by Annie Murray
She said her goodbyes to him on the Saturday night before she was due to return to Birmingham for the summer term, although she would see him at church the next morning. Edwin, ever proper, embraced her outside her parents’ house.
‘It’s the downhill run now!’ Edwin looked very pleased with himself. ‘Another four months and we’ll be married!’
‘I can’t really take it in,’ Gwen said. An odd, physical sensation accompanied the thought, a kind of twist inside her.
Edwin stroked her hair. Longingly, he said, ‘Heavens, I wish it was tomorrow.’
Gwen smiled.
‘Darling,’ he went on miserably, ‘I know it was what you wanted, but I do wish you were here. It’s miserable without you. It’s seemed such a long time.’
‘I know, but it’ll soon pass. It’s only a term, after all.’ Teasingly she tapped his nose. ‘The best things come to those who wait.’
He kissed her then, in his ardent yet restrained way, hands pressing on her back while managing not to let her body come any closer to his.
‘Oh.’ He pulled back regretfully. ‘Look, I’d better go, darling.’ He was wide-eyed, suddenly boyish, hoping that she would try to prevent him.
Gwen stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
‘See you soon,’ she said. ‘It’ll be the half-term holiday in no time.’
‘Yes.’ Edwin sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. That’s if your landlady doesn’t finish you off with her cooking first!’ He went to fetch his bicycle.
‘I love you!’ he called, weaving off along the road.
She opened her mouth to reply, but he was already a good distance away.
The next afternoon she caught her train back to Birmingham. It was raining and water ran down the windows, which were steamed up inside. She sat with her coat still on and rubbed the wet window, trying to see out, excitement rising inside her.
Joey’s hand slid along the bottom edge of the large windowpane above the frame, which was covered in flaking sky-blue paint. He liked the smooth feel of the glass, as if it was water and he might sink into it, cool and soothing on his body. He pressed his forehead against it. On the other side of the pane were shelves arranged with jars and packets: bottles of HP Sauce, packets of Tetley Tea and Bournville Cocoa and Bird’s custard powder. He pressed his burning cheek against the glass. For a moment all the colours blurred. Then his eyes focused. Pan Yan Pickle, he read on the label of a bottle.
‘’Ere – you still hanging about? I thought I told you to clear off!’ A plump woman stood on the doorstep. Her voice seemed to boom out from somewhere very high up. ‘Look what you’ve done! I only polished that window this morning and you’re making it all smeary. Go on with you! You should be at school!’
‘Oh, Mom,’ another voice said. ‘The poor little thing. He don’t look very well to me.’ Through his hazy senses, Joey felt her come closer, battering him with questions. ‘Are you poorly? What’s your name? Where d’you live? Does your mother know you’re here?’
He didn’t know what else to do except nod his head, which felt too big for his body. But it hurt his neck when he did and he screwed his face up in pain.
A cool hand touched his forehead. ‘He’s burning! You been sent home from school have you?’
He nodded.
‘You hungry?’
Another nod.
‘What’s that round your neck?’ No answer. ‘What’s that, Mom? Looks like an old sheet. ’Ere, I’ll find you summat to eat. Then you’d best get home to your Mom.’
‘You’re a soft ’a’p’orth, you are,’ the older woman scolded, disappearing into the shop. ‘He’ll be off round the corner right as rain once you’ve given ’im summat.’
Joey propped himself against the window frame. Time passed. Then he opened his eyes to see a greasy brown paper bag being dangled in front of his nose.
‘Go on, then – take them and away with you,’ she said, though not harshly. ‘Mom don’t like you hanging about.’
Round the corner, in a quiet street, he came upon a pair of big green doors. He sank down on the step and looked in the bag. She’d given him a handful of broken biscuits. He shoved one in his mouth. It was soft and stale and, as he chewed, it turned into a thick lump in his mouth which he only managed to swallow with an effort. He closed the bag. The cold of the step crept up into him, making him shiver violently. He hugged his arms across his chest. Something had happened to his head. It was so heavy he had to lean it against the door, and his eyes wouldn’t stay open. Darkness sank over him.
Most of the time now, he didn’t know where he was. The first days, after he ran away from Mrs Simmons’s house, he’d stayed round Winson Green. Mr Sim-mons’s old trenchcoat was long and heavy and he draped it round his neck, the top half of it hanging down the left side of his chest, the tails on the right side. If it wasn’t for the night-time he would have ditched the thing. It stank of snuff and Mr Simmons’s stale sweat, and it weighed him down. He felt stupid carting it about. But there was also something comforting about the feel of it, the way it hugged warmly around his neck, and when the light began to fade he was glad he’d carried it all day.
The bread had lasted him until the next day. He had no idea what to do with himself, and he walked the streets, up and down, watching out carefully for anyone who might know him. He was frightened they’d be looking for him – the Barnardo’s man with his long chains or a van to push him into and lock him in. He walked along the wall of the prison as fast as he could, looking over his shoulder. There was nowhere to duck into here and hide! What if the orphanage man came now and tried to get him?
He went down to the cut, where he and Lena used to go and play. He didn’t want to think about Lena, or Polly or Kenny. He wandered back and forth along the towpath. There were warehouses opposite and he kept hearing the trains going by on the railway behind. At the back of one factory a pipe let out hissing clouds of steam just above the murky water. Joey stood and watched. The canal was busy with boats, the motors put-putting by, the narrowboats passing each other on the thin channel. He liked it down there. There were people about but they didn’t bother him. He spent a long while throwing things into the water, stones, twigs and cinders. The coat annoyed him, swinging in his face every time he bent down. Stones were the best, the ‘plop’ they made, then the little rings of ripples. He had to stand back to let a man go by who was leading a big black and white horse, hauling a boat, its hold heaped high with gleaming coal. The man winked at him as he went past.
Soon after he felt gripes in his stomach and suddenly, urgently needed to relieve himself. He just made it up behind a bush and yanked his short trousers down, grunting at the pain in his stomach. Afterwards he had to wipe himself with leaves and his hand stank. He went and leaned over the bank to wash and found tears running down his face. Those he wiped away on the coat.
He kept away from Canal Street, from the house. In his mind they were all still there for him, those giants from the orphanage outside the house, prepared to wait for ever.
In the afternoon he stole a bottle of sterilized milk from a crate at the back of a shop. If he ran off down the road with it, he knew, someone would be suspicious. He was already quite skilled at pilfering. He held the bottle inside the folds of the coat and slipped quietly out of the entry to the street, walking as if he had every right to be there. In Blackpatch Park he ate some of the hard bread and drank all the milk he could.
As evening came, it grew bitter. The air stung his bare legs and he was too cold to stay still. Joey walked the streets, draping the coat round him, along the Flat, the shops all closed now, past the Railway Inn, the baths in Bacchus Road. Smells filled the air: beer from the pubs, the hot whiff of chips and vinegar and smoke from chimneys. He walked along streets, seeing the lights through the windows, hearing voices as doors opened and slammed shut. He carried with him the remainder of the bottle of stera. His feet were tired and sore, but he didn’t think about anything. That night he slept in
Blackpatch Park rolled up in the coat, pulling it right over his head. He found a spot under some bushes. He heard little rustling noises in the leaves around him, but he kept his head down, exhausted. The next morning he was woken by a magpie’s croaking call on the grass nearby.
Over the next few days he walked further out of town. He found other ways of getting food. In Hands-worth, he discovered, there were people in the big houses who were rich enough to throw away food. There were the pig bins – usually full of a reeking mulch of leftovers – but in the misken at one house he found a cooked lamb chop and a lump of stale cake. He gnawed for ages at the chop bone. Later, over the side wall of another house, he saw that someone had left a basin of something to cool on the step by the back door. He couldn’t see what it was, only the steam rising. He had been walking the streets for three days now and the temptation of warm food possessed him so much he was trembling. Gritting his teeth, he climbed the wall, seized hold of the basin and tried to get back over with it, but it slipped from under his arm and as he leapt to the ground he heard it smash on the path behind. Heart hammering, he ducked down behind the wall. But no one came.
Slowly, still driven by desperation, he inched himself up, pulled up on his arms and looked down over the wall. Amid the smashed shell of the bowl lay soft lumps of egg custard. Saliva poured into his mouth. He had to have some! At that moment he didn’t care about anything else, would have risked everything for the comfort of that warm, sweet pudding sliding down his throat. In a second he had scrambled over and was scooping the stuff into him in handfuls, separating it from the bits of broken crock. He crammed in as much as his mouth would take, cheeks ballooning, swallowing convulsively.
He heard footsteps in the house and was on the wall in a second, hands smeared with custard.
‘Oi – get back ’ere, you little bugger! Look what you’ve gone and done!’
But he was over, running and running, the coat weighing him down. He ran until he was well away, gasping with exhaustion. He felt terrible. His innards heaved, splatting custard along the Hamstead Road.
That night he slept in Handsworth Park and it rained. He thought about sleeping on the bandstand, but it felt too exposed. Instead, he burrowed himself as far under some bushes as he could, near the churchyard at the side of the park, wrapping himself right up in the coat. In the night he was woken by something tugging at him. Then he was being dragged and he tried to put out his hands, but he was tangled in the coat. Suddenly he felt himself flipped over, banging his back on something sharp and the coat was yanked away from him.
‘Oi!’ He leapt up. ‘That’s mine!’
‘Not any more it ain’t,’ a gruff voice said. He barely even got a glimpse of the man as he ran off across the park.
‘Give it back!’ Joey wailed. ‘It’s mine! It’s my dad’s!’ In his mind it felt as if it was his father’s. He pushed back into his spot under the bushes and hugged his cold legs. Without the coat, he felt naked. It had been like a companion.
Hungering for the sight of something familiar, he wandered back towards Winson Green the next morning. The day brightened, but it took his damp clothes a long time to dry out. He went to Canal Street under the railway bridge, all his senses alert for meeting anyone he recognized. Near the school he could hear the shouts and screams of children playing. He couldn’t help it: he was drawn closer, just wanting to be near, to see. The school playground was lit up with sunshine at the far end. He stood at the corner in the shade, pressed against the railings, peering through. There was a group playing hopscotch. He saw Lucy Fernandez with her long dark hair, limping in the heavy caliper. And Ron – wasn’t that Ron? But then his attention was snatched away. Miss Purdy was on dinner duty! At the sight of her in her neat blue coat, with her pretty hair and pink ribbon, something seemed to expand inside him, right up to the back of his throat, an ache that made him swallow to try and make it go away. But then he saw her shade her eyes and he thought she was looking at him. She began to move towards him. He tore himself away, running fast along the street and round the corner.
The nights were the worst now. All he had to wear were his short trousers, his ragged vest, the grey jersey that Miss Purdy had given him and his boots and socks. In the daytime all he thought about was finding food and keeping out of trouble. He wandered from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, begging and stealing food from shops and houses, drinking stolen milk and water from water butts and taps. He went for several days without speaking to anyone, or them speaking to him. Sometimes he felt as if he was invisible.
At night he always found a park to sleep in. Once he slept in a shed at the bottom of a big garden, and was very glad he had as it rained hard that night. In the shed he found a soft old sheet, which was full of dust and made him sneeze. He rolled it up to take with him in the morning and found it was a dirty cream colour and encrusted with stains of deep green paint. It was not much against the night-time cold but he found it a comfort. In the daytime he slung it round his neck, as he had the coat.
By the time darkness fell he was usually exhausted from moving round all day and fending for himself. He wrapped himself round in the sheet and pushed himself under a bush where no one could see him. He had grown used to the rustlings of the night. One night, as he lay curled up in the sheet, he heard miaowing close by. He could sense the cat looking at him and he uncovered his head.
‘Here, puss,’ he whispered, reaching out his hand. His own voice felt strange to him. The cat allowed him to touch it and began to purr.
‘Come on – come in here with me.’
Curled up beside the warm, purring body he slept, comforted. Sometime before dawn the cat woke with a commotion and scrabbled about, frantic to be released from the sheet.
‘Don’t go!’ he heard himself say, but as he lifted his head the cat shot past him. He lay down, feeling how sore his throat was. His head ached and his neck felt stiff. He didn’t feel well all day and he didn’t move far. That night he slept in the same spot, hoping the cat would come back, but there was no sign of it. He lay on the hard ground, cheeks burning, yet his body was shaking and the cold seemed to bite right into him. He barely slept and when he did his dreams were frightening. When he woke in the morning he could hardly tell who he was, and it was later that day that he found himself waking on a doorstep, propped up next to two big green doors, with a greasy bag of broken biscuits in his hand.
He leaned his head against the rough bricks. His breathing was too quick, his body pulsing like a chick he once saw hatch from an egg in the brewhouse when his father kept hens. Everything about the baby bird had seemed too fast, as if it must burn itself out with living within minutes of being born. Joey’s vision blurred, then corrected itself. He could hear his pulse banging in his ears. It was a quiet street and only a couple of people passed, who gave him no more than a glance. Joey didn’t move. He sat still, his eyes half open.
A figure was approaching briskly along the street. Joey watched dully, then his eyes snapped open. That uniform! It was the School Board man, whistling as he came along the road! He’d come to get him, to take him away and lock him up behind the walls of the orphanage! Joey wanted to get up and run away, but his body wouldn’t obey. He managed to turn himself sideways and cringe back into the darkest corner of the doorway, pulling his knees up tightly to his chest and turning his face away. The whistling came closer. Joey pushed his head down against his knees, eyes squeezed shut. His kneecaps felt huge and hard. He held his breath. The whistling passed without a pause and he uncurled, trembling.
He couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping out again that night. He would have liked to go and find the shed from where he’d taken his sheet, but he didn’t have any idea where it was, or where he was now. By the time darkness was falling he found himself in a street of high houses with roofs like triangles and front gardens and gates. There were curtains and lights on inside – electric lights like the ones in school. He had eaten nothing all day except that one mouthful of biscuit and
his legs were shaky. A road intersected with the one along which he was walking, and at the end the last two houses were dark with no curtains in the windows.
Hardly knowing what he was doing, Joey pushed open the gate of the end house. The path was overgrown and plants brushed against his legs, scratching him. Joey wondered if anyone lived there. He went round to the back. There might be a shed down the garden. He was desperate to lie down anywhere under cover and rest his pounding head and shivering bones. Even the weight of the sheet he was carrying felt almost too much to bear.
The path took him round to the back door. To his surprise, when he went up close, he saw it was slightly ajar and he pushed his way in. It was dark and he noticed that the floor felt uneven underfoot. There was a sound like running water somewhere near him. If he could just lie down anywhere – he didn’t care now if someone lived there, if he got caught. He had to lie down, to sleep . . .
In the hall he felt his way along the wall and came to a doorway on his left. He fumbled for the handle and stumbled inside. Here – he’d sleep here. It was the last thing he would remember for some time after that: taking his sheet from round his neck and sinking onto it on the hard floor, as he pulled it round him. Later he remembered that, as he drifted quickly into unconsciousness, he heard the sound of someone snoring.
SUMMER TERM
1936
Sixteen
‘Donald Andrews? Joan Billings?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘Here, Miss!’
‘Ernie Davis?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
Gwen smiled at her class as she took the register. It was a bright spring morning and she felt full of energy and enthusiasm. The classroom looked colourful now, with all the Easter pictures they’d painted pinned up round the walls, and the sun was pouring in through the long windows. It occurred to Gwen just how much she liked being a teacher.
