Child from Home (30 page)

Miss Francis had said, ‘Don't be afraid to ask if you get stuck on anything.' But due to feelings of worthlessness and failure, I was not prepared to risk appearing silly in front of my peers. I would not ask when I did not fully understand something and never put my hand up to offer answers. I was so unhappy and I felt that I was not as clever as the other children in the class. A feeling of hopelessness was dragging me down and my schoolwork began to suffer. I got into trouble due to my increased lethargy and withdrawn churlish state. My emotions were kept bottled up until they came out in aggressive outbursts and I got into fights. I didn't like hurting people but I found that a good fight helped to get rid of some of my pent-up anxiety for a time. At home in Middlesbrough we had been materially deprived, but here we were being emotionally deprived and the effects were to last a long, long time.

There appeared to be two sides to my nature. I was quiet, subdued and deep thinking, and needed solitude from time to time. Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Lingering in the silence of the countryside gave me a warm pleasant feeling and I became a watcher of people and things. Still painfully shy and inhibited in company, I dared not reveal my unspoken dreams. At other times I became a more primitive, rowdy boy who ran wild with Jimmy and the others. Recently we had started to take heart-stopping risks, as traumatised children tend to do. We dared each other to do dangerous things and often ended up in even deeper trouble. Those early Sunday morning walks to Torville's shop were my brief periods of enjoyable peace and quiescence. These traits are apparently the two sides of the same coin: the yin and the yang of Oriental philosophy.

Life had become a fear and a mystery, and Jimmy and I were emotionally wounded and left with scars that would take many years to heal – and some never did. I had bad dreams and Mrs Harris, in trying to curb our exuberance and love of life, came very close to breaking our spirit. The human spirit can only take so much before it crumbles to dust, so we tried to avoid her, as she would give us a smack round the head for the slightest infringement of her rules. We even got a clout for getting in her way, but it was hard not to with so many of us in that small house. I cannot speak for the others, who also had their share of beatings, as I do not know how they turned out in later life, but Jimmy and I were being shaped by circumstances over which we had no control. It was time to do something about it. Jimmy and I started to think of running away.

The long-suffering and undemonstrative Mr Harris seemed to sense our unhappiness and tried to show us more affection to make up for his wife's increasing carping and cruel ways. We appreciated his many small kindnesses but it was not enough. Children have indelible memories and our minds were made up. We waited for a suitable time to make our getaway but, in the meantime, we escaped into the great airy spaces of the countryside as often as possible. Our hearts were heavy and the lightness had disappeared from our step as we trudged to school day after day. We were content if we scraped through the day without further hurt, and indoors we moped and said nothing or stayed out of the way in our bedrooms. We had long discussions and we asked the others if they wanted to come with us. Dot and Thelma willingly agreed and Ducky, who was a wimp and a sucker up, reluctantly agreed but only after much persuading. He said, ‘It's all right for you lot, but Newcastle is a lot further away than Middlesbrough. Ah‘d be on me own from there on.' We thought we had better keep a close eye on him in case he gave the game away. We decided to go on the morning of Whit Monday, the first weekday of our half-term break.

Jimmy went into Mr Harris's cluttered shed and found an old battered saucepan that he kept rusty nails and screws in and we washed it out in the pond. I stole a bottle of Camp coffee and chicory from the Co-op store that had an Indian prince and a kilted Scottish soldier on the label, which reminded me of what Dad had told us about his time in India. Consequently I suffered feelings of guilt and remember thinking, what if PC Manging found out? Would I be charged with larceny and put in a cell in York Jail? A picture of Dick Turpin in his cramped cell came into my mind. What would Mam think of me? The song
It's a Sin to tell a Lie
kept going round in my head. Dot pinched some broken biscuits from Bryant's and we hid them in a tin under the railway sleepers that formed the little bridge over the drainage ditch up Usher Lane. Thelma stole a teaspoon and a tin of Libby's evaporated milk and we bought a few ha'penny Oxo cubes with our few coppers. The thought of going home lifted our spirits no end and we couldn't wait for the big day to come. We thought that Middlesbrough and Grove House lay just over the ridge to the north of Strensall and that was the way we planned to go.

Whit Sunday was a day of changing cloud and sunshine as we put on our ‘Sunday Best' ready for church. Mr Harris had built an arch of rustic trelliswork over the path that ran down the back garden and had trained climbing roses to twine around it. The young, almond-shaped leaves were reddish-tinted and, due to the warm weather, they were just coming into flower. The girls were wearing light-coloured dresses in honour of Whitsun and Mr Harris snipped off a few of the miniature, partly open buds and pinned one on each of the girls. He then put the stems of others through the buttonholes of our jackets. In church I usually tried to avoid being next to Ducky who always stood next to Mrs Harris. Creeps and unctuous people like him made my flesh crawl, and Jimmy whispered, ‘I 'ope he don't say 'owt.' So this time I made a point of standing on the other side of her so that I could hear what he said. I barely remember the service that day as my mind was on more important things.

That day the hands of the kitchen clock seemed to crawl round and, on going to bed, we were quiet for a change. Usually we argued and tiptoed in and out of each other's bedrooms and Mrs Harris often had to shout up the stairs, ‘Get into bed or you'll feel the belt around you! I won't tell you again.' Due to an excess of excitement, I lay awake listening to the sound of the rafters creaking as they cooled and slept only for short spells. Ducky was snoring and letting off as usual and the night seemed to drag on interminably, but finally the first faint signs of dawn began to filter around the blackout curtains. It was only six o'clock and too early to get up but eventually a chorus of birdsong greeted the start of the new day. Mr Harris was out and on his way to work as the rising sun bathed the houses in its warm gold-tinted light. It was a glorious morning and I thought to myself that by the time it set I would be back with Mam. This was the day we had longed for and we could scarcely believe it was here. We put on our old threadbare clothes to give the impression that today was nothing out of the ordinary, and I had on my ragged pullover that had holes at the elbows as if I was just going out to play.

How we contained our excitement I'll never know. We ate as much porridge and toast and margarine as we could cram into our stomachs, and we kept back two of our mugs after Dot had done the washing up of the breakfast things. We hid them away in Thelma's canvas knapsack while Mrs Harris was outside in the back garden hanging out items of threadbare underwear that had seen too many washes. Thelma was then sent on an errand to the shops. We were ready and eager to be off and tried to hide our excitement as we waited impatiently for her to come back. At the last minute Ducky chickened out, saying, ‘It's a barmy idea and ah'm not coming with yer.' We prayed that the oily creep wouldn't give the game away. ‘Right,' said Thelma when she got back. ‘Let's be off.' As we stepped outside the sun was well up but the air wasn't too fresh, at which Jimmy exclaimed, ‘Phew! What a pong!'

The cattle had been taken in for milking at Abel's dairy and there was cow splatter all the way up Usher Lane. Taking care where we put our feet, we collected our supplies from our hidden cache and set off on our desperate bid for freedom, hoping we would never see the horrible Mrs Harris again. We were delighted at the thought of going back to our parents. We would go by way of Grove House where I would be reunited with my Mam and the others would then go on to Middlesbrough. It seemed that our dreams were coming true at last.

As we hurried past the house, in case Mrs Harris saw us and called us in to go on another message or something, there was a new spring in our step. On reaching Station Road, we went wild with released excitement before we crossed the wooden sleepers of the railway crossing. There were a number of large Victorian houses with ornately carved wooden porches, and long, pendulous bunches of light yellow flowers dripped from the laburnum shrubs in some of their gardens. Hopping and skipping up the twisting road, we left the houses on the eastern edge of the village behind. Thelma said, ‘The lane goes north 'ere before it turns t' t'east and crosses Foss Bridge. Ah've been up 'ere before on me friend's bike.'

At this point a tall metal pylon towered above us and as we passed under the wires we could hear them humming and buzzing loudly. I was a bit frightened and was glad to get past and away from them – electricity was a scary mystery to me. We followed the lane, which was empty except for the odd military vehicle. A little way up the road a local farmhand rode past on his old sit-up-and-beg bike but he took no notice of us, as he knew that the school was closed for the Whitsun break. To our left was the high, grass-covered slope of the railway embankment, some parts of which had been dug over to grow vegetables, so we had a roll down that for a while. Patches of it had been turned black where the sparks from the fireboxes of the passing trains had set it alight. I selected a long, juicy grass stem to chew on, at which point a ladybird flared its wings and flew away home. We were doing the same thing but I hoped our houses wouldn't be on fire.

It was a glorious day and verdant, sun-drenched pastures stretched away into the hazy distance. When a freak breeze stirred the grass in a field beside the road, Thelma said, ‘It's only t'fairies passing through. They say that if yer sit under a 'awthorn tree at this time o' t'year they can gain power over yer.'

We then heard the unmistakable harsh, croaking call of a secretive corncrake from the long grass at the far side of a field. Its ‘crek-crek; crek-crek' call made me think of a creaking farm gate. When we reached the concrete pillbox we ran in and out of it pretending we were soldiers firing our machine guns through its outward sloping slits. Nearby a windhover, with a black band along the edge of its tail, hung perfectly still in the sky before swooping down on some tiny creature in the long grass. After much dallying and playing about we reached the low-walled, stone bridge that crossed the Golland Dyke. The grass verges and some of the fields were covered in golden buttercups. Here we made a drink with our oxo cubes and water from the stream but, with the water being cold, they were only partly dissolved and bits floated about in it. We sat on the parapet of the bridge basking in the hot sunshine and rested for a while.

The road swung sharply to the right just before it reached Towthorpe and Thelma said, ‘I heard that a local man crashed his motorbike and was killed on this bend a few years back.' The day was becoming exceptionally hot for the time of year and we took turns at carrying the knapsack. Thelma, who was brisk and businesslike, had taken charge, as, at the age of nearly eleven, she was the oldest and had her head screwed on properly, whereas Dot tended to stand and gawp. As the sun beat down on the tyre-polished tarmac we were so happy and elated and hadn't a care in the world. Jimmy suggested thumbing a lift but nothing came along and Thelma said, ‘We'll probably get a lift when we get on t'main road. Don't worry, just think what it'll be like back 'ome with our parents.' I tried to picture their surprise on seeing us on the doorstep.

Jimmy and I were busting for a ‘Jimmy Riddle', so we went behind a bush, but Dot didn't seem bothered about us being there; she just crouched down for a pee in the long grass like a little partridge. Back on the road, we larked about popping the odd tar bubble that had started to form in the sun-softened asphalt, and as we skipped along we could hear tiny squeaks and the soft plopping sounds of voles dropping from the banks into the drainage ditches. We stopped to investigate things on the grass verges so often that the time just melted away and it was near noon by the time we arrived at Towthorpe Bridge.

As we stood by the low, stone parapet of the bridge we could hear the distant wasp buzz of a motorbike, which gradually grew louder, and we had to get out of the way as an army despatch rider suddenly appeared. He was wearing white gauntlet gloves and his motorbike purred as he coaxed it along the quiet by-road. We dropped sticks into the water and dashed to the other side of the bridge to see them float out. By this time the sun was scorching and there was a heat haze over the countryside. Beyond the small, irregular-shaped fields the trees in the distance looked blurred and quivery, and above them peewits rolled and tumbled in the clear blue sky. Getting hot and sweaty, we flapped our shirts about trying to cool ourselves down a bit as sweat ran into our eyes making them sting.

We slid down the embankment and sat on the grassy banks of the Foss where Jimmy punctured the tin of condensed milk by bashing a nail (which he had taken from Mr Harris's shed) into it with a rock. We made coffee with cold water scooped from the narrow river that ran clear and cool beneath the old stone bridge. We were in heaven, enjoying our bread and biscuits, and it was so still and peaceful with the river gently slapping against the banks, and purling quietly as it meandered along. The water sparkled and the sun beat down and we were glad to be in the shade for a while. As we sat huddled together, Thelma started to sing the Flanagan and Allen song
Underneath the Arches
and we all joined in. We sipped our mugs of cold, horrible-tasting coffee and tried to convince ourselves that it tasted delicious, but who cared anyway? The sweetness of the biscuits disguised the taste and nothing was going to spoil our day. We were so delighted and euphoric at the thought of getting away from the nasty Mrs Harris for good. We were going back to our loved ones at last!