Nicholas Dane

by Melvin Burgess

  ‘Creal says,’ he muttered.

  All in all, Oliver didn’t seem all that pleased that Nick was coming along on one of his nice evenings out, which was a bit mean, Nick thought. Didn’t want to share, he supposed. But he couldn’t blame the younger boy all that much, even though it irritated him. Sharing out his sweets was about the only bit of leverage Oliver had at Meadow Hill.

  Andrews took them across on the short journey from the house to Mr Creal’s flat.

  ‘What’s up, we can find our own way,’ said Nick.

  ‘Yeah, over the fence,’ said Andrews. He jerked his head and led the way across the grass. They followed, looking like a row of ghosts from an old comic book in their baggy jim-jams and tatty brown gowns. Mr Creal met them at the main door, dismissed the prefect and led them up the stairs himself.

  He paused outside the door. ‘You look like a trio of scarecrows!’ he said, smiling at them. The boys laughed a little self-consciously. Tony Creal lifted the key in the air. ‘Right - you can say goodbye to the pleasures of Meadow Hill for a little while. Just remember - what goes on out here is what goes on out here, and what goes on in there is what goes on in there. And never the two may meet!’

  He winked, opened the door and waved them in.

  There was a plate of sandwiches on the coffee table, plates of nuts and crisps and a cake on a table in the kitchen for later. It was friendly and ordinary, that was all. And it was great.

  ‘The Sweeney's on, we can watch that in a bit,’ said Mr Creal. ‘Now get stuck in, you lot! Stretch or starve, that’s the way it is here.’

  They chatted, watched telly, munched nuts, ate sandwiches and cake, then played cards for a while. One moment they were being treated like hardened criminals, the next, they were sitting on the sofa eating Battenburg cake and sipping hot cocoa. Surreal - but wonderful. Already, Mr Creal had found a way into Nick’s heart. He was his only link to what he thought of as real life, his only lifeline back to the real world.

  After The Sweeney, Mr Creal offered round some cigarettes. Flynn, who claimed that he smoked forty a day on the outside, sucked them down like mother’s milk and Mr Creal had to get another packet before the evening was out. Then they drank some beer. Flynn got over-excited and started gulping it down and had to be put on rations, but it was all friendly. They all got tipsy and soon everyone was telling crap jokes and roaring with laughter.

  The only fly in the ointment was Oliver, who wasn’t his normal jokey self, but looked sulky and uncomfortable. Mr Creal did his best to cheer him up, but he just sat there all night looking glum, until Nick was sick of him. It was his only chance in weeks to relax and enjoy ordinary things - why should Oliver spoil it by being miserable?

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ said Mr Creal. ‘Everyone gets like it in this place from time to time. Even me,’ he added, slightly wistfully.

  ‘Yeah, but not tonight,’ said Nick.

  Mr Creal pulled a face. ‘You can’t always tell when sadness is going to call, can you, though?’

  It sounded too deep for a night off. There was time enough to be miserable some other time, as far as Nick was concerned. But he found out that Mr Creal was right soon enough. It happened at the end of the evening, when they were playing some music. Nick had put on some of his own tapes, but it wasn’t one of his that got to him. It was Abba - ‘Dancing Queen’, a stupid song.

  It was Christmas back home, after the presents had been opened around the tree. He’d bought his mum Abba’s album and this song was on it. She was doing a daft drunken dance around the sitting room to it, with an enormous voddie and orange in her hand, warbling, ‘Dancing queen...only seventeen,’ while he wailed at her to stop that terrible racket.

  He’d got a Walkman that year. He remembered opening it around the tree and his mum stooping to kiss him ...

  The memory took him completely unawares and pierced him like a glass shard. Stricken with horror and loss, he panicked. Standing there in the middle of the room with the music blaring away, caught between the past and present... He felt tears coming up and he knew he was going to blub.

  ‘Nick, we need some more Coke.’ Mr Creal was at his shoulder, guiding him out of the room. ‘Oliver, that’s too loud, turn it down, please. Nick, you come with me... ’

  He guided Nick out of the room, down the corridor and into the bathroom. ‘I know,’ he said. He patted him on the shoulder, and suddenly, in a fit of sympathy, hugged him tight to his chest. He held him a moment, while Nick struggled with his tears, then stepped out of the room and left him to his grief.

  Ten minutes later, when Nick came in with a washed face and another four-pack of Coke, no one seemed to notice that he’d gone. He nodded to Mr Creal in thanks and sat back down. He smiled weakly at Oliver. It was true. Sorrow could catch you when you least expected it - even when you were in the middle of a good time. Sometimes, perhaps, especially when you were in the middle of a good time.

  By ten-thirty, Mr Creal was getting anxious.

  ‘Mr Toms,’ he said, pulling a face. ‘I keep telling him that I’ll make sure you lads are safely in bed without him having to worry about it, but he still insists I get you back by ten-thirty and look - it’s already gone past. Sorry, Nick, you’ll have to go. Oliver, Mr Albans on your side doesn’t mind so much, you can stay a bit longer if you like. And you, Flynn. Nick, can I trust you to make your own way?’

  Nick pulled a face. No one ever wanted to be first to bed. Just his luck to get Toms! But he went quietly enough. As soon as the word bed was mentioned he started yawning. He wasn’t used to staying up so late. Mr Creal saw him to the door.

  ‘I can trust you to find your own way back? Of course I can!’ he smiled. Before Nick went, he slipped one of those paper bags into his hand.

  ‘Safe home,’ he said. He waited outside as Nick made his way down and waved as he turned the corner in the corridor out of sight.

  Nick made his way back to the dorm as promised. The prefects were waiting downstairs for him and waved him up.

  ‘Bum boy,’ jeered Andrews, as he climbed the stairs. Nick didn’t care. He’d had the best night for years -that’s how it felt. He had a bagful of goodies - he’d give a packet of cigs to Davey tomorrow. He got into bed, sighed deeply, pulled the covers up to his chin and fell fast asleep.

  10

  The Pieman

  Jenny was devastated. Nick, in a Home! How could she have allowed such a thing to happen? What would Muriel have said? It was awful. Depressing. So depressing that she’d taken to her bed for a day. But then she pulled herself together as always, and hauled herself up. Pausing only to dump Ray forever, she rang Mrs Batts up to arrange a visit, and discovered to her amazement and horror that visits were forbidden.

  ‘Forbidden? You’re joking. What is it, a prison camp or what?’

  ‘Now, Mrs Hayes, Meadow Hill is a hiiighly respected instituution,’ insisted Mrs Batts irritably. The visiting rule was unfortunate. Strictly speaking, Meadow Hill was an assessment centre rather than a Home and in theory, no one was supposed to stay there for more than a few weeks before they were moved on. The no-visits rule was originally put in place after a number of ugly scenes, when parents had travelled miles only to find that their child had already been moved on. Unfortunately, a shortage of places meant that boys could remain there for months or even years. For them, only good behaviour could give them a glimpse of their families.

  Mrs Batts explained the rules as patiently as she could, but Jenny’s outrage was undiminished.

  ‘I shall complain to the Head. I’ll complain to everyone I can. My MP,’ she snarled. ‘He’s just been orphaned, Mrs Batts, and you’re telling me I can’t go and see him?’

  ‘Visiting points are given out easily enough. He’ll be out for the weekend if he behaves himself.’

  But, of course, the weeks went by, and no Nick, no news of Nick, not even a letter from Nick. Jenny made it her business to start badgering Mrs Batts for news, for a visit, and for another chance to hav
e him live with her.

  ‘One paarent families aren’t reeeally the thing, Mrs Hayes, are they?’ she’d pointed out. ‘There’s no man in them.’

  ‘I’d have thought that was an advantage,’ muttered Jenny.

  ‘In your case, maybe that’s true,’ muttered Mrs Batts back.

  ‘But I’m the only thing Nick has,’ insisted Jenny. ‘Don’t you think it’s harsh for a boy to lose his mother and then everything else along with it? Home, school, his friends, everything? At least here he could attend school like he used to.’

  ‘When he used to,’ said Mrs Batts. But Jenny had made a good point. Mrs Batts’ admiration of Meadow Hill was really an admiration of Mr Creal, who was both a formidable organiser and had the charm of an angel -he put her in a flutter every time she saw him. And dedicated to those boys! He hardly ever had a word to say against them, even the most vicious of them. And the hours he put in - his own time, too. No effort was too much for Tony Creal where those boys were concerned.

  It was difficult to believe that Jenny had anything to compete with that level of commitment. But she was persistent, you had to give her that. And the point about school and friends was well put.

  Single parent families very rarely got permission to take on a difficult teenager like Nick, but it wasn’t impossible. Mrs Batts could have fast-tracked it if necessary. The trouble was, Nick was getting on so well at Meadow Hill.

  ‘He’s taken to it like a duck to water,’ Mr Creal had told her. ‘Really - the routines seem to be just the thing for him. Working hard at school. I’m thinking of sending him out to do some O-levels. I’m sure he’s capable of them if he keeps this up.’

  Well - what could you say with a recommendation like that? Mrs Batts didn’t say an outright no to Jenny, but things were going to have to take a severe nose dive for her to ignore that kind of advice.

  Friends and well-wishers were one thing - family was another. Family had rights, and responsibilities too, and Mrs Batts was putting most of her efforts into that direction. It cost a fortune to provide for the facilities at Meadow Hill. Why should the state pay for Nick when half his family were swimming in gravy? The trail in Australia had gone cold, but she was having better luck with the pie side, as she was now calling that part of the investigation.

  ‘Those bloody pies!’ exclaimed Mrs Batts to her colleagues at work. And, ‘I’ll get to the bottom of those pies if it kills me.’ Or, ‘Pies, pies, pies, my life is full of pies.’ She had a sense of humour, did Mrs Batts.

  It turned out that Muriel was the illegitimate daughter of one Daniel Moberley - Dirty Dan, as Mrs Batts called him - and Muriel’s mother, Sarah. Dirty Dan had kept up an affair with Sarah for years, right up until his wife found out about it when she discovered a dry cleaning bill for a number of very posh frocks that she knew nothing about. Dirty Dan had been faced with an ultimatum - ditch the bitch, or face an expensive divorce.

  Sarah had responded to the crisis by getting pregnant. Dan, however, was more interested in money than love, or children. The wife was the cheaper option and he’d gone for her, leaving Sarah with a baby and little else. Not only that, but the first two weeks of motherhood convinced her conclusively that she didn’t like children. Very soon she came to blame the round-eyed little girl, watching her like a goblin from the cot, for all her woes. She lived in a state of perpetual warfare with her daughter for fourteen years, when Muriel ran away from home. Her mother jumped at the first chance of escape, and emigrated to Australia, where she continued to live without any apparent interest in her offspring from that day to this.

  But the Moberley family were still in existence, although they no longer had anything to do with Maggie’s Pies and Pasties. Nick’s grandfather was dead, but a couple of his children still lived on including Michael Moberley, who had inherited the family pie firm and subsequently sold it, living off the proceeds very nicely ever since.

  When Mrs Batts rang Michael Moberley he was not in any way astonished to discover that he had relatives that he knew nothing about - he knew his long-deceased father better than that - but he was curious. One of his father’s old lovers in Australia? No surprise at all. A nephew from his dead half-niece in Manchester? He never knew.

  He was disgusted that the grandmother wanted nothing to do with the boy, though.

  ‘Not even a letter from her for the lad? Not a phone call?’-he asked.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Moberley. She was really quite short with me on the phone as well.’

  ‘Sounds as if she would have made a good match for Dad. He was a right bastard, too.’

  Michael told Mrs Batts he’d have a think about it and put down the phone. He felt sorry for the boy whose mother had died and who, if it were not for a chance of birth, might have been safely and comfortably educated at the expensive private schools his own children had gone to when they were growing up.

  He made a few phone calls. Discussed it with his own children and talked to his brother John about it. John took after their dad and he didn’t give a toss. His children agreed with him, however. No one wanted to actually take the boy on - Michael was too old for that sort of thing and the rest of them had busy lives, children of their own, careers and so on - but they were well off, and there was no reason why they couldn’t help out in some other way... slowly introduce this boy into the family, maybe. Even schooling, perhaps? Something, anyway.

  As a result, Michael Moberley rang Mrs Batts a few days later to arrange a trip to Meadow Hill, to discuss the case with Mr Creal, the deputy there, and see exactly what he might be able to do.

  Tony Creal was in his office ready for the appointment, and watched out of the window as Michael Moberley pulled up the drive and into the weedy car park. A bloody big Rover. Money. The door opened and out stepped the man himself, dressed in a well-cut suit. More money! Amazing. Money didn’t often put in an appearance at Meadow Hill. Who’d have thought it? Mr Creal watched closely as a middle-aged man strolled across the tarmac to the grand front steps and lightly walked up them. Funny, how well-dressed people always seemed to stroll. Or they strode purposefully. It probably wasn’t possible to shamble in a good suit. The cloth wouldn’t let you.

  Sitting opposite him a few minutes later, Mr Creal wasn’t so sure what to make of his visitor. He’d been thinking, business man, loads of money, tailored suits and shirts, expensive cologne, trim, right-wing, help those who help themselves sort of thing. Here was the posh suit all right, but it wasn’t one of those city things, and the man in it was unshaven. There was no whiff of expensive cologne, no shiny handmade shoes, just a pair of trainers. Michael Moberley was smoking roll-ups, his hair was around his collar, but he still, somehow, managed to carry an air of being expensively brushed, dressed, washed and powdered since the day he fell gracefully from his mother’s womb onto the fine linen sheets that had enwrapped his life from that day to this.

  ‘Record producer. Packed in the pies years ago. I even went vegetarian for a while.’

  ‘I quite like a pie myself,’ admitted Mr Creal.

  ‘Take my advice, never eat a pie unless you see what goes in it. Or a sausage. I was in pies for years, I never eat pies. I won’t eat arseholes.’

  ‘Ew,’ said Mr Creal. ‘I’d have thought that would make them rather chewy. Maggie’s pies are always very juicy.’

  ‘Even an arsehole gets tender if you boil it long enough,’ observed Michael Moberley; and they both giggled like schoolboys.

  ‘Everyone’s going to get ill from eating that sort of stuff one day, trust me,’ said Michael Moberley. ‘I got out of pies originally because, well, to be honest, when I was young, all my mates were making pop records, designing the inside of classy London houses and shagging starlets, and what was I doing? Trying to source the cheapest arseholes in Europe. Recycled meat slurry doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as rock ’n’ roll, does it?’

  ‘The music business? Is it lucrative?’

  ‘More lucrative than pies,’ admitted Michael M
oberley. ‘Even I made money and I’m crap, really. You can make a huge amount of money, but people do know how to spend it. I was one of those. A spender. But you know what? At least mass-market music isn’t as bad for you as mass-market food. I’d listen to my pop songs but I was never prepared to eat my own pies. Which tells its own tale. Now then.’ He crossed his legs and got down to business. ‘I believe you have a nephew of mine here?’

  ‘Nicholas Dane.’ Mr Creal shuffled the papers on his desk. ‘Mrs Batts says you knew nothing about him at all?’

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it? Not a thing. Do you mind?’ Michael Moberley took out a tin and started to roll himself a cigarette. A habit acquired from a misspent youth smoking wacky baccy, as Mr Creal rightly supposed. ‘My dad was a bit of a lad. Well, that’s one way of putting it. A bit of a bastard would be another. He gave my mum a hell of a time - and me. Hard but fair, I think they call it, but I can’t see what’s fair about having the shit knocked out of you by someone twice your size. He whacked me and he whacked my mum and I expect he whacked this lad’s granny as well, when she was with him.’

  Michael lit his cigarette. ‘So I’m curious,’ he said, speaking round it and squinting over the smoke. ‘I used to think, you know, how unlucky I was when I was younger? With a dad like mine. But now look. Easy job, easy money. And this poor kid, he could so easily have been where I am and instead what’s he got? Mum on drugs dies in a council flat, no one to look after him, bang, disappeared into care. Shit, isn’t it? So, basically, I’d like to do what I can for him. I dunno. A boarding school, perhaps? Decent education? I can’t give him a family, it’s too late for that. But I can help out with money, maybe ... what do you think, Mr Creal?’

  ‘Tony, please.’

  ‘OK, Tony. Now, how do you think he’d get on with that?’

  Tony Creal stuck out his lip thoughtfully. ‘That’s very generous of you,’ he said. ‘It’s not often that people want to take an interest in what is, after all, a fairly distant relative.’