Nobody Came (8 page)

O
n our second day at Sacre Coeur, Sister Freda approached me at breakfast. I was trying to choke down my porridge when she said: ‘Robbie, we all know that the Devil finds work for idle hands.’ I looked at her uncomprehendingly. ‘So we have arranged some work for you, and you can bring your little brother as well.’ Still I stared blankly at her, unsure what she meant. Her voice grew shrill with the beginnings of anger. ‘There’s no place here for lazy little boys,’ she snapped, and I wondered why she was getting cross when we hadn’t done anything wrong.

Davie sat silently at my side. His hand clutched my arm and his chubby little body, which seemed to have shrunk over the last forty-eight hours, pressed against mine. I felt his utter, bewildered misery and my eyes began to water but a sense of self-preservation stopped me from crying. Instead I swallowed hard.

Obediently we climbed off our bench and followed Sister Freda along dark corridors and through a door we hadn’t seen before that opened onto the boys’ playground. We crossed over the tarmac square and took a path that led to an outhouse.

Sister Freda knocked on the door. As it swung open, I came face to face with a grossly fat man who terrified me at first sight. He had a bulbous nose, thick rubbery lips and pale small eyes framed by sparse fair eyelashes.

‘Good morning, Neville,’ she said.

He answered her politely while regarding me appraisingly. His eyes darted over my body before looking into my face and as my eyes met his I recognised something in their depths: a gloating lewdness, an anticipation of something I had no name for, both mixed together in an expression that somehow repulsed me.

‘Here are two new boys, Robbie and Davie,’ she said. ‘Get them both to help you. Davie’s not so young that he can’t do anything.’ She cast her frosty gaze down onto us. ‘I don’t want to hear any complaints about you two. You are to do what Neville tells you. You heard what I said – that little brother of yours is to pull his weight here too.’

‘But Sister, he’s not four yet!’ I exclaimed.

As the words left my mouth I wanted to swallow them back for I knew they were a mistake.

Sister Freda, who was jealously aware of her position as second in command, had no tolerance for any word or action that appeared to question her authority. Her face darkened with rage, and she raised her arm and swished the leather strap she was holding across the backs of my legs.

‘Don’t you answer me back, you child of the Devil!’ she screeched.

I gasped with pain and shock, my legs stinging from the blow. Her arm rose again and I lifted one of mine to protect my head. She caught hold of it, held me tightly and brought that thick strap down across my back, my shoulders, my legs and my bottom. All the time those blows rained down on me, words such as ‘evil’, ‘bad’ and ‘discipline’ spewed out of her mouth. The pain was so intense I felt hot tears spurt from my eyes and Davie gasped with fear, but still she shouted at me and beat me with that strap.

When she finally stopped I was shaking convulsively, and my back and legs were burning with the unaccustomed pain. Gloria had often swiped me but no one had ever hurt me like that before and I was rigid with shock and fear. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Neville seemed to be enjoying watching my punishment; the tip of his tongue licked his wet, fleshy lips.

‘Now get in there and do as you are told,’ Sister Freda shouted. She shoved me fiercely into the room, Davie stumbled after me and the door slammed shut.

Only two days before, John, Davie and I had been together at home. It only took two days at Sacre Coeur to make me shake with fear and trepidation. And now we had to work for this loathsome man; I don’t know how but I could already sense that Neville was a threat to us both.

I forced myself to focus on the room. When I did, I saw about twenty terrified chickens flapping their wings and trying to escape from Neville’s huge hands. He sniggered with glee as they clucked in panic, beat their wings, jumped on any surface they could find; they were climbing over each other as they tried to get away and pecking frantically at his fingers, but there was no escaping Neville.

‘Watch this, boys,’ he said with a wide grin that contained a strange level of excitement but no humour, and to our horror he picked up a chicken and threw it on the floor so hard that we heard the crack of tiny bones breaking in its wing. His foot came down on it. ‘This one’s for the nuns’ table so we mustn’t hurt it too much,’ he said with a smirk. ‘Can’t have its nice white flesh bruised now, can we? Stops it tasting nice, that does.’

He picked up a small gleaming axe and with one fast whack brought it down sharply on the chicken’s neck. Its head rolled off but its eyes, which only a split second earlier had registered its terror, remained open. Davie gave a little whimper and turned his face away towards me.

Neville lifted his foot off the chicken and, to our increasing horror, the headless creature stood up, raised its wings and ran around the room, flapping its death throes as it spurted hot, bright-red blood on the floor, on us and on the other terrified chickens. We watched in disgust and macabre fascination, wondering how it could be so obviously dead and yet apparently so alive. Finally it slowed down and Neville picked it up and hung it on one of a line of hooks on the wall, with the blood still dripping from its neck. He repeated this brutal act many more times, laughing and obviously relishing the remaining chickens’ escalating distress and our stricken faces.

‘What’s the fuss about anyhow? You eat the bloody things, don’t you? What do you think happens? Think they lie down and die quietly next to the pot?’ He roared with laughter at what he thought was his hilarious joke.

‘I want those heads picked up and put in there,’ he said, pointing to a box. ‘And if they are still on the floor when I come back, do you know what I’m going to do, Robbie?’

Speechlessly I shook my head.

‘I’ll hang you up with the chickens right on that special peg,’ he said, still with that wide grin on his face. ‘See it? It’s higher than the others. I had it made for little boys just like you.’ He held the axe against my face, grazing the skin ever so slightly. It was covered in blood-soaked feathers and silvery strands of chicken gore. I could feel it and smell it. I was determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me rub my cheek clean.

‘So if you don’t fancy hanging there, get moving – both of you.’ His hand patted me on the bottom and lingered there, its fingers prodding into my flesh. ‘I’ve got to go to the kitchen. Be back soon. So don’t go anywhere.’ Laughing that sinister laugh, he opened the door and walked through it.

When it closed I put my ear to it and tried to hear his footsteps fading. Surely we could get out of here, find John and escape? We could live on the beach. We could be castaways again, couldn’t we?

I tried the door. It was locked. I wanted to throw myself against it, beat it with my fists, kick it with my feet, scream out my frustration, but I did none of those things. Instead, as instructed, I picked up the blood-soaked chickens’ heads and put them into the box.

I averted my eyes from the pitiful hanging corpses. I tried not to look at my little brother to prevent his fear transmitting itself to me. I also tried to ignore the terror of the remaining chickens. They might not have been the most intelligent of creatures, but they certainly seemed to know that they were about to suffer a horrible end.

I felt tears starting to leak out and leant against the locked door in despair. The sound of Neville’s advancing footfalls made me spring away from it, though, and I hurriedly wiped away the moisture under my eyes. I didn’t want him to see any signs of weakness.

‘Now I’ve got another nice little job for you two namby-pambies,’ he said as soon as he entered. ‘You’re going to pull all those feathers out. See here?’ He pointed to a deep tin bath. ‘That gets filled with nearly boiling hot water from the geyser.’ I glanced at the old-fashioned geyser that rumbled and steamed away in the corner. Next to it was a huge enamel jug that I assumed was used to carry the hot water.

‘Robbie, you can help me fill the bath and then in go the chickens; just for a couple of minutes, mind – can’t have them getting cooked!’ He laughed at the picture that this thought conjured up in his head, then went on to explain that boiling water loosened the feathers and would make Davie’s and my job easier.

He threw the first couple of chickens in once the bath was three-quarters filled, and then scooped them out with a large ladle after a few minutes.

‘This is how it’s done. Just hold these feathers tight at the bottom and pull them quickly and out they come. Easy job, that is.’ He looked up at me with a broad, satisfied smirk on his face.

‘What are you waiting for? Get started,’ he told us and placed a steaming hot, wet bird in my arms.

The smell was terrible, like wet pillows. I sat on the floor feeling sicker and sicker as each handful of feathers I pulled out exposed more puckered, pallid skin beneath. My little brother’s face was screwed up and his mouth drooped but he silently copied what I was doing. Feathers stuck to our clothes, in our hair and all over our hands. I could even feel them trying to go up my nose as I breathed in.

All the time I sat on the floor pulling feathers out of the dead chickens, seeing the steam rise from the tin bath, hearing the splash as yet another bird was thrown in, I was aware of Neville’s eyes watching us.

He’s waiting for us to cry, I thought, but I’m not going to. I mustn’t and I didn’t.

In the playground later, I found Nicolas and asked him about Neville.

‘Oh no, have you been sent to the chicken-killing room?’ he asked sympathetically. ‘You’re right to be wary of Neville.’

He told us that Neville had been born on Jersey and brought to Sacre Coeur when still only a few days old. Rumours amongst the boys said that he was such an ugly baby that when his mother first set eyes on him she was so overcome with horror that she bribed the midwife to keep his birth a secret. She hid him from sight and told friends and relatives he had been stillborn. Then, in the darkness of the night, she left him at the gates of Sacre Coeur.

During the time he lived there, neither the baby Neville nor the teenage one had sufficiently moved the heart of any visitors for him to be invited to leave the orphanage and live in a new home. Over the years that he had been cared for by the nuns he had grown into a man large in stature and low in intellect, and he had learnt the skills of manipulation and obsequiousness. When Neville reached the age when other boys were normally left to fend for themselves, the nuns, believing in his loyalty and fearing for his ability to cope with the reality of the world outside, decided to allow him to stay. After all, with his limited intelligence, his squat overweight body and his face that repelled even the most generous of spirits, it was unlikely that he would ever gain employment. But to the nuns he was an asset – young, strong and, with them, biddable. As long as he was fed and clothed he demanded no wages. He needed no money, for everything he wanted was at Sacre Coeur.

Neville was placed in charge of the chicken sheds. He made sure the eggs were collected and put into boxes ready to be sold. He supervised the cleaning of the deep litter barns and organised the killing of the chickens. Scrawny birds, past their egg-laying days, were destined for our greasy stews and the young tender plump birds were destined for the nuns’ table.

Neville liked looking after the chickens for it gave him the opportunity to indulge all three of his main interests: eating copious amounts of food, inflicting pain on small creatures and molesting little boys.

I listened to the story with a chill in my bones, and hoped fervently that I would never be sent back to the chicken-killing rooms to work with him again.

That night in bed I curled up as tightly as I could. I could still hear Davie’s muffled sobs but this time I couldn’t bring myself to go to him. I didn’t want to be a big brother; I wanted John back so he could be mine.

My legs and back still smarted from the beating Sister Freda had given me, and when I closed my eyes an army of headless chickens, their wings flapping and their necks splattering thick arcs of blood, came marching towards me.

‘Please, Stanley,’ I whispered into my pillow. ‘Please, please get better soon and come and get us all.’

O
n our fourth day at Sacre Coeur, which was a Monday, I was taken to a new school, one where all the orphans aged five to eleven went. Every morning after our hastily consumed breakfast the nuns, smiling graciously at passers-by, marched us in a crocodile from Sacre Coeur to the school gates.

Davie had to stay behind at the orphanage. At not quite four he was too young for school. A young nun called Sister Claire, who had a strong French accent, was evidently in charge of the little ones. ‘Don’t worry, Robbie,’ she said, holding Davie’s hand. ‘They’ll be all right with me. I’ve got charge of the young ones today.’ I noticed then that she had a row of freckles across her nose and her smile reached her eyes. I was pleased that it was her who would be looking after Davie.

The very first day at my new school, I knew I wasn’t going to like it. There was no friendly Miss Darby who knelt down to my height when she had something important to say to me, smiled reassuringly when I tried to give the right answer to a question and heaped praise on me when I succeeded. At this school the teacher in charge of the infants was an overweight, harassed woman who didn’t seem to like small boys, especially orphaned and abandoned ones.

With my Sacre Coeur uniform and hair clipped almost to my scalp, I was keenly aware of looking different from the others in the classroom. There was no other boy from the orphanage in my class and my classmates showed little interest in becoming my friend. For a few moments when I first went in many curious eyes looked me up and down, then they noted my outward differences and turned away.

To add to my discomfort was the embarrassment of yet again having lunch boxes sent in by a charitable organisation. At this school, we charity cases were put in a separate room to eat instead of sitting with the other children who had brought in home-made lunch boxes. If our uniforms had already marked us out as different, being fed separately made it look as though we were being deliberately segregated.

Sometimes I heard the other children mutter the word ‘Bastard!’ and I’d scurry along the corridor with my head down. I knew that being a bastard was worse than being an orphan. I also knew that I was not going to find it easy to make new friends there but I didn’t fully understand why.

Every morning before school I was put to work with Nicolas, sweeping the huge tiled hall. That took us almost an hour before breakfast. At four o’clock, when the school bell rang we all trooped back to Sacre Coeur for more chores before supper at five fifteen. The days fell into a pattern and Davie and I began to find out what was expected of us. Then, on the Friday morning a week after our arrival, there was a new development.

‘Tonight after supper you’re both to come for your baths,’ Sister Freda told us. ‘You pick up your washbag and come to the bath area, and no dawdling mind.’

Nicolas explained to me that half the boys bathed one week and the other half the following one. ‘Bad luck,’ he said. ‘This week is the one where Sister Bernadette and Sister Freda are there. They’re the worst.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled by his remark and the short harsh laugh that accompanied it.

‘They like to make sure you are really clean everywhere,’ Nicolas replied, then he turned away and I knew that was all he would tell me.

The old nun on supper duty told everyone who was going for a bath to leave first. Davie and I followed a stream of boys. Up the stairs we went until we came to a large room that had been converted into five oblong cublicles using sheets of chipboard. Two doors were fitted to each one and there were benches outside.

Two boys I didn’t know, Davie and I were called through.

‘Take all your clothes off,’ instructed Sister Claire, the French nun who looked after Davie while I was at school. She turned her face away modestly to avoid seeing our naked bodies.

‘Hang your trousers and jumpers on those pegs above your heads and throw your dirty socks and underwear into the boxes by your feet. When you come out I’ll give you each clean ones.’

We were told to sit on some wooden benches in the passage outside. The clean underwear and socks were waiting in baskets beneath it. Davie was still too young to be self-conscious but the other two boys, who were roughly my age, and I tried to hide our shrivelled little penises from view. We crouched over like little old men, our arms folded low down on our chests. We were shivering with the cold and goose bumps rose on our arms as we waited. Getting into a bath full of hot water suddenly seemed an attractive proposition. Two boys came out of the tiny bathroom we were waiting to enter, both wearing dripping-wet, baggy grey underpants that they pulled off and quickly passed to Davie and me.

‘You’re next,’ they told us. ‘You have to put these on before you go in there.’

We looked at them in amazement.

‘The nuns mustn’t see us without our clothes. It’s a mortal sin for a woman to look at a naked boy’s body,’ the older boy explained patiently.

I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed pretty stupid to me but I still pulled on my sodden pair and Davie wriggled into his ones that were far too big for him. We padded over to the cubicle door and went in cautiously.

Inside we saw a small white enamel bath and a chair, set in a windowless, whitewashed cupboard of a room. I was dismayed to see that Sister Bernadette was waiting for us because all Nicolas’s warnings about her rang in my ears.

‘Climb in, both of you,’ she instructed. ‘Take your soap and flannel and wash yourselves everywhere, except’ – she paused to give even greater impact to her words of warning – ‘you are not to put your hands inside your pants. Do you understand me?’

I stared, wondering if I had heard her correctly. It sounded a strange command but I tried to hide my thoughts and simply said, ‘Yes, Sister,’ for I knew that to question her orders was to invite her wrath – something I certainly didn’t want to witness.

The bathwater already looked scummy. At least four other bodies that had not seen soap and water for two weeks had been immersed in it already. Still, we were used to shared bathwater so, not paying much heed, Davie and I levered ourselves in.

I turned my eyes away from Sister Bernadette, not because of modesty but because her penetrating gaze made me feel uncomfortable. I picked up my soap and flannel and started washing myself. I rubbed the flannel under my arms and across my chest, I soaped the back of my neck and behind my ears, then I closed my eyes and ducked under the water to wash my hair.

‘Finished,’ I thought to myself as I shook the drops from my head and stood up to step out.

‘Wherever do you think you’re going?’ she asked. ‘You’re not finished yet. Pass me your flannel and soap and your brother’s as well. Now lean back and put your hand on the sides and keep perfectly still. We have got to get you clean everywhere.’

She bent forward and placed one podgy hand firmly on my chest. The other hand grasped the flannel and slid it quickly under those underpants. I felt the rub of the cloth against my penis as her strong fingers tugged my foreskin up and down harder and harder.

‘Clean everywhere is what you have to be,’ her voice chanted in my ear. ‘No touching yourselves there. You touch yourself and God will know and you will go straight to Hell. Do you understand?’

My eyes were watering. The smarting of my penis coupled with an awakening shame took my voice away. I could only whisper, ‘Yes, Sister,’ even though I didn’t really understand what she meant. How could I avoid touching myself there? I held it when I peed, didn’t I? She hadn’t said anything about that. Would that make me go to Hell?

Nicolas told me later that it was not the actual touching of my penis that was the sin but if I enjoyed it. Whatever the nuns said, he told me that when I got older I would enjoy holding and touching my penis. He said it would also feel good when I moved my hand up and down.

But that day in the bath, I only knew that it hurt. It hurt a lot.