Just Henry

by Michelle Magorian

  ‘It makes you feel more alive?’

  ‘Yeah. Is that what it feels like when you write?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Henry smiled, relieved. Suddenly he was conscious of her gazing at him.

  ‘Henry, about your grandmother, you haven’t told her your mother will be typing for me, have you?’

  ‘No, course not.’

  ‘I know you’re very close to her, but please don’t be tempted. Your mother obviously has her reasons for not telling her.’

  ‘I won’t tell her. Promise.’

  ‘Oh, look,’ she said, glancing out of the window, ‘we’re coming into Woking. This is where the spacecraft landed. And where one hundred-foot-high machines walked with martians inside them.’

  Henry stared at her, alarmed.

  ‘No, I’m not going mad,’ she laughed. ‘War of the Worlds. H. G. Wells. One of my son Max’s favourite books.’

  ‘The History of Mr Polly,’ Henry said. ‘That’s by him too.’

  ‘Yes. How do you know that?’

  ‘I saw the film. It had John Mills in it.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘so you obviously like watching stories. You just have an aversion to printed matter.’

  Henry grinned.

  Waterloo Station was spectacular. Rain was drumming loudly on its high vaulted glass-and-iron roof with its criss-crossing girders. It was the size of six Hatton Stations, with lines of platforms and steam and electric trains alongside one another. There was a large newsagent’s shop in the centre, a chemist near two of the many gates, and a tobacconist’s shop. As they walked through the gates, Henry saw restaurant and refreshment signs, and beyond the main booking office on the other side was a building with a sign saying, NEWS THEATRE.

  ‘That small cinema is where people can watch newsreels and cartoons while waiting for their trains,’ Mrs Beaumont explained.

  Henry could hardly take it in. He was mesmerised by the sight of so many people milling around the station with their suitcases, some sitting on long wooden benches, others going up to a woman in a white overall and hat who was serving tea from a large urn. There were men in kilts, women in smart suits with matching hats or in long evening gowns accompanied by men in evening dress, a red carnation in their lapels. He had never seen so many men wearing bowlers and top hats. Standing near the tea urn were two brown-skinned men. They were each wearing colourful striped turbans with a jewel in the centre, above red tunics and baggy blue trousers tucked into long black boots. They looked like princes.

  Behind him one of the steam trains let out a loud hiss. Henry whirled round. Black smoke was shooting upwards from one of the funnels and it was then that he spotted a familiar figure standing beside one of the newer steam trains. It was Jack Riddell from his form. He was in the railway group. One of the drivers was leaning out of the cab above him and talking to him. Henry turned back to take in the crowds again. He now understood what his stepfather had meant when he had said that London was like another country. He slipped the camera out, released the bellows and took a photograph of Mrs Beaumont.

  ‘Caught,’ she laughed.

  ‘Here we are,’ Mrs Beaumont said. ‘Home Sweet Home.’

  She unlocked a massive carved door and opened it into an enormous hall with high ceilings. ‘The whole place needs a lick of paint,’ she remarked, ‘but with government regulations, that’s not possible.’ Three large doors led off the hall, one to the left, one to the right, from where piano music was coming, and tucked away beside the wide steps was a door leading to the back of the house.

  A tall slim woman with short wavy hair and round tortoiseshell glasses peered out of the door on the left. She gave a broad smile.

  ‘Hettie!’ she cried. She took off her glasses. ‘I’ve sorted out beds for you both.’

  ‘I didn’t expect that,’ said Mrs Beaumont. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You must be Henry,’ the woman said, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Violet.’ They shook hands and she beckoned them in.

  They trooped into a huge sitting room. In front of the window looking out on to the street was a heavy mahogany table covered with stacks of books and papers.

  ‘I’m marking books and scribbling down ideas for the rest of the term.’

  ‘Violet is a teacher,’ Mrs Beaumont explained. ‘She lives here with a fellow teacher.’

  ‘Who’s away, which is why Mrs Beaumont can sleep in her bed tonight.’ She indicated the large double doors at the back of the room. ‘It’s our half-term too.’

  ‘I thought the dance classes would have stopped this weekend,’ said Mrs Beaumont.

  ‘They have.’

  ‘But there’s piano music coming from the studio.’

  ‘That’s Jessica. Oh, Hettie, it’s so good to see you.’

  ‘And you,’ laughed Mrs Beaumont, squeezing her hand. ‘Is Daniel in?’

  ‘Yes. And Ralph. He’s on weekend leave and doing a bit of filming.’

  ‘He’s Jessica’s fiancé, an actor,’ Mrs Beaumont explained. ‘He’s the person I hope will be able to get hold of some black paint for you. Jessica lives here too. She’s an Art student.’

  ‘She’s practising the piano for you,’ said Violet to Henry.

  ‘For me?’ said Henry, mystified.

  ‘Daniel will be showing you some silent films tomorrow in the studio. He’s the man I told you about, the one who knows everything there is to know about film history. Jessica can play the piano really well, so Daniel asked her if she could come up with something to make the films more lively.’

  Henry was staggered that strangers would go to all this trouble for someone they had never met.

  ‘Max is coming round this evening with some friends. They’re bringing reels of an Italian film, a projectionist and some film equipment. Apparently they’ve been extraordinarily lucky to get hold of this film. It’s only just come out,’ Violet added.

  ‘Max is my younger son,’ Mrs Beaumont reminded him.

  ‘Now,’ said Violet, ‘about sleeping arrangements. I thought Henry could sleep in the room where all your furniture and belongings are stored.’

  ‘Wonderful.’ Mrs Beaumont turned to Henry. ‘I’ll have a word with Daniel first, then we can go out for a quick bite and come back here to sort through my belongings before this film starts.’

  Henry followed Mrs Beaumont up two flights of stairs and into a large room at the back of the house. Its walls were stacked high with boxes, cases and furniture. A camp bed was made up in front of a high double window, which looked out on to a straggly garden. Beyond the trees and high brick wall was a graveyard and more trees. There were no curtains. Two ceiling-high shutters had been folded back, letting the late-afternoon light in.

  ‘I thought I’d find it all covered in cobwebs, like Miss Havisham’s abode. Miss Havisham was . . . ’

  ‘In Great Expectations,’ said Henry. ‘I saw the film.’

  She smiled.

  Henry scoured the alcoves and the boxes with his eyes. It looked as though there were a thousand or more books in the room.

  ‘You’re sure you won’t have nightmares sleeping among this lot?’ she said. ‘The words might leap out at you in the night and torment you.’

  As long as they don’t fall on top of me, he thought, gazing up at the precariously balanced book towers.

  ‘Now, I’d better introduce you to Daniel.’

  ‘No need,’ said a booming voice behind them.

  A tall white-haired man was standing in the doorway, a pipe clamped between his teeth at the side of his mouth. The hair on that side of his face was stained yellow from the tobacco. Henry noticed he had a walking stick. The man caught his eye and tapped his right leg with it. There was a loud metallic twang.

  ‘Lost it in a trench somewhere in France,’ he said gruffly. ‘I take it you’re Henry, the boy who wants to know about films in 1899.’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘I’ve managed to find some 1895 films and a couple of 1900 ones. I hop
e that’ll do.’

  ‘Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!’

  This was better than Henry had expected.

  ‘Call me Daniel. Come with me.’

  Henry followed. They walked into his room, which was joined to another room and spanned the width of the house. The ceiling-high dividing doors were slightly ajar. Daniel limped over to them and thrust them open. Behind the doors were stacks of flat circular metal containers.

  ‘Films,’ he said. ‘I keep them all on this side and shut the door on them when I light a fire in here.’

  Henry spotted a fire bucket filled with sand, and a fire extinguisher.

  ‘Highly flammable is film,’ said Daniel.

  Mrs Beaumont was staring uneasily at the extinguisher.

  ‘Why does that not make me feel wonderful?’ she commented.

  ‘Hettie, you do know you look peculiar? Are you in disguise?’

  Henry was puzzled. Mrs Beaumont looked perfectly normal to him.

  ‘Rude, isn’t he?’ she quipped.

  ‘Just honest,’ said Daniel. ‘You know me. I call a spade a spade.’

  ‘Most of my clothes are here,’ she explained. ‘The clothes I took with me eventually fell apart. These are my mother’s.’

  ‘I’ll show you more tomorrow,’ said Daniel. ‘You’d better go and eat. You must be ravenous. And I need time to prepare for your son and his friends coming round.’

  By the time Henry and Mrs Beaumont had returned to the house from a café, the afternoon sky was so dull that they had to turn the light on in Mrs Beaumont’s storage room. Rain trickled down the high windows in rivulets. Mrs Beaumont drew her fingers along the sides of the window frames.

  ‘It’s not leaking. That’s a relief.’ She turned her back to the window and faced her possessions. ‘I’m going to have to empty one of these trunks first and then repack it with what I’ve selected to take back to Sternsea.’ She knelt down in front of one, snapped the locks to one side and flung open the lid. ‘Here goes.’

  ‘Good! That’s exercise books, paperbacks and clothing,’ she commented, gazing with satisfaction at a fully packed trunk, several hours later. ‘Now,’ she said, pulling herself up to her feet, ‘I’ll nip down to Violet’s room and change out of these ancient tweeds into something of mine which is a little less dreary. Meanwhile you can put on this old jersey of Oscar’s.’ She handed Henry a thick blue woolly garment. ‘Oscar’s my elder son,’ she added. She hurried out of the room with an armful of clothes.

  It was dark outside now and chilly. Henry pulled on the jersey gratefully. From downstairs he could hear the front door opening and the sound of several male voices and laughter. Suddenly he felt painfully shy.

  ‘Ma!’ Henry heard someone yell. ‘What on earth are you wearing?’

  ‘Granny’s clothes.’

  Why do people go on about what she looks like? Henry thought, puzzled.

  ‘You must come and listen to some records we’ve brought,’ continued the man. ‘They’re a sensation!’

  Henry crept out on to the landing. Footsteps were moving rapidly up the stairs. He dived back into Mrs Beaumont’s room.

  ‘You’re a noisy lot of blighters aren’t you?’ he heard Daniel roar. ‘I could hear you nattering halfway down the street.’

  ‘Come downstairs quickly!’

  There was a loud hammering on Henry’s door. Nervously he peered out. Standing there was a tall, eager man with blond hair. There was no mistaking that he was Mrs Beaumont’s son. He had the same look in his eyes as if he was having a private joke.

  ‘You’re hearing this too, Henry,’ he said.

  Henry followed awkwardly behind them as they headed downstairs.

  ‘This is revolutionary music,’ the man said over his shoulder.

  A crowd of men in sodden corduroy trousers, tweed jackets and dripping raincoats were gathered in the hall. The man swung round to Henry and said, ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Max Beaumont. Mother’s told me all about you.’ He turned to the other men. ‘Who’s got the gramophone?’

  One of the men held up a wooden case and dashed into the studio.

  ‘You will be watching the film with us, won’t you, Ma? You haven’t made any plans to dash off somewhere, have you?’

  ‘No plans for this evening at all,’ Mrs Beaumont said.

  Henry did his best to hide his disappointment. He had hoped that they would go to one of the large London cinemas. Watching a film in the front room of someone’s house would be worse than watching a film in a church hall.

  Suddenly a burst of music rocketed out of the studio. A saxophone was being played so fast it made Henry feel breathless. It was the most exciting sound he had ever heard. He could hear people laughing with exhilaration.

  ‘What is that?’ said Mrs Beaumont, astounded.

  ‘Salt Peanut,’ answered Max. ‘Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.’

  ‘But what kind of music is it?’

  ‘Jazz, of course.’

  A young man shot his head round the studio door. ‘No it’s not. It’s bebop!’

  ‘It’s jazz!’ protested Max. ‘Modern jazz.’

  ‘It’s so frenetic,’ she said.

  ‘It’s so wild!’ laughed Max.

  ‘Difficult to dance to at that speed,’ commented Daniel.

  ‘Who needs to?’ said Max. ‘It’s so mesmerising it stops you in your tracks. A friend has brought a stack of records over from America. Isn’t it wonderful! Oscar will be so envious.’

  Henry listened to the music transfixed.

  That evening Henry sat cross-legged in the front row of the studio next to Mrs Beaumont, who was on a cushion. A white screen had been erected in front of the high windows now concealed behind closed shutters. The lights were switched off, the projector whirred and grainy black and white images appeared on the screen.

  ‘What’s the name of this film?’ Mrs Beaumont whispered to Max.

  ‘Bicycle Thieves,’ he answered.

  It was the music which seeped under Henry’s skin first, pulling him into a teeming world of poverty where the possession of a bicycle meant a job and food on the table. In among the crowds of people were a man and his small son. It was they who kept Henry riveted to the screen – the pride in the boy’s face when, after his parents had pawned the family sheets, his father was able to buy a bicycle and was given a job, and their determination to find it after it had been stolen.

  As Henry watched, an intense pain welled up inside him. He saw the adoration in the boy’s eyes for his father and the way they looked after one another and he realised he was seeing something he had never experienced. He had never known what it was like to walk beside his father, to glance up at him, to copy his mannerisms, to walk happily in his shadow.

  He swallowed hard to hold back the tears, his jaw and throat aching. When the lights were switched on, there was only a stunned silence and the sound of the projector flicking the tail-end of the final reel. Henry kept his head bowed. He found himself thinking of Grace. She would have been able to follow the story in spite of not being able to read the subtitles or understand Italian, because the story was all there in the pictures.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said someone quietly from behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw several people nodding in agreement. A tall man with a beard was staring at Henry.

  ‘Pretty powerful, eh?’

  Henry nodded.

  By now people were heading towards the door. Mrs Beaumont beckoned him to join them.

  ‘There’s a fire in Daniel’s room and toast.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he mumbled. ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’

  Upstairs, he slipped into the room, quickly shut the door and leaned against it, relieved to be alone. He couldn’t even bear to switch on the light. He walked over to the window and folded back the tall shutters. Outside the rain was still streaming down the glass. He stood still for a moment, drinking in its sound. He needed i
t to soothe him. After a while he kicked off his boots, threw himself on the bed face down, pulled the pillow over his head and sobbed like a baby.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t take you to a cinema yesterday,’ said Mrs Beaumont after breakfast. ‘I’ll take you next month when we come back with Grace.’

  She was wearing slacks and a jacket. Henry was surprised to see how different she looked. He had never even seen his mother in trousers.

  ‘I’ll be leaving you with Jessica and Daniel while I shoot off to get this wretched hair cut.’

  She said her goodbyes, leaving Henry hovering by the open door to the studio.

  ‘Come in, old chap!’ said Daniel, noticing him. ‘I’m just setting up, which is a little tricky with a walking stick. Like to help?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Daniel raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Daniel,’ said Henry.

  ‘They’re very short films, so it shouldn’t take too long. Most of them are French, but there’s no need to worry because they’re all silent. Jessica is going to play the music.’

  A young woman smiled at him from behind the piano. He gave her an awkward nod. He had spotted her briefly the previous evening. She had long red crinkly hair and freckles, and when she smiled, he noticed that her front teeth crossed one another slightly.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  Henry could feel himself reddening. To his embarrassment he heard himself reply, ‘Good morning,’ as if he was in school.

  ‘A lot of the films I’ll be showing you,’ Daniel said, ‘are made by the Lumière brothers and are of their friends and family. Remember, no one had seen anything like this at all. So you can imagine what a sensation it was. The first time people watched a film of a train coming into a station, they screamed. They thought it was coming in their direction. That’s how real it was to them then. Right, that’s the first one set up. You’ll be in charge of the lights, Henry. Let’s roll.’

  ‘So,’ said Daniel, after he had shown the last film, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘All those women in long dresses and straw hats coming out of the factory, they were all real people,’ Henry exclaimed. ‘They weren’t actresses playing parts. They were people who really lived in the nineteenth century.’