“The marble’s gone,” Brian informed him. You big-headed bleeder, he swore under his breath. Big-head glared at the blank paving, spun with an accusing war-like snarclass="underline" “Yer’ve pinched it.”
“I ain’t,” Brian denied. “I ain’t a thief, if yo’ are!”
“Gi’ me that marble.”
“I ain’t got it, I tell yer.” Big-head edged closer: “I’ll bash yer up if yer don’t gi’ it me. I know yer’ve pinched it. Yer can’t gerraway wi’ that.”
Brian was about to tell him what happened, but held back. “I ain’t got the marble. It must ’ave rolled somewhere.” But, threatened with a nose-bleeder, he was forced to hand over a marble to Big-head; then went with his last three to play somewhere else.
In summer and winter, snow and rain and frost, and now again sunshine, Brian set out up the early-morning street with his brother and sister, telling them to hurry, otherwise they’d be late at the dinner-centre. With plimsoll shoes and peacock jerseys, he led them to the long hut beyond the recreation ground where at morning and midday meals were served to those whose fathers were on the dole. They were caught up from warm troughs of sleep by Seaton’s rough voice at seven o’clock: “Come on, Brian. Dinner-centre.”
“Come on, Arthur and Margaret, Fred,” he said to the bundles beside him in the bed, “dinner-centre.” The bottom room of the house was merely part of the route, though, on his way through, Brian wished they could eat breakfast there, but saw nothing on the table except a mug of tea to be drunk by his father.
Caution was needed to get his charges over the dangerous boulevard, for often out of the morning mist buses or lorries came rushing by like cliffs, and he had to arrange them level at the lights, wait for red to show, and walk them quickly across in line. Often they were first there and stood near the green-painted iron gates waiting for Miss Braddely. Other children appeared from the mist, shivering and silent, red-faced and still sleepy, and Brian would help carry the crate of cold milk bottles up to the kitchen door when Miss Braddely herself came short-stepping it from a different world from theirs. Brian went in the kitchen and watched her put cocoa on the stove to boil, then saw her work the bread-cutting machine and spread thick butter over each slice. He took Fred and Margaret and Arthur to their places in the hall, sat them quiet while they waited for breakfast to be pushed through the hatch, immersed in the low quiet talking from two dozen other children at the tables. The breakfast, when it did come, was magnificent: three thick half-slices of bread and butter each, and a mug of milky cocoa. There was no breakfast to beat it, as far as Brian knew, except tomatoes and bacon, but that was a dinner.
At half-past eight they walked back through the rec to school, now very much alive, noticed little bead-like mounds of soil made by worms among the flower-beds, discovered the ground to be less white, though their breaths still turned to vapour, so that Margaret put a piece of stick between her lips and shouted: “Look, our Arthur, I’m smoking! Don’t tell mam I’m smokin’, will yer?”
Brian met them at half-past twelve and played shepherd again over the much busier boulevard for dinner. As many as two hundred children (who had not bothered to go for breakfast in the morning) milled and played around the dinner-centre door waiting to be let in by fat Miss Harvey. The door opened inwards, and the crush was often so great that even the bulk of Miss Harvey couldn’t stop a dozen children falling into the hall, so that she beat them about the shoulders with a wooden spoon for not showing more restraint. Brian disliked the dinner — cabbage, potatoes, liver, and pudding — and often slid it quietly to his cousin Bert when Miss Harvey wasn’t looking. The meal lacked the clean simplicity of breakfast. Its smells were too diverse and often unidentifiable, and you had to eat whatever of the food you might like in too great a hurry. Often Miss Harvey made them sit quiet and say “grace” before dinners were handed out, a practice that the gentler Miss Braddely forwent in the too-early morning. Afterwards they splayed like confetti out on to the greensward of the rec, and on sunny days Brian fought for the swings or a place on the seesaw, slide, tabletop, or monkey climber, pulling Arthur and Margaret and Fred on after him, and forgetting the world till schooltime at two.
The second session with Mr. Jones came round, and everything was quiet when he entered the room. “For this lesson I want you to draw a pen-picture of the Old Sea Dog, when he comes to the Admiral Benbow Inn.”
There was a rustling from every desk, as though a gala of paper-chains had fallen down at Christmas. It’s funny, Brian thought, there ain’t any drawing paper in our books. Anyway, I’d rather do it in pencil because it seems daft to draw a picture with a pen. I suppose that’s what he means, so I’d better get on with it or I wain’t be finished in time. I don’t want his fist flying around me today. A pen-picture’s a picture you draw with a pen, he reasoned, still unsure of what exactly Mr. Jones wanted. What else can it be? Stands to reason. The whole class was engrossed in the exercise, and Brian sketched in the roof of the Admiral Benbow Inn.
Mr. Jones walked up and down the gangways, watching for signs of progress. The first thing Brian heard was someone being furiously thumped a few desks away. He trembled inwardly. “Idiot! Nincompoop! Fool!” Mr. Jones bellowed with each resounding bat of his hand. “Begin all over again.”
This made everyone wonder whether he was doing the right thing, and after several similar demonstrations Brian felt Mr. Jones peering over his shoulder. Blows exploded against his back and fell about his ears.
“This is the limit! Oh, my goodness!” Mr. Jones wailed in mock-despair. “Oh, dear! Would you believe it? This clown has actually drawn a picture! Actually drawn one!”
With hands bent over his head, he wondered: Why is he hitting me like this? It’s bad enough hitting me, but why is he telling the class I’ve made such a daft mistake? It was hard not to weep at such thoughts, and he was saved from tears only by a surge of hate; he let forth in his mind a stream of awful words he had heard his father use under his breath to his mother. Mr. Jones still hovered, ready to crack him again, while vivid barbed-wire images flashed through Brian’s mind. Why don’t he die? still building a dyke against the tears.
“You’re supposed to write a description of what the captain looked like. To use words,” Mr. Jones bellowed. “Do you hear?” Brian said in a low voice that he did hear, and after a parting hit, Mr. Jones went on his way.
More drawings were discovered, and those who did them paid for their mistake in the same way. Mr. Jones reached his desk clenching and unclenching his burning fists in an effort to cool them, the silent hatred of the class turned against him for the rest of the lesson. “I didn’t know we had so many artists,” he said, grey eyes twinkling in a dangerous good humour. The few clever ones who never made mistakes laughed at his joke, having correctly sensed what they were supposed to.
“If I had made such a blunder in my class when I was a boy,” Mr. Jones went on, “I’d have been thrashed with the leg of an easel. My schoolmaster used the leg of an old blackboard easel to knock sense into us.” Another joke, though fewer boys laughed than before. Brian’s shoulders still ached. “Daft bastards,” he said under his breath. “It’s nowt to laugh at. I wish old Jones would die, though, that’s all I know. Why don’t he die? Why don’t the old swine die? He must be sixty if he’s a day. But he’ll never retire because he likes hitting kids too much.”
CHAPTER 9
One Thursday afternoon Vera said: “Go up Ilkeston Road, Brian, and meet your dad. He’ll be on his way back now from the dole-office. Tell ’im to get five Woodbines and bring ’alf a pound o’ fish for our suppers. Go on, run, he’ll gi’ you ha’penny if you see him.” Brian gathered what brother was available, and did as he was told.