He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1)

by Barbara Arnold

  ‘I told you. We’ll know when Mr Stannard is ready to tell us.’

  As if hearing what Mum had said, Fred opened the door and walked into the kitchen. His face had white patches where the light brown usually was. His shoulders seemed to have drooped. ‘I suppose Tony’s already told you that it was the police knocking at the door.’ Fred’s voice had lost its up and downness. ‘I hope it won’t cause you any embarrassment,’ he said to Mum.

  What people in Blountmere Street thought had never been important enough to bother Mum. I suppose she thought what was another policeman on the doorstep after all the rigmarole there used to be with the police and the Old Man when he was boozed.

  ‘Unfortunately, he came with the news that Eileen, my wife, has been killed in a bus accident.’ Fred stared at the floor and I wanted to put my arm around him, although inside I was relieved he hadn’t been arrested. I felt that if I were to let go of the chair I was holding on to, I might float to the ceiling.

  Mum took a breath, I think to say how sorry she was, but Fred held up his hand and said, ‘As you know, my wife and I were estranged. But this has come as a bit of a shock.’ He pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and sank on to it.

  Suddenly my appetite came back and I pinched a piece of Angela’s toast while she wasn’t looking.

  Straight after telling us, Fred popped next door to let Lori know about his wife’s accident. While we were putting our coats on in the passage, Angela said, ‘I wonder if that bus squashed Fred’s wife flat like the hedgehog we saw in The High Street, but with a lot more blood.’

  ‘How should I know?’

  Angela’s talk of blood and people being squashed, straight after breakfast was disgusting.

  ‘I wonder if Fred’ll marry Lori now?’ She continued.

  ‘Dunno.’ I couldn’t imagine Fred wanting to marry again when he had us.

  ‘What was Old Flat Feet doing at your place?’ One of the crowd of kids asked as soon as we opened our front door. ‘Your Old Man in trouble again?’

  ‘No, their Old Lady’s done him in,’ another boy shouted.

  ‘It’s none of your business.’ Angela shot a warning look at me. She needn’t have bothered. Having a secret made me feel important.

  Now that the warmer weather had come, the Gang began visiting our camp in the evenings after school. Although we met practically every day, we hadn’t noticed the changes in each other until we got back to the camp. Herbie was the only one who didn’t seem to have grown, as if his bones had refused to get any longer and couldn’t take the weight of any extra flesh on them. The stones Dennis and I perched on last year now needed us to draw our legs right up to our chins to squat on. Dobsie had grown so tall, he needed another stone, a bigger, flatter one that took him a whole evening to find and lug back to the camp.

  Both Dennis and Dobsie now smoked as if they’d been doing it since they were babies, bringing crumpled packets of Woodbines with them. Dennis’s stealing had become a hobby. Dobsie’s parents had been paid out from the thrift club and had bought him a train set. He boasted the train was just like a real one.

  Our camp was now bordered on every side by prefabs, each one enclosed by a square fenced-in garden. Having people living all around us took away some of the mystery of our stone circle, although our camp was still hidden behind the jagged wall. It made The Common a more attractive place to act out our adventures, especially on a Saturday afternoon after a morning at Saturday Picture Club.

  The Common might not belong solely to us, but going “Up The Common” was highly rated by the Gang when it came to having adventures.

  “Up the Common” was the most grass and trees we had ever seen. “Up The Common” the ponds were like oceans. “Up The Common” was the best playground in the whole universe. “Up The Common” was a smashing place to be on a spring day when the wind was blustery and the sun shone through silver clouds.

  ‘Race you,’ Herbie shouted to the three of us, as he began running towards the horse chestnut trees, heavy with pink and white candles. The other three of us were quick to follow him, at the same time curving and swerving in a game of “It”.

  ‘Where we going now - over the Spinney?’ Herbie asked, as we leaned against tree trunks getting back our breath. The Spinney was the most thickly grown part of The Common. Although it covered a fairly small area and the trees themselves weren’t as tall as the ones we were resting against, The Spinney was the ideal place for playing Tarzan.

  I beat my hands on my chest, shouting, ‘Me Tarzan,’ and Dennis, swinging on a branch, yelled back ‘Me Jane’.

  ‘Swing upside down, Den, like Tarzan does. It’s easy.’ Dobsie shouted.

  ‘If it’s so easy, you do it.’

  ‘I would if I wanted to, but I don’t want to.’

  ‘If you two are going to argue, let’s play something else,’ Herbie suggested. ‘What about pirates?’

  Using hollows in the trees as ships, and twigs as swords and daggers we sailed around the world a dozen times, bringing back treasure which we fought over. We killed each other and simply came back to life, ready to set sail again for faraway places. It was Saturday afternoon at its best.

  ‘What about riding the lizzies?’ Dennis suggested when we were beginning to tire of shouting, “Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum”, and “Aha, me hearties”.

  “Up the Common” the playground didn’t have one lizzie, but two, and riding the lizzies the way we did wasn’t for cowards. The last time we had ridden them we’d frightened a group of stupid girls into screaming. The playground attendant called us nothing but a bunch of hooligans, and banned us from the playground. ‘I’ll have you for trespassing if you so much as set a toe past the gate.’ He had poked his finger into each of our chests.

  ‘You know we’re not allowed,’ I replied.

  ‘It’s all right, the attendant’s not here. I’ve just had a look. Gone home to his missus, I reckon,’ Dennis said. ‘So we can ride the lizzies in a bit of peace and quiet.’

  I grinned. There was nothing peaceful or quiet about the way the Gang rode the lizzies.

  We jostled each other through the gate, Dobsie spitting his usual glob of saliva into the sandpit as he walked past.

  ‘Oi, you filthy little whatsit, you stop that,’ an angry mother shouted, picking up her toddler.

  Both lizzies were in use, gliding backwards and forwards. They were going so slow, the half a dozen or so riders on each hardly needed to hold on to the iron handles.

  With sneering looks, the Gang watched the girls at either end of each lizzie driving them, each girl clutching two vertical bars, while they worked the rollers with their feet. They swung the lizzies backwards and forwards, at the same time lifting the lizzies higher. They weren’t riding them like the Gang rode them. When we rode them they went so high, it was like flying and my stomach turned over and almost came out of my mouth.

  ‘Call that riding the lizzie,’ Dobsie shouted. ‘You’re a lot of lily livers. Now scarper.’ He picked up a stone and shied it. ‘Anyone of you got the guts to ride with us?’ He yelled, but already the lizzie was slowing and losing height. The children riding it were preparing to flee.

  ‘Hop up then,’ Dobsie ordered when the previous riders were already on the other side of the playground. ‘Tell you what, let’s race each other like they do in the Boat Race. Den and Herb, you’re both Cambridge, so you can go on either end of that one.’ He pointed to the first lizzie. ‘And ‘cos Tone and me are Oxford, we’ll take this one. You’d better watch out. We’re going to give you the hiding of your lives.’

  We began cranking up the lizzies, at the same time taunting each other.

  Dobsie shouted, ‘We’ll beat you, just like we beat you in the Boat Race.’

  ‘Beat us! You couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding. Oxford are a bunch of nancy boys,’ Dennis yelled back as we worked the rollers and the lizzies swung higher.

  ‘Oxford’s stronger than Cambridge.’

&nb
sp; ‘Cambridge is cleverer than Oxford.’

  ‘We’re winning. You’re sinking,’ I shrieked as we worked the rollers and the lizzies swung like sky boats. ‘Swing high! Swing low!’ I chanted inside my head. ‘Swing high! Swing low!’

  Gradually the lizzie rose. Dobsie and I were definitely higher than Dennis and Herbie. Up and up we went, and I had to arch my back and grip the vertical bars really tight.

  As the ground disappeared, swinging the lizzie needed the sort of strength Popeye got from eating spinach.

  When I drove forward, my body and arms were stretched as if they were made of elastic. The lizzie made strange screeching noises. Dobsie and I still kept our feet on the rollers, though. Now the whole frame began to shudder, and the metal burnt my hands. My arms ached and gasping sounds came from my throat, until I couldn’t keep my foot on the roller any longer. I clung to the bars, concentrating really hard on not letting my fists come undone. But Dobsie was taller than me and his foot still reached the roller. He kept pushing, and my bones began twisting in their sockets. My spine was stretched as if I was being tortured. ‘Take your foot off,’ I yelled to him. ‘Don’t push.’ But my words didn’t reach him.

  Suddenly, at the other end of the lizzie, Dobsie’s body jerked and his right hand lost its grip on one of the vertical bars. It swung like a monkey’s, trying to get its hold back. It aimed and missed, aimed and missed, near but not near enough. Dobsie’s other hand began to slide down the sidebar until it slid free and Dobsie sort of fluttered from the lizzie like a flag in the breeze.

  I could never remember how I slowed the lizzie, or how I came to be standing over Dobsie’s body. His trousers were ripped, and his legs looked like snapped twigs.

  The ambulance came and the men lifted the body out of its blood and placed it on a stretcher. Then they covered it with a red blanket. I remember thinking they used red because it soaked up blood without it showing. They spoke to each other in whispers, a few words at a time, as they lifted the stretcher into the ambulance. Before they closed the door, I heard one of them say the word, “dead” and then I saw them pull the blanket over the face.

  The playground attendant came from out of nowhere. ‘I knew one of ‘em would end up killing himself. I told ‘em.’ He pointed his finger at the policeman, who somehow just seemed to be there. ‘I banned ‘em, I did. I told ‘em they wasn’t to come here. If they did they’d be trespassing, I told ‘em. Silly little devils.’ He pushed his cap back on his head.

  ‘Is this true?’ The policeman licked the end of a pencil and wrote in a blue notebook. The woman with the toddler clinging to her legs was cradling Herbie. ‘D’you have to question them now?’ She asked, but the policeman continued writing.

  Dennis was already beside the sandpit and running. He fled through the gate and along the outside of the playground. He had messed himself. It stuck to his legs like treacle and he left brown footprints on the path as he ran.

  ‘Oi, come ‘ere,’ the policeman bellowed, but the brown footprints continued until they ran on to the grass, and Dennis became a distant figure.

  Whenever I thought about that afternoon, what was most vivid in my memory were Dobsie’s snapped bones sticking through his flesh, and the brown slime sliding down Dennis’ legs.

  In the days that followed, I couldn’t link that twisted body with the know-it-all Dobsie who sat on the stones at the camp reading comics and smoking. That disgusting shape, oozing blood haunted me with pictures I couldn’t chase from my head. That, that ‘thing’ wasn't – couldn’t possibly be - my mate who walked backwards and forwards with me to school every day. Nobody could change like that in less than a couple of drags on a fag.

  The policeman returned and said, with regard to the deceased, Alan Dobson, although theoretically there was some argument as to whether it had been a case of trespassing, under the circumstances, and this time, the authorities would not be prosecuting. As if there would be another time, another body, another red blanket. I listened as if from a long way off, puzzled by “theoretically” and “authorities” and “prosecuting”.

  Mum smiled gratefully and said thank you. The policeman replied that I had best try to get it out of my mind. But I knew the memories would never leave. They were glued there forever.

  Dobsie’s father called and said I had nothing to feel guilty about. His face was lined with sadness and his eyes were swollen. He placed a hand on my shoulder, but I stared ahead. I didn’t feel guilty. I didn't feel anything. I wondered what would happen to Dobsie’s train set.

  Mum said we must pray for Dobsie and his parents, and that I should go to the funeral because one day I would be pleased I had. I didn’t think I would feel pleased ever again. Everything would always be filled with nothingness. I wished Fred was at home. He shouldn’t have gone away to his wife’s funeral. She had deserved to die for not loving Fred, but Dobsie, not Dobsie. Dobsie had earned a place on this earth for being young, and my pal. The people in my life became confused. Perhaps I would never set eyes on Fred again, but I would see Dobsie walking to school tomorrow.

  I refused to go to school. Instead I spent my time watching Brian’s wheel-walking, or sitting on Fred's bed and reading the pile of comics Lori got from a jumble sale. Sometimes I wandered round Fred's room looking at Fred's models, stroking them as if they were a body.

  Mum tried to encourage me back to school. ‘It’ll take your mind off things. I'm sure you'll find everyone very kind,’ she said.

  I didn’t know what I wanted, but it wasn’t for people to be very kind. I didn’t want people to be anything. I didn’t want people at all. I couldn’t bear to stand there in the hall while Old Williamson announced Dobsie’s death, lowering his voice, like Fred did when he had talked about his wife being killed. I couldn’t bear everyone’s sympathy mixed with their blood-thirsty questions. I never wanted to see anyone from school ever again or to set foot in Blountmere Street. Life was cruel and it waited like an axeman the other side of our front door.

  One afternoon from Fred’s window, I saw Dennis. He was wearing his pullover back to front. He kept his gaze directed at the pavement and didn’t look in the direction of our flat. In the same way, I kept my eyes from Dennis' legs in case I saw the brown slime still there, oozing like the blood had from the body.

  Dennis wasn’t at the funeral. I didn’t blame him. There wasn’t any point. I wouldn’t have gone if Mum hadn’t made me. It was a mark of respect, she said. Herbie and his father sat on the other side of the aisle. Herbie and I wore black armbands that looked like soot rings on our jackets. People smiled their funeral smiles, but neither of us took any notice of the other.

  Mum took hold of my hand. I wish it had been Fred, and I kept my eyes fixed on the stained glass window at the front of the church. I studied a red disciple's robe and a blue angel's wing. I didn’t want to have to smile a funeral smile back to other funeral smiles. I didn't want to see the white coffin with the body inside with the snapped legs.

  The Reverend Roberts called the body "Our dear departed child" and declared, ‘God hath given and God hath taken away’. Still I stared at the disciple's robe and the angel’s wing, even when they sang The Lord's My Shepherd. Even when Dobsie's mother called out, “Alan!” “Alan!” as if it wasn’t Dobsie’s funeral but someone else’s.

  For the first time I allowed my eyes to rest on the coffin with its red flowers spelling SON. It was sissy. Dobsie would have wanted a train, a plane, a spaceship, with no stupid flowers on top.

  Then they carried the white box to the back of the church and out into the spring softness. It should have been taken to the bombsite camp to our circle of stones hidden behind a half-destroyed wall. Instead they slid it into a hearse and drove it slowly away.

  Chapter Six

  The Gang didn’t seem like the Gang without Dobsie, and we hadn’t been to the camp much since he - well, since he - I couldn’t say the word “died”, and “passed away” was what old people did – since he left. That was it, si
nce he left the camp and Blountmere Road School; since he left the earth and went somewhere else, like Jet in Journey Into Space.

  Now that Fred was back I preferred spending time with him in his room, helping him work on his latest model sailing vessel.

  ‘This is one Vasco da Gama might have sailed to Brazil in during the reign of Henry The Eighth, but don’t you want to go out with your chums?’ Fred asked.

  ‘Nope.’ How could I tell him I was afraid that if I left him for too long, he might have an accident, too. As it was, whenever he went out, I felt pulled tight inside, and I couldn’t settle to anything. I usually ended up sitting on the stairs waiting, praying he would walk through our front door in one piece.

  ‘The last time we went to the camp, Herbie cracked stupid jokes and laughed all the time,’ I told Fred.

  ‘Laughing, and making light of it, is probably his way of dealing with things,’ Fred replied, running his finger along the piece of wood I had just glued, pressing it into position.

  ‘I s’ppose.’ I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to laugh to forget something like Dobsie’s accident.

  I didn’t want to think about Dobsie any more because the words, It was all my fault, circled around my head. Changing the subject, I said, ‘Mrs Colby’s been telling us about that King Henry bloke, the one who had lots of wives. He had some of their heads chopped off, didn’t he?’

  ‘Unfortunately, he did.’ Fred wiped his hands on a cloth to remove the glue. ‘Actually, with the school holidays coming up, it might be a nice outing for us to go to Hampton Court, where Henry used to live some of the time. The four of us could go together – you and me, Angela and Amelia … Miss Lorimore. Hampton Court isn’t difficult to get to from here,’ Fred said. ‘We can catch a bus from the High Street that goes all the way. I don’t suppose your mother would want to come. It would probably be too much for her legs.’

  Making a day of it to Hampton Court with Fred! It was the first time I had felt anything other than dagger stabs of fear and guilt since Dobsie had left.