Street Kid (16 page)

Freda wasn’t letting up. ‘And I suppose that little tart, Bunty, you keep going down the road to visit isn’t my business either?’

I’m glad that I couldn’t see my father’s eyes when she said that. I didn’t know how Freda dared tackle him head on. We both knew he could get really scary.

But he just called her a sour-faced cow and told her to shut up.

I knew, when they went to bed, that Freda was brewing for a fight. I’d seen her put on her pink nighty with ribbons earlier on, and when my Dad came to bed she’d tried as hard as she could to flirt with him. It was awful to listen to, especially as he was so cold and curt to her in response. When he saw the nighty he just said, ‘You’ll get cold. You’d better put a cardigan on.’

Another time, Freda had a bug and was throwing up into a bowl over the side of the bed. My father didn’t ask her if she was okay, didn’t even look up from his book. It was as if, now that he’d got to South Africa, he was going to try his hardest to show that he really didn’t need Freda any more. He had other fish to fry, and one of them was obviously Bunty.

I’d tried then, as I tried now, to cut out the sound of their voices by lying with my good ear shoved as hard as it would go into my pillow.

Oh please will you just shut up. I can’t stand it.
I found myself furiously arguing with them in my head. I was feeling hot and sweaty by now and was longing to throw back my sheet and turn my pillow to its cooler side, but knew I didn’t dare risk them hearing me move.

I felt like I’d been lying there for hours and was almost sobbing with frustration.
I’ve got to get some sleep. I’ve got school tomorrow. Will you just shut up!

The next day, school was as bad as I feared. I’d been there a week now and Barnato Park Girl’s School wasn’t getting any better. Unlike my school in Hulme, this one was full of well-heeled, spotlessly dressed girls from the posh northern suburbs. With their Alice bands and their perfect cardigans around their perfect shoulders, they looked a very different breed to anything I knew. And, once they’d scented an outcast in their midst, they turned from me with a collective shudder.

Although I didn’t have to play the part of a boy once we’d left the ship, my hair was still pretty short. That alone made it quite impossible for me to fit in with the young ladies of Barnato Park School. And my father soon saw to it that I would always be an outcast.

He had hit the roof when he saw the clothes’ list. ‘I don’t bloody believe it! Three white piquet cotton dresses, if you please,’ he snorted furiously. ‘Six pairs white cotton ankle socks; two pairs black lace-up walking shoes with eight eye holes; one black blazer with brocade piping and school badge sewn on pocket; one white panama hat with school crest embroidered on hat band –’

At this he’d broken off, throwing the list down in disgust. ‘Where am I going to get all this bleeding money from? Who do they think they are –?’

‘Well, what do you expect me to do?’ Freda asked, knowing that one way or another it would be her responsibility to sort me out.

‘Get her a dress and a pair of shoes that’ll last,’ he said. ‘And they can stuff the rest.’

When I’d gone into school in a less-than-white dress, a pair of shoes far too big for me, and an old pair of socks, I was hauled up in front of the class.

‘Where’s your blazer and hat?’ the teacher, Mrs Poole, asked me.

‘I don’t have them,’ I replied.

‘Well, you’d better come with them tomorrow as there’s a dress drill,’ she said. ‘Now, sit here at the front where I can see you and get out your arithmetic exercise book.’

‘I don’t have an exercise book,’ I said quietly.

The other girls sniggered as Mrs Poole drew herself up indignantly. ‘Were you not given a list of what you had to buy?’ she asked. ‘This is not England, you know.’

‘My father’s got the list.’

‘You cannot come to class without your exercise books,’ she said, closing the conversation.

Mrs Poole then reluctantly gave me a piece of paper to write on. All the other girls had pencil cases complete with set squares and protractors and all sorts of other unfamiliar items that had been on the list. I only had the pencil stub and ballpoint pen Dad had given me, along with one of his half-used jotter pads that he’d thrown in my face with a snort.

What the heck am I going to do now?
I thought to myself.
I hardly dare ask him for this stuff, but even if I did he’s never in.

However, when I got home he was in and I did find the courage to confront him. I asked about the blazer. He went absolutely bonkers, swiping me across the face.

‘Oh, you think the trees, the bloody trees are going to give me money?’ he shouted. ‘You’ll just have to wait.’

And wait I did.

The next few days, it was the same routine – the dress drill and a ticking off by Mrs Poole – until finally she wrote a letter to my father. He moaned and complained the whole evening about it, finally throwing a couple of pound notes at Freda saying, ‘Buy her a bloody blazer.’

So Freda took me to the shop at last and bought the blazer and hat on the dummy in the window as she didn’t have enough money for one out of a box. The blazer had faded and the hat had a yellow tinge.

A week later, I was still feeling like a gawky sparrow in my grey socks. Only this time my name was being read out by the headmistress in assembly. I got up, blushing with shame, sensing several hundred smirking faces turned in my direction.

‘Now girls, I want you to raise your hands if you can see what is wrong with Judith’s appearance,’ she said. ‘We set a standard at Barnato Park which we expect every single girl to adhere to. It is just not good enough coming in looking like this.’

One prissy girl in the front immediately shot up her hand. ‘Yes, Serena,’ the head said, pointing at her.

‘Well, miss, her dress looks all dirty round the hem and isn’t ironed properly, and there’s no school badge on the collar.’

‘That’s quite right. You must all have creases here and here on your dresses,’ the head said, pinching the sleeves
of my dress. She then made me kneel down. ‘And you’ll see that Judith’s skirt is not the regulation length above the knee.’

‘Anybody else?’

Another hand went up. ‘She’s meant to have white socks, turned down an inch,’ another girl informed us. ‘Hers aren’t white, they’re a sort of grey colour.’

One by one, every item of school clothing was criticized, until the most humiliating moment of all.

‘And what’s wrong with these?’ The headmistress lifted my skirt so that the whole school could see my knickers, which weren’t the regulation black.

I wanted to run away and never come back.

We got out of school at half past one and the heat on the streets was intense. We were forbidden to take our blazers off until we’d arrived home, which I thought was a stupid rule as by the time I got back to the Allendene I felt like a cooked chicken. I ran straight upstairs and peeled the white dress from my hot and sticky body.

I’d had to get into the routine of washing my dress every afternoon. It always had grass stains on it or muck from the wall we used to sit on at breaktime. I found it very tricky to get it clean as we only had a tiny basin in the corner of our room and the material of the dress seemed to suck up masses of water. It was almost impossible to wring out and there was water all over the floor by the time I’d finished. I had to borrow Freda’s towel and roll my dress up in it in an attempt to soak it up.

Next, I took a coathanger and hung the dress at the open window to dry. I managed to borrow an iron from a lady downstairs which you had to plug into the
electric light switch. It was pretty hopeless and didn’t do the job of making the proper creases on the sleeves. I tried to get the dress flat but it never looked right – or quite clean.

Chapter Fifteen

F
reda and my dad were getting on worse and worse. Their silences filled our room in the rare evenings they were both in and although neither of them hit me any more, they were often sniping at me. Once, I came into the room and found Freda sitting on the bed looking red eyed from crying. I suddenly felt a little bit sorry for her.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked her.

Freda didn’t bother to look at me and I thought she wasn’t going to reply. After a moment, though, she said, ‘I wish I’d never come.’

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t respond. I was waiting for her to say that it was all my fault, that if I hadn’t been in tow, she and Jack would be all right; but she didn’t this time.

My dad refused to be brought down by Freda’s mood. He continued to be in his element, filling the wardrobe with new suits and cravats, bought with some of the ill-gotten proceeds of the sanctuary as it turned out. It was as though here in South Africa he finally felt free to be the con man – a role that had always come naturally to him.

Freda wasn’t the only one upset by my father’s goings on. All his sharp suits and new girlfriends had to be paid
for somehow. One evening, only a couple of months after we moved into the Allendene, we had a visit from Alec and Gladys.

Cathleen and I sat on the bed watching the row unfold. I felt a strange sense of relief that the Rippons had found out that my father wasn’t to be trusted. I’d always liked Alec and it made me feel very uncomfortable that he was paying for our room at the Allendene and bankrolling the sanctuary. I had a horrible sense that it would only be a matter of time before my father and Freda had sucked him dry.

Alec was a mild-mannered, kindly man and I was quite amazed that he could be so feisty. He must have been really, really angry with my dad.

‘I’ve had enough, Jack. Absolutely enough!’ Alec was a small man but just now he almost looked tall. Gladys stood at his side, showing the quiet moral support she always gave her husband. I thought again what dignity she had.

My father didn’t answer but wore a relaxed expression. Not quite insulting, but almost.

‘We feel betrayed, quite frankly,’ Alec went on. ‘We’ve given our all to the sanctuary. Sold our house, for Christ’s sake. Patients told us you were taking money out of the donation boxes. We didn’t want to believe them, but Gladys saw you. You’re a lousy fraudster, Jack.’

‘What do you plan to do then?’ my father said, clearly wanting to end the conversation but still sounding nonchalant.

‘I’ve got my wife and child to consider,’ said Alec. ‘And there’s no way we want anything to do with a con man like you. We’re leaving before you can do any more damage. Quite frankly, you’re very lucky I haven’t called in the police.’

‘Well, you’d better please yourself, then,’ my dad said, moving over to the door and opening it.

Gladys took her cue, taking Cathleen with her, and walking out without a backward glance, dignified to the last. Alec looked suddenly deflated and very, very sad. Only a few weeks ago, he and dad had come up with a slogan for the sanctuary: ‘New light, new hope, new truth’. Now his dreams of helping lost souls were in pieces. He didn’t look at my father or Freda as he left the room.

I wonder what they’re going to do now?
I thought to myself.
Maybe they’ll go back to England and buy their house back.

But I had a feeling that they wouldn’t give up quite yet; wouldn’t want to go back to England so soon. That would be admitting they’d failed. We never saw the Rippons again.

Once they’d left the room, my father muttered, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ and I knew that he’d put them out of his mind just as soon as they’d walked out of the door. I’d never known him to feel a moment of remorse, or even embarrassment, and he wasn’t going to start now. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of that particular gravy train for him. He’d go out looking for another tomorrow, no doubt.

I could tell that Freda was immediately in a much better mood. No more having to be the poor relation around Gladys; no more being left out in the cold while the other three played doctors and nurses at the Triangle Band Healing Sanctuary. I’m sure Freda thought that being on their own again would allow her to be my father’s right-hand woman at last, standing with him on the platform at Spiritualist church events. After all, back in Hulme, that’s what he’d always promised her.

‘Don’t worry, Jack,’ she said to my father soothingly. ‘We’ll work out a plan. I’ll get a job or something.’

My father didn’t show much grace when she said that, but he didn’t turn away from her.

Freda was true to her word and got a part-time job at a solicitor’s firm called Schwartz, Fine and Kane as a filing clerk. My father happily took her money for the rent but showed no sign of wanting to be around her any more than before. In fact, if anything, they saw less of each other. Dad hardly came home at all, and soon Freda was staying out much more as well.

She’d made some friends at work who encouraged her to join the Italian Club, where she could play tennis and drink in the bar with other ex-pats. I noticed that Freda had started to look different too, wearing what she called her ‘trews’ – checked trousers that were very much in vogue then – instead of her usual frumpy skirts and dresses.

By now, she’d completely washed her hands of me. Apart from the odd gripe to my dad about how useless and sneaky I was, she ignored me completely. It was as if I wasn’t there.

I was relieved not to be bullied as much by Freda any more, but I found myself feeling desperately lonely. There was no one I could talk to at school and instead of coming home to Gyp’s enthusiastic welcome, as I would have done in Hulme, I’d get back to our empty boarding house with hours to kill before bedtime. I managed to while away some of the long hours of the afternoon and evening in the hotel lounge, picking out tunes on the piano; and a couple of times a week I would go to the library. I found that I had an unquenchable hunger for books about animals, particularly dogs. I read
Jock of the Bushveld
and
Old Yella
again and again. Reading them helped me grieve for Gyp, for I was still feeling the loss of her keenly.