Just Henry

by Michelle Magorian

  Just HENRY

  MICHELLE MAGORIAN

  Copyright

  Just Henry

  Text copyright © 2008 Michelle Magorian

  Cover copyright © 2008 Nick Keevil

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Egmont UK Ltd

  239 Kensington High Street

  London

  W8 6SA

  Visit our web site at www.egmont.co.uk

  First e-book edition 2010

  ISBN 978 1 4052 4932 4

  Dedicated to my agent Pat White, and to Cally Poplak, with thanks.

  In memory of Miriam Hodgson and Brian Finch.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE - Ringing in the New

  1. Unwelcome news

  2. Escape

  3. Mr Finch & The Third Man

  4. The presentations

  5. Mrs Beaumont and the mystery girl

  6. The audition

  7. Winding on

  8. A sudden change

  9. Another country

  10. Unexpected friends

  11. And then there were four

  12. Homeless

  13. Liza

  14. In the dark

  15. Alarming developments

  16. Presentation time

  PART TWO - Caught

  1. The informer

  2. The Morgans are rescued

  3. Grace

  4. Present hunting

  5. Christmas

  6. Spilling the beans

  7. Selecting the worthy

  8. The stranger is identified

  PART THREE - Dodge

  1. In shock

  2. Becoming an outcast

  3. First contact

  4. Waiting and watching

  5. Meeting with a stranger

  6. London and a dream in sight

  7. A few home truths

  8. Undercover work

  9. Breaking it to Mum

  10. The 39 Steps and blackmail

  11. Surprises among the china

  12. A lucky escape

  13. Out in the open

  14. Goodbye Gran

  PART FOUR - Looking for the Diamond

  1. A new life

  2. Digging up the truth

  3. Shedding an old skin

  4. First date

  5. Ted and Percy

  6. Molly

  7. Facing the consequences

  8. The final reel

  Postscript: London

  Author Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  Ringing in the New

  1. Unwelcome news

  ‘WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET!’

  But the pleas from the usherette were having little effect on the handful of small children who were straddling the backs of the cinema seats and riding them as though they were horses.

  Behind them, Henry swayed from left to right in an attempt to see the screen. Above his head, a lone collie was leaping through the flames of a burning orphanage in search of a missing boy who was in bed in the attic. The film music rose to a crescendo, as did the volume of noise from the auditorium. Finally, the wonder dog managed the impossible and the little boy was saved. This was greeted with a roar of approval from a thousand voices in the upper circle and stalls. As soon as the credits began to roll there was the crashing of upturned seats followed by a stampede up the aisles.

  The introductory drum roll of God Save the King stopped the ones who hadn’t made it through the exit doors and they froze to attention like everyone else. As Henry stood, towering above the noisy group in front of him, he thought yet again that he really was too old for the Saturday Morning Pictures. He had had no intention of going that morning but when the official-looking envelope addressed to his stepfather had plopped through the door he couldn’t bear to stay in the house any longer. His mother had looked as if she was about to faint when she spotted it on the mat. He had been tempted to tear it open so that she could find out how stuck-up and stupid his stepfather was there and then, but had stormed out of the house instead.

  Once the National Anthem was over he sat down again and gazed up at the screen tabs. Whenever the lights hit the auditorium after the Saturday morning show he was always surprised by the shabbiness of the curtains. In the dark, when red, green and blue lights whirled in circles on them, their age disappeared and it was like being in Hollywood.

  Suddenly he was aware of an usherette, peering down at him from the aisle, in her smart brown and gold uniform.

  ‘Hoping to lie low till the main programme?’ she enquired. ‘Come on, ducks.’

  He moved his bare feet along the red carpet and recovered his damp plimsolls with his toes. It was so hot in the cinema that once the lights had dimmed he had kicked them off, as did nearly everyone else he judged, as the smell of hundreds of unwashed feet and hot sweaty rubber had hit the darkened auditorium. He slipped them on and loped towards the exit doors, narrowly missing being sprayed with disinfectant by one of the cleaners. As he stepped into the palatial foyer, hordes of children were still running down the wide carpeted stairway and joining the flood of children pushing their way from the stalls. He stepped to one side and knelt down to tie his laces, sweating profusely, his shirt and baggy shorts clinging to him. It was as stifling in the expansive entrance as it had been in the auditorium. A few yards away, by the Cinema Club table, he observed a smartly dressed man taking down notices advertising the benefits of belonging to the club – cycling groups and handicraft lessons. He was the choirmaster. A girl with long black plaits was hovering beside him.

  ‘And then there’s the Carol Competition in December,’ the man was saying over his shoulder.

  ‘And I can belong to the choir?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘As long as you’re not tone deaf.’ And he gave a laugh.

  She was very well spoken, thought Henry. He had never heard anyone at Saturday Morning Pictures sounding so lah di dah. He observed the way she stood bolt upright in her blouse and skirt as though her body had never known what the word slouch meant.

  ‘You enjoy singing then?’ asked the man.

  ‘I love singing.’

  Henry turned quickly before he was spotted and wandered over to read the ‘Coming Attractions’.

  HE’S A FAMILY MAN!

  He poisons Uncle Henry . . . drowns Cousin Ascoyne

  blows up Uncle Rufus . . . pierces Aunt Agatha

  shoots Uncle Ethelred . . . explodes Cousin Henry

  Ealing Studios present

  DENNIS PRICE. VALERIE HOBSON

  JOAN GREENWOOD. ALEC GUINNESS

  in a hilarious study in the gentle art of murder

  KIND HEARTS and CORONETS

  A BRITISH PICTURE

  ‘Blast!’ he muttered. It was an A film. That meant he would have to find an adult in the queue willing to take him in.

  When he turned, the girl had disappeared. The choirmaster who was clearing the table caught his eye.

  ‘I didn’t notice your name among those auditioning for the choir,’ he commented. ‘You must be about thirteen now?’

  ‘Fourteen, sir. It’s my voice, see. It goes a bit up and down now.’

  ‘Ah. Well why not come along to the auditions and we’ll see how you do. I’m sure we can squeeze you in again if you’re up to the mark.’

  Henry hesitated. He hated performing in public but Gran had told him what a wonderful singer his father had been and it made her feel good knowing he was carrying on the family tradition. Henry
had let her think there wasn’t a choir any more but she was bound to find out about the competition.

  ‘I’ll think about it, sir.’

  ‘Good lad.’

  He was about to leave when he spotted the girl again. It was difficult not to. She was the only still figure in the centre of the foyer. Oblivious to the children jostling around her, she stood with her head thrown back. Someone else was also observing her from the foot of the stairway. It was Pip, the smallest boy in his form, almost the smallest in the school. People said he ought to be a jockey and had nicknamed him Pipsqueak. Then it was shortened to Pip and it stuck.

  A small, tired-looking woman wearing a faded floral wrap-around overall was dragging an industrial vacuum cleaner towards him. Pip smiled at her. Henry guessed she must be his mother. He looked away out of habit. Pip was nice enough but, as everyone knew, you ignored people like Pip.

  The foyer was almost empty now. He glanced back to where he had seen the girl but she had gone. He strolled over to where she had stood and looked up. Heavy dark beams criss-crossed the colossal arched ceilings like something out of a film about the Tudors. It was strange that in all the years he had been coming to the Plaza he had never looked upwards.

  ‘Come on, sonny.’

  The commissionaire, a tall imposing man, was waiting patiently for Henry to leave. He was pulling on a large black coat with gold braid and buttons and his smart cap. Henry dawdled past the two box office windows and the chocolate girl. She had just finished wrapping a white overall around her waist and was hanging a tray of chocolates round her neck. Glancing at her, he tried to think of yet another excuse to stay so that he could avoid going home, but one look at the commissionaire’s raised eyebrows and he quickly pushed open the nearest foyer door. Out on the stone steps, the August heat nearly knocked him sideways. Two queues for the matinee had already formed on the pavement and were beginning to trail down Victoria Road. It often struck Henry as strange how two roads that joined each other could be so different. Victoria Road had been untouched by the bombing but all that remained in Henry’s street were nine small houses clustered in front of a bombsite. A fence had been put up in front of it after the war to prevent children playing in the rubble but it had been broken for years and everyone used it as a shortcut to Hatton Road and the railway station.

  He was hopping down the steps when he spotted a familiar figure in khaki having a smoke.

  ‘Charlie!’ he yelled.

  The nineteen-year-old turned and gave him a wave. Henry gaped at him in astonishment, for Charlie’s luxuriant mop of ginger curls had been shorn off. All that remained was a carrot-coloured blur on his scalp. Charlie sprang to his feet, put on his black beret and slowly turned round in his Army uniform, as if in a fashion parade. Henry took in the huge polished black boots, gaiters and white blanco’d belt.

  ‘Smart, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. They didn’t leave much hair on your head, did they? What’s it like?’

  ‘It’ll get better now I’ve finished Basic Training.’

  ‘That bad, eh?’

  ‘I survived.’ He shook his head and gave a short laugh. ‘I dunno. One minute Dad says doing National Service will make a man out of me. The next minute he says don’t volunteer for anything.’ He took out a packet of Woodbines from his pocket. ‘I expect you’ll get on better than me when it’s your turn, your dad being a hero and all that.’

  ‘That was nine years ago.’

  ‘Makes no difference. He sacrificed his life for another man.’

  He pushed the packet of cigarettes in Henry’s direction. Henry shook his head.

  ‘Still think it’s like burning money?’

  ‘Burning cinema tickets,’ said Henry.

  ‘So what was it like?’ asked Charlie, indicating the cinema. ‘They still have the sing-song with the Wurlitzer organ?’

  ‘Yeah and the short films and the news and the cartoons and the serial and a bell-ringing concert on stage. I had five Hopalong Cassidys in front of me as well.’

  ‘Why d’you still go?’

  ‘It’s cheap and sometimes they have a good film.’

  ‘Roy Rogers?’

  They grinned at one another. Henry couldn’t stand Roy Rogers, a singing cowboy who was always immaculately dressed even at the end of a gun battle.

  ‘That too. But last week they had a film with Errol Flynn in it, Sea Hawk. It was good.’

  ‘I dunno how you can stand the racket.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Henry, smiling.

  ‘So, have you found someone else in the street to take you into the A films?’

  He shook his head. He had missed Charlie’s company in the queues. Charlie didn’t mind him talking about the films. But he wasn’t going to tell him that. He’d sound soft.

  ‘When d’you get back?’

  ‘Late last night. I got a seventy-two.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Seventy-two hours’ leave. So far, most of it’s been used up, gettin’ ’ere. So,’ he added, dragging on his cigarette, ‘where you off to?’

  ‘Home,’ said Henry quietly.

  ‘You don’t sound too cheerful about it.’

  They stared across the bombed landscape towards Hatton Railway Station, where his stepfather worked. A ring of smoke rose above Charlie’s head.

  ‘When do you have to go back?’ Henry asked, changing the subject. He didn’t let anyone know about the rows at home, not even Charlie.

  ‘Tomorrow. I’ll either get the coach from London just after midnight or get the one-thirty milk train.’

  ‘Not long then?’

  ‘Nah. Got to make the most of what I got left.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Henry quietly.

  ‘Good to see you, mate.’

  Henry took that as his cue to go. He gave a casual nod, turned the corner into his street past Number 2 and headed for the broken fence. For a while he burrowed around in the long stretch of rubble for broken floorboards or scraps of material his mother could wash and use for making swathes of patchwork material, but his heart wasn’t in it. He knew he was just filling in time to avoid walking into Number 6.

  He crossed back over the road past half a dozen girls playing hopscotch and glanced through the front window. His gran was sitting, flopped back in her armchair, fanning herself with a magazine. As he opened the front door a screeching sound erupted from the kitchen followed by high-pitched laughter. He pressed his hands to his ears. How his mother could put up with it for a day let alone weeks mystified him. The kitchen door had been flung open and he caught sight of his half-sister running in circles at top speed round the kitchen table, shrieking her head off, her blonde curls bobbing up and down. He wondered how so much sound could emerge from someone so small.

  His mother was closing the range door. She looked over her shoulder, her face flushed with the heat.

  ‘She just needs to get out,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ he protested.

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ she said, ‘your face! You look like you’ve walked into a horror film.’

  He wanted to talk to her about going to see Kind Hearts and Coronets but it was impossible to think straight with Molly making such a racket. He wished he could be alone with his mum, like they used to be before Molly was born. He glanced up at the shelves on the wall opposite the range, crammed with books. Sticking out between a Latin primer and a geometry textbook on the top shelf was the unopened envelope. His mother turned hurriedly away.

  ‘Auntie cross!’ yelled Molly from her highchair and she pointed her spoon at Henry’s gran and banged it on the tray.

  ‘She needs a good slap, that girl,’ snapped Gran, who sat slumped opposite her, scowling.

  ‘It’s just high spirits!’ said Henry’s mother nervously. ‘You keep forgetting. She’s only two.’

  ‘Too noisy. Too messy. Too spoilt for her own good.’

  Henry’s mother gave a laugh.

  ‘Now, Mrs Dodge
, you don’t mean that, do you?’

  ‘Don’t I just?’ she muttered.

  ‘Now, let’s enjoy the meal, shall we?’ said his mother brightly. The atmosphere in the room was so tense that Henry thought his backbone would snap. Only Molly seemed not to notice the tension in the room. As soon as his mother had begun stacking the dirty dishes and had placed a pan of potatoes on the range ready for when his stepfather returned home from the morning shift, his grandmother shuffled back to the front room.

  It was at about half past two when the door in the yard opened and Henry spotted a tall gangly figure in blue overalls and a black cap through the back window. His mother visibly jumped. Molly froze for an instant and then started jumping up and down, shouting, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

  No sooner had he opened the scullery door into the kitchen than she flung herself at him. Within seconds she was in his arms. Struggling, he managed to put his tea can on the table.

  ‘Hello, love,’ he said, turning to Henry’s mother and kissing her on the cheek.

  This display of affection still embarrassed Henry, even though his mother and Uncle Bill had been married for three years.

  ‘Had a good day?’ she asked automatically.

  ‘Yes. I was on a steam engine. They needed extra trains for the holidaymakers so they had to use them as well as the electric ones.’ He stopped and stared at her. ‘It’s come, hasn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  Now he’ll get his come-uppance, Henry thought.

  ‘And you haven’t opened it?’ he asked, struggling with Molly, who was bouncing energetically in his arms.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shall I take Molly into the yard?’ Henry heard himself say.

  ‘Molly not go!’ she screamed. ‘Molly STAY!’

  His mother glanced at the wall, which divided his gran’s room from the kitchen.

  ‘Molly, you don’t want Auntie coming in here and telling you off again, do you?’

  ‘And watching Uncle Bill open the envelope,’ murmured Henry, under his breath.