Chrissie's Children (10 page)

At the end of an hour he had not sold a stick and the bread and margarine he had eaten for breakfast was only a distant memory. He found some comfort in the knowledge that there was food in the
house for his mother, while Billy, his half-brother, was given a free midday meal of broth at St Peter’s Mission Hall in Dame Dorothy Street. It was another hour before he made enough to buy
a sandwich in a pork shop. The butcher dipped the two halves of the bun in the gravy and then forked the sliced pork in between them while Peter watched hungrily. It took the edge off that hunger.
He could have eaten another and he had just enough to buy it, but he was determined to go home that night with more than just the price of a pork sandwich. He set out again, towing the bogey.

Ursula Whittle was tall, thin, nervous and just turned thirty. She peered out at the world through tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. This was her first term at Sophie’s
school, her first teaching job, and she was afraid she was going to lose it. She had been warned a month ago that her enforcement of discipline was inadequate. She had tried, but she liked the
girls, wanted them to like her, and found that hard to reconcile with discipline. This morning she had received another warning – and been given the job of supervising the entire school
through the lunch break.

Her once wealthy father had died of a heart attack when his business foundered and he lost everything in the depression. The shock left her mother deranged, and she had lingered on, vaguely
smiling and ineffectual. Ursula looked after her through those last years and through the last of the money, paid out on her father’s insurance policy. When her mother died Ursula was left
alone and penniless. She had got the job at the school because a governor was an old friend of her father. She knew she was lucky to have it and would not get another. If she lost it she was doomed
to a poverty she had never known but knew of. She was desperate.

So she hastened across the quad, filled with girls from eleven to eighteen, talking and playing. Then she set out to patrol the playing fields where more of the girls practised hockey or
rounders. Ursula was almost running herself, her head turning all the while, trying to be everywhere and see everything. She was panting and feeling dizzy. Then as she passed a belt of trees and
shrubs that walled off one end of the playing fields she saw and heard a sudden rustling in the bushes. She forced her way in to investigate and found a small clearing.

‘Sophie!’ She was almost sure of the name, but there were so many girls and all looked alike in their uniform, so she added, ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Yes, miss.’ Sophie climbed to her feet and brushed down her gym slip. The youth from the boys’ school on the other side of the copse scrambled to his feet and ran.

Ursula shouted after him, ‘Stop! Stop!’ but he took no notice and in seconds was lost beyond the trees. She demanded of Sophie ‘Who was that?’

‘I don’t know, miss,’ Sophie answered with wide-eyed innocence. ‘I just found him in here when I came to look for some nature study specimens.’ That was almost
true. She had been seeking leaves when she saw the youth on the playing fields on the other side of the wood, and had called to him . . .

Ursula did not believe her, and had the damning evidence of her own eyes. She said, trying to be stern, but squeaking, ‘This is a
very
serious matter. You’ll go before the
headmistress this afternoon. Come along now.’ She ushered Sophie out of the copse ahead of her.

Sophie also knew this was a serious matter. There had been cases before, and all had ended in expulsion. Then she would have to face her father – and her mother. That would be the worst.
The sky had darkened as if to match the cloud hanging over her. Thunder rumbled and as she trailed across the field ahead of Ursula Whittle the first fat raindrops began to fall. So she was driven
into the school hall along with all the other girls seeking shelter.

There were five hundred of them. Their voices, echoing in the high-ceilinged hall, drowned the sound of the storm outside. Crowded together and excited they ran amok, playing hastily devised
games, scuttling in and out of the rows of chairs, leaping over them, kicking them aside. Ursula stood on the stage and ordered, ‘Sit down! Find your usual places in assembly and
sit
down!
’ None of them heeded her, her words lost in the din. The clock on the wall told her that the headmistress and other teachers would return in fifteen minutes. If they found this
chaos then she would be dismissed.

Sophie saw an opportunity. There was the piano on the stage. In front of her was an audience. Did she dare? She was a crash-bang pianist, and the chord she struck made Ursula Whittle jump and
produced one moment of silence while the five hundred girls gaped at the stage. Sophie sang ‘Stormy Weather’ and they giggled and booed – but then they listened. And when she
finished the song and went straight into another, they still listened. Her voice was a powerful contralto, husky and adult. She held them, their heads nodding in time, humming and rocking to the
music, until the bell clanged for afternoon school.

Ursula Whittle had sidled off to the side of the stage. She returned now as Sophie closed the lid of the piano and stood up. Ursula lectured her, ‘That might have become a very serious
matter. You must be more careful where you go to collect specimens. Promise me you won’t go there again.’ It was meant to be a severe warning but it came out weakly, gratefully, because
Ursula knew she had been rescued.

‘Yes, Miss Whittle,’ Sophie answered meekly, knowing she, too, had been saved. She was still grinning when Helen Diaz put an arm around her.

‘That was marvellous!’ Helen said with admiration – and surprise, because she still could not believe that it had been her friend performing on stage. ‘You can really do
it.’ Sophie nodded, laughing.

Not everyone was as enthusiastic. Pamela Ogilvy was the only daughter of a director of a shipbuilding firm. She was in Sophie’s form and never understood why Sophie Ballantyne befriended
Helen Diaz rather than herself. She had not joined in the applause, and dismissed Sophie’s performance as ‘exhibitionist’. However, she did not say so aloud, and she smiled at
Sophie in passing. Sophie did not notice and Pamela sniffed and walked on.

Unaware of this, Helen opened an exercise book and took out a sheaf of leaves, carefully picked and pressed. ‘Here you are.’

‘What?’ Sophie was still excited.

‘I got these in the park for this afternoon’s lesson, some for me, these for you. I told you I would. You said you had some homework you wanted to catch up on.’

Sophie smiled. ‘That’s right. I did.’

Helen admonished her. ‘You shouldn’t leave your homework till lunchtime.’

‘I’ve promised not to do it again,’ Sophie said, as she secretly thought, In another place, at another time . . .

She lived through those fifteen minutes on stage again and again through the afternoon, thinking, So it’s as easy as that.

Sophie was still singing when she arrived home and found her mother using the telephone in the hall. Chrissie set down the receiver tight lipped. Sophie glanced through to the
sitting-room and asked, ‘Where’s Matt?’ She had to tell someone about her performance in the hall and dared not tell her mother.

Chrissie answered grimly, ‘You may well ask. He left a note. I’ve just phoned your father with the news.’ She handed the sheet, torn from a sketching pad, to Sophie, who read,
in Matt’s neat script, ‘Gone to Finchale. Cook fitted me up with supplies. Back in a few days.’

Chrissie snapped, ‘It’s no laughing matter.’

Sophie tried to stop grinning and agreed, ‘What a cheek, sloping off like that. Of course, he’s Cook’s blue-eyed boy. She’ll have seen him all right for grub.’

‘She did – and claims she assumed he had permission to go off.’ Chrissie suspected the truth of that, knowing the cook’s fondness for Matt.

Sophie soothed, ‘Still, he’s been away like that a few times now.’

Jack said the same when he returned that evening: ‘Well, he’s done it before.’

Chrissie pointed out angrily, ‘Not without asking our permission first.’

Jack shrugged. He had spent an afternoon dealing with problems at the yard and that had taken the edge off his original anger. ‘He said too much earlier, so he’s got out of the way.
He’ll come home in his own good time and I’ll have a word with him then.’

Chrissie said unhappily, ‘He worries me, Jack. I want him to be happy.’

‘So do I. And I hope he is now.’

Finchale Priory lay some six miles away. Matt got down from the slow train at the little station, shrugged into his pack and walked the country mile to the priory. It lay by
the river in its steep-sided valley. He found a clearing where he had camped before, a hundred yards from the ruined priory and close by the river. There he set up his little tent, cooked his
supper of sausages and potatoes on his fire and ate it by the light of the flames. Then he unrolled his groundsheet and blankets. He lay peering out of the open door of the tent, blinking at the
embers glowing in the darkness, listening to the run of the river beyond. In minutes he was asleep.

In the days that followed he would wake thinking of the row before he left home and the one that awaited him on his return. Then he would become involved in the small chores of the day –
washing up and cooking – and afterwards take his pad and pencils and go sketching, or sink into one of the books he had brought with him, or go roaming the countryside, long striding, for
hours.

He missed Tom. They had grown up together, different but close, playing, fighting, scheming, arguing – and uniting to look after Sophie. They had gone to the same school with less than a
year between them. Now they met only at weekends when Tom came home. Matt didn’t want to complain to Tom or ask his advice – though he had in the past and would again. He just wanted
his brother there. However, that was not possible. He reminded himself that they would be camping together in France in the summer and was more cheerful. Meanwhile tomorrow could wait; he would let
life take its course.

He returned home at the end of a week, in time for dinner, and was made welcome. He did not have a prepared speech, but after dinner he just spoke his mind: ‘I’m
sorry, Mother, Dad, but I just had to get away. I like to read, sketch, play rugby – but when I feel like it, not doing a period on this, another on that, according to a timetable. I
don’t want to go to school at all but I know I need a certificate, a piece of paper to be able to get a job. The trouble is, I just don’t know what job I want.’

Jack glanced ruefully, exasperated, at Chrissie. ‘Which leaves us where we were before. What are we going to do with him?’

Chrissie did not care, was only glad to have her boy back.

Pamela Ogilvy was blonde, and big for her age. She had heard of Matt’s running away and thought him romantic. She waylaid him as he left the house with Sophie and Helen,
who had called to see Sophie. Pamela met them at the gate, smiled at all of them, but a little more at Matt than at the rest. Her eyes were still on him when she addressed Sophie: ‘I wondered
if you could tell me one or two things about this trip.’

Matt asked, ‘What trip?’ and thought she was a pretty girl.

Pamela still smiled at him. ‘We’re going to Germany this summer.’ She was aware of Helen listening and added, ‘Well, some of us are – about a dozen or so
actually.’

Matt said, ‘That sounds great.’

Sophie glanced from Pamela to Matt and back again, then asked, ‘What did you want to know?’

Helen Diaz started to walk away. ‘I’m going home.’ She was not going to Germany and Pamela knew this.

Sophie had read the situation and said quickly, ‘I’ll see you as far as the tram. Come on, Pamela.’

Matt said, ‘I’ll walk with you.’

Sophie cut in, ‘Dad said the car wasn’t running properly. He was going to ask you to mend it.’

‘Not running properly?’ Matt halted, puzzled. ‘What d’you mean?’

Sophie called back to him, ‘That’s all I know – except that you need to keep on the right side of him after this last week. Come
on
, Pamela!’

So Pamela had to go, while Matt made his way back to the house wondering, Not running properly? I’ll have to ask Dad . . .

When he did, Jack Ballantyne answered him, ‘Must be some mistake. The car’s ticking over like a clock, nothing wrong with it.’

Later, when Matt challenged Sophie, she replied cheerfully, ‘I was keeping you out of trouble. You’ve been in enough without getting off with Pamela. She’d put you through the
mangle.’

Riled, Matt answered, ‘You can stop interfering in my affairs.’

Sophie walked into her room and paused only to tell him, ‘Somebody has to look after you. I’d have thought you’d be glad I was prepared to do it because lots
wouldn’t.’ Then she closed the door in his face.

Joshua Fannon came home from the pub early because he had spent all his own money and had only the rents he had collected that day. The coins chinked in the pockets of the old
raincoat buttoned tight over his belly, but he dared not spend them. He smelt the gas when he opened the door and heard the hissing.

‘What the hell . . .’ He shoved the door wide and stepped into the kitchen. The gas lamp was not lit because the room was still twilit on this spring evening. He saw his wife,
Meggie, lying fat and loose in her armchair by the fireplace as usual, though the grate held no fire, only dead ashes. A half-empty bottle of gin and a glass stood by her chair, again as usual. In
the hearth was a teapot and a gas-ring with a kettle perched on top of it. The hissing came from there.

Fannon swore. ‘Ye daft cow!’ He guessed that Meggie had turned on the gas to boil a kettle for tea but, in her drunken stupor, failed to light it. He lumbered across the room, belly
wobbling, and bent to turn off the gas, then froze there with his hand on the tap. Meggie was a very bad colour and breathing harshly. He rose slowly, wheezing, then moved quickly to close the door
with barely a click. Stepping carefully and light on his feet, he went to the gas meter in a cupboard on one side of the fireplace, dug down into his raincoat pocket and brought out a handful of
change. He picked out the pennies, bent down and fed them into the meter one by one. As each rattled down inside, a nerve twitched in his cheek. He was sweating and watching Meggie but she showed
no sign of waking. As he rose he knew the gas would flow for several hours.