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

by Barbara Arnold

  ‘Gotcha, sonny.’ A hand encircled my leg, yanking me to the ground. ‘Thought you could get away from me, did you? I ain’t a footballer for nothing.’

  I struggled to get free, but the man pressed his knee hard into my chest.

  ‘You’re not getting away this time.’ Standing and hauling me to my feet, he rammed his knee into the small of my back, urging me forward into the darkness.

  ‘Herbie!’ I yelled. ‘Herbie!’ But the doors to the tenements stayed closed. My voice struck the walls and echoed back at me.

  I saw Paula and Mrs Dibble standing outside as the man pushed me towards the van. I noticed a torn piece of Angela’s dress caught in the van door.

  Paula rushed towards us. ‘Where are you taking them?’ She took hold of my arm. ‘Where are they taking you?’

  ‘We’re not at liberty to tell you that.’ The man said, still panting.

  ‘You can’t take them like this. If you wait, perhaps we can work something out.’ I could see Mrs Dibble was agitated.

  ‘We’ve got our orders. Anyway, a home is the right place for these two hooligans.’ The man indicated to the woman to open the van door and shoved me inside. ‘Don’t move a muscle, or it won’t just be your head that’s cut.’

  ‘I’ll write, I promise,’ Paula called into the van. ‘I’ll find out where they’re taking you and I’ll write.’

  Inside Angela was weeping loudly. It was a horrible sound.

  ‘Shut up.’ The woman shook her.

  ‘Leave her alone. When we get to where you’re taking us, we’ll report you. Just wait.’

  ‘We’re really frightened, aren’t we, Jim,’ the woman laughed. ‘Anyway, there won’t be any “we”. Brothers and sisters are separated. No, Sunshine, you two are going to different orphanages. That should cool you both down a bit.’ The woman pulled her collar up and around her ears. ‘Hurry up and get this thing started, Jim. The sooner we get rid of the pair of them the better.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Pass the glue,’ Joe called, lifting the tangle of paper chains further over on to the work bench. I swore his hair was more orange than the marigolds in old Dibble’s garden, and his face was polka dotted with freckles the same colour as his hair. I handed him the paste pot and brush. We had made the paste from flour that cook had grudgingly measured out. She had grumbled that if we weren’t careful, there wouldn’t be enough for the dumplings to go with the stew we were having that night. If the dumplings tasted like the stew smelt, wafting into the orphanage recreation room in overpowering waves, the flour was best used to glue together paper chains.

  ‘We must have miles of them here, enough for Balham High Street.’ Joe picked up another armful and dumped them on the floor. ‘There’s enough for the whole of the blinkin’ orphanage, and Matron’s allowing us to hang ‘em in our rooms, as well.’

  I shrugged. Who cared? I didn’t give a tinkers about paper chains or the Christmas tree Monica the housemaid said was coming today. She had already begun to moan about the needles it would drop.

  ‘These decorations’ll finish off our room nicely. We’ll drape them round our beds, because they’re next to each other, then loop them up and hang them over Micky’s and Tom’s beds. It’s a marvel only having four of us in that great big room. At our dump at home, there was six of us in an attic the size of a pea. Packed in like cockroaches we were, and there were plenty of them about, too. And fancy having carpet in your bedroom! I still can’t get over it.’ The polka dots on Joe’s face seemed to expand and join each other in orange splodges.

  ‘So what! We had carpet everywhere in our place at home. Angela and I had a bedroom each, with our own bedroom suites,’ I lied. I couldn’t understand how Joe actually seemed to like this place. ‘Don’t you care you’re not allowed to write to anyone, even your old lady, and that they don’t let you get letters either?’ I asked. ‘Monica told me, they don’t even tell your family where you are. Not that it bothers me,’ I added. It didn’t do to show your feelings to anyone, not even your friend.

  ‘My old lady can’t read, nor can any of the family, not much at any rate. They don’t want me. I’m one less mouth to feed. They’ve probably already forgotten about me.’ Joe finished pasting the last green circle, linking it to an orange one. ‘Anyway, we’re best pals, ain’t we? We both came here on the same day. We sleep next to each other and I know The Common a bit. In my book, that makes us closer than family.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I liked Joe. We stuck up for each other, and he’d once been “Up The Common,” but he didn’t take the place of Mum and Angela, even Paula. And the rooms might be warm and the mattresses springy, not like the ones Ang and I slept on, but this place would never be like our flat in Blountmere Street, especially when Fred had lived with us.

  All I wanted was to hear from Mum, so she could tell me how she was, and how Ang was doing in her orphanage. I remembered Paula writing Christmas cards, sitting at the Dibbles’ kitchen table, drawing holly leaves in the corners and stars on the envelopes. If only she'd send me one. She said she would write to me when we were taken away. But how could she when she didn’t know where I was?

  On Christmas Day, Father Christmas arrived early at the orphanage recreation room with two sacks.

  ‘It’s bleedin’ daft having Father Christmas. Anyone would think we were babies. Anyway, it’s the gardener,’ Joe whispered. ‘He’s still got mud on his boots.’

  Matron had fixed a piece of mistletoe in her wiry grey hair and Father Gardener Christmas kissed her full on the lips. Then he plonked himself onto a chair covered with a piece of frayed red satin. ‘I hopes you’ve all been good child-ren,’ he said in his strange country accent.

  Matron said she was sure we had. Holding the register, she began calling out our names. It reminded me of Mrs Colby and the school dinner lists. Because my surname began with an A, I was one of the first to walk forward to Father Christmas’ throne. ‘How old be you sonny?’ Father Christmas asked. His front teeth were rotten and his neck was ridged with dirt.

  ‘Eleven,’ I answered. He gave me the willies, dressed in a tatty robe that smelt of last year’s Christmas dinner, and wearing a beard that looked as if mice had nested in it. He delved into his sack and brought out a box. He shoved it at me, before waving me away with a grimy hand.

  I walked back to my place next to Joe. ‘What you got?’ Joe asked, helping me tear the paper from the box. Even when I was tearing paper from a present, I was noticeably slower than him. As the strips came off, it became obvious it was a puzzle. The picture on the front was of a large lady sitting outside a cottage, knitting. The corners of the box were crushed and there was a white label at the top which read “To an Orphan. Two pieces missing.”

  ‘I had a Meccano set once and a suit with long trousers,’I said to Joe, sucking the tears back down my throat. I wished I could put my foot on the box and flatten it and the woman knitting.

  ‘I swear you ain’t smiled once all day, and it’s Christmas,’ Joe walked across to me after we’d eaten our Christmas dinner, as I sat at one of the work tables in the recreation room picking up puzzle pieces and putting them down again. ‘And what d’you reckon about the turkey and Christmas pud. It wasn’t bad, was it?’

  ‘I s’ppose.’

  ‘Is it ‘cos you’re worried about your old lady?’

  ‘Course I’m not. Why would I be bothered about Doll?’ Recently I had begun calling Mum, “Doll.” It sounded tough to call your mother by her first name. ‘Do you think I’m soft, or something?’

  ‘Well, if you wanted to get in touch with her, I’ve thought of a way you could do it,’ Joe continued, ignoring what I’d just said.

  ‘How?’ I tried to sound as if I wasn’t interested.

  ‘You could write the address of this place on a bit of paper. Send it to one of your friends and ask them to get it to your old woman.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to post it?’

  ‘Ask Monica to do it. You know she’s got
a soft spot for you, always calling you her curly haired angel and all that carry on. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t snitch to Matron.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, not that I care one way or the other.’

  ‘You’ll get me hung, drawn and quartered, you will,’ Monica said when I handed her the envelope addressed to Paula. If I sent it to Dennis or Herbie, it would probably end up in a puddle. Anyway, I didn’t know their exact addresses.

  ‘But you’ll do it?’ I asked, wiping my hand across my face so that she couldn’t see my eagerness. ‘I haven’t got a stamp.’

  ‘Buying a stamp won’t break the bank, but you’re to keep it to yourself. I can’t afford to lose my job. I’ve got a sick mother at home to keep. I would have handed in my notice years ago if it wasn’t for her. I’m too kind hearted for this sort of place and always being at the beck and call of that dried up prune of a matron.’ She ruffled my hair, which was something she did a lot when she came into our room. It embarrassed me when she did it in front of the others.

  ‘You understand you won’t get a reply, or if you do, it won’t be given to you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s just that I want Mum to know where I am, in case they haven’t told her, then when she’s better she’ll know where to come to get me out.’ I liked saying Mum instead of my Old Woman or Doll, and Monica said, ‘Your Mum’s a lucky lady. I’d have loved a boy like you. A bit late now, though.’ She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose. Tucking the handkerchief back, she patted the pocket of her apron where my letter, or more accurately a scrap of a paper bag in an old envelope, was hidden. ‘Let’s hope it does the trick, eh?’

  ‘If you stand at that window any more, you’ll become a blinkin’ statue and stay there forever,’ Joe vowed as I gazed at the gravel drive below. I’d done it every single day of January, willing Mum to limp along the path on her way to collect me. Instead, the gardener trundled his wheelbarrow along it, still gathering dead leaves, delivery vans drove to and fro, orphans walked in crocodiles on their exercise walks, the vicar cycled twice a week to see matron, but Mum’s shabby navy blue coat and hat never appeared in the distance.

  Clumps of what Joe said were snowdrops peeped through the grass and around the trees. Midway through February, it snowed and smothered the snowdrops. I knew then that Mum wouldn’t come, not for a while. She would wait until spring came fully. I would see her walking down the gravel path edged with daffodils, or on a warm summer’s day, dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief. Although I tried to silence it, a voice inside me kept whispering that she might not come at all. After all, like Joe, I’d only be another mouth to feed. If she had to choose between who should go home with her, it would be Angela. At least Ang did things around the place, made herself useful, and it wouldn’t be long before she could get a job. That’s when I stopped staring out the window. I wouldn’t even let my eyes wander to it, no matter how much I wanted to look.

  I hated Saturday afternoons. I hated every single minute at the orphanage and at school, but I hated Saturday afternoons the most, because we had to make a model for Sunday School the next day. Although I’d made models with Fred, now I could never get mine right, and I was slow, much slower than Joe. I seemed to be slow at everything these days. Perhaps it was because I didn’t sleep or eat much.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ Joe asked, pushing his hair back to reveal even more marmalade splodges.

  ‘The whale that swallowed Jonah, what d’you think it is, Scotch mist?’

  ‘It looks like a bit of cardboard you’ve painted grey.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand. I’ve finished mine. I’ll just pop over to the workbench and get what we need.’ Joe darted across the room. He was getting quicker while I was becoming slower.

  Without meaning to, I glanced up and out the window. Ribbons of cloud tied up the sunshine, making the landscape look as empty as I felt. Remembering my promise to myself not to look, I directed my gaze back to the table, but something red flickered at the edge of my vision. Immediately I looked up. A girl in red was walking slowly past the window. Her coat was open, and her short brown hair blew around her face. Just as quickly as I had seen her, she disappeared. I remained staring in front of me. It was probably only seconds, but it seemed minutes before she returned, peering in the window, shading her eyes with her hand. I put my hand up to wave, then dropped it. This girl wasn’t real. I was dreaming, like I sometimes did when I eventually fell asleep. Then a gust of wind blew her coat open, and I saw her pleated skirt.

  ‘Paula,’ I mouthed, already running from the recreation room.

  ‘I thought you were never going to see me,’ she said, when I got outside and she guided me away from the window and towards a doorway, where Mrs Dibble and a man were huddled.

  ‘What’re you doing here? We’re not allowed visitors. Is everything’s all right? There’s nothing wrong with … ?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. Paula and her mum wanted to make sure you were all right,’ the man explained as we squeezed bedside them. ‘They told your mother they’d come if they could.’

  I stared at the ground willing myself not to cry.

  ‘By the way, my name’s Bill Masters, a friend of the Dibbles. I’ve got some transport and when Paula said she wanted to see you, I offered to bring them down.’ The man extended his hand. ‘How d’you do? I’ve heard a lot about you. All good, of course.’

  ‘My word, Tony, you’ve grown.’ Mrs Dibble was wearing a pale blue coat I hadn’t seen her in before. It made her look a lot younger, and her face was reddish. Suddenly she embraced me and I raised my arms a little, then dropped them to my side, uncertain what to do.

  ‘Who would have thought we would all be meeting together in a beautiful country place like this?’ Mrs Dibble smiled.

  I knew she was trying to be cheerful, while all the time she was taking in my frayed jersey and trousers that sagged below my knees.

  ‘Paula’s been on about you ever since you went, so we thought we’d bring you a few bits and pieces.’

  ‘We’ll have to hatch a way for Tony to smuggle them in,’ The man stopped Mrs Dibble from unloading everything there and then.

  ‘Are you likely to be missed?’ he asked. Funny I hadn’t heard Paula mention him before.

  ‘I reckon they won’t notice I’ve gone for a while. We’ve got to make a model and I was just starting mine.’

  ‘It sounds a very nice place letting you do interesting things like that.’ I knew Mrs Dibble was trying to be encouraging, but I didn’t answer her.

  ‘What if Mrs Dibble and I go for a walk while you two have a chat? It’s a little cramped here. We’ll be back in ten minutes. Come on Lil.’ Bill Masters said.

  ‘As long as they’re not found.’ Mrs Dibble looked concerned.

  ‘They’ll be all right. We’ve got to make sure we’re not seen either, so we’d better creep back the way we came.’

  ‘Honestly, Bill, this cloak and dagger stuff’s not for me,’ Mrs Dibble complained, but the man, his arm around her shoulders, was already leading her away. I wondered what Old Dibble would have said to that.

  It was draughty and I kept looking towards the door, in case someone came through it and caught us.

  ‘What’s it like here?’ Paula asked.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Now that someone I really wanted to see was here, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Perhaps matron was right. We were better off without visitors.

  ‘Have you made many friends?’

  ‘Not many.’

  A bird settled on the gravel and began rummaging through it.

  ‘There’s this boy called Joe. He’s in my room. We get on all right.’

  ‘Your mum sends her love and says to tell you she really misses you. She’s getting a lot better. It can’t be long before she’s home, then you’ll be able to come back.’

  I stared at Paula, trying to work out whether she wa
s telling the truth or only saying what she thought I wanted to hear.

  ‘Your Mum’s heard from Angela. She’s settled down where she is, and she says she’s made a lot of friends.’

  ‘Good.’

  It hadn’t been like this between Paula and me when we read comics on Saturday afternoons. Then we hadn’t had to struggle to find things to say to each other.

  ‘We’ve brought you a letter from your Mum, and Fred and Lori have written to you from New Zealand. Even Miss Selska’s sent you something about how to look after your health. We’ve brought them with us to give to you.’ Paula tried to penetrate the wall between us that seemed to be six feet wide.

  ‘You’re not missing anything in Blountmere Street. It’s just the same. Nobody’s been able to go over the bombsite because it’s been too cold and wet. The only news is that Kenny Bryant and Marjorie Hicks got married last week. She looked lovely in this brocade dress with those pointy sleeves brides’ dresses have, and she had ever such a long veil. The bridesmaids were in red, which is very unusual, don’t you think?’

  Another bird joined the one already on the gravel, and began to peck amongst the stones, making soft scrabbling noises.

  ‘I would have written, but we didn’t know where you were until we got your letter,’ Paula explained.

  ‘They don’t let us have letters, anyway. They say it will unsettle us.’

  ‘Do you have lessons here?’

  ‘We all go to school in the village.’

  ‘Is it better than Blountmere Street School?’

  ‘Nope.’ I looked down at my feet.

  ‘Did you sit the Eleven Plus exam?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How did you do?’

  ‘All right.’

  Paula hesitated. I knew she was trying to think of something more to ask, while I couldn’t bring to mind anything I wanted to say.

  ‘With all this ground, I bet you play lots of outside games.’ She pressed on.