“You ought to be more like your big brother and think on about joining the Cubs or maybe a church group.”
“I don’t want to join anything.”
“I don’t want to join anything.” She mimics Tommy, and smiles at Ben, who chuckles approvingly. “Young man, you need to get your ideas straight. You’ll soon learn that the secret to life is getting to grips with the fact that you can’t always have what you want.”
Tommy looks down at his plate and carefully cuts the last piece of toast into two, and then pushes some beans onto each bit. He’s still confused and a little bit upset: Why would Ben tell Simon Longbottom that he didn’t have a brother?
“You do know that when we go nesting, we don’t keep the eggs.” Ben carefully places his knife and fork together, and then looks up again at Mrs. Swinson. “We just like to count them, and then we put them right back in the nests.”
“But you shouldn’t even be touching the eggs. The mother bird’s got them all nice and warm, and then you lot come along with your mucky hands and it’s all back to square one.”
“But is it alright to just look?”
Mrs. Swinson sighs deeply, and then once again gestures with the unlit cigarette.
“Your best bet is to just leave nature be, that’s what I think.”
It is now Tommy’s turn to put his knife and fork together at attention and push the plate slightly away from himself.
“Well, what do you say?”
They both chorus, “Thank you, Mrs. Swinson.”
“That’s right. I hope I’ll not have to ask in future. Now then, we’ve heard all about Ben’s day at school, what about you? Before you go down to the basement to watch telly, I’d like to know what you’ve both been up to.”
“Tell her about the watch.”
He glares at Ben, who smiles weakly and then turns away and won’t meet his eyes. Mrs. Swinson pauses before striking a match on the box.
“Well, what watch is this?”
“Tommy was telling me about a watch, but I reckon I must have heard wrong.”
He suddenly feels angry, but he keeps his focus on the now-empty plate as Ben begins to stammer.
“I don’t think I can have heard him right.”
His brother is making it worse. Mrs. Swinson slips the cigarette back into the box, and then leans to one side so that she can place the saucer that she was using as an ashtray on top of the Aga.
“Well, Ben, either there is a watch or there’s not a watch. Which is it?”
“I don’t know,” mutters his brother, which is the daftest thing he could have said, for now Mrs. Swinson has the bit between her teeth.
“Have you seen the watch, Ben?”
“Yes, Mrs. Swinson.”
“Then you’ve told a lie, for you know full well there’s a watch. Telling lies is a sin, but, as the vicar will tell you when he hears about this, we’ll not be the ones judging you. We’re all of us accountable to higher powers.” She pauses. “Well? I, for one, would like to see the watch.”
His brother’s world is collapsing. The club on Thursday. Nesting. Simon Longbottom’s dad and the army. Clearly nothing matters anymore because Mrs. Swinson now thinks his brother is a liar. He stares at Ben and wonders why on earth he decided to squeal.
Tommy puts his hand in his pocket and passes the watch to Mrs. Swinson, who is clearly surprised by this elaborate underwater model with an adjustable dial on the front.
“Now then, Sonny Jim, I want you to reason carefully before you answer me. Where did you get it, and don’t be like your brother and think you’re going to get away with any yarns, for I’m not fresh off the boat.”
Tommy wishes that he’d just left it where he saw it and hurried out of the changing rooms, for Ben now looks as if he’s ready to burst into tears.
“Well, I’m waiting. Come on, I don’t have all day to be sopping up your dumb insolence.”
“I found it, Mrs. Swinson.”
“So, you’re sticking to that cack-handed story, are you?”
“It’s the truth. I found it in the changing rooms.”
Ben coughs and puts his hand to his mouth to stifle the sound. “It’s true.” His brother has a scratchy throat, so he coughs again. “Tommy found it at dinnertime, and he was going to report it to his teacher.”
“And how exactly do you know this? Were you in the changing room with him?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Swinson laughs scornfully. “And if I ask you again, are you going to continue to try and bamboozle me with more of your lies? Always the brightest kid in the year, your mother said, but you don’t seem that clever to me.”
Ben lowers his eyes, and the room gives way to a devastating silence, made all the more painful by the triumphant smile on Mrs. Swinson’s face.
“You know, for a moment there I thought I might have got you two wrong, or at least one of you.” Her eyes bore directly into Ben. “But you, Mr. So-called Brainbox, you’re nothing more than a barefaced liar.” She looks now at Tommy. “And you’re a thief. In a fix, aren’t we?”
Tommy watches Ben wipe away his silent tears with the sleeve of his pullover, and he feels nothing but intense hatred for this miserable woman, who is not their mother and never will be.
“Away to bed with the both of you. Tomorrow morning we’ll return the watch to its rightful owner, by which time I expect to hear the whole truth. Am I making myself clear?”
Tommy can hear her downstairs locking up the house. When they came upstairs, Ben wouldn’t talk to him, and he simply got into bed and turned his back. He knows that Ben has nicked a lot of stuff: sweets from corner shops, packets of biscuits from the new supermarket, stacks of comics and records. Ben has even taken money from the pockets of clothes hanging up in the cubicles at the swimming baths. (Ben told him that the teacher lined them all up and gave them a piece of paper and asked everyone to write down who they thought did it, and they all wrote down his name, while Ben wrote down “Colin Green.”) But unlike his brother, Tommy has never nicked anything in his life, and he didn’t nick this watch, he found it, and no matter what Mrs. Swinson says, he’s not going to say anything different in the morning. He hears her plodding slowly up the stairs, and he looks again at his sleeping brother. He and Ben used to talk about everything, but all that seems to have changed. Mrs. Swinson opens the door to their bedroom and pokes her head in. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut until he hears her pull the door to, and then he listens for the snap of the switch as she turns off the lights in the hallway. Maybe things will be different tomorrow, but if they’re not, he’s still not going to change his story. She can call him whatever she wants to, but he didn’t nick the watch.
They stand together by the front door and wait for Mrs. Swinson. It’s obvious that Ben has been crying, for his eyes are all bloodshot, but Tommy doesn’t say anything to him. Today his brother’s school uniform hangs sloppily, and Ben looks as though he needs more sleep. Mrs. Swinson, however, has put on her powdered face as she tries to look bright and breezy, but as far as Tommy is concerned, she resembles a clown, and she smells of dog. She retrieves the black umbrella that’s leaning up to the side of the door and looks daggers at them both.
“Well, have you anything to say before we set off?”
Tommy defiantly gives her the eye and watches her crabby face curdle into contempt.
“I didn’t think so.”
It has rained overnight, and as they attempt to match Mrs. Swinson’s brisk pace, they keep an eye out for the slack water in the gutter, which sprays up every time a car or bus races by. When they reach the school, Tommy sees two older boys in the playground who stand together, bags abandoned on the rain-drenched ground between them, quietly arguing as though their lives depended upon whatever point they were trying to make. As Tommy passes by the boys, he catches sight of their prefect badges, and he assumes they have to get to school early to carry out some duty or other to which they’ve been assigned. To the side of the gymnasium, a
mopey boy of about his own age is kicking a football up against the wall with a hypnotically monotonous rhythm, and Tommy notices that the boy’s school shoes have already been scratched so badly that no amount of polishing is going to help. Only a few vehicles are parked in the staff car park, and being a new boy, he’s not sure which car belongs to which teacher. Mrs. Swinson leads them inside the main school doors and pads her way down the long corridor and knocks loudly on the staff room door.
A grim-faced Mr. Hedges carries his mug of coffee with him from the staff room. When he and his party reach the classroom, he tells the two boys to sit at the two desks in the middle of the front row. Mr. Hedges takes a sip of his coffee as he crosses the room and shuts the classroom door, and then he moves back to Mrs. Swinson’s side, and the two adults look down at them both. Mr. Hedges takes another sip and then rests the mug on his desk; he takes the watch from the woman and fingers it as though he has been asked to place a value upon the timepiece.
“Well, I’m not aware of any boy reporting a missing watch.”
Tommy stares at him, daring him to ask a question. Mr. Hedges turns to the woman with the umbrella.
“And did Thomas tell you where he got the watch?”
“He took a watch that isn’t his. In my books that’s stealing.”
“He found it,” Ben shouts. “She said Tommy took it, but he never did. She’s a liar.”
Mr. Hedges holds up his hand with the watch in it. “Now steady on a minute. There’s no need for that sort of thing.”
“She called me a liar and our Tommy a thief, but it’s her who’s lying. He found it on the changing room floor, and he was going to give it back. Our Tommy just wanted to show it to me.”
“Is that right, Thomas?”
He nods, but he can’t take his eyes from his impassioned brother. Mrs. Swinson snorts, then laughs.
“The pair of them must think we’re simple. I mean, come off it, look at them. Getting the truth out of kids like them is like trying to get blood out of a stone. They’d steal the milk right out of your coffee. Somebody’s parents will have saved like billy-o to buy that watch as a birthday present or a Christmas gift.” She glares directly at Tommy. “You can’t just take it and not expect consequences.”
Mr. Hedges looks at the woman and tries to work out why she’s so angry. She’s not exactly acting like a guardian, but he generally does everything possible to avoid extracurricular situations, which is why he was so taken aback that this woman thought it perfectly fine to come hammering on the staff room door with her loud demands that he listen to what she had to say about one of “his boys.” She points at Tommy. “Honestly, Mr. Hedges, I think that one’s a bit funny in the head, and if you ask me, they both want a good clout to brighten up their ideas.” Mr. Hedges considers the red-faced woman, then looks at the two resolute boys, who sit quietly behind the small desks, and then at the watch in his hand.
“You know, perhaps you two boys should step out into the playground.” He addresses Tommy. “Is it alright if I hold on to this watch for now?”
Tommy nods and stands.
“I’ll have a word with you both, in here, at dinnertime, alright?”
They look at Mr. Hedges, whose stony face flashes them a quick smile as they file past him and out of the classroom.
* * *
Ben and Tommy stand together in the playground. They watch Mrs. Swinson pass slowly through the school gates and then turn left. It has started to rain again, but she walks with the umbrella still rolled up as though she has forgotten she has it with her. More pupils seem to be milling about now, for there are only ten minutes to go before the bell that will signal the start of the school day. As Mrs. Swinson finally disappears from view, Tommy recognizes Simon Longbottom loping towards them with a huge grin on his face, but Ben speaks before his new friend can say anything.
“I’m talking to my brother. I’ll see you inside.”
Simon Longbottom looks thrown, so Ben repeats himself.
“I’ll see you inside. I won’t be long.”
They both watch as Simon Longbottom uses his forefinger to push the wire frames of his rain-spattered glasses a little farther up his nose. Then Ben’s new best friend reluctantly moves off, all the while casting disconcerted glances over his shoulder. Ben turns to face his brother.
“Is Mam coming this Saturday?”
“I think so.” Tommy coughs and then offers further clarification. “She said she was if she can get time off from the library. But I suppose it all depends on her nerves.”
“I know.” His brother pauses. “I’ll see you at dinnertime. And tonight I’ll meet you over by the gates.” Ben quickly gestures with his head. “Four o’clock sharp.”
Tommy hears the bell for registration. However, he waits until the last boy has dashed out of the toilets and in the direction of his classroom. He bends over and puts his mouth to the tap and starts to drink the icy water, and when he’s finished, he draws the arm of his blazer across his mouth. Alone in the toilets, the only noise he can hear is the sound of a broken lavatory constantly flushing and the squeak of his rubber-soled shoes as he moves anxiously from one foot to the next. Today is his second day at this school, but he’s hopeful that it will be better than the first. And it could be that this Mr. Hedges is alright. Not as bad as he thought.
VI
CHILDHOOD
“Leaning on a Lamp-post”—George Formby
It’s years since I’ve seen one of those tellys. They look like a brown ice cube, and all the edges are rounded, and the screen’s a bit like a goldfish bowl. These days you never see them in people’s houses, and I bet they don’t even have them in museums. The old-fashioned tellys are so strange that most people coming across one might well be inclined to think, bloody hell, what’s that? That said, were I ever to clap my eyes on one of them, I’d be fascinated because of the memories it would bring up. I remember watching our set with Mam. Just the two of us on a Sunday afternoon, sitting in the living room of the new flat in Leeds and our Tommy asleep in the bedroom. I don’t know why, but I like to imagine a scene where I’m standing up tall in a cot and clinging to the top rail and peering in fascination at the flickering black-and-white images, but I know that, being six years old, I was sitting bolt upright next to her on the settee, my little legs sticking out, and I had both hands threaded neatly together in my lap as though I was trying to please her.
I remember the Arnhem Croft flat really well, but it sometimes makes me sad that I can’t remember that much about where we used to live in London. I know that it was small, and I’m sure that it had an inside toilet because in those days having a toilet in the house was still something of a big deal. Mind you, I can’t see Mam ever putting up with sharing a privy with other people. She seemed to take a lot of pride in insisting that we might not have had much, but at least we had standards, repeating it like it was a piece of scripture. What I do remember is that in the London living room there was a cupboard with a wooden train set that was stashed away, and I had to reach up and open a door and grab it from a shelf if I wanted to play with it. I wasn’t supposed to do this, but if nobody was looking, I knew that I could just about reach it. I don’t remember ever playing with the train set in Leeds, for after all, we had a telly now. Come Sunday afternoons it was just me and Mam, and sleeping Tommy, and the telly and the sharp smell of the gas fire if it was really cold out. I remember us once laughing together at a film that starred George Formby, who was gormlessly dashing about all over the place on a motorbike. He was funny, and we both loved the fact that he was behaving like a clot, but when the film was over, I’ve not got a clue what we did. Truth be told, I’ve no idea what we’d have done before the film, although I do know that, despite the evidence of a nice new bathroom in the flat, at some point every Sunday Mam stood me on a chair in the kitchen and gave me a strip wash, reminding me all the while that cleanliness was next to godliness.
What I do remember about London is that life was
better outside the flat than in it. Our London street was quite wide, with tall houses on both sides and a café opposite us that we looked down on. There was a wall at the far end of the street, and if you got on your tiptoes and pulled yourself up, no doubt chafing the tips of your shoes as you did so, then behind the wall you could see slack water. I thought it was a river, or maybe a canal, but it was probably just the filthy runoff from some factory. However, as a child, I thought it looked splendid. After all, there was this mysterious body of water, and it was right at the end of my street. Of course, I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t allowed to go to the far end of the street by myself, so it must have been Mam who took me. I also remember going with her to a park that was under a bridge at the end of a main road. The park was little more than a steep, grassy hill that you walked up, and when you got to the top, you could look down and see right into a football ground. If it was a Saturday afternoon, then you could hear the noise and see the little spindly men running crazily around like clockwork toys, and I loved this and used to try and follow the match. Mam would smile and ruffle my hair. You’ve got lovely hair, Ben, but you’ll have to be careful that you don’t catch nits when you start up at school. If you do, they’ll shave it all off, and you’ll feel a right charlie. I looked up at Mam, who would usually be staring off into the distance, and then the sudden roar would tell me that somebody had scored a goal. You like your football, don’t you? And you know the names of all the players, don’t you? I’d nod confidently, but she’d just smile and say, give over with your fibbing.
On the way back to the flat she’d take it upon herself to remind me of the players’ names. Morrison, Chapman, Harvey, Connolley, Adamson, Connor, Firth, Young, Lewis, Appleton, and Smith. She’d laugh and then tickle me. Come on, you big soft lump, I know you can remember them, although come to think of it, I’ve no idea how she knew them. I suppose she must have memorized them from the papers, and she probably thought it was the sort of thing that boys ought to know. She’d make me practise the names till I got them right, and then she’d give me a gobstopper or an aniseed ball as a reward as we made our way back home. Come on, we’d better get a move on. Mam would reach down and take my hand, and with her other hand she’d push Tommy in the pram, and together we’d head off in the direction of the main road, where, during the week, the lollipop man patrolled the crossing when the children started to come out from school. This was the same school I was slated to attend come September. Once, when we were crossing the road right by the school, I noticed that one of my shoelaces had come undone, and so I stopped, and Mam bent down to tie it for me. Of course, in the end, I hardly spent any time at that school because we moved north to Leeds and left Dad behind.
The Lost Child Page 13