My Friend Harry was a bit cagey on the subject of his very first memory. It wasn't that his recollection wasn’t clear enough. Quite the reverse. But though he would dearly have liked to say it was of his mother smiling at him in his pram or of his father waggling his fingers at him or, indeed, both of those endearing greetings happening concurrently, the truth was less fragrant.
His first and quite clear memory was of sitting on his enamel potty in the kitchen and looking at the bare boards revealed by a hole in the linoleum. How old would he have been? Two? Three? To his right was the black leaded Larbert kitchen range, fronted by a steel fender. Above it, a black painted mantlepiece bearing a tea caddy, an alarm clock, a shell-cap from the Great War and two open razors in worn leather cases. To the right of that was the brick copper with a wooden lid and a copper-stick. That's where the weekly wash was boiled. To his left was a floor-to-ceiling dresser, two cupboards at its base, stacked with plates, dishes and jars. From hooks at the edges of the shelves dangled cups, mugs and jugs. A window looked out on to a concrete yard with a five-foot fence separating them from the lot next door. Hanging on the fence was the galvanised tin bath which was brought into the kitchen on Friday evenings for the weekly baths, all taking turns with the water. In front of the window was the kitchen table covered in 'American cloth' and in the corner of the room beside the range was the yellow kitchen sink - cold water only. All this, naturally, was beyond Harry’s ken as a tiny boy sitting on the pot, but it must have made some impression to be such a clear memory after so many years.
But it was only a year or two after Harry's dawn of realisation that he became a medical specimen.
Harry's mother was given to entertaining various aunts and other ladies to afternoon tea, those social occasions being given the honour of the 'middle room' with its open fire, its cushioned chairs and couch and its mahogany table covered with a tasselled velveteen cloth. With eight or nine hatted and veiled ladies siting around the table and sipping their tea and nibbling their biscuits, many were the reputations torn to shreds, long were the discussions of ailments and misfortunes, wide-ranging were the predictions of shameless young hussies coming to no good.
Naturally, Harry was excluded from such gatherings. Until...
He had the clearest recollection of the start of his embarrassing misfortune. His mother was drying him after a bath when she looked puzzled. "Pull your stomach in." she said. Harry did his best to oblige, but it still stuck out so she prodded it with a forefinger. "It's hard," she said in surprise. "Your stomach's hard." She prodded and prodded and shook her head in mystification.
The very next day all the ladies had congregated in the middle room and when the scandal mongering showed signs of flagging, Harry's mother made the announcement that had them all setting down their cups in astonishment. "My Harry's got a hard stomach." she declared. Eager to expand their medical knowledge, they requested proof.
Harry was sent for and in a matter of seconds down came his trousers and up went his shirt and vest. All eyes were focused on his stomach. Soon, all forefingers were prodding it and loud were the exclamations of wonder. Harry, needless to say, was overwhelmed with shame and anguish, but there was no escape.
In full frontal exposure he had to stand there while theories were evolved, discussed, rejected and replaced with others. And all the while there were tut-tuttings and exclamations of the order of “Did you ever see the like?” “Hard as iron, isn't it?” and so on and so forth.
When, reluctantly, the first examination and discussion had ended and Harry was allowed to retreat, he desperately hoped that was the end of it.
No such luck. Week after week there would be a concerned inquiry about the hardness of Harry’s stomach to be followed, inevitably, by his frontal exposure; the prodding of forefingers; the exclamations of astonishment; and the exchange of diagnoses. Eventually, though, the thing ran its course and he was spared the weekly ordeal. Maybe the hardness softened, maybe the subject had palled. Whatever the reason, Harry's hard stomach was no longer on the weekly agenda and he did no more full frontals for 20-odd years. That was when he joined the Army.
And talking of potties and related matters, it is now timely to introduce a sordid note. My Friend Harry, when barely house-trained, was sent to a Convent school. Harry at that time had the greatest difficulty with buttons and most difficulty of all with trouser buttons. So many were the occasions when a tearful and stinking Harry, having horridly lost the battle between the call of nature and recalcitrant trouser buttons, cowered mutely at the open door of the lavatory hoping someone would come to his aid.
That meant a lay-sister having to be summoned and that meant Harry sitting half-naked in a drying room while the ghastly trousers and pants were washed clean and dried. He would then be sent home with a note scribbled by an irate Mother Superior - to get another rollicking from his mother.
That happened time and again and the shame lingered throughout adolescence. It was, incidentally, indicative of the times that nobody thought twice about sending a toddler home on his own. In Harry's case it was about two miles through busy streets.
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