Just Henry

by Michelle Magorian

  ‘Gotcha!’ yelled an angry voice, and before Henry could swing round, a strong hand grabbed him firmly by the shirt and dragged him outside. Grace screamed. Henry looked up to find himself staring up at a tall burly man, a rough cap pulled over his balding head.

  ‘Mr Henson,’ gasped Henry with relief.

  ‘Henry! I thought you was a looter. You’d never believe how many people have been trying to break into the house.’

  ‘I wanted to take the wood I collected to Mrs Beaumont’s house,’ he explained.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  Between them they filled one wheelbarrow and carried a long plank into the alley behind the yards.

  ‘Where are we going to put it all?’ asked Jeffries. ‘Mrs Beaumont doesn’t have a shed or an air-raid shelter.’

  ‘And you mustn’t put it in the dance studio,’ protested Grace.

  ‘In the basement,’ said Pip. ‘There’s a place for coal there.’

  Once they reached Mrs Beaumont’s overgrown front garden, Mr Henson helped them stack the wood by the steps leading to the basement.

  ‘I’ll take the wheelbarrow back and load it up again,’ he said. ‘One more trip and that should do it.’

  ‘I have a feeling we won’t be able to make a second journey.’

  ‘Of course, it’s Sunday,’ commented Mr Henson. ‘Bath night.’

  They all nodded.

  ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll bring it round ’ere for you.’

  It was late and they all had to get indoors for their baths. After they had said their goodbyes to Grace in the porch and opened the hall door, Henry heard a loud cry from his mother’s bedroom.

  ‘Mum!’ he yelled and made for the stairs.

  ‘Henry!’

  He swung round. Uncle Bill was standing in the sitting room doorway.

  ‘Wait down here,’ he said. ‘If you want to go to the toilet, you must use the one outside in the studio.’

  ‘Why? What’s happening?’

  ‘The district nurse is up there. Your mother’s in labour.’

  Molly was wrapped up, her head on a pillow on the settee. Mrs Beaumont was sitting beside her, stroking her hair. Henry could see Molly had been crying. Her eyelids were fluttering as if she was fighting sleep but losing the battle.

  ‘She didn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to go upstairs,’ Mrs Beaumont whispered. ‘She thought your mother was ill and she wanted to make her better.’

  ‘But she was only with us a little while ago. She never said anything,’ he exclaimed.

  ‘It all started very quickly, that’s why she had to leave the cinema.’

  ‘Where’s everyone else?’ he asked.

  ‘In the kitchen. They didn’t want to disturb your mother by going upstairs.’

  He glanced across at Uncle Bill. He was sitting on the edge of a chair, staring anxiously down at the floor, his fists clenched. Suddenly his head shot up and he sprang to his feet. A baby was crying. He bolted out of the room and Henry quickly followed him. Together they stood helplessly at the foot of the stairs. After what seemed like hours, the district nurse appeared on the landing.

  ‘A little boy,’ she said matter of factly.

  ‘And Maureen?’ asked Uncle Bill.

  ‘Mother and baby are doing well. But she’s not to get out of bed for three days. She’s to have meals brought up to her. She must have all the rest she can get.’

  ‘There are two other women in the house,’ said Mrs Jeffries from the kitchen steps. Jeffries was standing excitedly behind her.

  ‘Three when Mrs Hart returns from her honeymoon. We’ll all make sure she stays in bed.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ the nurse said brusquely. ‘This fire business is shocking, I know, but I’m relieved she can be somewhere where she can be looked after properly.’ And she scowled at Uncle Bill as if he was the cause of all his wife’s problems.

  By now Pip and Mrs Beaumont had joined them in the hall. Henry’s stepfather began to walk up the stairs. The nurse pursed her lips.

  ‘Two at a time is plenty,’ she said. ‘And a cup of tea, toast and scrambled egg wouldn’t go amiss for the new mother,’ and with that she turned on the heels of her heavy lace-up shoes and strode back into the bedroom.

  Henry followed Uncle Bill.

  His mother was sitting propped up against plumped-up pillows, wearing a cardigan over her nightdress, her hair damp and tangled. She looked tired but as pretty as a film star, thought Henry. He glanced at the bundle in her arms and recognised the shawl he had rescued. He and Uncle Bill leaned towards it together. She beamed up at them.

  ‘I can’t let go of him,’ she said.

  She moved the shawl to one side. A tiny red-faced baby was lying there asleep.

  ‘He’s out for the count,’ observed Henry.

  ‘You make him sound as if he’s just done twenty rounds in a boxing ring!’ said his mother. She patted the side of the bed. ‘Come and sit beside me, both of you.’

  From the other side of the room Henry heard tut-tuttings from the nurse.

  ‘My three men,’ she said, gazing happily at them. The baby gave a sudden snuffling noise as if taking a breath in his sleep.

  This is my brother, thought Henry, and he felt a catch in his throat.

  ‘Oh, Bill,’ laughed his mother.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help it,’ he said, tears running down his face.

  Henry was startled. He had never seen a man cry.

  ‘Do you want to hold him, Bill?’ she asked.

  Before the nurse could protest, she handed him over. The baby looked even tinier in his stepfather’s arms and Henry knew immediately what he had to do.

  ‘Wait there,’ he said and ran for the door.

  He heard his mother laugh.

  ‘I wasn’t planning on going anywhere just yet, love.’

  Alone in his bedroom Henry stood still for a moment, trembling. He dragged his arm roughly across his blurred eyes, pulled the camera out of its case and headed for the landing.

  ‘Don’t pose,’ he said in his mother’s bedroom. ‘Ignore me,’ and he quickly took a photograph of the scowling district nurse. As his mother laughed at her outraged face, Henry took one of her.

  An hour later, Molly woke up with a start.

  ‘Mummy!’ she cried.

  Mrs Beaumont pulled her gently on to her lap.

  ‘Mummy’s asleep. And so is your baby brother. Would you like to see him?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You have to be very quiet, though,’ and she pressed a finger to her lips.

  Henry watched them walk hand in hand out of the sitting room. Pip and Jeffries had already gone to bed, but he had been too excited to sleep. He was sitting with a mug of cocoa warming his hands.

  When they returned, Mrs Beaumont sat Molly back on the settee.

  ‘Would you like to sleep with me tonight?’

  ‘And Dolly?’

  ‘Of course. There’s somebody else who can come too,’ she said and she produced a parcel from behind an armchair.

  ‘This is for you. It’s a special present so you can remember the day your little brother was born.’

  Molly tore off the wrapping and gave a squeal. Inside was a floppy dog.

  ‘He’s a rather special dog,’ said Mrs Beaumont. ‘He has a secret. Look.’

  She turned it over, undid some buttons hidden under a flap of fur and put her hand inside. ‘It’s for you to keep your nightdress inside. Do you like him?’

  Molly hugged the dog tightly, nodding.

  Mrs Beaumont turned to Henry.

  ‘You have a present too,’ she said, ‘so you won’t forget today either. It’s in a leather case upstairs. And this goes with it,’ and she held out half a dozen new boxes of film.

  Henry couldn’t believe it.

  ‘The camera?’ he whispered.

  She nodded, smiling.

  ‘Thank you,’ and he quickly stuck his nose in his cup, his hands shakin
g with excitement.

  ‘Drink up,’ she said. ‘We could all do with some sleep.’

  Henry didn’t want to go to the cinema that week. He was mesmerised by baby Laurence. He and Molly, his mother and stepfather settled in very quickly at Mrs Beaumont’s house. It was as though the baby glued them all together. Within a week, Henry found that he had begun to forget the misery his father and grandmother had brought to their lives, and by the following Saturday, he and his friends were back to the familiar routine of looking through the Sternsea Evening News.

  ‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,’ Jeffries announced.

  ‘Sounds like a girl’s film,’ said Henry.

  ‘And what’s a girl’s film?’ Grace said hotly.

  ‘Oh, no, it isn’t,’ Jeffries continued. ‘It’s got John Wayne and Indians in it.’

  ‘What’s with it?’ asked Henry.

  ‘Er, Bride for Sale, but it says it’s a comedy.’

  ‘M’m,’ said Henry doubtfully. ‘What else?’

  ‘There’s a musical at three cinemas,’ said Jeffries. ‘Irving Berlin’s On the Avenue. Oh.’

  ‘Oh, what?’ said Grace. ‘The film with it is an A?’

  ‘No. Another U. It’s called Mother Knows Best – a romantic frolic.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re all staring at me,’ Grace protested. ‘I’m not interested in a romantic frolic either.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ said Jeffries and he returned to the paper.

  ‘What have they got there from Monday?’ asked Pip.

  ‘Rebecca.’

  ‘Rebecca!’ exclaimed Mrs Beaumont, who up till then had been quietly scrubbing potatoes with her back to them. ‘I’d love to see that again.’

  ‘“What was the dark intangible shadow that hung over these two human lives?”’ read Jeffries dramatically.

  ‘It’s got Laurence Olivier in it,’ she added.

  ‘Is it a love story?’ asked Jeffries.

  ‘It’s more of a thriller really. Very atmospheric. There’s this sinister housekeeper called Mrs Danvers . . . ’ She stopped. ‘I don’t want to tell you too much. It’ll spoil it. I bet it has a western with it.’

  ‘It has!’ said Jeffries. ‘Wagon Wheels Westward.’

  ‘Oh, let’s go and see that with Rebecca,’ said Grace.

  ‘Hands up for yes,’ said Jeffries.

  They all raised their arms.

  ‘Carried unanimously.’

  It was decided to see She Wore a Yellow Ribbon the next day and Rebecca on Wednesday.

  ‘And I am going to treat you all to The Happiest Days of Your Life on Friday,’ said Mrs Beaumont as Mrs Jeffries walked into the kitchen. ‘It’s all about a girls’ boarding school which is billeted on a boys’ boarding school and there are some very funny people in it. You too, Natasha.’

  ‘Hettie, I really can’t allow you . . . ’ Mrs Jeffries protested.

  ‘And then Maureen and Bill can have the house to themselves for one evening.’

  Mrs Jeffries smiled.

  ‘Well, if you put it like that . . . ’

  ‘I do.’

  And so it was settled.

  On Sunday evening, after She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Henry walked out of the cinema in a daze, his head filled with earth-red rocks jagged against the skyline, lines of soldiers on horseback, a dead postmaster slumped across the doorway of a stagecoach, deserts and buffaloes, a lone cavalry man trapped by a small ravine and his heroic leap over it as he fled from Indians. Just staring up at the huge landscape on the screen had made Henry feel he had more room to breathe. He was remembering the tall drawling John Wayne, his black silhouette on horseback against a fiery orange sky, when he heard Mrs Beaumont say, ‘Not too soppily romantic, then?’

  ‘A bit, but the filming was . . . spectacular!’

  ‘What about you, Roger?’

  ‘I liked it. But it wasn’t as good as Fort Apache.’

  Grace groaned.

  ‘You’re too fussy,’ she said, giving him a playful punch.

  Rebecca couldn’t have been more different. It was set in Manderley, a huge house in Cornwall and everyone spoke in posh clipped English accents. With its vast rooms and sudden shafts of light flooding the long dark corridors, it was like a foreign country to Henry, a world where one of the many servants would light a blazing fire in a massive fireplace in the morning room and light another one later in the afternoon room. And everywhere there were signs of the mysterious Rebecca, who had drowned and had been worshipped by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs Danvers.

  ‘I’d tell that Mrs Danvers to take a running jump,’ he whispered to Jeffries, when she tried to persuade the new wife of Rebecca’s husband to throw herself out of a window.

  ‘She’s the best thing in it,’ said Jeffries thoughtfully.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Henry. He gazed up at the actress playing Mrs Danvers, standing upright in her black dress, watchful, silent and unsmiling, as the ceiling-high curtains billowed violently beside the towering windows, the sea crashing on the cliffs below.

  On Friday, Grace’s Great-Aunt Florence came with them to see The Happiest Days of Your Life, and as they stepped outside the cinema after seeing it into a deluge of torrential rain, they were still laughing.

  ‘What about that bit where the boys ran into the dormitory and had a pillow fight with the girls,’ Grace said.

  ‘And there were feathers flying everywhere,’ Pip added.

  ‘I liked the scene when the caretaker and his assistant had to keep changing the lacrosse net to rugby posts and then back again all the time,’ said Jeffries.

  ‘Call me sausage!’ Great-Aunt Florence sang out, pretending to be the gawky sports teacher, and she gave Grace a hug.

  ‘I haven’t enjoyed anything so much for ages,’ said Mrs Jeffries. ‘That look on the Math’s teacher’s face when she gushed all over him and told him how much she had enjoyed censoring the pupils’ letters with him!’

  Once they reached Mrs Beaumont’s house, they said their goodbyes to Grace and her great-aunt, ran up the steps past the storm door and left their umbrellas dripping all over the porch floor. Mrs Beaumont closed the storm door and pushed open the hall door. Whispering and attempting to smother their laughter, they crept down to the kitchen so that they wouldn’t wake Molly or the baby.

  Uncle Bill was in the kitchen, reading.

  ‘Maureen’s just giving Laurence a feed,’ he said.

  Henry still couldn’t get used to a baby being called Laurence. It seemed too big a name for someone so small. His mother had named him after the actor Laurence Olivier. But Henry had already begun calling him Larry.

  ‘Good film?’ asked Uncle Bill.

  ‘Wonderful!’ chorused Mrs Beaumont and Mrs Jeffries.

  ‘You and Maureen must see it,’ added Mrs Beaumont. She turned to Henry and the others. ‘Let’s go again tomorrow night. The audience were laughing so much in places that I missed bits. What do you say? On me, of course.’

  Henry grinned. This was like Christmas.

  ‘We’ll do some jobs for you,’ said Jeffries.

  ‘I can’t come,’ said Pip. ‘I’m playing the piano at the Plaza.’

  ‘You can come with me and Mrs Carpenter if they show it again,’ said Uncle Bill. And then he frowned. ‘Although I suppose I can’t do that till after the . . . ’

  And he stopped. After the divorce, thought Henry, which was going to be difficult because the police still hadn’t been able to find the whereabouts of his grandmother. And wherever she was living, that’s where his dad would be.

  ‘I’ll come with you, Pip,’ said Mrs Beaumont. ‘I don’t think I’ll mind seeing it a third or even a fourth time. It’s so nice to see a film that makes you feel happy. Now, let’s get the kettle on.’ There was a loud knocking from upstairs. ‘Would one of you boys answer that? It’ll be Grace. She’s probably forgotten something.’

  Henry shot up the steps to the hall and flung open the door to the porch. He was still smiling
over one of the scenes in The Happiest Days of Your Life when he unlocked the storm door.

  But it wasn’t Grace. Standing outside on the steps were two men in raincoats and sodden hats.

  ‘We’re police officers,’ said one of the men. ‘We’ve come to speak to your mother and Mrs Jeffries.’

  2. Digging up the truth

  ‘HENRY!’

  Mrs Beaumont had come up to see what was happening. Henry was staring speechless at the policemen.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Beaumont?’ he said, dazed.

  ‘Show these gentlemen into the sitting room. I’ll close the storm door. It’s like Noah’s Flood out there.’

  Although her voice was light, Henry could tell she was worried.

  The policemen hung their dripping raincoats and hats on the pegs in the porch.

  ‘I’m Detective Constable Blakely and this is Detective Constable Adams,’ said the older man.

  Henry recognised both of them. Detective Constable Blakely was the man who had chatted to him at the police station the day his mother was interviewed, but he couldn’t remember where he had seen the other detective.

  ‘Is it about the fire?’ Henry asked.

  ‘It’s about quite a few matters,’ said DC Blakely. He glanced at Mrs Beaumont. ‘Some tea might be in order,’ he added quietly.

  They gathered in the sitting room. Uncle Bill and his mother sat on the settee, clutching hands, Mrs Jeffries sat beside them with Jeffries perched on the arm next to her.