I did not grow taller, or grow hair on my legs, he said nothing. Not so his mother, though.
‘Ee, Alfie Monk, your mother not feedin’ you or summin’?’ Mrs McGonagal said to me one day in the shop. ‘Look at ye! There’s more growth on a mouldy cheese.’
‘Ma!’ said Jack, but he was laughing too. I don’t think he intended to be mean, but, when he laughed, I shrivelled inside because I’d seen it all before. The suspicion, the mistrust, the gradual – or sometimes sudden – withdrawal of friendship from the strange boy who does not get older.
Not long after, I heard them talking about me. I had come into the shop; the tinkling bell that normally announced a customer’s arrival was broken, so nobody knew I was there.
I heard Jack in the back room of the shop. He was repeating his mother’s joke from before in his new, deeper voice.
‘… more growth on a mouldy cheese, I tell you!’
‘Come on, Jack. Don’t mock the afflicted. He’s prob’ly got some growth condition or summin’.’ The voice was a young woman: Jean Palmer, whom Jack had started courting. I had met her once or twice. She was pretty.
‘Alfie’s different. It’s not right,’ said Jack. ‘He’s not changed in five years. Five years! And have you heard how he talks? Reckons he’s from Hexham. Well, I know Hexham, and they don’t talk like that out there.’
By now, I had moved from my position by the counter and was sort of crouched down behind a stack of cardboard boxes. I did not want them to come out and see that I had been listening.
‘Aye, he does talk funny, I’ll give y’that,’ Jean Palmer said. ‘But I like him.’
‘He’s not right, Jean. And his aunty’s not right, either. Never looks you in the eye when she’s talking to you. Living out in the woods like that – with a goat of all things. Old Lizzie Richardson told Ma she used to know her years ago, in North Shields, when she had a son of her own, and he was called Alfie as well. That’s odd, isn’t it?’
‘Lizzie Richardson? She’s over eighty.’
‘That’s what I’m saying, Jean. And, if Mrs Richardson knew her back in Shields, that puts that Mrs Monk at sixty-odd if she’s a day.’
‘Well, she’s lookin’ good on it is all I can say.’
At that point, another customer came in and shouted, ‘Hello?’ and hardly noticed as I scuttled out. I cycled home, despondent.
This was how it happened, again and again, although this time was quicker than I was used to.
You see, it is simply not possible to get no older and expect nobody to notice. People talk; people gossip. You can often get away with it for much longer than you might expect, but eventually people behave just like, well … people.
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