Trouble at the Little Village School (39 page)

‘Leave it a moment, Michael,’ she said. ‘He needs a little time to think. He’ll open the door in his own time.’

She was right, for a few minutes later the door of the caravan creaked open and Danny stood in the doorway, his face flushed with distress and his eyes full of tears.

‘’Ello, Dr Stirling,’ he said, biting his bottom lip so he wouldn’t cry.

‘Hello, Danny,’ said the doctor quietly. ‘We’ve been looking all over for you.’

‘I’m sorry I’ve put you to all this trouble.’ The boy had misery written all over his face. ‘I ’ad to come ’ome. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry your head about that,’ the doctor replied. ‘The main thing is that we have found you safe and well. Here’s Mrs Devine and James. They’ve been worried about you too.’

‘’Ello, Mrs Devine,’ said the boy, his voice strained with tears. ‘Hi, James.’

Elisabeth smiled and nodded.

‘Hello, Danny,’ said James. He looked pale and nervous.

‘I think we’ll get you back to Clumber Lodge, Danny, for a hot drink and some breakfast.’

The boy stared forlornly at the floor and didn’t move. ‘Will I have to go back?’ he asked, gnawing his lip.

Dr Stirling and Elisabeth exchanged glances. ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ said the doctor. ‘Now come along, it’s too cold to stay outside in this weather.’

Danny looked up. There was sadness and resignation in his face. He knew that he would be returned to his grandmother.

Dr Stirling left the house early. It was the following morning, and Mrs Stainthorpe was due to collect her grandson. The doctor had really wanted to be there when Danny left, but he had received an emergency call to which he had to attend. The night before, he had telephoned the police, cooked Danny a meal and put the boy to bed.

‘Please would you ask Mrs Stainthorpe to stay until I get back?’ he asked Mrs O’Connor. ‘Put her in the sitting-room and get her a cup of tea.’

The housekeeper huffed. She could think of a drink she would like to give to that woman and it wasn’t tea. Prussic acid, more like. ‘Very well, Dr Stirling,’ she replied. Poor man, she thought. The last time she had seen him so quiet and dejected was after his wife had died.

‘I shouldn’t be long,’ he said. ‘I should like to say goodbye to Danny before he leaves.’When Dr Stirling had left, Mrs O’Connor shouted up the stairs. ‘Danny, will you come down here a minute, I’d like to have a wee word with you.’

A moment later the boy came into the kitchen. He had an expression of grim forbearance on his face, like a condemned man being dragged off to his execution.

‘Sit down for a minute,’ the housekeeper told him. ‘I’ve made some scones – your favourites. You can take a few with you when you go.’

The boy sat in miserable silence at the kitchen table, cupped his head in his hands and stared vacantly though the window at the gloomy grey sky. Rain snaked down the windowpanes. It was a cold miserable day which reflected his mood. At the rear of Clumber Lodge the garden was neglected. Beneath ancient oaks and tall sycamores, with their thick, shiny black trunks and intricate mesh of smaller branches, was a tangle of overgrown roses, buddleia and thorns, dense holly thickets and laurel bushes. The wind blew fretfully at the window frames and the rain continued to patter on the glass.

‘I were gunna fettle t’back garden when t’weather eased up,’ said Danny sadly.

‘You made a grand job of the front garden, so you did,’ the housekeeper told him. ‘Maybe you can come over some time and sort out the back.’

‘Mebbe,’ muttered the boy.

The housekeeper placed a liberally buttered scone on a plate and slid it across the table. ‘Now get that down you,’ she said. ‘You’ve had no breakfast and you can’t start the day without something inside you. That’s what my owld grandmother used to say.’

The very last thing Danny wanted to do that morning was to eat. His stomach churned and his throat felt dry. ‘I’m not that ’ungry, Mrs O’Connor,’ the boy replied, miserably pushing the plate away. ‘Thanks anyroad.’

‘Well, I was wanting to have a wee chat with you,’ she said, ‘before your grandmother arrives.’

‘I don’t really feel like talkin’,’ Danny told her. He was on the verge of tears.

‘Maybe so,’ she said, ‘but there’s one or two things I want to say to you before she comes. Now, first things first. Have you got everything?’

‘I think so.’

‘Have you fed that ferret of yours?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And did you say goodbye to James before he left for school?’

Danny nodded.

‘And did you write a note to Dr Stirling thanking him for having you?’

‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. There was a tremble in his voice. ‘I left it on t’chair in mi . . . in t’back bedroom.’

Danny suddenly began to shake with crying, then he burst into quick choking sobs. ‘I don’t want to go, Mrs O’Connor. I don’t want to go back. I don’t like it theer. I likes it ’ere.’

‘I know that, darlin’,’ said the housekeeper, sniffing. She plucked a handkerchief from her apron pocket and blew her nose noisily. Her face was soft with concern. She moved around the table and, sitting next to the boy, put her arm around him.

‘You know, your grandmother is a very lucky woman, so she is,’ she said.

Danny looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. He looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Lucky?’ he repeated. ‘’Ow is she lucky?’

‘Having a grandson like you, that’s why. You could have been a real tearaway like some of the youngsters these days. You could have been moody and rude and bad-tempered, a lad who didn’t do as he was told, who leaves his room as if a bomb has hit it.’

Danny stared at her blankly.

‘You could have been like that Malcolm Stubbins,’ she continued, ‘who, from what I hear, leads his poor mother a merry old dance.’

‘He’s not that bad these days,’ said Danny. ‘Anyroad, I’m not like Malcolm Stubbins, Mrs O’Connor.’

‘I know you’re not, darlin’, and that’s why your grandmother is a lucky woman. I mean, you’re a well-behaved and polite boy and you do as you’re told and you always left your room here nice and tidy.’

‘I promised Dr Stirling that I’d be a good boy,’ said Danny.

‘Yes, well, doctors don’t know everything,’ said the housekeeper, more to herself than to the boy. ‘What I’m getting at is that if you
had
turned out to be a real handful, I reckon your grandmother wouldn’t be all that keen to have you living with her.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘She wouldn’t have wanted one of these moody and badly-behaved children, now would she?’

Incomprehension crept across Danny’s face. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mrs O’Connor,’ he said.

‘I don’t mean anything,’ said the housekeeper. ‘I’m just remarking that had you been a difficult and disobedient boy, she would have waltzed you back to the Social Services in no time at all.’

Danny thought for moment and let what Mrs O’Connor had said sink in. Then a flash of understanding lit up his face. ‘Are ya sayin’ that I should—’ he began.

‘I’m just making an observation, that’s all,’ she told him. ‘Your grandmother couldn’t have put up with that sort of boy, so as I say, she’s very lucky to have such a nice, well-behaved young man living with her.’ She winked. ‘Close your mouth, Danny, and eat your scone.’

The doorbell rang.

‘Now you run along upstairs to your room for a wee while,’ she said, rising from the table and smoothing her hands down the front of her apron. ‘That will be your grandmother and I want a word with her.’

A woman with badly dyed blonde hair and alarming eyebrows stood on the doorstep in a cloud of cheap scent. A cigarette smouldered between her fingers. Her face, bright with blotchy rouge and heavy black eyeshadow, looked pinched and sullen. The scarlet lips drooped in distaste.

Mrs O’Connor, her face distorting into an expression of chill disapproval, stared at the visitor for a moment. ‘You had better come in,’ she said, ‘but before you do, will you extinguish the cigarette. Dr Stirling doesn’t allow smoking in the house.’

Mrs Stainthorpe gave the housekeeper a dismissive look of barely suppressed animosity. ‘You don’t say,’ she said casually, flicking the cigarette into the garden. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to pollute the atmosphere in the house, would I?’ She pushed past the housekeeper. ‘Is he ready?’ she asked.

‘Danny will be down in a minute,’ Mrs O’Connor told her. ‘He’s upstairs getting his things together.’

‘Well, I hope he hurries up. I’ve got a taxi waiting. He’s costing me an arm and a leg, that lad.’

‘Dr Stirling told me to ask you to wait until he got back.’

‘Is he out?’

‘On an emergency.’

‘Well, I haven’t got all day and the meter’s running in the taxi,’ said Mrs Stainthorpe, giving a superior little sniff. She fingered one of the heavy earrings fastened to her ear. ‘I’ve got things to do, and the last thing I wanted this morning was chasing after him upstairs.’

‘You can wait in the sitting-room,’ said Mrs O’Connor with meticulous coldness. She pointed to a door. ‘Through there.’

The visitor moved at a leisurely pace into the sitting-room. Her small appraising eyes took in everything: the bright paintings, the long plum-coloured drapes, the thick-pile beige carpet and a deep cushioned sofa and chairs.

Mrs O’Connor remained at the door of the room, her arms folded across her chest.

‘Nice in here,’ said the visitor. ‘He’s not short of a bob or two is Dr Stirling, by the looks of it. I can’t understand why he wants to adopt somebody.’

‘Danny isn’t just somebody,’ Mrs O’Connor told her brusquely, ‘and Dr Stirling is a kind and caring man and wanted to give the boy a good home.’

‘You don’t say,’ remarked Mrs Stainthorpe, running a finger over the windowsill and examining it as if to find dust. ‘This could do with a good clean by the looks of it.’

The housekeeper could hear a lack of interest in the woman’s voice. Her lips twitched as if she was about to say something, but she remained silent and stared at the woman with a mixture of distaste and annoyance.

Mrs Stainthorpe glanced out of the window and over the garden. ‘Bloody awful weather,’ she remarked, reaching out and picking up a photograph of a woman in a silver frame from a small occasional table.

‘Is this his wife?’ she asked.

‘Yes, it’s Mrs Stirling,’ replied Mrs O’Connor.

‘The one what had the accident?’

‘Dr Stirling has only had the one wife,’ she was told.

‘She should have had more sense riding a horse down a country lane. They’re a bloody nuisance, horses on the roads. They ought to stick to the fields.’

It was with difficulty that the housekeeper controlled herself.

‘Will you tell him to hurry up?’ said Mrs Stainthorpe impatiently, glancing at a showy gold wristwatch. ‘As I said, I’ve got things to do and there’s a taxi waiting. He’s been nothing but trouble, running off like that. I don’t know what got into him. He’s got everything he needs at the apartment – his own room, lovely view of the river, plenty to eat, new set of clothes.’

‘There must have been a reason,’ replied Mrs O’Connor, giving the woman a baleful look. ‘Children don’t run off for no good reason.’

‘He doesn’t know when he’s well off, that’s his trouble. Like a lot of kids these days. I never had it so easy when I was young. ’Course he’s been allowed to have his own way. Les spoilt him rotten and since he’s been living here—’

‘He’s better off living here,’ interrupted the housekeeper sharply.

Mrs Stainthorpe looked around sourly. ‘So you say.’ She gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘Well, I can’t stop here all day on the off-chance that Dr Stirling will grace us with his presence.’ Then in a sweetly sarcastic voice she asked, ‘If it’s not too much trouble, will you tell Daniel his grandmother is here to collect him?’

Danny came into the room. ‘I’m ready,’ he said.

Mrs Stainthorpe’s painted eyebrows arched with disapproval. ‘So I see,’ she said. ‘Now then, young man, what’s all this running off? You’ve put me to no end of trouble.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I won’t do it again.’

‘I should think not. Go on, get in the taxi.’

‘Could we wait until Dr Stirling gets back?’ asked Danny. ‘I’d like to say goodbye to ’im.’

‘No, we can’t!’ she snapped. ‘I’ve wasted enough time as it is. Go on, do as you’re told.’

Mrs O’Connor bent and gave Danny a lingering hug and whispered in his ear. ‘I shall not tell you to be a good boy, Danny,’ she said. ‘Just remember what my owld grandmother used to say: “There’s more than one way to skin a rabbit”.’

‘Danny got off all right then?’ Dr Stirling asked his housekeeper later that morning.

‘He got off but he wasn’t all right,’ Mrs O’Connor told him dourly. ‘Poor wee fella, he looked distraught. I did ask madam to wait but she said she had things to do. I’d like to know what things. She’s a selfish piece of work is Maisie Proctor, so she is, and she could cut an iceberg in half with that sharp tongue of hers. Only out for what she can get.’

‘Perhaps we’re being a little hard on the woman, Mrs O’Connor,’ said the doctor. ‘I guess that behind that bluster and sharpness there’s a rather sad and lonely woman.’