The Best in Blountmere Street (The Blountmere Street Series Book 2) (9 page)

‘Our friend, Bill, kindly said he’d bring us to see you, and as your Mum was a bit worried about you, we … um … we took him up on his offer.’

‘I’m Bill Masters, by the way.’  Bill extends his hand and Tony shakes it in a droopy sort of way.  ‘Unfortunately, matron won’t let us in,’ Bill adds.

‘They won’t let us have visitors, or letters.  They say it’s not good for us.’

‘It’s just as well, we’ve bought letters from your Mum, your godparents in New Zealand, even one from your lodger.  Mrs Dibble and Paula have got a few other bits and pieces for you, too,’ Bill says.

‘I won’t be able to take them.  If they knew I’d got them, I’d be in for trouble.’  Tony seems as if he might be about to cry and looks down at his feet.

‘They’ll start to miss me, I’ve got to go.’  He turns, and without even saying goodbye he begins to walk away. Then just as suddenly he swivels round and runs back to us. ‘Take me home with you.  Please take me with you.’  His fingers are digging into my arm.  ‘I hate it here.  Can’t you put me up?’

‘I’m afraid they wouldn’t let us,’ Bill replies, while Mum says, ‘I knew this would happen.  I told you it would.’

‘Look, Tony, it won’t be long before your Mum’s out of hospital and she’s said to tell you that as soon as she can, she promises she’ll get you home and the three of you will be together again.’ 

Tony shrugs and I know he wants to say promises mean nothing to him.  Every promise ever made to him has been broken.

Mum fills the silence with things like what a nice place the orphanage looks and how nice the other children seem.  She says the grounds must be exciting to play in.  When she says she’s sure the matron’s bark is worse than her bite, Bill takes holds of her arm and begins to lead her away.  ‘Let these two youngsters have a couple of minutes to themselves.  I shouldn’t think you’ll be missed quite yet, Tony.’

When they’ve disappeared round the corner, Tony and I just stand and stare at each other.  I hadn’t imagined it would be like this.  I had thought Tony would be happy to see me; that it would be like Saturday afternoons on our back doorstep.  A bird settles on the gravel drive and begins rummaging through it, while I try with all my might to find something to say, or at least something that will have meaning.  Suddenly, it comes to me.  ‘I know I can’t write to you, but there is a way we can talk to each other that nobody else will know about, or be able to stop us from doing.’

‘What?’

‘In our minds, we can send our thoughts to each other.  If we concentrate hard enough, I know we’ll be able to reach each other.  I can tell you what I do every day and you can do the same.  We can confide like we always used to.’

Tony looks uncertain. 

‘Let’s do it at four o’clock every afternoon.’  The bird is still pecking in the gravel.  ‘We‘ll give our thoughts wings and it’ll be our secret.’

‘All right.’  Tony still sounds doubtful, but his face has lightened.

When Mum and Bill reappear, Mum’s face has become a deeper colour again.

‘Have you got a drawer you can hide these letters in?’  Bill asks, as Mum hands Tony the envelopes.  ‘If you haven’t, you can hide them under your mattress.’

Mum delves into her bag.  ‘It’s obvious you’re not going to be able to take all this stuff, but how about this?’  She offers Tony a white paper bag which I know is filled with Old Boy Barker’s special mix.  ‘Stuff it inside your jacket pocket, then find somewhere to hide it when you get to your room.’  Mum hangs her bag back over her arm and pushes her hair back.  ‘I hate all this secrecy,’ she says.

Tony takes the sweets and as he turns to go, I kiss him on the cheek.  ‘Don’t forget four o’clock every day,’ I say.

‘Four o’clock,’ he says.

I’m sure Tony’s been reassured by our plan.  No one will know and no one can stop us.  I relax into the cushions Bill has placed for me in the back of the van. 

As they usually are, Mum and Bill are chatting.  I love the three of us being together like this, and the relief of not having to be on guard in case Mum or I do the wrong thing.  Bill’s mood won’t suddenly change and leave us wondering what we’ve done wrong.  I draw Bill, Mum and Tony into a deep place somewhere inside me.  I allow my eyelids to flicker shut, and sleep.

Trees overhang the narrow lane, filtering the afternoon light into the van when I next open my eyes.  I’m conscious that the throb of the engine has stopped.

‘I love you, Lily.  I always have,’ Bill is caressing Mum’ hair with those long tapering fingers that whenever I think of Bill, I remember first.

I sense Mum is crying.  ‘If only … ’

‘Shush,’  Bill pulls Mum towards him and kisses her again, at first gently and then to me, it seems, with the longing of many years.  ‘My only love,’ he whispers into her hair.  Mum lifts her face towards him.  Then, as if a wire has been inserted into her spine pulling her taut, she pushes him away.  ‘This isn’t right.  I don’t know what sort of woman you think I am!’  Mum squeezes herself against the door as if she is trying to get as far away from Bill as she can without actually getting out of the van.

‘Why is it you constantly deny your feelings?’  Bill runs his fingers through his hair.

‘I’m not denying anything.  A couple of silly things happened in the heat of the moment, that’s all.  I didn’t say my marriage vows to break them.  Now let’s get going before Paula wakes up.  I want to get home before it gets dark.  Les will be wondering where we are.’

‘But Lily … ’

‘I said, let’s go.’

Chapter Ten

‘And you say some men came and took your piano away?’  Mrs Addington sits in her usual chair by the unlit paraffin heater.  Her legs are still heavily bandaged and resting on her customary stool.  I crouch beside her.  When Tony was here I was never invited to the Addingtons’ place.  But since Mrs Addington’s discharge from hospital I pop upstairs to their flat just about every day, especially now that Angela has returned from the orphanage.  She’s a different person; somehow softer and easier to get along with.

I continue, ‘Mum tried to stop them but they barged into the front room and began moving it.  They said Dad had sold it to them.’

‘That must have been very upsetting for you both.’

If I were to tell the truth, Mum had been a lot more upset than me.  Nothing had been able to make any real impact on me since Tony had disappeared from his orphanage.  Mum, though, had been so distraught about the piano, she’d actually confronted Dad and demanded to know how he could have sold it, when I was learning to play.

“You had no right to.”  Her face had been the colour of the flour she was making pastry with, and her hands had shaken so much she’d needed to hold on to the table for support.

“I’ll do what I like,” Dad had advanced towards her, making my legs tremble.  To my relief, he had turned and marched out of the kitchen.

“I’ll get another job and buy a new one,” Mum had shouted after him, but Dad had ignored her.

I fidget, partly because crouching beside Mrs Addington is becoming uncomfortable, but more from the memory of the confrontation between Mum and Dad. 

‘Have you been able to find out anything more about Tony?’  I ask, anxious to stop the words between Mum and Dad playing in my head.

 Every afternoon at four, I still experiment with transferring my thoughts directly to Tony.  I strain to give my words arrows, in the hope they will pierce all the barriers there must be between where he is and where I am.  Once the words have left my head, however, they seem to dissolve.  And not a single one of Tony’s seems able to jump the divide between us, either.  It leaves me with a gnawing sense of frustration.

‘And you still haven’t heard anything of Tony’s whereabouts?  ‘Someone must know where he is.  He can’t just have been at the orphanage one day and gone, the next,’ I say, standing up and straightening.

‘Everyone we contact denies any knowledge of his whereabouts, or says they don’t have the authority to say.’  Mrs Addington’s face has a lot more lines than before she went into hospital.  I can see some patches of pink scalp through her thin hair, too.

‘I don’t know what to do next.  I’ve written so many letters to so many places, we must find out soon.  Then we’ll have him home before we know it.’

‘You’ve done it, Paula!’  Mum does a sort of dance up the passage, waving a sheet of paper above her head.  ‘She’s done it, Les!’  She seems to have forgotten the piano and their recent coolness.  Dad continues spreading marmalade on his toast and doesn’t answer.

‘What’ve I done?’  As usual, my thoughts are on Tony.  If the matron of the orphanage had said he’s been transferred to another orphanage, why can’t Mrs Addington find out where he is?

‘You’re a silly,’ Mum hugs me, causing me to drop my knife on the floor and Dad to snort his disapproval.

‘What have we been waiting to hear about for the last few weeks?’  Mum asks.

For a moment, I think it must be news of Tony.

‘It’s your Eleven Plus results.  You’ve passed!  You’re going to a grammar school!  Isn’t that wonderful?  It’s marvelous news, isn’t it Les?’ 

Without finishing his toast, Dad leaves the kitchen.

It isn’t about Tony, after all.  Anyway, if it had been about him, why would they have written to Mum.  What was I thinking of!  Inside me, it feels as if something has fallen from my throat to my stomach and lodged there.

‘You must be so excited, Paula.’  Mum’s voice is fluttery. 

All I feel is disappointment, and Mum fixes me with a look of exasperation.  ‘Honestly, I don’t know about you, really I don’t.  You’re going to have all the opportunities I missed, and you act as if you don’t care.’ 

Mum begins clearing the table, banging plates together and ramming cups into each other.  ‘I don’t know why I bother making all the sacrifices I do, when no-one in this family cares.’  She crashes one saucer on another, causing a piece of chipped china to fly across the table

I can’t think of a single reason why I should be called in to Mrs Lionel’s office.  I’ve never been in any trouble, unless, after all this time, the school’s found out about my forged letter and the Head Mistress is going to deal with me.  I knock a shaky knock, sidle into her room and edge towards her desk with its posh leather top and gold pen and ink stand.

‘Come nearer, girl, and don’t look so worried.  I’m not going to give you detention.’  Mrs Lionel pats the bun resting on the nape of her neck.  She reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of Queen Victoria. 

‘Congratulations on passing the Eleven Plus examination.’ She smiles.

‘Thank you.’  Mrs Lionel must be calling everyone who has passed their Eleven Plus to her office to congratulate them.

‘I’ve been talking to Mrs Colby, and she’s of the opinion that you should be given the chance to apply for a scholarship to Riversham College.  We both think you have the ability.  You will need to be there on Friday to sit an examination.  Mrs Colby will give you the details to give to your parents.’  Mrs Lionel rises from behind her desk to show me that our meeting is over.  ‘Good luck, Paula.’

Mrs Lionel couldn’t have given me worse news.  As if it isn’t bad enough that some of my class have begun running after me in the playground and on my way home from school, chanting, ‘Goody, goody grammar school girl.’  When they catch me, they grab my satchel and swing it round and round like a catapult.

I consider refusing to sit the entrance examination for Riversham College, but if Mum finds out, she’ll never forgive me.  And I can’t rig my own failure. It’s dishonest.  I know that on the day I simply wouldn’t be able to do it.

‘Riversham College!  I’ve always said you were a brain box.’  When I tell Mum what Mrs Lionel said, for the second time this week Mum actually dances.  ‘I’d better start looking for another job.  The hats they wear at these places cost a fortune, without all the other stuff you’re going to need.’  She stops to catch her breath.

‘I might not pass.’

‘Of course you will.  They wouldn’t be putting you in for it if they didn’t think you’d pass,’ Mum gazes out the window.  ‘It’s where I should have gone, and to think my daughter’s going there.’  She turns back to me. ‘It’s where
we
belong, not here with this rabble in Blountmere Street.  You’ll fit in better there.’

I wish I had Mum’s confidence.  Life doesn’t make a lot of sense.  I’m ostracised in Blountmere Street because people consider me snobbish and out of their class.  At Riversham, where, without a scholarship the fees are as far from Blountmere Street pockets as a Rolls Royce, I’ll be looked down on and rejected as being of a lower class.

‘We won’t tell your father.  We’ll let it come as a surprise when you pass the entrance exam.’

‘All right, but I’d like to tell Bill.’

‘You’ll do no such thing.  Because Bill’s a friend from the past, doesn’t mean we have to tell him every time we do something.  You’re not to get in touch with him.  Goodness knows how you got hold of his address in the first place.  Do you hear me, no writing to Bill.  Write to Damielle instead.  She’d love to hear all about it.  You’ve got more time now you don’t have piano practice, although I’ve made up my mind, we’ll get another piano somehow.’

Since she’s returned from the orphanage and has left Blountmere Street School for Grigham Road Secondary Modern, Angela is no longer one of my tormentors. She seems to have grown years older in the time she’s been away.  Sometimes she speaks about the orphanage, and though she appears to have got used to her time there, I know she’d been unhappy.  I’m sure she didn’t used to be as affectionate to Mrs Addington as she is now.  She brushes her hand across her mother’s shoulders or arms whenever she passes.  And she’s always sitting by her side and holding her hand.  She would have said it was all “wet” before she went into the orphanage. 

If Tony was here, he would notice the difference.  Amazingly, with Tony as the centre of our concern, Angela and I are tip-toeing our way into friendship.  It feels good.

‘Still no news of Tony,’ Angela informs me as we sit together at the Addingtons’ battered kitchen table, although Mrs Adddington has recently taken off the newspaper and put an old cloth on it.  I think it’s her way of saying she won’t let things get as bad as they did before.

‘We’ve had another letter that says nothing.’  The tremor in Mrs Addington’s voice causes Angela to take hold of her hand and rub it.  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ she croons as if her mother is a child.

‘You don’t think they’ve sent him …’  Recently during one of my four o’clock mind sessions I thought I glimpsed a fuzzy impression of a ship ploughing through a sea with waves like the snow icing on Mum’s Christmas cakes.  The picture had shimmered and faded almost as soon as it had appeared.  I’d been left thinking it had been mad to think that this way of communicating could possibly work.  I was dabbling in something I had no right to.  Suddenly I’d been frightened.

‘He’s in another orphanage somewhere.  They’ll let us know soon,’ Angela assures us.

Since I sat the entrance examination for a scholarship at Riversham College, Mum’s been absurdly happy, singing her way around the house in her deep rich voice, and prancing up and down the passage.  She seems to have forgiven Dad for selling the piano.  She doesn’t appear to notice his sulkiness, and is constantly asking him if he’s got everything he needs, and if there’s anything she can get him.  Dad’s reply is never more than a sound made somewhere deep in his throat. 

It doesn’t concern me Dad hasn’t spoken a word in weeks.  There’s nothing unusual about that.  What’s more disturbing are the looks he directs towards Mum.  He’s like a snake that’s about to hiss venom at her.  It would have been better if he didn’t look at her at all.  That’s the way he normally acts.  It’s the way Mum and I understand.

I wish I could contact Bill.  He’s the only person I can tell about seeing the ship, without being laughed at, or, in Angela’s and Mrs Addington’s case, upsetting them.  He’d know how I feel about Riversham, and how much I miss Tony.  I wonder how he’s feeling about what happened between him and Mum in the van.  Every night, mingled with thoughts of Tony, are images of Bill and Mum on the day we visited the orphanage.

The envelope falls onto the door mat while Mum’s cooking Dad’s breakfast, and Dad’s scraping irritably at his chin with a razor.  The envelope’s brown and looks official.  It’s addressed to Mum and Dad, and I know immediately it’s from Riversham College.  I pick it up and insert it into the waistband of my skirt.  I pull my jumper over the top, and creep into my bedroom, where I take care not to tear the envelope as I lift the flap.

The letter informs Mum and Dad that Paula Jane Dibble has been granted a Scholarship to Riversham College.  I hurry to replace the letter in the envelope and press on the flap to reseal it.  I pull out one of my dressing table drawers, slip it between my underwear and return to the kitchen.  I’ll wait until Dad’s left for work before I show it to Mum.  I’m already bracing myself for Mum’s reaction.

When Mum reads the letter from Riversham College, she’s so overcome she sits at the table, rests her head on her arms and weeps.  ‘It’s what I always wanted,’ she sobs.

That night, Mum can’t restrain herself any longer and blurts out the news to Dad, while he’s reading
The Star
.

‘She’s got into Riversham, Les.  Riversham, just imagine.’

Dad says nothing.

The next morning before I leave for school, Mum produces a list from her apron pocket and says, ‘I’ve been thinking about Riversham.’  I doubt Mum thinks of much else.

‘Now I’ve cashed in my insurance policy we’ll need to go up West for your uniform.  It’s a pity I didn’t get as much as I’d expected.  Just as well Aunt Min’s offered to buy your straw hat.’  She stops and marvels.  ‘A straw hat, I can’t believe it!  You’ll be the only girl in the neighbourhood who goes to such a posh school.’  Mum continues without appearing to take a breath, ‘I was relying on making your summer dresses and blouses, but you can’t wear homemade clothes at Riversham.  What we’ll have to do is buy one of each, and I’ll wash and iron what you wear that day and have it ready for you to wear the next one.  You mustn’t say anything to anyone there.  You don’t want them to think you’re not as good as them.’

Despite the warmth of the day, Mum wears her blue
swagger
and white gloves when we go “Up West” to buy my school uniform.  ‘There are standards to maintain,’ she says when I question the need for her to wear a thick coat.   ‘We can’t have the shop assistant thinking we’re not well-to-do.’

In the shop, Mum pats the perspiration from her nose with her handkerchief, and replaces the lace edged square in her handbag.  Then she tweaks the lapels on my jacket.  ‘And mind your p’s and q’s.  We don’t want them thinking we’re common.  Because Angela upstairs talks as if she works at the fish market doesn’t mean you have to.’

‘Is that just one blouse, madam?’ the shop assistant asks Mum.

‘For the time being.  I’ll come back later to purchase another when I’m sure of its quality.’

‘I’m sure madam will find the quality ...’

‘And the Riversham College straw hat, if you please.’  Mum waves a gloved hand in front of the woman, while I count the purple triangles on the plush carpet.

‘Come on Paula, stop daydreaming and try it on.’  Mum is at her most bustling.  ‘Don’t jam it down like that.’

‘Let me.’  The shop assistant tilts it forward, adjusting the brim.

‘Oh my!’  Mum exclaims, forgetting her resolve to sound upper class.  ‘Oh my!  You look like a real lady.  Wait ‘til they see you in Blountmere Street.’