LITMIR.BIZ

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cheating. Our kind of growing up was something entirely different. It was simple really. Run as fast as you could for about sixty yards or so, jump as high as you could and hope that your speed and that last mad scramble would take you to the top. As there was nothing to hold on to until you reached the top the inevitable happened – you crashed to the ground! It was easy to see who had tried the wall that day – a bloody nose, a fresh bandage, a torn trouser. Such little things were reminders for all to see.

      Getting to the top of that wall was one thing I was determined to do. I don’t know how many times I had failed. I never kept count, but it was on such an occasion when I had landed with a crash from that wall that it happened. I know that my nose was bleeding a bit, so I sniffed. Bleeding noses didn’t matter at all, as Mum so often said, it lets out the mad blood. Lying on my back I was aware of two people looking down at me. I had no idea who the lady was, but there was no mistake about the man. It was Old John D. Hodge himself.

      I had heard a lot about Old John D. He was one of the Senior Masters at the posh school, but I had never seen him. Many people had described him to me and I didn’t like him. Not one bit. He was slightly hunchbacked with a club-foot and a hare-lip which he kept covered with a large bushy beard. That sounded bad enough to me, but I was told that he also carried around with him a length of bunsen burner tubing, which he used instead of a cane and which he had no hesitation in using when things didn’t go to his liking, which from the sounds of things was often. The tubing was called the ‘persuader’ by everybody. He was the stuff that nightmares were made of.

      Looking down at me looking up at the sky, he laughed at me. He didn’t realize how important this wall was. Nobody laughed at that. It was much too important to laugh at … I was going to have another try at it, and so I did, but the result was just the same. I failed and, as usual, ended up a heap on the floor.

      ‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ He was still there and smiling down at me. No, I didn’t like him. Not one little bit. I bet he couldn’t climb that wall either. I was a bit fed up with that silent and quizzical look he gave me when I failed with the wall, and that slow shake of his head annoyed me. ‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ I just wished he would go away and leave me alone.

      I was very surprised when the postman handed me that letter one morning. The one that said I had passed my examinations with good marks. I had got that scholarship and a small grant of money which was so important to me, and I could go to one of the posh schools. I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was the Maths paper that was the problem. The first nineteen questions were so easy that I never bothered with them, but the last question was the one that interested me most of all, so I tried it. I didn’t get very far with it. An hour’s work left me a few pages of notes and lots of scribble, but no answer to the problem. I was a little comforted to be told some months later that nobody had ever attempted to answer that question before.

      So there I was. All polished and dressed up in my nice new school uniform just off to catch the bus.

      ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘what is the point of going to school to learn some more?’

      ‘You’ve got to learn more,’ she replied, ‘to protect your self from what you already know,’ which is one of those sayings that takes you months to understand, but Mum always did have a way of turning things upside down. She had this odd way of putting things that left me standing on my head.

      So it was that we all sat waiting for something to happen. I had managed to get the corner seat at the back of the classroom and soon we heard someone limping along the passage. We all held our breath as the door opened. There he stood, exactly as I had been told: Old John D. Hodge – our form-master!

      ‘I will talk,’ he began, ‘and you will listen. Is that understood ?’

      We nodded.

      ‘I will teach and you will learn. Right?’

      Again we nodded.

      ‘If any of you don’t want to learn there is always another way of going about it,’ and he hit the desk with the ‘persuader’.

      ‘Who arranged the order for you to sit in?’

      For the next few minutes we were all changing places until he was satisfied. I suddenly found myself at the front of the class. Somebody was detailed to hand out exercise books and we were told to write our name, form and address of the school on the cover of the exercise books and, like so many other pupils must have done, mine ended up with:

      London

      England

      Europe

      World

      Solar system

      Universe

      I was sorry that I had done that when he began to walk around the room looking at our efforts. I did try to cover it up with my hand. And then his hand was under my chin as he tilted my head back.

      ‘Well, well, young man, you certainly know where you are. I wonder, are you as certain where you are going. Are you?’

      ‘No, sir,’ I replied. Perhaps it was at that moment that something happened. Suddenly I was looking into the bluest eyes I had ever seen. I tried to turn away but he held my head tight.

      ‘You’re the one that likes to climb things, aren’t you?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Ah, I think I can give you plenty of things to climb. Plenty! I can promise you that!’

      The little street where I lived was a real rag-tag and bobtail of a place. Most of my friends lived here. The triplets were amongst our best friends and whenever the kids were playing in the street, it was pretty certain that if Bombom the black goddess wasn’t looking after them, then I was.

      The triplets were Millie’s younger sisters. Their real names were Billie, Leslie and Josephine, but nobody ever called them that. We all called them Ready, Willing and Able. Something had happened to them. They were strange. I suppose modern medicine would be able to give whatever had happened to them a name. In those days some people simply called them daft or soft in the head. Perhaps now we might be more kindly and call them mentally handicapped. But if three kids could be truly called angels, it was Ready, Willing and Able. Without a husband their mother struggled hard to bring up five kids. The little street was always very protective, and it was no rare sight to see one or other of the women bearing down on number 12 with some steaming left-overs from their own meals. None of the other kids were beyond snitching the odd cabbage, potatoes or, if they were lucky, an apple or two from the Market. PC Laithwaite was quite aware of these acts of pilfering and, under May’s leadership, many of the stall holders in the market place were always studiously looking somewhere else when the raiders were about. So all in all they didn’t do too badly. After all, the alternative was the Workhouse and nobody in their right mind would wish that on anybody, not even their worst enemy. Things like money for the rentman, the coalman and the gas meter made things more difficult to deal with. Money was in very short supply down our street. On very rare occasions somebody had a few bob to spare and we all knew where that had to go.

      So far as Millie was concerned there was only one thing to do and she did it. She joined the big house at the top of the street with the other girls. We all knew why Millie was ‘on the game’ as it was called, but to begin with we had no idea why the rest of them were at it and certainly nobody was going to condemn them.

      Danny and I had more fights over those girls than we ever did for our own pleasure. We were like a couple of knights even though our armour was fairly rusty, but woe betide anybody who said anything about the girls.

      One of us would say, ‘it’s my turn, you thumped the last one’. Wallop. ‘That’s another one who won’t say that again.’ When PC Laithwaite called on us with some complaint made at the

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