Miss Purdy's Class (54 page)

Theresa’s face was a blank of bewilderment. She sank down on a chair at the table.

‘
What?
What’re you saying to me?’

Gwen stared at her. It dawned on her that Theresa’s complete bemusement was real.

‘So – he hasn’t told you! And your sister-in-law hasn’t let on either?’ She couldn’t keep the anger and bitterness out of her voice, even though none of this was Theresa’s fault.

‘Whatever haven’t I been told? Look – come and sit down, love.’ Agitated, Theresa pointed at the chair opposite her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about – what’s this talk about a grandchild? Whatever are you saying to me?’

Gwen stayed standing. ‘Daniel has a son called Evan. He’s the image of Daniel. His mother is called Megan Hughes and she lives in Treherbert.’

She could almost see Theresa Fernandez reading her lips, such was her need to make sense of what Gwen was saying.

‘We came face to face with her – in Tredegar. Daniel’s not denying it. He had an affair with her and she has a boy and now . . .’ She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. ‘And I can’t stay with Daniel – not after this. He’s betrayed me. I thought he was good and true and he’s just lied to me all the way along . . .’

Theresa had been listening, apparently stunned, as if she couldn’t make sense of what Gwen was saying, but seeing the girl’s distraught state she got up and came closer to her, seeming unsure whether to touch her or not. Instead she stood wringing her hands.

‘Are you telling me the truth? Gwen, you don’t strike me as a liar but I can’t believe what you’re saying to me! You mean, my son . . .?’

Gwen nodded, sobbing. ‘He didn’t deny any of it. He knew because she wrote to him, but he didn’t do anything, didn’t go back to her or help her. I feel as if I don’t know him at all.’

‘Holy Jesus,’ Theresa breathed. Gwen could hear how appalled she was. Staunch, Catholic Theresa. She could hardly have learned anything more distressing. ‘If this is true . . . How could I not have known? He never said a word . . .’ There was real anger in her voice now. ‘I thought he was a good boy – he used to serve at the altar! I brought him up to be good that way . . .’ She sank back on to the chair again, in shock. ‘What’s the boy’s name again?’

‘Evan.’

‘A grandson.’ Theresa shook her head. ‘How old is the child?’

‘She said nearly two.’

‘And all this time . . . For shame. Oh my Lord, for shame . . .’

There was a long, pained silence, then Theresa saw how it was for Gwen and said, ‘You poor young thing. And Daniel thinks the world of you – you do know that, don’t you?’

Gwen shrugged, looking down at the pitted surface of the table. ‘Not enough to tell me the truth though.’

She looked up and the two women regarded each other for several moments in silence. Theresa’s blue eyes held pity, shame, and an appeal to her.

‘Can you forgive him?’

‘I’ve told him it’s over,’ Gwen said flatly. ‘How could I ever trust him again after this?’

Theresa shook her head, her face full of sorrow. She looked as if she was trying to decide whether to speak. Eventually, with difficulty, she said, ‘It’s the choice we often have, lovey. You forgive them or you lose them.’

‘I can forgive him.’ Gwen wiped her eyes. ‘Least, maybe I will be able to one day. But I can’t forget, and I’d never know again if he was telling me the truth about things, would I?’ Gwen gave a great sigh and brought her hands up to cover her face.

‘I love him so much, Theresa. I can’t bear it!’

Fifty-One

The sun and moon rose and sank in the sky. Joey didn’t know how many times. He felt hazy in the head, as if he was never completely awake. He stayed with John, waiting for him to surface. There was an old trough flung away at the side of the barn and he drank out of it. The water tasted of metal. He tried to dribble some into John’s mouth, but most of it ran down into his beard. Joey ate the eggs. He hadn’t the strength to go back to the henhouse to find some more. Most of the time he slept. After dark, rats scuttled and cheeped in the barn and sometimes he felt one brush past him, solid and sleek. At the beginning of the time in the barn, John coughed. Then his breathing rattled. Joey didn’t like it and prodded John sometimes to make him stop. John’s eyes and lips had white stuff round them. After a day or two he went quiet. At night the rats seemed to have come closer.

Joey woke sometime during a sunny day. It was bright outside and he felt a sudden increase in energy, like a flame drawn by the wind. John lay very still. He was silent now. His face looked different and sunken. When Joey went to prod him he saw the lobes of John’s ears were nibbled away and there was blood. Joey didn’t think about it any more. He left the barn and walked away without thinking of the curtain or the pan and knife. His clothes were dry by now. There was nothing to think about except putting one foot down, then the next, on and on along the fringe of the field, watching his feet because at first the slanting sunlight seemed too bright to look into and if he raised his eyes everything seemed to whirl and spin around him and the space was too wide, the sky so high and far it made him dizzy. He did not think about food now. There was no food. He had no memory of when he had last eaten. He stumbled on and on across the fields, lurching like a drunk, not looking for anything or heading anywhere.

Fifty-Two

It was drizzly the next day, and cold, and the men marched as briskly as they could, sometimes slapping their arms round themselves to try and keep warm. Some carried banners. At times they broke into song. The ‘Internationale’ was a good marching song and it helped pass the miles to sing. They sang political songs and songs from the valleys and in some places they earned money by singing. They had walked east, through Bristol and Bath and were now passing through Berkshire on their way to London, sleeping in church halls or workhouses, wherever hospitality was offered to them.

Two young men were marching together, talking, sometimes joining in the rich-voiced singing or discussing the impact the march would have when it reached Hyde Park. The government
had
to listen and abolish the means test.

‘Catch you up in a mo’, Dai,’ the younger of the two said. ‘Call of nature . . .’

‘Careful now,’ the other teased. ‘Cold out, today!’

Despite the days of walking, the man vaulted with ease over a five-barred gate into the nearest field. He was dark-haired and lithe and had been toughened up by a collier’s life. He disappeared behind the hedge, which glistened with water droplets. Having relieved himself, he straightened his clothes and turned to rejoin the marchers, but something caught his eye a short distance away in the field. It looked like a little heap of discarded clothing. This seemed a rum place to throw away clothes. He narrowed his eyes, peering at them. He thought he made out an arm, stretched out to one side of the bundle and, frowning, he moved closer.

For a few seconds he could not make sense of what he saw. The pinched face was obviously that of a child, though it had the worn, exhausted look of a very old man. There was a twig-like arm, and yet the creature seemed to have been stuffed, clown-like, into a set of clothes far too adult and bulky looking for him.

Leaning down, the man said, ‘Hello, there. Can you hear me?’

There was no reply. He pushed gently at the body and assumed the boy was dead. Conscious of the march moving inexorably on ahead of him, he thought, well, nothing for it, and scooped the emaciated little body up into his arms. It was floppy as a rag doll, but not cold and stiff: there was still life in the skeletal frame, just. Poor little beggar looked close to death though! Whatever had become of him? The young man was full of rage suddenly. That was the reality of capitalism, of the country under this betraying government: children were starving to death, not just in the valleys, but all over!

As he began to walk, the child gave a slight moan and his big, prominent eyes flickered open for a second.

‘It’s all right, little man,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ll take you somewhere safe. D’you know where you are?’

There was silence. What could he do? He’d have to take the child to the nearest house where they would have pity on him. A church perhaps, or a farm?

‘Muur . . .’ the boy groaned.

Asking for his mother, Daniel thought. God alone knew whether there was anyone for him in this world.

He was almost back to the gate now, and about to shift his stance and put the boy over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift to climb over, when he heard something else which riveted him to the spot. No – he was imagining things – he could only have been mistaken.

‘What were you trying to say then, lad?’ he asked gently.

Quite clearly, just once, the little boy parted his parched lips and with a huge effort, murmured, ‘Miss Purdy . . .’

Fifty-Three

‘Gwen, dear, there’s a letter for you –
and a telegram
!’

Ariadne was all of a flutter, the envelopes in her hand as Gwen came in from school.

‘I hope it’s not bad news!’

Ever since she had told Ariadne what had happened with Daniel, her landlady had adopted an even more motherly role towards her.

‘Oh, you poor, poor young thing,’ she had exclaimed with tragic eyes. ‘And you thought he was the One didn’t you? I know you did – I could see it in you when you were with him. And he was so polite and
handsome
.’

Gwen took off her hat and shook the rain off it, then hung up her coat, somehow not wanting to know what the news was. It was bound to be from home – her mother or father ill or some other unpleasant problem she would have to face. Wearily she took the envelopes and went into the back room, where it was not so dark. Ariadne followed like her shadow. The handwriting on the letter was Billy’s. She smiled faintly. His letters were always bubbling over about something he had read and she found them uplifting. First, she tore open the telegram.

‘Oh my dear – what is it?’ Ariadne saw Gwen’s first reaction, one hand going to her heart.

All she saw at first was the name at the bottom, DANIEL, and the rest took her time to make sense of, her eyes going over and over it:

HAVE FOUND JOEY PHILLIPS STOP IS IN WALLINGFORD WORKHOUSE STOP VERY SICK STOP WANTS YOU STOP DANIEL

Gwen looked up at Ariadne, completely bewildered.

‘Where on earth is Wallingford?’

It was the middle of the next day when she stepped out onto Wallingford station and asked the way to the workhouse.

‘We don’t call it the workhouse any more,’ one woman she made enquiries of told her severely, then instructed her to follow the Wantage Road.

All morning Gwen had been in a turmoil of emotion. The slightest thing made her tense and overflowing with tears these days. It had not taken a second’s hesitation to decide she would not be in school. Once she discovered that Wallingford was far to the south in Berkshire, though, her confusion increased. For Daniel to be there obviously had something to do with the route of the march, but however had Joey got right down there? And hearing from Daniel again stirred up all the sad and bitter feelings which had not yet even begun to subside in his absence. Sitting on the train, she was full of her old hunger for him, as if his very being was imprinted on her, and yet the thought of him now gave her nothing but pain. Every time she thought of him, she could see the tired, pretty face of Megan Hughes, the hurt in it, and what Daniel had done in leaving her and his son without any apparent regret or care.

She looked out at the damp autumn countryside and let herself think over all the close, happy times she and Daniel had shared together, allowed the sense of hurt and betrayal to overwhelm her for a time, and tears ran unstoppably down her cheeks. She was caught in a painful collision of emotions, longing both to be held in his arms and to punch him hard in the face.

Walking along to the workhouse, she wondered, had Daniel come here himself, carrying the boy? Had he left the march? She had no idea exactly where the route had gone. Or had Daniel handed him to someone else? How on earth had he found him?

The workhouse was a sturdy-looking brick building and she was admitted by an equally sturdy-looking woman whom she took to be the matron. In the hall inside, she explained that she was looking for a little boy, Joseph Phillips.

‘I’ve come to take him back to Birmingham,’ she said. ‘I’m his teacher.’

‘Birmingham?’ The woman looked incredulous. Her tone was brisk but not unkind. ‘Well, what’s he doing down here?’

‘I’ve really no idea. He disappeared from school months ago. We’d have to ask him how he got here.’

‘Oh, I don’t think he’s in a fit state to tell you that at the moment. He’s very poorly – I was surprised he lasted the first night after they brung him in.’

‘Who brought him?’

She looked surprised by the question. ‘A farmer, so far as I know.’

Not Daniel then, by the sound of things.

‘I really want to take him back with me today,’ Gwen suggested.

‘Ooh no!’ The woman pursed her lips and kept shaking her head. ‘Oh, dear me, no – he’s far too ill to be moved. Oh no, I don’t think so.’

Gwen sighed. Perhaps the woman was right. How was she going to manage with a sick child all the way back?

‘All right. I’ll come back and fetch him when he’s better. But may I see him? I’ve come a long way today.’

Well, I suppose that’d be all right. He’s in the infirmary. I’ll get someone to take you.’

A puny-looking young man was enlisted to lead her to the infirmary, where they walked between two rows of black iron bedsteads amid the sounds of coughing and hawking. From the far end came a terrible sound of groaning. On one bed she saw a tiny, crumpled figure lying like a fallen bird. It took her a moment to recognize the boy. Joey had always been a scrawny child, but now he was obviously extremely malnourished. His head looked disproportionately big, the skin tinged blue under his eyes, the rest of his face deathly pale. He lay prone, eyes closed, as if he had not an ounce of strength left to move. As she moved closer and leaned down to look at him, she saw his little hand, ingrained with dirt, the wrist so thin it looked fit to snap at the slightest touch.