Nicholson Minor and I Are Going to Make Nitro-glycerine in His Father’s Shrubbery.

This was to be my third summer at Seven Oaks. I had not been looking forward to it much for there was nothing for a lad to do in Seven Oaks. Grandpapa spent most of the day dozing in his armchair. Grandmama grew marrows and talked on the telephone and only seemed to notice me when it was time for something unpleasant: bed, or bath, or one of Mrs Mogford’s dreadful puddings. There was no one in Seven Oaks to chum around with and nothing left to explore. There had, when I first arrived, been talk of a secret passage, but this turned out to be the sort of fantastical rot Grandpapa liked to press upon little boys when they grew tired of hearing what he’d done in the War.

I’d begged Mother not to send me down this summer. I asked to be posted off to the Shropshire cousins or left with the neighbours or -perish the thought- billeted out to Scout camp with all the other boys who had nowhere else to go. But Mother was firm. She said the Grands were looking forward to having me and Seven Oaks was a paradise for children: acres and acres of grounds to explore. Mother had nothing but fond memories of Seven Oaks but she’d had brothers to pal around with and several thousand cousins and a pony of her own. I might have petitioned Father. Father sometimes sided with me. But Father was overseas on business and Mother was adamant that she wasn’t having me home all summer, getting under her feet. So, off I went to Seven Oaks, somewhat reluctantly with a smart leather suitcase and a forwarding address tucked inside my pocket in case I should lose all sense of myself on the train between London and Oxford. I was glummer than a boy of twelve has any need to be. I had not yet crossed paths with Nicholas Minor. Neither, did I know, this was to be the best and longest of all my childhood summers.

Nicholson Minor, contrary to his name, was a hulking great lad of fourteen. He belonged to the groundsman though it was never quite clear how or why Geordie, a confirmed and somewhat cantankerous bachelor, had all of a sudden acquired a teenage son. He was waiting by the front door when the car dropped me off. Before I could even get inside to greet the Grands, he had me in a kind of friendly headlock. “I’m Nicholson Minor,” he said as he grated his knuckles across my scalp, “I’ve been waiting for you.” No further information was proffered or demanded. In lieu of conversation I was handed an enormous wad of toffee and led round the back of Seven Oaks where we decamped in the shade of the big Monkey Puzzle tree. “Sit down,” said Nicholson Minor, “I’ve drawn up a list.” He had. It was a tremendous thing to behold: comprehensive, extensive and quite the most poorly spelled document I was ever to come across. “It’s our plans for the summer,” he announced. I was not consulted on whether I’d like to collude in these plans or preferred to abstain. Naturally enough, I threw myself into Nicholson Minor’s summer list. There were no other entertainments forthcoming at Seven Oaks.

We climbed trees. We built rocket launchers. We tortured the kitchen maids and fired Grandpapa’s rifle from the upstairs bathroom. We abseiled from the North Tower on bedsheets knotted into makeshift ropes. We inadvertently poisoned the chickens and set several oriental rugs on fire. We dug a moat round the summer house and filled it up to the brim with cherry wine and cut the sixth page out of every book in the library. We were generally wild as crows and just as filthy. We were horrible, horrible children that summer. But we were not for a single moment, bored. 

By the time September crept round Nicholson Minor and I were inseparable. I could not remember how I’d managed without him, nor envision how I might function back at school with only lesser boys for company. I asked Grandmama if I might stay forever at Seven Oaks and even telephoned Mother in order to plead my case. I was told not to be such a silly billy. Father himself was coming to pick me up in the Daimler. He would drive me back to London the day after next. I said I would not go. I had a tantrum on the hall rug. Grandpapa stood over me scowling, not sure where to start with a great big lad of twelve, crying in his hallway. I ran away and determined to hide out forever in the chicken coop but it was dreadfully smelly and too cold to sleep. I crept back into the house and made a plan. I wasn’t going to leave Seven Oaks. They couldn’t make me. They’d be sorry they’d even tried.

I explained my plan to Nicholson Minor. The day before we’d made nitro-glycerine in his father’s shrubbery. I’d found the recipe in one of Grandpapa’s old war books. There were buckets of the stuff still sitting in the shed. “Let’s blow up Seven Oaks,” I said. “Let’s wait ‘til Father gets here and blow the whole house sky high with everyone inside. Then, we’ll be able to do whatever we want.” Nicholson Minor did not seem as keen on this plan as I’d anticipated. He was not sure. Nitro-glycerine was a notoriously tricky thing to work with. It might take us with it. He did not want to get in trouble with his dad, or the police. He did not want to end up going to Hell for murdering folk. Nicholson Minor laid all his reasons out slowly and with great care as if he were placing cutlery upon a dining room table. Then he paused and waited for me to respond. “What rot!” I said indignantly, “you’re scared.” Nicholson Minor insisted that he was not scared and I should go ahead and do it myself if I wanted to. But I couldn’t. I was not bold without him. We poured the nitro-glycerine into the fountain. I went back to London for the autumn term.

The following summer when I returned to Seven Oaks Nicholson Minor was nowhere to be found. I asked everyone where he’d got to: Grandmama, Grandpapa, Mrs Mogford, Old Geordie. None of them seemed to know who I was speaking of, though they said Nicholson Minor sounded like a rough sort of boy, the kind I shouldn’t have for a pal.  

Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1946 novel, The Hollow