In My Wildest Dreams

by Leslie Thomas

  This eccentric man had some memorable ideas. Once, patriotically seeking to help the fight against Hitler, he bought two goats for ten shillings each, having some notion of mating them and starting a small goat farm. The passage in This Time Next Week about the goats has brought me hundreds of letters from children who have read the book, which is set for school examinations:

  Three of us he sent to collect his goats. I've never worked it out yet why he wanted the wretches. Probably because he was intensely patriotic, he imagined that if they had kids (as if he didn't have enough) he would be able to raise a goat herd and thus help the national war effort.

  There was Grandpa, a melancholy youth with spinneys of hair cropping his face, and Frank Knights and myself.

  We claimed the goats from a piggery somewhere beyond the river and Kingston Bridge. The three of us saw the animals for the first time and knew we were buying trouble. One was fawn and white and the other white. Both had pink, sleazy eyes and sniggering expressions. I have never looked upon two more debauched creatures. Unfortunately for the Gaffer's ambitions they never got around to having kids. They were both billies.

  'We oughta brought the cart,' said Grandpa, dolefully regarding the animals. 'We'll never get 'em back.'

  The cart referred to was a sturdy hand-barrow which nominally belonged to the Kingston cleansing department and was supposed to be used by road-sweepers. The Gaffer had borrowed it years before and had never got around to giving it back.

  'We'll walk 'em – like dogs,' said Frank, who was one of the brainy kids in the home. 'Let's get some string.'

  The crook who sold us the goats gave us the string and looked as though he was tempted to charge us for it. We tied it around the stiff hair of their necks and set off on the return journey.

  At first it seemed that it was going to be smelly but non-violent. The putrid pair trotted along willingly.

  'It's going to be simple as anything,' I said.

  'Terse,' muttered Grandpa. 'They're too shagged out, to cause any bovver. Look at 'em.'

  The bother came immediately they saw a trolleybus. It was going at a spanking pace and the white goat tried to get underneath it. It pulled Frank with a swift and decisive tug. He gallantly held the string, but the goat was going to do battle with the low snout of the trolley, and nothing was going to stop him.

  Fortunately the bus driver had good reflexes. He hit his brakes ferociously; the ungainly vehicle skidded and stopped. When it stopped, the goat, horns down, vile glint in the eye, was three inches from death. Frank was only a fraction further away. The conductor of the bus had fallen from the platform onto the road.

  There was huge confusion. Traffic squealing, bus driver in a near faint, conductor rubbing his backside, passers-by giving advice and trying to tug the goat away from the trolleybus. In the middle of it all the goat I was holding, and which had remained placid, had a hearty pee all over my boots. So interested was I in the animated scene that my first awareness of this disgusting act was when the warm water trickled through the lace-holes and soaked my socks.

  I cried out in horror and Grandpa, who was tugging the string of the other goat with Frank, turned and shouted: 'Wot you standing there for? Come and 'elp us.'

  'I can't,' I bellowed. 'The thing's just pissed all over my boots.'

  A man who had been laughing on the pavement sat down on the kerb and began to howl into his crossed arms. Everybody started laughing and Frank's goat, with two little jerky frisks, escaped and galloped away in the direction of Kingston Bridge. A whooping posse followed it, with the elongated Frank galloping bonily in the lead. At the bridge the goat stopped and looked around mildly as if wondering who was causing all the confusion. Frank regained the string, Grandpa held it with him, and I splashed up with my goat which until that time had been more insanitary than violent.

  But there was time. At the centre of the bridge my goat tried to jump the parapet. There was a small stack of concrete tank traps, the sort that were hurriedly mounted everywhere during the invasion threat. They were piled like steps on the pavement, offering an ideal scamper for this goat who must have had mountain ancestors. The creature ended up straddling the stone coping, forelegs over the river, hind legs over the pavement. In a red panic I released the string and grabbed two handfuls of the scrubby, stiff hairs on its back.

  Frank and Grandpa, who were a few paces ahead, turned. 'It's trying to get into the river!' I cried.

  'Let it,' said Grandpa stonily. 'Best place for the soddin' thing.'

  Frank left Grandpa with the first goat and came to my aid. So did half a dozen passers-by, several of whom had followed us from the last performance. A soldier got hold of the goat's tail and the animal began to bleat horribly. A gnome-like lady put down her shopping basket and began tweeting humane instructions, an action which she later regretted since immediately we got the goat down it put one of its back legs into her basket.

  People on the river and along the bank below, accustomed to seeing human heads peeping over, did a double-take when they observed this one.

  Eventually we got it back and having had its moment of glory it seemed satiated and content to be led along. So did the other goat, apart from an abrupt and momentarily terrifying charge at a nun, and we triumphantly led them into Dickies.

  The advent of this pair began a reign of terror. The Gaffer had them set free at first in the fenced-off, grassy area beyond the mud patch. But he knew more about boys than goats. The following day one was discovered truculently challenging the traffic in the middle of Kingston Hill and was returned by a policeman who said it could have caused a messy accident and should be tethered.

  So the Gaffer had the goats tethered. They apparently liked their tethers because they ate them to the last strand and were next found pottering around the grounds of Kingston Hospital.

  Chains were the next deterrent and they were more successful. But by industrious and secret tugging both animals were able to remove the stakes from the ground. Then they would break through, or go around, the fence and fly in fury across the mudpatch, over the playground, through the rooms and corridors scattering boys and staff.

  'The goats are out!' the cry would ring. The Bulls of Pamplona caused no more scattering than this. Shrieks and shouts and tumblings. Down the Death Row passage they plunged once, with half a dozen boys just in front of their seeking horns and a hundred more shouting encouragement from behind. The pursued boys fled through the kitchen and gallant Mrs Mac tried to defend her territory with her ladle. But her bravery was brushed aside by the twin terrors who charged around and around the big table like tribal devils.

  One of them – the white one – found a cloth in which some Dickies pudding had been steamed. It gobbled up the cloth and within the hour it was dead.

  Boz, who had been on kitchen duties and had witnessed the entire drama, related it in the dormitory that night.

  'After it 'et the puddin' cloth,' he said with relish, 'it laid down and sort of swelled up. We thought it was going to go off bang. Then it just conked out.'

  'Fancy being killed by a Dickies pudding cloth,' I remarked.

  'It weren't the cloth,' said Boz scornfully. 'It was the bits of pudding that was sticking on it.'

  The other goat lived for years. Its escapades continued after its partner's going, although it steered clear of the kitchen. In later years it became an embarrassment to a neighbour who would telephone and say: 'lour ruddy goat is in my outside lavatory again.' The goat one afternoon conscientiously tramped through every precious pane of his cucumber frame. He called and said something would have to be done. Mr Vernon Paul, who had by this time become superintendent, with a stroke of native genius offered to give the goat to the neighbour as a present. The offer was promptly accepted.

  It was, of course, more a case of giving the neighbour to the goat. The animal continued and insisted on spending most of his time in Dickies grounds, with occasional-forays into the neighbour's garden, who was powerless to do anything
since it was his goat. Soon he moved house and left the goat.

  The animal grazed and grunted at Dickies for all of fifteen years. It was a dun-coloured patch on the landscape of the home familiar to generations of boys. When it died, it had a good and peaceful passing.

  Life, indeed, was not the sorry thing it might have been. There was another epic occasion when a bronzed Australian breezed in and said he wanted to re-equip the home with sports equipment. Delighted, the Gaffer dispatched several of us with him to Bentalls store in Kingston, where our benefactor purchased football and cricket gear which we bore joyfully back. The superintendent then assembled the boys and we said our thanks with an appropriate prayer and a ragged rendition of 'Waltzing Matilda'. Our cheers filling his sunburned ears, our Aussie friend left. Soon after, the police were with us. The man had bought himself an expensive watch, a radio and other presents with the same cheque and it bounced resoundingly. We, the Dickie boys, familar in our blue jerseys, had been his cover, his guarantors. All the sports gear had to go back except a football which was hurriedly and sufficiently kicked to ensure that it was left with us. The fraud was eventually caught but we wished him no evil. The memory of the Gaffer praying for him and singing 'Waltzing Matilda' was something we savoured.

  The boys who were my companions in this place have reappeared over the years. Some have wanted no memory of it. One boy, who was my close friend, changed his name and vanished. Occasionally I see his younger brother and he has been unable to trace him. The inimitable Boz, cheery as ever, reappeared providently after thirty-five years and helped me get over the sad weekend when my dog had died. Some of the others organised a Dickie boys reunion and later trooped into the television limelight when I was the subject of This Is Your Life. The first get-together, held in a Kingston public house next to the church where we once howled hymns, was an occasion viewed with some apprehension by me. Reunions are notoriously prone to disappointment. But when I entered the room there were so many there who were instantly recognisable although years had vanished. Wives and girlfriends were ranged, passive and puzzled, around the wall and the Dickie boys were in a bunch in the middle. They all looked and sounded the same as ever; the laughs, the jokes, the same rough optimism that had kept us going. The only difference was that we were drinking beer and wearing long trousers. That night we sang the remembered songs, including the dubious versions of 'The Jolly Blacksmith' and 'Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam' ('And a bloody fine sunbeam, I'll be'), and finished with the chorus that we had once echoed as a piece of hope that was unlikely to be fulfilled:

  This time next week,

  Where shall I be?

  Sitting by the fireside,

  Eating my tea . . .

  It was my brother who found me in the end. I was in the bathroom, up to my neck in the murky water which had seen the ablutions of several other urchins, when a letter was tossed in my direction. I failed to catch it and it fell into the water but I managed to rescue it before the words were obliterated.

  Roy had spent some time in the hospital at Woodford Bridge where he was visited by the kindly Martin family from Newport who told him that his mother was dead. His letter now told me that he was then sent to foster parents, a homely thatcher and his wife, who lived in the Buckinghamshire village of Long Grendon. Apart from changing his name from Roy to George (his correct first name) they had helped him to live a happy village life. He became part of their family.

  At once I wrote back and then a plan began to form to 'do-a-bunk' and go to see him. Doing-a-bunk had a long tradition at Dickies. There were some who were bunkers, who ran away regularly, and others who only did it when a need or crisis arose. Some enterprising bunkers had a sort of circuit, spending days making their way through towns and countryside, always giving themselves up at carefully selected police stations of an early evening. The time was important because it guaranteed a friendly supper, a decent bed, even if it were only in a cell, and a full and satisfying breakfast, before being returned to retribution. Some survival experts were able to remain at large for a long time and others escaped to far distances. One boy, it was rumoured, got to Yorkshire on the buffers of a train.

  I was not a natural bunker. From the start I had fashioned a personal defence, tucking myself away in a corner, preferably on some hot water pipes, and getting my head in a book. Once I did conceive a plan to hide in the loft on the dormitory landing, coming down at night to scavenge food, perhaps having obtained a duplicate key to the bread room. I aimed to remain in the loft for two weeks until the hue and cry had died down and then slip quietly away. The loft, however, I found to be icy, hard and running with mice, so I abandoned the scheme.

  When I did abscond I planned it minutely, working out a route to Long Crendon, a distance I calculated of about fifty miles. I took provisions and I had a map. I also carried the half a tin of sweets my brother Harold had sent long before. It was a good time of the year for hiking and I suffered little physical discomfort. One night, when it rained, I slept on the towpath under the river bridge at Marlow, within sight of a house I now have. The last few miles were the most trying. Wearily I turned onto the final stretch of road wondering if I would make it before nightfall. Then I spotted a bicycle in the yard of a police house. I purloined this and rode the rest of the way in wobbling triumph.

  By a poetic chance I actually saw my brother coming across a field as I pedalled into Long Crendon. I shouted to him and he shouted back. The bike skidded and I fell sideways. We ran towards each other and stopped. Boys that we were, there did not seem much to say.

  "Lo, Les,' he said.

  "Lo, Roy,' I replied. Then: 'I've got some sweets for you. Hally sent them. I've eaten my half.'

  Things began to change, as they well might. The Gaffer retired and strode off straight-backed in the direction of Cornwall, with matron waddling at his side. It was after she died a few years later that he returned to Barnardo's in need of a home. The couple were replaced by a stocky man with a grin like a slice of orange peel. His name was Vernon Paul and he was a bachelor. The new matron was a sweet, gentle and hard-working person called Miss Blott. Dickies was all the better for them.

  Vernon Paul had been a Barnardo boy himself, although he was for some reason reluctant to talk about it. When, years later, I interviewed him for the BBC he refused to say anything about his days in the homes and asked me not to even mention it.

  Before he went on his upright way the Gaffer left me with one more memory. I was now fifteen and determined to become a writer. At the time I was at a technical school in Kingston, trying to solve the mysteries of plumbing and building brick walls which collapsed with a sigh. The work open to Barnardo boys in those days was limited. A carpenter, a railwayman or, at the poshest, a clerk in an insurance office seemed to be the best that could be achieved. No one had ever announced that they wanted to be a writer.

  The scene had a touch of Oliver Twist. The boys were in the chapel, waiting for the Gaffer to release them into the playground, and he was showing no inclination to do so. He sat at the front, nodding at his Surrey Comet and chain-smoking (his one indulgence although he occasionally went alone to the cinema). This was the moment I decided to state my case and I stood up at the back and walked tentatively down the Ronuked central aisle.

  'What do you want, son?' he enquired, not unkindly but without looking away from his paper.

  This was it. I took a deep breath. 'Sir,' I said perhaps not as firmly as I might, 'I want to be a writer.'

  He had grown a trifle deaf with age and it was some moments before he revolved from his newspaper. But he always encouraged ambition. 'Good,' he said eventually. 'Well done. I'll see you're a waiter in a good restaurant.'

  The only waiting I did in those days was for girls who never turned up. I was very romantic, and still am, about women. Certainly the women of my boyhood dreams were always pink-cheeked, with a parasol and possibly surrounded by a bower of roses. Humiliation, perhaps not surprisingly, was to be my lot throughout m
y boyhood and into my teens. At one time I thought I must be close to holding the world record for waiting under clocks.

  I confided in Frank Knights, the oldest boy in the home, that I had made a date with a deliriously pretty girl from Surbiton High School. Frank, who was known as Nightshirt and was worldly-wise, enquired if she had a similarly beautiful friend. It turned out she had and we arranged to meet them under the clock at Kingston bus station. Brushed and clean we hung about for an hour and a half but they did not show up so we went and spent the money on egg and chips in a café. It was the first time in my life that I had been out to dine.

  There occurred another far more mortifying experience with a girl who did keep the appointment. She was a snooty, thin thing I met at evening classes (in pursuit of my dream, I was learning shorthand and typing after drawing inaccurate lines, building bad walls and defacing pieces of wood during the day). We began to talk about music and, in a moment of extravagance, I invited her to a concert at the Albert Hall. To my ecstasy and horror she accepted. She would telephone me to fix the day.

  Now she did not know I was in an orphanage and I did not want her to know. This was when Mr Paul had become Superintendent and I was able to haunt the office on the Saturday, waiting for the phone to ring. It would never do for someone to pick it up and say: 'Dr Barnardo's.' Fortunately she called at more or less the arranged time and I was swift to the receiver. I can still remember the number. 'Kingson 0232,' I responded in my poshest voice. Matron put her head in the door and went out again. 'Sorry,' I said and, to explain the pause, truthfully added: 'It was just one of the staff.' Now she thought we had servants too.

  The assignation was arranged. She rang off, saying thrillingly that she was looking forward to seeing me again. Now I had the problem of obtaining money. As a senior boy I was getting half-a-crown a week pocket money and I worked out I could just manage the train fare and the lowest-priced tickets for a total of ten shillings. The sporting Mr Paul advanced me a month's pocket money on account of some fiction I related. On the day, shaking and shining, I went up to London on the train and then by bus to the Albert Hall. There she was. Waiting – for me! As though I took women out every night, I kissed her on the cheek.