He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) (6 page)

As the ground disappeared, swinging the lizzie needed the sort of strength Popeye got from eating spinach.
 

When I drove forward, my body and arms were stretched as if they were made of elastic.
 
The lizzie made strange screeching noises.
 
Dobsie and I still kept our feet on the rollers, though.
 
Now the whole frame began to shudder, and the metal burnt my hands.
 
My arms ached and gasping sounds came from my throat, until I couldn’t keep my foot on the roller any longer.
 
I clung to the bars, concentrating really hard on not letting my fists come undone.
 
But Dobsie was taller than me and his foot still reached the roller.
 
He kept pushing, and my bones began twisting in their sockets.
 
My spine was stretched as if I was being tortured.
 
‘Take your foot off,’ I yelled to him.
 
‘Don’t push.’
 
But my words didn’t reach him.

Suddenly, at the other end of the lizzie, Dobsie’s body jerked and his right hand lost its grip on one of the vertical bars.
 
It swung like a monkey’s, trying to get its hold back.
 
It aimed and missed, aimed and missed, near but not near enough.
 
Dobsie’s other hand began to slide down the sidebar until it slid free and Dobsie sort of fluttered from the lizzie like a flag in the breeze.

I could never remember how I slowed the lizzie, or how I came to be standing over Dobsie’s body.
 
His trousers were ripped, and his legs looked like snapped twigs.

The ambulance came and the men lifted the body out of its blood and placed it on a stretcher.
 
Then they covered it with a red blanket.
 
I remember thinking they used red because it soaked up blood without it showing.
 
They spoke to each other in whispers, a few words at a time, as they lifted the stretcher into the ambulance.
 
Before they closed the door, I heard one of them say the word, “dead” and then I saw them pull the blanket over the face.

The playground attendant came from out of nowhere.
 
‘I knew one of ‘em would end up killing himself.
 
I told ‘em.’
 
He pointed his finger at the policeman, who somehow just seemed to be there.
 
‘I banned ‘em, I did.
 
I told ‘em they wasn’t to come here.
 
If they did they’d be trespassing, I told ‘em.
 
Silly little devils.’
 
He pushed his cap back on his head.

‘Is this true?’
 
The policeman licked the end of a pencil and wrote in a blue notebook.
 
The woman with the toddler clinging to her legs was cradling Herbie. ‘D’you have to question them now?’ She asked, but the policeman continued writing.

Dennis was already beside the sandpit and running.
 
He fled through the gate and along the outside of the playground.
 
He had messed himself.
 
It stuck to his legs like treacle and he left brown footprints on the path as he ran.

‘Oi, come ‘ere,’ the policeman bellowed, but the brown footprints continued until they ran on to the grass, and Dennis became a distant figure.

Whenever I thought about that afternoon, what was most vivid in my memory were Dobsie’s snapped bones sticking through his flesh, and the brown slime sliding down Dennis’ legs.

In the days that followed, I couldn’t link that twisted body with the know-it-all Dobsie who sat on the stones at the camp reading comics and smoking.
 
That disgusting shape, oozing blood haunted me with pictures I couldn’t chase from my head.
 
That, that ‘thing’ wasn't – couldn’t possibly be - my mate who walked backwards and forwards with me to school every day.
 
Nobody could change like that in less than a couple of drags on a fag.

The policeman returned and said, with regard to the deceased, Alan Dobson, although theoretically there was some argument as to whether it had been a case of trespassing, under the circumstances, and this time, the authorities would not be prosecuting.
 
As if there would be another time, another body, another red blanket.
 
I listened as if from a long way off, puzzled by “theoretically” and “authorities” and “prosecuting”.
 

Mum smiled gratefully and said thank you.
  
The policeman replied that I had best try to get it out of my mind.
 
But I knew the memories would never leave.
 
They were glued there forever.

Dobsie’s father called and said I had nothing to feel guilty about.
 
His face was lined with sadness and his eyes were swollen.
 
He placed a hand on my shoulder, but I stared ahead.
 
I didn’t feel guilty.
 
I didn't feel anything.
 
I wondered what would happen to Dobsie’s train set.

Mum said we must pray for Dobsie and his parents, and that I should go to the funeral because one day I would be pleased I had.
 
I didn’t think I would feel pleased ever again.
 
Everything would always be filled with nothingness.
 
I wished Fred was at home.
 
He shouldn’t have gone away to his wife’s funeral.
 
She had deserved to die for not loving Fred, but Dobsie, not Dobsie.
 
Dobsie had earned a place on this earth for being young, and my pal.
 
The people in my life became confused.
 
Perhaps I would never set eyes on Fred again, but I would see Dobsie walking to school tomorrow.

I refused to go to school.
 
Instead I spent my time watching Brian’s wheel-walking, or sitting on Fred's bed and reading the pile of comics Lori got from a jumble sale.
 
Sometimes I wandered round Fred's room looking at Fred's models, stroking them as if they were a body.

Mum tried to encourage me back to school.
 
‘It’ll take your mind off things.
 
I'm sure you'll find everyone very kind,’ she said.

I didn’t know what I wanted, but it wasn’t for people to be very kind.
 
I didn’t want people to be anything.
 
I didn’t want people at all.
 
I couldn’t bear to stand there in the hall while Old Williamson announced Dobsie’s death, lowering his voice, like Fred
 
did when he had talked about his wife being killed.
 
I couldn’t bear everyone’s sympathy mixed with their blood-thirsty questions.
 
I never wanted to see anyone from school ever again or to set foot in Blountmere Street.
 
Life was cruel and it waited like an axeman the other side of our front door.

One afternoon from Fred’s window, I saw Dennis.
 
He was wearing his pullover back to front.
 
He kept his gaze directed at the pavement and didn’t look in the direction of our flat.
 
In the same way, I kept my eyes from Dennis' legs in case I saw the brown slime still there, oozing like the blood had from the body.

Dennis wasn’t at the funeral.
 
I didn’t blame him.
 
There wasn’t any point.
 
I wouldn’t have gone if Mum hadn’t made me.
 
It was a mark of respect, she said.
 
Herbie and his father sat on the other side of the aisle.
 
Herbie and I wore black armbands that looked like soot rings on our jackets.
 
People smiled their funeral smiles, but neither of us took any notice of the other.

Mum took hold of my hand.
 
I wish it had been Fred, and I kept my eyes fixed on the stained glass window at the front of the church.
 
I studied a red disciple's robe and a blue angel's wing.
 
I didn’t want to have to smile a funeral smile back to other funeral smiles. I didn't want to see the white coffin with the body inside with the snapped legs.

The Reverend Roberts called the body "Our dear departed child" and declared, ‘God hath given and God hath taken away’.
 
Still I stared at the disciple's robe and the angel’s wing, even when they sang
The Lord's My Shepherd.
 
Even when Dobsie's mother called out, “Alan!” “Alan!” as if it wasn’t Dobsie’s funeral but someone else’s.
 

For the first time I allowed my eyes to rest on the coffin with its red flowers spelling SON.
 
It was sissy.
 
Dobsie would have wanted a train, a plane, a spaceship, with no stupid flowers on top.
 

Then they carried the white box to the back of the church and out into the spring softness.
 
It should have been taken to the bombsite camp to our circle of stones hidden behind a half-destroyed wall.
 
Instead they slid it into a hearse and drove it slowly away.

Chapter Six

The Gang didn’t seem like the Gang without Dobsie, and we hadn’t been to the camp much since he
 
- well, since he
 
- I couldn’t say the word “died”, and “passed away” was what old people did – since he left.
 
That was it, since he left the camp and Blountmere Road School; since he left the earth and went somewhere else, like Jet in Journey Into Space.
 

Now that Fred was back I preferred spending time with him in his room, helping him work on his latest model sailing vessel.
 

‘This is one Vasco da Gama might have sailed to Brazil in during the reign of Henry The Eighth, but don’t you
 
want to go out with your chums?’
 
Fred asked.

‘Nope.’
 
How could I tell him I was afraid that if I left him for too long, he might have an accident, too.
 
As it was, whenever he went out, I felt pulled tight inside, and I couldn’t settle to anything.
 
I usually ended up sitting on the stairs waiting, praying he would walk through our front door in one piece.

‘The last time we went to the camp, Herbie cracked stupid jokes and laughed all the time,’ I told Fred.

‘Laughing, and making light of it, is probably his way of dealing with things,’ Fred replied, running his finger along the piece of wood I had just glued, pressing it into position.

‘I s’ppose.’
 
I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to laugh to forget something like Dobsie’s accident.

I didn’t want to think about Dobsie any more because the words,
It was all my fault,
circled around my head.
 
Changing the subject, I said, ‘Mrs Colby’s been telling us about that King Henry bloke, the one who had lots of wives.
 
He had some of their heads chopped off, didn’t he?’
 

‘Unfortunately, he did.’
 
Fred wiped his hands on a cloth to remove the glue.
 
‘Actually, with the school holidays coming up, it might be a nice outing for us to go to Hampton Court, where Henry used to live some of the time. The four of us could go together – you and me, Angela and Amelia … Miss Lorimore.
 
Hampton Court isn’t difficult to get to from here,’ Fred said.
 
‘We can catch a bus from the High Street that goes all the way.
 
I don’t suppose your mother would want to come.
 
It would probably be too much for her legs.’

Making a day of it to Hampton Court with Fred!
 
It was the first time I had felt anything other than dagger stabs of fear and guilt since Dobsie had left.

On the day we went to Hampton Court, Lori was wearing a scarf I hadn’t seen before.
 
It seemed even longer and had flowers scattered over it, like one of Old Dibbles’ flower beds.
 

‘It gives things a floral, summery look,’ she said when Fred commented on how “fetching” she looked.
 
“Fetching” must be a good thing to look because Lori blushed and smiled.

We waved to Mum who stood on the doorstep.
 
Some of the Blountmere Street kids stared at us as we rounded the bombsite, but we ignored them as we walked past the prefabs and on towards the High Street.
 

‘I bet they’ve never been to Hampton Court,’ Angela said, sticking her nose in the air.

It seemed we had no sooner got to the bus stop than the bus arrived and Lori said, ‘Well, I never.
 
Many’s the time I’ve taken this bus, but I’ve never had such a short wait.’

‘It must be a sign that today’s going to be a good one,’ Fred smiled.
 
‘I suppose you youngsters want to go upstairs,’ but Angela was already halfway up.

The top deck was smoky, emphasising the blueness of the sky and the greenness of The Common outside.
 
All at once, I realised we were going to have to pass the playground.
 
I hadn’t been there since Dobsie’s accident, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
 
Fred was sitting behind me seeming to sense my dread.
 
He put his hand on my shoulder.
 
I don’t know if his touch gave me courage, but I opened my eyes just as we passed the playground.
 
The lizzies had been replaced by two piddly rocking horses.

‘Look out for Bert and Bertha,’ Fred said, keeping his hand on my shoulder, as we passed the pond that had an island in the middle.
 
I could see ducks launching themselves into the water and others waddling about on the grass.
 

‘All right, lad?’

‘Here, have a lemon drop,’ Lori offered.

‘We’ve never been as far as this in our whole lives,’ Angela said, as she peered at her image reflected in the window, and primped her hair.

The further we went, the more spaced out the houses became, with grass verges and lots of trees.

When we got off the bus I stood looking at some of the houses that were covered with leaves.
 
Lori said the green stuff was ivy.
 
I thought it was pretty funny because the ivy only left gaps for the windows and doors, which looked like eyes and noses peering through the leaves.

‘Some of those houses are very old.
 
It’s probably only the creeper that’s keeping them from falling down,’ Fred said.
 

I didn’t know how old our place was, but it was probably held together by soot, and the only leaves were those in Old Dibbles’ garden.

‘Let’s walk across Bushey Park, which will lead us to Hampton Court Palace,’ Fred suggested, and we set off.

To me, Bushey Park was like a jungle, with a tangle of dead leaves and twigs that crunched beneath our feet.
 
The trees grew so close, I couldn’t see the sky, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see monkeys swinging through the branches.
 
‘This must be just like South America,’ I said to Fred.

He laughed and said, ‘Not quite.’
 
Then he winked at Lori, who, as usual was hanging on to his arm.

Just as Angela started complaining about how far she had to walk and that she couldn’t manage another step, we came to an open area.
 

‘This seems an ideal place for our picnic, Fred,’ Lori’s smile was wide enough to show a good few of her teeth and Fred rubbed his hand against her arm.
 
I hoped they weren’t going to be lovey-dovey all day.
 
Angela raised her eyebrows in a way that said she felt the same.

Fred had brought a bag with him that was almost as big as a suitcase.
 
He put it down, opened it and pulled out an old blanket which he spread on the ground.
 
Lori had packed sandwiches and a flask of tea, and I thought she was going to make her usual comments about the good old British cuppa and dear Mr Churchill and The War.
 
Instead, she rummaged in the bag, her head practically disappearing into it, and with a sort of whoop, she pulled out a bottle of Tizer.

‘Much better than tea, don’t you think?’
 
She said.

Fred had bought a shillings worth of cakes from the baker’s on our way to the bus stop and he offered me the bag.
 
I shut my eyes and dipped my hand in.
 
I wanted the doughnut, and I knew Angela wanted the shell cake.
 
As it happened, I got the shell cake and she the doughnut.

‘Swap them,’ Fred advised.

I thought how straightforward things were with Fred.
 
There was no arguing or trying to get the biggest or the best, nor was there any using it to lord it over the other person.
 
Fred was fair and not a bit selfish.

We finished our picnic, with Fred and Lori having one last cup of tea.
 
Then we made our way across a green and into some of the Palace gardens that made Old Dibble’s bit of dirt nothing to show off about, although he always did.
 
The roses, which were the only flowers Angela and I knew the name of, were a silky sheet of colour, and when I breathed in their scent, my nostrils seemed to capture it.
 
Their smell stayed with me for the rest of the day, sweet and in some way comforting.

I’d had enough of gardens by the time we’d trudged round one that had a lot of small bushes cut into shapes and criss-crossed by gravel paths.
 
Fred said this type of garden had been very fashionable a few hundred years ago.
 
Lori replied it was too orderly for her liking.
 
‘Give me a bit of clutter,’ she said, making me think of her kitchen.

In a teasing way, Fred said, ‘I wonder how I knew this wouldn’t be your type of garden, Amelia,’ and winked at her.

Angela lifted her eyebrows again.
 
She could get them so high they almost touched her hair.
 
‘I think gardens like this are boring,’ she said.
 

‘Perhaps the maze will be more to your liking,’ Fred suggested, hoisting the picnic bag higher up his shoulder.

‘It’s not another lot of bushes, is it?’

‘Actually, it is, but they’re taller, and they’re planted in such a way that once you enter, it’s difficult to find your way out.
 
It’s a game, a sort of puzzle.’

‘We’ll get out, though, won’t we?’

‘Eventually,’ Fred told her.
 
‘I haven’t heard of anyone being imprisoned in the maze for a lifetime.’
 
He grinned at Lori and her face turned the colour of one of the pink roses we had just seen.
 
As much as I liked being out with Fred, this courting lark was a bit much.

To begin with, the maze seemed simple enough, but after we had been going round and round for what seemed hours, and Lori was complaining of her bunions and Angela beginning to panic, it stopped being fun.
 
Perhaps we would be the first never to come out.
 
We were all being punished because of me and Dobsie.
 
It was all my fault.

‘We need to think about where we’ve come from and retrace our steps.’
 
Fred sounded as confident as he always did, and led us round endless bends, each one looking the same as the one before.
 
Eventually, we found ourselves on the outside again.

‘I told you there was nothing to worry about.’
 
He patted Angela’s arm, but she said ‘I wasn’t worried.
 
It’d take a lot more than that to put the wind up me.’

I looked up at Fred.
 
How could a maze be difficult for a man who had sailed round the world hundreds of times!

Sitting on a bench overlooking the River Thames, we finished the last of the cakes, this time iced buns, before going into The Palace.
 
It was the biggest building I had ever seen, not high like the ones I made with my Meccano set, but stretched wide as if the bricks were on elastic.

Walking round the huge entrance hall reminded me of Mum’s church, echoey and cold.
 
The walls were covered with paintings and tapestries of men on horses wearing silver and red armour, and women sitting in gardens under rose arches sewing or just talking to each other.
 
I wondered if any of them had been Old Henry’s wives.
 
If they were, they might not be as carefree as they looked.
 
Perhaps they were discussing how they could avoid having their heads chopped off.

‘This is much more to my liking,’ Lori said studying all the paintings, and I thought Fred was going to say he wondered how he knew that, too, but he didn’t, although the corners of his mouth turned up.

I reckoned our kitchen would have fitted into the Palace kitchen a hundred times.
 
It had huge pots and pans hanging from beams and a fireplace you could walk into.

‘I couldn’t imagine how much coal this fireplace would have taken,’ Lori exclaimed.
 
‘If my grate was this big, Vic Newnham would be making a delivery
 
every day of the week and weekends as well.’

‘Fancy eating your Spam in a room like this,’ Fred laughed, as we walked through what he said was the Great Banqueting Hall.
 
Again, it was massive with a carved stone ceiling and oblong windows.
  

‘Can you imagine Old Henry at the top table drinking from a golden goblet as they brought in a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth and all the trimmings.
 
Do you know people actually came to watch him eat,’ Fred told us.