Meet Me at the Pier Head

PAN BOOKS

I dedicate this work to all survivors of abuse in childhood and to organizations whose members and supporters give help to the young of today.

1958

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

1968

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

POST SCRIPTUM

Christmas 1968, Kent, England

Theodore Quinn’s office currently held three points of view. He could look at Myrtle Street through one window, or turn his chair and study the playground through a
second window, or he could carry on trying to be stern while telling off one Colin Duckworth. It wasn’t easy, yet he needed to keep his eyes pinned to this likeable nuisance of a child. A
born comedian, Colin pretended to be stupid when he was, in effect, brighter than some of the teachers.

I must not laugh, must not, will not – I’ll explode shortly. Look at the state of him. He puts me in mind of a bundle of soiled clothing ready for what people hereabouts call the
bag-wash, but he’s a great kid and I like him. He knows I like him. Dear God, he’s doing that ploughed field thing with his forehead again.

Theodore Quinn had dignity up to a point, two passports, a degree, a doctorate, a teaching qualification, headship of a school, and a sense of humour that threatened to be his downfall. He had
taught for over eight years in the city of Liverpool, where the children had a terrible attachment to and affection for the ridiculous, and they made him laugh. For them, rules were rough
guidelines at best, a call to arms at worst. He tried to pin a professional glare to his face. ‘Why, Colin? It’s almost time to go home, but you and I will stay here till we get to the
bottom of this. I suppose you’re expecting to play football tonight. Am I right? You and the other lads down at the park having a kick-about?’ This place reminded him of the Bronx, his
last home in America; the only difference lay in the accents.

Colin Duckworth, reddish hair standing on end as usual, shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. ‘I never done nothing,’ he mumbled, his eyelids fluttering wildly. Blinking was
Colin’s ‘tell’, the signal that accompanied his lies. Some kids wept or tugged at an earlobe, while others played with their hair or rearranged clothing, but this young chap was a
blinker. At this moment, he was probably looking at life through the equivalent of very fast windscreen wipers, while his deepening blush clashed loudly with his disordered mop.
‘Colin?’

‘Sir?’

‘Never did anything,’ Theo said in a vain attempt to correct the boy’s English. ‘You never did anything, not nothing.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Not quite.’ The head of Myrtle Street School knew better than to embark on a lecture relating to verbs, participles and double negatives at this particular juncture. Colin Duckworth
didn’t care about grammar, as he intended to be an Olympic swimmer (speciality the butterfly stroke), the first man on the moon, and a player for Liverpool Football Club. In his spare time,
the gutsy eight-year-old would work on the docks with his dad. ‘Well?’ Theo asked, arching an eyebrow.

‘Well, what, Sir?’

‘The roof, Colin. You were seen on the roof. You crossed the roof, picked up a ball, threw it down, then slid down a drainpipe which is now loose.’

The child sighed heavily. ‘I must have slept-walked, cos I don’t remember nothing, Mr Quinn.’

‘Sleep-walked.’

‘That’s what I said. It was scary, waking up on a roof. I could have fell off, Sir, and broke me neck or me back and ended up down the ozzie for operations and all that if I had fell
off.’ His voice faded during the delivery of this longer sentence. He was losing the battle, and both occupants of the head teacher’s office knew it. No one ever won when it came to a
battle with Blackbird.

‘Fallen off,’ the headmaster said.

‘Yeah, that as well. Me whole life flashed in front of me eyes. Dad says that’s what happens just before you die. Sir?’

‘Yes, Colin?’

‘How does me dad know that? He’s never died, has he? I mean, if you’ve never died, how can you be sure . . .?’ The boy’s voice faded due to a complete lack of
conviction. He’d tripped over his own tongue, hadn’t he? He’d dug his own grave again. Mam often fired such accusations when he wasn’t telling the truth. Oh no,
Blackbird’s brain was clicking; Colin could almost hear it shifting up a gear.

Theo stirred himself. ‘You didn’t die, but your life flashed in front of your eyes. Or are you making this up, I wonder?’ This terrible boy was very bright, advanced enough to
have skipped a year.
I must get Miss Cosgrove to send me his work. Looking at his work will be a darned sight easier than looking at him. And he has wonderful parents . . .

‘Me, Sir? Erm . . . it must happen when you nearly die or think you’re going to die. Or something.’

The head of Myrtle Street School stood up and walked to the playground window. For some reason, he could no longer manage to look at Colin Duckworth. He stared at the flat-roofed buildings that
were supposed to be temporary measures. Thirteen years had passed since the end of hostilities, and the makeshift replacements for classrooms had begun to look old, shabby and permanent.

‘The school got bombed before I was borned,’ Colin informed him as if reading his head teacher’s mind. ‘So I never seen it, Sir.’

‘I know.’

‘Caretaker was killed stone dead. He was an ’ero.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s why we have the prefab classrooms, Sir.’

Sir grinned and shook his head almost imperceptibly.

‘Them flat roofs is no good, Sir. Me dad said so, Sir.’

‘Quite. And you could have put your foot through the felt. We need a new roof, because the rain gets in. You might have stood on a weak spot and ended up inside the building with two
broken legs and some broken furniture.’

Colin bridled and folded his arms. ‘I’m not soft enough for that, Mr Quinn. I was dead careful.’

‘In your sleep?’ Theo spun on the spot and scowled at his companion. Keeping a straight face in the company of Colin and his ilk was never going to be easy. ‘You were careful
in your sleep? Well, isn’t that a novelty?’ He mustn’t laugh.
Don’t laugh, Theo
continued to be his mantra as he glared at the boy.

Colin swallowed hard. The thing about Blackbird was that he had his limits, and punishments were harsh. Not the cane, not a slipper, not even a ruler – oh, no, because that kind of stuff
would have been too easy, too quick. Blackbird did detention. Detention meant pages of sums or something really horrible like geography or history or French. This headmaster felt that children
should begin to learn a second language in junior school. ‘I was a bit awake. Not proper, just a bit not asleep. Like a dream, Sir.’

‘I wonder. You’re something of a miracle, then?’
Keep a straight face, Theo. You can laugh when he’s gone.

‘Eh?’

‘You can see in your sleep.’ He flapped his ‘wings’.

The wings were part of the black cloak he wore so that people knew he was coming. Sir had a degree in something that sounded like cycle-ology, and he wore a gown. It flapped, so his nickname was
Blackbird. ‘Sorry, Sir.’

‘There was a ball on the roof, Colin. Where is it now?’

The child squirmed, and his eyelids shifted into neutral.

‘Where?’

‘Our back kitchen, Sir. Under the sink with Mam’s cleaning stuff, like.’

‘And whose property is that football?’

‘The school’s, Mr Quinn.’

Theo sat at his desk once more. ‘Bring it back Monday morning. Tell your father I want to see him when he can spare the time.’

Colin’s face blanched. ‘Can I not just get detention, Sir? Me dad’ll go mad at me for pinching a ball.’ Even geography would be preferable to his father’s
disappointment. Roy Duckworth didn’t beat his kids, but he was very good at doing disappointed. His mother, too, was great at looking hurt.

‘No, he won’t go mad, because I won’t tell him about the ball. I need to speak to him regarding another matter.’

‘Oh.’

‘You may go now.’

The child blinked warily. Was Sir going soft in the head? The ball was a real casey, leather, with a lace that tied it up. ‘So no punishment?’

‘We’ll store this up for next time, Colin. One more infringement, and you’ll get two detentions.’ He smiled at the bewildered child. ‘Go before I have a change of
heart, son.’
And before I fall apart, because you look ridiculous. Gaps in your teeth, that silly hair – no, I mustn’t look at you.

Alone in comparative silence, Theo sat chuckling quietly while listening to the low, almost inaudible hum of a working school. It was balm for his soul, because he loved children, especially the
naughty ones. In his experience, the imaginative and difficult pupils often grew up to be the better achievers, the workers, the providers of the future.

Theodore Quinn had made his own future, and he had been an angry, recalcitrant child. No, he didn’t want to think about all that mess just now. The summer break was about to begin, and he
was one teacher short for the coming school year. There was a general shortage of teachers, and just one applicant had emerged for September’s reception class. She was from the south. Theo
sighed. Would she need an interpreter? He remembered his own difficulties when, at the age of twenty-nine, he had arrived with a bundle of qualifications and a teaching certificate.
Liverpool’s accent and vernacular had confused him, while the children had been in awe of him, because he was a Yank.

He still had his little blue book, a hard-backed item containing a list of words like tom
ah
to and T
yous
day instead of Toosday. Then there were the Germanic-type elements like
either and neither. The English clung to the original rule that the second vowel took charge . . . Then sidewalk was pavement, faucet was tap, a car hood a bonnet, a car trunk a boot. That same car
rolled along on tyres rather than tires, while vehicles in the sky were aeroplanes, never airplanes. English English was more elegant than American English, though this tiny island owned dozens of
accents, and each ruined the language in its own special way. It was all good, clean fun.

Theo grinned as he remembered his early experiences as a teacher. ‘Are you a cowboy, Sir?’ they had asked on his first day in a classroom. ‘Or a film star? Can you ride a
horse? Did you have a gun?’ Yes, he had been an object of interest for a short time. But, like anybody else from overseas, he had been absorbed by Liverpool, accepted, even loved. Of one
thing he was certain: he was an excellent teacher. His father, an Irish Liverpudlian who had emigrated to America decades ago, had a saying. ‘Do it right or stay in bed. No half-measures,
lad.’ That had been good advice from a hard drinker.

Dad had remarried after Mom’s death, and Theo had met his now adult half-siblings on several occasions, but he had no intention of returning permanently to America. This was home.

Somebody tapped at the door.

‘Come,’ he called.

It was Colin Duckworth again. With his gap-toothed smile, unruly hair and bright pink blush, he looked like something from a circus. ‘Sir?’

‘Yes, Colin?’

The boy hovered in the doorway. ‘Was you in the war, Sir?’

‘I was.’

‘Was you in it before the rest of the Yanks, Sir?’

‘I was.’ Theo repeated. ‘It’s were you, by the way.’

‘Me, Sir? No, Sir, I weren’t in it, cos I weren’t borned. Was you with the RAF?’

‘Rear gunner, yes.’ Once again, he had lost the battle with Colin’s English.

‘Did you shoot Germans down, Mr Quinn?’

‘I did. It was my job, you see.’

Colin punched the air with both fists. ‘Yesssss. I’ve won a go on Bernie Allinson’s new bike. Thank you, Sir.’ The boy withdrew and closed the door.

Theo found himself doubled over his desk laughing. ‘Seek and ye shall find’ had always been his maxim as a teacher. Children should never be afraid to ask questions, but some of
their queries required delicacy. ‘Do babies come out of the woman’s belly button?’ and ‘What does bugger mean, Sir?’ were not unusual. He’d been forced to
explain why fish didn’t drown, why America didn’t have a king or a queen, how aeroplanes managed not to fall out of the sky, and why the Nazis had murdered Jews.

He dried his weeping eyes. ‘They’ll be the death of me,’ he mumbled. ‘And what about Miss Bellamy? How will she cope?’ He picked up her application. She had taught
for five years in a private college for girls in Kent. Her address was Bartle Hall, Chaddington Green, and she was unlikely to have encountered the colourful language known as Scouse. The letter
was interesting.