He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) (32 page)

‘Rubbish!
 
Sheep dung!
 
All you tried to do was make money out of them.
 
You took advantage of two vulnerable children.’
 
Peg’s chest lifted precariously.

‘Go … way.
 
Go …way.’
 
The Missus’ voice had risen to a shriek.

‘I best go break it up.
 
Though ‘tis a pity the Boss isn’t here to get a walloping, too,’ Fergus said.

‘So Peg sticks up for us and gives the Missus a shiner.
 
I can’t get over it,’ Joe exclaimed the next time we met at
The Travellers
.
 
The tension between us had immediately dissipated with the news.
 
‘Tell me what ‘appened.’
 
He seemed to have forgotten his recent efforts to talk posh.

‘I’ve already told you half a dozen times.’

‘Just once more.
 
What happened after Peg walloped her?’

‘The Missus fell and hit her head on the wall.’

‘And?’

‘As she slid down, her coat and dress got caught up somehow and I got this view of her suspenders and brown knickers.
 
Anyway, at the same time as Fergus ran across the road, Jack came sprinting from
The Travellers
and dragged Peg away.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing much, except that Peg was the last person he’d expect to get herself into a fight.
 
At the same time, he laughed a bit, as if he was sort of proud of her.
 
He called her his “good lady” a lot.’

‘What d’you think Eleod’ll do?’

‘Jack doesn’t think he’ll do anything.
 
Too scared the Millards will report him.’

‘And will they?’

‘Peg wants to, but Jack says, where’s the point?
 
The Downstons will lie themselves out of it.
 
Anyway, it’s over now.’

‘It’s not the issue, though.’

‘That’s what Peg says, but Jack doesn’t want to get involved.
 
He thinks it’ll take too much out of Peg.
 
It already has.’

Joe edged closer in his old conspiratorial way.
 
‘The Boss’s got a woman in Christchurch, so I hear.
 
She’s years younger than him.
 
That’s where he goes when he says he’s on business.
 
Dirty old sod.’

A week later, Peg still looked strained as she climbed into the truck, ready for Jack to drive her to the bus.
 
It had taken all Jack’s persuasion and my assurance we’d eat every crumb of her baking, before Peg agreed to spend a week with her son.
 
She hadn’t seen him or their daughter-in-law and grand-children for a while.
 
It would be good for her, Jack said.
 
She’d be able to help out, too, what with Jenny’s hands full with the four kids, and Roger’s partner away with his elderly parents again.
 
The poor old couple had never settled.
 
They were still homesick for the Old Country, Jack said.
 
I knew how they felt.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The evening sun sketched shapes that flitted like phantom birds on the wall of the school room.
 
Had I been coming here for four years?

Miss Jervlin voiced my thoughts.
 
‘One day had to be the last time you sat at that desk.’
 
Her hair may have grown greyer, the skin round her neck a little folded, but Miss Jervlin was as taciturn as when I had first met her that Sunday morning outside the church.

Four years of scrubbing off the grime of the farm and driving over potholed roads to the old wooden school.
 
Four years doing what all the kids in Blountmere Street had done years earlier.
 
Four years of discovery.

‘And now in a few weeks you’ll be off to university.
 
You’ve done well.’
 
Miss Jervlin smiled at me in what was, for her, the ultimate display of pride.

‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘Nonsense!
 
Anyone with some tenacity could have got this far.’

Tenacious wasn’t a word I would have used of myself.
 
There had been so many times when Peg had to chase me from the house.
 
But for Peg, I knew I would have given up long before sitting my bursary.

Mum never seemed to place much importance on education.
 
If I’d won a place to a university when I lived in Blountmere Street, I would have been ostracized and called “toffee nosed”, and “stuck up”.
 
 
But, then, in Blountmere Street, I would have been as far away from a university education as I was from the moon.
 
I couldn’t think of one person I’d ever known who had gone to university.
 
Anyway, I was the last one they would have imagined going there.

Mum once said something about it standing a young man in good stead if he got an apprenticeship and learnt a trade.
 
I thought it was Mum who said it, or was it Mrs Dibble?
 
Anyway, I had no idea what “good stead” meant, and I couldn’t see myself becoming a plumber or a bricklayer, even then.

It was Peg, too, who had encouraged me to buy a car and to take time off from studying, urging me to go to the township more.
 
‘Everyone needs some fun from time to time.’
 
She sighed one of her deep, heartfelt sighs.
 
‘And why you haven’t taken up with that Merrin Bensdyke is beyond me.
 
The girl’s a looker, and she seems keen enough.
 
You make a lovely couple when you dance together at the community hall dances.’
 
Peg looked into the distance as if she was seeing herself and Jack at that age.

I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t “taken up” with Merrin Bensdyke.
 
She was all the things Peg said she was, yet when we drove somewhere or sat on the beach aiming pebbles at the ocean, it was as if her presence
created
a space in me, rather than fill it.

Joe said that “hit was hindeed a honour to ‘ave a friend with henough brains to do all this ‘igh-faluting stuff hat one of them there universities”.
 
He smiled expansively, although he was unable to resist looking up at the sign that read, “Epsley and Fisher, Agricultural Machinery” and underneath in smaller gold letters: “
Proprietors Bruce Epsley and Joseph Fisher
.”
 
‘Not bad, eh?
 
Part-howning a business hat my hage.’

As well as being referred to by the Epsleys and their friends as Joseph, and his now entrenched “h” habit, Joe’s face had widened, and his freckles had expanded and contorted into shapes like an orange jigsaw puzzle.
 
Due to Ann Epsley and her mother’s influence, he had taken to wearing a black velvet waistcoat embroidered with a pink floral design.
 
It was the closest Joe got to flowers these days.

Joe and Ann’s engagement was announced at one of the community hall dances only a few weeks before Bruce Epsley took Joe into partnership.
 
The exact date of the wedding hadn’t yet been fixed, but Ann said she and her Joseph would be married early next year.
 
Already, her “glory box” was full and their wedding would be a grand affair, quite the biggest the township had ever seen.
 
The only time she’d mentioned my impending study at university was to say what a pity it was I wouldn’t be able to attend their nuptials.

Joe, however, had confided to me that he was in no hurry to get married.
 
“Plenty of time for hall that malarkey.
 
All the time hin the bleedin’ world,” he said.

I doubted Ann Epsley and her family saw it that way.

On the day before I left the Millards to study at the University of Canterbury, Fergus gave me his copy of First World War poetry and returned to Dublin.
 
It was yet another change at Downstons’ since the Missus had died a year earlier after suffering a stroke.
 
Peg had been fraught with worry that her attack on Maggie Downston had contributed to her death.
 
She had even consulted old Doctor Marthwaite, who said that he would hardly have thought a slap two years earlier would have resulted in a stroke.
 
It was much more likely to have been due to the Missus’ high blood pressure.
 
Nevertheless, I knew Peg had come to regret her attack.
 
She had gone for the wrong one, she said.
 
It should have been Eleod Downston, especially after he’d brought a girl no more than a youngster to live on the farm less than two months after his wife’s death.
  
It was shameful.
 
SHAMEFUL!

I heard from Murray that Gaylene rarely went back to the farm these days, and who could blame her.
 
She had got herself engaged to a banker in Auckland.
 
I wondered if he ever read her poetry.

Apparently, Paul Downston got himself into a spot of trouble and ended up in gaol.
 
‘Not that I’m surprised, my word I’m not,’ Murray said.
 
‘Nasty bit of work.
 
Kicked that horse of his into such a bloody mess, the poor animal had to be put down.’

Murray, too, was considering leaving Downston’s to work with his brother over on the Coast.
 
As soon as he got things straightened out, he was off, too right he was.
 
He had been bought so many farewell jugs by his fellow drinkers at
The Travellers
, they began to think his talk of leaving was a catch on Murray’s part to get free grog.
 
Crafty old bugger.

I closed the lid of my orphanage suitcase, smoothed my bedcover and tweaked the curtains straight.

In the yard, Peg wedged herself into the front seat of my Morris Minor.

‘I don’t know if I should be going, Jack.
 
It seemed a good idea to get a lift with Tony to see our Roger and Jenny and the kids, and to make sure Tony gets settled into his lodgings, but now I’m not so certain.’
 
Peg looked as if she might be about to cry.

‘Of course it’s the right idea.
 
I’d come myself if it wasn’t for the farm.’
 
Jack bent and kissed Peg.
 
She clung to his arm.
 
‘It gets more difficult to leave you the older we get.’
 
She looked into his face.
 

All I had managed to say to Merrin was a stilted goodbye, without even the promise of a letter.

‘I’ve put a couple of cans of petrol in the boot.
 
It’s a long way.’
 
Jack disentangled himself from Peg and walked round to the driver’s door, beginning to extend his hand before abandoning his reserve and embracing me.
 
‘Take care, boy.
 
We know you’ll give it your best.’
 
He laughed a half-laugh to cover his awkwardness.
 
‘Be careful of those Christchurch girls.
 
I hear they eat blokes like you for breakfast.’

‘Come on, Jack, let the bloke get in the car.
 
It’s not as if you won’t see him again.
 
He’ll be back in the holidays.
 
He’s part of the family.’

How different it was from when Joe and I had left Downston’s.
 
Then, we had sneaked away, dispirited, willing ourselves not to look back.
 
We hadn’t wanted to be reminded of our years of incarceration.

Peg and I drove first to Epsley and Fisher’s and waited while Joe, looking very Bavarian in his floral waistcoat, stood by a tractor.
 
He patted it as if it was a dog, while he explained its features to an entranced farmer.

‘Hanother ‘appy cocky,’ Joe rubbed his hands together as the farmer left.
 
‘Just spent a packet and given Hepsley and Fisher a tidy profit hinto the bargain.
 
Come hinto my hoffice, I’ve got somethink for you.’

I left Peg sitting in the Morrie and followed Joe into his office.

He took a key from his waistcoat pocket and unlocked the drawer of a desk in the corner.
 
He took out a package and extended it to me.
 
‘Cop ‘old of this, and don’t go hopening it now.’

‘How will I know what it is if I can’t open it?’

‘Cos it’s a bit of dough to ‘elp you out with your university heducation.
 
It should see you through for a while.
 
I’ve been keeping it ‘ere for you.
 
Don’t altogether trust them there banks.’

‘But …’

‘’aven’t I hallways said what I ‘ad was ‘alf yours?
  
I’m doing hall right ‘ere, what with a few private deals.
 
So ‘ere’s your share.
 
Just between the two of us, now.
 
You can tell Peg it’s a pair of socks.’

‘Look, Joe, I can’t … ’

‘Don’t go getting all sentimental.
 
Just take it and do what-hever it is you do at university, you blinkin’ brainbox.
 
Who would’ve guessed it when we was in the orphanage.
 
A right dunce you were back then.’

I looked at the splodged freckles, framed by spiky marmalade hair.
 
‘I’m sorry if we haven’t been, well, if we haven’t been so … I suppose … close lately.’

Joe made a dismissive gesture.
 
‘Now didn’t I say you weren’t to go getting sentimental on me.
 
That’s ‘ow it is with brothers.
 
Can’t hallways be in each other’s back pocket.’
 
He cuffed me round the head.
 
‘Don’t go getting too big for your boots, that’s hall.’

‘That was nice of Joe to buy you some socks,’ Peg remarked, as we drove from Epsley & Fisher’s.
 
‘Being the skinflint you are, he knows you probably won’t buy any for yourself.
  
Do you want me to open the parcel for you?’

‘No thanks.
 
I’ll open it later.’

The road rose and fell, snaking between thick bush and the ocean.

‘I always love this journey with the sea at your elbow.’
 
Peg wound down her window and breathed deeply.
 
‘We must be surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.
 
Though, I suppose if a place is someone’s home, wherever it is must seem lovely to them.’

Even a bombsite.
 
Especially a bombsite, awash with dandelions and fresh spring growth shining with dew.
 

‘That older couple, you know, the parents of our Roger’s business partner.
 
They’ve never been able to settle properly in New Zealand.
 
Jenny says sometimes she catches them sitting in the garden holding hands, looking into space as if they’re seeing something no-one else can.’

We drove on a little longer, then parked and watched seals sunning themselves on shiny outcrops before they flopped back, satiated, into the water.

From sea to sea
.
 

I’d sung the hymn a lifetime ago at Mum’s church.
 
Then, the words had struck the stone pillars and bounced back.

From sea to sea to sea to sea
.
 

There had been a time when my only idea of what the sea looked like was in the book on Devon that Paula had got from the library.
 
I never did get to Bognor with the Cubs.
 
Perhaps Dennis and Herbie went.
 
They might even have thought of me now and then while they were there.
 
Fred and Lori promised to take Ang and me to the seaside, but they never got round to it before they emigrated.