Please Don't Make Me Go

by Fenton, John

  By the time I arrived at Ealing Broadway Station the snow had nearly stopped. An odd flake still fell from the sky and gusted around before settling on the ground. I went into the station shop and bought a large box of Black Magic chocolates, five packets of Players Weights cigarettes and a two-ounce tin of Golden Virginia tobacco. I handed the shopkeeper a one-pound note and the ten shilling note and he handed me back four two-shilling pieces and two pennies. I put the change into my pocket and made sure that the other three pound notes were still tucked safely under my handkerchief.

  The shopkeeper said cheerily, ‘Have a very happy Christmas.’ I nodded my head, picked up my purchases and hurried out to catch the 211 bus that would take me close to home.

  I was pleased to see a bus waiting at the stop. I climbed on and handed the conductor the two pennies the shopkeeper had given me. He gave me my ticket and a cheerful smile, saying, ‘Happy Christmas, sonny.’

  I nodded back at him and went and sat on the back seat of the bus. I rolled and lit a cigarette and stared sightlessly out of the window. I wanted to get home and away from all these people who seemed to have a permanent smile fixed on their faces.

  I walked slowly along the road towards my home. Fairy lights lit up the windows of several of the houses and I could see beautifully decorated Christmas trees in most front rooms. Somewhere close, but not in my road, I could hear a Salvation Army band playing Christmas carols and I started to hum along. I intended to go to Midnight Mass at St Benedict’s Church as I had promised Jesus in one of our chats that I’d speak to him again on Christmas Eve. I didn’t want to let him down as most of the time in Vincent’s he was the only one I could rely on a hundred per cent. Father Delaney had overheard one of my little chats to Jesus and ever since then he had insisted that after every Mass I had some time alone in the chapel. He said he felt very envious that I had such a close and personal relationship with the Son of God and that I must never stop speaking to him as he was always listening out for me. When I went to clean the vestry that evening I found two cigarettes on the floor.

  I gave the front doorbell two quick pushes. The hall light came on and I could see Mum through the frosted glass hurrying along the hallway. She opened the door and flung her arms around my neck.

  ‘It’s so wonderful to have you home,’ she said. ‘What time did you leave to get here?’ She planted a big kiss on my cheek and pulled me inside.

  She had made an effort to look nice and the flowered print dress she was wearing was immaculately clean and crease-free. She had applied some dark red lipstick and I could smell the cheap perfume she had liberally sprinkled over herself. Her hair was done in tight curls and I knew that she must have had curlers in her hair for hours and hours to get it to look so nice. I hugged her tightly.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ I said and saw the look of delight spread across her face. ‘I left at 2.30 this afternoon.’

  The front room door opened and my grandmother came out, smiling at me. I kissed her on the cheek. She was nearly deaf and only partially sighted and she squinted through her glasses to see me more clearly. Her voice seemed to crackle as she spoke.

  ‘You’ve grown. Look at him, Joan. Look how tall he’s got.’ Her feeble, gnarled hands squeezed the tops of my arms. ‘Feel how big he’s got, Joan. He’s nearly a man. Feel him, Joan. Feel him.’

  I self-consciously broke free from her and smiled at Mum. She was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘She’s right, darling, you have grown. You must have sprung up at least two inches since the last time I saw you. You’re quite the young man.’

  ‘I’m not even fifteen, Mum. I’m just a kid.’ I handed her the paper bag with the chocolates and cigarettes inside. ‘I’m sorry they’re not wrapped but I’ve only just bought them.’

  She looked inside the bag and started to cry. I couldn’t understand why she would start crying at receiving some chocolates and cigarettes for Christmas and I silently wished I’d never bought them. She reached out and hugged me tightly and I could feel the dampness of her tears on the side of my neck.

  ‘You’re such a good boy,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t deserve your presents.’

  ‘You’re my mum,’ I said. ‘You deserve everything in the whole wide world.’ I gently pushed her away from me. ‘Where is everybody?’

  Mum pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes. ‘Liz is living in Kensington with a very nice young man.’

  Elizabeth, my oldest sister, was five and a half years my senior. We had barely spoken when I lived at home as there was too big an age gap.

  ‘Jean has gone to see her boyfriend and should be back later tonight.’

  Jean was eighteen months older than me. We were much closer and got on well. I smiled at the thought of her having a boyfriend. ‘Jennifer is in the kitchen watching television with your father.’ Jennifer was six and a half years younger than me.

  ‘Television. Did you say television?’ My eyes opened wide in astonishment. Only rich people had a television. ‘When did you get it? You never mentioned it in any of your letters.’

  ‘Don’t get excited, John. I didn’t get it.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘Your father got it a couple of days ago. He has put it in the kitchen so he can watch it in there. He said there’s no reason for you to go into the kitchen as you’re not allowed to watch it and he doesn’t want to see you.’

  I nodded, unconcerned. I didn’t care if I never saw him again for the rest of my life; I hated him and wished he was dead. It would have been nice to watch some of the shows on television, but nowhere near as nice as not having to put up with that nasty bastard. I smiled at my mother. ‘So where do we get to spend our time this Christmas? In with Gran or in the back living room?’

  ‘I’ve lit a nice big fire in the back room and Jennifer has hung up some decorations.’ She guided me down there. ‘I’ve also moved the radio into the room so that we can listen to all our favourite programmes. It will be really nice and cosy.’ She squeezed me tightly around the shoulders. ‘I know how you love reading. You can read to your heart’s content in there and no one will disturb you.’

  ‘I’m going to Midnight Mass tonight, Mum. Would you like to come with me?’ I asked hopefully. ‘I’d really like you to.’

  She lowered her head and shook it slowly. ‘You’re asking the impossible. I will never set foot in a Catholic church again. Did you know that Father Gregory from St Benedict’s had the cheek to come around to this house and tell me that your father had done the right thing putting you in that school? He believed everything your father told him. He said I was failing as a wife and a mother in not supporting what he had done.’ She looked up at me and the hatred she was feeling, thinking of the incident, blazed out of her eyes. ‘I told him exactly what I thought of him, his church, his pious hypocrisy and the entire Irish race. I couldn’t go to church now, not even for you. I just couldn’t.’

  My heart was bursting with pride. It was the first I had heard about the parish priest coming to the house and the thought of my mother giving him a piece of her mind because of me made me immensely proud of her. I gave her a huge hug. I had tears in my eyes and held her close to me until they had disappeared. I asked quietly, ‘Do you mind if I go?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ She stepped back. ‘I would never stop you going to church. Every person must worship God in the way they are happy with. I don’t feel I need a church to speak to God. He knows what is in my heart and what sins I have committed. I don’t need a priest as a middle man. Especially an Irish one. You go to church and I’ll wait up for you.’

  When I arrived home from church at ten minutes past one in the morning she was waiting in the back room with a freshly made pot of tea and a plate of mince pies.

  * * *

  Mum woke me on Christmas morning by gently tapping me on the shoulder and kissing me on my forehead. I had slept on the couch in the back room, covered with a thin blanket and two large coats and with my head resting on a large feather pillow that Gr
an had lent me. Much to my surprise the fire was already blazing and the room neat and tidy. I hadn’t heard a thing as I was unaccustomed to late nights and had been extremely tired. I heaved my legs over the side of the couch and sat staring into the burning coals.

  Mum sat down on the edge of one of the easy chairs and puffed slowly on a cigarette. The smoke drifted past my nostrils and I held out my hand, looking hopefully in my mother’s direction. She took another cigarette from her packet, lit it and handed it to me. I slowly sucked in a mouthful of smoke and savoured the great feeling of inhaling it into my smoke-hungry lungs. We sat in complete silence, both of us lost in our own personal reverie and neither wanting to break the spell.

  The moment was shattered by Jennifer bursting in. She handed me a small packet wrapped neatly in Christmas paper.

  ‘Happy Christmas, John,’ she said and looked at Mum to see if she had done and said everything as they had rehearsed. Mum smiled and nodded her approval.

  ‘Happy Christmas to you, Jennifer.’ I pulled off the wrapping paper to reveal a packet of twenty Senior Service cigarettes.

  ‘I really wanted some cigarettes and these are my favourites.’ I had said the right thing. Jennifer looked really pleased.

  From down the side of her chair, Mum produced a larger, bulkier package wrapped in the same coloured paper that Jennifer had used. She reached across and handed it to me. ‘Happy Christmas, darling.’

  I opened it carefully, removing the paper and folding it neatly on the side of the couch. I looked down at the two books resting on my lap: Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier. I knew nothing about either book but I trusted my mother’s judgement and was feeling a little choked up.

  ‘Thank you, Mum,’ I said. ‘How do you always know what I want?’

  During the remainder of my Christmas holiday I lost myself in Kidnapped, totally excluding everything else and virtually living the experiences I was reading about. Alan Breck Stewart and David Balfour became real people to me, just like the shipwreck off the island of Mull and their escape across the wild landscape of the Highlands. With the help of Gran’s encyclopaedias, I found out about Culloden and the Jacobites and even read a brief account of James III of England and the Hanoverian King George II. Mum laughed when I had difficulty understanding some of the Scottish dialect, telling me she doubted that any person apart from a Scot would understand it.

  All too soon David Balfour retrieved his inheritance, the House of Shaws, from Ebenezer Balfour and the story reached its conclusion. So had my holiday. It was time for me to return to Vincent’s. It was the best Christmas I had ever had. I had had no contact with my father.

  Chapter 14

  1959

  The Kent landscape was frozen whiteness and the grass crunched under our feet as we trotted out of the dressing room and onto the playing field for a practice match. The match only lasted for about four minutes as the ground was too hard and pitted to run on. The dressing room was freezing cold as we struggled out of our kit and back into our school clothes. Bernie scratched a match along the wall and puffed a roll-up into life. Other squad members watched us enviously as we smoked the cigarette down until only the smallest butt remained. The temptation was too much for several team members and, throwing caution to the wind, they lit a couple of roll-ups and shared them in two of the cubicles. Nobody had the sense to keep an eye out for any of the masters or Brothers until disaster appeared at the door in the form of Brother Arnold.

  He walked slowly into the dressing room, his mouth twisted into a sneer, and sniffed loudly as he tried to locate the source of the cigarette smoke. Stephen Wright, the First Eleven centre forward, started walking towards the cubicles and Arnold pulled him savagely back by his hair and hit him hard with the flat of his hand across his cheek and mouth. The sound of the hit must have alerted the smokers as we heard a toilet flushing. Arnold ran around the corner to the cubicles and was just in time to catch three boys coming out of one.

  ‘You little bastards,’ he screamed, ‘do you take me for an idiot?’

  He grabbed the nearest boy and used him as a battering ram against the other two as he pushed and hit them into a corner. He then turned his attention to the only cubicle with a closed door. He broke the lock with one kick and the door flew open with a crash. Two boys were crouching against the far wall. He dragged them both out by their hair and shoved them into the corner with the other three boys then set about them with a brutal frontal assault, slapping and pummelling them until they lay sprawled in an untidy heap. One of the boys had a bad nose bleed and his blood was spattered over the wall and floor. Arnold stood over them, gasping for breath, his face twitching with anger, watching for any reason to resume the attack. Satisfied that he was an unopposed victor, he turned on his heel and strutted arrogantly out of the room.

  One of the boys staggered to a basin and rinsed his face. He patted it dry with a towel and peered out of the window at Arnold, who was walking round the perimeter of the pitch. He rummaged in his kit, produced another roll-up and lit it. It was like a signal for the entire team. In less than a minute there were eight roll-ups burning and we all puffed on them in an unrehearsed act of hidden defiance. We waited until Arnold was about twenty yards from returning to the dressing room to escort us back to school before we all jogged out. As Arnold entered the dressing room we cheered and ran as fast as we could into the yard and out of his sight. I wished I could have seen his face as he found the eight roll-ups still burning on the windowsill. Every member of the squad lost ten points for smoking that day but we all felt it was worth it.

  January disappeared with the memory of freezing fog and abandoned football matches. Tom Banks kept the squad fit by making us do circuit training in the recreation room for an hour every evening. We enjoyed the training with Tom as he always left us alone in the showers at the end of each session. This, of course, meant that we got a peaceful cigarette before we went to bed.

  Shortly after my fifteenth birthday, in April 1959, Jimmy Wilkinson was released on licence. I was absolutely devastated. Wilkinson had done two years and one month of his three-year sentence and had somehow fooled the licensing committee into releasing him early. It was quite common for boys to be released on licence and I was always a bit jealous when they came into the yard on their last morning and said goodbye to their friends. But Wilkinson’s release was a travesty of justice and ruined all my plans for getting revenge on him.

  Stealing his cash had just been a bonus: it had been pure luck that I had discovered his hiding place. My intention had always been to do physical damage to him; I had dreamed of that day and knew that once I had mastered catching the high boot, I stood a good chance of exacting revenge. Now that dream was shattered.

  He swaggered into the yard on his last morning and revelled in the attention shown to him by mates. I watched him leave the yard with a terrible feeling of being cheated. Bernie just said, ‘Thank fuck he’s gone. Maybe we’ll get a little peace now.’

  I said moodily, ‘My only wish is that he dies screaming.’

  Bernie said, ‘So do I, but I think it goes deeper with you. You’ve been obsessed with him for over a year. I know you were practising catching the high boot with Wilkinson in mind. I never said anything to change your mind but, if you’d ever fought him, he’d have fucked you up good.’

  ‘Well, he’s gone now and we’ll never know, will we? But I was looking forward to finding out one day.’

  Bernie stared at me. ‘You did a good job on Love but he wasn’t in the same class as Wilkinson and his mates. And don’t forget the caning you got for fighting.’ He spat on the floor. ‘It’s really not worth it.’

  ‘It is to me,’ I said. ‘Every time somebody hits me it makes me more determined to become a better fighter. I’m fed up of being bullied and having to sip my tea carefully because my lips are cut and sore. Believe me, my days of being bullied are coming to an end.’ I heard my Mum’s words ringing in my ears: ‘The
only real way of dealing with a bully is by bullying him.’ I was convinced she was right and that’s what I had to do. Bernie never agreed with me, though.

  ‘You’ll end up being caned again,’ he said. ‘I saw your arse. It was black and blue and had a couple of nasty cuts on it as well. Don’t be stupid and have it happen all over again.’

  ‘How many times has Love had a go at us since that fight? How many fucking times?’

  Bernie shrugged his shoulders. ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘The answer is none. Not even once.’ I smiled with pride. ‘Which proves my point that you have to fight back to win. If Love ever tries to hit either of us again I’ll beat the shit out of him. He knows that and that is why he hasn’t come near us.’

  ‘There are a lot of better fighters than Love in this school,’ Bernie laughed. ‘Or have you turned into Superman and can now beat anything and everyone?’

  ‘I never said I thought I could beat everyone. I said it pays to fight back.’ I pulled a partially smoked roll-up from out of my sock and handed it to him. ‘I know I could get hurt in a fight and I know that the cane hurts but—’ I took the lit roll-up from Bernie and sucked on it hungrily before handing it back ‘—I think it’s better than having every arsehole in the school carrying on smacking us in the mouth just for fun. Did I tell you that last night Riley, the prick, had me standing by the side of my bed for over an hour?’ He was a big lad in our dorm, and just did it to wield his power – no other reason. ‘I stood there because I wasn’t prepared to fight back and tell him to fuck off. Well, tonight I’m going to tell him to fuck off and stay in bed, and when he gets out of his bed to thump me, we’re going to end up fighting.’

  ‘You’re not the only one being pushed around. Look at Peterson, the new kid. ‘He’s already got a fat lip and a black eye. All he did was sit down on the same bench as Cuddy.’ Bernie pulled down his right sock and pointed at a large scab and a purple swelling on his shin. ‘I’ve still got a bruise on my leg from being kicked by that cunt and I’d love to kick the shit out of him, but I know that I can’t. You have to be sensible and just try to stay out of the way of the arseholes.’