A City of Strangers

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

FOR

Greta and Peter,

first readers

Unable to define anything I can hardly speak,

and still I love the place for what I wanted it to be

as much as for what it unashamedly is

now for me, a city of strangers, alien and bleak.

Dannie Abse,
“Return to Cardiff”

I
t had been quite an ordinary day up until then.

Except that Carol Southgate, in her first term as a teacher, did not have as yet ordinary days: There was about all of them an element of challenge, fear, discovery. Then at ten-thirty she scanned casually the list of children in Burtle Middle School's 3B—her own class—and said “Michael Phelan.” She was not entirely familiar with the names and was looking for a child who had not yet read for her; otherwise she would have remembered about the Phelans.

A boy, smallish for his twelve years, looked up at her momentarily from a desk toward the back of the class. Then he looked down at his book and began.

He read hesitantly at first, in a strong Yorkshire accent, but he swiftly gained confidence, so that by the second verse the reading had swing, panache, drama:

Rats!

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles.

And ate the cheese out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles . . .

The poetry books that 3B were using were old and not really suitable. It sometimes seemed as if teachers and pupils were supposed to be grateful that they had any books at all. Carol sat back, suffused by a rare feeling of well-being, of positive pleasure. This, surely, was the miracle that happened now
and again in all teachers' careers—the life-enriching miracle that made the drudgery worthwhile. And this boy was one of the Phelans, of whom she had heard so much. She let Michael read for four verses, his voice increasing all the time in relish and sense of occasion. Then she said, as calmly as she could:

“That was very nice. Wayne Fothergill—can you get the swing of it as Michael has?”

Wayne Fothergill, of course, couldn't. The reading declined into hesitancy and dullness. A cloud, as so often outside, came over the sun.

Nevertheless there had been this momentary brightening up of Carol's morning, and it buoyed her up. Moments of surprise and joy had been few in her teaching career thus far. At coffee break she said to her new and as yet half-known colleagues:

“You've given me the wrong idea about the Phelans. Michael read quite beautifully this morning.”

They turned on her in scorn, Dot Fenton being the one who led the attack.

“Oh,
Michael!
If you've only known Michael you haven't experienced the Phelans. If you'd had Kevin, now—he was
vicious.
Or that little slut June. Or Cilla. And there's a horrible little girl called Jackie who's just started Junior and who's
really
going to present problems when she comes here. Oh dear! To imagine that you know the Phelans when you only know Michael!”

“Michael is all right,” said Bob McEvoy quietly.

Registering his comment, as she had for the past month registered him, Carol sat with him at lunch break. They both ate sandwiches wrapped in grease-proof paper and drank from thermoses prepared at home. Carol had been anxious to avoid any suggestion of favoritism, but during History with 3B after coffee break she had asked Michael to read a passage about the death of Wolsey. He had read that beautifully too.

“Is it true what they say about the Phelans?” she now asked Bob. He nodded.

“Pretty much. Kevin was indescribably nasty. The sort of boy you have to physically restrain yourself from beating up—to knock quietness into him, if not sense. He left two or three years ago. I was a young teacher then, new and uncertain, and it was touch and go, I can tell you.”

“Whether you . . . laid hands on him or not?”

“Yes. And don't be shocked. You'll know the feeling, I can tell you.”

“What about the others?”

“I only know June, who's left, and Cilla, who's here at the moment. They're pretty dreadful, yes.”

“You're interested in drama, aren't you?”

Everyone knew that about Bob McEvoy. Officially he was the P.E.
teacher, with bits of other things thrown in—Religious Instruction and Mathematics with the lower grades. But he had acted with the Youth Theatre in his time, and performance was in his blood. He grinned and said:

“Would you like me to hear your Michael Phelan read?”

“He's not
mine
. . . . Well, yes. Are you putting anything on this year?”

“Oh, yes. There's the school play in February, but also the big production—kids from all the schools in Sleate—coming off in May, in the Civic Theatre. It's
Saint Joan
this year.”

“Michael for page,” said Carol promptly.

“There's also Speech Day in November. I'm getting together a few kids to do things—read poems, perform tiny playlets. If he's as good as you say, if he's really got a sense of rhythm, maybe he could do a poem or two.”

“Am I hearing things?” It was Dot Fenton, who had given the bitter little diatribe on the Phelans at break. “Are we talking about a
Phelan
performing
at Speech
Day?”

“Why not?” said Carol, suddenly prickly.

“Can't you imagine what he would
look
like? They're all filthy, and June positively smells—I don't like to think what of. You must be out of your minds.”

“His mother could make a bit of effort.”

“My dear young thing, don't talk about what she could do, talk about what she would do. His mother doesn't know the meaning of the word effort.”

“I've never seen Michael worse than grubby, and what child isn't that sometimes? Anyway, why should the kids who get up at Speech Day always be the ones with the neat trousers and socks and the nice clean shirts?”

“Because we try to maintain standards, that's why,” snapped Dot dismissively, and went on her way. Carol, regaining her cool, raised her eyebrows at Bob.

“I'll hear him read,” Bob said quietly.

It was Friday of that same week that, walking home together after school, Carol and Bob McEvoy saw Michael Phelan ahead of them on the road up the hill.

Burtle, the suburb of Sleate which the school served and where they lived, was not one of the most attractive parts of Yorkshire. It had not been made so by nature, and the actions of the Council in demolishing much of its nineteenth-century heritage had not improved matters. Semidetacheds and council housing estates alternated with the occasional high-rise block, but sometimes, in gaps between the red-brick gables and the concrete slabs, one caught glimpses of Victorian Camelots or mill-owners' Georgian. It had, Carol had decided, a certain raggedy vigor, sorely frayed in that era of mass unemployment.

Michael and his friend were larking around, pushing and chasing each other along and across the pavement, never venturing into the traffic. They watched them, two very normal children.

“He read very well,” said Bob.

“I knew he would.”

“Whether he can act at all I didn't find out, but speaking is half the battle, as a rule. He could certàainly do something at Speech Day.”

Ahead of them Michael's friend branched off to go home, while he himself trudged solidly up the hill toward his own home.

“Why don't you tell him now?” asked Carol, and they speeded up their walk.

When they came up behind him he turned and grinned at them, noting the fact that they were together and probably filing it for lascivious comment to a friend in the morning, in the way schoolboys have.

“You read for me very nicely this morning, Michael,” Bob said. “I thought it might be an idea if you recited something for the parents at Speech Day.”

The boy's forehead creased.

“I don't know about that. . . . I don't know what my Dad would say. . . . He's a bit . . . Well, we don't go in for that sort of thing in our family.”

“But there's no reason why he should object, surely, is there?”

“You don't know my Dad.” Michael Phelan grinned. He seemed to have a certain pride in his dad, as a well-known character. “I shouldn't think I'd be going to school at all, if he had his way.”

“Oh, come on, Michael: Everyone has to go to school.”

Michael Phelan twisted his face and threw his voice into that of a hectoring, opinionated adult.

“ ‘Bloody waste of time. No bloody use at all. Should be out earning a living.' That's what my Dad says. I heard Mrs. Makepeace say my Dad has opinions on everything, and all of them are wrong.”

“Who's Mrs. Makepeace?”

“Our next-door neighbor. She helps a bit—with my clothes and that. . . . Maybe I'll talk to her about Speech Day. Sometimes my Dad listens to her.”

“You do that, Michael.”

“Would it mean dressing posh? I know just what my Dad would say if it did. Specially if it meant buying new clothes for me.”

“I'm sure if you could get Mrs. Makepeace to help a little you would look fine.”

They had reached the top of the hill, and they turned off into the council estate where Michael lived. By now Bob McEvoy was off his route home, but his curiosity was roused. Carol was walking quietly behind them thinking
that, given time, Bob could bring out unguessed-at qualities in this odd, charming boy.

The Belfield Grove Estate was built as rented accommodation by the Sleate City Council shortly after the war, and the houses, though uniform and possessing few graces, had at least escaped the brutal impersonality of later council architecture. Now it was run-down, with slates off roofs and paint peeling from the window frames. Some of the gardens were beautifully cared for, while others had run wild for years, and still others were the dumping-ground for abandoned motorcycles and cars, disused rabbit hutches or pigeon lofts. Along the road as they walked, chocolate wrappings fluttered around their feet, and in the gutters lay odd tin cans and take-away pizza cartons. The inhabitants of the Estate did not have the middle-class habit of getting on the phone if the street cleaners had not been around recently, so for the most part the Council forgot the Estate existed. Some of the houses had been sold at knock-down prices to their tenants, and some of them had done odd things to the outsides—painted over the brickwork, or had a new frontage attached of simulated stone that looked nothing like stone. Sharp-eyed dogs roamed around, looking for succulent leftovers in tins or a friendly child with a sweet.

Michael was by now chattering happily on.

“I liked that poem I read for you the other day, Miss. That one about the rats. P'raps I could read that at Speech Day.”