Street Kid (26 page)

With a great deal of grumbling, my father forked out for a school uniform and exercise books, ready for the new term. It felt very strange going back to Barnato Park; but although I was nervous about it, something inside me had changed since being confined to the flat all those weeks. I’d had a lot of time to think.

I’d never run away from my father and Freda when I was very young – I hadn’t known where to run to, since I didn’t know where my mother lived; and, anyway, I was so terrified of being caught by my dad. Later, once Mum had made contact, she never actually asked me to come back to live with her. Now I realized I was old enough to take responsibility. There was no one else in this but me. I could see a way out, and I was determined to make my way back to my mother and sisters again.

I knew that if I was to have a future which didn’t involve staying with my father or living on the streets, then I’d need to work hard at school and find a part-time job to earn some money. I made a pledge to myself that, at seventeen, I would pass Standard Seven with honours, and that on the day I left school I’d throw my hat into the nearest dustbin.

I’m going to get through this and I’m going to show them that I’m not the loser they think. I’ll make something of my life and help other kids like me, if I can.

This was going to take some doing. I’d now lost a year and had been kept down in the same class. I was still
banned by Miss Schmidt from attending Afrikaans lessons, which was a big problem. Without that subject, I couldn’t pass my exams; but I was determined to find a way around that. It’s strange how everything is possible when you know what your goals are and have the single-mindedness to reach them.

In my first week back at school I went downtown to the public library and asked the librarian which books I’d need to teach myself Afrikaans. She looked at me kindly. ‘You might be interested in this,’ she said, handing me a leaflet. ‘There’s a free tuition scheme available for immigrants wanting to learn Afrikaans. It’ll be much easier than learning it from a book.’

I was in luck. Soon I was having a lesson every week and made quick progress. I was diligent with my school-work as well, spending hours on the balcony of the flat, catching up on what I’d missed.

Something else happened that summer to make me all the more determined to earn my independence. A letter from my mother arrived. How it reached me, I don’t know, but I suppose my dad must have kept Mum’s solicitor informed of where he was living.

In her letter, Mum asked me how I was and told me how my sisters were doing at school. ‘I often wonder how you’re getting on in South Africa and how much you’ve grown,’ she wrote. ‘It must be very different from Manchester. I expect you’re as brown as a nut with all that sun. I wish we could have a bit of it here.’

And she wrote that she missed me.

As I held Mum’s letter, hope flared up brightly, and I felt warm inside.

Chapter Twenty-two

F
or the next three years, I worked as hard as I could. Soon after my fourteenth birthday, I managed to get a Saturday job on the sweet counter at the OK Bazaars. It paid badly, but it was a start. Shortly after that, I got another job at a dairy on the main street in Yeoville, working an early-morning shift before school.

Every day, before dawn, the African nannies would travel into Johannesburg and stop off at the dairy on their way to work to pick up the babies’ milk. I had to be there by half past five to serve them. Wearing a pinafore over my school clothes, I stood at the counter for the next two hours, carefully counting eggs into brown paper bags. If one broke, the money would be docked from my pay, and I hated that. Every penny I earned I hid in a sock, which I kept under the sofa. Counting my savings, shilling by shilling, was my one real pleasure. Losing even a penny of it hurt.

It would never have occurred to me to spend my money on records and clothes like the other girls of my age. I had other plans.

Soon after I got the job at the dairy, I walked into the travel agency on Commissioner Street and went up to the
counter. A smallish man with thinning hair looked at me with interest, obviously wondering what a fourteen-year-old was doing on her own in his shop.

‘Hello, can I help you?’

‘I want to buy a ticket to England,’ I replied. ‘Can you let me know how much the cheapest fare would be?’

‘Well, let me see.’ He took a file from the shelf behind him and leafed through it for a moment. ‘The cheapest way of getting there will be by boat and that’ll set you back a hundred and twenty pounds.’

I put a pound down on the counter and the man looked at it without expression. I thought it was to his credit that he didn’t react as he might have done, with a raised eyebrow or a patronizing smile. He showed me the same formal courtesy he would have offered any other customer.

‘I’d like to leave that as a deposit,’ I told him.

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but aren’t you a bit young to be travelling on your own?’ he asked.

I decided, as he’d treated me well, that I’d let him into my plans. ‘I want to go to England to live with my mother,’ I said. ‘And I don’t yet have a passport and I won’t be able to go before I’m seventeen when I finish school. I realize that.’

‘Well, that’s okay then.’ He nodded his head, satisfied with my explanation. ‘By seventeen, you’ll be old enough to travel on your own and all you’ll need is your birth certificate and a photograph and you’ll be able to send off for a passport yourself. That shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘So you’ll take my pound?’ I asked him.

‘Of course I will. I’d be happy to.’

With that he opened a big accounts book and turned to a fresh page at the back. ‘Here we are. Let’s log it in then. What’s your name?’

‘Judy Richardson.’

‘There we go, Judy. One pound.’ And he entered the date. ‘I’m Mr Harvey, by the way. Delighted to be of service. Just let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you. You only have to ask.’

Every week, on a Saturday morning, for the next two years, I visited Mr Harvey’s travel agency and put my money on the counter. Little by little, in a quiet, reserved sort of way, we became firm friends.

As soon as he spotted me at the door, Mr Harvey would fill two cups he had ready on the counter with coffee. I always felt warmed by this gesture as I knew it meant he’d been looking forward to my visit. Then, as I sat perched on a stool sipping my coffee, Mr Harvey turned to the big colour map on the wall behind him and showed me how far my latest pound would take me on my six thousand mile journey, moving the drawing pin he used as a marker a fraction closer to England each time.

‘Ah now, Judy, we’ve cause for celebration this week. You’ve just crossed the Equator.’

By the time I was seventeen, I was working so hard that I barely saw my father and Freda. I’d got a well-paid job at the Regent Cinema in Kensington after a tip-off by the manager of the Gem, a local fleapit, who lived below our flat in Hopkins Street. He knew the manager at the Regent and said he’d heard he needed part-time staff.

At first, I covered Saturday matinees and Sunday evenings, but after a few months I was asked if I wanted to do a couple of nights a week as well. The pay was good and I was given travelling expenses on top, which I always saved, although it was quite a distance to walk from Yeoville. I gave up my job at the OK Bazaars because it
clashed with the matinee, and I soon chucked in the dairy too, finding that getting my homework done was becoming impossible. Instead, I cleaned shoes and worked in the kitchens of a local hotel a few hours here and there. By now, I was squirrelling away one pound ten a week.

In my last term at Barnato Park, before school broke up in December, I was told that I had passed Standard Seven with Honours. I could hardly believe I’d done it at last. After all the homework, the extra classes, and the hours in our local library slogging away, it felt really, really good.

As I walked up to collect my certificate from Mrs Langley in assembly, I couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at Miss Schmidt.

You see, you mean-eyed old spinster, I managed to do it without you. I’m not such a stupid dunce after all, am I?

I hoped my stare managed to convey all the ill-will I’d ever carried for her. I reckon it must have done as she didn’t manage to hold my gaze and was the first to turn away. I felt about ten feet tall.

I achieved another thing on my list of goals that week when I tossed my hat into the bin outside the school gates.

At about that time, I came across an advertisement in a local newspaper for a cheap charter flight to England. Instead of the hundred and twenty pounds a berth on the
Windsor Castle
was going to cost, it seemed I could fly for just sixty pounds. By now, I’d saved sixty-six pounds.

The next day I went to see Mr Harvey and showed him the advertisement.

‘Do you think I’d be able to cancel my berth on the ship?’ I asked him.

‘Let me find out for you. I’ll certainly do what I can. Come and see me tomorrow and I’ll let you know how
I got on. And I’ll see if the June flight’s still available too.’

The next day Mr Harvey was all smiles when he greeted me.

‘It’s absolutely fine and I’ve reserved you the flight.’

I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t speak. I had to sit down on the stool by the counter for a moment to recover.

‘Now, if you haven’t done it already, you’re going to need to get your passport organized.’

Mr Harvey went on to tell me where to go to have my photograph taken and how to get to the passport office.

The next day, in the flat, I sneaked a look inside my dad’s brown case, in which he kept his personal papers. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t found my birth certificate amongst them; but, to my relief, it was there. What took me by surprise was the strong wave of disappointment I felt when I read my father’s name on it.

All those years of reading books about foundlings who turned out to be princesses had left their mark on me. I’d always hoped that my father was just some wicked imposter. Now I knew for certain it was only a fantasy.

I wrote to tell my mother I was coming, and when my train would be arriving at Euston. Over the past two years, I’d had three or four letters from her and she’d always written that she was missing me. Now, a month or so before I was due to fly, I had a reply from her, saying that Dora would meet me under the station clock.

A few days before I left, I went down to the travel office to pick up my ticket and say goodbye to Mr Harvey. It turned out to be an emotional moment, which took us both a little by surprise.

As I watched Mr Harvey leafing through his file for my itinerary, eyes a little brighter than usual, I thought,
How
strange it is that he seemed such a buttoned-up sort of person at our first meeting. I never guessed then what a kind and generous friend he’d turn out to be.

‘Well, I must say I’m proud of you, Judy,’ Mr Harvey said a little gruffly. ‘I don’t think many youngsters of your age would have stuck with it for the past three years. I’m really happy for you.’

I thanked him for being so kind to me.

‘Oh, not at all, not at all!’ He brushed my words aside. ‘But do send me a postcard from Buckingham Palace, won’t you?’

I assured him I would.

There was now just one more thing I had to do.

I’d left it until the night before my flight before telling my dad that I was going. He’d just come off the phone to Cherie and was toasting his toes by the one-bar electric fire.

I went over to stand in front of him.

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

He looked up from his paper, frowning.

I was amazed how I was able to stand there without fear. My knees weren’t trembling, and I could even look him straight in the eye. I realized with relief that all I felt now was indifference.

There’s nothing at all you can do to me. I’ve got my ticket, my passport, and money of my own. I’m free of you now.

‘I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ve got a ticket on a flight to England and I’m going to live with Mum.’

‘What do you want to do that for?’

I shrugged. I wasn’t about to share my thoughts with him.

When Dad saw he wasn’t going to get an answer he gave a snort of scornful amusement. He had a way of looking at me pityingly, as though I was the village idiot.

I really didn’t care.

You’re the sad old git, Dad, sitting there in your socks. Still pretending to be Christ Almighty. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. And I’m going where I’m wanted.

I knew it would pique my father that I was going to join Mum. He’d hate to think of us talking about him behind his back. knowing I’d be letting on that he was living in a sad little flat and having to sponge off Freda, and that he hadn’t made it as a big shot spiritual leader with a chain of sanctuaries after all.

Before he left for work the next day, my father thrust six pounds into my hand. ‘Give it to your mother,’ he said.

I nearly fell off my perch. He was usually so tight with his money, and I’d never seen him actually volunteering any. It was painfully obvious that he still needed to show Mum he had the upper hand after all these years.

Chapter Twenty-three

I
arrived at Euston Station and made my way to the big clock.

It had been four days since I’d left Johannesburg and I’d been hopping in little rattle-bone planes all over Africa and Europe since then. My journey had begun with a train bound for Lourenço Marques that took a day and a night. From there, we climbed on board a tiny aircraft, bound for Lisbon, which had to land every two hours to refuel. After a night in Lisbon, we flew to Paris and this morning I’d finally arrived at Gatwick.

Nothing that happened on that journey had the power to dampen my spirits, even when I had to share a bed in Lisbon with a tiresome old lady who plopped her false teeth into my glass of water. When I felt tired, cramped, or bored, I found it easy to switch off at any time to embroider the fantasy that I’d cherished for so many months now.