‘Well, that’s what they’re for, dear. Have a fudge through and see if you can find anything that fits, and take it to them. I’m just trying to sort them into different piles for size.’
Dinner time flew past. Gwen had found a bakery near the tram stop, from where she bought her lunch every day. She munched on one of her cheese and onion cobs, and when Lily Drysdale said she had forgotten about bringing in food, Gwen gave her the second one.
‘That’s so kind,’ the other teacher said, holding the bread with one hand and continuing to sort through clothes with the other. ‘I’m really so disorganized about food . . .’
Gwen stored Lily Drysdale up as another thing to tell Edwin. To her Lily seemed more alive than most people she met, but then she wondered if Edwin would really appreciate Lily. He could be quite dismissive about some of the older ladies of the parish, as if in the nervous fussiness of widowhood or spinsterhood they didn’t quite count as people. She decided to keep Lily to herself.
Some of the clothes were threadbare, but among them she found a pair of short trousers and a slate grey jersey with patched elbows which she thought might fit Joey Phillips. She wouldn’t humiliate him in front of the class. She’d call him aside to wait until after the others had gone. She imagined the austere face of the withdrawn little boy lighting up at the sight of some new warm clothes.
Folding them into a small bundle, she put them away in the teacher’s high desk as the children came in chattering from their dinner break.
‘Quiet now!’ she commanded. ‘Time for register.’
Down the list of names she went again, to the mumbles and whispers of ‘Here, Miss.’
‘Speak up a bit, do,’ she urged them. ‘Joseph Phillips?’
There was silence. His place was empty.
‘Does anyone know where Joey is?’
She saw a couple of the boys exchange glances.
‘Jack? Eric?’
‘No, Miss. Dunno where he is.’
Gwen frowned and continued calling out the names. It wasn’t the first time Joey Phillips had gone missing from afternoon school. In fact it was happening with increasing frequency. She found herself feeling disappointed at not being able to give him the clothes. But where was he? Why had he not returned to school?
His hands were warm and sticky from the gravy seeping through the rag. Joey had tipped his school dinner into it in his lap, and the moment he was free to go outside he tore home along the street, cradling it in his hands.
Dora was hunched up close to the dying coals of the fire Joey had built that morning, hugging the blanket round her with her thin arms. Joey had replaced the soggy cardboard over the broken window with a piece of orange box, propped up inside.
‘Here y’are, Mom. Brought you some dinner!’
He tipped the cooling stew and potatoes onto a plate. His mother struggled for breath. Her cheeks were red and she was obviously feverish.
‘What’ve you got there?’ she whispered once she could speak. ‘Oh, Joey – that’s not your dinner, is it?’
‘Eat it, Mom,’ he ordered, feverish himself in his feelings. He handed her the plate and a fork. ‘It’ll make you better.’
Dora’s features twisted. ‘No, Joey. It’s for you.’
It won’t make me better
, she could have said.
Nothing will now.
The sickness and the baby inside her were taking every last ounce of her energy. How would she ever find the strength to bring the child into the world? She had nothing left, no courage, no feeling, only instinct seemed to keep her alive. A force which drove her to survive for this unborn child, no matter how hopeless it was. She’d given up her two babies to the home. Loss and shame were eating away at her from the inside. Shame had been her life’s companion, but now it was worse than ever. Joey and Lena would have to go to Barnardo’s too when her time came, and it couldn’t be long now. When she was alone, she slipped down into complete despair, lying for hours with her eyes closed or rocking back and forth in distress. But now Joey stood mute before her, holding out the plate. She sighed, ashamed, and took it, picking at the tepid stew.
‘That fire needs seeing to,’ he said gruffly.
No, don’t go
, she wanted to beg him.
Don’t leave me
.
But he’d gone, ignoring the harsh comments of the women he passed in the yard, along towards the coal wharf to stuff his pockets. Once he’d built the fire, he was off again to beg some orange boxes. He walked tall, swaggering. School be damned. That was for babies. He was a man. And he had work to do.
Five
The School Board man turned down the entry off Canal Street. There were two women in the yard, busy with a maiding tub full of washing and a mangle. They looked up and stopped work, arms self-righteously akimbo, and as he went to number three and knocked, they rolled their eyes at each other.
‘Huh. Might’ve known it’d be that whore’s lad.’
‘You don’t want to go near ’er,’ the other one called to him raucously. ‘You never know what you might catch!’
The man waited, tapping his pencil on his notebook, taking in the state of the house. The door looked about to fall off its hinges, the window frames were all rotten and half the downstairs window was smashed and blocked off with a flimsy bit of wood.
What a bloody awful state to live in
, he thought. And why was no one answering? He peered through the top part of the filthy pane and saw a shadowy movement inside. A second later the door squeaked open a few inches. The man felt the shock of what he saw register on his face. Flaming hell, the woman was no more than a living skeleton!
She was stooped, as if very old, though he could see that in truth she could not be more than a young woman. Between matted strands of hair her face was a yellowish colour except for two burning spots high on her cheekbones. Her eyes, which bulged unnaturally in her gaunt face, held complete hopelessness. She stared at him without speaking.
‘I’ve come about your lad. He’s not been to school when he should. Keeps running off of an afternoon.’
There was no reaction, as if she couldn’t hear or make sense of his words. A sickening stench came from the house.
‘Joseph Phillips? He is your lad?’
She nodded, opening the door a little further. The man’s sense of horror increased. The woman was wearing an off-white, soiled garment which looked as if it had been stitched out of an old sheet, and made her look as if she was already clad in a shroud. She was obviously heavily pregnant and the bulge of the child looked grotesque against her wasted body. For a second he caught a glimpse in her features of someone who might once have been pretty, but then her face took on a sly, aggressive look.
‘My Joey goes to school. I seen him go off every morning, like.’ Talking made her cough alarmingly and she pressed a rag to her lips. The man looked at the ground until the fit passed. The cough looked as if it might split her body apart. In his revulsion he found some pity.
‘You might think so, but the school says he hasn’t. Goes some days, half the day. Some days he stays away all day. You need to make sure he attends. It’s the law.’ For some reason he found himself adding, ‘I’m only doing my job, Missis.’
He felt the eyes of the two neighbours boring into him as he left.
‘You won’t get nowt out of her!’ one of them called to him. ‘Too busy whoring for the rent money to care about her kids.’
‘She hands ’em over to Barnardo’s when she can’t be bothered with ’em no more! Bloody disgrace, that woman.’
The man didn’t turn his head. Christ, he’d seen everything now. This job was the limit at times – the way some folk lived! It was a relief to hurry past the slimy bricks of the entry and out into the street again.
Joey’s name was read out in assembly. The first time, Mr Lowry stood on the little stage at the far end of the hall, looming over them all, tall and forbidding in his tweeds, and read out a short list of names, among them Joseph Phillips. Heads turned. Form Four whispered to each other. Joey wasn’t there. But the next day he was.
Mr Lowry’s office was a small, austere room upstairs with a desk and chair and a bookshelf behind them. On the desk lay his two canes. The small, thin boy kept his eyes on them as he stood before the headmaster. They were all he was aware of, mixed with the smell of Mr Lowry’s shoe polish. You could almost see your face in his black shoes every day.
‘Joseph?’ Mr Lowry stood up and came round the desk. Joey didn’t look up at him, but he knew that, as usual, the headmaster was holding the riding crop, fingering it. He could see the bottom edge of the man’s jacket, his legs. ‘You haven’t been attending school.’
Joey didn’t answer. He was numbed by exhaustion. His mind floated off elsewhere. School, Mr Lowry, all of it, was as nothing.
‘Have you gone deaf, boy?’ Mr Lowry spoke in his commanding, Scoutmaster tone. ‘If I ask a question, I expect the courtesy of a reply.’ He bent lower and looked into Joey’s face. Joey felt forced to look back into Mr Lowry’s large, pebbly eyes. They were cold and frightening. He had hairy nostrils and his breath smelt of stale tea.
‘No.’
‘
No?
’ He was working himself up now.
‘No, Mr Lowry.’
Stung by the boy’s sullen tone, the headmaster straightened up, laid the riding crop very deliberately on the desk and took up the cane.
‘You must be punished.’ There was exaltation in his voice. ‘Give me your hand, boy. You’re a disgrace!’
Mr Lowry took a deep breath through his nose with each hard swipe of the cane on Joey’s hand. Six times he raised it and whacked it down. The boy flinched physically each time but his expression didn’t alter. There were no tears. Joey stood picturing that man he’d seen on top of his mother. One man, a stranger, who could have been any of the others whom she’d let use her. Pain went through him. He stuck his chin out and clenched his teeth. Mr Lowry stopped for a moment and Joey looked up at him. At the sight of Joey’s hard eyes something seemed to snap in Mr Lowry. He seized the boy by the shoulder and spun him round.
‘Bend over. You will be affected by me, boy. You
will
be.’
Joey heard the cane as it came through the air. He screwed his eyes shut. Mr Lowry thrashed him again and again. Joey couldn’t count. He was lost in the pain. It cut through his buttocks, travelled in shock waves down the backs of his legs, but he didn’t cry out. Mr Lowry was grunting. At last he stopped and there was silence for a moment in which all Joey could hear was Mr Lowry’s panting breaths. The boy clenched his jaw and forced himself to stand straight, steeling himself against the pain, forcing it away in his mind as he had done with his feelings so many times in his life.
Mr Lowry’s face was flushed. He ran a hand over his sparse salt and pepper hair.
‘Now.’ He laid the cane methodically back on his desk and adjusted the shoulders of his jacket. ‘I shall be checking with Miss Purdy, and I want to see an end to this truancy, Joseph. You will be in school every day from now on. If your record deteriorates again I may have to think about expelling you. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes, Mr Lowry.’
Joey left the room, his face blank of expression.
‘Joey – stay behind at the end of the morning, please.’
Gwen knew Joey Phillips had had a caning that morning. But he had come in after his punishment, not wearing the defiant grin boys usually put on to show how little they minded. Nor were there any tears. He just looked as he always did: closed and indifferent.
He stood beside her desk once the others had filed out.
‘You have school dinner, don’t you, Joey?’ He nodded, glancing at her, then away. Gwen sensed that he was somehow overwhelmed by the sight of her. She was wearing her pretty crimson dress again with a matching ribbon, which made her more colourful than anyone else around, except for Lily Drysdale. Gwen was darned if she was going to give in to the grime and just wear black and grey! She climbed down from her chair so as not to tower above the boy. He was still wearing the clothes she had given him a couple of weeks ago. They had not reached the rotten state of his last set of garments, but she wondered if they had parted company with his body at any time since she had handed them to him. Their state was of general, all-over grime. He had no shirt on, but seemed to have some sort of vest under the grey jersey and his neck and face were uniformly grubby. He was such a poor little thing! Up close this was even more obvious. His limbs were very thin, his pallor evident despite the grime. He stank of poverty. Yet, in his expression, beneath the puckered brows, was something that both puzzled and affected Gwen. In this pathetic, dirty child’s eyes was a mysterious strength. Over the past month, after she had offered him the clothes and he had accepted them with silent dignity – if not a word of gratitude – she had found herself paying more attention to him, watching him sometimes when he was bent over his sums or geography. His work was poor. His mind never seemed to be on his lessons. He didn’t make many friends. The only boy she saw him have anything much to do with was Ron Parks, who gave him sweets and asked him to play sometimes. He appeared indifferent to the other children, though sometimes he got into fights and usually came off best in them. She had once seen him leave the school with his little sister Lena trotting behind him, striding off like a man with a mission, and the sight had moved her. There was something about him, small and pathetic as he appeared, that was intimidating. In looking into Joseph Phillips’s eyes, Gwen felt she had struck up against rock.
‘Mr Lowry is very concerned and angry about you playing truant, Joey. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Miss.’ He spoke woodenly, looking at her only at waist level.
She sat down on one of the little desks. ‘Can you not look me in the eye, Joey?’
He looked up, just for a second, then dropped his gaze again, taking a step backwards and Gwen realized her mistake. Teachers were distant, foreign people to him, who often exercised control by fear and violence. Faced by her friendly, smiling eyes he didn’t know how to react.
But she had begun so she persevered. ‘Where do you go to – when you skip school?’