pivot on which my world turns, and the one part of my life that is mine and mine alone, is my sweet, brave, kind, gentle, generous, gorgeous Tyler Wilmot, the best and most adorable big brother in the world.
Will was always there, the main focus of my life even if he didn’t know it; all my very earliest memories are about him. I distinctly remember when I was a small child, not yet three years old, sitting on his lap and poking my fingers in his mouth while he tried to bite me, and laughing uproariously; it really was the best, funniest game I knew, and Will never tired of playing it with me. Willie and his pretend biting and funny faces were the most important thing I had, only mummy and daddy made me feel as good as he did.
Every time I felt blue, or needed a special hug, Will had it for me; his arms around me, my hand in his, the way he’d pat the seat and make room for me on the couch so I could cuddle against him, all special, enduring memories; when my friends came over to play, after we’d had enough Barbie fashion parades, and doll’s-house picnics and dolly tea-parties, Will would be the bear (because I asked him, and he never said no to me) so he could chase us through the house and hunt us down. Mummy only had a couple of rules: no playing in the bedrooms and jumping on the beds, and no chasing up and down the secret stairs, and when the bear caught us, he was only allowed to tickle me, I made sure of that. Everyone else got tagged, but I got tickled; my rules, my Will, my bear, ergo my tickles!
I was scared of thunder; it weakened my knees and rang alarm bells all through me, and only Will knew how to peel me off the ceiling and bring me back to reality. I won’t lie to you; when a peal of thunder sounded, only his arms around me made me feel safe, not mummy, not daddy, not even Aunt Kay; only Willie could talk me down and put me back together. He even made me a den, a thunder-shelter to hide from the scary thunder-beasts when they came looking for me, a cave he made out of his blankets and bedclothes and his arms, and I knew when I ran and jumped in there I’be safe and protected because nothing could get me while my Will was protecting me in my secret thunder-shelter.
Mummy and daddy talked about sending Will away to school and I went bonkers-crazy; send him away? Not bloody likely, this was home, this was where he lived, with me, this was where he was staying, end of conversation! They didn’t know I was playing under daddy’s desk and listening in horror when they were talking about taking my Will, my big bear, away from me, how very dare they! Who was going to protect me if they sent him away? Nuh-uh, not happening, no way, no how!
Will was kind of the same; he knew mummy and daddy were thinking about boarding school for him, and he wasn’t at all on-board with the idea; all his friends were here, all his favourite things were here, all his favourite places he and his friends from the local farms liked to play, places where they could build campfires and dens and tree-houses in the woods and build fires to wrap potatoes in foil and bake them in the coals, and build rope-swings. He never knew I knew he’d sneak out after bed-time so he and his friends could go poaching trout, or scrumping, stealing apples, pears, and soft fruit from our neighbours’ orchards (why, I don’t know, we had plenty of the same fruit orchards on the estate right outside the front door) plus I was here, and I wasn’t going to let him go anywhere, no chance…
I made myself totally unbearable around mummy and daddy; crying, throwing tantrums, snapping and snarling, flouncing around and having fits of outright brattish disobedience. Oh I worked so hard at making the olds understand just how super pissed-off I was with them for even thinking about putting my Tyler-Bear somewhere I couldn’t have him whenever I wanted him. Mummy would panic in the mornings because my bed hadn’t been slept in, and then she’d look for me and find me asleep in bed with Will, my Pooh bear with me so I had all my special bears when I went to sleep, making double-sure they couldn’t magic him away in the middle of the night. I was taking no chances…
Eventually they twigged that perhaps, just perhaps, sending my pet bear away might, possibly, be a really, really bad idea; chalk one up to the power of nuclear ground-zero level obnoxious brattery…
Through all this, Aunt Kay was my voice of reason; Will and I were used to being under her orders, she and mummy ruled the house and just ran everything, but when mummy wasn’t available, Aunt Kay always had a soft lap, a bag of jelly-babies and a soothing word for me. Will deferred to her automatically, he’d had her long before I had and he was used to her dampening his handkerchief so she could wipe smuts and grime off him, just as he was used to her ordering him around, and cowering at that look she gave him when he didn’t do things exactly the way she’d told him to.
It took me a long time to realise Aunt Kay wasn’t actually my auntie, that she was, in fact, mummy’s housekeeper; all through my childhood she was the one who, when mummy wasn’t around because she had to work, cooked my lunch, made me jam sandwiches, wiped off my milk moustache, brought me treats if I’d had a blue day, made me the occasional fried-egg sandwich as a special treat, and watched cartoons with me sitting on her lap. She was the one who admired my drawings and taped them to the fridge. She was the one who made Will tidy his room, and told me off when I spilled blackcurrant on the study carpet then helped me blot it up, and she was the one who looked after the two of us while daddy was away overseas with the regiment and mummy was running the business-side of the estate.
It took me even longer to understand we lived on a large estate, mostly because I wasn’t allowed to wander around the way Tyler was. Until I was maybe seven or eight all I’d ever seen of the estate was The Lodge, the old estate gatehouse where Aunt Kay lived, the Lodge garden, where I was allowed to play under Aunt Kay’s eye because it was fenced off so I couldn’t go wandering, the rear courtyard and loose-boxes if Will was with me, or the playroom next to my room. The house was big, but not spooky, just old, and there were lots and lots of places to explore. Apart from the three hidden back staircases and landings, I could go pretty much where I pleased, as long as mummy, Aunt Kay, or Will knew where I was. As far as I knew, that was it; the fact that the estate covered a vast area of farmland, orchards, and villages didn’t percolate down to me until I was older.
Will, of course, had scoped out the place many times, and he knew all the little nooks and crannies, the little hidden rooms and attics, and the huge grounds where all the fruit orchards and woodland were. I wasn’t allowed to climb trees, so Will would scale one of Mummy’s ornamental plum trees in her formal garden and get me a handful of lovely sweet, juicy golden plums, and then Aunt Kay would go off on him for getting me all sticky, and filling me up before dinner and ruining my appetite. When he did things like that for me, that’s when I knew how much he loved me; he knew Aunt Kay would be mad but he did it anyway, because I liked them and I’d asked him, and he never refused me anything.
As I got older it began to seem more and more important to me that Will was where I could see him, hear him, feel him; if he wasn’t around for any reason I’d get weirdly jumpy and scared, and everything would only back down when he showed up again. I didn’t demand he spend all his time with me, he had his friends and I had mine, but if he was gone for a long time, and I don’t mean school, then somehow Aunt Kay would know what was up with me and she’d take me with her to go find him, mostly to reassure myself that he was still around. Mummy and daddy talking about sending him to boarding school had set off all kinds of fears and suspicions inside me, and anytime I couldn’t find him I started worrying mummy and daddy had sneaked him away when I wasn’t looking.
Willie had also changed; he was Tyler now, his real name, not Will, his family nickname, and it seemed to be important to him that we now called him Tyler. He also seemed to be shooting up like a weed, every day he looked taller, bigger built, less clumsy; I was still just a little squirt and he was looming over me. Aunt Kay told me he was becoming a big boy, and I really didn’t like the idea at all; if he became a big boy like all my friends’ big brothers then he’d stop doing stuff with me and go and do it with someone else, and I wasn’t going to allow that.
But it was inevitable that he did; Ty still played with me, he still climbed trees and chased me up and down the stairs, and helped me search for the way into Narnia in the huge old wardrobes stored in the attics, and sat still while I practiced being a nurse on him and glued his hands together with Scotch tape because Mummy and Aunt Kay wouldn’t let me play with sticking plasters, but it was changing, he was changing; now, when his big, ugly, smelly, noisy, flatfooted friends showed up and barged around like a herd of trolls he’d disappear with them and I’d be sitting in a disconsolate sulk because he’d picked his friends over me.
When I reached my teens is when I really started to change; things were happening to me, to my body, yucky things; I itched all the time, my skin felt like it was too tight and looked like I’d been scrubbed with a cheese-grater. I erupted so badly I looked like an extra from ‘Star Trek, all oily and blotchy with red-raw zits the size of match-heads bursting out all over me, but especially my face. I sweated at the least excuse (and Aunt Kay telling me when I complained that ‘Horses sweat, men perspire, but ladies only glow’ didn’t help much, I just spent my time in the wettest glow possible feeling miserable about it…) and changing my clothes three times a day seemed like an awful lot of work, and it just never stopped.