He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) (18 page)

‘That’s the finish of our education, is it?’

‘You’d better watch your mouth, boy, or I’ll shut it for you.
 
It’ll get you into trouble one day.
 
Let that be a warning.’

Inside, my anger churned.

Back in the men’s quarters, Joe flung himself on his bunk.
 
‘It’s like being home,’ he said.

At least Joe and I were comparatively safe here - as safe as we were likely to be.
 
But I had learnt from experience that when you felt at your most secure it was the time when you were most at risk.
 
When it came to it, you couldn’t trust anyone.
 
Look after number one was my motto.
 
But when I thought of Elsie, I knew Joe and I should be grateful we were away from the homestead and with Murray and Fergus, even if they were funny old blokes.

‘I reckon we won’t have to worry about the Boss for a day or two.’
 
Joe stretched on top of his bunk, his hands behind his head, elbows akimbo.
 
‘I’d say the Missus won’t feel too good, either.’

‘Why?’
 
I wouldn’t care if Downston and The Missus dropped down dead there and then.

‘Crook I’d say, the pair of ‘em.
 
And that high and mighty Harrington.’

‘Crook?’

Joe crossed one leg over the other and smiled up at the rafters.
 
‘You didn’t think I offered to make the tea out the goodness of my heart, did you?’
 
He began to laugh.
 
It made his whole body shake and his bunk rocked.
 
‘When I went into the kitchen to fill up the teapot, I took it outside and peed in it.’
 
Joe could hardly draw enough breath to talk.

‘You peed in the teapot?’

‘Funny how tea and pee look the same, ain’t it?’

Chapter Fifteen

Candlewax dumped his swag on the bed.
 
It was kept in the corner of the men’s quarters for the various swagmen who called at Downstons.

‘You ‘ad the boil-up yet?’ he asked.

‘Not yet,’ Murray replied.

‘Blimey, he stinks.
 
How we supposed to eat with that pong?’ Joe complained.

‘You’ll get used to it.’
 
Murray took a pile of newspaper squares we had recently cut and handed them to Candlewax.
 
‘Mind you use ‘em,’ he instructed.

The man’s hair was long and greasy.
 
‘You got a jacket?’
 
He mumbled.
 
It’s cold out there at nights?’

‘We might have something, but you mind what I’ve just told you.’

Without seeming to hear what Murray said, Candlewax untied his swag and took out a tin.
 
He unscrewed the top and immediately the smell of the sludgy green ointment inside it filled the men’s quarters.
 
It made my eyes water and forced me to rush for the door.

‘Good for cuts and the sort.
 
Seen it heal a cockie down south who nigh on cut his hand off.’
 
The swagman offered the tin to Murray.
 
‘You can have it for a double helping of boil-up.
 
Plenty of mutton in it, is there?
 
The Missus give you chops and bread for breakfast?’
 
Candlewax seemed unaffected by the smell, although his nose dripped on to the floor.

‘Mornings I throw in a few potatoes the boy grows,’ Murray said.

‘Sounds like poison to me,’ Candlewax spat on the floor.

‘Outside for that sort of thing,’ Murray grumbled.

‘Getting fussy now you got a couple of pommies with yer.’

That night when Candlewax wasn’t calling for someone called Gladys, he was farting, causing Fergus to complain into the darkness, ‘For the love of all the saints, can’t someone put a cork in one end of the wretched man, and a gag at the other?’

The next day, as soon as he had downed two bowls of boil-up, Candlewax was off, wearing a jacket Murray had somehow managed to lay hold of.
 
He left a bed that Fergus and Murray threw into the undergrowth, and a stench that took days to fade.

I didn’t envy Candlewax with the weather getting colder.
 
He’d need the jacket.
 
I guessed he wouldn’t use the newspaper squares he’d taken with him for the purpose they were intended either, but to pad his coat against the freezing blasts.

I blew on my hands, and my footsteps crunched on the frozen ground as I walked to the pigsties.
 
The snow that had coated the mountains flirted with the foothills, turning them into a succession of thinly clad white mounds.
 
The distant sheep stood cold and lonely against a gun metal sky.

The sooner I fed the pigs and cleaned the pigsty, the sooner I could get back to our quarters and the potato porridge Murray had taken to making with the onset of colder mornings.

I heaved a bucket and tipped its contents into a trough.
 
Today, it was too cold to take my time and dream my dreams of Blountmere Street.
 
My jersey did little to combat the chill, and my short trousers left my knees exposed and purple.
 
New Zealand wasn’t the tropical place I’d boasted about to the other boys on the ship.
 
At least this part of New Zealand wasn’t.

Joe entered the hut, stamping his feet and clapping his hands to shock life back into them.

‘Holy Mother of God, do you have to make that racket?’
 
Fergus winced.
 
Last night, he had returned from the township, drunk as usual.
 
Murray had dumped him in a disheveled heap on his bed.

‘Porridge?’
 
Murray enquired.
 
‘Nothing like potato porridge to warm the innards.’

Fergus lurched for the door.

‘Hooray,’ Murray called after him.

‘Blimey, he stinks the place out when he’s been on the grog, just like my old man.
 
It stayed up your nose all day when he’d
had a skinful.’
 
Joe squeezed his nostrils between his thumb and forefinger.

Smells didn’t stay with you for just a day.
 
On the odd occasion, when I tried to conjure a picture of the Old Man, all that flickered behind my eyelids was a blurry cut-out figure.
 
Yet, in my head somewhere, I still held the aroma of cheap perfume worn by the women the Old Man had brought to the house. The scent of Bunty - rotting violets - and with it came the memory of her painted face, bleached hair and the last time I heard the Old Man’s voice.

‘Spent his winnings at
The Travellers
,’ Murray nodded towards the door Fergus had retreated through.

‘Winnings?
 
On the gee gees?’
 
Joe had his spoon raised ready for when Murray placed his bowl in front of him.

‘Too right.’

‘You won?’

‘Too right.’

‘Did you win a lot?
 
A fortune?’

‘Enough.’
 
Murray delved into his pocket. He pulled out a wad of notes.
 
‘That reminds me, we put a bob each way for you young blokes on
Lucky Scoundrel
.’
 
He began peeling from the bundle of notes.

‘D’you mean you put a bet on for us, and we won, as well as you?’
 
I asked.
 
I hadn’t ever won anything.

‘Too right.’

‘But we never gave you any money.’
 
The last time I could remember holding money in my hand, was when Mum gave me sixpence for Saturday Picture Club out of what Fred and Lori left us.

‘Our shout.
 
We each put in a bit for the two of you.’

‘And we’ve won thirty bob each?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Blimey, we’re blinkin’ rich.’

‘Steady on, Ginger.’
 
Murray replaced the wad in his pocket, and began spooning porridge on top of the boil-up.

Joe stared at the money in his hand.
 
‘One day I’ll be stinkin’ rich.
 
And I’ll tell you something; now I’ve got a bit, I won’t ever be without cash again’

That evening, when Fergus’ hangover had worn off, he suddenly asked me ‘Have you thought any more about writing to those neighbours of yours?’
 
He flipped over a dog-eared page of
Beautiful Ireland
, as the wind forced itself between the wooden slats of our quarters and rustled the calendars on the walls.

‘Not really.’

‘If you write a letter, I’ll post it for you.
 
The last one you wrote probably got lost on the ship.
 
To be sure, that’s what happened.’
 
But Fergus’s eyes never left his book.
 
‘Anyhows, be that as it may, if you start a letter now, you’ll have a couple of weeks to work on it.’

‘I’ll think about it.’
 
What reason did I have to write?
 
I wasn’t likely to get back to England no matter how many wins we had on the horses.
 
And, if Paula Dibble did decide to answer, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear how Mum died, and what had happened to Angela.
 
I didn’t want to know how things had changed in Blountmere Street.
 
My dreams were all I had left.

‘And those other friends, the ones who live in New Zealand.
 
What about them?
 
They might have a telephone number.
 
If you give me their names and address, I’ll try and find out.
 
Now where’s the harm in that?’

‘No point.
 
They didn’t turn up to collect me off the ship, and that’s that.’
 
I resented Fergus’ nosiness.

‘Have you thought they might not know you’re here?’

‘The orphanage said they’d get in touch with them, and the orphanage always did what they said they would.
 
They said they’d punish you if you wet the bed and they did.
 
They said you were going to be sent to New Zealand, and you were.’

‘Why don’t you give me these people’s names and address.’
 
I could tell Fergus was trying to make up for losing my last letter but it was too late.
 

‘They’re called Fred and Lori.’
 
I didn’t want to say their names out loud.
 
My voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Fred and Lori who?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Of course it matters.’

‘Stannard.’

‘Stannard?’

‘That’s what I said.’
 
Why didn’t Fergus stop asking questions.
 
He wasn’t always on at Joe to write to
his
folk.

‘Where do they live?’
 

‘Don’t know.’
 

‘The North or The South Island?

‘Don’t know.’

‘So you didn’t give the orphanage their address?’

‘Didn’t have one.
 
The matron tore up their letter, and I couldn’t remember their address in New Zealand.’

Fergus’ face took on the sort of softness it did when he read poetry out loud.

‘By all the saints, how could the orphanage contact them without an address?’

‘New Zealand’s not that big.
 
There can’t be many Stannards living here.’

Fergus sighed.
 
‘You said they have a son in New Zealand.
 
What’s his name?’

‘Ronald, but Fred said he didn’t have the same surname as him, because he’d taken Fred’s first wife’s name.’

‘It doesn’t make things easy, to be sure, but let’s have a go, anyway, shall we?’

‘Do what you want.’
 
I didn’t care. Fergus could please himself.
 
This time I wouldn’t spend every waking opportunity with my eyes fixed on the distant road, expecting Fred and Lori to come round the bend and down the hill.
  
It was a mug’s game.
 
I wasn’t playing it any more.

Paul Downston galloped his horse, Flinders, in the paddock next to the pigsty.
 
It was early for Downston’s son to be out.
 
During his school holidays, when he was back on the farm, he wasn’t usually around until much later.
 
If I could, I avoided him. He was as much a bully as his father.
 
More so.
 
Even Downston didn’t treat the animals with the cruelty his son did.
 
I could see the horse was tiring.
 
Its breath created a white column in front of it, yet the boy kept applying his whip to the animal’s rump, urging it to go faster.
 
I walked back into the sty, my insides feeling as if they were being squeezed through the Missus’ mangle.
 
Just as I couldn’t do anything to change my own life, I could do nothing to help Flinders.
 
We were both captives.

Paul Downston tugged at the rein and turned Flinders towards the pigsty.
 
My stomach experienced another turn in the mangle.
 
As they approached, I noticed blood pumping from one of Flinder’s flanks.
 
I shivered.
 
Like me, Flinders was at the mercy of a brute.

‘Come here you, pommie bastard,’ Paul Downston commanded me, as he reached the sty.
 
He dismounted from Flinders, with another vicious crack of his whip to the mare’s hind quarters.
 
Flinders whinied.
 
I hated hearing her pain.

‘You slept in my bedroom while I was away, and ran it alive with fleas, you dirty orphan.’
 
He accused.
 
‘Now say, “Sorry, sir”.’

I didn’t answer, and went inside the pigsty.
 
I took a piece of rag from a hook, returned and began dabbing at the wheals on Flinder’s back.