Miss Purdy's Class (53 page)

Forty-Nine

Day after day, they trudged on.

The days were cold now and the nights freezing, iron hard. Along roads and tracks they went, through towns and villages, begging food and sometimes work. Odd jobs came their way, on farms especially. Some people took one look at them and turned them away. But there had been work, along the road. They spent the best part of a week picking apples and pears and sleeping under the trees. They gathered late potatoes, mucked out horses and collected eggs when farms or stables were shorthanded. They helped pull down a rotting barn and burn the wood on a huge pyre. The farmer was kind and brought potatoes to cook buried in the heat. Many others cursed them and turned them away, especially when they left the country and tried begging round the towns. The days passed, hungry, cold, no beginning or end to anything except the daylight, the alternate rising of the sun and moon. Apart from that there was no shape or purpose. They just kept walking.

The night of the first frost they were sleeping in a barn, and in the morning stepped out to find the ground white, the cow-nibbled grass rigid underfoot. Joey walked round and round in circles, feeling the crunch of it under his boots. He had never seen a field covered in frost before. They had had to find him new boots when the soles of the others fell away from the uppers and he could no longer walk. These were old and too big, and inside he had wrapped his feet in rags. That day he remembered the name of the next village because they brewed up tea and walked on between icy hawthorn hedges, ploughed fields on each side, breath white, noses and ears frozen, and he saw a sign saying, ASTON.

Words spilled suddenly from his mouth. ‘Aston – that’s where my nanna’s house was!’

John stopped, turned on the icy road and stared at him.

‘This ain’t Birmingham.’

Joey looked back silently. John’s face looked pointed now, like a fox’s.

It grew warmer again after that. Rusty leaves had rotted in drifts and the wind blew them into swirls. Nuts and haws rolled under their boots. There was no work now the summer was over. They passed through somewhere called Faringdon. People steered away from them as they passed. ‘Dear me – look at them,’ he heard. ‘It’s a disgrace.’ Or ‘How terrible.’ In the main street Joey caught sight of a strange pair of people walking along: a boy with a head that looked too big for his body, staring eyes, clothes like a clown and a wild giant beside him, all black, bushy beard . . . John, that was John, and it was only then that he saw he was looking in a shop window at his own reflection.

John sometimes mumbled to himself, but never looked anyone in the eye. Neither of them had the energy to say anything. They had no proper food, had not had a hot meal for weeks. John coughed a lot. Everything seemed distant, Joey felt, as if he was floating and not part of things. He had felt invisible and seeing himself was a shock.

The weather turned wet. One afternoon, on a stretch of open, chalky downland, they were caught in a downpour with no hope of shelter. The rain slanted down, turning the track to slippery clay which clung thick and heavy to their boots so that it became a struggle to lift their feet. They kept having to stop and try to wipe the caked mud off on the grass. John let out muffled curses. He had been even quieter than usual lately. He coughed, doubled up with it, making a racked, liquid sound. The sky was a thick swathe of cloud, no break in it and they were already soaked through. John put his head down against the wind and Joey walked in his shelter, the legs of his trousers sodden and heavy.

They stopped that day long before they normally would. There was a barn at the foot of a hill and they went into its hay-smelling gloom. Neither of them could stop shivering, their teeth chattering. Their clothes were soaked, and so were the contents of the curtain. Even the matches, which John usually kept safely stowed in the pan, had fallen out and were sodden and useless. Joey was surprised how quietly John took this. They could not build a fire, had no food, but he didn’t shout and swear like he often did.

He just said, ‘That’s it, then,’ and sat hugging himself, shaking.

Joey’s clothes were so cold and uncomfortable that every move he made caused him miserable discomfort. They had eaten nothing that day. He stared out at the rain falling over the grey clay. When he looked round, John had lurched over sideways and stayed just where he was, fast asleep. In the end the hazy feeling Joey had so often filled his head completely and all he could do was curl on his side and let the darkness fill him completely.

When he woke it was light and seemed to be morning, but he wasn’t sure. He could hear rats moving in the barn. He lay for a long time in a dazed state, without the strength to get up, listening to sounds from outside, those big black birds calling in their scraping way from trees in the distance and a smaller bird somewhere nearer. He could not feel his feet. Perhaps he had no feet any more? He tried to wiggle his toes but felt nothing. After a time he thought about moving, about turning his head. Where was John? It was so quiet in here. It took a great effort of will to make himself move, having to think about it, to tell his neck to turn. When he did he saw John had shifted onto his back and was still asleep.

Now I’ll move my arm
, he thought.
Sit up, sit up
. . . His clothes were still wet. Moving was misery, barely seemed worth the trouble. In the past he might have sobbed but that took too much from him too. He hauled himself up and sat staring, hearing John’s wheezy breathing coming to him faintly. John twitched, coughed. Joey pulled himself up and saw their bundle on the floor of the barn. He rifled through it, the pan and knife and spoon, the old rags, hoping there might be a morsel of food in there they had overlooked. Apart from a few crumbs, there was nothing. He looked at John again. In the end he went over and shoved at his arm, trying to wake him. John groaned, but his eyes did not open. Joey shook him but there was no response. He knelt, staring down at the man’s face. There was dirt deeply ingrained in his forehead and nose. Joey saw yellow sticky stuff was coming out of the corners of his eyes. Everything else was hair, bushy, black and matted.

‘John?’ His voice sounded reedy and strange. No reply came.

Joey stood up, steadying himself, feeling light enough to float away, and wandered out of the barn, squinting as the light stabbed into his eyeballs. He set off across the field, but it was so wet that he was soon weighed down by the thick clay and he turned back and moved along the edge where there was a rough strip of weeds. In the distance he could see some farm buildings and he made for those. They were two fields away: another ploughed field, then a meadow for grazing, which was empty of animals. As he moved closer, he could hear cows bellowing in the farmyard, which reeked of manure. He crept closer and saw a wooden shed, which he took to be a henhouse. Keeping to the backs of the buildings, he edged round the farm until he was able to sneak over the iron fence and into the hut. It was, as he thought, full of the feathery warmth of hens, the stink of their muck and their fussy clucking noises. He groped around for eggs, found three and put them carefully in his coat pockets.

When he put his head out of the henhouse, though, he saw a man, walking across the yard in the distance. Joey froze, almost retreated into the henhouse – but he’d be trapped in there! He ran the short distance to the fence.

‘Oi! What d’you think you’re doing, you thieving little . . .’

Joey could hear that the man was running and he tore away across the field of cowpats, his lungs fit to explode, trying desperately not to lose his boots, grasping the ends of his coat to keep the eggs cradled and safe. He was convinced the man was chasing him and that he could hear shouting, but when he turned, there was no sign of him. By the time Joey got back to the barn he was stumbling, barely able to stand. He flung himself down and took out one of the eggs. Knocking the top off carefully with the knife, he slid the raw egg into his mouth, swallowing its slimy contents in two goes. There was no one coming outside, but he kept peering out just in case.

John was still asleep. He had not moved.

Fifty

People started disappearing from the school. First of all, Alice Wilson was absent for the register for two days in a row. Gwen assumed she was poorly and didn’t give it much thought. She was caught up in her grief over Daniel, carrying her heart about inside her like a hard, painful stone. She kept thinking about going to see Theresa Fernandez. Had she known about Megan Hughes as well? Had they all made a proper fool of her?

But soon after, Charlotte Rowley vanished. Rumours started to circulate and days later Agnes Monk also failed to arrive at school. In the staffroom there was talk about nothing else. Mr Lowry did not issue an explanation, but one came, eventually, from an unexpected source. Lily Drysdale, as ever taking her own individual approach to the care of the school’s children, had managed to get Ron Parks to talk to her.

‘There was something not right about the boy, I could see,’ she told Gwen. ‘He looked troubled. And, my goodness me, I can see why now.’

What he had told Lily, in an empty classroom after the end of school, was that he had ‘seen something he shouldn’t have’ and that was what had made Mr Lowry so angry. When Lily gently suggested that he might have been beaten unjustly and that it might be a good idea to get it off his chest, Ron looked deeply uncomfortable. He muttered that he had seen Mr Lowry ‘doing something’ to Miss Rowley in his office at the end of school the day before his beating. Lily felt it would be too delicate to ask what exactly Mr Lowry was ‘doing’ but Ron volunteered the information that she was ‘lying across the desk, on her front’ and they were ‘fighting’. Ron said her face was ‘all queer’ and that it looked as if Mr Lowry was about to give her the cane just like he did the children, but he didn’t hang about long enough to find out.

‘But what were you doing up there?’ Lily asked. ‘Had he sent for you?’

Ron looked even more shamefaced at this point. He and his pals thought that Mr Lowry was out of his office after school. He often appeared downstairs, standing in the playground as they all left. A couple of Ron’s pals had made a bet with him that he couldn’t sneak up to Mr Lowry’s office, pinch one of the canes off the desk, run down to them with it to prove he’d done it, and replace it without Mr Lowry ever knowing.

‘Goodness – that would have taken some guts,’ Gwen said admiringly.

‘Well, quite,’ Lily said. ‘Except that he was so sure Mr Lowry wasn’t going to be in there that he forgot to knock and find out and just went barging in.’

Gwen put a hand over her mouth, laughing in horror. What on earth had been going on?

‘No wonder he’s got shot of Charlotte Rowley . . .’

When Miss Monk failed to arrive at school a couple of days later their classes were run by last-minute replacements. It was the talk of the staffroom all week, and at home Ariadne was enthralled by the story.

‘That poor Miss Monk,’ she said.

‘Poor be damned – she’s a right old tartar,’ Gwen said.

‘But she was carrying a flame for him, from what you’ve said.’

‘More fool her.’

‘You’re becoming very harsh,’ Ariadne said.

‘Well, the pair of them are just so horrid. I wish he’d leave as well and we could get someone else. It would make all the difference to the atmosphere in the school.’

Once things settled down, Alice Wilson still did not come back.

‘Have you seen her?’ Gwen asked Lucy.

Lucy Fernandez shook her head. ‘Our mom went round to see her mom, but there was no reply when she knocked on the door.’

Gwen knew that she would have to go and see Theresa Fernandez. The pain of anything associated with Daniel was so great that she didn’t know if she could bear it. But she knew that one day she was going to have to face her and ask the one question that she dreaded.

She went after school that afternoon.

‘Hello, dear!’ Theresa greeted her warmly. Gwen could still barely imagine this rounded, lively woman almost dying in a Welsh prison. Had Daniel been telling her the truth about that? Somehow she was full of doubt about everything now. It was achingly hard to be in this house again.

‘Come in and have a cup of tea!’ Theresa talked as she bustled about the back room, where most of the children were sitting or coming in and out. ‘There was something I wanted to talk to you about – you’ve heard about Alice, I suppose? Mrs Wilson came round to see me today before they left. I don’t know how, but her mother tracked her down and she seems prepared to take her and Alice in. I think it’s up in Staffordshire somewhere – the family are quite wealthy, I believe. Lucy will miss little Alice, though. She was ever so upset when she heard . . . Don’t s’pose you’ve heard from that lad of mine – the march is starting in a few days, isn’t it, but he doesn’t let me know anything!’

Gwen was completely taken aback. Theresa was treating her as if nothing at all had changed. Only then did it dawn on her that Daniel had been in Wales all this time and hadn’t told his mother what had happened. It took her a few moments to cope with this. She felt as if the shape of the world had changed and become full of pain and sadness, yet Theresa had no idea! She kept chatting on about this and that, until Gwen could no longer stand it.

‘Please.’ She fought the tears she could feel rising. ‘Could I have a word with you – on our own?’

Theresa looked startled, hearing the desperation in Gwen’s voice.

‘All of you,’ she called to the children, ‘out of here! Miss Purdy and I have something to discuss in private. Rosa, mind the shop, will you?’

The children scuttled out through the shop door.

‘What is it, lovey?’ Theresa said, and the comfortable tone of her voice suddenly filled Gwen with fury. She had been duped by the whole family! No one had told her the truth and she felt used and hurt and very foolish.

‘You didn’t think to mention to me –’ she stood with her arms tightly folded, speaking in cold, clipped tones – ‘that you already have a grandchild living in the valleys. Daniel’s son.’