‘Would, could–’ Miss Ranskill had made up her mind, and the words came tumbling out. ‘If the magistrates will allow it, will you let the boy come and stay with me for as long – as long as he likes?’
‘I’m sure it’s ever so good of you,’ declared Mrs Amery.
‘I owe his father a debt,’ Miss Ranskill told her, adding hastily as the expression of distress on Mrs Amery’s face turned to one of suspicion, ‘I don’t mean a money debt: he taught me things I shall never forget.’
‘It’s ever so good of you. I don’t see that there’s anywhere else he could go, seeing Mr Amery’s determined he shan’t come back here.’
And now Miss Ranskill was in a hurry to be gone. She asked a few more questions, and learned that it was unlikely that Colin’s case would be heard until after lunch.
‘There are so many cases just now. It’s this dreadful war and the fathers all being away. The boys go about in gangs. One’s as bad as another. The policeman told me that when he said they’d got to make an example of Colin seeing as how he was a leader. Yes, there’ll be a lot of cases on today. There’s young Pyecroft, for instance – now he’s a bad boy if ever there was one – a real bad-hearted boy.’
But Miss Ranskill had not time to listen to the iniquities of young Pyecroft. She asked a few questions, discovered that the coal merchant had a taxi and might be persuaded to drive her into Mallingford, since it was within the nine-mile limit for taxis, said goodbye and let herself out of the front door. The little gang of boys was still lurking and cat-calling by the gate.
The sea-shell was in her pocket. She had taken it as a talisman. His clothes would be sent on.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The little boy sat hunched up in the corner of the third-class carriage. He had scarcely spoken a word through the journey that was very nearly at an end.
The distressing blue light that made war-time travel so melancholy showed Miss Ranskill that his eyes were closed. She did not believe that he was asleep; his eyelids were pressed down too tightly and his lips were too firm. He was defending himself from question and scrutiny; and containing within himself all the horrors of the courtroom – the looming police, the inquisition of the prosecution, the publicity and the inner loneliness.
Miss Ranskill had not witnessed his humiliation but she had seen his face, dour and defiant, before he went into the court; tear-blotched and glum when he came out. She had seen him shrug away when his stepfather had laid hand on his arm, had seen his contemptuous eyes as he listened to the half-jocular, half-bullying words, spoken more for the benefit of the ghoulish onlookers than for the boy himself.
‘Let this be a lesson to you, my lad. I can tell you, you’d have copped it proper if I’d been the Magistrate. You will next time, make no mistake about that. Don’t you look at me in that saucy way neither, as though you fancied yourself a hero, you dirty little sneak-thief, you.’
She had seen him duck his head and look into all the corners of the outer room as though searching for cover.
She, herself, had had an exhausting day. There had been interviews with the Magistrate, another with the Probation Officer, a third with the stepfather, besides formalities that seemed endless. Her own credentials, as a suitable and responsible guardian of the boy, had had to be established. There had been telephone conversations with the doctor in her own village and with old Mr Jelks, the local Magistrate, who had known her since girlhood.
The Probation Officer had been kindly and helpful.
‘We get so many cases like this. From our point of view it is always more difficult when the child does not come from a really bad home. We have more power, when we can prove neglect and can make use of an Approved School. There was neglect in this case, of course, but not physical neglect. The boy is well-nourished and well-clothed. His sort of case is more puzzling to the outsider than it is to us. Here we have a boy with a perfectly good previous record, a fairly quiet, well-mannered boy, who suddenly becomes a little villain, loses all sense of right and wrong, and, when he comes before the Magistrates refuses to say a word that might help him. What has happened? He may have been to too many gangster films. He may have come under the influence of older, more sophisticated boys. He may have had too much love or too little, or his pride may have been hurt so badly that he felt an urge to assert himself and become important to someone. I think that is what happened here. This little boy became the leader of a gang of small hooligans.’
The Magistrate had been more general.
‘This particular sort of case is being repeated day after day all over the country. It is one of the evils of war. These boys are too young to differentiate between crime and what I can only call legalised crime. Don’t mistake me, Miss Ranskill, I am not a pacifist, I can see the difference between the public executioner and the common murderer: the one is the servant of the community, the other is a slave to himself. In these days, most of our young men are public executioners. It is difficult to explain that to children and stimulate their patriotism though. Train-busting would be a crime in peace-time, but in war it is a triumph. These boys read about successful Commando Raids and think it would be thrilling to be a Commando. They can’t go to Germany, but they can break into empty houses and have some of the fun (the imagined fun) of being a Commando.
‘Remember another thing, these boys are too young to remember peace conditions properly. Four years, more now, is a long time in a child’s life. The best people in the country, the disciplined younger people are mostly out of the country. All their examples are gone and their fathers are away. Old fogies like myself can’t do a great deal of good though we try our best. Yet these children must be saved or the war will be a mockery and we shall only have bred a race of hooligans who will menace peace as the Germans have menaced it.
‘If you make yourself responsible for the boy, you may not have an easy time. Don’t spoil him, don’t sentimentalise over him, but show him the past and let him look at the future.’
Miss Ranskill remembered all this as she glanced across at the boy. His face was a little more relaxed than it had been when he shuffled beside her out of the Town Hall past the craning onlookers and into the chill of the Market Square.
The parting with his stepfather had been brief.
‘You try and mend your ways, my lad, and be a credit to your Mum and me. She’ll be sending your clothes along for you. Goodbye.’
The boy had stood looking down at the muddy pavement.
‘Saucy, eh? Well, I’ll give you another chance. Goodbye.’
The boy, prompted by a nudge from Miss Ranskill, had muttered ‘Goodbye’, but he had addressed a leaf in the gutter, and had continued to regard it until his stepfather joined some waiting acquaintances on the opposite pavement. His coarse laughter sounded across the square. He tilted his cap at an angle and remarked in a voice evidently meant to be heard:
‘Surly little bastard! I wish the old fool joy of that one.’
‘Come along,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘let’s go to the station. We can get something to eat there.’
The meal had not been a very great success. The boy drank a great deal, cup after cup of urn-tasting tea, but he only fiddled with the sausage rolls, crumbling the pastry into flakes and kneading the meat between finger and thumb. Miss Ranskill guessed that his hands were hungrier for occupation than was his body for food. Every movement of those hands reminded her of the Carpenter’s, and she wished he would keep them still.