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

by Barbara Arnold

Miss Jervlin probably recognised Fergus as one of the men she saw when she went into the township. One of the ones who lurched from The Travellers and stumbled along the main street, sometimes collapsing in the gutter when the six o’clock swill was over.

  ‘Good, you’ve found each other.’ Peg pushed her way between us, her fox grinning. ‘I’ve been telling Barbara here what a bookworm you are.’

  I shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘I told her that through no fault of your own.’ She glared at a far off place, presumably in the direction of the Downstons’. ‘You’ve not had any proper education since you came to New Zealand. Missed a lot, and you, such an intelligent young bloke. Disgraceful.’ Her fox seemed to snarl. ‘And education’s so important. My kids wouldn’t be where they are today without having had a good education. Part owner of a company, one of them, and doing well for himself.’

  It must have been at least the sixth time she’d told me.

  ‘You must wonder what all this is about.’ Barbara Jervlin directed the conversation back to me. ‘I’m quite prepared for you to come to the school, say, three afternoons a week at about four o’clock, for a couple of hours for you to catch up on your schooling.’

  ‘Jack and me have talked about it, and it’s all right with us. You can leave a bit early, maybe make up the time by doing some extra when you can. You can take the truck.’ Peg looked anxious for my reaction.

  ‘But what about … I mean how much will it cost?’

  ‘It’s all taken care of. You just do well with your studies. Can’t have a brain like yours going to waste. You do want to do it, don’t you? Me and Jack got the impression you did.’

  I was sure I hadn’t mentioned anything about my lack of schooling to the Millards, although it had been at the forefront of my thoughts recently. The Gang, who had never had a good word to say about school, would just about be finished their school years. Mine had ended a long time ago. If I was to meet them now, they would know all manner of things that I didn’t. I would be backward and behind them and every other kid of my age or even younger in Blountmere Street.

  ‘Is it all right with you?’ Miss Jervlin prodded, obviously not used to being kept waiting by her pupils. ‘It seems to me that one of those good things Uncle Rewi just talked about has landed directly at your feet,’ Barbara Jervlin said.

  I gave the teacher a quick sideways glance. Would lessons from her be a good thing, straight from the portals of heaven? I wasn’t convinced.

  ‘That’s settled, then.’ The fox appeared to open its mouth in a saber-toothed shout of triumph, as Peg wrestled it back into position.

  If it wasn’t for Peg sending Joe to look for me in case I’d forgotten I was due to begin my lessons that evening, I wouldn’t have gone.

  Steaming water was in the basin in my bedroom when I got back to the homestead. Peg handed me my towel, grumbling at me to use it to dry myself on, instead of that “silly bit of rag”. ‘It’ll come up just as fluffy next time I wash it,’ she assured me. A clean shirt was laid out on my bed. I knew she was hovering outside my door in case I needed anything else.

  ‘I’ve packed you something to eat on the way there. Your dinner will be waiting for you when you get back, so don’t worry,’ she said, as I jumped in the cab of the truck.

  Missing dinner was the least of my worries. Walking into the small playground in the opposite direction to some incredibly small children who stared at me and giggled - that was a worry. Looking into the classroom with its little desks, benches and multiplication charts - that was a worry. Miss Jervlin, a pile of ink-blotched exercise books in front of her, scolding a boy no more than seven - that was yet another worry.

  When Miss Jervlin had finished dealing with the boy, she bade me a curt good evening and indicated a desk directly in front of her own table. Attached to the desk was a bench that I practically had to double myself to sit behind.

  ‘I’m sorry, the furniture’s a little small for you, but I’m sure you’ll manage.’ She handed me a timetable. ‘You’ll have as much homework as you actually do here at school. Unfortunately, you’ve got a good few years to make up. Either you grasp the opportunity that’s being handed you, or you do without any formal secondary education. The decision is yours.’ She managed a brittle smile, but I knew that between her and Peg I didn’t have a choice.

  ‘What’s twelve twelves?’ Joe sat on the wall surrounding the homestead garden, a trowel in one hand, a book of tables in the other. I had loathed school work in Blountmere Street, but to my amazement, now I enjoyed it – all of it, even mathematics and science. These days no one had to force me to do my homework. What would Ang and the Gang have said about that!

  ‘A hundred and forty-four.’ I regretted making paper darts to throw at the Gang or polishing conkers ready for a playground match at Blountmere Street School, instead of learning my tables .

  ‘Thank gawd for that. Now we don’t have to go over the blinkin’ things anymore. Mind you, I’ve learnt most of them mesself now.’

  ‘But don’t you want to make up for all the other things you missed at school? Miss Jervlin said you could come with me if you wanted.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that? I can count and read gardening books, study the gee gees and sign my name. You don’t need nothing else to make money. As long as I can count my winnings, why should I spend all that time cooped up in a classroom? Good on ya, Tone, but it’s not for me. I reckon I’ll get on very nicely in life without it.’

  Peg was probably right: Joe would survive by his wits.

  ‘Give me one good reason why you can’t go to the dance in the community hall,’ Peg confronted me and Joe as we prepared to leave the homestead for a day’s work.

  ’Cos we can’t dance, for starters.’ Joe adopted a defensive pose, standing sideways to Peg with his arms folded.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Nor, I bet, can three quarters of the other people who’ll be there.’ Peg was at her most persuasive. She turned to me. ‘You’ll be coming, won’t you, Tony?’

  ‘No fear, not me.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you two. You get the chance to meet some young people your own age, have a bit of fun, even dance with some girls and the two of you are like a couple of wet fleeces.’

  ‘We’re happy as we are, aren’t we, Tone?’

  ‘And I’m extra busy with my school work at the moment.’

  ‘That’s precisely why you need to go. Don’t forget what they say about all work and no play.’ Peg began walking away, calling over her shoulder, ‘Did I tell you I’m in charge of the buffet supper, so there’ll be a good few of my special pavs there.

  ‘I suppose we could go,’ Joe said, loud enough for Peg to hear.

  ‘Good. Saturday at seven. I’ve already got your tickets.’

  That night, it happened again and it pushed the dance a long way from my thoughts. Like before, it wasn’t a voice, not an audible one at any rate, and I wasn’t asleep. Along the hall, I could hear Peg’s’s rhythmic snoring, while outside everything was still. It was like it had been at the Downstons when I’d been woken up with the same persistent tapping somewhere inside me. I levered myself into a sitting position, accustoming my eyes to the darkness. The feeling intensified, but there were no pictures or words to help me. It was more of an imprint on my spirit. I got out of bed and stood at the window looking down on what I was already beginning to think of as Joe’s garden. Jack would say I was suffering from a touch of indigestion; too much of Peg’s ginger pudding. But indigestion didn’t make you feel as if someone was shaking you at your deepest point. Bad acid didn’t contribute to the impression someone was pleading for your attention.

  ‘What is it?’ I whispered, but I knew even as I spoke that my words were hanging static there in my room. I continued to stare from the window as the first line of light appeared on the horizon.

  The week before the community hall dance, Peg cooked herself into a frenzy. If she hadn’t been able to listen to Au
nt Daisy on the radio while she was doing it, she didn’t know what she would have done, she said.

  On the actual night, I couldn’t imagine where everyone had come from; dozens of people jiggling and jostling each other on the dance floor. The dancing wasn’t the kind they did in England, where men and women stood close together with their arms around each other, and which the Gang swore they’d never do. At this dance, men were flinging women all over the place, even throwing them over their shoulders and turning them upside down. All of it was done to a deafening drum beat and twanging guitars.

  ‘This is sissy compared to The Travellers.’ Joe wedged himself into a corner.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I couldn’t see what was sissy about this sort of dancing.

  ‘There’s no beer,’ Joe complained.

  ‘Are you going to ask someone to dance?’ I shot a glance at a row of girls sitting with their hands clasped in their laps. Their skirts were well above their knees, and their hair was piled high on top and stretched wide at the sides

  ‘Not on your nellie! Real men don’t dance.’

  I looked around at the crowded dance floor. ‘They do here.’

  ‘I’m going outside. This racket’s driving me up the wall. Can’t stand the crowd either,’ Joe grumbled.

  I knew how he felt. We hadn’t seen so many people all together since the day we arrived in Wellington. Our isolation had changed us and we hadn’t realised it.

  ‘What’re you two doing skulking in the corner?’ Peg advanced towards us, licking her fingers free of cream. ‘You should be out there on that floor enjoying yourselves.’

  ‘We’re all right as we are, thanks.’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’ Peg wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Come with me.’ She yanked us from our chairs, put her palms into the small of our backs and before either of us could object further, she was shoving us to the edge of the dance floor.

  ‘Ann! Merrin!’ She called to two girls still sitting, waiting and hopeful. ‘Come and teach these boys how to rock and roll.’

  ‘I’m off,’ Joe tried to free himself from Peg’s grip, but a girl a head taller than him was already leading him on to the dance floor. ‘I’m Ann,’ I heard her say, as Merrin took my hand and pulled me towards the crowd of dancers.

  ‘Haven’t you really done this before?’ Merrin made it sound as if I must have lived on a far off planet, or that I had been imprisoned somewhere. She was partly right.

  ‘It’s easy. All you have to do is flick me left or right, and that’s the way I’ll go.’

  It wasn’t so simple. To begin with, I was sure she’d swung left when I’d flicked her right, or right when I’d flicked her left. We bumped into people, almost fell over, but once or twice Merrin managed the perfect twirl, laughing, breathless, her skirt billowing.

  It’s shot taffeta … It’s for my bridesmaid’s dress. See it changes colour … gorgeous isn’t it ... .and Lori’s going to buy me this headdress of silver leaves and silver shoes to go with it.

  Angela pirouetted in front of me as she had in our kitchen at Blountmere Street. I stopped for a moment and swallowed, struggling with the overpowering sadness that had suddenly fallen on me.

  ‘Are you all right? Do you want to stop?’ Merrin asked.

  ‘No, no, I’m all right.’ I said, but I knew then what I had to do.

  The brave yet cowardly rollers mesmerized me as they attacked the sand then retreated. Above me shags circled, while seals reclined fatly content on flinty outcrops.

  At last I found a smooth rock to lean against and, balancing a book on my knees to rest on, I began to write once again to Paula.

  This time, my letter was longer. My life since leaving England at least needed some explanation. Once I began, it kept coming. It was like sitting on her back doorstep on Saturday afternoons. I told her about my first letter to her and how Fergus had lost it; about Joe and our time at Downstons. I confided to her my mind visits to Blountmere Street each morning. I told her about Fergus and the way we used to read poetry together in the evenings in the men’s quarters; about my lessons at the township school. I asked her where she went to school and if she had been attempting to reach me in my head, as we’d once said we would. I’d often tried, I wrote, but it never worked.

  Up and up it surged. And still it kept gushing like oil from a deep well. Where was Angela now? Did Paula still keep in touch with her? Was Ang all right? Was she working? Would she send Angela’s address and … and a photo? Would they all send photos? I would let them have one of me as soon as I could get it taken. And Lori and Fred? Did they still keep in touch? How were they? Had they said anything about why they weren’t there to meet me?

  The waves grew more courageous, pummeling the rocks. The seals, seeking revival, plopped into the white capped frenzy.

  For the first time since beginning the letter, I hesitated. Mum – how had she died? Had she been in hospital? She hadn’t been on her own, had she? Did Paula happen to know if Mum had said anything – left any message for me before she passed on?

  And then it was over. The well was dry. I addressed the envelope, sealed it, and walked back along the beach. Purged. Very light.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘A cracker of a bird, this one.’ Jack’s sleeves were rolled above his elbows, and sweat glistened on his arms as he carved the Christmas turkey.

  Outside, a snowy-clothed table was fast becoming covered with bowls as Peg set yet another dish on the table, this one steaming with freshly picked peas, fragrant with mint.

  ‘I hope we’re going to have enough.’ Peg surveyed the table dubiously.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mum, you could give everyone in New Zealand a feed with the amount you’ve got here.’ Susan Millard shifted the baby at her breast. ‘We’re going to be very well-fed indeed, aren’t we my possum?’ She spoke into the soft down on the baby’s head.

  ‘Never knew a Christmas when Mum didn’t cook for the nation.’ Neville Millard was a male version of his mother.

  Peg looked down on the baby. ‘Your first Christmas, wee fella. Another addition to our family. It’s a pity Roger, Jenny and the kids couldn’t come, but that business of his keeps him busy, especially with his partner being away with his family and parents this Christmas.’

  There was a general shuffling of chairs, while Peg ordered everyone to dig in.

  Afterwards, we drank toasts to The Queen, Peg and her Christmas dinner, the new baby, to the success of the farm, absent family and friends, even to me and the exams I’d sat a few weeks earlier.

  Then, drowsily full, we sprawled in deckchairs. A warm breeze blew across the homestead garden and ruffled the red pohutakawa flowers on the tree outside the backdoor of the homestead.

  All around, eyes were closing. Jack emitted a whistling sound and Peg began to snore.

  ‘Do you still see Ann Epsley?’ I asked Joe, as if I’d plucked the question from the breeze.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Did you buy her a Christmas present?’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘But you like her, don’t you?’

  ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘She’s keen on you. I can tell.’

  ‘Don’t talk wet.’ Joe closed his eyes as a sign the conversation was at a close, but I wouldn’t let the subject go.

  ‘So why do you keep seeing her?’

  ‘Her old man owns a business.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s well off!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Flippin’ heck, d’you want a picture painted? You need to keep in with anyone who might be able to pull a few strings for you - someone you might be able to tap up for a bob or two.’

  ‘So you’re keeping things going with Ann because of her father?’

  ‘Something of the sort.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘What’s so terrible about it? If you had any sense, you’d do the same.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Take the Millards. You’d onl
y have to tell them you needed a bit of cash to send to yer family in England, and they’d cough up, no questions asked. Why don’t you? It’d be a start for yer. Get you set on your way to being well off.’

  ‘But that would be using people who trust you. It would be betraying them.’

  ‘Please yourself, but if you ask me, you’ve been listening to too many of that Rewi-bloke’s semons.

  Peg roused herself from her chair. “I’d better start getting tea ready. The others’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Tea! You can’t be serious! We’ve already eaten enough grub for a year.’ Even Joe’s appetite appeared to have been satisfied.

  ‘It won’t do any good telling my good lady that,’ Jack spoke sleepily from the depths of his deck chair. ‘Though it’s amazing how you can always force down another fruit mince pie or brandy snap.’

  Peg seemed to have invited most of the township for tea.

  ‘Have you given any more thought to what you want to do with your life, Tony?’ Barbara Jervlin bit into one of Peg’s shortbread specials. I had difficulty directing my thoughts to my education after having eaten so much. Anyway, my life was still a question I couldn’t find an answer for.

  ‘Surely you’ve given it some consideration,’ Miss Jervlin enquired. ‘After all, the results of your exams should be here soon. I’d be surprised if you didn’t pass. What are you going to do then? Call a halt to your schooling? I, for one, would be very disappointed if you did. If you’re going to continue, what do you want to be?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind being … a teacher.’ It was just something to say. I had no idea what I wanted to be. I didn’t know if I cared. If I could find someone I’d known in my old life in England, it might have been different. I wasn’t sure how or why. I only knew instinctively that it would.

  In that case, you’ll definitely need to return to school.’ Barbara Jervlin’s features softened. ‘I think you’d make an excellent teacher, Tony.’