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

by Barbara Arnold

  Mum’s letter wasn’t very long and consisted mainly of news that Angela was in an orphanage in the country, like mine, and that she seemed happy with her new friends. Quite a few times, she told me to be a good boy and seven times – I know because I counted them every day – she told me she loved and missed me, and that it wouldn’t be long before we’d all be back home together in Blountmere Street.

  I even read Miss Selska’s letter every day, although it was full of advice on using camphorated oil and eating my vegetables.

  My letters filled my mind all day at school, even when Miss Magdalen told the class, looking directly at me and Joe, that there were some children who would never amount to anything.

  Every afternoon I tried to get in touch with Paula. It brought a sort of relief being able to pour out the day’s happenings, even if I did feel as if I was talking to myself. Even though I concentrated really hard and wriggled around and squirmed, I couldn’t pick up anything from her. But my letters – well – they were real, not airy-fairy. My letters told me that people were thinking about me. Mum wasn’t going to let me rot in this place. Soon she was going to come and take me home to be with her and Ang.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Joe lurched into the room in his usual door-swinging fashion.

  ‘Nothing much, just reading my letters.’ I stuffed them into their envelopes and back under the mattresses.

  ‘It’s a wonder you haven’t read the words off the pages,’ Joe said, at the same time seeming to be having difficulty getting something out of his pocket. ‘Here, I got this for you, seeing as how they won’t let us have the light on at night.’ At last he loosened a small torch from his trouser pocket.

  ‘How did you get hold of it?’

  ‘Ask no questions, and you’ll hear no lies.’

  ‘You nicked it!’

  ‘As if I’d do a thing like that? I knew Joe was pretending to look shocked.

  ‘Where am I going to keep it? If I put it underneath my pillow they’ll find it, and I can’t put it under the mattress.’

  ‘I’ve already got the place. They don’t call me Einstein for nothing.’ Joe walked across to the window. ‘I was having a decko yesterday and behind the curtain, I found a hole. I think that torch will fit it nicely.’

  I had never thought to probe behind the curtains. They were covered with tired yellow flowers and dull brown leaves that extended well beyond the window on either side.

  ‘I reckon they must have been going to put a socket in or something. Anyway, it's big enough to squeeze your letters into it as well.’

  I pushed the batteries into the torch, tested it to see that it worked, then wedged it into the cubby hole. Brick dust floated to the floor. Joe knelt and rubbed it into the carpet with the sleeve of his jersey.

  ‘I’ll put my letters in later.’ How could I tell Joe the hole in the wall was too far away to be from my letters?

  ‘Hurry up will you, or we’ll be put away in that halfway house they’re sending ‘em to. I’ve heard Charlie Butcher and Bruce Levene are off there tomorrow.’

  It reminded me of my nightmare and I looked towards the curtain for reassurance.

  ‘Thanks, Joe.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The torch and that.’

  ‘Now don’t go getting soft,’ he said.

  Miss Magdalen entered the classroom looking even more sombre than usual. She stood in front of her table, paused, then cleared her throat. ‘This is a very sad day for us all.’ She paused again, as if not knowing how to bring us the news. ‘We have just heard that our dear King George the Sixth has tragically passed away.’ She hesitated, then in a loud voice announced, ‘God Save The Queen.’

  Matron declared the next day one of mourning “for our dear departed Majesty”, which meant total silence at breakfast and when we returned from school. A black-framed banner appeared in the hall from which a picture of the late King looked down on us, as if it had been placed there in case we dared utter a sound. The whole orphanage was ordered to attend church to pray for our new Queen.

  ‘Church is bad enough on Sundays, let alone in the week,’ Joe lisped out of the side of his mouth, even though we were still alone in our room. Matron could hear and see things that normal people couldn’t.

  That afternoon I thought I heard Paula speaking to me. It was a vague impression. She was talking about the King. I could visualize the sadness in her face, the expression in her eyes. Or was it because I knew that was what she would have been talking about? Just the same, in my head I responded, telling her about the banner, going to church in the week, even about matron wearing a black ribbon tied around her head with a bow in the front.

  ‘You’re a dirty, disgusting boy!’ Matron was making one of her surprise morning inspections. She didn’t make them often. We never knew when she would appear in our room at seven in the morning, and order us to take the sheets and blankets from our beds. Matron’s face was close to Joe’s. ‘What boy of your age wets the bed! Get here.’ She grasped the top of Joe’s pyjamas and yanked him towards her. I watched as she ordered him to take the wet sheet off his bed. I knew what was coming, what always happened when a bed wetter was discovered.

  ‘You know what to do, Joseph.’

  ‘But Miss, it’s horrible.’

  ‘It is entirely of your own making. Now put the sheet over your head! Right over!’ With the sheet covering Joe like a shroud, matron propelled him through the door and on to the landing, calling, ‘Come here children. Witness a dirty bed-wetter.’ Joe stumbled up the corridor, the wet patch sticking to his face, outlining the shape of his nose, his lips pressed together so that they looked like one. At the doors of their rooms, the other boys called out, ‘Wet the bed! Wet the bed!’ as they were expected to.

  Although we never mentioned it, I knew Joe often peed himself at night, but he had always managed to get the bed made in time, and it remained a secret. When Monica came to change the sheets, she took no notice of the urine stench and stains, she just stuffed the sheets into a large laundry bag. Now Joe had been caught, and there was nothing I could do, only refuse to go to the door and join in.

  ‘Get out here immediately, Tony Addington,’ Matron ordered.

  ‘No I won’t. I’m not going to watch my mate have the mickey taken out of him. It isn’t his fault: he can’t help it.’

  ‘Are you daring to answer me back?’ Matron marched towards me, caught hold of my ear and dragged me behind her. ‘You’ll stand there until I tell you to move! Come here and help me take the mattress off this dirty boy’s bed,’ she called to Monica, who, well used to the rigmarole, was sweeping the stairs, appearing not to take any notice.

  With a lot of puffing from matron, she and Monica hauled Joe’s mattress clear of the bed. As they did so, Miss Selska’s letter fell on to a blanket.

  ‘Joseph Fisher, get here immediately!’ Matron had forgotten the bed-wetting incident in the light of a greater crime. Joe fumbled with the sheet and, forgetting matron’s warning not to move, I fled to help him free himself

  ‘What is this?’ Matron poked the envelope into Joe’s face.

  ‘It’s a letter, Miss.’

  ‘I can see it’s a letter.’ She began taking the pages from the envelope and reading them. ‘This appears to be yours.’ She rounded on me. ‘It is yours, isn’t it?’

  I remained silent.

  ‘How did you get it?’

  I clamped my lips together.

  ‘If you won’t tell me, there is only one thing to be done.’ Deliberately she tore the letter into strips, then the strips into pieces and stuffed them into her pocket.

  ‘I will be calling for both of you in my office later.’ She began to leave, then stopped. ‘Monica, before you go, perhaps you’ll help me with the other two mattresses and Tony’s as well. Boys like this can’t be trusted.’

  My mattress was the last to be taken from the bed. All the time Matron and Monica were turning the other two, I wondered how I could retrieve th
e letters under mine. I knew I had pushed them well into the middle. Perhaps we could divert matron’s attention. I looked at Joe for help, but he was still recovering from being laughed at by the other boys. He shrugged his shoulders in a hopeless sort of way.

  When matron and Monica took my mattress from my bed, matron immediately snatched the envelopes.

  ‘Please don’t tear them up,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ll do anything, anything, just don’t get rid of my letters. You can keep them in your office. I swear on God’s honour, I’ll never read them again.’ I turned to Monica, ‘Please don’t let her do it.’ As if she hadn’t heard me, however, and without opening the envelopes, matron simply tore Mum’s and Fred and Lori’s letters into the same strips and pieces as she had Miss Selska’s. She shoved them into her pocket. Then she swept out of our room, saying, ‘I’ll be calling for you both in my office.’

  ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ Monica was weeping as she placed her arm round my shoulder. ‘She’s an old cow to do that.’

  I shrugged her hand off me. My letters had been taken. Nothing was left, except a square that had fluttered from Matron’s bunched hand and concealed itself in the bedclothes strewn across the floor. On it were the words, “Love Mum”.

  After Monica had gone, I skirted the mound of covers to the window, where I pulled back the curtain and inserted the square of paper next to my torch. No one would ever take it from me, no one, ever. I would kill them if they tried.

  ‘They’re sending me to that half-way house,’ Joe said later that day after he had been summoned to matron’s office. There was still a lingering smell of urine about him. ‘They’re sending me somewhere abroad. They said I was a-good-for-nothing and lucky to have the chance of a fresh start.’ He cuffed tears across his face. All at once I knew how much I would miss him.

  ‘I wish you were coming with me.’ He suddenly seemed very small and frightened, but my sadness for Joe was mingled with relief that I wouldn’t be in this horrible place much longer. Anyway, Joe was going to have an adventure. I was sure he would enjoy that.

  It was a couple of weeks before matron ordered me to her office. Every day I had been expecting to have to confront her and explain the letters, but when I passed her she ignored me.

  One afternoon after school, when the wind was blowing so hard every window in the place rattled and everyone seemed restless, Monica came running to our room, puffing, ‘Matron wants to see you in her office. She’s got some high-up bloke with her, too.’ She began brushing me down with her hand, then trying to flatten my hair. ‘You’d better make yourself presentable. Rub a flannel over your face. It’s black. If you ask me, it’s something important.’

  Monica insisted on taking me to Matron’s office, even though I knew the way perfectly well. She babbled on and on as we walked down the stairs and along the narrow corridor, but I wasn’t listening. At last Mum was better and the man had come to take me back to her.

  ‘Come on in,’ matron invited me into her office. Her desk was swept clear of everything except a vase of daffodils. She wasn’t scowling as I expected her to be, and my hopes rose.

  ‘This is Mr Grasley,’ matron indicated the man standing by the window. He walked towards me and put out his hand. His fingers were bony like a skeleton’s.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some rather bad news.’ Matron screwed her face into a funny shape. It couldn’t be anything bad. Mum was better. I was going home. The man coughed, swallowed and coughed again. ‘Anthony Malcolm Addington?’ He enquired, and without waiting for a reply, continued, ‘I have to inform you that your mother has passed away and you are being conscripted on to the Government’s Child Migration Scheme with your destination, New Zealand.’

  There was no explanation or words of sympathy.

  I wondered how Mum died and what would happen to Angela. Did the Old Man know or even care, but I was dismissed before I could even form the questions.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Twelve

  New Zealand 1953

  The wind was whipping the sea into a frenzy when we docked at Wellington. It caused the ship to be tossed about as if it was made of balsa wood, like the ones the kids sailed on the pond Up The Common.

  Joe and I were part of a string of orphan boys who clutched on to the rope of the gang plank, as we tottered from the ship and on to the quayside. We clasped our empty cases, and studied our strange surroundings, while the wind slapped at our bare legs and penetrated our jackets.

  ‘I thought you said it never gets cold here.’ Despite the chill, Joe stuffed the cap we were ordered to wear on disembarkation into his pocket. ‘It makes me look like Little Lord Fauntleroy,’ he complained.

  I hardly heard him as I scanned the waterfront, then up to the bush-clad hills, dotted with wooden bungalows painted different colours like lumps of marshmallow. Even though it was cloudy, the light was bright and I shielded my eyes with my hand. Perhaps Fred and Lori lived in one of the marshmallows and were hurrying down one of the steep streets to meet us.

  When I had been in England, a woman from the transit orphanage, wearing gold rimmed spectacles hung round her neck on a chain, had written down Fred and Lori’s names. She had thanked me and smiled. Smiling was something people who worked in orphanages never did. I returned her smile, seeing myself racing down the gangplank into Fred and Lori’s arms. On board, it made the cramped conditions and seasickness bearable. At night it helped me not to cry.

  ‘I thought you said your precious friends would be waiting for you.’ Micky Bricks jeered, waving his arm around at the emptiness.

  ‘They’ll be here,’ I replied.

  Some men in shirts, their sleeves rolled up and wearing caps like the one Old Dibble wore, herded us across the wharf into a long wooden building. We were still not used to being on firm ground, and we staggered and tripped. Inside, people were bunched around the edges of a long room. They stared at us I heard someone say, “You’d think they’d be different coming from the Homeland.”

  My gaze travelled from person to person as I searched the knots of people for Fred and Lori.

  ‘Can yer see ‘em?’ Joe enquired as we were manhandled into a row.

  ‘Give us a mo.’ I found a chair, stood on it and continued looking round the room.

  ‘Get down immediately,’ ordered a man in red plaid shorts and long socks.

  ‘Well?’ Joe asked.

  ‘They’re a bit late, that’s all.’

  When we were in position, an official-looking man with hair parted down the middle, told us we would have opportunities in New Zealand we’d never dreamt of.

  Outside the wind howled. Inside it was damp and drab. He droned on. One of the boys wet himself. It made a hissing sound on the floor.

  The man used strange words like, ‘New Zealand pride”, while the people nodded, and I stood there not knowing what was going on.

  At last the man finished and another man stepped forward. He was from what sounded like “The Agency”. He spoke with the same strange accent, and said things like gidday and nemes instead of names. He said that some of the children would be placed temporarily in orphanages, until they found all of us foster homes, although some of the boys had foster parents waiting to take them immediately. At least, I think that’s what he said.

  All the time the speeches were going on, my eyes never stopped sweeping the room for Fred and Lori.

  The next thing I heard, the Man from the Agency was saying we were very lucky and privileged children. Our lives would be so much better than the ones we’d left behind. We’d actually eat lamb and drink plenty of milk. Then he pulled a piece of paper from his briefcase and began reading names from it.

  ‘Perhaps your Fred and Lori can’t get here, and they’ll put us in a home while we wait. We mustn’t let them split us up.’ Joe moved closer. He clung to the hem of my jacket, while kids started walking towards uplifted hands. It left Joe and me exposed and conspicuous. Someone slipped in the urine and cursed.

  ‘Mr Eleo
d Downston?’ We were led to a man who had two distinct lines across his face: his eyebrows thick and joining like a black hedge and his lips thin and straight that stretched from one weather-beaten cheek to the other.

  ‘This is Anthony Addington and Joseph Fisher,’ the man said.

  Joe’s grip tightened on my jacket, pulling it off my shoulders. ‘Is that the name of your Fred and Lori?’ He whispered.

  I shrugged myself free of his grip and brushed my sleeve across my eyes, spreading the moisture towards my temples. I didn’t answer. They’d given me to someone else. Fred and Lori didn’t want me.

  ‘I asked for girls,’ Eleod Downston complained. ‘The missus needs ‘em to help her around the place.’

  ‘I’m afraid there aren’t any girls on this shipment.’ The Man from the Agency might as well have been talking about sacks of sugar or flour. ‘I’ll definitely put you down for a couple. Any preferences?’

  ‘Young.’

  ‘Young?’

  ‘The Missus likes ‘em young, so she can train ‘em.’

  ‘Quite, quite, and may I say how generous it is of you and Mrs Downston to offer a home to these deprived children.’

  The Man glided away, avoiding the urine.

  Eleod Downston hawked phlegm into a piece of rag. He looked us up and down and measured the circumference of our upper arms with his circled fingers. ‘A couple of scrawny bastards they’ve given me,’ he sneered.

  ‘I’m Joe and this ‘ere’s Tony.’ Joe began. His voice sounded funny.

  ‘When I want to know your names, I’ll ask for ‘em. Until then, keep your mouths shut.’ Downston grabbed hold of my chin and forced my face up. My teeth locked together.

  ‘Get your eyes up, boy,’ he ordered. ‘Never could stand whingers. Well, pick up your stuff. What d’yer want – a housemaid to do it for yer? We breed ‘em tough here, so you can forget yer fancy mummy’s boys’ ways.’ He strode towards the door. We followed, while The Man from the Agency called after him, ‘Hooray, Mr Downston. We’ll be at your place to go over the paperwork and check everything’s all right. Give us time. You’re a fair ways out in the wap-waps.’