Richard Gallear - The Forgotten Child

‘Stop it, Arnold! Stop hitting him!’ she pleaded. ‘That’s enough. Please stop, you’re hurting the poor child. He’s only little, and he couldn’t help it – he was car sick.’

I was crying, she was crying, and still he hit me a few more times until he’d finally sated his rage. He stood back and Pearl leant down and gently helped me up, dabbing at my tears and washing the worst of the sick off me with some water and a hankie.

‘There, there,’ she tried to soothe me. ‘You must be hurting. We’ll sort you out properly and put some cream on your bruises when we get home.’

‘Stop feeding the brat that drivel,’ ordered Arnold, ‘we’ve got a long journey to do!’ He tore me away from her, frog-marched me round to the back of the van and this time he more or less threw me in and slammed the doors shut.

I was in shock, whimpering as quietly as I could, unable to believe or understand what had happened to me. No adult had ever hurt me in any way before, let alone hit me. I had never known fear of anyone. At Field House, I had always been treated with love and care by the wonderful staff, even when I was naughty. Already I missed them so much – I wanted to ask Pearl and Arnold to take me back there, but I didn’t dare.

Was this how my life would be from now on? Were all mums and dads like this? As we set off again, I nursed my bruised and battered body, but I couldn’t stop crying, even when he shouted at me to shut up. He clearly didn’t want me, yet they had chosen me.

The journey from Field House to the Gallears’ home in Birmingham was probably only about an hour and a half, but it seemed like for ever to me, in my misery and sickness, which didn’t stop. I was very nearly sick again, but somehow managed to prevent it, fearful of another beating. Worse still, I was trembling with the shock, the pain and humiliation. I did not understand: how could the lovely matron and housemothers let me go away with this evil man? Why did nobody protect me? I was sure they would have stopped him if they’d realised what he was like. If only I could tell them, I knew they would come and rescue me – but how could I let them know?

From the back of the van, I couldn’t see much of the changing landscape, from rural to urban as we went through the city, though I glimpsed enough to know this was like nothing I’d ever seen before – an alien landscape. The one thing I did notice, as we drove along, towering over everything else, were the huge black windowless buildings in the mid-distance, which I later found out were gas tanks. Finally, we seemed to leave the city behind and travelled down side roads lined with little brick boxes with windows, some of them joined together in rows.

‘Here we are,’ announced Pearl as the van slowed down, turned and came to a halt in what seemed to be a dead end (in fact, it was a driveway). ‘Welcome to your new home.’

From the back of the van, all I could see was a brick wall, so I didn’t reply. But I was highly relieved that the van had stopped and I hoped I wouldn’t feel sick any more. Arnold came round and threw open the back doors. Fresh air at last! But he stood there with a threatening scowl. Highly aware of the awful stench of vomit that covered me and the floor of the van, I desperately wanted to get away from it, to be outside, but I was reluctant to get out with that man standing by the open doors like a predator waiting to clutch his prey.

‘Hurry up and get out,’ he barked, ‘and bring your stinking things!’

I had no choice, so I jumped down in front of him into the afternoon sunshine. It felt as if my stomach leapt after me – I was so afraid. I remember that once I had steadied myself, I was glad of the breeze to waft away some of the smell. Arnold towered over me in a menacing way, the sun glinting sharp rays off his glasses. Pearl was unlocking the front door of a tiny house – well, it seemed tiny to me, attached to another house just the same.

Having spent all my life so far in Field House, with its huge rooms and wide windows, surrounded by acres of its own land, this was a strange sight.

‘Get inside!’ ordered Arnold. ‘You smell disgusting, get those stinking clothes off!’ he sneered.

I was surprised to see that Pearl looked almost as frightened of him as I was.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll take him in and sort him out.’

Arnold went off and she came to help me out.

‘You poor boy,’ she said in her soothing voice. ‘You must feel awful in those smelly clothes, we’ll soon clean you up and sort you out.’ She picked up my case and took me by the hand. ‘This is our house,’ she added. ‘It’s your house too now.’

I suppose I should have said something nice, instead I looked down at the ground and all I could see was concrete. I didn’t know that word, but it seemed to me that this hard stuff was everywhere – the driveway, the road surface, even on some of the houses. I had never seen anything like it. And the houses themselves were like toy houses.

I would soon come to realise this was a normal suburban road – a cul-de-sac – but I couldn’t see any wide green spaces or trees or distant hills, only a few small flowers in gardens down the road. Worse still, I could hear a continuous rumbling sound in the background, which I later found out was traffic. At Field House there had always been peace and quiet, except for the birdsong in the trees, so this was all a huge shock to me.

‘Let’s go inside,’ suggested Pearl, leading me in through the front door.

CHAPTER 6

Stepping into a small gloomy hallway, the first thing I noticed was the strong smell. I recognised it as a clean smell, similar to our bathroom at Field House. It was the smell of bleach. How strange that it should be in the hall of this house instead of beeswax polish. I suppose I thought everybody lived as we did, so now I would have to learn different ways.

Standing in the hallway with Pearl, I was wary of Arnold, standing behind us. She must have known.

‘Let’s go up to the bathroom first and clean you up properly,’ she said. She led the way up the stairs and straight into a clean white bathroom. ‘Take off all your clothes,’ she said, opening my case and getting out my change of summer clothes. She ran warm water into the basin and used soap and a flannel to wash me down, then dried me with a fluffy towel – much nicer than the scratchy old ones I’d been used to.

‘Can I go to the toilet?’ I asked, desperate by now.

‘Yes, of course, it’s just next door to the bathroom.’ She opened the door for me.

Meanwhile, she must have put my case in one of the bedrooms.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You’re all clean and smell nice again. Let’s go downstairs and I’ll show you round the house.’

We walked down the thin, red cord carpet running down the middle of the stairs. At the bottom the hall floor was covered in lino, with a flowery pattern. There were three doors from the hall, one of which was closed.

‘That’s the front room,’ explained Pearl, opening the door just wide enough for me to see a dark, formal room with old-fashioned furniture and quite a musty smell. ‘You’re not allowed to go in there on your own, only when one of us is with you.’ She quickly closed the door again.

‘This is the kitchen,’ she said, taking me through an open doorway to the back of the house. It seemed very clean and sparse. Again, there was a lino floor, with a different flowery pattern and a flowery mat in front of the sink. Almost everything in this house seemed to be floral!

‘This leads to the garage,’ she said, opening a door at the side of the kitchen. ‘You can play in there if you want to, when the weather is bad.’ She opened another, narrower door at the back. ‘And this is the pantry. We keep all of our food nice and cool in here.’ She opened that door to show me the shelves, stacked high with tins and packets of all shapes and sizes.