And collided with Grace. Quickly he began striding ahead of her.
‘You didn’t go back for your handkerchief, did you?’ she asked, running alongside him. ‘It’s him, isn’t it? The man in the photograph?’
‘You mustn’t tell the others.’
‘Henry!’ she gasped. ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’
‘So he knows you’ve spotted him?’ said Uncle Bill.
It was later that night in the bedroom that Henry told him about the incident at the café. He decided not to mention that Grace was with him and that she now knew everything.
‘Yes.’
‘There must be some way round this,’ Uncle Bill whispered.
‘Shall I tell Mum?’
‘No, I don’t want her going downhill again. She’s started typing a new story for Mrs Beaumont and it’s like a tonic. She dreads coming home, though, and that’s sad.’
It was all so simple, thought Henry. All Uncle Bill had to do was to move out. His real father could then move in. After all, it must be terrible for him to know that another man was living in his house. Molly could then go and visit her father somewhere else, couldn’t she?
When Henry next woke, he discovered that the camp bed was empty. It was still pitch dark. He slipped out of bed and crossed the landing. Molly was fast asleep but there was no sign of his mother. He crept downstairs. Light was spilling out from under the kitchen door.
‘But what about the police?’ he heard his mother say.
‘There’s no point rushing into things. We must think about you and the baby first.’
‘Oh, Bill!’ and she gave a muffled cry. ‘I don’t want to have this baby in prison.’
4. Waiting and watching
UNCLE BILL TOOK MOLLY TO THE SEAFRONT IN THE MORNING SO that Henry’s mother could prepare the Sunday dinner without Molly getting under her feet. Henry noticed that she still wasn’t using the new pressure cooker.
‘I’m saving it for a special occasion,’ she stammered, and walked hurriedly into the scullery.
He did his best to avoid Gran. Even when he was in her room, he concentrated on tending the fire rather than looking her in the eye. She had a way of wheedling information out of him without him realising, and he couldn’t forget the conversation he had overheard on the stairs. He had to keep his mouth shut to protect his mother. He prayed that Grace was keeping her mouth shut too.
After dinner, Mrs Henson took Molly out, and his mother went upstairs to put her feet up. While Henry and his stepfather washed and dried the dishes, Henry brought up the subject of Gran.
‘Have you told her what the district nurse said about her helping Mum?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Has Mum?’
‘No.’
‘Why? There was a pause.
‘Best leave well alone.’
‘She’s not old, you know. Not very, anyway.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I worked it out. She’s younger than Mrs Beaumont.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You know?’ said Henry, surprised.
‘She’s happy in her room and well,’ he hesitated, ‘she might be a bit in the way. Two women in the kitchen and all that.’
Henry said nothing. Three women shared Mrs Beaumont’s kitchen and they got on all right. He was just being weak. And Henry couldn’t tell Gran to help. He wasn’t a grown-up. It was up to Uncle Bill.
It wasn’t until Wednesday that Henry returned with Jeffries and Pip to the second-hand bookshop. Pip asked the bookseller if he had any music scores while Henry made his way back to the stack of unsorted books to reread the details of So you want to be a camera operator in the schoolboy annual. He hadn’t been there long when the bookseller appeared with an anglepoise lamp and plugged it in. It was identical to the one his mother had given Uncle Bill at Christmas.
‘The husband of the woman who bought it sold it back to me,’ explained the bookseller and he switched it on.
Henry sat in the small pool of light, gaping at it. He knew Uncle Bill was mean, but to sell a present his mother had worked hard for and chosen for him, shook him. He bowed his head in an effort to conceal his rage.
‘I can’t find anything useful yet,’ said Jeffries, peering round a bookcase. ‘Cheer up!’ he said, taking in Henry’s face. ‘We can come back when we’ve got more time.’ And he began calling out for Pip.
‘No luck,’ said Jeffries. ‘I couldn’t find anything about films twenty years ago.’
‘Never mind,’ said Mrs Beaumont. ‘Plug in the electric fire up in your bedroom and you can look through my brother’s film magazines.’
They trooped up the stairs. When Henry stepped into Pip and Jeffries’ room, he was surprised to see the walls covered in photographs of film stars.
‘They’re from my Picture Goer’s Annuals,’ said Jeffries. ‘You rescued them, remember?’
Henry nodded. That day when he had stood guarding a wheelbarrow outside Jeffries’ old lodgings seemed a lifetime away. He stood in front of an actor in chain mail.
‘That’s Laurence Olivier addressing his soldiers in Henry V,’ said Jeffries. A bedraggled Humphrey Bogart was looking over the barrel of a rifle in Treasure of the Sierra Madre in another picture. ‘What do you think of this one?’ He pointed to a sepia photograph of a tanned Jean Simmons, her dark wavy hair brushed away from her face, leaning back with her eyes closed against the trunk of a palm tree, in a sarong. Underneath it said, Jean lazily enjoys the hot sun of the South Seas after a hard day’s location work on The Blue Lagoon. ‘Do you remember seeing her before?’
‘Ophelia in Hamlet,’ said Henry.
But the biggest surprise was two enormous film posters, the kind one would only see in a cinema foyer. The one above Pip’s bed was in black and red, DICK BARTON STRIKES BACK.
Pip stood beside it, beaming.
‘That’s the crowd fleeing from the sound rays,’ explained Pip, pointing at the rays spreading out from a picture of Blackpool Tower.
A woman was clasping her hands to her ears, her body bent backwards as though in agony. Above her were the words, THE BBC’S SENSATION! – LISTENED TO BY 10,000,000 NIGHTLY! At the bottom was a line of small pictures of the cast and dog.
‘The picture that puts showmanship back in show business!’ read Pip with a flourish. ‘You know the scary bit at the end of the film, well, Mr Hart told me that the chief projectionist told him and Stan, the second projectionist, to use full application of sound to blast the audience out of their seats! That’s why people screamed when they saw it.’
He pointed to the poster between the two windows, a vividly coloured one of The Adventures of Robin Hood.
‘Mr Hart asked one of his friends to get me that. He gives us all sorts of things. And sometimes he takes my mum to tea in the Plaza café.’
‘You should have seen the dress my mother made for her,’ said Jeffries. ‘She made it from old curtains.’
‘It looked like something out of a magazine,’ said Pip. ‘And Mrs Jeffries dyed a pair of Mrs Beaumont’s gloves to match the shoes we dyed.’
Jeffries laughed.
‘Your face,’ he choked, pointing at Henry.
‘You’re talking about fashion!’ Henry said.
‘When Mr Hart came here to collect her,’ continued Pip, undeterred, ‘he went all red. So did she.’
The bar on the heater began to glow. Henry moved closer to be near its warmth.
‘Let’s look in the cupboard,’ he said hurriedly.
Jeffries threw open the doors and Henry’s eye fell on the large magazines piled horizontally on the bottom shelf – the Picture Posts. As he looked up at the shelves with the novels on them he immediately spotted one called Caught by Henry Green. Instinctively he reached for it.
‘Why are you taking that book down?’ asked Pip.
‘Wasn’t that made into a film, with James Mason in it?’ said Jeffries.
And then Henry remembered. It wa
s the film he had told his mother about, the one that had upset her so badly, about a woman who was married to a bully.
He had a quick look inside but it seemed to be about a man who was a voluntary fireman in the war. He returned it to the shelf.
‘These look good,’ said Jeffries, spotting some smaller magazines.
He selected a handful and laid them out on his bed. As he opened them Henry could see pages of closely typed essays.
‘You know I think everyone will be bored if we do the same old presentation again,’ said Jeffries thoughtfully. ‘I think we ought to show a proper full-length film.’
‘And introduce it,’ said Henry.
‘Briefly,’ added Pip.
Henry and Jeffries glanced at each other and grinned.
‘Good idea,’ they chorused.
‘It’s got Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in it,’ said Jeffries over the newspaper.
‘What has?’ asked Pip.
‘Lost in a Harem.’
‘Oh, they’re really funny,’ said Grace. ‘They’re so silly.’
‘And Jimmy Dorsey and his Band is in it too. My mother loves them. And there’s a police film, The Blue Lamp, showing at the three Odeons. A bit more lively than Little Women, eh?’ he said, grinning at Henry.
Henry pretended to collapse with relief.
‘And it says James Cagney is RED HOT in White Heat at the Savoy. The unending battle of city streets,’ he added dramatically.
It was a good week, thought Henry. With any luck he wouldn’t have to spend much time at home at all.
On Saturday, Mrs Beaumont came with them to see The Blue Lamp. The film followed the day to day life of PC Dixon, a friendly London copper patrolling his beat. Henry was so absorbed in the film that he forgot all the trouble at home, until they came to a scene at the police station where PC Dixon noticed a tiny boy waiting in front of the desk, ‘Hello, son’, he said cheerily. ‘Come to give yerself up for bigamy?’
As the people in the auditorium laughed, Henry shrank into himself. Could his mother really go to prison? The policeman’s words haunted him throughout the film.
The following afternoon, Henry couldn’t get away from home fast enough. He, Pip and Jeffries ran to the Troxy to see a double bill of A films. Mrs Beaumont couldn’t come, so as soon as they reached the picture house they began looking for a likely person to take them in.
‘Shame on you!’ yelled a voice from behind.
Henry whirled round. It was Frank. He lifted his chin and began sniffing.
‘Something smells awful bad round ’ere.’
‘Come on,’ said Henry to his friends and moved to another part of the queue.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Jeffries.
‘He doesn’t like me.’ Suddenly he spotted someone he hadn’t seen for months and his spirits lifted. ‘Charlie!’ he yelled.
He ran up to him.
‘Hello, Henry,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Will you take us in?’
‘The three of you?’ He stared at Pip and Jeffries. Henry’s stomach tightened. After a brief silence Charlie gave a grin. ‘No skin off my nose,’ he said. ‘Hand yer money over.’
Once they entered the barn-like cinema, they separated. Balanced precariously on the broken seats in the front row they watched an action-packed The Rats of Tobruk and a gun-toting drama called The Man from Texas. It was just what Henry needed. As cowboys were flung off their horses and rolled in the dust and their enemies fired volley after volley of bullets from behind high rocks above narrow canyons, the tight feeling in his stomach disappeared along with his worries.
It was when they left the cinema that Henry spotted the man again. He was standing on the pavement opposite. Henry looked away quickly.
‘It’ll be good to see Daniel again when we go up to London at half-term, won’t it?’ he said, making conversation.
‘Yes. I wonder if he’ll have a film to show us,’ said Jeffries.
‘Don’t you wish you were coming, Pip?’
‘No. It’s the Chief’s day off and Mr Hart’s going to teach me how to lace a projector.’
They reached the Plaza.
‘See you tomorrow,’ said Henry, waving casually.
He watched them till they were halfway up the road before running back towards the Troxy.
The man was standing under a street lamp near the railway station, his head bowed, the shadow from his hat hiding half his face. As Henry stood on the kerb he glanced up at him. Again he showed no surprise. Henry’s chest felt tight. He tried to catch his breath and attempted to walk casually across the road. A car appeared from nowhere and hooted at him. He jumped backwards and watched it pass. He moved forward again, as if in a dream, his body seeming to be one step behind him. Once he reached the kerb on the other side, he ambled slowly up to the man, his hands clenched tightly in his pockets.
‘I’m Henry Dodge,’ he said. ‘Are you . . .?’ He hesitated, almost afraid to say the word. ‘Are you my dad?’
5. Meeting with a stranger
‘YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT.’
Henry was taken aback. He had always imagined that his father would sound posh and commanding, like John Mills in Scott of the Antarctic or one of the films where he was in charge of a submarine, saving hundreds of lives. Within seconds he realised that he had been stupid. He and his gran were Londoners. His father had only moved down south after he had married his mother.
They decided to talk on the railway bridge, where Henry thought they would be less likely to be spotted. For a while they stood side by side in silence, their elbows on the iron wall.
‘Where have you been?’ Henry asked, eventually.
‘That’s the problem,’ his father answered roughly. ‘I dunno. Only bits are coming back to me, see. I’ve had to go and visit doctors.’
‘You lost your memory?’
‘Yeah. But not the memory I thought I lost.’ He paused as if not knowing quite where to begin. ‘I wakes up in this hospital bed, see, and they tells me who I am, but it ain’t Alfred Dodge. They says, “You’re Walter Briggs.” I says, “I can’t be Walter Briggs or I’d remember,” and they says, “Well, what do you remember?” And I says, “Nothin’.” And they says, “Yer papers say you’re Walter Briggs so that’s who you are.” And they treats me for concussion and sends me packin’. Anyway, there’s this envelope with Walter’s address on it, in London. They tells me they think I’d come down on a day trip to the coast. So I goes up to London hoping someone in his street will recognise me, tell me the story of me life and that. But when I gets there, the street’s rubble. So I gets in touch with the Services to see if this Walter has been called up. And he was, but he failed the medical. Asthma.’
‘So you lost your memory but you still thought you were Walter Briggs?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So when did you think you were someone else?’
‘Last year. I’m a driver, see. Up to then I was workin’ between London and the Midlands. Then I gets this job pickin’ up lorries from the dockyard down ’ere and driving them to London. I travels down in the train. Sometimes it’s the other way round.
‘Anyway, I’m sitting in this train carriage and there’s this newspaper on the seat what someone’s left behind. So I picks it up and there’s this photo in it.’
‘End of last August?’
‘That’s right. And there’s this woman standin’ next to a man with a little girl. And it just hit me out the blue. That’s my Maureen. Just like that. Well it give me a bit of a turn, I can tell you.’
‘But didn’t you recognise the streets when you first came down?’
‘Not at first. The place has taken a bit of a poundin’, ain’t it? Lots of the streets I knows ain’t here any more. Once I recognised yer mum in the photo, other stuff began to come back. The door in the photo had a number on it so I knew where she lived. I didn’t even know if you or your gran were alive cos you weren’t in the photo. Then I thought, I can’t just turn up
out of the blue in case I give someone a heart attack, so I hung around for a bit, watchin’, whenever I come down on a job.’
‘And that’s when you saw me?’
‘Yeah. I thought, that boy could be me. And then I remembered being in the Army, so I contacted them and they sent me to see some medical bloke. He tells me I’m dead, that I’d been killed on leave while I was down ’ere.’
‘Private Jeffries said you saved his life.’
‘Who’s Private Jeffries?’
‘This other soldier. He wrote a letter to the Sternsea Evening News. He said you threw him aside and took the blast.’
‘Well, I never.’
‘We went to your funeral,’ Henry said quietly.
‘Well, it weren’t me you buried.’
‘It must have been the man who saved Private Jeffries’ life. Maybe he saved your life too.’
‘Mebbe he did.’
‘Private Jeffries didn’t turn up for the funeral, though. He went AWOL. You know, Absent Without Leave.’
‘Yeah, I do know what it means,’ said his father and he smiled.
‘Sorry. Anyway, his wife doesn’t believe it. She thinks he’s wandering around somewhere in a daze.’
‘Like what I was?’
Henry nodded.
They stared silently at the railway line.
‘Mum knows,’ said Henry quietly. ‘She recognised you from the photos I took.’
‘Yeah. I saw you snapping away. That’s some camera you got.’
‘It’s not mine.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s on loan.’
There was another silence.
‘I expect she was a bit shocked,’ said his father at last.
Henry nodded.
‘When I saw her in the newspaper and I saw she’d married again and had another nipper, I thought, this is a bit of a mess. I’ll have to tread carefully. A lot of people could get hurt.’
Just Henry Page 26
