‘Not in winter.’
‘I suppose not, but there must be some good things about being here.’
‘There’s nothing good about being here.’ Even though I was talking to Paula Dibble from Blountmere Street which was something I would have given anything for, I wanted to run away.
I picked up a stone from the path and began gouging the brickwork with it.
Mrs Dibble and the man came into view. They were laughing. Even from a distance, I could see Mrs Dibble’s face was still flushed and she looked a lot different from the woman who scurried along Blountmere Street as if she was responsible for looking after the whole earth.
‘Bill’s a friend of Mum’s from before she was married. He’s really nice,’ Paula said, and I watched with panic as they came closer.
Without meaning to, I clutched hold of her. ‘Take me home with you. I hate it here. It’s horrible. Your mum could have me. It wouldn’t be for long.’ I shook Paula’s arm.
‘I don’t think we’d be allowed to.’
‘What aren’t you allowed to do?’ Mrs Dibble asked in a fluttery voice, as she and the man drew nearer.
‘Tony wants to come back home with us.’
Mrs Dibble shot the man an “I knew this would happen” look before replying. ‘I’m sorry, Tony, but it wouldn’t be allowed. Anyway, you won’t be here much longer. Your mother’s well on the road to recovery. She’ll be sending for you soon. Make the most of it, eh? After all, it does seem a very nice place.’
I turned away, my shoulders slumping forward, my head low on my chest.
‘Now, come on, cheer up!’ Mrs Dibble urged. ‘Let’s see how much of this stuff you can take in with you.’
‘I won’t be able to take any of it.’ I swiveled back to face her. ‘If they found out, I’d be in for it.’
The man took the bag from Mrs Dibble. He began sorting through its contents.
‘Take the letters. Have you got a drawer of your own that’s private?’
‘I’ve got a drawer, but it isn’t private.’
‘Well, put them under your mattress, and here are some sweets. Stick them in your pocket.’
‘They’re Old Boy Barker’s special mix,’ Paula added.
I allowed Mrs Dibble to tuck the bag into my pocket.
‘We’ll give your Mum your love, and tell her you’re being well looked after. Have you any messages for anyone?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then, we’d better go before you’re missed.’
After allowing Mrs Dibble to kiss me on the cheek, but without saying goodbye or looking at them, I walked to the door. My footsteps dragged with the weight of my abandonment.
‘Wait! Wait!’ Paula began running after me. ‘It’ll be all right. Honestly. I’m sorry you can’t come back with us. I wish you could, but your mum will come and get you. It won’t be long. If she had to, your mother would fight to have you with her, I know she would. She might be quiet, but she’s strong inside. You’ve got to believe that, Tony.’
‘Yeah, I know, but you don’t understand what it’s like here, and I miss everybody at home, especially Ang. It’s funny really, ‘cos I always thought I’d like the country. We’re not far from the sea either, but it doesn’t feel right.’ My top lip quivered.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I only wanted to see you and let you know we’re thinking of you.’
‘I’m glad you came. I’m sorry I got the pip. I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all. Thanks for bringing all that stuff.’
‘I’m sorry you can’t take much of it. We’ll give it to you when you get home. It’ll be like Christmas.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got to go.’ Then, as if on an impulse, she said, ‘Why don’t we make a promise to think of each other every afternoon at four? That way you can stay in touch with Blountmere Street. Perhaps it won’t be so hard to be here for a little longer then. We’ll have to concentrate hard so that what we’re thinking reaches each other. And no-one will know, only you and me.’ She kissed me on the cheek. ‘I love you, Tony,’ she said. This time I didn’t squirm.
Chapter Eleven
As soon as the Dibbles had gone, I dashed back up to my room. I hoped for a glimpse of them leaving the orphanage, but they had been swallowed into the bare landscape. I took the letters from my inside pocket: one from Mum, another from Miss Selska and a third from Fred and Lori. I tore the top from the last envelope, and snatched at several sheets of thin paper like posh lav paper. They were covered with Fred’s precise writing and paragraphs in Lori’s scribble. I scrutinised the pages as if I could magic Fred and Lori right there into my room. Although they didn’t exactly say so, I could tell they weren’t happy. They didn’t belong thousands of miles away. Their home was in Blountmere Street with me and Angela and Mum.
‘What’re you doing?’ Joe barged into the room, as he always did, swinging round the door. With one leap he landed in the middle of his bed. ‘You know we’re not s’pposed to be here at this time on a Saturday afternoon. What happened? One minute you were at the table, the next you’d scarpered. I told everyone you’d gone to the lav.’
‘The people who live downstairs to us in Blountmere Street turned up. We had to hide because matron wouldn’t let them in, the old bag. They brought me some letters and stuff, so I came up here to read them.’
‘You’re lucky.’
‘I s’ppose.’
‘We’d better get downstairs quick, before they notice we’ve gone, or we’ll miss our crumpets tomorrow. Sunday night and crumpets is the best night of the week. Saturday afternoons aren’t bad either.’
As far as I was concerned, nothing about this place was good.
‘What did your mates say about your old lady?’ Joe asked.
‘They said Doll’s getting better. She’ll be sending for me soon.’
‘There you are then; I reckon you’ve got nothing to moan about.’
‘I’ll hide these letters under here.’ I began lifting the corner of my mattress.
‘Three’s a lot to have under there. Why don’t you put one under my mattress. That way it’ll be safer,’ Joe suggested. It was typical of Joe to think of something like that.
‘Good idea,’ I handed Joe Miss Selska’s letter. I didn’t want to sleep that far away from the other two.
‘The Dibbles brought me some sweets – Old Boy Barker’s special mix. I’ll hide them in my socks then we can have them tonight. It’ll be easier with only a couple of us.’ I looked across at the two empty beds that, until a few of days ago, had been occupied by Mickey and Tom. The beds looked as if they were wearing uniforms of grey blankets hemmed with red stitching. ‘We’re sure to get another couple in here soon, so we’d better eat them quick. You’ll love ‘em’ For the first time that afternoon I smiled - properly, not that silly raising of my lips I’d done for the Dibbles.
The next afternoon at four o’clock, the time Paula and I had arranged to send mind messages to each other, I screwed up my face in concentration to receive her message. Now it had actually come to it, I found it impossible to chase away all the thoughts that dodged and darted around my head like naughty puppies. No sooner did I catch one, than another and another took its place.
‘You in pain or something?’ Joe asked, looking at me funny.
‘I need some peace and quiet, that’s all.’
‘Please yourself.’
Paula made swapping our thoughts sound easy, like receiving letters in your head. I was sure she was sending hers right now. If Paula said she would, she would. I gritted my teeth and grunted, but nothing came. Joe gave me another of his funny looks.
It had been a crackpot idea, but if I couldn’t catch hold of Paula’s thoughts, I might as well let my own wander where they would. Paula might be better at picking them up.
I closed my eyes and pictured the model I had been working on, or at least Joe had been working on for me, when Paula had come yesterday. It had been judged by the local vicar as the best in the Sunday School.
&
nbsp; Inwardly I cringed as I recalled over-hearing the vicar telling one of the women from the village that they usually chose an orphan to win, because they felt sorry for ‘the poor souls’. It was like being on the Poor List again. Forgetting Paula might be picking up what was in my head, the shame I’d felt blazed into anger. They were nothing but a bunch of do-gooders. I loathed their smug faces. When I got home, I’d show them, and all the others like them.
‘I’ve just heard they’re sending another four kids to that there halfway home Micky and Tom got sent to.’ Joe loved tittle-tattle, good or bad, and I wondered if it was because his ears came to a point at the top that he got to hear so much. He kept scraping at his potato. Spud bashing was our special duty every morning before school. If we didn’t fill the cauldron, we had to clean the lavs.
‘Alfie Barchard says it’s ‘cos they’re getting ready to go on this adventure to another country.’
‘Why would they want Mickey and Tom and the others to have an adventure? They hate us having adventures. Anyway, why do they have to have them in some other country? Can’t they have them here? It’s crackers.’
‘Alfie Barchard says it’s hot where they have their adventures.’ Joe threw a spud into the cauldron. Water splashed the bench and trickled on to the floor. ‘I wouldn’t mind an adventure in a hot place mesself, except I’d frizzle up with these.’ He pointed to the freckles covering his arms that made them look a completely different colour to mine. ‘That’s the trouble having ginger hair. I wouldn’t mind if my old man or woman had it. I’m the only one in the whole blinkin’ family who’s a carrot top. I reckon I must have been the milkman’s.’
‘Did he have ginger hair?’
‘I don’t know, do I? It was a joke. Where’ve you been all your life!’
‘Learning how to punch people like you.’ I grabbed hold of Joe’s jersey and hauled him towards me.
‘Let go, for pity’s sake, I was only joking.’
‘Yeah, well. Let it be a warning to you, or anyone who takes the mickey out of me.’ I let go of his jersey.
That night I had another of the nightmares I had been having of late. A cannibal was chasing me across a desert. The heat pressed down on me like a rock. It caused my head to bang inside and my lungs to long for a cool English day. The soles of my feet were criss-crossed with bloody tramlines. My feet sank into the sand, making them difficult to lift.
As the chase went on, a paralysis began creeping into my legs. I struggled to keep going, pushing one foot in front of the other as the savage with a spear hared after me. Numbness was taking hold of me as my attacker drew nearer.
The heat didn’t seem to affect him at all. Gradually my whole body lost feeling, and I fell onto the sand.
With a whoop of victory, the cannibal dragged me towards a fire with a cauldron, hanging over it like the one we used for the spuds. I could feel the heat like blisters on my skin, and hear fire roaring in my ears. My lungs wouldn’t blow up and I was having difficulty breathing. Sweat trickled into my eyes and down my face until I could taste its saltiness. Effortlessly, as if I was made of cotton wool, the cannibal lifted me up and into the cauldron, where Mickey’s and Tom’s faces leered up at me. I fought to suck in the next breath. Then, while I was being lowered into the pot, my lungs filled with air as if a pair of bellows had been pushed into them.
‘It’s all right, Tone. It’s all right. You were having one of those nightmares again,’ Joe was sitting on the edge of my bed holding my shoulders while I sucked in air, trying to breathe properly.
‘It was horrible, horrible. He was cooking Mickey and Tom. I was next.’
‘What’s going on in here?’ Matron opened the door and waved torchlight around the room.
‘He’s had a nightmare, Miss. He’ll be all right in a minute. He needs a drink of water, and it’d help if we could have the light on for a bit.’
‘You most certainly can’t have either.’ Matron’s whispering was louder than if she spoke normally. ‘The rules are no lights after half past eight. He’s not a baby. He doesn’t need a drink at night. We can’t make exceptions for him. Before we know it, everyone will be pretending to have nightmares, then where will we be!’ She closed the door with a click. We heard her footsteps disappearing along the landing.
‘He was going to eat me, Joe.’ My voice still trembled.
‘Who was?’
‘A cannibal. He was going to put me in the spud pot.’
‘You gave me a turn screaming like that.’
‘Promise you won’t tell anyone.’
‘What’ d’you take me for? Mates don’t grass on each other.’ By now, Joe was sitting cross-legged at the foot of my bed.
‘I wish I could have the light on. I don’t want to go back to sleep in case he gets me this time.’
‘I won’t let him. I’ll cover myself up with a blanket and sleep at the end of your bed. At home I was used to kipping in half inch of space.’ He pulled back the blanket and crawled under it. Knowing he was there at the foot of my bed made me feel safe and eventually I fell back to sleep.
When I awoke, Joe was hunched like a hibernating animal at the bottom of my bed. I wiggled my feet and gradually the hillock flattened and Joe’s face emerged. ‘Best night’s kip I’ve had for a blinking century,’ he grinned.
A white skin of frost covering the countryside was beginning to melt as we walked to school.
‘You don’t think horrible things really do happen when they send them to have these adventures, like being eaten by cannibals, do you?’
‘Course they don’t. Cannibals come from Africa, and Africa’s too far to send them to have adventures. Stop worrying.’ Against the frost-blue sky, Joe’s hair was an orange crown around his head. ‘Come here and I’ll show you something.’
‘What is it?’
‘A bird’s nest. I found it yesterday. There’s no eggs in it, so it might be old, or a bird might be going to lay some soon. I’m going to try and get a book on birds, then perhaps I can find out what sort of nest it is.’ Joe stooped to pick a snowdrop from a clump emerging from behind a tree trunk. ‘I never saw a flower growing ‘til I came here. I saw them in shops, but not actually coming up out the ground. And the only birds I ever saw were sparrows and pigeons. It’s real lovely in the country.’
I found the bombsite far more beautiful. Each season it changed, even at different times of the day. Eerily it rose from the fog on a winter’s morning like a ghost city. Evening shadows stretched long fingers across it, leading it into the secret night. Dandelions thrived in yellow clouds, afterwards their petals dropping, leaving their fairy-down to be blown away in countless games of “Telling the Time”. Flowers that had once been part of someone’s garden refused to give up and kept up the same colourful display year after year. And when the sun shone on the sycamore tree by the bakers, it actually glimmered, while in the autumn it dropped its seeds like tiny brown helicopters.
‘Dirty orphans! Dirty orphans!’ A group of village children began careering towards us, yelling, ‘You’ve got fleas and stink!’
‘I’ll kill you. I’ll kill all of you.’ Instant anger flared inside me, but Joe was already dragging me through an opening in the hedge and pushing me down behind it.
‘What d’you think you’re doing? There must be a dozen of ‘em. They’ll murder us.’
‘Nobody’s calling me a dirty orphan.’ I struggled to free myself from Joe’s grip, but his hands were like a vice. He was surprisingly strong for someone with such a small frame.
Reluctantly, I ducked low as the chanting grew louder and the cows in the field munched on, oblivious to the din.
‘Come on out, you dirty orphans.’ The group of boys was close now. ‘Leave it until we get to school. We’ll get ‘em then,’ one of the boys boasted and, satisfied to wait, the group passed by.
‘Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can’t harm you,’ Joe actually laughed.
‘Wait ‘til we get to school, then
we’ll see whose bones are going to be broken.’ I clenched and unclenched my fists.
‘Don’t be so daft. We couldn’t take that lot on, even if we were Tarzan. There’s other ways round things. Leave it to old Joe.’ He touched his nose with his forefinger.
‘We’ve got a horrible disease,’ Joe cautioned the group that confronted us later that morning in the playground. ‘If you get too near us, your tongue’ll go black and your eyes pop out of their sockets. The next thing you know, your balls will have dropped off and you’ll be sicking up every last part of your guts. If you don’t believe me, go to the orphanage. There are eyes and balls and guts all over the floor. It’s the most horrible sight you’ve set your eyes on.’ Joe pulled a grotesque face and the boys’ eyes widened. Looking from one to the other, they waited for the first one to make a move.
‘If you don’t clear off, we’ll spit on you, then you’ll die in agony. If you snitch about what’s happening at the orphanage, your fingers and toes’ll snap off like twigs!
Without waiting to consult with each other, the group fled.
‘I told you to leave it to me.’ Joe rubbed his hands together as if he had sent each of them packing with a punch on the nose.
‘Now no-one’ll talk to us. Not that I care,’ I added.
‘Neither do I, so there you are. We’ve got each other. Anyway, you won’t be here much longer. Your Mum’ll be collecting you before you can say “balls”’.
In my experience, although you pretended words didn’t hurt you, they punctured your insides, and the pain never went away, not really. Yet words, when they were kind, warmed you like an oven in your belly. It was because of words, written ones, I couldn’t wait to get back to the orphanage every day after school and take my letters from under the mattresses. I knew every letter by heart.
Fred was busy helping his son with his business, although he didn’t say exactly what it was. Something to do with tractors, I thought. Lori helped Fred’s son’s wife with their new baby, but she didn’t mention going shopping, or to the library, or having afternoon tea with friends like she did in Blountmere Street. Instead, she asked strange questions like the price of lamb, was I enjoying the winter and how many times we’d had Spam lately.
He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) Page 11
