A Wise Child

by A Wise Child (retail) (epub)

  Good job they don’t know I was only a hobo, he often thought to himself, but he said nothing. He was surprised at how easily all the details fell into place and he suspected that many strings were being pulled, after he and Riley had met Riley’s brother-in-law’s employer.

  Premises were found and fitted up, contracts obtained and Sam approached several men from the works who agreed to work for them.

  ‘You can say they’re hand-picked,’ Sam said to Riley.

  They were all older men, who took a pride in their work, and were disgusted by the sloppy attitude of the managers and workforce in the big factory.

  The new venture was a success from the start and was the best antidote Sam could have found for his bitter memories. He rarely had time to think about the past.

  Stan Riley was highly skilled and ready to shoulder his share of the problems and he and Sam worked well together, but Riley often said he had no head for business. He particularly disliked dealing with the civil servants from the Ministry of Supply.

  Sam found that managing the paperwork connected with the business came easily to him and gradually he took over the business side, while Stan organised the work on the shop floor.

  Sam also made frequent trips to London to arrange with civil servants about contracts and soon became more self-assured on these occasions.

  Always, no matter how hard he worked, some small thing could bring memories surging back to Sam. A tune once heard on an outing with Nellie and Tom, a smell of cooking, the sight of a small boy trotting beside his father, would be like the opening of a wound inside him.

  If only he had realised how much he loved Ellie, he often thought. If only he could turn back the clock, but with bitter self-reproach he knew it was impossible. Other women had shown interest in Sam but he never responded. No other woman could take Ellie’s place in his heart, even though she seemed to have forgotten him.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Nellie’s broken arm slowly healed, and she recovered from the deep wound in her temple, but it took longer for Jean to recover from her miscarriage.

  ‘I seem to have no strength,’ she told Nellie. ‘People tell me I’ll feel better when I start another baby but I don’t really want to yet. I feel too tired.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Nellie advised. ‘Wait until you feel strong again. You’ve got your hands full at present with the three boys and Bob not there to help you.’

  Neither of them felt physically ready to reopen the cafe immediately and they decided to wait for a while.

  ‘Perhaps when we feel better,’ Jean said. ‘Because what will you live on without it? You haven’t even got Tom’s allotment now he’s married and what we’ve made from the cafe won’t last for ever.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Jean,’ Nellie said. ‘I’ve still got my little nest egg, as you say, and when that’s gone I’ll get a job. One where someone else does the worrying,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘Will it upset you to close it after working so hard to build it up from scratch?’ Jean asked.

  ‘I was proud of it,’ Nellie admitted. ‘Proud that I proved that I could do it, although it’s been such a worry lately.’

  ‘You proved that all right and it was a real success,’ Jean said warmly. ‘It’s a shame that the war spoiled it all.’

  ‘Yes, but with all that’s happened, Jean, doesn’t it make you realise what’s important and what isn’t?’ Nellie said. ‘And the cafe isn’t.’

  She was quite happy, pottering about her house and visiting or being visited by her friends and working for the Women’s Voluntary Service. Katy had been rehoused in a council house in Huyton after most of Johnson Street had been demolished by a landmine during the May blitz, fortunately while most of the residents had been in shelters or sleeping at Maghull.

  She often came to see Nellie and told her that she was very unhappy in Huyton and her mother Bella who was with her was even more unhappy.

  ‘It’s a lovely convenient house with hot water and a bath and gardens,’ she said, ‘and the kids love it but it’s the noise we can’t stand.’

  ‘The noise?’ Nellie echoed. ‘I thought it was like the country out there.’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said Katy. ‘The time those birds start up in the morning and the noise of them. We can’t get a wink of sleep from before it’s light. Mam’s dwindling away.’

  Nellie sympathised with Katy but she thought to herself that she must write and tell Tom this conversation. It was the sort of thing he enjoyed.

  Jean and the boys and Winnie and Cathy often came to see Nellie and she spent much of her time with Gwen.

  Nellie often went up to the flat to dust and air the rooms ready for when Roz and Tom came on leave and sometimes Gwen helped her.

  ‘I can’t wait to see my girl at home living here,’ she sighed as she cleaned windows. ‘This makes her seem a bit closer somehow.’

  Tom had been moved to Wellington Barracks in London and had been able to see his publisher on two occasions. The book was due to be published in the spring but before that happened Roz and Tom both had Christmas leave.

  They spent an idyllic seven days in the little flat planning for their future and recalling happily all that had happened since the night that they met at the concert.

  Tom took Roz to meet Miss Helsby and there was an immediate rapport between them.

  ‘Tom wouldn’t have had the confidence to write a book if it wasn’t for you, Miss Helsby,’ Roz said. ‘Would you, Tom?’

  ‘No, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to deal with the publisher,’ Tom said with a grin. ‘Did I tell you he thought I’d been to a boarding school?’

  ‘You told me in your letter and I was very pleased to hear it, Thomas,’ Miss Helsby said. ‘I have never approved of the way society is set in rigid layers and my ambition has been to break that mould.’

  She turned to Roz. ‘I wanted to train my boys so that they could speak and behave in a way that would make it possible for them to move at any level of society. To give them the confidence to move in places that were otherwise denied to them, no matter how able.’

  ‘That’s how people are judged,’ Roz agreed. ‘By their accents and table manners and so forth.’

  ‘I don’t envy the rich,’ Tom said. ‘And I’ve no desire to move in society but I want to be able to outface anyone who thinks they can despise me. It annoys me though when God is brought in to it.’

  ‘What do you mean, Thomas?’ asked Miss Helsby.

  ‘I mean the idea that some men are born to wear out their lives in long hours of heavy labour in atrocious conditions, and other men are born to live luxurious lives on the fruit of that labour and God ordains it. “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high or lowly and ordered their estate”,’ Tom quoted grimly.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Miss Helsby, ‘I agree with you, Thomas, and in my small way I have tried to alter that state of affairs, but with little success, I’m afraid. You were the only one who was prepared to work to improve yourself and a young boy I have now for whom I have great hopes.’

  ‘This war will make a difference,’ Tom declared and Roz agreed with him.

  ‘People are mixing now who would never have met before the war,’ she said. ‘Not just the forces but the Home Guard and ARP and the women in nursing and WVS and all sorts of organisations.’

  Miss Helsby smiled at them affectionately. ‘The idealism of youth,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I hope you’re right but I’m very much afraid that everything will revert to the old ways after the war.’

  The conversation turned to other topics but when they were walking home Tom told Roz that he thought Miss Helsby was wrong.

  ‘Things won’t go back to the old ways,’ he declared. ‘We won’t let them. The fellows won’t let them get away with it like they did after the first war.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to change everything,’ Roz said. ‘I had a happy childhood although we were so hard
up.’

  ‘So did I,’ said Tom. ‘I was lucky being in Miss Helsby’s class and having the chance of extra training, and luckier still that Mum let me go for it and gave me money for the baths and toothpaste and so forth.’

  ‘They must both be glad they did, Miss Helsby and your mum, and very proud of you,’ Roz said.

  ‘I’m very proud of them,’ said Tom. ‘Especially Mum, and my dad too. He did so much to encourage me and told me tales about his voyages. I must have been a pest but they never brushed me off. I was damn lucky and now I’ve got you.’

  He drew her close and kissed her before they went into the house.

  Roz told Nellie how much she liked Miss Helsby. ‘I thought at first she was very stiff, you know, the formal way she talks, but she’s different underneath. You’d think a woman of her class would like things to stay as they are but she really wants change, doesn’t she, Tom?’

  Tom agreed. ‘I hope she lives to see it,’ he said. Nellie told them that Miss Helsby had retired but had returned to teaching for the duration of the war.

  ‘She’s worked so hard for her boys. I’m glad our Tom has been such a success, for her sake,’ she declared, looking fondly at him.

  ‘Hey, don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, Mum,’ Tom protested, smiling self-consciously. ‘The book might be a flop.’ But none of them expected that it would.

  Later, as Tom and Roz lay talking after lovemaking, he said reflectively, ‘Remember what we were talking about – that although we were poor as kids we were happy? I hope I’ve been able to bring that out in my book, Roz.’

  ‘I’m sure you have, love,’ she comforted him.

  ‘People of, well, a higher social class, they lump all our sort of people together as The Poor. As if we were all the same, living a sort of animal life, but we know it’s not like that. People in Johnson Street – they were all different and there were grades.’

  ‘I know,’ said Roz laughing. ‘People at one end of the street looking down on people from the other end because they were common.’

  ‘And for all the poverty and the hunger and the awful verminous houses people still managed to get a laugh out of things and they were good to each other in trouble.’

  ‘Kids enjoyed themselves,’ Roz said. ‘I suppose because we didn’t know anything different. I know I used to love all the street games, all the girls did, and the lads. We could always find a way of making a few coppers too and we enjoyed ourselves.’

  ‘I’ve tried to show that in my book,’ Tom said. ‘But you know, Roz, I’ve had my eyes opened since I’ve been in the army. When I start writing again I’ll see a lot of things differently.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Roz asked, snuggling closer into his arms.

  ‘The officers,’ Tom said. ‘Looking at their lives from here, we think they have a great time. All that money and comfort and being able to do what they like, but it’s not really like that. Those young Guards officers. They’re mostly out of the top drawer but when you know more about their lives you’d feel sorry for them.’

  ‘I don’t think I would,’ Roz declared.

  ‘But a fellow who was batman to one of them told me he was talking one night when he was drunk. He said he was sent off to school when he was four. Imagine that. On his own in a strange place when he was four. I remember my dad taking me on the Overhead Railway when I was four and the way he looked after me.’

  ‘Poor little lad,’ Roz exclaimed.

  ‘Then it was another prep school when he was seven, then public school, then Oxford and straight into the army. He was only at home for holidays from when he was four and half the time his parents were away then anyway.’

  ‘They must be unnatural parents,’ Roz said but Tom disagreed.

  ‘Not by their standards,’ he said. ‘The same thing happened to them. None of them know the security and affection we take for granted. We’re the lucky ones, Roz.’

  ‘Well, our children will have the best of both worlds,’ Roz declared.

  ‘I hope so, love,’ Tom said kissing her tenderly before making love again.

  Afterwards as Roz slept, Tom watched her with love and pride, marvelling that they were in accord in every way.

  Tom and Roz were due to leave on the day after Boxing Day and on Christmas Eve Gwen came to stay with Nellie until they left. Gwen was convinced that the war would soon be over.

  ‘I know we were a bit optimistic thinking it’d be over by Christmas 1940,’ she said, ‘but I’ll bet it’ll be over by the summer of 1943. Look how Montgomery has battered them Huns at El Alamein and Hitler’s bitten off more than he can chew with the Russians. This’ll be the last wartime Christmas, you see.’

  They all hoped she was right but were unconvinced, but in spite of that everyone agreed that it was the happiest Christmas they had known. If only Sam was here, Nellie thought, although she said nothing, but she knew that Tom was thinking of him too.

  When the time came for Tom and Roz to leave, Gwen told them that their visit had made her feel ten years younger.

  ‘You feel the same, don’t you, Nell?’ she said. ‘It’s done us both the world of good to see you both so happy.’

  Nellie was fighting back tears as she hugged and kissed them. ‘Please God it won’t be long before you’re both home for good,’ she said. ‘Your gran’s right, Roz. It does us good to see you so happy. You were made for each other.’

  Roz too was tearful as they left. ‘I hate leaving them, Tom,’ she said. ‘Oh God, if only it was peacetime and we could please ourselves.’

  ‘Never mind, love,’ Tom consoled her. ‘It can’t last for ever, and just think. By our next leave my book will be published.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got that to look forward to,’ Roz said trying to smile.

  Before publication day there was even more exciting news for Tom when Roz wrote to tell him that she was pregnant and the baby was due in August. Excited letters flew back and forth between Roz, Tom, Nellie and Gwen and then suddenly there was all the excitement of publication day.

  Wartime restrictions meant smaller newspapers and the publisher had warned Tom that there would be few if any reviews of his book. Tom was surprised to find that there were several, all praising the book.

  A launch party had been planned but Tom told the publisher that he would be unable to spare any leave to attend it. He was determined that all his leave would be spent at home with Roz.

  ‘Leave it with me, my boy,’ Charles Mandred, the publisher, said smoothly. As though by magic a forty-eight-hour pass became available to Tom without prejudice to his leave and he accepted it gratefully.

  The launch party went well but Tom was surprised by the comments of the guests, all of whom seemed to see more in his book than he intended, just as the reviewers had done.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he told the publisher later. ‘I thought I was writing about what it meant to be born into one lifestyle and then to be trained for a different one. To be what an old friend called “neither fish, fowl nor good red herring”. It didn’t actually happen to me. Miss Helsby widened my horizons but circumstances kept me close to my roots.’

  ‘But you took your experience and imagined how it could be,’ Charles Mandred said. ‘As someone once said, “Fiction is fact transformed by imagination”.’

  ‘But these reviews,’ said Tom. ‘I’m delighted with them of course, but they all seem to think I was writing about my relationship with my father. Listen to this. “A poignant account of a young boy’s love and admiration for his father, and his feelings of guilt and rejection when he is abandoned by his father.” I’m sure I didn’t feel that, much less write about it.’

  The publisher leaned back in his chair smiling. ‘That is what gives the book its unique quality, Tom. You went deep into your subconscious for these feelings, feelings of which even you were unaware. That sort of total recall in depth is very rare. What you really felt has come through in your writing.’

  Tom was n
ot convinced but the publisher took a folded paper from his pocket. ‘Read this. It’s the reader’s report which led me to read your manuscript and write to you.’

  Tom read, flushing with pleasure. ‘“A poignant exploration of the mind of an adolescent boy. His dreams and sorrows, his joy in childhood memories and his grief and guilt at the abrupt ending of his idyll. The deep love for his parents shines through the lyrical prose. Eminently publishable.” He seems to be a bit lyrical himself,’ Tom said, adding hastily, ‘but I’m very grateful to him.’

  ‘A most unusual report from any publisher’s reader and particularly from this one,’ Mr Mandred said smiling. ‘He’s not given to enthusiastic reports, so you should be very pleased.’

  ‘I am,’ Tom said, but secretly he was worried about the reviews. He thought that his mother might read them and be hurt, but fortunately Nellie read only the report in the local paper which stressed that he was a local boy who had left elementary school at fourteen years old and made no mention of Sam.

  Tom was invited to a dinner party on the evening of the launch and Charles Mandred advised him to accept.

  ‘Some very useful contacts,’ he said. ‘You’ll meet some interesting people.’

  Tom was not impressed by the people at the dinner party and felt that they patronised him.

  He was glad to return to his hotel room where he wrote to Roz. ‘This seems an awful waste of a forty-eight-hour pass. Perhaps you’ll be out of nursing if I get another one and able to come down here. Incidentally I know how this was worked. Mr Mandred told me my commanding officer was his fag at Eton. Wheels within wheels!!’

  The following lunchtime Tom was interviewed on the wireless as the ‘celebrity in town’. He spoke with sincerity and passion about his childhood in Bootle and the debt he owed to his parents and to Miss Helsby.

  The interviewer skilfully drew him out to talk about the help Miss Helsby had given him, and his mother’s unfailing support and encouragement, then he said smoothly, ‘And how old were you when you were deserted by your father?’