He was happy to suck on their knowledge but gave no friendship in return. The only one to whom he warmed was Bowman, who would always defend him when others taunted; this and the way Bowman talked quite frankly to him, doubly made up for the way the older boy ordered him around. Nat started to copy Bowman’s movements, to walk like him, repeat his phrases, dream that Bowman was his father.
Today, as at every opportunity, he clung to the youth’s side as he and a party of boys were led down Marygate to the swimming and shower baths on Esplanade. There was an air of excitement. Old Bramble Conk had promised that those who could not swim would be able to do so when they returned for lunch. In this expectation, Nat strode out beside his friend, bouncing off the soles of his feet in the manner of the older boy.
‘Looking forward to being able to swim, Nat?’ Bowman rarely used the boy’s surname, knowing how offensive it was to its owner. Only when Nat annoyed him did he resort to it.
Nat responded with eagerness. ‘Aye! Can I be in your group?’
Bowman had been assigned to help with tuition. ‘If you like.’
They had reached the end of Marygate and entered the baths, whose doors had been closed to the public at the end of the summer but as it was not yet frosty were opened occasionally to the inmates of the Industrial School. Bowman gave instructions to his group. ‘Get changed, no dirty business, and come straight out again.’
Nat and the others piled into the changing rooms and disrobed. Naked, he felt more vulnerable than ever amongst those who were his enemies and changed very quickly. Even so he had time enough to compare the other boys’ genitals with his own. One of them caught him looking. ‘What’s up, d’you fancy some o’ this, Smellie?’ The boy grasped himself pointedly. Nat tried to leave but a mêlée ensued whence he was grabbed and nipped in the most indelicate manner until Bowman, hearing his squeals, bawled into the changing room, ‘Come out now!’
Nat was last to emerge as the others barged and punched their way past him. Bowman sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re gonna do without me to protect you. I’m off tomorrow, you know.’
Nat stood shivering and nonplussed. ‘Off where?’
‘Into the Navy – my time’s up.’ And with this he picked up Nat and threw him into the pool.
There was a splash, the water closed over his face, then silence as he plummeted to the tiles below… and there he remained for interminable seconds. The devastation of losing his only male friend was replaced by terror. Nothing was happening! He was going to die down here! Air seeped from the corners of his mouth and bubbled its way to the surface. Frantic, Nat pushed his heels against the tiles and by some miracle found himself rising, but the surface was miles away, he would never reach it before he drew breath! His lungs felt about to explode as he burst through the barrier to loud instruction from Bowman. ‘Now move your arms like this!’
Nat panicked and lashed about wildly.
‘Stop panicking.’ Bowman was firm. ‘Be calm. I won’t let you drown. Just move your arms slowly like this and paddle with your legs. That’s right! Not so fast now… good. There you are, you can swim – next!’
Nat realized through his terror that he was still afloat, though now he became aware of just how cold the water was too. Keeping up the arm movements he gradually made his way to the side of the pool where he clung to a rail and gasped for breath, chin juddering. ‘Well done,’ said Bowman, and calmly dunked another reluctant candidate.
Later, when he walked back to the school with damp clothes and chafed groin, Nat questioned Bowman. ‘Are you really going in t’Navy?’
‘That’s right. I’m off to sail around the world, me hearty. S’pose you’ll be gone by the time I get back.’
‘Do you mean you get sent back in here after you’ve been in t’Navy?’
The pugnacious face cracked. ‘No, clot! I meant I’ll just come visiting from time to time, see how the officers are faring an’ that.’
Nat found this incomprehensible. ‘What d’you want to come and see them for?’
Bowman chuckled. ‘They’re not bad blokes. Well, most of ’em. Good or bad they’re the only family I’ve got. I never learned anything till I came here.’
Number eight had never spoken of his past and Nat, though curious, had been too nervous to probe. It was too late now. ‘They can’t learn me owt,’ he retorted.
‘That’s obvious,’ came the sarcastic observation. ‘You’re too cocksure for your own good. With an attitude like that you’ll just finish this stretch and get bunged up for another.’
‘I won’t,’ declared Nat, and repeated the thought to himself the next day when, with a sense of loss, he witnessed the ceremony of Bowman’s proud departure and watched his friend shaking hands with the masters whom he himself loathed. I won’t ever be sent back here. I won’t ever like the masters and they won’t tell me what to do, never ever.
4
Life after Bowman left was dreadfully lonely for a time, not to mention dangerous. With his protector gone, Nat fell prey to Larkin who terrorized him at every opportunity during the following week. The longest week of his life. As yet, no one had filled Bowman’s role as supremo – though there were many candidates – and this left the way open for Nat’s oppressor to do as he liked. He leaned over the table now, inserted his fork into Nat’s sausage and transferred it to his own plate. Nat glared ineffectively, then resigned himself to eating the lonely pile of mashed potato before someone could steal that too.
‘Hang on!’ A boy seated lower down the table espied the theft. He began to clamber over the bench and made towards Larkin.
‘Sit down that boy!’
The order was ignored. Keighley, a fifteen-year-old with fluff on his chin but determination in his eye, prowled up to stand over Larkin. Without explanation he grabbed the sausage from Larkin’s plate.
‘Oy, that’s mine!’ Larkin scissored his legs over the bench and confronted the other.
‘No it isn’t – you just pinched it off him, and now I’m pinching it off you!’ Keighley held onto his prize. Larkin tried to retrieve it.
‘What is going on up there?’ Mr Raskelf’s walrus face peered down the hall, then called to the officer nearest to the incident. ‘Mr Chipchase, please be so good as to sort out the disturbance.’
Chipchase hated these anarchistic episodes, which always ended with injury, usually his own. He went slowly in the hope that it would have sorted itself out by the time he arrived, adopting a conciliatory air. ‘Now, now, boys! Settle down.’
Keighley defended his action. ‘Sir, he’s got two sausages and I’ve only got one little un! It’s not fair.’ Younger boys were now in fits of laughter at the dialogue.
‘How come you’ve got two?’ asked Chipchase. Then spotted Nat’s bare plate. ‘Where’s your sausage, twenty-seven?’
Larkin jumped in. ‘He’s eaten it, sir! Haven’t you, Smellie?’
Nat was to be championed. ‘I don’t believe you,’ replied the officer and turned to Keighley. ‘Put it back on twenty-seven’s plate.’
‘But, sir, he’s only little, he doesn’t need a whacking great sausage like that – look at the totty one I’ve got!’
Keighley ran to his own plate and brandished his sausage in the air, comparing the two.
‘I refuse to stand here with a tape measure whilst my own dinner goes cold,’ sighed Chipchase. ‘Just give him one of the sausages – and fifty-nine, I’ll see you later.’ Larkin glowered.
A triumphant Keighley put the inferior sausage on Nat’s plate, yet once the officer’s back was turned he snatched it up, grinning, and carried it to his own plate. But the episode had sparked unrest and the moment he sat down to eat, another boy grabbed the extra sausage, and just as quickly another boy tried his hand, then another and another. The battle for supremacy had begun.
‘Mr Chipchase, I thought I asked you to deal with the matter,’ objected Mr Raskelf as punches began to fly. ‘Please attend to it straightaway!’<
br />
Chipchase had had a difficult morning and now risked sarcasm. ‘Yes, Headmaster, what would you like me to do – write a stiff letter to the butcher insisting that in future he makes all his sausages an identical length?’
Luckily, Raskelf did not hear this due to the commotion that had erupted into an out and out brawl, involving almost every boy in the school. ‘Go and call for reinforcements! Fetch a weapon! I want every officer here right now!’
‘Yes, sir,’ muttered Chipchase. ‘Every man on deck – shall I summon the cavalry too?’ Ever calm, he made for the nearest exit, having no need to inform anyone for the noise of the riot had alerted officers all over the building and now they came running with cudgels, straps and whatever they could lay their hands on. ‘Ah well, they won’t require my humble assistance, will they?’ smiled Chipchase, and taking the precaution of locking the doors of the dinner hall behind him, he retired to his carpentry room for a smoke until the distasteful episode was over.
Nat and fellow weaklings showed similar expedience and fled to the edges of the hall, where they watched with excitement as the battle for leadership ensued with plates being thrown, benches and dinner-tables being upturned, table legs being wrenched off and used as weapons, blood and mashed potato splattering the polished floor and as many sausages as the audience could eat, before an army of officers waded into the affray wielding blows to shaven heads and delivering broken bones and bleeding flesh until the wrecked hall was finally called to order.
Somehow, there emerged a victor. At the end of the day when the main perpetrators had been thrashed or carried off to the medical bay, word spread that Keighley had taken over Bowman’s leadership. Nat did not know how the vote had been arrived at and cared even less. Keighley had another year to serve. With the barter of food Nat could buy protection against Larkin. For another year he would be hungry but safe from assault.
Safe maybe, but never happy. For all he abominated the vigorous weekday regime, it did at least keep his mind occupied. Sunday was a time of depressing boredom, a time to wallow in the acute loneliness of imprisonment. No one, not even his mother, had told him they loved him, but with her he had at least felt loved. Here there was nothing. He was just number twenty-seven. A no-nowt.
* * *
The weather grew colder. Ice formed on the dormitory windows. Nat got chilblains on his toes and fingers, which drove him mad with their itching; even worse were the ones on his heels that split open and crippled him so badly that he wept when he put his feet to the floor in the mornings. Matron smeared ointment on them but ironically they only improved when Nat fell ill with bronchitis and was moved to a warm medical bay for three weeks.
During the run up to Yuletide Nat felt a new kind of tension amongst the boys, a sense of impending explosion, a feeling of being watched even more closely by the officers. Nervously expecting a riot, he was not to know that it was always this way in the weeks before visiting day – especially at Christmas with all its added pleasures. Any misdemeanour could spell a withdrawal of these benefits, no one was going to risk that, hence the air of apprehension. Informed as to its cause, Nat became infected with nervous excitement. The last few days before visiting day were almost unbearably anxious. He had not seen his mother for two months. Was she still under Kendrew’s wicked spell? What if Kendrew accompanied her? What if the man prevented her from visiting Nat at all?
Christmas finally arrived. In material terms Nat had a better time of it here than at home, there being several legacies from rich old ladies of fruit, plum puddings, money and sweets. Marvellous though all of this might be it was surpassed by the appearance of his mother’s tearful face at visiting time – and, most importantly, she had come alone. Nat was too overjoyed to ask why Kendrew had not accompanied her, and wriggled delightedly in his seat.
Their discourse began awkwardly at first, with her asking was he all right several times and did he get enough to eat, Nat answering both with a yes. With his last response, silence fell between them, both perched there uncomfortably, looking round at the other visitors. Then Maria said again, ‘So… you’re all right then?’ At his nod she laughed. ‘Listen to us. You’d think we’d have loads to say after two months wouldn’t you? Still, you never were much of a talker – come on then, tell me what sort of things they have you doing.’
He shrugged. ‘’Part from the work it’s the same as ordinary school: sums, reading…’
She groaned. ‘Well, I hope they don’t clout you too much.’
‘I haven’t been clouted at all. Not by the masters.’
‘Oh, we can’t have that,’ joked his mother. ‘Come here and I’ll belt you one!’
Nat was forced to laugh and after this perked up enough to tell her more about the school and its inmates. She asked him to point out which boys he liked. Nat replied that he didn’t like any of them. Maria’s heart went out to her son, and she changed the subject. In no time at all the visiting period was over. With the call for everyone to leave, Maria tucked her scarf into her coat and made to rise. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better…’
Nat panicked. ‘Don’t go!’
Maria’s stoical expression collapsed. ‘Aw Natty, don’t make it worse…’
But he clawed at her arm. ‘Don’t leave me, Mam!’
Mr Chipchase, who governed visiting, spotted the difficulty and came over. ‘Come on now, twenty-seven, your mother will be coming again soon.’
No, not soon! It would be two whole months before he was allowed another visit. He clung onto his mother’s shawl as she tried to depart, begging her, ‘Please, please don’t leave me!’
Chipchase tried to prise Nat’s fingers from the cloth but each time he uncurled one the others dug deeper.
‘Twenty-seven, you’ll earn yourself a punishment,’ he warned.
‘Eh, he has got a name you know!’ objected Maria, then begged her son, ‘Nat, let go! You’ll only make it harder on yourself.’
At his mother’s entreaties, Nat finally released her. After she had gone, the little boy was overcome by a depression that kept him awake all night and continued into the next day. Even with his hands occupied he felt it controlling him. He was in the chip shop collecting the oddments of wood when the impulse eventually took him. Quite calmly, he laid the piece of wood that he was holding in a box and asked Mr Chipchase if he might be excused to go to the closet. The officer being a lenient sort, permission was granted.
There was one cubicle with a small window. Nat balanced on the lavatory, tried to open the sash, then heard a steady tapping and looked over his shoulder. Mr Chipchase was leaning against the wall, tapping out a code with his carpenter’s pencil.
‘I shouldn’t bother, lad – it’s nailed up.’
Nat slumped. He gave up trying to force the window and jumped down from the lavatory seat.
‘I’ve been watching your face since your mother visited,’ explained Mr Chipchase, still toying with his pencil. ‘If you knew how many times I’ve seen that expression…’ He shook his head in a weary manner and summoned Nat out of the cubicle.
Nat met him with an air of persecution. The officer leaned forward and touched his shoulder with the pencil. ‘You ought to be thanking me, lad, not hating me. I’ve just saved you a beating. You think it’s hard now but you’ll make it ten times harder for yourself if you choose this path. They’ll catch you and fetch you back and birch you and then you’ll be singled out as a troublemaker.’
What do you know? Nat refused to look at him, sulking.
Chipchase straightened himself and replaced the pencil in the top pocket of his apron. ‘I won’t mention this to the superintendent but I want you to give me your word that you won’t try to escape again. Do you promise?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Nat hung his head.
‘Right, back to the workroom and we’ll say no more.’
Nat went meekly, but was now even more determined to escape. However, he withheld further attempts for the time being. Although Chipchase had not publ
icized his break for freedom, he himself remained vigilant and Nat was left in no doubt as to his surveillance. He was not even permitted to go to the latrines alone. There was no chance of escaping by night for every door and window was locked, but Nat bided his time and pretended that he had settled down.
* * *
January brought an overnight flurry of snow. When, after breakfast, it ceased to fall, a contingent of boys was sent to clear the footpaths. Nat, having been judged after this period of time by Officer Chipchase to be no longer a risk, was amongst them. The work proceeded well at first, until the boys could no longer resist the lure and a snowball fight ensued. Nat saw his chance. When the officer in charge went to intervene, Nat dropped his wooden clearing implement and slipped away.
Familiar with most of the city’s streets, he went directly home, leaving a trail of melting snow on the brown linoleum as he climbed the stairs. There was no one in the parlour. Should he pull aside the curtain and see if his mother was in bed? Would Kendrew be there? On tiptoe he picked up an edge of the curtain and peeped round it. His mother was alone and fast asleep. Relief forced his breath out. Maybe Kendrew was gone. She did not wake. He hovered at the bedside wondering whether to shake her. No, she would be angry. He remained there just looking at her. His concentrated gaze pierced Maria’s slumber. Her eyelashes fluttered, lifted, then lowered again – then flew open and she screamed.
‘Oh, Nat!’ For a moment she could only gasp, clutching at her heart which was thudding like a sledgehammer. Then she railed at him. ‘What the devil are you doing here? You nearly gave me a bloody seizure!’ With a cry of frustration she pulled him to her and gave him a hug and a kiss before thrusting him away so that she could get out of bed.
‘What did you run away for?’ Shuddering at the cold room, she hurried to put on a dressing gown and tied the sash. ‘I thought it wasn’t too bad.’
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