‘But he must be in some sort of trouble, Sally. You saw how ill he looked.’
‘Then he should have trusted me. If things went wrong he should have told me. I’d have helped, whatever trouble he was in, but now it’s too late. You can see that, can’t you?’
Sadly Valmai nodded. She went home feeling distressed and angry. By the time she opened her back gate, anger was the strongest emotion and she was prepared to remind Gwilym how he too had let her down. Voices in the shed halted her and she listened as Gwilym and Jimmy were discussing an imaginary game of cricket. She peeped in and saw the game in progress was on paper.
Gwilym put down the pencil he was using to describe various field positions and with a ball in his hand began demonstrating bowling techniques to a very interested Jimmy, who held another ball and followed Gwilym’s guide. Valmai went quietly into the house, anger dissipated, and allowed a few minutes to pass before calling to tell Gwilym she was home. Jimmy shared their meal. As usual, he was unwilling to go home.
On Monday, her last day, she once more set off for Bristol. The council offices were open and helpful staff tried to find her son, but eventually Valmai accepted that the lead that had excited her was taking her nowhere. She spent the day wandering around, trying various firms who might just employ him ‘on the roads’ but at five o’clock, weary and disheartened she caught the train back home. Time to give up, she decided. Rhys knew where to find them and they’d have to wait until he was ready to explain. Better to keep her job and concentrate on helping Sally and Sadie.
She was calm when she reached home and Gwilym was waiting for her, with the table set and soup simmering on the cooker.
‘No luck, love?’ he asked, stretching up to kiss her.
‘We won’t find him until he’s ready to be found.’
‘I’m sorry. I should be doing the running around, not you.’
She glared at him in rare anger. ‘Yes, Gwilym. You should.’
The long-awaited Sunday lunch with Amy and Rick was finally arranged in late November. As expected Gwilym and Valmai had declined the invitation so it was a small party. Amy’s mother was the only other guest and when Sally walked in with Sadie, she politely reminded Sally that everything was expensive and new, and the child would have to be watched so no damage was done.
‘Her name is Sadie,’ Sally said equally politely.
‘And she’s very welcome,’ Amy added, guiding Sally away from her mother into the dining room, where a fire burned and Christmas decorations added to the feeling of excitement. A tree stood in one corner and beneath it brightly packed parcels were stacked amid tinsel and tangled strips of green and red crepe paper. Sadie clung to her mother and stared around her with starry eyes.
‘I know it’s early, but as it’s our first Christmas in our first home, I want it to last as long as possible.’
Despite a few complaints from Dorothy, the occasion went well and it was three o’clock before Sally left. She and Amy shared amused glances as Dorothy brushed imaginary crumbs from the armchairs and tut-tutted about the plates left piled up ready for washing.
Rick walked with them as far as the gate. ‘Thanks for coming, Sally. Amy and I enjoyed it very much.’
‘You had a few doubts once, didn’t you?’ Sally whispered. ‘But now, anyone can see that you are happy. I’m so glad. Amy is a great person and I’m pleased to have her as a friend.’
‘Once we accepted that we were both on the same side regarding her mother’s interference, the doubts were gone. We’re repainting the bathroom pale blue as we both wanted, losing the dull grey she insisted on. The kitchen will soon be white and yellow, not green. The garden is not what I’d hoped for but it’s fine. In the summer it will be a pleasant place to sit, and I can still grow the vegetables I want. Eric, clever man, suggested an allotment. So yes, everything is perfect.’
Sally still needed to do something permanent about childcare. Sadie was three and it would be some time before she was at school. A live-in nanny would be perfect but paying for one wouldn’t leave her much spare money.
‘You don’t need a nanny for twenty-four hours, just the time between nursery ending and either you or me getting home,’ Valmai said, and persuaded Sally to agree.
‘Thank you. I’m so grateful to you both.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Gwilym said, looking down at the blanket that covered his legs. ‘I wish I had.’
‘Not too late!’ Valmai retorted. ‘When are you going to start helping young Jimmy? He needs help if he’s ever going to succeed at cricket and you’re the only one capable of helping the poor boy.’
‘It’s nearly Christmas. Hardly the weather for cricket!’
‘Football then! He only needs a few tips and lots of encouragement. Come on, you know what he has to put up with. It would make such a difference to him, you know that.’
The words were harshly spoken, but Sally knew Valmai wasn’t angry – she was trying to shame him into helping himself.
‘I’ll come to the field with you, whenever you want to go,’ she told him. ‘The one near the old mill, it’s quiet there, and one of Sadie’s favourite places. She and I would love to go with you.’
‘You mean out of sight, where I won’t be a sideshow,’ he muttered.
‘Oh, you’ll be a bit of a curiosity for a while,’ Sally agreed, ‘but only until people are used to seeing you about again. It’s been a long time and people are bound to come up and talk about your situation, but in a kindly way. Get that over with and you’ll wonder why you didn’t try before.’
‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Come the spring maybe.’
Sally smiled. ‘In the spring.’
When she set off for home a little later that evening, Sally heard crying. She went back into the house and said, ‘Someone’s crying and it sounds like Jimmy.’
Valmai went up and found Jimmy sitting on his back doorway. He looked up and in the slanting light from the kitchen she saw that his face was dirt-streaked and swollen with crying. She went to him and put an arm around him. Sitting beside him, she talked and coaxed him to go with her to where Gwilym was waiting anxiously.
Waving for Sally to go home, blowing a kiss to Sadie, she led the still sobbing boy into the house. He was very cold, wearing only a shirt and some ancient pyjama trousers that were too small. His feet were bare.
‘Mam’s out and I can’t find my pyjamas,’ he sobbed. Gathering him into a blanket, Valmai cuddled him, while Gwilym wheeled himself into the kitchen to put milk in a pan to make a hot drink. Half an hour later, Jimmy had been fed, comforted and was fast asleep, warmed by the cosy blanket, the roaring fire and loving care – luxuries he had been managing without for a long time.
When Netta returned at eleven o’clock, Valmai heard her coming along the pavement and from the sound of her footsteps, changing from walking to running, she had suddenly begun to feel guilty.
Netta was surprised to see that her house was in darkness and she wondered whether Walter was already asleep, and whether he had made a meal for Jimmy. ‘Poor Jimmy,’ she said aloud.
Valmai waited in her doorway and allowed Netta to go upstairs and realize Jimmy wasn’t there. She heard a scream and stepped towards her neighbour’s back door. ‘It’s all right. This time!’ she shouted over. ‘Jimmy is safe with us. What are you doing to the child? Leaving him alone like this?’
‘Walter was here. He said he’d stay while I went to see Mam. He promised.’
Netta carried the sleeping Jimmy, still wrapped in the blanket, back to his bed and covered him. She sat beside his bed for the rest of the night, determined that the first thing he’d see on waking was her sitting there, smiling at him, able to reassure him that all was well and it would never happen again.
A week later, when frost covered the ground in a sparkling reminder that winter was about to descend, Jimmy disappeared.
Rows were constant. When both Netta and Walter were at home there was either silence that was palpable and more
than Jimmy could cope with at such a young age, or shouting matches that drove him from the house. On this particular night he heard blows being struck and the sound of his mother throwing china. He dressed in as many clothes as he could squeeze on to his skinny frame and, when the couple eventually went into their separate bedrooms, he crept downstairs. He dragged a couple of blankets with him, which he wrapped around his shoulders and tied with string around his waist. Two carrier bags were filled with as much food as he could carry and he left, heading first for the mill.
In the morning, his mother left early, shouting to Walter, telling him she would be out for the day and to stay with Jimmy. An hour later, neither of them having checked on Jimmy, Walter too left the house.
Valmai went to Netta’s house at lunchtime that Saturday wondering where Jimmy was as he had promised to come to the shed to help make a pull-along duck for Sadie. The back door was wide open and she called then went inside. Everything was in disarray. Pots and pans were piled up ready to wash, dirty plates were everywhere, many broken and left where they had fallen. The grate was filled with cold ashes and the temperature suggested it hadn’t been lit for a long time. Alarmed she ran upstairs and looked in each room. They had all gone. Why hadn’t she been told? Something was seriously wrong.
She ran back to tell Gwilym and he told her they had to call the police. She ran to the phone box and dialled 999 and waited, staring up and down the road hoping to see the three of them walking back with explanations.
The police searched the house and before they had finished, Walter came back.
‘She told me I was to stay and mind the boy,’ he said. ‘No one tells me what to do. He’s her kid not mine.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Valmai asked. ‘Of course he’s yours.’
‘I didn’t want him. She did and I’m not staying home while she goes out and has fun. What sort of a man d’you take me for?’
‘Where is your wife, sir?’ one of the policemen asked.
Walter shrugged. ‘Says she’s visiting her mother.’
‘The address?’ Walter gave it, the information was passed on and he was then asked, ‘And the boy? Did he go with her?’
Walter shrugged again.
Police were sent to Netta’s parents’ home and at once a search was on for Jimmy. Neither parent knew where he could be. The day passed and no one saw or heard from him.
When Sally heard about Jimmy’s disappearance she went at once to the mill after telling the police it was his favourite place.
With a powerful torch she nervously entered the building, calling his name as she climbed the precarious steps to the top floor. He wasn’t there. His friends were contacted but no one had any idea of where he might be.
Hiding in a tree that was covered in a thick coat of ivy that concealed him completely, Jimmy watched. When first Sally then the police had searched the mill and gone away, he crept down and settled to sleep in the top room, safe from more searchers at least until morning.
Chapter Ten
THE PEOPLE CONCERNED about Jimmy didn’t expect to sleep. Throughout the evening searches were made of outhouses and barns. Torches patterned the air as more and more people joined in the worrying exploration of every place they could think of where a small boy could hide. So far no one had suggested any danger or harm, only that he had run away and was hiding.
People were increasing in number as news of the missing boy spread and they went off in different directions with policemen making notes of where they went. Rick went back to the mill in case Jimmy had returned after the earlier search.
As he heard him coming, calling his name, and seen the torch flashing from side to side, Jimmy ran from the mill, grabbing his bag of food – some of which he dropped – and went back to the invisible safety of the ivy-covered tree. He thought the branches would never stop moving, especially as he disturbed them to try and retrieve the food he had unfortunately dropped, but by the time Rick came out of the mill again, nothing was moving and there was no sound to betray his presence, so close to where he stood.
Unable to just wait, Sally thought of David. He would surely help. Leaving Valmai to stay with Sadie, who was blissfully asleep, Sally ran to where David lived with his mother and asked if he would help them find the boy. She knew that he walked the fields and woods day and night and he’d know of places no one else had considered.
‘Sorry I am,’ Mrs Gorse said, ‘but he’s out. Never one to stay in, he goes out walking and watching wildlife most nights. I’ll tell him if he comes back before I go to sleep but he never comes in very early.’ She chattered on, making excuses for David’s inability to help, and promised to tell him the moment he came home. ‘He’ll come straight away when he knows, sure to.’
Sally walked away and on impulse knocked on the door of the local teacher, Joy Laker. Joy offered to come at once. ‘Wait and we’ll go in the car,’ she said. ‘That way we can search a bit further away.’ She went to the drive and stared about her in astonishment. ‘My car! It’s gone!’
Sally waited while Joy rang the local police, then Joy shrugged. ‘I’ll come anyway. An extra pair of eyes will help.’ They hurried back to Sally’s house in School Lane. ‘Such a nuisance about the car. I need it tomorrow to go and see my mother. And it might be damaged.’
‘Maybe it’s been taken by someone too lazy to walk home. Borrowed, not stolen.’
‘I hope so.’
Eric stood and looked down the lane towards the mill. ‘I still think he might be around there somewhere,’ he told PC Harvey. ‘He knows the place well and he’d have found a dozen places to hide.’
‘Shall we go for another look? It’s getting late and he might have fallen asleep thinking we’ve finished searching until tomorrow.’
Eric patted his pockets. ‘I’d like to go on my own. I think I’ve an idea how to coax him out. Just give me an hour, will you?’
The policeman conferred with the others and they agreed to stay away from the mill for an hour and leave Eric to try and persuade the boy to show himself. ‘I’ll wait within calling distance, in case there’s been an accident and you need help,’ the constable promised.
Eric gathered dry grasses and small kindling wood and soon had a fire burning. He took from his pockets a few small potatoes and, wrapped in greaseproof paper, a couple of meat pies. He had known as soon as he had learned of Jimmy’s disappearance that food would be the best way to tempt him from hiding. Once the fire had a heart he placed the potatoes in the glowing ash and sat and waited, his ears alert for the first sound.
Just out of sight but as patient and aware as Eric, PC Harvey also listened to the night. Voices were heard occasionally, calling to others as the search moved around them. A rustling sound gave brief hope as a fox ambled past him. He heard the fox rustling some paper, then the unmistakable lip-smacking sound of it eating. Lucky fox, he’d found a morsel for his supper.
In the tree, safely out of sight, Jimmy tried to stretch his stiff limbs. Tiredness was making his eyes droop. The cold night air was seeping into his body and shivers warned of worse to come. He tightened the duffel coat tighter around him but it no longer made any difference. If only they’d go away so he could get into the mill again. Worst of all, he was hungry. He had dropped his sandwiches and the chocolate bar as he’d climbed into the ivy and every time he decided to go down and look for them, a faint sound, a voice or the rustling of feet pushing through the dead grasses stopped him. Now they had been enjoyed by a fox.
Then he smelt smoke and his eyes opened wide. Someone was at the mill. Could it be Eric? It had to be. No one else would be there on such a cold night. More cautiously than the fox, he moved down from the tree. Eric, just a distorted silhouette, was sitting beside the fire, stirring the ashes with a stick. Without turning his head, he said, ‘Hello, boy, come for some supper, have you?’
‘Yeah. The fox pinched mine.’
‘Take one of these pies. That’ll warm you up. Then I think we’d better go home.’
Constable Harvey was smiling as he watched the boy biting huge mouthfuls of the welcome food.
‘Taters aren’t cooked, are they?’
‘Not yet. Perhaps we’ll finish them off tomorrow.’
With Jimmy eating a second pie, a partly cooked potato in the other fist as a hand-warmer and Eric’s arm around his shoulders, the man and the boy walked back to Mill Road after telling the relieved police all was well.
Walter came running out of the house shouting and raging against Eric.
‘What have you done to the boy? Where did you take him? Evil you are, Eric Thomas, always thought you were a bit funny in the head and—’
He was stopped as Netta pushed him out of the way and hugged Jimmy. ‘Shut up!’ she said, and Jimmy tensed. Surely they weren’t going to start arguing straight away?
‘Are you all right? We’ve been so worried. Why did you go away?’
‘Fed up with the rows. And I know they’re my fault,’ Jimmy said, trying to hold back sobs. ‘I try to please Dad but he hates me.’
‘What rubbish you talk,’ she soothed. ‘We both love you very much.’
Walter was still shouting at Eric. ‘Keep away from my son. Right? Spending time with children like my Jimmy. You’re weird! No wonder your wife and daughter left.’
‘The police were with me all the time,’ Eric said, his eyes wide with shock. ‘I’d never harm Jimmy, or any other child.’
Constable Harvey came then and led a still protesting Walter inside, where he warned the man against repeating unconfirmed and nonsensical accusations about the man who found his son and brought him safely home.
It was very gradually that the crowds dispersed, everyone wanting to talk about the events of the day and the surprising rescue by old Eric. When Sally was going into her house to allow Valmai to go home, David appeared.
‘What’s happened? Have they found him?’ He showed relief to be told the boy was back with his parents. ‘Up in the wood the other side of the park I was, watching a family of badgers. Sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.’
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