Hollow Henry - rough notes. A character without a plot
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bcderbyshire
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Hollow Henry - rough notes. A character without a plot
Hollow Henry
It’s true that Henry was, as a younger child, completely unaware of his hollowness. He ran squealing like any other small boy, so immersed in life he gave no thought to himself.
The world was external – the colours and tastes and smells; the downhill race and uphill climb across the grassless, bike-worn humps in the woods; the bent twig held as a gun for cowboys and Indians or War; wishing, wishing for a real toy gun for a birthday or Christmas, one you could break open and see the bullets nestling in their silver chamber like formalised eggs; the sky spinning above him when he lay on his back on a coverlet of warm grass and daisies; his goofy friends with luminous ears and wilting socks, playing every game to strict rules to be broken only at peril of excommunication from today’s gang; the alien planets of night and holidays by the sea, when everything known became unknown, mysterious, new; climbing out of the window at night to stand on the lawn where black balls of hedgehogs snuffled and the air tasted of caves and old soil; sitting on the train watching the buses change colour and knowing he had left the narrow streets of his confined life behind for a week.
These people, events, sensations, surrounded him. He floated passively among them like a fish nuzzling the glass bowl. They surrounded him. He was like the cross formed by four squares touching each other – an illusion suspended by the reality around him.
Everything was external until the day he first wondered what exactly it was girls kept hidden under their white or blue knickers which they would tuck their skirts and dresses into when they did handstands – which only girls could do – white legs sparkling in the sun; white socks and brown buttoned shoes; or skipping intricately to songs only they knew; or those complicated hand-clapping games between two or three, sometimes four or more of them; these secret beings with their secret smiles and songs, their hidden places.
His gaze was turned inward by them. He discovered he was hollow. There was a hole in him, but he couldn’t make out its shape. Maybe it was like a girl, or like their secrets and their secret places. Maybe it was a code he couldn’t break – a conundrum beyond his intelligence or experience. Maybe it was man-shaped, waiting there for his voice to break, for everything to grow and change.
Now his name has become a burden. Why Henry? Why those two awkward syllables? Why not John, or Jim, or Pete, or Tom, or Paul? Sure, some of them began as multi-syllables – Peter, Thomas – but they shorten so well. John and Jim, Pete, Tom and Paul are older, muscular, experienced. They have Brylcreamed hair, tight trousers. Maybe they carry flick-knives. Certainly they know about girls. They’ve seen the secret. Girls love them and willingly follow them into darkened rooms where The Unknown happens. But Henry is the name of a hollow boy who crosses the road rather than pass close to girls because he knows they will be able to see into that hollow place – to look beneath his boy’s clothes and see his skinny, white legs, his clumsy feet, his ribby chest. They will know he is only a boy with a squeaky voice and hairless Thing and a shapeless hollow waiting perhaps to be filled one day with God knows what. Henry is a shameful name – a buffoon’s name; a name for someone who wears a vest, whose hair sits on the top of his head like a yellow turnip; an absurd name given to narrow-faced uncles with thin hair and small moustaches under sharp noses. John has muscles; Jim carries a concealed flick-knife; Pete and Tom and Paul know the secrets. Henry has feet which conspire to trip him when a girl approaches.
He has a hollow place.
He tries to peer into his chest, to chart the exact shape of this hollow, but it seem to change every time he looks. Sometimes it is exactly like a girl standing on her hands; then it becomes a question; then a broken voice, a poem, an unknown road bearing secret cars to unknown cities; God-shaped, even. A throne-room.
It’s true that Henry was, as a younger child, completely unaware of his hollowness. He ran squealing like any other small boy, so immersed in life he gave no thought to himself.
The world was external – the colours and tastes and smells; the downhill race and uphill climb across the grassless, bike-worn humps in the woods; the bent twig held as a gun for cowboys and Indians or War; wishing, wishing for a real toy gun for a birthday or Christmas, one you could break open and see the bullets nestling in their silver chamber like formalised eggs; the sky spinning above him when he lay on his back on a coverlet of warm grass and daisies; his goofy friends with luminous ears and wilting socks, playing every game to strict rules to be broken only at peril of excommunication from today’s gang; the alien planets of night and holidays by the sea, when everything known became unknown, mysterious, new; climbing out of the window at night to stand on the lawn where black balls of hedgehogs snuffled and the air tasted of caves and old soil; sitting on the train watching the buses change colour and knowing he had left the narrow streets of his confined life behind for a week.
These people, events, sensations, surrounded him. He floated passively among them like a fish nuzzling the glass bowl. They surrounded him. He was like the cross formed by four squares touching each other – an illusion suspended by the reality around him.
Everything was external until the day he first wondered what exactly it was girls kept hidden under their white or blue knickers which they would tuck their skirts and dresses into when they did handstands – which only girls could do – white legs sparkling in the sun; white socks and brown buttoned shoes; or skipping intricately to songs only they knew; or those complicated hand-clapping games between two or three, sometimes four or more of them; these secret beings with their secret smiles and songs, their hidden places.
His gaze was turned inward by them. He discovered he was hollow. There was a hole in him, but he couldn’t make out its shape. Maybe it was like a girl, or like their secrets and their secret places. Maybe it was a code he couldn’t break – a conundrum beyond his intelligence or experience. Maybe it was man-shaped, waiting there for his voice to break, for everything to grow and change.
Now his name has become a burden. Why Henry? Why those two awkward syllables? Why not John, or Jim, or Pete, or Tom, or Paul? Sure, some of them began as multi-syllables – Peter, Thomas – but they shorten so well. John and Jim, Pete, Tom and Paul are older, muscular, experienced. They have Brylcreamed hair, tight trousers. Maybe they carry flick-knives. Certainly they know about girls. They’ve seen the secret. Girls love them and willingly follow them into darkened rooms where The Unknown happens. But Henry is the name of a hollow boy who crosses the road rather than pass close to girls because he knows they will be able to see into that hollow place – to look beneath his boy’s clothes and see his skinny, white legs, his clumsy feet, his ribby chest. They will know he is only a boy with a squeaky voice and hairless Thing and a shapeless hollow waiting perhaps to be filled one day with God knows what. Henry is a shameful name – a buffoon’s name; a name for someone who wears a vest, whose hair sits on the top of his head like a yellow turnip; an absurd name given to narrow-faced uncles with thin hair and small moustaches under sharp noses. John has muscles; Jim carries a concealed flick-knife; Pete and Tom and Paul know the secrets. Henry has feet which conspire to trip him when a girl approaches.
He has a hollow place.
He tries to peer into his chest, to chart the exact shape of this hollow, but it seem to change every time he looks. Sometimes it is exactly like a girl standing on her hands; then it becomes a question; then a broken voice, a poem, an unknown road bearing secret cars to unknown cities; God-shaped, even. A throne-room.
