Max was the one who decided the games. Max was the one who knew exactly what to do. Max was the one with all the right answers. The decision maker. He was the chief, the star, the head of the Wild Bunch, the captain, the general, chief scout for the wagon train, the squadron leader, tank commander, starship pilot, the president, the five star hero.

Those were the good-to-be-alive days. The sweet taste of honeysuckle days. The bustling, hectic holidays when all life suddenly kaleidoscoped in on the big old house, electrifying the front porch, the back yard and the drunken sheds, and the vault like musty old wood panelled rooms with the static of chatter and the squeals of youthful delight. Like a great life-giving sap rising through the creaking, age-old frame of the mansion - that was what it was like when the other kids came. Sneakered feet stalking along groaning corridors, sticky fingers on scratched, wood wormed bannisters, dirty noses snubbed against grubby panes, eyes full of wonder recording every sad old portrait on every leaning wall, every curve of fluted mahogany, every alabaster angel on every bedroom frieze.

Suddenly come summer they would be there, then instantly the old house would be young again, the arthritic winter long behind and spring just a half-forgotten impression of brightening anticipation.

But today? Today summer was over. And today the big old house was emptier than it had been in the spring before the children had come. It was empty with memory, the bannister no longer a helter skelter, but a vacant patch of brown grass where the monument to amusement had stood yesterday. Today Max's house was a fairground field after the fair has gone, after the bright coloured lights and the hurly burly and the smiling faces have all moved on.

And the deep silence hung hard and heavy on Max until he could feel the full weight of it, depressing, oppressing.

For Max was not like the other kids. And because he was not like the others, he would not be answering the merry clatter of the school bell with them, sitting in the dusty old village classroom building games from the boredom of dull two-times-two, wishing for that magic bell to declare playtime again.

No, Max was special. That was why he had servants to look after him. That was why they never actually stopped him doing anything, although there were many things he could not do. He could not run and skip through the maple smell of spring with the other boys, dip warm hands into cool pools to catch newts, climb crags to sniff the air breathed only by the King of the Castle. He could not tumble in hay ricks, slide on his backside down slippery grass mounds. He could not bark his shins in raucous play. He could not fight Jimmy Herbert.

He could not TRULY be one of them.

Max knew he was special. He didn't agree with Nan Drew that he was delicate. But life had its compensations. He knew for sure he was the cleverest kid there had ever been. The stuff Jimmy Herbert would be doing in university in maybe 10 years' time was nothing to Max now.

It seemed sometimes that Max knew everything in the world. He could recite Einstein's Special Theory like a favourite nursery rhyme - and he fully understood what it meant. He could tell you where any chosen star would be in the sky at any precise time of the year. He could do the most complicated mathematical calculation in a moment. He could tell you anything you wanted to know, practically.

And this was the root of it all. Why Max was so different. But although Max understood, the knowledge did little to soften the pain of not going conkering, fishing and even tobogganing. For what was life without the essence, the sights and smells and sounds of true freedom?

It was the end of the holidays. It was the back-to-school days. And for Max it was hibernation again. The big sleep until the kids returned one day now so far off to bring back the lifeblood to this withered old oak of a house.

It was back to work for Max. A return to his young life's work, so far beyond the grasp of any of his summer friends and even the servants who looked after Max. Not that the work ever bothered him in the slightest. It was really no matter for consideration, so easy was it all to him.

And there was one pleasing aspect to the onset of Max's winter. Soon Nan Drew would be back. Nan the mother figure, the one who had nursed Max along from infancy to what he had become today. Nan the woman of some 30 winters, but no summers Max had ever seen. Nan of the peach complexion and sharp, nut brown eyes. Nan who had given Max his name and looked after him and taught him everything. And Nan who had taken nothing in return except a few faint lines, growing deeper every year now, on her gently weathering face.

The other kids said she was beautiful. Max couldn't see it. But he was only too pleased to bask in the glory reflected on him from this magnificent woman. Max was close to being quietly proud of her. Nan was equally close to actually being the mother he had never had.

And it was nearly time now for her little car to scrunch up the gravel of the drive to the big house where she spent the largest slice of her year, solely for Max's benefit. Nearly time for her to struggle through the great oak door with her bursting little leather suitcases containing Max's winter. He could almost hear her gently-tinkling bright white voice now laughing out her hello that said the sun was going down and the leaves were beginning to bring in their harvests, and the world was yawning outside the stained windows of home.

Fair exchange. Laughter called Jimmy Herbert for a sweet sigh called Nan Drew.

And suddenly Max knew. His little inner clock said Nan's back. Her moment had arrived, her special time. And again Max had missed the moment of nothingness he watched for every year. The defining moment that separated winter from summer and was neither but was both.

But now the little leather soles of the neat patent shows that belonged to Nan Drew were pattering like snowflakes up the steep front steps. And the doorhandle was moving ...

And there was Nan, hot and tired but smiling, her neat and pleasing clothes dripping down her tidy body like streams of discreet jewels and her hellos echoing away into some part of the old mansion where they might alert John or Margaret or Old Steven, the people who flitted about the place right through the year tending Max's needs quietly and efficiently as bees tend their queen.

"And how are you, Max? I would swear these summers are getting longer, you know."

"No," Max's reply betrayed no flicker of emotion. "Date of departure August 1st, date of arrival September 29th. Total time elapsed, 59 days, 19 hours and ..."

"All right, all right, Max. It's good to be back with you again. The world out there always seems so uncertain and imprecise after a season with you."

She dropped the travel stained bags on the wooden floorboards and called out another hello to Max's guardians, then turned back to "her child", her voice softening into the mildest tone of rebuke.

"But don't you forget, I taught you everything. Therefore, I know your faults - and you do have them, you know. Just because you think you're perfect, you know everything there is to know and you can look after yourself, don't believe that is always necessarily so. To me, Max, you still have most of the imperfections of any boy your age. In fact, that's very important for the job you have to do."

Nan took a deep breath as if drinking in the atmosphere of the big old house once again to absorb her winter persona, and smiled a curious smile that was warm yet also somehow etched with an edge of concern.

"And as we've got on to the subject ... well, I wasn't going to tell you straight away, but I've had to keep the secret all summer and I'm just bursting to tell someone. It's right that it should be you first.

"Max, you have known all along that the time would come one day for you to do the job you have spent all this time working up to. Well, Max, that time has now arrived. All those years of work, and the play, too - at last, they're going to come together in your very own mission. My work here is nearly finished. but yours is only just about to begin in earnest.

"Oh Max, you must be so thrilled! Your big moment at last."

"What ... what must I do?" Max faltered.

"You're going to be an astronaut." Nan Drew's face was alive and dancing with excitement. The things she had had to contain for such a long, long summer now flooded, cascaded out in great torrents of tinkling words like the white spray on a waterfall.

"You have been specially trained for one of the most important space missions of our time. Your mission is the reason I have taught you so much about the stars, about geodynamics, about astrophysics and the way the universe works.

"You, Max, are to take the first space probe through the centre of a Black Hole. At last all the theoretical work is complete and now you are ready, too.

"I'm confident that you are equal to this task - you are perfect for it, Max. In fact, you are the only one who can do it.

"Do you realise what this means? You will be pioneering new pathways for mankind through the universe. You will be the one to finally conquer the massive distances between the stars. You will soon be the one who solves the problem that is keeping man a prisoner in his own galaxy. You will be the one who finally sets the human race free.

"Max, you are the future of space travel. You and others like you. Doesn't it make you feel proud, Max?"

And suddenly Nan Drew had finished. The tide had receded. And all that was left was silence. A silence as long as the deepest winter's night, as cool as a breeze from the mountains far away.

Then there was a barely perceptible swishing sound, as of leaves falling to earth. Max was moving. Stiffly, the perfect little frame of what could have been any average 10-year-old boy was shuffling towards the door on the world. The perfect little hand was on the doorhandle. The door was opening. Now the little outline was motionless on the threshold, head tilted slightly up towards the dimming sky.

So that was it. Childhood was over. No more red-haired, strawberry-lipped Jimmy Herbert. No more Wild Bunch. No more soldiers, and cowboys and indians, and battleships. No more bright little voices of light. No more summers. NO MORE SUMMERS.

As if cued by some subtle inner movement of emotion in this suddenly sad little figure, it had started to rain.

A splash, a dash, a sprinkling of fine droplets just to put the seal on the verdict and bring home that this was positively and irrefutably the end of boyhood.

The door closed as gently as a sigh of resignation. Max turned slowly right round towards his mother, his teacher and a raindrop trickled down the smooth, grey and gleaming, perfect little metal android face.

And it seemed to Nan Drew like the last teardrop of summer.

Copyright © Maurice Paul Bower, 2001. All rights reserved.
E-mail: bower@agored.demon.co.uk