The Lost Child

V. BROTHERS

The school secretary stops him as he is leaving the staff room and tells Mr. Hedges that a new boy will be joining his class, but he doesn’t loiter to hear what else the woman might have to say, for her reputation as a gossip has been long established, and he doesn’t like to get involved. A simple life uncluttered by marital obligations at home or any entanglement in petty disputes at school has served him well for nearly forty years, and he isn’t about to lower his guard this morning. And now here is the boy, in the third row to the left, seated quietly behind a desk and looking pathetically out of place. She had shouted after him that the ten-year-old boy was in the care of the council, or a foster home, he couldn’t remember which, but plainly something had happened to the lad, for it was highly unusual to be asked to try to assimilate a new face into the scheme of things once the term had started.

That morning Mrs. Swinson had made it her business to ensure that Tommy got to school in plenty of time to be introduced to the headmaster, who looked at them with a vacant squint and eventually remembered that it was this boy’s older brother, Ben, who began school yesterday. Having delivered his long-winded speech about the new premises’ being only two years old and the pride of the local education authority, and how in this school they’d given up the Eleven plus and brought juniors and seniors together (although, for administrative purposes, they liked them to start on separate days), he formally welcomed the new pupil and then pressed a dismissive button and let them know that his secretary in the outer office was ready now to receive them. An irritated Mrs. Swinson levered herself out of the chair, feeling put out by this man’s rude button pushing, but Tommy, fascinated by the bald head behind the desk, bided his time for a few moments.

“Come on then,” she hissed, glaring impatiently at Tommy.

Her stage whisper brought him back to reality, and he followed her into the outer office, where they were greeted by the jolly face of the school secretary. A humiliated Mrs. Swinson couldn’t bring herself to speak to the woman, so she made a pantomime of buttoning up her coat and tying on a headscarf over her bun of grey hair.

“I’ll see you after school.”

She didn’t wait for a response, and simply abandoned him to the care of the nice fidgety lady, who looked as if she would be better served working behind a shop counter and dishing out sweets.

“Are you ready to meet your new friends?”

He nodded and half walked, half ran after her down the full length of a long corridor and followed the secretary as she turned and entered an empty classroom.

“Just take this seat, love. The other boys will soon be coming in from the playground, but meanwhile I’ll go and find your form teacher, Mr. Hedges. I’ll let him know that you’re here.”

He sat with his arms folded and resting on top of the desk, but he was careful to pull himself upright so he wasn’t slouching. Eventually, after what seemed like an age, the other pupils began to drift noisily into the classroom and look at him with curiosity before thumping themselves down behind their desks. Nobody sat beside him, which made him wonder if the desk was always free or if their hesitation was something to do with him.

“Quiet everybody.” Mr. Hedges is looking directly at him. A round-shouldered, white-haired man with a chiseled face that appeared to have been manufactured in a quarry, he seems out of place in this modern school whose desktops remain unscarred by graffiti. “Well, stand up, young man, and tell us your name and where you’re from.”

Every head in the classroom turns, and thirty pairs of eyes are suddenly trained upon him. He pushes himself back from the desk and climbs to his feet, aware of how bizarre he must look in his oversize school uniform.

“My name’s Tommy Wilson.”

“And where are you from, Thomas?”

“I’m from England.”

His fellow pupils release a volley of scornful cackling that threatens to swell into hysteria.

“Alright, alright, I’m not sure what you all find so amusing.” Mr. Hedges scans the room before once again turning his attention to the new boy. “Well, Thomas, we were hoping for something a little more specific, but for now ‘England’ will suffice.”

But every one of the thirty boys, who continue to stifle their laughter, feels sure that the queer apparition standing behind the desk has nothing whatsoever to do with their world, where despite the evidence of their brand-new modern school, people continue to live in back-to-back houses and washing is strung out across cobbled streets to dry on the breeze. They all know that the church is at the top of the hill, and the butcher, the baker, and the post office are at the foot of the hill, and the pub is somewhere in between, and it’s blatantly obvious to each of them that this Tommy Wilson is most definitely a stranger.

“Well, sit down then, Wilson. I assume that everyone will introduce themselves in time, but for now you’ll just have to muck in like the rest.”

Again he hears sniggering.

“Are you asleep, Wilson? I said you can sit down, lad. This isn’t the army, you know.”

Mr. Hedges achieves the anticipated roar of laughter, and a self-satisfied smile creases his lips. He has some sympathy for the stray, but he doesn’t play favourites, and he isn’t about to start now.

“You had better buck your ideas up, Wilson. You’ll have to be on your toes to survive in these parts.”

At noon the bell rings out, and as soon as Mr. Hedges picks up his books and papers and leaves the classroom, desk lids are opened and slammed shut, and the mad rush commences. Tommy follows the other boys, feeling the double humiliation of not having anybody to talk to and understanding that he will most likely have to ask somebody where the line is for those who have free school dinners. Once they reach the cafeteria he discovers it to be a raucous cavern of clanging confusion and raised voices, and he anxiously scans the room for his brother, but he can’t see him. Perhaps the older boys eat in a different location? Despite the tight knot of hunger in his belly, he knows that this is neither the time nor the place to make a mistake, and so he turns and gently shoves his way back towards the door.

The gymnasium is in its own building behind the main school block, but between the two structures is a narrow gap into which neither sunlight nor noise from the playground can penetrate. He slumps down onto the shingles and leans his back against the brick wall of the school block. By pulling his knees up tight under his chin, he can make a ball of himself and therefore consider himself potentially useful. At the far end of the gymnasium building he hears a door smash open, and two boys in football kit, with shirts flapping out of their shorts, rush into view and head towards the playing fields. Intrigued, he stands and tiptoes his way along the loose stones until he reaches the gymnasium door, which remains invitingly ajar. Once inside he discovers himself to be in a changing room with its collection of shirts, jackets, and trousers hanging in seemingly random formation from various pegs, and he sees both white and black plimsolls and duffel bags scattered haphazardly on long benches and across the floor. He looks around and knows that he probably shouldn’t linger, but this is the first time he has felt any sense of familiarity and comfort since his mother dropped him off at Mrs. Swinson’s house on Saturday morning.

Mr. Hedges stands beneath the archway of the main entrance to the school with a whistle in his hand. The new lad is loafing by himself in the far corner of the playground, carefully watching two hastily assembled teams of boys playing an eleven-a-side match with a dirty tennis ball. The moment he saw the boy he knew it was an impossible situation. Thomas Wilson is not part of the group, nor does it look as if he’ll be invited to join in. In fact, he suspects that timidity has most likely been introduced into the lad’s soul by a neglectful upbringing. He sees it all the time — like whipped puppies, some of them — but there’s nothing to be done, for on top of everything else, they can’t be expected to minister to the welfare of the disadvantaged. They’re teachers, not social workers, and it’s an important distinction that some of his younger colleagues would do well to remember. That said, the curly-haired Wilson boy is clearly a special case. The lad has got his hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets, and occasionally he lurches and kicks out at the same time as somebody shoots, but then young Wilson remembers himself and quickly looks around to make sure that nobody has noticed. Mr. Hedges shakes his head. He blows his whistle and brings dinnertime to an end.

Tommy surreptitiously lifts himself off the chair and quickly hikes up his trousers so that none of the other boys notice what he is doing. He folds the waistband over and runs his hands to the sides to make sure that everything is even all the way around; then he plonks himself back down and slides forward so he is almost wedged under the desk. Their tired mother had left them with Mrs. Swinson on Saturday morning, but shortly after she went off back home, Mrs. Swinson took one disappointing look at their clothes and announced that she had no choice but to take them shopping that same afternoon.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and during the war I even had evacuees — Cockneys from London — dirty beggars all of them, and I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but at least their mothers knew to send them with some proper clothes. I mean, really. I’ll wager she thinks she can use her depression as an excuse, but those plucked eyebrows give her away.”

Tommy and his brother were each kitted out with a new blazer, a white shirt, and a pair of school trousers, but everything was at least two sizes too big. Mrs. Swinson made a big show of handing over the council vouchers, as though she wanted all and sundry to know that these two boys were in her charge and she was going out of her way to provide them with a roof and bring them up to scratch. But her mood changed when the man failed to produce the two school ties that she was anticipating, informing her that she would have to pay for them. Tommy was relieved, for at least there would be one item of clothing that they would not be required to grow into.

The four o’clock bell signals the end of the day, and a glassy-eyed Mr. Hedges looks up from his desk. He slowly draws his hunched body to its full height and surveys the room, the weight of his judgmental gaze falling on each boy in turn. Tommy is the new boy in the class, but he already understands that being assigned to this form means that he has probably drawn the short straw.

The boys push back from their desks, and as they file past Hedges, they hand him their exercise books, which contain the answers to the history questions that are still chalked up on the board.

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Matthews.”

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Appleby.”

He wonders if “Privet”—for Tommy has heard the other boys secretly referring to the teacher by this nickname — will remember who he is.

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Wilson.”

He worries about his answers, but this being his first day perhaps he will be forgiven for getting most of them wrong.

“Wilson.” He stops but is afraid to immediately turn around. When he does so, he can see that Hedges has a biro in his hand and is gesturing with it towards his almost totally shrouded shoes. “I recommend a good-quality belt, if you get my drift?”

He hears some boys chuckling, but a quick swivel of Hedges’s owl-like head restores order.

“Yes, sir.”

He moves now with his eyes down, sure that everybody is laughing at him, and wishing that just one person — that would have been enough — could have made the effort to be his friend. He feels sure that when they see him play football, they will want to know him, but as he threads his way through the jostling crowds in the narrow corridor, he can’t remember whether the games period is tomorrow or the next day. He does, however, remember where the toilets are. Once he has finished, he looks around and is surprised to see that the pristine walls are unblemished by either hastily scribbled girls’ names or rumours and, increasingly implausible, counterrumours. He holds his hands under the cold water tap and quickly rubs them together, pretending that they’re lathered in soap, and he begins now to focus his mind on the task of meeting up with his brother.

Tommy stands by the school gates and waits until the deluge of excited boys reclaiming their freedom becomes a dribble. He screws up his eyes, hoping to see Ben emerging out of the glow of the fading sun, but the rush of pumping arms and legs appears to have dried up entirely. And then he sees Ben standing nonchalantly at the bus stop across the street with a group of twelve-year-old boys all of whom are greatly amused by whatever it is his brother is saying. Tommy looks both ways and begins to cross towards him, but when he sees the embarrassment on Ben’s face, he decides to keep walking. Behind him he hears his brother’s raised voice (“See you tomorrow”), the chorus of voices that confirm the appointment (“Yeah, tomorrow”), and then the pitterpatter of a short, unenthusiastic jog that concludes when Ben reaches level with him.

“Hey, what’s the matter with your trousers?”

Tommy stops now and turns and looks at Ben’s grinning face.

“Pull ’em up, our kid. Simon Longbottom says you look like a dick.”

“Who’s Simon Longbottom? And what does he know about it?”

“He’s my new best mate.”

Ben pauses and points to a thin pipe cleaner of a boy who lingers by the bus stop as though waiting for Ben to disappear from view. Simon Longbottom’s circular wire-frame glasses are recognizable as health service handouts.

“Him and some of the others have invited me to a boys’ club on Thursday night.”

“To do what?”

“I don’t know, do I? Nesting in the woods. Maybe some footie.”

Ben walks on, and it’s now Tommy’s turn to chase after his brother, who seems to have found a way to make Mrs. Swinson’s baggy clothes fit his gawky body. He’s noticed that whenever Ben walks in a group, even if he’s lagging behind, it always looks as though everybody’s following him.

“You know she’ll not let you go.”

“Well, I won’t know that till I’ve asked, will I?” His brother loosens his school tie as he walks. “Our teacher, Mr. Rothstein, he sometimes calls us by our first names. And you know what else, it turns out that Simon Longbottom’s dad is in the army, and he’s got a skull and crossbones tattooed on his forearm. Apparently he’s based in Germany, and before that he was in Gibraltar.”

“Has he been?”

“Has who been where?”

“Simon Longbottom. To Gibraltar. And Germany.”

“I don’t know. I suppose so.”

They continue to walk, but Tommy feels hopelessly inadequate given the evidence of his brother’s second day at school. He puts his hand in his blazer pocket and gently cups his fist around the watch.

“You’ll never guess what I found at dinnertime.”

“Where did you get that? It’s a beaut.”

“I found it on the floor of the changing rooms. It was lying under a bench, and there was no teacher to ask or anything. It’s one of those that you can wear underwater. Do you like it?”

“What were you doing in the changing rooms?”

“It was just somewhere to go, and the door was open. Do you like it?”

His brother shakes his head.

“You’re mental, you know that, don’t you? You’re not supposed to just go into the changing rooms.”

Ben begins to walk faster, and Tommy scurries after him and catches up with his openly frustrated brother as they turn into Mrs. Swinson’s street.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Look, Tommy all you ever do is think about football.”

“You’re just copying what Mam says.”

“Well, it’s true. And I’ll tell you what, when Simon Longbottom asked me if I had any brothers or sisters, I said no.”

“Why did you say that?”

“Why do you reckon?”

Tommy pushes the watch back into his blazer pocket and tugs at Ben’s arm.

“You’re not going to squeal on me, are you? About the watch.”

“Why should I care? You got yourself into this mess.”

Tommy had hoped that the watch might be something that the two of them could share and take turns wearing, something that might make them forget Mrs. Swinson and her house. As he’d picked it up off the changing room floor, he was thinking only of his brother and trying to imagine the look on Ben’s face when he showed him the watch. His brother has now stopped by Mrs. Swinson’s front gate and is gesturing at him.

“Well, are you coming in, or what?”

Mrs. Swinson opens the door and looks down at them. She has unclipped her bun so that two strands of plaited grey hair now frame either side of her face, making her look like an old lady version of a doll.

“You’re late. I was expecting you both ten minutes ago, so I called the vicar to see what I ought to do.” They remain poised on the doorstep and look up at her. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s be having you into the kitchen so I can take a good look.”

They stand before her as she perches now on a stool by the Aga and pats Simla, the youngest of her three husky dogs. It occurs to both boys that they will most likely be inspected like this at the end of each day. Tommy looks over at the dogs, but he keeps his distance, for he doesn’t much care for Simla and the other two. Mrs. Swinson blinks furiously as she speaks, but not in time to the words so everything appears to be frantic and out of control.

“Well, I explained to the vicar that you weren’t quite ready this week, but he’s looking forward to meeting the pair of you on Sunday. You have been baptized, haven’t you?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I don’t know why I bother.” She points at Ben. “And I don’t want to see you with your tie like that.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Swinson.”

“And look at the state of the both of you. What am I supposed to do with this hair of yours? Can you run a comb through it?” Ben opens his mouth to speak, but she continues. “Well?” She points now at Tommy. “How was your first day at school? And you”—she jabs her finger in Ben’s direction—“how was your second day?”

“It was grand.” Ben immediately senses that he’s said the wrong thing, but it’s too late.

“Grand, was it? Well, be off with you upstairs and get changed; then I’ll see you back down here for your tea, and for heaven’s sake, no noise, for my head’s splitting as it is, and Simla’s feeling a bit under the weather.”

Tommy puts on the clothes that he is used to wearing, and even though he’s now back in short trousers, he feels a little better about everything. Ben has on long trousers as he’s been allowed to stop wearing short ones, but Tommy can see that his brother seems disheartened to be taking off his school uniform. He watches Ben fold everything carefully and then open up the wardrobe and place his neat pile of clothes on the top shelf. The watch is lying on the bed, and Tommy picks it up and begins to strap it to his wrist.

“What are you doing?” Ben makes a grab for the watch. “Take it off, you prat. You don’t want her to catch you with that, do you?”

Mrs. Swinson hasn’t moved from the stool near the Aga, but she is now smoking a cigarette and making a big show of knocking off the ash into a saucer that she cradles in her lap. In the corner, the three dogs are curled up in their respective baskets and appear to be dropping off to sleep, but Tommy is never sure if they’re just pretending.

“Well, the thing is, Ben, we’ll need to know more about who these boys are and what it is they get up to at this club before we can allow you to go off with them just like that.”

They eat their beans on toast and sip at their glasses of fizzy pop, but they keep glancing at Mrs. Swinson so she understands they are paying full attention. Ben has told her about Simon Longbottom, and how he usually comes in the top three in the class, and all about his dad’s being stationed in Germany, and Mrs. Swinson has nodded sagely, interrupting Ben only to remind him that he shouldn’t gobble his food.

Tommy’s baked beans keep falling off the back of his fork, but he knows that this is the proper way to eat them, for their mother has drummed it into their heads that turning the fork the other way and shovelling them up is common. Tommy likes to think that she’s looking at them both all the time, even though he knows that in reality she can’t see them. However, whenever he tries to talk about her with his brother, Ben changes the subject or just gets annoyed and snaps at him, for it’s clear that his brother is angry that their mother has sent them away like this.

Mrs. Swinson stubs out her cigarette and immediately fumbles around in the box and takes out another one. She pokes it in his direction, so there can be no doubt whom she’s talking about.

“You ought to be more like your big brother and think on about joining the Cubs or maybe a church group.”

“I don’t want to join anything.”

“I don’t want to join anything.” She mimics Tommy, and smiles at Ben, who chuckles approvingly. “Young man, you need to get your ideas straight. You’ll soon learn that the secret to life is getting to grips with the fact that you can’t always have what you want.”

Tommy looks down at his plate and carefully cuts the last piece of toast into two, and then pushes some beans onto each bit. He’s still confused and a little bit upset: Why would Ben tell Simon Longbottom that he didn’t have a brother?

“You do know that when we go nesting, we don’t keep the eggs.” Ben carefully places his knife and fork together, and then looks up again at Mrs. Swinson. “We just like to count them, and then we put them right back in the nests.”

“But you shouldn’t even be touching the eggs. The mother bird’s got them all nice and warm, and then you lot come along with your mucky hands and it’s all back to square one.”

“But is it alright to just look?”

Mrs. Swinson sighs deeply, and then once again gestures with the unlit cigarette.

“Your best bet is to just leave nature be, that’s what I think.”

It is now Tommy’s turn to put his knife and fork together at attention and push the plate slightly away from himself.

“Well, what do you say?”

They both chorus, “Thank you, Mrs. Swinson.”

“That’s right. I hope I’ll not have to ask in future. Now then, we’ve heard all about Ben’s day at school, what about you? Before you go down to the basement to watch telly, I’d like to know what you’ve both been up to.”

“Tell her about the watch.”

He glares at Ben, who smiles weakly and then turns away and won’t meet his eyes. Mrs. Swinson pauses before striking a match on the box.

“Well, what watch is this?”

“Tommy was telling me about a watch, but I reckon I must have heard wrong.”

He suddenly feels angry, but he keeps his focus on the now-empty plate as Ben begins to stammer.

“I don’t think I can have heard him right.”

His brother is making it worse. Mrs. Swinson slips the cigarette back into the box, and then leans to one side so that she can place the saucer that she was using as an ashtray on top of the Aga.

“Well, Ben, either there is a watch or there’s not a watch. Which is it?”

“I don’t know,” mutters his brother, which is the daftest thing he could have said, for now Mrs. Swinson has the bit between her teeth.

“Have you seen the watch, Ben?”

“Yes, Mrs. Swinson.”

“Then you’ve told a lie, for you know full well there’s a watch. Telling lies is a sin, but, as the vicar will tell you when he hears about this, we’ll not be the ones judging you. We’re all of us accountable to higher powers.” She pauses. “Well? I, for one, would like to see the watch.”

His brother’s world is collapsing. The club on Thursday. Nesting. Simon Longbottom’s dad and the army. Clearly nothing matters anymore because Mrs. Swinson now thinks his brother is a liar. He stares at Ben and wonders why on earth he decided to squeal.

Tommy puts his hand in his pocket and passes the watch to Mrs. Swinson, who is clearly surprised by this elaborate underwater model with an adjustable dial on the front.

“Now then, Sonny Jim, I want you to reason carefully before you answer me. Where did you get it, and don’t be like your brother and think you’re going to get away with any yarns, for I’m not fresh off the boat.”

Tommy wishes that he’d just left it where he saw it and hurried out of the changing rooms, for Ben now looks as if he’s ready to burst into tears.

“Well, I’m waiting. Come on, I don’t have all day to be sopping up your dumb insolence.”

“I found it, Mrs. Swinson.”

“So, you’re sticking to that cack-handed story, are you?”

“It’s the truth. I found it in the changing rooms.”

Ben coughs and puts his hand to his mouth to stifle the sound. “It’s true.” His brother has a scratchy throat, so he coughs again. “Tommy found it at dinnertime, and he was going to report it to his teacher.”

“And how exactly do you know this? Were you in the changing room with him?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Swinson laughs scornfully. “And if I ask you again, are you going to continue to try and bamboozle me with more of your lies? Always the brightest kid in the year, your mother said, but you don’t seem that clever to me.”

Ben lowers his eyes, and the room gives way to a devastating silence, made all the more painful by the triumphant smile on Mrs. Swinson’s face.

“You know, for a moment there I thought I might have got you two wrong, or at least one of you.” Her eyes bore directly into Ben. “But you, Mr. So-called Brainbox, you’re nothing more than a barefaced liar.” She looks now at Tommy. “And you’re a thief. In a fix, aren’t we?”

Tommy watches Ben wipe away his silent tears with the sleeve of his pullover, and he feels nothing but intense hatred for this miserable woman, who is not their mother and never will be.

“Away to bed with the both of you. Tomorrow morning we’ll return the watch to its rightful owner, by which time I expect to hear the whole truth. Am I making myself clear?”

Tommy can hear her downstairs locking up the house. When they came upstairs, Ben wouldn’t talk to him, and he simply got into bed and turned his back. He knows that Ben has nicked a lot of stuff: sweets from corner shops, packets of biscuits from the new supermarket, stacks of comics and records. Ben has even taken money from the pockets of clothes hanging up in the cubicles at the swimming baths. (Ben told him that the teacher lined them all up and gave them a piece of paper and asked everyone to write down who they thought did it, and they all wrote down his name, while Ben wrote down “Colin Green.”) But unlike his brother, Tommy has never nicked anything in his life, and he didn’t nick this watch, he found it, and no matter what Mrs. Swinson says, he’s not going to say anything different in the morning. He hears her plodding slowly up the stairs, and he looks again at his sleeping brother. He and Ben used to talk about everything, but all that seems to have changed. Mrs. Swinson opens the door to their bedroom and pokes her head in. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut until he hears her pull the door to, and then he listens for the snap of the switch as she turns off the lights in the hallway. Maybe things will be different tomorrow, but if they’re not, he’s still not going to change his story. She can call him whatever she wants to, but he didn’t nick the watch.

They stand together by the front door and wait for Mrs. Swinson. It’s obvious that Ben has been crying, for his eyes are all bloodshot, but Tommy doesn’t say anything to him. Today his brother’s school uniform hangs sloppily, and Ben looks as though he needs more sleep. Mrs. Swinson, however, has put on her powdered face as she tries to look bright and breezy, but as far as Tommy is concerned, she resembles a clown, and she smells of dog. She retrieves the black umbrella that’s leaning up to the side of the door and looks daggers at them both.

“Well, have you anything to say before we set off?”

Tommy defiantly gives her the eye and watches her crabby face curdle into contempt.

“I didn’t think so.”

It has rained overnight, and as they attempt to match Mrs. Swinson’s brisk pace, they keep an eye out for the slack water in the gutter, which sprays up every time a car or bus races by. When they reach the school, Tommy sees two older boys in the playground who stand together, bags abandoned on the rain-drenched ground between them, quietly arguing as though their lives depended upon whatever point they were trying to make. As Tommy passes by the boys, he catches sight of their prefect badges, and he assumes they have to get to school early to carry out some duty or other to which they’ve been assigned. To the side of the gymnasium, a mopey boy of about his own age is kicking a football up against the wall with a hypnotically monotonous rhythm, and Tommy notices that the boy’s school shoes have already been scratched so badly that no amount of polishing is going to help. Only a few vehicles are parked in the staff car park, and being a new boy, he’s not sure which car belongs to which teacher. Mrs. Swinson leads them inside the main school doors and pads her way down the long corridor and knocks loudly on the staff room door.

A grim-faced Mr. Hedges carries his mug of coffee with him from the staff room. When he and his party reach the classroom, he tells the two boys to sit at the two desks in the middle of the front row. Mr. Hedges takes a sip of his coffee as he crosses the room and shuts the classroom door, and then he moves back to Mrs. Swinson’s side, and the two adults look down at them both. Mr. Hedges takes another sip and then rests the mug on his desk; he takes the watch from the woman and fingers it as though he has been asked to place a value upon the timepiece.

“Well, I’m not aware of any boy reporting a missing watch.”

Tommy stares at him, daring him to ask a question. Mr. Hedges turns to the woman with the umbrella.

“And did Thomas tell you where he got the watch?”

“He took a watch that isn’t his. In my books that’s stealing.”

“He found it,” Ben shouts. “She said Tommy took it, but he never did. She’s a liar.”

Mr. Hedges holds up his hand with the watch in it. “Now steady on a minute. There’s no need for that sort of thing.”

“She called me a liar and our Tommy a thief, but it’s her who’s lying. He found it on the changing room floor, and he was going to give it back. Our Tommy just wanted to show it to me.”

“Is that right, Thomas?”

He nods, but he can’t take his eyes from his impassioned brother. Mrs. Swinson snorts, then laughs.

“The pair of them must think we’re simple. I mean, come off it, look at them. Getting the truth out of kids like them is like trying to get blood out of a stone. They’d steal the milk right out of your coffee. Somebody’s parents will have saved like billy-o to buy that watch as a birthday present or a Christmas gift.” She glares directly at Tommy. “You can’t just take it and not expect consequences.”

Mr. Hedges looks at the woman and tries to work out why she’s so angry. She’s not exactly acting like a guardian, but he generally does everything possible to avoid extracurricular situations, which is why he was so taken aback that this woman thought it perfectly fine to come hammering on the staff room door with her loud demands that he listen to what she had to say about one of “his boys.” She points at Tommy. “Honestly, Mr. Hedges, I think that one’s a bit funny in the head, and if you ask me, they both want a good clout to brighten up their ideas.” Mr. Hedges considers the red-faced woman, then looks at the two resolute boys, who sit quietly behind the small desks, and then at the watch in his hand.

“You know, perhaps you two boys should step out into the playground.” He addresses Tommy. “Is it alright if I hold on to this watch for now?”

Tommy nods and stands.

“I’ll have a word with you both, in here, at dinnertime, alright?”

They look at Mr. Hedges, whose stony face flashes them a quick smile as they file past him and out of the classroom.

* * *

Ben and Tommy stand together in the playground. They watch Mrs. Swinson pass slowly through the school gates and then turn left. It has started to rain again, but she walks with the umbrella still rolled up as though she has forgotten she has it with her. More pupils seem to be milling about now, for there are only ten minutes to go before the bell that will signal the start of the school day. As Mrs. Swinson finally disappears from view, Tommy recognizes Simon Longbottom loping towards them with a huge grin on his face, but Ben speaks before his new friend can say anything.

“I’m talking to my brother. I’ll see you inside.”

Simon Longbottom looks thrown, so Ben repeats himself.

“I’ll see you inside. I won’t be long.”

They both watch as Simon Longbottom uses his forefinger to push the wire frames of his rain-spattered glasses a little farther up his nose. Then Ben’s new best friend reluctantly moves off, all the while casting disconcerted glances over his shoulder. Ben turns to face his brother.

“Is Mam coming this Saturday?”

“I think so.” Tommy coughs and then offers further clarification. “She said she was if she can get time off from the library. But I suppose it all depends on her nerves.”

“I know.” His brother pauses. “I’ll see you at dinnertime. And tonight I’ll meet you over by the gates.” Ben quickly gestures with his head. “Four o’clock sharp.”

Tommy hears the bell for registration. However, he waits until the last boy has dashed out of the toilets and in the direction of his classroom. He bends over and puts his mouth to the tap and starts to drink the icy water, and when he’s finished, he draws the arm of his blazer across his mouth. Alone in the toilets, the only noise he can hear is the sound of a broken lavatory constantly flushing and the squeak of his rubber-soled shoes as he moves anxiously from one foot to the next. Today is his second day at this school, but he’s hopeful that it will be better than the first. And it could be that this Mr. Hedges is alright. Not as bad as he thought.