Completely true in every detail, I remember almost fifty-one years on, how she sat, the little silver bracelet she wore on her left wrist – even the charm that hung off it – a small fish. I can describe her dress, her shoes ... sIip-ons actually, smell her hair, hear her soft voice – tell you what the weather was like. I don’t have to imagine the tears which come to my eyes as I write this either. She was so ethereally beautiful and I would give anything to be able to go back to her and that time so long ago. I never ever wanted to grow up – it was the cruellest thing ever happened to me.

Of course, having seven children now (aged 8 to 50) more than compensates for my lost childhood and I love them more than life itself, but Ruth was my first real experience and with all the limited knowledge of worldly things I possessed at thirteen – I loved her with every emotion that crowded in upon me. The incident is mentioned briefly in an autobiography I published some years back entitled”Cool Among the Flames” – compiled mainly to shut up my then youngest daughter who was forever asking...”But what did you do before you had us dad?” It does not however plumb the emotional and physical depths that I am about to relay to you. It is I admit, a very slow-to-develop recollection, nothing wondrous and impassioned should ever be rushed should it?

Living then in the county of Kent, just a couple of miles outside the Greater London border, I grew up cocooned in a world of Harry Potter type kids all with their middle-class Brit accents. Ruth herself was so very like Emma Watson who plays Hermione in the HP films, right down to her hair, facial features and totally adroit Englishness. She was fourteen, just a few months older than Emma. Think of her and you’re 4/5 of the way to seeing Ruth although in a classic beauty shoot-out, Emma would be coming in a distant second.

Most years our family, of which I was an only child, would head-off to my Great Aunt’s farm, set in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales. Only twenty minutes or so from the tiny village of Hawarth where Emily Bronte and her sisters lived and where Heathcliff wanders still his beloved Wuthering Heights. The 19th century farmhouse where we stayed had neither sewerage or electricity but no-one in 2021 even working with the most technologically advanced kitchen equipment available, could cook anything to compare tastewise with what was served-up in that tiny farmhouse beneath a flickering gas-light. I lived for the next steam-train trip that would take me north to my closeted and remote little spiritual home.

Immediately adjacent to the farmhouse was a good-size barn in which my Uncle would feed and milk the cattle, daily occupations as far removed from my own experiential domesticity as Hans Solo and the Millennium Falcon might be adjudged so far as the Wright Brothers are concerned. Nevertheless, I slipped into “farm life” without the least parental urging.

The summer holidays then, some five months subsequent to my thirteenth birthday, saw us enjoying another farm visitation up there on the picturesque moors. It was a Friday. I recall this clearly because mom had promised to take me to the local movie-house, a decrepit but intimate old relic in a nearby township, some twenty-five minutes walk from the farm, alongside those old stone walls which separated field from field, property from property ... and on those cold misty nights – legend from legend. That’s what one did in those days – walk! Films were only run there Saturday nights and I recall it was the following day!

Some time around mid-afternoon that Friday, while chasing cows, sheep, chickens and poor old Dobbin - so ancient a sway-back, it was definitely a dead horse walking - around their own fields, I heard my dad call me from far-off. Scooting back up to the farmhouse, Mom, Dad and my Uncle were chatting to another family.

“Say, this is my son Noel,” said dad. I shook hands with the man and nodded to his wife. Evidently they were staying for the week in the farm-house right across the way. The “way” being a road no more than twelve feet wide between the properties. I could have tossed a stone from my bedroom clear through their kitchen window ... could probably have flicked it!

“And this is their daughter Ruth,” Dad was continuing. I looked up at her and lost my power of speech. Nothing was working ... my arms. voicebox ... brain!

“Well say hello to Ruth, Noel,” said my mom, “She’s just fourteen – a bit older than you. Maybe you’d like to play with her? (Jesus Christ – thinking back now, what an incredible slip of the tongue that little statement was!) ... show her over the farm maybe?”

I managed some strangled sound like “Y-oh” ... a resulting cross between “Yes (mom)” and “Hello.” Ruth looked less than impressed but allowed me to direct her back the way I had just come.

“You two be back for tea in an hour or so!” called out dad. If I had been seventeen, I wouldn’t even have been back!

Now, I was hardly what you’d call a ‘smooth operator’ at thirteen. I had known from the first time my eyes fully focused shortly after birth that I liked girls! My best friend at junior high, she who I had sat beside since day-one in primary school was most definitely a girl and I’d had a thing for my younger cousin since she was eight. Sexually however, aside from a couple of show and tell sessions behind the lounge with my cousin when age-wise, we were yet to hit double figures, and hot little Carmen who had charged me threepence to “have a feel” in fourth grade one afternoon, I had no reason to doubt the stork theory!

And yet, as I helped Ruth over that first stile (a wooden ‘step’ arrangement, built to enable one to cross those old stone walls, between fields) and the brief flash of her knickers as she climbed over ... I knew intinctively that some up-till-now unutilised software was kicking-in.

One thing I did have going for me – I could hold a conversation and with Ruth this was a ground-level entry requirement. Well read, intelligent, but equally (so I discovered) impulsive and adventurous, she was no wimpy arm decoration.

“This is such fun,” she called out to me, crossing her fourth stile. She wasn’t far off the mark either.

The extreme southern ends of the property were marked by the onset of the banks of the beautiful river Nidd. A timeless old waterway whose shallow but crystal-clear waters were stocked with enough trout to satisfy generations of retired Yorkshiremen. Linking my Great Aunt’s farm with the neighboring property across the river was a sturdy but none too steady ‘swing bridge.’ Only able to carry one abreast, it was aptly named, as Ruth found out.

“Oh Gosh!” she uttered, as almost mid-center, the bridge’s lateral motion caused her to slip backwards. She fell against me as I caught her. Just for a moment I held her there and she turned as if to say something, her face but inches from mine. Even in that instant, I knew she was everything to me ... completely nonsensical as that sounds and especially with the benefit of but thirty minutes relational co-existence.

Whatever awareness came to her at that second, she held-on to it, but from that moment on, existed an unspoken bond between us. Having wandered across a few neighboring fields, we returned to the farm property and I took the opportunity to demonstrate my prowess skimming stones downriver.

“Let me try that,” she said and promptly buried my best throw with a perfect flat trajectory that pulled in ten “bounces” before heading into some distant mud-flats. My highest had been eight! That was Ruth!

As feminine as they come, she knew all the tricks. The cutesy smile, hair tossed over her shoulders at strategic moments, eyes wide for effect, “helpless little girl” routine” (as if!) Fact is, the gulf, both physically and emotionally, between a thirteen-year old boy and a fourteen-year old girl is laughably distant.

Not that I was feeling out-matured or even out out of my depth as such. I was enjoying every moment of her company. We sat there on that lush green river bank and talked about just about everything. School to home-life, pasts and futures, likes and dislikes. At one stage I was just so enraptured, I must have been staring at her. She stopped and asked,

“What are you looking at?” I remember just saying simply, “You!”

She actually blushed and that made me feel self-conscious. Right about then I heard my father calling-out and I knew we were way past our allotted hour or so. Playfully, and I suppose in some ways with a child’s enthusiasm, I grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet as we took off across the fields. She didn’t let go of me until we reached the front gate.

After tea we played multiple games of “Concentration.” Just sitting on the floor with her, listening to her laugh when I forgot where the other ‘eight’ was ... her hand brushing against mine as she leaned across to turn over the matching ‘King,’ her sharp little intake of breath and the way she would hold her hand to her chest when she made a pair. I see it all now as clearly as I did then. The absolute last thing I wanted to hear was mom saying,

“Noel, it’s nine o’clock, Ruth has to go back over the road now.” Dad walked her across, but not before I collected my shoes and went with them.

“Are you doing anything in the morning?” she asked sweetly.

If I had been due to collect the Nobel Peace prize, I would have cancelled it. I told her I wasn’t and dad, looking at me knowingly, smiled and said.

“Not really Ruth, would you like to come over and spend some time with Noel? ... assuming its OK with your parents?”

I really think I caught the faintest blush – I was having such trouble standing up I couldn’t really be sure.

I went to sleep that night just staring out my window across the roadway.

You’ll notice that aside from drawing a comparison with Emma Watson, I haven’t made any real attempt to described Ruth in detail. I will paint for your benefit right now the picture of a young girl that dad ushered into our tiny kitchen the following morning, just as I was finishing my breakfast cereal. Remember though this is a recalled image from a child’s memory not an adult’s.

Poise ... that’s the word for it ... I didn’t know it then, but she had such poise. Her shoulder length light brown hair – it must surely have just been washed, had a natural wave through it and framed her beautiful little face to perfection. She had it pulled back at either side with small mica clasps and her mother had either donated or bought her a simple but pretty pair of earrings that glinted when she turned her head. Ruth had that “just scrubbed” look and she smelled of fresh flowers and youthful promise.

As it was quite a warm morning, she was wearing the simplest of little short-sleeved cream colored tops with just a couple of buttons at the neck. I remember now, the pretty white lace-edging around the sleeves. Obviously planning on some serious cross-field hiking she had on a pair of dark blue girl’s pants and matching-color running shoes.

She must have had the most beautiful youthful figure (as I’m sure my dad would have noticed!) but I had as much knowledge, interest and experience in sexual matters then as I did in current affairs. What I did have an interest in, was getting out of that farmhouse with her at the first available second!

“No more than a couple of hours,” said mom, as we hightailed it out through the main gate. “Three hours is close enough,” I was thinking!

Both Middlesmoor and Nidderdale are sight-seeing valleys within commutable distance of the farm and both offer magnificent wind-swept views of the moors. We lit out for Middlesmoor, being slightly nearer. Some of the more elevated stiles I spent double the time necessary helping Ruth over – I’m sure she noticed! I think she even took her time climbing them.

It was the most balmy of English summer mornings, non-penetrative heat and the occasional light breeze being the order of the day. Successfully negotiating our two hundredth field so it seemed, the heights of Middlesmoor stretched before us ... acres of swaying heather leading the way and lending to the casual traveller a gentle if not rather exhiliarating scent. Ruth and I hadn’t shared much in the way of conversation mainly on account of the fact this was all so new to her and she was completely taken up with the experience. I of course had walked this way so many times with mom.

“It’s just so beautiful up here isn’t it?” she said to me, sitting on a huge rock that had been there long before Moses came down off Mount Ararat. The wind at that moment was blowing her hair across her face and she looked like an angel ... one that Michaelangelo would have liked to sculpt. I sat beside her and without any thought for the consequences, turned my head to her and just kissed her.

It was only the briefest of contact – and I was so shocked at my own forward behavior I had no idea what to say as a follow-up. I think I stood up and muttered “sorry” or something equally inane. Half expecting a slap across the face, I was primed for anything except what happened. She just whispered “Come here,” and pulling me back down beside her, returning the most wonderful kiss flush on my sadly inexperienced lips.

In hindsight, over the years I have experienced several electrical discharges ... light sockets, frayed wires – even taken a full charge direct off the spark plugs of a V8 Falcon. That one put me on by back for the count. But the sensation that arced through me that second as she kissed me, ran out first place let me tell you!

It was, as far as lip to lip duration goes, brief - not much longer than mine but if I had gotten up from that rock I would have been unable to balance properly.

“You are sooo sweet,” she said, hands folded neatly in her lap now. “You don’t have to apologise for kissing me,” she added giggling.

“Can I do it again then?” I asked hopefully.

“Later maybe,” she replied, teasing me unmercifully.

“C’mon,” she said, “lets walk the rest of the way.” She took my hand ... I felt such a child!

As we walked, I was aware of a nagging irritation. It bothered me to such an extent I half whispered to her as we negotiated another stone wall,

“Ruth, have you kissed any other boys?” I desperately wanted to hear her denial.

She stopped, turned and still holding my hand said,

“Oh, that is such a funny question,” but seeing as I wasn’t laughing, she added, “Well actually ... no I haven’t – never met a boy I ever wanted to kiss me ... you’re the first – honestly!” I knew it was the truth.

“So you wanted me to kiss you?” I teased.

“I didn’t say that,” she retorted, slipping effortlessly into a demure, “I’m much more grown-up than you” mode ... which she was!

“You did kinda...” I replied, trying to get full mileage out of my deductive brilliance. She just flashed me a pretty smile and the subject I knew, was at an end.

No sooner did we make the summit of Middlesmoor than it was time to head back and even then the three-hour time allotment was looking iffy. We saw so much ... the old Roman ruins atop Scanlon’s Ridge, the tiny bus-stop in Summerbridge called “New York,” the caverns where a family of black panthers were said to have made a home for themselves. None of them though came close to watching Ruth. Crouching down smelling the heather, brushing her beautiful hair out of eyes after the wind had taken liberties with it, hugging herself as she sat down occasionally to take in the view.