The Cuckoo Child (7 page)
Once or twice, as the minutes ticked by, Dot fell into a light slumber, but she was awoken, fully, by The noise of the front door crashing open. Heartbeat quickening, she pulled her blanket up as far as she could. The fact that her uncle was so late must mean he was even more drunk than usual and, though he always ignored her, you could never tell for certain what would happen. It was best to play safe and keep as out of sight as possible. Dot heard stumbling footsteps approaching and heard, also, the mumble of voices. Uncle Rupert must be drunk indeed if his friends were having to bring him home; she just hoped they would not accompany him right into the kitchen, though she realised this was a strong possibility. After all, they could scarcely abandon him and would assume his wife would be in the kitchen, waiting for him.
The door opened; it would not have been fair to say it crashed open, but it certainly swung pretty wide, knocking into the bottom of the sofa upon which Dot lay. Uncle Rupert’s voice, thick with drink, muttered: ‘You’re welcome as the flowers in May, so you are, and why don’t one of you pour us all a li’l d-d-drink, ’cos it’s a well know fac’ . . . fac’ . . . fac’ that a hair of a dog is the best cure for . . . aaargh! Aargh!’
Dot’s nose wrinkled with distaste; Uncle Rupert was clearly vomiting. She just hoped to God he’d managed to reach the sink because it would be a lot easier to swill it away once he had staggered off if he had done so. If he had been sick on the floor, it would be a mop and bucket job, and even the thought of getting out of her bed to do the work made her tired bones ache.
‘You dirty old . . . Look, Rupe, if you’re goin’ to be sick again . . .’
There were some more ghastly, gurgling noises and Dot heard the scrape of a tin mug as it was lifted off the table. ‘Clean out your gob with this,’ a man’s voice said commandingly. ‘My God, what a couple of glasses of gin can do on top of a bellyful of porter! Look out, Archie – he’s going to keel over an’ we can’t leave ‘im face down in that.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ the other man’s voice grumbled. ‘We didn’t ask him to get drunk as a bleedin’ pig. Still, we’ll dump him on the sofa, purrout the lamp an’ leave ’im to it. I wonder why his missus ain’t up, waitin’ for ’im?’
The reply was brief and coarse but Dot scarcely heard it. When the man had mentioned the sofa, she had taken a squint at them and was now frozen with horror, unable to move a muscle. Even in her wildest nightmares, she had never dreamed that Butcher Rathbone would visit No. 6, Lavender Court, but here he was, actually suggesting that they should dump Uncle Rupert upon the sofa on which she lay. And the other man . . . ? Desperate though her fear was, she still tried to get a look at him, but he was between her and the lamp, simply a dark shadow bending over her uncle.
‘C’mon, get your hands under his armpits, and we’ll heave him to his feet,’ Archie Rathbone said authoritatively.
But whilst Dot was still wondering whether they would notice her and move away, or simply sling the drunken man on top of her, she heard another voice. ‘What the devil’s goin’ on here? Oh my Gawd, don’t say the silly old bugger’s been and gone and fallen under a tram. Or is it just the drink, as usual?’ It was Aunt Myrtle, who must have heard the racket the men were making and, realising that there were strangers in her home, had come down to sort things out.
Dot burrowed under her covers once more, but listened, with a wild and bumping heart, to Mr Rathbone’s explanation. ‘It were just the drink,’ Mr Rathbone said. ‘The fact is, me and a couple of me pals were celebrating a – a – birthday and old Rupert here joined us and took one over the eight, as they say. Being pals, we brought him home, but we expected his good lady to see to him. So since you’re here now, we’d be much obliged if you would take over, so as me and me mate can return to our own homes before dawn breaks.’
‘Right. Thanks very much, Mr Rathbone,’ Aunt Myrtle said. ‘If you’ll just bring him through to the parlour – me niece sleeps in here – I’ll clean ’im up and see he don’t come to no harm.’
The men agreed to this, and presently Dot heard first the parlour door and then the front door slam, and knew that the two men had left and that Uncle Rupert would remain in the parlour until morning. Quick as a flash, she jumped off the sofa and ran to the window. With the utmost caution, she eased back the curtain a tiny way and applied her eye to the crack, but she soon realised she might as well not have bothered. There was only one street lamp in the court and that was at the far end, by the privy. To be sure, there was a sliver of moon high in the dark sky, but all it showed was two figures making their way across the cobbles towards Heyworth Street.
Dot closed the door and was about to return to the kitchen when her aunt came out of the parlour. She was looking furious. ‘Trust your bleedin’ uncle to go puttin’ me under an obligation to the meanest, most expensive butcher on Heyworth Street,’ she said crossly. ‘All that mumblin’ about me best pal . . . and then Mr Rathbone sayin’ no doubt he’d be seein’ me quite soon when I were after some nice chops, or a bit o’ shin for some stew. Still, perhaps now he’s gorrin wi’ Rupert, he’ll put in a few bones for soup, or a nice bit of offal . . . for free like, I mean.’ They had reached the kitchen now, and she looked down at the puddle on the floor with deep distaste. ‘Put the kettle over the fire, chuck, an’ when it boils you can pour it into a bucket, add some bleach and mop this mess up in a trice. I’m goin’ back to bed.’ She grinned, suddenly, at her niece. ‘Wharra good job you wasn’t asleep after all. I bet you gorra scare when they said they was goin’ to drop ’im on the sofa on top of you. What did you mean to do? Lie doggo until they’d left, or set up a squall to make ’em think the sofa cushions had come alive?’
‘I dunno,’ Dot said wearily, fetching the bucket and beginning to pour hot water into it. ‘I hadn’t made up me mind, like. To tell the truth, I were sound asleep when they come in and I was still wonderin’ what were goin’ on when I heard your voice. I were relieved, I can tell you.’ Her aunt chuckled and stood watching as Dot poured the strong bleach into the bucket, then fetched the mop and stirred it vigorously. When she began to mop, Aunt Myrtle turned as if to leave the room, but Dot stopped her and bent an innocent, enquiring gaze on the older woman. ‘I know Mr Rathbone, a’course, though we hardly ever gerrour messages from him ’cos he don’t like kids, but who were the other one? It weren’t Mr Wright, what lives further along the court, and it weren’t me uncle’s other drinkin’ pal Mr Ellis either; I knows their voices and I’m sure it weren’t either of them.’
‘I dunno meself,’ her aunt said, heading for the parlour door. ‘Old Rathbone don’t usually drink at the Elephant; he’s a feller with a deal more money than our Rupert. I guess he an’ his pal are from t’other end of the street and don’t come this way much.’
‘I see. Don’t go for a moment, Aunt Myrtle. I – I don’t want Uncle Rupe comin’ in once I’ve turned the lamp out; can you take him his water through, do you think?’
‘Well, I will say this for you, Dot McCann, you’ve got your wits about you,’ her aunt said, almost approvingly, coming back into the room to pick up the almost full tin mug. ‘I’ll put it near the head of the sofa, then he can’t fail to see it when he wakes up. I never drew the parlour curtains across an’ it gets light early at this time o’ year, so he won’t come blunderin’ in to disturb you again.’
Dot breathed a sigh of relief and presently, finishing her task, she rinsed her hands in a little clean water, dried them on the roller towel and returned to the sofa, where she fell into a disturbed sleep.
Chapter Three‘John Cochrane, get back into line at once and don’t let me see you turning sideways to gaze at what doesn’t concern you again.’
Someone sniggered and Corky twisted round and gave the boy a glare, then turned quickly back again to face the front. The boys were marching in crocodile formation from the untidy, draughty barracks of a house to the playing field, shared by just about every school and institution in the neighbourhood, where they held their once monthly game of punt-about. You could scarcely call it football since there would be fifty boys playing it, but even so it was eagerly anticipated by the boys at the Redwood Grange Orphanage, for it was the closest thing to freedom ever offered by that establishment.
‘What’s so funny about my name, Tolstein?’ Corky muttered, addressing the sniggerer. ‘It ain’t anywhere near as funny as Tolstein. At least it’s an English name . . . or Irish, at any rate.’
The sniggerer looked apologetic. ‘I weren’t laughin’ at you, Corky,’ he said humbly. ‘I were laughin’ at old Blister, ’cos when he shook his fist at you like that, the drop on the end of his nose fell straight on to his knuckles. Wish my name were Cochrane,’ he added wistfully. ‘What was you lookin’ at, anyroad?’
‘Dunno as I were lookin’ at anything in pertickler,’ Corky said vaguely. Old Blister hated him, but then there was constant war between most of the boys and the men in authority over them. There were so many rules, that was the trouble. For instance, no one was supposed to talk when being herded from the orphanage to the playing field and the boys were always warned not to gaze into shop windows, not to lag behind or hurry forward, and never to look at passers-by but to keep their gaze fixed on the back view of the boy in front.
Corky was a foundling, which meant that he had been left on the doorstep of the home fourteen years ago. There had been a note pinned to the thin piece of blanket in which he was wrapped and this had read:
John Cochrane, aged about five weeks
.
Please take care of him
. Corky had maintained for a long while – still maintained to his friends – that this meant he had not just been abandoned, that his mother had intended to return for him as soon as she could, but something had intervened to prevent her from doing so. However, he had not voiced the theory aloud for some considerable while because what was the point? There were boys there who had simply been dumped and had been named by Mr Burgoine, the head of the orphanage, according to the whim of the moment. There were others who had come here, aged anything from three or four to eleven or twelve, because their parents had died or could no longer cope with the number of children they’d produced. Once, Corky had envied such boys, but he did so no longer. They had memories, to be sure, but they must be wistful memories. Corky had dreams, and in his opinion dreams were much better than memories because you could be anything you liked in a dream.
John Cochrane, aged about five weeks
.
Please take care of him
. Corky had maintained for a long while – still maintained to his friends – that this meant he had not just been abandoned, that his mother had intended to return for him as soon as she could, but something had intervened to prevent her from doing so. However, he had not voiced the theory aloud for some considerable while because what was the point? There were boys there who had simply been dumped and had been named by Mr Burgoine, the head of the orphanage, according to the whim of the moment. There were others who had come here, aged anything from three or four to eleven or twelve, because their parents had died or could no longer cope with the number of children they’d produced. Once, Corky had envied such boys, but he did so no longer. They had memories, to be sure, but they must be wistful memories. Corky had dreams, and in his opinion dreams were much better than memories because you could be anything you liked in a dream.
He had tried to explain this theory to a young reporter, a certain Nicholas Randall, who had come to the orphanage for a couple of days earlier in the week to interview the boys for an article he was writing about one of the largest orphanages in London. He had talked to Corky alone, sitting behind a desk in a small room which was used to interview new members of staff. He had been a nice young fellow and when Corky had told him that he intended to be a great man one day, make piles and piles of money and take over the orphanage himself, he had clapped him on the shoulder and said he was a grand chap, full of grand ideas, and would undoubtedly do something truly worthwhile when he was a man. But as he talked and laughed and listened, Corky had seen that his eyes were sad and had known that this young man was altogether different from the staff who ran the Redwood Grange Orphanage. This young man had the imagination the others lacked; he could put himself into the shoes of a child who had never known love or a home of his own, and he had sincerely pitied the Redwood Grange boys.
But it was something which had happened the day after the interview that Corky was mulling over now. He had been in the punishment cupboard – locked in, to be precise – when the young reporter, and one of the junior masters, had stopped just outside it, presumably for formal farewells. By this time, Corky knew that the reporter was doing a series of articles on children’s homes up and down the country and thought, vaguely, that it might be interesting to find out how Redwood Grange compared with other orphanages.
But then the teacher had begun to talk and Corky found himself listening intently. ‘I hope you’ll give us a good report,’ the master had said. ‘You must remember we’re doing our best against fearful odds; most of these kids are the dregs of society, with scarcely any common sense, let alone brains. But we try to inculcate some rudimentary education, though of course the Board are so parsimonious that the teacher/pupil ratio is about thirty to one. Still, they’re better off in here than roaming the streets, with their bellies empty and their feet bare.’
There had been silence for a moment and then the young reporter had spoken with suppressed violence. ‘Better off in here than on the streets? What are you saying, man? I’d rather see a happy, filthy child, with life and mischief in its eyes, even if it had to beg on street corners for a penny or two to buy bread! You may have tried to teach these kids, tried to discipline them, but all you’ve done is make them see that they’re no-hopers. Why, if I had to advise any of your boys, I’d tell ’em to get out, to see how real, honest-to-God grimy people live. And that’s what you ought to be doing. Otherwise, how can they survive when they leave here?’
The teacher had laughed, uneasily. ‘We’ve a hundred boys in this place,’ he had muttered. ‘If there were only fifty, it might be a different story, but there isn’t much you can do with that many. The dormitories were intended to hold six and now they hold a dozen. We do our best . . .’
But at this point, the men had moved away, leaving Corky with a good deal of food for thought whilst he waited for release. He had been in the punishment cupboard for being caught coming down from his dormitory after the midday meal. He had gone up to fetch an exercise book which must have fallen from his book bag when he had snatched it up that morning, but this had been no excuse and he had been told by Mr Evans, who had caught him coming down the stairs with the book, that he would not be released from the cupboard until after tea, which meant, of course, that he would miss the meal.
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