Perpetual Playground
Copyright 2011 Joe Solomon
Smashwords Edition
Licence notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although it is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support.
ISBN 978-1-905633-11-1
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to print extracts from Robin Askew’s appreciation of Joe Solomon in Venue magazine’s 1998 Honours List.
Cover Design and Illustration – Dru Marland drusilla.marland@btopenworld.com
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Contents
1 School
Martin never joined in the playtime football. He stood, a solemn, bespectacled ten-year-old, in a corner of the boys’ playground, the waste paper receptacle to his left, and on his right, the newly-built air raid shelter. Martin’s corner, the boys had christened it. The building work had left it messy, strewn with cement. But Martin, positioning his feet with girl-like care, went through his ritual of eating sandwich and apple, then wrapping the core in the little bag before dropping it into the container. “I wish you were all as tidy as Martin,” the janitor had said. Chants of Janny’s pet and Tidy Martin had come out of that. A flash of poetic inspiration produced Tidy Martin, nothing to fart in. That one made him cry. “I’ll tell my mother on you!” Not that he did. He couldn’t use that word to her.
“Whatever you do,” she had warned him, “Don’t get too pally with common boys. I don’t want you picking up any bad behaviour.”
There was bad behaviour everywhere he looked here. The lavatories were horrible, you didn’t dare sit down. There were even pee-fights sometimes. In the school basement, the boys would close the outer door to make it dark, climb up on a pile of benches that were stored there, jump down on each other, fight and yell. If Martin had to pass through, he would do so very quickly, almost clinging to the wall. If two boys had a playground fight, the rest would go “Ou, ou, ou!”, jumping up and down in a big circle. The winner would be carried round the playground on their shoulders. No pals here, then. His only pal was Ewan, who lived in the same street, but went to a different school. Martin’s mother had said, “Ewan seems to be a nice boy. His mother does a lot for the church.”
Though Martin never went near a football, one day a football, kicked off-course, came right up to him in his corner. He looked at it, frowning, uncertain whether he was expected to return it or not to interfere.
“Come on! Ball!” someone yelled.
Martin’s kick was lousy, the ball stopped far short of the players.
“Cannie even kick a ball! Hey” – and Fred ran up and kicked it back. “Try again!”
The second attempt was lousier still. “What have you got for feet? Matchsticks?”
“Come on, Martin,” laughed Eric, shooting the ball back to him. “You’ll get there in the end!”
“Hey, what about the game?” said Ian.
“This is a better game,” said Eric.
Hearing this, Martin said, “No! Get the ball yourself.”
They were crowding towards his corner. “Ball, Martin!” “Kick the ball, tidy Martin!”
He tried to rush out, but they blocked him. “You let me through!”
Fred made sparring motions. “What are you going to do about it?” Martin stepped back. They jeered, “Cowardy cowardy custard, can’t fight for mustard!”
Then came what seemed a huge weight landing on his back, a strangle-grip around his neck. He floundered about and seemed to get turned around. He was being pulled down, felt a knee dig into his back. From the mess of cement in which he lay, he looked up into the delighted smile of Pat. Pat’s eyes were shining, his face alight with triumph. Through Martin’s whole being there seared a burning shame. Pat was a smaller boy, in a younger class, he would be eight or nine. His socks had slipped down in the struggle, and his bare legs and his mucky bare knees towered over Martin.
There were yells of “Cannie even fight Pat! Super, Pat! Pat fixed him!”
As Martin started to cry, the bell rang to end playtime.
2 Home
There was cement all over the back of his jacket, and some on the seat of his shorts. Mummy and Daddy would go mad! About the jacket especially, which was new. Daddy had made this jacket at his tailor’s shop. They would go mad and they would ask questions. How could he tell them that a boy, not in his class, but a younger kid, had done this to him? Then it struck him as he walked home from school that Georgina might be able to clean it off before Mummy got home.
Georgina was their daily maid. Mummy nearly always had afternoon tea in one of her favourite restaurants. He would get a snack from Georgina on his return from school. There seemed to be nothing that Georgina couldn’t clean, so she could probably manage the jacket.
The thought of the maid cleaning something for him reminded him of a joke, though it wasn’t one he found funny. The boys at school had got to know about the maid not long after he’d started there, he’d been six years old. Mummy had sent him out to the shops one Saturday, with Georgina, to help with carrying small items. In one of the shops, they’d come upon Ian with his mum, and the boys had exchanged, “Hiya.” At school on Monday, Ian had said, “Your mum’s just like my mum, getting you out with her to carry shopping on Saturdays!”
Martin, not then knowing he shouldn’t, had said, “That wasn’t my mum. It was Georgina, the maid.” The word got around. His earliest torment had been, Martin’s got a maid! Martin’s got a maid! The great joke came when he’d been sprayed with muddy water from a water-pistol: Never mind, Martin – your maid’ll clean it up!
Why, he had wondered, are they being so horrible to me because I’ve got a maid? I haven’t got a maid. She’s Mummy’s maid. What’s wrong with it? I’ll have to ask Mummy.
Mummy hadn’t been to a restaurant that afternoon. She’d gone to see the doctor about an illness called diabetes. She must have just got home because as he passed through the hall to the kitchen he heard Georgina saying, “I hope it went all right at the doctor’s, Mrs Vanskin?”
“No, not really. He wasn’t pleased with the urine test. Still too much sugar.”
“That’s a shame. Did he suggest anything for it?”
“Just the usual – keeping strictly to the diet. He’s quite right, of course, but – oh, it did rile me a bit today! A woman of over forty being lectured on what to eat!”
He knew she was on a diet, but wondered what urine and being lectured meant as he opened the door. “Hello, Martin,” she said, “how was school today?”
“Oh – there’s something I want to tell you about it – but I’ll tell you later.” He couldn’t talk about the maid with the maid there, because you weren’t supposed to talk about people in front of them.
“Well, I’m glad it can wait. Right now I want to take it easy, read a book or something. I’ll be in the bedroom if either of you want me. But try not to want me for half-an-hour or so.”
As soon as the half-hour was up, he knocked on her door. “Come in. Yes, something about school.”
“The boys at school are being nasty to me because there’s a maid. They come at me in the playground and say Martin’s got a maid. Martin’s got a maid. What’s wrong with having a maid?”
Mummy looked upset and her answer didn’t come right away. “There’s nothing wrong with it and don’t let them put it into your head that there is. But – wait a minute – how do they know there’s a maid? You didn’t tell them, did you?”
“I told Ian. He saw me with Georgina in a shop and he thought she was my mum. So I told him she’s the maid. And then –”
“Oh for heaven’s sake! What did it matter if he thought that? What’s it to him or to any of them? Oh – well – I suppose you couldn’t have known what you were letting yourself in for. You see, although there’s nothing wrong with having a maid, some people who don’t have them get nasty about those who do. It’s called envy. That’s why they’ve made it a playground joke. But they’ll soon get tired of it – playground jokes come and go. So I don’t suppose it’ll last long. But be careful about what you tell them. What happens in this house is no business of theirs.”
She’d been right, he now thought, about the joke not lasting long, but there’d been plenty of jokes ever since.
Georgina’s half-peeled potato dropped into the sink when she saw the state of Martin. “Good grief! What’s that muck all over you?”
“Ce–cement.”
“Cement! Good God! What were you doing?”
“Well – there was some cement in the playground and I fell in it.”
“What do you mean, fell in it? Are you sure somebody didn’t push you in it?”
“Oh no, I just – well, I just slipped. Could you clean it off?”
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! I’ve been asked to clean some filthy-dirty things in my time, but never, in all my twenty-five years doing service jobs, cement off a jacket. D’you think I’m a walking dry cleaning shop?”
“Please! If Mummy sees it, she’ll –” The words choked off.
“Yes, she will, won’t she? I think this will have to go to the cleaners. But let’s see what I can do with a sponge and some water.”
Her efforts only made the mess ghastlier. “I’ll have to leave it. It can’t be done this way. I’ve no time, anyway. I’ve still to do your tea and jam roll and then there’s tatties and liver to get ready for your mum to put on. God, it’s soaking wet now as well as filthy. Let’s get it up on the clothes-pulley. It’ll catch the heat from the stove.”
“Oh, Georgina, can’t you try a bit more?” he cried in panic as she unwound the pulley rope.
“No! I’ve no time. You’ll have to face the music. If you get a row, you get a row.” And the horrible mess rose ceilingwards and dangled down. What a sight for Mummy coming in!
“No good standing gaping,” Georgina said. “Sit down and get your tea.” This was hurriedly brewed and plonked before him along with the jam roll and a sticky bun.
He could hardly eat for worry – which would be worse: keeping up his lie about how it had happened or telling Mummy that…? He concluded that they were equally worse.
“You’d better eat all that up,” Georgina was saying. “Mummy won’t like you wasting food. Good sakes, am I supposed to stand over you like a baby? You’ll make me late for my stairs.”
Cleaning stairways in blocks of flats was her evening job. Her customers were ladies for whom the task was too dirty. Once, he had asked why she had two jobs.
“To make enough money, of course.”
“But everybody else only has one. Like Daddy, he only has one.”
“Daddy has his own business, hasn’t he?”
“Yes; but not just Daddy –”
“Martin, it’s not very polite to ask folk about money. I wonder your mother hasn’t told you that.” She had told him that, but this wasn’t fair because he hadn’t said a word about money.
He heard Mummy’s key at the front door. Taking her coat off in the hall, she called through, “Sorry I’m late, Georgina. I know you wanted to get away sharp.” Opening the kitchen door, she went on, “I met old Mrs – The words froze as she caught sight of the jacket. “What in the name of – what the hell – ?” The cheery voice and face were transformed into the tone of rising anger and the glowering frown of the moods he dreaded most.
Seeing her in one of her best dresses, the red one with the black band running down the front, he suddenly remembered how even a spot of milk spilt on a dress would have her tut-tutting and fussily dabbing with her hankie. No wonder she swore when it came to a huge cement stain on a jacket.
“He says he slipped,” Georgina concluded her explanation, “but if you ask me, one of those young devils pushed him in it.”
“Did they, then?” demanded Mummy. “I want the truth from you, now.” She stood over him, wagging her finger.
“Well – you see, the boys were picking on me –”
“Speak up. I can’t hear a whisper.”
Georgina said, “I’ll have to dash off now, if that’s all right. I’m sorry if I made the mess worse. I suppose I should have left it, but –”
“Oh yes, that’s all right, just go. You did what you could. I should never have let him go to school in it.” As Georgina left, mummy looked up at the jacket, and her face changed from anger to what he had come to recognise as fear. She said, “Why I didn’t think…” but it was more to herself than to him. Then she said, “Before we go any further, Daddy mustn’t know about this. After he made it specially for you. Let’s see if it’s dry yet.” She lowered the pulley, looked at the clock, felt the garment. “It can stay there another ten minutes. Then I’ll wrap it up and put it under the laundry pile. I’ll have to take it to the cleaners tomorrow. If Daddy says anything about the jacket, say you’re keeping it for best. Now then,” (sitting down at the table to face him) “tell me what happened.”
Haltingly, he described the ball-kicking incident.
“How did the cement come into it?”
“Well, it was lying there because they’ve just built an air raid shelter in the playground. Does – does that mean the Gerries might bomb the school?”
“Never mind that now! You tell me what happened.”
“Well – when I tried to get out of the corner, they all came at me and I finished up in the cement.” (He thought, Not a lie.)
“They needn’t think they’re going to get away with it! Rage was working up again. “How many of them were there?”
“Oh – about ten or so.”
“Did you hit any of them back, for God’s sake?”
“I couldn’t –” He broke into tears. “I couldn’t fight ten, Mummy.”
“Yes, all right, all right, Martin.” She put an arm round his shoulders, and, removing his glasses, dried his eyes with her hankie. “Lucky those didn’t get broken. The cowards – ten against one! Did you tell the teacher?”
“No. They – call you tell-tale tit if you tell the teacher.”
“Never mind what they call you, we want to have it stopped. You don’t owe loyalty to tykes like that. Now then, I want the names of the boys who did it, because tomorrow, I’m seeing the headmaster, with the jacket.”
Martin’s face went pale as a sheet. In his eyes was a deeply troubled look. She said, with sudden gentleness, “Don’t worry about them doing anything to you, because” (gentleness vanishing) “when I’ve finished with that man, and he’s finished with them, they won’t dare. I’ll take it to the Director of Education if I have to, and I’ll leave him in no doubt of that tomorrow.”
So, in a funny, choked voice, he gave the names for Mummy to write down – Pat’s name and the names of all those who had not got him down in the cement. And he could read their thoughts, in advance, very, very clearly. He would be the weakling sneak whom even Pat could get down on the ground, who ran to his mother and the headmaster and said that they had all done it. But he daren’t change the story. Was there any way to stay off school?
Wrapping the jacket, Mummy said, “By rights the school should pay for it, or the parents of the little tykes, but by the time you argue about it – could you not have used your brain and seen that you shouldn’t wear your best new jacket to school? Have I always got to do your thinking for you?”
“No.”
“Well, it looks like it. With a mess like this, they’ll charge extra. Goodness knows where the money’s to come from! You’ll have to make do on your pocket-money from Daddy from now on. No coming to me for extra. And that silly comic of yours can be cancelled. It’s time you were reading books, not comics, anyway.”
“I do read books. I’ve got Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson out of the library.”
“Then it’ll be books only! Then maybe you’ll get them finished in time! There was a fine on the last one. How much money is to go draining out of this house because you won’t use the brains God gave you, I don’t know.”
“Mummy, you know the school Ewan goes to, Linenhill? They’re not tykes there, because some of the boys were at his birthday party, and they’re nice. So I could go to Ewan’s school.”
“Could you indeed? Could you indeed?” As he gaped, she went on, “That is impossible. Let’s hear no more about it.”
“But – but – why’s it –”
“If I say it’s impossible, it’s impossible. Don’t you cross-question me! Set the table. Daddy’ll be in any minute.”
In the pantry, as he gathered plates, angry, bewildered thoughts raced through his mind. His older brother, Ted, as a boy, had gone to Linenhill. If it had been possible for Ted, why was it impossible for him? He must look out for a chance to ask Ted next time he came round with his wife, Pearl. How soon would that be, he wondered. Ted was an engineer with the BBC and travelled a lot, never allowed to say where, or when he would be back. It was important work; people in that job didn’t get called up for the Forces.
As he laid the pile of plates on the table, Mummy caught sight of the cement on the back of his shorts. “God! Those too! Get them changed double-quick before your father’s on us. Oh, get on! I’ll finish the table.”
But, as he ran through the hall to his bedroom, his father was on him. “Hallo, Martin. Where are you rushing to helter-skelter?”
“Oh – to – to change my trousers.”
“Change your trousers? Why?”
“I – I got them dirty.”
“Yes, you certainly have. What on earth is that mess?”
“I – well – they rubbed against something dirty – somewhere.” (He thought, Not a lie.)
“H–mm. If you looked where you were going sometimes, that mightn’t happen. They’ll need dry cleaning from the look of them Hurry up, then. You’ve got my feet to do before tea.”
This meant taking Daddy’s shoes off when he got home from work and briskly rubbing his feet to help what he called his circulation trouble, which made it difficult and tiring for him to walk. Though he took a tram most of the way home, the short journey from the tram stop was long and hard for him.
From time to time, Martin wondered if Daddy wouldn’t be better to do what Mummy thought he should do – work less hard. She’d once said over supper “Don’t you think you could take things a bit easier? You’re sixty-seven, after all. Supposing you didn’t open the shop on Saturday mornings and took a day off mid-week?”
“You should know better than that, Sal. The lifeblood of the business is its regular customers. If I had to turn away some of their orders and take longer to do the jobs, I’d soon lose them.”
“You know best about that, of course. But for just a day-and-a-half, couldn’t the staff keep things ticking over?”
“We need to do better than tick over. They’re conscientious, but not fully experienced. I have a sleep on Saturday afternoons and I walk easy distances at other times. So I do take things as easy as the situation allows.”
Martin now rushed to change his trousers and get back to the kitchen where he took up his position for the feet-rubbing job, sitting on a low chair, the feet resting on his thighs. Daddy remarked, “I hope your new jacket hasn’t rubbed against anything dirty?”
“No,” said Mummy, draining potatoes, “he’s keeping it for best.”
“Sensible boy.” Daddy took up the Edinburgh Evening News and ran his eye over the front page. “Grim! There’s no stopping the Germans.” No one was supposed to touch the paper before Daddy, which had once got Martin into trouble. Wondering what was so special about it, he had quickly skimmed through the pages. Finding he couldn’t understand most of it, he had re-folded it, but some loose middle pages fell out as he did so. He failed to put them back in the right order. Daddy didn’t notice at first, but then turned a couple of pages and said to himself, “Continued on page 4? Doesn’t seem to be – oh!”(as he turned another couple) “why the devil is it – ? Martin, have you been messing about with my paper?”
“No.” Nothing more was said about it till after supper, when Martin went off to the front room to do his homework. He’d hardly started before Daddy barged in upon, saying, “I’ve found out that Mummy didn’t touch the News and that it didn’t arrive till after Georgina had left. So who else but you could have touched it?”
Martin paled, bit his lip, and said, “The paper-boy… he must have done it.”
Daddy said, “No.” The scorn he put into that word gave Martin the worst fright he’d ever had. Though he didn’t keep up the scorn sound, every word he went on to say added to Martin’s shame. “You know that lying is wrong. That lie was more wrong, much more wrong, than interfering with the paper. Supposing I’d believed your story and complained to Wilkinson’s about their paper-boy? It wouldn’t have worried you that someone else might get into trouble? So long as you aren’t found out, that’s all that matters, is it?”
All that he could think to say was, “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, sorry that it didn’t work. I’m very disappointed in you, Martin.”
“No, Daddy, I didn’t mean –”
“Get on with your homework. I’ve heard enough of you.”
It hadn’t been easy to get on with…and now another night with too much to worry about. He thought, I must try to keep my mind on the homework after supper – not think about anything else.
The meal was begun as soon as Daddy’s feet had been rubbed and he had settled into his slippers. Mummy asked, “Busy day, Neville?”
“Not too bad. Could be better, could be worse. Have you had a busy day?”
“Oh, the usual. Bit of shopping in town. I got you that wall-map you wanted.”
“That’s good. Thanks, Sal. By the way, Lorna Ross was in to pick up Allan’s suit. She said she’d seen you in the R.B. Hotel tea-room.”
“Oh. Really.” Martin noticed the quick breath Mummy took, the sudden flush, the pretend-calm voice she had when she was afraid of what Daddy would say next. “I didn’t see her.”
“She was with some friends and didn’t get a chance to come over. Expensive place, I believe?”
“Oh – well! It all depends on what you have. If you weren’t careful about what you ordered, it would be. But all I had was tea and a toasted teacake. I couldn’t go having cream cakes and things, anyway. There’s my diet.” She glanced suddenly, uneasily, at Martin. He lowered his eyes to the task of cutting meat.
“Yes,” said Daddy thoughtfully. “That’s another thing.”
Mummy changed the subject. She talked away, but Daddy said little. Martin hoped he wouldn’t bring the talk back to tea-rooms. Sometimes on Saturdays and in school holidays, she had taken him to these places. And she always had cakes. He’d been told not to tell Daddy about these teas – “He’s a bit of a fad about food, and – well, he wouldn’t approve and it’s better if he doesn’t know.”
Martin had picked up enough about Mummy’s diet to know that she shouldn’t be having cakes. He had puzzled about it, but… well, she did have them… he mustn’t tell Daddy.
He had found that this wasn’t so easy. It came about as he and Daddy were walking to church on the Sunday after the newspaper row, which was still on his mind. Mummy stayed home, on Georgina’s day of rest, to do Sunday dinner. The church was at the end of their street, but it was a slow walk because of Daddy’s difficulty. “Cheer up, young man,” he said. “You look as if you’ve got the troubles of the world on your shoulders.”
Martin forced a smile. Daddy asked, “Did you have a nice day out with Mummy yesterday?”
“Yes, it was all right.”
“Tell me what you did. All the things I was missing. Make me jealous!” This was Daddy in a good mood – Martin felt the great weight of disgrace lifted away.
“Well, we went to Princes Street Gardens. And there was a band playing. Then we went to the pictures.”
“Good film?”
“All right. Carmen Miranda was in it. She has flowers and fruit and feathers all over her and she dances in it all. She’s a laugh. I didn’t understand the rest of it.”
“You probably weren’t missing much. Go for a cup of tea afterwards?”
Martin, caught between Mummy’s instructions and what Daddy had said about lies, didn’t know how to answer. Daddy repeated, “Go for some tea somewhere?”
He replied, “Yes, we went for some tea,” in a tight, troubled voice.
Daddy looked at him and frowned slightly. Then he said, “Well, it sounds like you had a very nice day. Good!”
Martin couldn’t concentrate on the service. Don’t tell Daddy was all very well, but what were you to do if Daddy asked you? He hadn’t dared lie, but would Mummy come screeching at him for telling? He caught the minister’s words: “Jesus always had the right answer.” Martin thought, Jesus didn’t live in my house and laughed inwardly, despite himself, though you weren’t supposed to think things like that.
What if Daddy, another time, were to ask: “And what did you have with your tea?” Or “Did you have cakes?” He worked out an answer which wouldn’t be a lie, but would, he hoped, put Daddy off the scent – “I had a couple of cakes.” But wouldn’t it be like a lie to say it like that? No, he decided, the words aren’t a lie.
He’d found something worth knowing – you could sometimes get out of telling a lie by doing things with words.
3 Homework
Martin’s thoughts kept wandering off his sums. He was in the front room, which no one else used unless there were visitors. Was there any way to escape school? He dreaded the looks he’d get and no one speaking to him except for sneak being hissed. Pat would give him a cheeky look, there’d be a smile, there’d be that shine in his eyes. There’d be a swagger in his walk.
Martin’s thoughts went to what Pat was doing now. He’d be feeling proud of himself, maybe telling other kids how he’d got him down (“He’s ten, I’m eight”), down in a pile of cement. And Pat would laugh. “I got my knee in his back and that finished him off!” He’d bring his knee up as he said that, look at it. Whew… it would feel good inside of Pat, looking down at his knees every so often and remembering. Pat… naughty, strong little boy. Martin felt a tingle all through his body, and most of all in the part Mummy always said it wasn’t nice to mention. He listened to make sure there were no footsteps, rubbed quickly, then got back to the sums.
I know how to do them, but I keep forgetting what they tell you in the question, he thought, biting his pencil. I suppose I’ll have to go to school. If I said I wasn’t well, it’d be a lie, and that’s wicked. He remembered that Mummy had told Daddy two lies that night – about the jacket and about cakes. Did that mean – Mummy – was – wicked? Oh no, it was wicked to think that, Mummy couldn’t be. But then, spending lots of money on cakes she shouldn’t have and never telling Daddy… no, no, no, she couldn’t be wicked, it was just that she was frightened of Daddy sometimes. He was very strict, and when he got angry, well, it was frightening. Not that Daddy had often hit him, he hardly ever did that, and when he did, it wasn’t very sore, but when you got a row from him, you felt – well, like that time with the paper. If he ever found out about the cakes, he would make Mummy feel like that time with the paper.
The sums! The first train is travelling at forty miles an hour, he drummed into himself. If I did say I was ill, they might get the doctor. He’d know I wasn’t. Could he make himself ill? If he swallowed something – like that white stuff in the tool cupboard, maybe – or furniture polish – just a wee drop, of course. Well, didn’t know how ill he’d get. Falling, somehow, breaking his leg? Difficult – might break his neck and die.
What about running away? In the stories he’d read, boys in trouble often ran away to sea. But the Navy would never take him, and even if they did, the Gerries might blow him to bits. He had no great-aunt, like David Copperfield’s, to take him in and send him to a nice new school. He thought desperately of asking Ewan to hide him in his house, smuggle food and drink to him. But Ewan’s mother would be sure to find him…
Couldn’t he catch a bad cold? That would be the easiest. Oh, yes – yes! There was a way… they’d never know. And if the cold lasted for a week, it would be school holidays, and a good, long escape from the boys, from Pat. Cowardy-cowardy-custard, cowering away from Pat. With a shiver and a frown, he wrenched his thoughts back to the sums, which had to be done in case the idea didn’t work.
4 Bedtime
While the bath filled, he waited in the kitchen in his dressing gown. Mummy said, as she always did at bathtime, “Make sure it’s not too hot before you get in.”
“Yes, Mummy.” He was making surer than she knew. Only the cold tap was running.
“Not too much water,” said Daddy. “There’s a war on. Five inches is supposed to be enough.”
“Oh – should I take a ruler?”
“No,” Daddy laughed. “You’re worse than the Ministry people. You can have a bit more than five inches, but I should think you’ve got it by now.”
“And be quick about it,” said Mummy. “I’ll be doing your hot milk shortly.”
“Oh, Mummy, could I have Bovril instead, please?”
“Bovril? Why do you want Bovril?”
“Well – it’s good for you – makes you strong.”
“So is milk good for you, for heaven’s sake. No, Bovril is not a bedtime drink. Milk is.”
He lay flat in the cold water, careful not to whew or puff too loudly. He submerged his head several times. He sneezed twice. Gosh, this was working… Once out, he dried the surface of his hair. It couldn’t be dripping wet.
Trust Mummy to feel his hair! “It’s wringing wet! I’ve told you you should always dry your hair thoroughly.”
“Er – I’m going to take the towel to my room.”
“Why not do it here in front of the fire? Then the heat will do half the work.”
So he went through the motions – a good performance, aided by mummy’s concentration on the milk and Daddy’s on the nine o’clock news on the wireless.
Kneeling at his bedside, Martin said an additional prayer to those asking for Mummy and Daddy to be blessed and sins forgiven.
“Please help me to get this cold – not a very bad one, but enough to keep me away from school. Please make me strong so that I can fight the tykes. If the cold keeps me off school, I’ll drink plenty of Bovril all the time and all through the holidays and I’ll ask Ted if he’ll teach me to box. Please, God, it would be a much nicer world if there were no common tykes in it –” He stopped in horror. You couldn’t ask God – that. Even with the Jerries, you prayed for victory over them, but you didn’t ask God that. Well, he hadn’t really asked it, but he’d thought it, so the thought had got into the prayer and gone up to God. Martin prayed the word never to cancel out the thought. But the thought-prayer kept coming back, needing a cancelling never each time. Then he saw a way out of it. He said, “Please, God, I say never to all the thoughts like that, past, present and future. I don’t really mean them. Amen.”
In bed he pretended to be asleep until after Mummy had opened the door and had her quick peep before she and Daddy went to bed. Then he crept to the window and, with great care, raised the blind and opened the window as far as it would go. He took off his pyjama jacket and vest, wondered if he should shed his pyjama trousers too, but no, that wasn’t a nice thing to do. Then he sat at the window. Good, there was a chilly breeze. It was summer, but the nights could still be cold. It was the last few minutes of daylight. He could pass a wee bit of time by watching for the exact moment when it disappeared.
His window looked out on a little playpark with swings and a few trees and, beyond that, a pitch-and-putt course. The familiar, pleasant view soothed him a bit. Where they lived was known as a nice area. This wasn’t as good as a select area, but much better than a rough area. He was glad not to live in one of them – there was enough roughness at school!
The house was one floor up in a block of tenement flats. Most people, in both nice and rough parts of Edinburgh, lived in tenements. The only time he’d seen inside a rough tenement was when Georgina had been sick and Mummy had sent him with a parcel of fruit for her. On asking if he could use the toilet, he’d been directed to a sort of cubbyhole out on the landing which she shared with two other households. “There’s no bath in there,” he had remarked. “Where do you go if you want to have a bath?”
She’d told him firmly, “A tub full of hot, soapy water is just as good as a bath.” He’d never tried one, so he didn’t know, but if it was, why did builders bother to put baths in other houses?
Watching the dusk deepen, he thought, the trees get like big shadows in the dark. And you wouldn’t know the swings were there if you didn’t know. That sounds wrong. A sentence to correct, like what you got at school sometimes. Had a school of his own, sitting there, exercises and all! A stranger in the dark would not see the swings. Aye, but anyone in the dark… Losh, he’d missed the daylight going!
He wished he could put on the light and read while he caught his cold, but he didn’t dare in the blackout – even a torch could bring an Air Raids Precautions man knocking on your door. One of them would be passing by sometime. Best if he didn’t have his face at the window then, as the man was likely to be a crony of Daddy’s. Daddy had been in the A.R.P. till Mummy had made him give it up. It had been the one time when she had given Daddy a row. “It’s ridiculous,” she had said. “Someone of your age and in your state of health dragging yourself round the block. And I suppose if you saw a light in a top flat, you’d go climbing up the stairs! There’s no one, except yourself, who expects it of you. It’s bad enough, what’s going to happen to the young men in all of this.”
The breeze was becoming a wind, rain had started, sprays of it blown through the window. Would the damp on the floor and chair be noticed? Early in the morning, he’d better find a cloth and wipe them. Hyoo, all night shivering and getting wet! Wasn’t fair! Ewan didn’t have to do this. Ted had never had to do this. The tykes who knew how to fight didn’t have to do this. Only he had to do this. And when he asked about going to Ewan’s school, he was told to shut up. He whimpered, Why was I born? Why was I born?
He sneezed. Stupid! Left my hankie under the pillow. He dashed to get it, then back to the window. Another sneeze – and another – a fit of sneezing. They might hear, Mummy come fussing in with an aspirin or something. He closed and blinded the window, got into bed. He thought, Gosh, I’m tired! More than tired – exhausted. He slept instantly.
5 Warning
In the morning, he was running a fever. “I’ll phone the doctor on the way to the school,” said Mummy.
“Will you be telling the headmaster I’m ill?”
“I certainly will. He’ll be ill when he’s heard me out! Now, you try to doze off. You’ll be all right once the doctor’s been. He’ll know what to do.”
He woke up to hear her returning from her trip to the school. He waited for her to come and tell him what had passed, but the bell rang and, when she came in, it was with Dr Orgreave. He had been the family doctor since before Martin was born. He had a pleasant, sort of soothing voice. After pulse and temperature taking he said, “It’s nothing too serious, just a slight fever. Now, Martin, I’m going to give you a wee injection in your thigh. You’ll feel a bit of a scratch, maybe just a wee bit sore, but not too bad. No, don’t stiffen yourself. Try and lie easy.”
Martin kept his eyes off the doctor’s hands and on his black and grey hair. Might just catch one turning grey!
After his injection, the doctor said, “You were very brave, Martin.”
“Brave?”
“Yes. Lots of children don’t take it nearly so well, even some who are older than you.”
Mummy asked, “Would you like a cup of tea, doctor?”
“That’s very nice of you, Mrs Vanskin.”
“Can I have one too?” put in Martin.
“What do you say?”
“Oh – please.”
“Trust him not to miss a trick,” she remarked. “Will it be all right just after the injection?”
“It won’t do him any harm,”said the doctor. “Anyway, he deserves one.”
As Mummy left for the kitchen, Dr Orgreave, returning equipment to his bag, remarked, “I see you’re reading Kidnapped. Enjoy reading, do you?”
“Yes. I’ve nearly finished it. It’s a good job it’s shorter than David Copperfield, because I got a fine on that. Mummy was angry.”
“You can renew the books if you need more time, you know.”
“Yes, I know, but I forgot.”
“You forgot? Getting on all right at school?”
A slight pause before Martin said, “I passed the class exam. The big exam’ll be coming up next year, the Qualifying Exam. We’ve just started working for it.”
“H–mm. Are you a bit worried about being off, then?”
Slight pause again, and Martin stated, “Well, it’s only a week to the holidays.”
“How do you get on with the other children?”
“We–ell –” Martin found he had to swallow hard.
“Bit rough there sometimes?”
But Mummy bustled in with the tea and talked of other things. When the doctor had gone, she told Martin, “He said it should clear up in a week or two. You’ve to rest and stay warm. Georgina will be in with a spot of lunch for you soon and a jug of blackcurrant juice. You’ve to drink plenty of that.”
“Oh, could I have Bovril instead – please?”
“Bovril? You seem to have Bovril on the brain. Georgina hasn’t got time to keep making Bovril for you. She’s got the laundry to do today, and I’ve still got some shopping to do. With blackcurrant you can have another drink whenever you want. A jug of Bovril would soon go cold.”
“What if Bovril was put in the flask? It’d stay hot then, wouldn’t it?”
“And have the flask tasting of Bovril for evermore? Ah, you’d complain then, wouldn’t you, next time there was a picnic? ‘Mummy, Mummy, the tea tastes funny.’ No, you’ll have blackcurrant and like it. And don’t be bothering Georgina for anything unnecessary. She’ll be busy.”
“All right. Did you see the headmaster?”
Unexpectedly, Mummy’s face brightened. “Yes, and he’s a very charming man. I was surprised. Gave me a cup of coffee in his office. ‘Do have a cup of coffee, Mrs Vanskin,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure we can get all this sorted out.’ I bet he won’t be so charming to those little tykes of his. He’s too nice a man to have to work in a school like that. Now, I’ve got to go.”
The blackcurrant was nice, but he’d have to find times when the coast was clear to make himself Bovril. Fancy Dr Orgreave calling him brave! That couldn’t be right. He was just saying it to soothe me after the injection. He finished his drink and tried to sleep. I’m cowardy-cowardy-custard, cowering under the bedclothes from Pat. All those thoughts about Pat came rushing in. Martin turned over onto his stomach.
He didn’t expect Georgina to come in, but she did, in search of stray dirty garments. “Martin, what are you doing?”
“Oh – nothing, – sleeping.”
“You weren’t sleeping! That’s a very naughty thing to do, Martin. And when you’re ill, too! Your mummy won’t like this.” She snatched a shirt from the wardrobe and glared at him as she passed his bed on her way out. “You’d better stop that, do you hear?”
“Georgina tells me she caught you fiddling.” Mummy stood very stiffly over the bed. She spoke that word with disgust. “Now that’s something you must never do, Martin. It’s very wrong to your own body, very dangerous. You want to get better, don’t you?”
“Y–ye–”
“You never will if you do that. You’ll get much worse. Boys who do that go mad. They finish up in the lunatic asylum. So you see why it must never occur again. I want you to promise me that it won’t. It is very wicked.”
His voice wouldn’t come. His lips shaped, “I promise.”
“If either Georgina or I catch you fiddling…” She stood awhile, frowning down at him. Then abruptly she left him on his own. Her unspoken words seemed to loom over him.
He remembered the scraps he had heard about the lunatic asylum. It was where the screwy people went. They talked to themselves. Some thought they were Napoleon. He knew there was, or had been, some kind of second cousin who had gone there, and had sat, all the time, looking at himself in a mirror. Mustn’t think about Pat…
Would Daddy be told, and come…?
He picked up Kidnapped, but couldn’t take in a word.
There was no row from Daddy, nor did Mummy say more, though, during his period in bed, she or Georgina popped in and out of his room quite a lot. What Daddy did say was, “Keeping your mind active, are you? Not sleeping all the time?”
“Oh, no, I’ve got things to read.”
“Good. Always keep your mind active. And, when you get better, make sure you keep your body active too. An active mind and an active body are very important.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
Next day, passing the kitchen door on his way to the lavatory, he overheard Mummy say something to Georgina about keeping an eye on him, adding, “His father said if he does that he might as well destroy himself.”
6 Ted
Next day, Ted and Pearl called. Pearl tapped on Martin’s door, saying, “May we visit the patient?”
Martin cheered up a little.”Yes, come in.” They made the kind of entrance that he always found a laugh – Pearl, a small woman, in front with a cheery smile, Ted, a lot taller, stooping over her with a mock scowl and blinking over his glasses at Martin. Ted stage whispered to Pearl, “No good giving him sweeties if he’s ill. Doctor won’t allow that.”
“No, I can have sweeties!”
Pearl could make sweeties, you could forget all about rationing when she was round.
“Sweeties when you’re ill?” gasped Ted. “Never heard of such a thing! I’d better have them instead.”
“Oh stop it, Ted!” said Pearl. “Depriving the poor laddie of sweeties! Here you are, Martin, a bag of chocolatey ones, and don’t give him any, for his cheek.”
“Why didn’t you just marry Martin?”
After some more banter, she left to help Mummy in the kitchen, and Martin said, “Can I ask you something, Ted?”
“You can ask. Whether I will answer is another matter.”
“Well, you know you went to Linenhill School? Why didn’t I go there?”
Ted looked serious when he heard that. “Have you asked Dad or Mum?”
“Well – Mummy – but – well, she got angry.”
“M–mm. Yes. It’s a sore subject with her, that. Well – you see, there are two different kinds of school – ones where you pay and ones that are free. You pay at Linenhill. The one you go to is free. Now, Mum and Dad – by the way, don’t say we’ve been talking about it – well, they don’t have as much money as they used to have. Dad’s business went through a very bad time, the same as lots of small businesses did. It’s what’s called a depression. There was very little money coming in. So, when the time came for you to go to school, they couldn’t afford to send you to Linenhill.”
“Oh. But why do you pay at some schools and not at others?”
“That’s a long story. Wait till you learn a bit more history. What made you ask about it, Martin?”
“Well, Ewan goes to Linenhill and – oh, does that mean his mum has lots of money?” It was, he thought, getting more puzzling as it went along.
“Mrs McQueen? I don’t know. Oh, well now, she may not have. In fact she probably hasn’t, because they have a special scheme for fatherless boys. They can go there free.”
“Can they? Oh. Is that because the headmaster feels sorry for them?”
“Well, maybe he does, but that’s not the point,” Ted laughed. (Martin wondered what was funny.) “The point is, where there’s no father there’s usually no breadwinner, no one going out to work and earning money as Dad does here. So they give them special help. It’s a rule that goes back years, nothing to do with the headmaster. Now don’t talk about it to Ewan. It might upset him.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t upset Ewan.”
“So you wanted to go to Linenhill because he does? But you see plenty of him out of school, don’t you?”
“Oh, it’s not just that, Ted. It’s more than that. It’s to get away from the kids at Eveley Park. They’re common tykes. I get bullied and tormented. They should feel sorry for me, too, at Linenhill!”
“Hold on! Calm down! Feeling sorry for yourself is no sort of answer to that. Or looking for another school. Don’t let them bully you. Stand up for yourself. That’s the only way to stop that – showing them you can fight back.”
“But I can’t fight back! They know everything about fighting. Ted, will you give me some boxing lessons in the holidays? Please!”
“Boxing lessons! Martin, for heaven’s sake, it’s not like sums or spelling, someone giving you a lesson and you know how to do it. You learn by doing it. Crikey, do you think they learned by boxing lessons?”
“I – I don’t know.”
“Well, I can tell you they didn’t. And I didn’t. Because there were – ‘tykes’, as you call them, at Linenhill too. Oh yes, there were and there are. No matter what school you go to, if you let yourself be pushed around, you will be pushed around. The trouble is you’re too timid. And it’s not only when it comes to fighting. I’ve noticed it in other ways, too. When you play with Ewan, he’s always the boss, isn’t he?”
“The boss? How do you mean?”
“I’ve seen you at that ridiculous game you play with him – what is it, pretending to be trams?”
“Yes – playing at trams.”
“He always tells you what number tram to be and ‘go over there, that’s Tollcross, come up Marchmont Road when I give the signal and we’ll meet at the top.’ Why can’t you decide what tram you want to be?”
“But it’s his game.”
“It’s your game, too, isn’t it, if you’re playing?”
“No, I mean he invented the game.”
“But that doesn’t give him the right to order everything that happens in it. If you let him boss you, he’ll make a habit of it. If you show him you’ve a mind of your own, he’ll have a lot more respect for you.”
Pearl entered with a tray for Martin and told Ted, “Tea’s ready. They want you through there with all your news.”
Ted left Martin with, “Remember what I’ve been saying. Get your nourishment down you and let’s see you fighting fit next time.”
7 Money
After his nourishment, Martin opened Kidnapped, not to read, but to give the appearance that he was keeping to the active mind rule, in case anyone came to check. He brooded. Plenty to brood about, and it all swarmed in together – Mummy on fiddling, Daddy on destroying oneself, Ted on fighting, Ted on money. The first three soon became too frightening to think about, so he tried to puzzle out the fourth.
So they were poor! He had never dreamed that. He had thought you couldn’t be poor if you had a maid. None of their friends and neighbours had one. Ewan had once asked, “Who’s that other lady who lives in your house? Is she your auntie?”
“No,” he had replied, feeling it was safe to tell Ewan, and impossible to conceal, anyway. “That’s Georgina. She’s the maid. She doesn’t live in the house. She comes to help my mum.”
Ewan’s eyes had popped with surprise. “Gosh! Your mum and dad must be rich, then. Only rich folk have maids.”
The only people Martin knew who did have a maid were Uncle Frank and Auntie Teresa. Mummy had taken him for holidays at her brother’s house outside Aberdeen. The maid there wasn’t like Georgina – she lived in and she had a uniform. The house was different, too. Its hall was really a big room, with armchairs, a carpet and an enormous hearth and mantelpiece. What a big house for only two people and a maid to live in, he thought, for his aunt and uncle had no children. Like Daddy, Uncle Frank ran his own business – a furniture factory – but, unlike Daddy, he drove to work in a car. It was a grand-looking one, with lots of room inside. Martin enjoyed the way he could sink right down in the back seat. At the end of the holiday, his aunt and uncle would each thrust a ten-shilling note into his pocket. He had been taught to say “No, thank you” if anyone offered money – if they insisted, he could take it, but he had to say this first. Uncle Frank and Auntie Teresa always had a laugh at the “No thank you’s”.
Martin had once asked Mummy, on the train home, “Couldn’t Daddy get a car, like Uncle Frank, to save him the walk to the tram stop?” She’d looked at him sharply, but then suddenly smiled as she said, “He certainly couldn’t get one like Uncle Frank’s! They’re very well off, you see, Martin. They can afford things like that.”
He had therefore concluded that Ewan was only half-right – Mummy and Daddy were richer than all the folk without maids, though not nearly so rich as folk like Uncle Frank and Auntie Teresa. But that hadn’t worried him, because he could almost always get everything he wanted. Like extra pocket money – though Daddy went on about earning it and making it last the whole week, it was usually easy to get more from Mummy if he and Ewan were going to the pictures or on the tram to the beach at Portobello. She would only refuse if she needed money for some special expense. It was things like that which made her frightened of Daddy.
Martin had first realised this when Daddy had given her money for a dress, and, a day or so later, she’d told Daddy there were lots of difficulties about size and she would need another four pounds for the right one. “Another four pounds, Sal?” There had been a funny silence, then he’d said gruffly, “We’ll talk about it later.”
Martin had reckoned that all this couldn’t be because money was short, it was because Daddy was very strict about it. And he had picked up some glimmering idea of why his parents thought about money in different ways. Sometimes, when she was in a good mood, Mummy told him stories about her childhood. There had been not one, but three, maids in the family home. The maids, she said, never gave her a chance to learn much about cooking and housework. “Whenever I went into the kitchen and asked to watch or help, they’d say, ‘Oh, don’t worry your head about that, Miss Sally. Just you sit down there and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’ In those days,” she’d explained a bit sadly, “Mum and Dad would have thought I’d never need to know about these things, there’d always be maids.”
What Mummy did learn about were the piano, drawing, painting and elocution. When this word was explained to him, Martin said, “Oh, I get that at school. You know, when I have to learn poetry off by heart.”
She had smiled and said, “Well, that’s not quite elocution. Elocution’s where you recite at a party, more like acting. Yes, there’s something I can show you.” She went and found a book – an old, old book, brown leather cover, and, in gold letters: Recitations for Young Ladies. Martin skimmed through it eagerly. “We don’t get any of these at school.”
“No,” Mummy laughed, “I don’t suppose you do. I can still recite a good many of them. No,” (blocking his return of the book to her) “by heart.” And he had got a performance all to himself! He wished he could have seen her at those parties.
Then, in a way, he did. It was at the wedding reception for Ted and Pearl. Daddy asked Mummy to do a recitation. She had said, “Oh no I can’t!”, but he said, “Please, Sal. You must.” She did the one that Martin liked best: The Woman and the Law. The woman ran away from her cruel husband and married a much nicer man, which you weren’t really allowed to do (“I said I was widow when really a wife”), so she was in the dock on trial. As she told the court of her sufferings, ‘the lip of the coward was cruelly curled’, but it was all right in the end, when ‘the hand of the gaoler slipped down from the lock’ on the judge declaring: “When thirty swift minutes have sped, you are free.” Everyone clapped Mummy (Martin was so excited he cheered), and Daddy looked very proud of her.
Daddy hardly ever talked about his childhood. He might now and again speak of something from his schooldays that made you laugh, but you never got whole scenes you could picture. Martin learned more about Daddy’s past from what Mummy said – that he was a very fine man who had worked his way out of poverty. He had been fifteen when his father died, and he had had to keep the wolf from the door by selling things in street markets. But he had struggled to learn his craft and build up a business. Success had brought an invitation to join a businessmen’s club that was partly social and partly charitable. “It was also,” said Mummy, “good for making contacts, but he made more contacts than he bargained for, because he met my father there, and then met me. We met at a Christmas ball they put on. And then it was more than my father bargained for when we fell in love and got engaged!”
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-30 show above.)