The Lost Child (19 page)

Later that night, in the quiet of our bedroom, Tommy whispered that he wanted to go home. He said he didn’t like being fostered. I agreed with him, but I reminded him that Mam wasn’t well and the doctor said she needed a break. She was having a hard time pleasing her boss at the library, and I had a feeling that if she lost her job, she wouldn’t be able to afford to look after us anymore. We just had to be patient. I said all of this, but inside I was angry at her. Although I enjoyed being a popular boy, the smallest thing would set me off. I don’t know where I got the idea from, but I used to imagine it was my fault that Dad had left us both. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong, but somehow I just got the sense that I was the problem, and this just made me even more frustrated. That night our Tommy wet the bed for the first time.

“In the Summertime”—Mungo Jerry

It was Terry Neat’s party, and his parents had completely abandoned the house to us. There were six of us boys and five girls, and to start with, I was a bit disappointed that there were more of us than them. His parents had put out bowls of crisps and peanuts and some bottles of pop and a sleeve of plastic cups. We had a choice: either Tizer or ginger beer. And, of course, we had use of their record player. Everybody’s favourite song was Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime,” and I remember it really well because it was the first time I’d ever been tempted to sing along. Not dance, of course. At twelve years old, dancing was out of the question. We just sat around and filled our faces and then made slightly muffled efforts to sing along to the chorus. At some point Mr. and Mrs. Neat came back, and it was clear that it was time for us to leave. The other kids’ parents started to turn up to fetch them. They came in and said hello to Mr. and Mrs. Neat, and thanked them before leaving with their son or daughter. Nobody came to pick me up.

We were back living with Mam now. One Saturday morning she’d just turned up at the foster home. She barged in past Mrs. Swinson and stood in the hallway and told us to pack up our things as we were leaving. Mrs. Swinson went to sit in the kitchen with the three dogs and slammed the door in behind her. Mam came up to the bedroom and stood over us and said we had to hurry, so we just chucked our things into the one big suitcase. She had come to visit us the previous weekend, and she’d waited until the three of us were alone in the sitting room before asking me what I thought of things by Mrs. Swinson, and I said everything was alright as I didn’t want to upset her. She just nodded but said nothing. Then, when I went to the toilet, I had a suspicion that she talked to our Tommy by himself. When Mam left, I asked Tommy what she’d said to him, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

Once we were packed, me and Tommy lugged the suitcase down the stairs and into the hallway. Mam had already made her way back downstairs, and she was waiting for us. You two got everything? We nodded, and that’s when Mrs. Swinson burst out of the kitchen and started on about how she’d tried to make allowances, but we were dirty, and we bolted our food, and we had no manners, and she went on about how she had no time for kids like us who’d been dragged up. Borstal material, she said, if not worse, but she was adamant that she couldn’t lay all the blame at our doorstep. She leered at Mam: I can’t abide women who are all over the shop when it comes to their responsibilities. On behalf of the blessed council, I seem to spend half my life mopping up the mess people like you make. I mean, look at how you’re all tarted up, and a mother too. Conceited bugger. Why don’t you just buzz off, she said, which seemed a bit soft after everything she’d blurted out. Go on, sling your hook and go elsewhere. Mam could have just walked away at this point and decided that there was nothing to be gained by getting into a fight, but that’s not how Mam worked. She started to yell at the woman and she gave as good as she was getting and the two of them went at it hammer and tongs while me and Tommy just stood there next to the suitcase, wondering when we were going to be able to go.

On the Monday morning I started up at the grammar school again as though nothing had happened. Our Tommy found out that he hadn’t made it off the waiting list, and so he’d soon be going to John Wardle’s, but he didn’t seem concerned. Steve Pamphlet was also in my house at the grammar school, and he interrogated me as to where I’d been for the past month. I was tempted to tell him America, to see my dad, but I just said, “Around.” There was a new music teacher, Mr. Hall, who asked me if I could play the descant recorder, and when I said I could, he called me out to the side of the piano and put some sheet music on a stand and made me play “Greensleeves” in front of the whole class. He seemed a bit peeved that I did alright, and when I finished, he told me to sit back down, and he didn’t look in my direction for the rest of the double music period. By dinnertime there were no more questions from anybody, just the odd glance from one or two of the teachers who probably hoped they’d seen the back of me. And then Terry Neat invited me to a party on Saturday afternoon at his house and so I went and I found myself half listening, half singing along to Mungo Jerry.

That night, back at the flat, I lay in bed across the room from our Tommy, and I told him about the song and how I wanted to nick the record out of Terry Neat’s house but I dared not in case somebody caught me. He propped himself up on one elbow, and he seemed a little put out. I could tell by how he was looking at me, but he knew full well that I nicked records, so what was his problem? We didn’t get pocket money because Mam couldn’t afford it. This also meant that we didn’t have Levi’s or Ben Sherman shirts or anything decent to wear. We had nothing. Nicking odds and sods seemed alright to me so long as you didn’t get caught. I told this to our Tommy, but he just kept looking at me and saying nothing, and so I changed the subject. I tried to get Tommy talking about football, but he still said nothing, and that’s when I began to feel sad and a little bit ashamed. I watched as my brother lay back down and pulled the blanket up to his chin. Good night, he said. See you in the morning. I listened to Tommy’s breathing becoming deeper as he fell asleep, and then I realized that I was actually angry with the bed wetter. If I wanted to nick stuff, I’d nick it. Who cared what he thought?

“Maggie May”—Rod Stewart

Beverley Armitage was the name of the first girl I ever kissed. She lived in the same block of flats as us and she went to John Wardle’s. She used to come and knock on the door and wait for our Tommy so they could go to school together, but he started to leave early so that he didn’t have to be seen with her, and I started to miss my bus into town so that I could be there when she came knocking. After the third time that it was me who opened the door, I could see that Beverley Armitage was getting the idea that our Tommy was doing his best to avoid her. She was twelve, a year younger than me, but I’d noticed that the age gap didn’t make much difference with girls. With a lad a year could be a massive gap, but lasses always seemed a bit older than what they really were. I’d also noticed that Beverley Armitage had started to develop a chest that I couldn’t take my eyes off, and I reckoned I’d better ask her out before she stopped coming around. So after failed attempt number three, and just as she was turning away to go back to the lifts, I blurted it out and asked her if she’d seen
Diamonds Are Forever
. She looked at me as if she hadn’t heard properly, and so I had to go on. It’s showing at the Clock Cinema, I said. We could go on Friday. She still didn’t say anything, so I thought I’d better finish. If you’re not doing anything, that is. Like most thirteen-year-olds, I was the bashful sort when it came to girls, and a smug, grinning Steve Pamphlet had summed me up in front of the whole class: too slow to catch a cold, let alone a lass. Of course, I had to pretend that I was in on the joke, so I laughed, but inside of myself I knew he was right. However, that morning on the doorstep, I surprised myself. In the afternoon, during the boring chemistry double period, I wrote “Beverley Armitage” on my exercise book in big swirling letters and coloured her name in with red, green, and blue felt-tipped pens. Inevitably, I missed everything that the teacher was going on about. Something to do with potassium and copper, or something like that, but having finished my doodling, I was busily now trying to work out how to pay for Friday night without it coming over like I was Mr. Moneybags.

It turned out that I needn’t have worried so much, for when we got to the head of the queue, she stepped in front of me and said that her grandma had given her half a crown and told her that she had to go dutch and pay her own way. I didn’t argue, but I was a bit surprised. I’d managed to save up about two pounds over the past year, mainly by nicking money out of kids’ pockets when we got changed for games. I’d go to a lot of trouble to make sure that I was the last out of the changing rooms, or first back in, or both, and I soon learned whose pockets were worth going through. To start with, I’d use the money to buy comics, usually
Hotspur
or
Victor
, but sometimes
The
Dandy
too. But then I decided I wanted a red Chopper bike, and so I stopped buying comics or going out anywhere, and I started to save up, but I quickly cottoned on that it was going to take me forever to save up enough money for a Chopper, or a bike of any kind, and that’s when it became clear that stopping in and saving every penny for a bike I’d probably never own was a waste of time. I’d be better off buying a bag of chips and hanging out by the off-licence and watching the older estate boys smoking Woodies and doing their impressions of Rod Stewart singing “Maggie May.” Getting together two pounds hadn’t been easy, but every time I saw Beverly Armitage’s chest, I knew that I’d be prepared to spend whatever it took to impress her.

However, it didn’t take long before I began to get the message that she wasn’t interested. I steered Beverley Armitage towards a double seat at the back of the front circle, but I didn’t lay a finger on her during the film. I just sat ramrod still and stared at the screen. I didn’t even offer her a spice, even though I had a packet of fruit pastilles in my pocket. The couple beside us seemed intent on getting thrown out as they were all over each other, and it was pretty distracting, as you could actually hear them kissing and their tongues were involved. I didn’t want to look, and it was sending me spare just thinking about it, but I realized that Beverley Armitage didn’t seem to be put out by their snogging, and I even caught her sneaking a peek at the courting couple. We both stood up for the national anthem at the end, and then I walked her home and started to make small talk about the film, and she tried to look interested in whatever it was that I was going on about.

It was still light when we got to her flat. I stood by the door, but I didn’t know if I should ask her out again, because it’s not like she’d been acting completely offhand or anything. However, she didn’t give me much of a chance to properly weigh things up in my head. She leaned forward and pecked me on the cheek and said good-night in a kind of cheerful voice as though the whole evening had been okay, and then she disappeared inside. And so that was it, but there was something about the way she kissed me that let me know that she didn’t want to go out with me a second time. Once was enough, and I knew I wasn’t going to embarrass myself, or her, by asking again. It was only later that night, as I looked over at our Tommy, that I began to accept what was going on. I may have been a bit older, but I was a crap substitute. From her point of view, it was all a big mistake. It was our Tommy she was smitten with, and maybe she thought she could get his attention if she was nice to his brother. The Beverley Armitages of this world were not interested in boys like me, but I decided that when Steve Pamphlet asked me if I’d got anything from her, I was going to tell him, yes, a quick feel, and then shrug my shoulders and say she wasn’t my type of lass, and try and leave it at that.

“Band of Gold”—Freda Payne

Things began to deteriorate after the fostering with Mrs. Swinson didn’t take. At the end of the day Mam was always tired, and sometimes she didn’t even have the energy to talk to us, so to my way of thinking, she needn’t have bothered making the effort. Most nights Tommy was at football practise, and so I was left by myself with her as she poured a drink, then scribbled a bit at her stories, then poured another drink. It was painful to watch, and I was always happy when she gave up and just went to bed. I worried a bit about Tommy, for he didn’t seem to have any time for Mam, and he even told me that he wished he was an orphan. Apparently there was a lad in his class at John Wardle’s who lived in a children’s home, and according to Tommy, he had more fun than we did. In fact, some of the grown-ups from the children’s home even came to watch Tommy’s mate play football. The one bright spot in all of this was that I managed to get a job delivering the
Evening Post
, but not before I had to practically beg the newsagent to give me the round, and even then I got myself a lecture. You just shut your gob and listen to me. I’ll not tolerate any slacking. You’re an estate lad, and it’s a scab of a place. There’s well-brought-up lads from farther out who’d kill for this job, and I always have to keep an extra bloody eye open with you lot. Always on the cadge, aren’t you? I mean, face facts, nothing good will ever come of you kids. They should build a trunk road between that estate and the local lockup because that’s where most of you are heading. And just because your lordship’s at the grammar school, don’t be thinking that you’re any better than the rest of them, because you’re not. I’ve got your bleeding number.

After school, I’d get off the bus and then chase home to the flat and drop off my briefcase and get changed out of my blazer and shirt and tie. Then I’d run back up the hill to a fence by the side of the church where the newsagent’s van would have left the bag of papers. I soon got to know the round like the back of my hand, and I’d jump over fences, cut through alleyways, all the time working out even quicker ways to get the papers delivered. Some people got fed up with me because they used to be early in the round, but now, because I changed things to make the round go faster, some of them were getting their
Evening Post
up to half an hour later than usual. The only bit that really slowed the round down was when I had to go into the new sixteen-storey block of flats. If a flat was below the fifth floor, then I’d forget the lifts and just race up the stairs. Above the fifth floor it wasn’t worth it; it was better to just wait for a lift, but they were really unpredictable, and usually at least one of them was out of order. If I had to use them, I’d start at the top and leave my bag blocking the lift door and work my way down. Once in a while I’d get caught by a resident who wanted to know what the hell I thought I was playing at messing around with the lifts. I’d have to use the stairs after that, but sometimes, maybe once a week, I’d get all the way down to the ground floor without being interrupted by anybody, and that sped things up a lot. I gave Mam most of the money from the paper round, but I don’t remember her ever saying thank you. Twelve and six, and then when the new money came in, I got a pay rise to thirteen bob because it was easier to give me sixty-five pence as opposed to sixty-two and a half pence. Six nights a week I did the round, and I got it down to just under an hour. However, after I’d given Mam her fifty pence, I was left with pretty much sod all, and so I began to think about getting another job, and then I got lucky.