Book 'Innocently Wild'
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All work within 'Innocently Wild' is the work of Andrew Murphy and contains some factual events and anagrams of places.
All copying in part or whole of 'Innocently Wild' is strictly forbidden, as is printing or using any parts for any other kind of use ©
This work has not been proof read by another reader and there are some mistakes in the proper spelling which the spell check may not of picked up on, there may be some other words misplaced, such as cat instead of car. This book needs to be checked over with the spelling where I know there are some mistakes.
'Innocently Wild' written by Andrew Murphy
Chapter 1
Innocence in the Making
John stood as a small child in the corner of an orphanage playground in London while the other children punched, kicked and spat at him. He stood in the corner curled up in to a small ball terrified fight back because he didn’t know how to.
As a five year old boy in 1952 John couldn’t understand why this was happening to him or why the nurses did nothing to stop it. The nurses in the orphanage stood in their crisp white starched uniforms which were spotless, smoking their cigarettes and laughing while they watched the children fighting in the playground.
The tears rolled down John’s cheeks with anger, hurt, and frustration at what was happening to him because this wasn’t the first time that he had been ambushed in the playground by the other children and beaten up. The nurses took a break as they relaxed and watched the children that they were responsible for running wild for an hour. They did the same each day in the playground which was covered in tar and surrounded by high railings to stop the children straying.
Occasionally the nurses would busy themselves by wiping noses and comforting the children when the older stern faced matron who was also in uniform came out of her office to see what was going on. The nurses would douse their cigarettes until the matron had gone back indoors satisfied that all was well in the orphanage playground.
John was born in 1947 and placed in to an orphanage by his mother who had found it impossible to keep him as her son. At this time in life he didn’t understand what was going on around him or why he was there. In the young mind of a child who knew no better, this was his home and the people around him were his family.
The nurses were kept busy making sure that the children in the orphanage were properly dressed, kept clean and well fed every day. They were taught how to wash their faces with their flannels and how to clean their teeth at night before putting on their pyjamas and saying their prayers to go to bed. Often the nurses had to wipe the tears off the little children’s faces who would cry when they got overexcited.
A nurse would sit down and read them a story once they were all tucked up in their beds for the night. The metal beds with wooden lockers beside them stood in a uniform row on the cold grey linoleum which was on the dormitory floor. The children would stare at the shadows on the walls which were painted white while the nurse read out the story loud so that they could all hear what she was saying. When she had finished reading her story she would turn off the dormitory light leaving them to dream and drift off to sleep without a care in the world.
When John reached the age of six the matron told him that he was being transferred to a new orphanage in a place called Pinnacle. She told him that he might be lucky enough to be adopted in that area and that the orphanage was in a far nicer location.
Every child who lived in an orphanage without a family hoped that one day they might be adopted, taken out of the orphanage and given a home with a proper family.
To be taken out of the orphanage by a prospective family was something that every child who lived in an orphanage wished for. If they were lucky enough to be selected they would talk about it excitedly for weeks.
Adoption gave them a chance to show that they could behave themselves properly. Children were always being moved from the orphanage that John was being brought up in. Some because they were to old and others who were lucky enough to have been adopted by families or couples who couldn’t have children.
The nurses at the orphanage in London reassured John who’s case was packed for his journey. He was made ready so that he could be taken to the railway station in an Austin Taxi by a nurse in uniform. They were to be met there by a social worker who was taking him to Pinnacle.
The woman that they met at the railway station in London was a small stocky lady who had glasses, a hat and a two piece tweed suit on. The nurse spoke to her for awhile before handing John and his case over to her in the noisy railway station so that they could begin their journey to Forgehill.
This was the first time that John had been out of the orphanage and he was frightened by the noises of the trains and people shouting. He held on to the social workers hand hard so that he wouldn’t lose her as they walked through the busy station to the platform. The sounds of whistles and trains letting off steam was deafening.
They boarded a train which was standing at the platform waiting to take them on their journey. A whistle blew and there was a piercing shriek as the steam train that they were on started to move slowly out of the station. Wheels sliding as it started to move.
Miss Smith the social worker had picked an empty carriage and John was able to sit at the window and watch the platform disappear as the train started to pick up speed. The trees and bridges flashed past as the train sped along the rails at speed leaving a trail of smoke behind it. Miss Smith had put John’s case on the case rack in the single compartment and was sitting opposite him reading a book while he stared out of the window watching everything that they passed.
Occasionally John would shout excitedly to tell the social worker when they were passing the cows and sheep in the fields. He had only seen them in books before.
John was fast asleep by the time they arrived at the orphanage in Pinnacle by car. It was dark when the train arrived at Forgehill and Miss Smith had lifted him off the train at the station, carried him, and placed him gently in to a Brown Austin Countryman car for the last leg of his journey.
John was wakened by a tall woman who had her hair tied up in a bun. She was dressed in skirt and jacket similar to the one that the social worker was wearing. She told him that she was Miss Bell the matron of the house that he had been taken to at the orphanage, and that she was now responsible for him.
There was a younger woman dressed in an overall standing in the room that they were in. She was told by Miss Bell to take John to the kitchen and get him some food. After that she was to show him where the toilets, the washrooms and his dormitory were.
The woman bent down and picked up John’s suit case before telling him to follow her to the kitchen. She told him that the other children were in their beds and that he would meet them all in the morning.
Jane who was an assistant at the orphanage took John through to the big kitchen and sat him down at a table before bringing him a glass of milk and a sandwich with fish paste on it.
Once he had eaten it and drunk his milk he was taken up stairs to be shown where the toilets and washroom were. There were a number of doors up the stairs which she told John to remember before taking him through a door to his dormitory.
John’s case was placed under an empty bed which he was told was his. He was also given a wooden locker to hang his suit in before going to his bed. As John got ready for his bed he noticed that the dormitory had beds on both sides of the walls with the shapes of people lying sound asleep in them. John who was shy started to get undressed for his bed while Jane checked the other children. Jane waited until John was undressed, in his pyjamas and in his bed before putting the light out and shutting the dormitory door.
Next morning John was wakened by one of the other children who was in the same dormitory him. Robert told John that they had to get up, get washed, get dressed and go down stairs for their breakfast.
John’s new orphanage was like a self contained village. It had eight residential houses with a hospital, school, stores, church, a wash house and a hall. They surrounded the playing fields which were in the middle of the large grounds. Each of the houses was set up as a complete unit with a matron, her assistants and twenty children.
The houses which had all been built the same way had a dining room, kitchen, toilet and a sitting room with a coal fire downstairs. The matrons private room and her office were near the front door of the building. The three dormitories, toilets and washrooms for the children were upstairs with a room for a live in assistant.
It didn’t take John long to get to know the matron, her assistants and the other children who were living in the unit that he had been placed in. Miss Bell was like an old hospital ward sister. She let everyone know that she was in charge of her unit. Everyone had to call her matron. Her job was to make sure that the children in her house were looked after and properly cared for.
She also kept an eye on her assistants who were younger than her. It wasn’t long before John found himself in trouble with Miss Bell the matron of his new home. The children from the orphanage were dressed in their best clothes and taken to a Christmas pantomime in Forgehill with the matrons and assistants from the other units looking after them.
They sat and laughed as the actors performed on stage with their festive production of ‘Old Mother Goose’. During the interval every child from the orphanage was given a tub of ice cream and a carton of orange juice by the actors who came from the back of the stage in their costumes to give them it personally. They laughed, joked and talked to the children before going on stage again.
When the Christmas pantomime was over the children and staff were ushered out of the theatre and transported by bus to a Christmas party which had been arranged in a large hall by the Forgehill fire brigade.
It was an annual event and it was something that the they had done for a number of years as friends of the orphanage. The Christmas party was well organised and everything was done to make sure that the children enjoyed themselves.
The tables around the hall were stacked high with food, drinks and crackers. There was more than enough food for everyone. When the feast was over the tables were moved out of the hall so that the games could begin.
The firemen, their wives and orphanage staff played musical chairs, blind mans buff and pass the parcel with the children who were enjoying their special day out from the orphanage. They were all waiting for the highlight of the night. which was yet to come with the appearance of Santa Clause.
Everyone was going to receive a personal present from Santa Clause when he arrived.
No one saw the three small children disappearing in to the artificial chimney which had been set up in the hall for Santa Clause to appear from. John, Robert and Margaret had got fed up with the games, so they decided to explore around the hall. They had found the artificial fireplace and walked in to the back of it to find a door.
Being explorers they opened the door and found a room full of Christmas presents. They didn’t know that Santa Clause was not a real person, and they had no idea that the presents that they opened up in the room had been wrapped up for all the children who were at the Christmas party. John, Robert and Margaret unwrapped every Christmas present that they saw in their search for a train set.
When someone eventually went in to the room to get the Christmas presents ready for handing out by Santa Clause the damage had already been done. John, Robert and Margaret had opened every present that was in the room.
The party organisers were dumbfounded by what they saw. The three small children were sitting in the middle of the room on the floor with the opened presents all around them in a pile. The organisers had no chance of getting the presents wrapped up again in time for Santa Clause to hand out individually to the rest of the children who were at the Christmas party.
The three children were taken out of the room and returned to Miss Bell who was angry at what they had done. She told them that she would deal with them later when she got them home. The matron didn’t let them out of her sight for the rest of the night.
Miss Bell told the other matrons who were all spinsters what they had done. They stood, stared and pointed at John, Robert and Margaret in disbelief until the party was over and they were taken back to the orphanage by bus.
When they returned to the orphanage later on that night the matron took them in to her office to punish them for what they had done. She put them over her knee and used a slipper before sending them to their beds without any supper in disgrace.
John who had led the other two astray had understood when it was far to late that what he had done was wrong. In their innocence the three children were all disgraced and sent to coventry by the other children who lived at the orphanage.
As the months moved on John found himself getting in to all sorts of mischief. The matron would tell him that he would never be adopted and that no one would want to take someone like him. John was now starting to rebel against her.
Miss Bell had slapped him across the face a number of times for throwing tantrums and shouting at her in temper.
During John’s stay in the orphanage a number of children were confined to the orphanage hospital for a week with the chickenpox. They were sent to the hospital to be quarantined so that they did not spread it on to the other children. As they were getting better they started to play tricks again.
John along with the other children decided to play a joke on the nurse by putting soap and water in a glass and giving it to her to drink. The nurse guessed what they were up to and she said she would only take a drink if they took a sip out of the glass first. The glass was passed around and the children screwed their faces up as they took a sip of what was in it.
They didn’t want the nurse to tell Miss Bell what they had been up to. The nurse took the glass and poured it down the sink when they had all taken a sip out of it, knowing that this was a joke that wouldn’t be repeated by any of them again.
Months went by and John had started to behave himself at the orphanage in the hope that the matron might find a family who would adopt him. Then one day it happened. John was introduced to a couple by the matron.
He was excited that Mr and Mrs Reid wanted a boy and that they were going to take him out of the orphanage and let him live with them for a whole weekend.
Miss Bell warned John that if he didn’t behave himself with Mr and Mrs Reid he would never be given the chance of adoption again.
Miss Bell dressed John in his best suit on the day that the couple were coming to take him to live with them and to see if they wanted to adopt him. He was dressed in his Sunday best which consisted of a white shirt, tie, herringbone suit with short trousers, cap and polished shoes. A small leather suitcase was packed for him by Jane with enough clothes in it to last him for the weekend.
For weeks John had been warned by Miss Bell that if he didn’t behave in the orphanage he wouldn’t be allowed to go and stay with Mr and Mrs Reid. John stayed on his best behaviour for the weeks leading up to his weekend frightened that if he didn’t he wouldn’t go.
As a six year old child John had never lived out of the confines of an orphanage before apart from going to the station when he went to Pinnacle, the Theatre and party at Forgehill which was the nearest large city to the orphanage.
Going to a family house was a totally new experience for John. Mr and Mrs Reid arrived on Saturday at the orphanage in their car to take John home with them to Forgehill.
A car was a form of transport that John had seldom travelled in while he was living in the orphanage and the bumping and shaking of the car throughout the journey made him sick. Mr Reid who was driving the square shaped Black Triumph Mayflower car had to stop it a number of times on route to their house so that he could clean it out.
When the car arrived in Forgehill John got out of the car so that he could go in to the couples house. Mr and Mrs Reid’s house was above a small sweet shop and to get in to their house they had to go through the shop and walk up the stairs.
John’s suitcase was put in the room that he was staying in for the weekend. It had a bed, sideboard, a chair, carpet and it had wallpaper with flowers on it. He went over and touched the flowers to see if they were real. Being brought up in the orphanage from birth, John had always slept in a gloss painted dormitory with linoleum on the floor.
Mr and Mrs Reid were a middle aged couple who had no children of their own. They had taken a number of children out of the orphanage to stay with them for weekends. But they had never found the right one yet.
John hoped that he would be able to impress the couple who had a pleasant manner and who wanted to make John feel at home with them.
Mr and Mrs Reid did their best to try and make John welcome in their house. They took him down to their sweet shop so that they could give him some sweets from the row of jars that were on the shelves.
John stood goggled eyed at all the sweets that were on the counter and on the shelves. He watched and helped Mr Reid serve some of his customers throughout the day. When the shop was shut for the night they all went up stairs so that they could get their tea.
Mrs Reid had prepared a special tea and the table was set for John and Mr Reid to sit down and eat. When the table was cleared, the couple played a board game with John to keep him amused while they listened to the classical music which was on the radio.
Soon it was time for John to go to bed. Mrs Reid tucked him in and told him a story before putting the light out and leaving him. .John was enjoying his weekend out of the orphanage.
Next morning John woke up early to find himself alone in a room for the first time in his life. There were no sounds or movement in the house, so he got up and got himself dressed to find out why. John came out of his room quietly to see if he could find Mr and Mrs Reid who were in their bedroom. He couldn’t find them.
In the orphanage there were always sounds of people moving around in the morning. Miss Bell and Jane would have made sure that everyone was up, washed and dressed in time for breakfast. The orphanage would have been a hive of activity by this time.
John went downstairs as quietly as he could to the shop to see if anyone was there. There wasn’t., he looked up at the jars of sweets on the shelves and bars of chocolate on the counter. Temptation took over. John got some jars of the shelf and sat down on the floor with them. He screwed the lids off and sat eating the sweets while playing with an electrical socket which was on the skirting board.
John switched it off on to keep his other hand busy while he ate sweets from the three different jars. To John this was heaven on its own.
The children living in the orphanage got sixpence a week for their pocket money and out of that they had put something in the bank. Miss Bell didn’t allow the children to eat many sweets. She told them they were bad for their teeth.
John heard a creaking noise up the stair. Mr and Mrs Reid were up and moving around. At that age John didn’t know that most people took a long lie on a Sunday. He made a mad scrambled when he heard the noise and tried to get the jars of sweets back on the shelf before the couple came down the stairs to look for him.
Two of the jars were put back on the shelf where they belonged. The third jar of sweets missed the shelf and came crashing down to the floor before breaking and scattering the sweets in all directions.
The sound of footsteps came rushing down the stairs and John knew that he had been caught. Mr and Mrs Reid were annoyed at him for being in their shop. They gave John a row and warned him that the sweet shop was out of bounds to him if they were not with him.
Mrs Reid took John by his hand and took him up the stairs to give him his breakfast and to let him get washed and get his shoes polished. With it being Sunday they were going to church and they were taking John to the local Sunday school.
They walked down the leafy avenues of Forgehill to the Sunday school and John was introduced to the Sunday teacher. Before Mr and Mrs Reid left him they told him to wait outside the Sunday school until they came back to pick him up. They told John that they might be back a little bit late because the church services were run at a different time.
When the Sunday school was finished John waited on the street for the couple to return and take him home with them. He stood and watched the other children being picked up and taken away by their parents until he was the only person left standing on the pavement waiting to be collected. He stood and looked along the street in both directions eagerly waiting for the couple’s return.
John didn’t know where Mr and Mrs Reid had got to, so he decided to walk back to their house by himself. He tried to retrace his steps by going back the way that they had all gone to the Sunday school.
The route was long and John’s small legs felt as if they had been walking for hours. John walked along different streets and avenues trying to recognise something that he could remember. He saw nothing but the big houses and trees lining the roads and after awhile it became clear to him that he didn’t know where he was going. John was lost and he had no idea what to do now.
A deep sense of fear started to come over him as he worried about what would happen to him next. The tears began flow down his cheeks as he started to cry.
He cried so loud that an elderly lady came out of one of the big houses that was on the road to see what was wrong. When she saw the little boy standing on the street by himself she tried to console him so that she could find out why he was crying. She looked up and down the street to see if there was anyone with him while her sister stood at the window watching.
The woman put her arm around John’s shoulder and asked him what he was doing on the street by himself, she also tried to find out where he had been and where he lived.
John couldn’t tell her where he lived through his tears because he didn’t know. And he couldn’t even remember the couples name.
Eventually the woman manage to calm John down enough so that he could tell her through his tears why he had gone to Sunday school and why he had tried to walk back home by himself.
The elderly woman who had white hair and small round glasses on with a shawl tried to find out what Sunday school John had been to. By this time he was breaking his heart and almost hysterical with the thought that the people who had taken him out of the orphanage to live with them for the weekend had abandoned him for breaking their jar of sweets. He thought he had been left alone in the world again.
John stood in his grey suit with short trousers and polished shoe crying his eyes out. His brown eyes were filled with tears as he stood next to the woman who was worried about him.
The woman’s sister came out of the house to see what was wrong. She suggested that they take John along some of the streets to see if he could recognise the Sunday school that he had been at.
They took him by his hands and walked with him. John felt comforted by the two woman. There were a few Sunday schools in the area and it could have been any one of them as far as he was concerned.
As they walked down one of the streets the couple who John was staying with were coming along in the other direction. They had been looking for him in other areas and they were at the stage where they were going to call the police with worry.
The couple were relieved that he had been found. They thanked the two woman before Mrs Reid took John’s hand to take him home with them. She wiped his nose and dried his tears before setting off. John had given them an fright by going missing the way that he had.
When they got back home to the shop there was another shock was waiting for the couple. The fridge in the shop had stopped working and all the frozen goods in it had melted. Their shop floor was flooded.
Mr Reid immediately called out an engineer to find out what the problem was so that they could get it repaired. Later on that afternoon an engineer arrived in his dark green Morris van with lettering on its side to repair the fridge. He opened his toolbag to get his tools out so that he could see what was wrong.
It didn’t take him long to find out what the problem was. Someone had turned the power off at the socket on the skirting board. Mr Reid made it clear to John that he was not to go near the shop again during the rest of his stay with them. He was banned from the shop altogether.
John’s stay with the couple was over the next day and he was being returned back to the orphanage in the morning.
Things hadn’t worked out for the couple the way that they had wanted and John wasn’t sure if he would be taken out for a weekend by them again.
The next morning the couple got up early so that they could give John his breakfast before starting off on their the journey back to Pinnacle. His case was packed and loaded in to their car before they set off.
John’s very first weekend out of the orphanage was over. Mr Reid had to stop his car a number of times on the way back to the orphanage so that John could be sick. Travelling had made him sick all over the seats of their prized Triumph Mayflower car again.
They arrived back at the orphanage at dinner time and John said his goodbyes to Mr and Mrs Reid before he was told by Miss Bell to go through to the dining room for his dinner. She took the couple in to her office for a chat and to see how the weekend with John had gone.
Later on that the day the matron told John that Mr and Mrs Reid had decided not to take him out of the orphanage with them again. The matron didn’t tell him why.
John was a little bit disappointed at the news that the couple were not going to take him out again, but it was soon forgotten when some of the other children wanted to know what Mr and Mrs Reid were like to stay with. They sat with their mouths open when John told them all about their sweet shop.
The children who hadn’t stayed with Mr and Mrs Reid wanted to know where they had taken him and what they had done over the weekend. John and his friends could talk about nothing else for the rest of the week. He went to the orphanage school and told his teacher that he had been away on holiday and that he was going to buy a sweet shop when he grew up.
The routine for the children in the orphanage was very much the same every day. They would get up in the morning get themselves washed and dressed before going down to the dinning room for breakfast.
Once breakfast was over Jane would check them all over before sending them to their school which was in the orphanage grounds. They stayed at school all day and got their dinners there. When school was over they would all return home to change their clothes with the matron keeping a watchful eye over them.
John had began to settle back down at the orphanage with very little happening for a long time. He had started to behave himself and the matron was getting on quite well with him.
After their tea in the evening they were allowed to play outside for a short time before being called back in to the house. When the children had finished their supper in the evening Miss Bell would take them in to the sitting room and sit them all on the floor so that she could read them a story from the books that she had picked up from the orphanage library.
One day John was told that there was a letter for him. It was the first letter that he had received. He didn’t know what Jane was talking about. when she told him. The matron took John in to her office and told him that a relation of his had contacted the orphanage.
It had emerged that John had some grandparents who were living in Scotland and they had contacted a social worker to see if he could go and live closer to them.
John couldn’t stop taking about his new found relations with his friends at the orphanage for days. He could hardly wait for day that he would meet his grandparents.
Over the next few weeks John received a number of letters from his grandmother. Every time a letter arrived Miss Bell would take John in to her office and let him sit down on a seat while she read the letters out to him.
He was still unable to read joined writing and fully understand what his letters meant. None of the other children living in the orphanage that John was at had never received a letter.
On John’s seventh birthday his grandmother sent him a picture book about a Scottish shepherd and his dog. John undid the string and unwrapped the brown paper parcel wondering what it was in it. It was the first present that hadn’t been given to him by the orphanage.
The other children looked on asking him if they could look at it. John proudly showed them what he had got. He took his prized possession with him and looked after it with loving care.
Miss Bell took John in to her office shortly after he received his book and told him that he was leaving within a month to go and live another orphanage, she went on to tell him that it was near Fennington in Scotland.
This was so that he could be closer to his grandparents. John was excited at the news and he drew a mental picture of what his new found grandparents might look like.
John just knew that he would be going to live near his grandparents and if things worked out well he could be going to stay with them for good.
Almost all of the other children in the orphanage were as excited as John was about this change of fortune. But there were still few of them who tried to put him off by telling him awful stories of what the Scottish people would be like.
John was told that the Scots were all cannibals and that they would eat him because he was an English boy. To his annoyance they would kid him on by reciting the ‘blood of an English man’.
John used to dismiss the other children as being jealous and not having any relations of their own. This would often lead to squabbling with the other children who were slightly jealous at John’s good luck. John would try and hit out in temper before bursting in to tears and running away at the name calling. Miss Bell would normally intervene by giving all the children a row.
John was kept off school the day before he was due to leave Pinnacle while his worldly possessions were packed in to his small suitcase. During the packing he noticed that his treasured book was missing so he went to look for it and find out where it was.
Margaret who had been kept off school because she was sick had taken the book out of John’s possessions and she refused to give him it back. This caused another row.
The matron got angry at the way that John was behaving over his book which he had kept close to him. In temper she took his book, tore it in half and threw it in to the dustbin.
John who was hurt at his book being torn up started shouting at the matron for tearing his book up.
Miss Bell who was fed up with his tantrums took John down to her office and put him over her knee to punish him. When he had received his punishment he was sent to his dormitory with tears in his eyes and confined to his bed until it was tea time. He pulled the blankets over his head to sulk.
This was a punishment that John had received before and it was the one that hurt him the most. Later on in the afternoon John could hear the other children coming back from school. He knew that it was nearly tea time. But John had made his mind up that when someone did come up to tell him to go downstairs for his tea he wouldn’t go.
When the matron sent one of the other children to get John for his tea he kidded on he was sound asleep. He didn’t respond when Anne shook him to get him up. Anne went back downstairs to tell Miss Bell that she couldn’t waken him. Shortly after trying to get him up Anne was sent back to try and waken John again.
John stayed still as if I was sound asleep and refused to move. He heard Anne turning and running down the stairs shouting to the matron that he was dead.
Miss Bell came rushing up the stair and came over to John’s bed to give him a shake and to get him up. John still lay as quite as he could. The matron bent over his bed to see if he was ill or if there was something wrong with him. John suddenly burst in to life and shouted to give her a fright. John got the biggest fright when the matron slapped him hard across his face. John had pushed Miss Bell to far. That night he got no tea and he was told to stay in his bed until the next morning.
The next morning John got up early and was bubbling with excitement of his coming journey in to the unknown.
There was a fair amount of activity and sadness when John did leave orphanage to be moved on in his life. He had grown up for a almost year with the other children in Pinnacle and they had become like brothers and sisters to him even though he was wild and always in trouble. To the other children, he was a likeable little boy in his own way.
John stood at the front door of the house that he had been brought up in with Miss Bell the matron, Jane and the other children who were wishing him well on his journey.
He was almost sure that the matron had a tear in her eye when she gave him a peck on the cheek and waved him goodbye for the last time, finally telling him to be good.
John was taken to the train station and put on a train with a social worker who had come down especially from the city of Fennington to collect him. She had been assigned to take him on his long journey to Scotland. John was bubbling over with excitement at the thought that he was now starting to get a little bit closer to the grandparents that he had never seen.
It was dark and he was sound asleep on the train when it pulled in to the station at Fennington. The social worker woke John up to get him off the train and in to a Pale Green Humber Hawk car which took them to his new orphanage.
John looked out of the car window with sleep in his eyes hoping that he could see where he was going.
When they arrived at Epington House which was a big house set in its own grounds John was introduce to Mr Mitchell the warden who gave him something to eat before showing him the dormitory that he would be sleeping in.
It was late and the other children were fast asleep in their beds. It had been a long and tiring day and when John went to his bed he soon fell fast asleep in his new surroundings.
In the morning John was wakened by the sounds of the other children who were starting to get up and get dressed for the beginning of another day. While John was getting dressed he looked around the dormitory to see the faces of the children that he would now be living with.
When he had washed and dressed himself he was taken down to the dining room by Peggy a girl who introduce him to the rest of the children who were living there.
At first John found it hard to make out what the other children in the orphanage were saying to him. They had a different accent from the one that he had heard in England all his life.
His first few days at the orphanage near Fennington were taken up answering questions from the other children. They wanted know where John had come from and what the orphanage that he had come from had been like.
John was shown around his new home which was a large house set out in it own grounds. To John it was like being out in the country. There were no other house near it.
The ages of the children who were in the orphanage ranged from six to fifteen and most of them had come from the West Coast of Scotland. Some of the other children did have parents, but they had been placed in the orphanage for other reasons.
Mr Mitchell who had ginger hair and a beard run the orphanage with his staff and wasn’t as old fashioned as the matron who had run the last orphanage that John had been in.
The warden did his best to make everyone feel at home and to make sure that the staff were there to help them in any way that they could.
Mr Mitchell took John in to his office and told him that he would eventually be going to stay with his grandparents for a weekend That would happen when he had settled in to his new surroundings and when things could be properly arranged with his grandparents.
Living in the new orphanage was not without its problem. John ended up in a number of fights for being English and for the way that he spoke. He still had a broad regional accent which some of the other children found impossible to make out. If anything, John had become good at running which was what he would do when he was being chased by the older children for being cheeky to them.
The school that John went to was outside the orphanage grounds and him and the other children had to walk down a country lane to get to it.
He had settled in to his class at school and was starting to get on with his work. Deep down John knew that wouldn’t be at the school for very long. His heart was set on going to stay with the only real relations that he had in the world.
He had already built his own mental picture of them and John would sit and tell the other children all about grandparents. It all came from the world of make believe.
John had been told that his mother and father had been killed in a car crash and that’s why he had been placed in to the orphanage from birth. None of the staff in any of the orphanages had ever been able to answer his inquisitive questions when he had asked them about his parents.
John had wanted to know what they had looked like and if they had loved him before they died. These were the type of awkward questions that no one could give John proper answers on.
Eventually the day came when Mr Mitchell called John in to his office to tell him that his grandmother was coming through to Epington House, the orphanage to collect him. He was told that he was going to stay with his grandparents for a weekend in a place called Quarrybell. John burst in to tears with emotional excitement at the thought that he was going to live in a real house with his own family.
Mr Mitchell told John that he was only going to stay with his grandparents for a weekend to begin with but if things went well he could be going to stay with them for good.
The day came when John’s grandmother was coming to the orphanage to pick him up so that he could get to know his grandparents. Billy one of the other children at the orphanage was sent to tell John that his grandmother was waiting for him in the wardens office. He went to Mr Mitchell’s office and saw an elderly woman sitting on a seat.
The other children in the orphanage were walking past the door and looking in deliberately to see what John’s grandmother looked like.
John’s first impression of his grandmother was that she looked quite old. Her face had a lot of wrinkles and she was wearing a pair of glasses that she appeared to be looking over. She had white hair and was wearing a beret with a blue wool coat. His grandmother also had a leather message bag with her. The warden introduced John to his grandmother as Mrs Anderson and told him to sit down.
During a conversation with John’s grandmother Mr Mitchell warned her that he was a little bit wild and that he would need an eye kept on him for his own sake. John had become shy and didn’t know how to speak to his grandmother when she asked him where his case was.
The other children had gathered outside the orphanage to watch John and his grandmother go down the drive to the big gates and past the stone wall which surrounded the orphanage grounds.
Chapter 2
The Realities of Life
John gripped his grandmothers hand tightly as they walked down the road. His grandparents had found him and he had no intention of letting them go now as he looked up at her.
John was nervous at being with a relation for the first time in his life. He felt that he wanted to pinch himself just to make sure that it wasn’t just a dream. John and his grandmother got a number of buses so that they could go to the village of Quarrybell. They got a bus to the centre of Fennington and another one to Tronbridge.
John still couldn’t get used to travelling on the different kinds of transport. It made him sick and he even felt ill even at the thought of having to travel on a bus.
His grandmother had to give him a paper bag to be sick in when he was sick on the single decker bus which was swaying from side to side on the road to the city of Tronbridge.
Mrs Anderson took John to Tronbridge on her route back to the village of Quarrybell. This was so that she could pick some papers up from the house that they had in the city. John’s grandparents kept a house in the city while they were working in the country.
John’s first sights of Tronbridge were breathtaking as he walked from the bus station to his grandmothers house. The streets were so wide and the buildings so tall. John looked up making himself dizzy when he did so.
He held hard on to his grandmothers hand while he Iooked around him trying to take it all in. John felt so small in the city which seemed to be so big and noisy with trams, buses, cars and people going in all directions.
The city was a frightening sight to someone who had never been in a large city before. John was quite a shy little boy who was thin and small for his age. He didn’t find it easy to make conversation with his grandmother who he had wanted to say so much too. But being beside her was enough to comfort him and to make him feel more secure than he had ever felt in his life before.
Everything seemed to be going very fast for John as him and his grandmother went to their city house in Ashworth Street to pick up the papers that she had come for. It wasn’t long before they were on the bus again travelling on their final journey to Quarrybell.
The bus pulled up at the village of Quarrybell and John and his grandmother got off to walk to the cottage where his grandparents were staying.
The cottage was a mile and half out from the village along a country road. John’s grandfather was working as a gardener for Miss Hamilton who owned the estate. The two roomed cottage with kitchen and bathroom came with the job.
The country road was quite and John and his grandmother saw no traffic on it while they made their way to the cottage. The road that they walked along had fields with cattle and sheep in them, it was also lined with trees, bushes, wire fences and dry stone dykes.
When they arrived at the cottage John’s grandfather was standing outside waiting for them to arrive. He was a big man with a heavy build and white hair. He had a tweed jacket and a hat on and looked a like a farmer. He welcomed John and told him to go in to the house which had a big fire burning in the range. John noticed a leg of ham hanging from the ceiling and asked what it was. His grandfather told him what it was and told him to sit down on a chair in front of the fire while his grandmother went to the kitchen to prepare their tea.
John liked his grandparents who were in their in their sixties. His grandfather tried to draw John out of his shell by talking to him and asking him questions about the orphanages that he had been staying in. He came over all shy and didn’t know what to say.
Mr Anderson told him that he was a retired gardener and that the owner of the estate Miss Hamilton had wanted him to come out of retirement and do some gardening work for her. Something that he was good at.
It didn’t take John’s grandmother long to make their tea and bring it through to them. The table was set and the tea was placed on it. It was a boiled ham salad. John sat at the table beside his grandfather to eat his meal.
Mrs Anderson had worked as a cook in service from a very early age and was a professional cook. The leg of ham that was hanging from the ceiling was the ham that she had used for their tea.
When they had eaten the salad John was given a large slice of cloutie dumpling which she had made especially for his stay with them. John tucked in because he hadn’t had food like this before.
Everything In the orphanage was steamed and tasteless, all the goodness was taken out of it when it was cooked.
When they had finished their tea John’s grandmother cleared the table and washed the dishes so that they could all sit in front of the fire, listen to the radio and talk.
John saw something with fur walking across the cottage floor, arching its back and digging its claws in to the carpet as it went. He hadn’t seen a real cat before. John’s grandparents couldn’t understand why he was frightened when the cat walked across the room and tried to climb on his lap. John told them that he hadn’t had any contact with cats, dogs or other animals in the orphanage.
The only time that he had seen them was when he saw them in a picture books. They tried to reassure him by getting him to touch the cat and to stroke its fur. John got another fright when the cat turned around and scratched him on the hand before running away.
The cottage didn’t have any electricity in it and the lighting was given off by a paraffin lamp which had been lit and placed in the middle of the table. It made the room look warm while the flames of the fire flickered casting a shadow over the walls and ceiling.
John’s grandparents talked to him while they listened to a play which was on the radio. The power for the radio which came from an accumulator.
John was starting to get tired and was yawning. His grandmother showed him where his bedroom was. She lit a lamp with a match and took him through to his room so that he could settle down and go to sleep for the night.
It didn’t take John long to fall asleep with his thoughts, dreams and wishes for the future. He just wanted to stay with his grandparents forever now if they would have him.
It was still dark the next morning when John was awakened by the sounds of tapping on his bedroom window. He got up and pulled the curtain aside to see what was making the noise.
All that he could see in the darkness when he looked out of the window was something with eyes looking in at him. John shouted and ran through to his grandparents room to tell them that there was someone looking at him through his bedroom window.
When his grandparents went through to see what the fuss was all about, the eyes at the window had disappeared. John’s grandfather told him later on that it had been a black crow that had been picking the putty from the window.
John was told that it was nothing to worry about and that the bird was unlikely to come back and do the same again. John and his grandparents were up and dressed now, and his grandmother put on the breakfast.
He sat down at the table and was given a feast of porridge, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, sausages and black pudding to fill him up until lunch time. She told John that they were going to another village to get some shopping later on that the day.
John and his grandmother went to a village called Greenlodge which was a mile and a half on the other side of the estate that his grandfather worked on. When they came to a cross-roads, John’s grandmother showed John where the big house was. She told him a little bit about the people who lived in it.
Two sisters called Hamilton lived in the big house and they were both very rich. They were recluses who didn’t like anyone going near the their house. John was warned by his grandmother that he was never to go up that road because the two sisters were witches. He was terrified when he heard that and moved in closer to his grandmother looking up at her as they walked.
When John and his grandmother arrived at Greenlodge they went in to a shop to get the Sunday papers and some other messages. Mrs Anderson told the woman behind the counter that John was her grandson and that he was staying with her for the weekend. John’s grandmother sounded very proud when she told the woman behind the counter who he was.
John felt as if he really belonged to someone for the first time in his life when his grandmother told the other woman who he was. Mrs Ewing the woman behind the counter gave John a bar of chocolate for nothing when his grandmother told her that he might be going to stay with them permanently.
On the road back to the cottage John’s grandmother asked John if he would really like to leave the orphanage and go to stay with them. John asked her if she meant forever. His grandmother replied by saying “Yes you can come and stay with us forever if you really want too”. John shut his eyes and made a wish.
When they returned to the cottage John was allowed to go outside and play while his grandfather stayed in and read the papers and his grandmother prepared the Sunday lunch.
There was a lot to explore in the country and John started by looking around the outside of the cottage. There were two farms further up the road and at the back of the cottage there was a field with cattle in it. The side of the cottage had a lovely flower garden with plants in it. Mr Anderson had already told John that he would give him a little plot to grow his own flowers in.
The cat was sitting on the path at the back of the cottage when John went over and started to stroke it. He picked it up when it started to purr and took it through the back door of the cottage to the bathroom. John shut the door and filled the bath full of water so that he could give the cat a bath.
When the bath was full he lifted the cat up and dropped it in. John’s grandmother came rushing through to the bathroom quickly when she heard the cat wailing and spitting at him. The cat had jumped out of the bath which was now overflowing and flooding the bathroom floor.
When John’s grandmother opened the bathroom door the cat went flying out with John following closely behind it trying and catch it. When the excitement had died down, it was explained to John by his grandmother that cats didn’t like being put in baths of water. He asked his grandmother why he had to take a bath when the cat didn’t?
John got told that cats didn’t like water and that they kept themselves clean by licking themselves regularly with their tongues. John was still puzzled by the behaviour of his grandmothers cat as he went out to play again. John’s grandfather who was sitting in his armchair laughed at all the commotion and left them both to get on with it.
It was lunch time and they all sat down at the table to eat their lunch. Peace had been restored and something new learned by John. John sat at his grandfather feet that night reading a comic and listening to the Scottish music that was coming from of the radio. They didn’t have a radio at the orphanage so he seldom heard music.
On Monday John said goodbye to his grandfather as he prepared to go back to the orphanage near Fennington with his grandmother. His Grandfather put his hand in to his pocket and handed him a shilling to spend on himself.
When he had been returned John sat at the orphanage window and watched his grandmother walking slowly down the drive until she was out of sight. Sad that she had gone.
A few weeks after he had been returned back to Epington House John was told to go to the wardens office. Mr Mitchell took John in to his office and sat him down on a chair.
The chair was far to big for him and his legs hung over the side hardly touching the floor. The warden told John that he had received a letter from a social worker telling him that he would be going to stay with his grandparents permanently.
John could hardly take in what he was being told. he had to asked Mr Mitchell a number of times if he really did mean forever? Mr Mitchell was happy for John and reassured him that it was for good.
John got off the chair and went around the orphanage excitedly telling all the other children what he had been told.
The few remaining weeks that John spent at the orphanage went fast as he waited for the day that his grandmother would finally come back and take him out of Epington House’s gates forever.
The other children were happy for him and they asked him all sorts of questions on an almost daily basis. They would also ask him how many more days he had to stay with them.
John already had the days counted up and just to make sure that he had got them right he would ask Mr Mitchell and his staff to make sure that he hadn’t missed any.
A small party was held for John by the children and the staff in the orphanage the night before his grandmother was due to come and take him to live with her.
When John left the gates of the orphanage for the last time, Mr Mitchell, his staff and other children waved him goodbye and wished him all the best for the future. John was now determined that would never return to an orphanage again if he could have any say in it. He had now experienced freedom.
When John had settled down in his grandparents cottage he found out that there were other relations in his family. He had an uncle, aunt and cousin who were living in Hightown and he had another uncle living in Tronbridge.
John was delighted that he had some more relations and he was beginning to wonder if he would ever get to meet them or see what they were like.
He was now attending the small village primary school in Quarrybell which only had two classrooms. There were no buses on the route to the school that John went to. He had to walk the mile and a half to and from school by himself every day.
There was only one other house on the country road that he took to his school. He had already met and spoken to the owner of that house who had given him some tomatoes from his greenhouse as he passed his house. He ate them on his way to school.
John’s grandparents had made John welcome and he was well looked after clothed and fed.
During his spare time, John would go out and explore the countryside and the woods which were around the cottage so that he could get the feel of them.
Archie who was one of the boys in his class at school lived on one of the farms that he could see from his cottage. John had already been to visit him and his parents at their cottage.
The summer school holidays were due to start shortly and the children were getting seven weeks off. John’s grandmother asked him if he would like to go and stay with his aunt and uncle in Hightown for a fortnight during the summer holidays. John told her that he would love to go and stay with them even though he hadn’t met them yet.
That night John asked his grandparents in the cottage all the questions that he could think of about his uncle and aunt.
When the holidays started John’s suitcase was packed and he was taken through to Hightown by bus to meet his aunt and uncle. They made him welcome and told him to call them uncle Bill and aunty Jean. They let him see his cousin Terry who was still just a baby.
During his stay in Hightown John’s uncle Bill took him down to the local park to play football with him and his days in Hightown passed by quickly.
John soon got to know some of the local children in Hightown. They had shown him how to ride a two wheel bicycle. At first he had been unable to keep his balance and he kept on falling off the bicycle, but with a little bit of perseverance and help from his new friends, he managed to master the bicycle so that he could ride it by himself.
Half way through his holiday John started to get pains on the right hand side of abdomen. At first they were mild, but as the day moved on the pain started to become worse.
At first his aunty Jean had thought that it was just a little bit of indigestion and that the pain would wear off in its own time. The pain didn’t and his aunty had to call a doctor out to examine him.
It didn’t take long for the doctor to diagnose that John had appendicitis. He was rushed through to the hospital in Tronbridge by ambulance.
The ambulance speeded through the streets with its bell ringing all the way to the city. When John arrived at the hospital he was immediately taken in to the theatre for an emergency operation.
The last thing John remembered when he went in to the hospital was a mask being put over his face. When he woke up he felt a tightness around his waist and he tried to undo what he thought was his belt.
He pulled and tugged at what he though was his belt until he felt it breaking free and slackening off.
A nurse came over and asked John what he was doing. She pulled the blankets off his bed to find it saturated with blood. He was rushed through to the operating theatre again. John had pulled off the bandages and pulled out the stitches that had been used to sew him together after his operation.
When he was sewn up again John spent a fortnight in the hospital and another fortnight in a convalescence home so that he could recuperate and fully regain his strength. He had been ill and his holiday had come to an abrupt end.
It didn’t take John long to start talking and building up his confidence again. Once he was up and running around no one could stop him. The nurses told him that he would need to take it easy for a few weeks. He felt well now and it did him a lot of good running around and talking to the other patients and nurses.
When John was well enough he went back to his grandparents cottage in Quarrybell.
During the rest of his school holidays John ignored what he had been told about taking it easy. He went to his friend Archie’s farm and played in the hay with him. They climbed and jumped off the hay stacks and watched his father working in the fields.
Archies father Rab worked as a farm hand and him and his family lived in a tied cottage which came with the job.
John’s grandfather hadn’t been getting on well with Mr Smyth the owner of that farm because his cows had escaped through a broken fence a number of times, gone in to his garden and eaten his flowers. That had caused friction between John’s grandfather and Mr Smyth.
When john’s grandparents talked to each other at night John would sit and listen quietly to them.
Because of his age John heard conversations that he didn’t fully understand.
His grandfather had been in the first world war and had been in the Royal Flying Corps. John that knew he had something to do with aeroplanes in the war, but he didn’t know what.