Authors: Lilian Harry
Sammy stopped dead in the doorway. His eyes, already enormous, looked as if they were about to pop out completely. He stared at Silver and then at Ruth. He started to back away, his face white.
‘Blimey!’ he said in an unexpectedly deep, gravelly voice. ‘It’s a bleedin’ eagle!’
It was much later that evening when Ruth finally sat down alone, with Sammy asleep at last upstairs.
The sight of Silver had frightened him badly and she’d had a hard time of it to persuade him that the parrot was not only harmless but friendly.
‘No, Silver’s not an eagle,’ she told him as he started to back out of the doorway. She drew him into the room, disturbed by the thinness of his shoulders. ‘He’s a parrot and he won’t hurt you. He can talk.’
Sammy removed his stare from Silver and fixed it upon her. ‘Birds can’t
talk
.’
‘Parrots can. Listen.’ She went over to the cage and scratched Silver’s neck. ‘Hello, Silver. Hello, my boy. Say something to Sammy. Say “I’m a little teapot”.’
Silver turned his head sideways and shuffled along the perch, his beak firmly closed. Ruth tried again. ‘“The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men …” Come on, Silver, be nice now. Sammy’s come to stay with us. How about “Run, rabbit, run”?’ He’s only just learnt that,’ she added, turning to Sammy. ‘He learns very quickly. You’ll be able to teach him things too.’
Sammy looked round a little anxiously. ‘Where’s the lav?’
‘Oh, you poor boy! Of
course
you need the lavatory – you don’t want to stand there while I chatter to this silly bird. Come with me and then I’ll get you some tea. Silver will talk in his own good time.’ She led Sammy out through the kitchen into the yard and showed him the door to the lavatory, then returned to set a match to the fire. She put the kettle on and began to cut some bread.
Sammy came back while Ruth was making the tea. A pile of bread and margarine was ready on a plate with a pot of home-made jam beside it, and she was looking in the cupboard for something more substantial. She poured some warm water from the kettle into the sink and handed him a scrap of soap from the jam jar on the windowsill.
‘There you are, wash your hands and dry them on the roller-towel behind the door. You may as well give your face a bit of a treat as well,’ she added as he swished his hands doubtfully in the water. He rubbed them over his face, leaving dirty streaks, then wiped himself on the towel. I’d better have that off and wash it next, she thought, observing that he had not so much washed himself as dirtied the towel. The billeting lady was right – he did need a good wash. But he would do for now, and in Ruth’s opinion the most important things were a good hot meal inside him and a smile on his face.
‘D’you like beans on toast? I always think they’re nice if you’re cold and tired. Tasty, and give you a bit of comfort.’ She took out a tin and looked at him enquiringly.
‘I has them at home,’ Sammy confirmed. ‘They’re all right.’ Apart from his remark about the eagle, he had reverted to a whisper. It was as if he was afraid to speak and he kept glancing nervously around the room. He’s as frightened as a kitten, she thought pityingly.
Relieved that she had found something he would like to eat, Ruth opened the tin and tipped the contents into a saucepan. She lit the grill of the little gas stove and put a couple of fresh slices of bread underneath.
‘So tell me a bit about yourself,’ she said to Sammy, warming some milk in a pan. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m eight,’ he whispered. ‘I had a birthday before – before –’ he stopped and blinked hard, then went on ‘– and I was seven before that, so I must be.’
‘Eight!’ Ruth had thought him at least a year younger. ‘And how old’s your brother?’
Sammy looked away. Alarmed, she saw tears in his eyes again and hastily changed the subject. ‘Where do you live, then? Portsmouth?’
He nodded. ‘Can I go and see that eagle again?’
Ruth smiled and tipped the warm milk into a cup. ‘Of course you can,’ she said, adding a spoonful of sugar. ‘But he’s not an eagle, he’s a parrot, remember? And his name’s Silver.’ The toast was done and she put it on two plates and tipped hot beans on top. Sammy had already gone through to the living room and she followed him with the two plates. ‘No!
Don’t
do that!’
Sammy was standing by Silver’s cage, poking the bird with the brass toasting fork Ruth kept by the fire. Silver was backing into his cage, squawking with annoyance. As Ruth snatched away the toasting fork he began to swear. Sammy cringed away.
‘Bugger me! Sod the little buggers. It’s a bleedin’ eagle. It’s a bleedin’ eagle.’
Sammy stared at the parrot, jerked out of his nervousness by astonishment. ‘That’s what
I
said! See, it
is
a neagle, it says so itself. And it doesn’t like me.’
‘It isn’t an eagle, it’s a parrot. And he’s just copied you. He already knew some of the words, so it was easy.’ Ruth didn’t say which ones he knew. ‘And he doesn’t mean you, when he says that. He learnt some of those words when he was on board ship coming home from Africa. They used to get cockroaches …’ She looked at Sammy, wondering if he understood what she was saying, but he nodded.
‘We had cockroaches too. My dad used to hit ’em with his boot.’
And probably used the same words while he did it, Ruth added to herself. She wondered who was going to learn most, Sammy or Silver.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘sit up to the table and have your tea. I’ve warmed you some milk as well.’
He eyed it dubiously. ‘I haven’t never had
hot
milk before.’
‘Well, try it now.’ She picked up her knife and fork and began to eat. Sammy watched her for a moment and then picked up his fork and, using it like a spoon, began to shovel beans into his mouth.
Ruth watched him for a few moments. He was ravenous, she thought. Poor little mite. She remembered Mrs Tupper’s words. ‘And I think you’d better have a bath before you go to bed.’
Sammy looked at her suspiciously. ‘A bath?’
‘Yes. You’ll have to help me bring it in from the yard.’ Ruth normally got one of the neighbours to help her drag in the old zinc bath that hung on a nail outside. ‘We can put it in front of the fire.’
He looked at the fire. ‘Bring it in here?’
‘That’s right. What do you do at home? Do you have a bathroom indoors?’ It didn’t seem likely, but you never knew. Ruth seemed to remember hearing some comment about people with bathrooms keeping coal in the baths.
Sammy stared at her. ‘We ain’t got no bath. Mum took us down the municipal sometimes. But it costs sixpence, see. Dad said we ain’t got money to pour down the drain.’ His blue eyes filled again and his lower lip shook, but at least he was speaking in a more normal tone now instead of that fearful whisper.
Poor little mite, he’s missing his mother, Ruth thought. She took away his empty plate and put the bread and jam
on the table. Sammy looked at it doubtfully and Ruth spread a slice for him.
He glanced at her. ‘Is that for me too?’
‘Yes, of course. You need something more than baked beans. You must be hungry after coming all that way.’ He touched the bread, still uncertain, and she added encouragingly, ‘Come on, eat it up.’
Sammy lifted the bread and then, as if suddenly afraid it would be snatched from him, crammed it into his mouth, pushing until it was all in and his cheeks bulged. He chewed desperately, his eyes still fixed on her face, then swallowed.
Goodness me, Ruth thought, perhaps the people who say evacuees have no manners are right. Or perhaps he was really hungry. She debated whether to give him some more, but before she could decide he had slid down from his chair and begun to back into the corner again, his eyes fixed on Silver, who had recovered from his annoyance and shuffled out of his cage to sit on his perch. He leant forward and swung his body from side to side, muttering to himself, while Sammy watched from a safe distance.
‘Do you have any pets at home?’ Ruth asked. ‘A dog, or a cat? Or maybe you’ve got a canary. Lots of people have canaries.’
The boy shook his head and to Ruth’s dismay his eyes filled with yet more tears. ‘I had a cat but Dad said it got run over. I reckon he drowned it really, ’cause of the bombing. He said the gov’ment said dogs and cats had to be des—destroyed.’ His voice trembled. ‘I wish you had a cat.’
‘I don’t think Silver would like me to have a cat,’ Ruth said, thinking of Albert Newton’s Blackie. ‘But I’m sure your dad didn’t drown yours. I expect it just died peacefully of old age.’ She decided to change the subject. ‘Whereabouts do you live, in Portsmouth?’
‘Copnor. We used to live in Old Portsmouth, till we got chucked out of the pub. Then we moved to Copnor.’
‘Oranges and lemons,’ Silver said, deciding to join in. ‘Bells of St Clements. Ding-dong bell, pussy’s down the well, who pushed him in –’
Sammy stared at him. ‘That’s nursery rhymes.’
‘He knows lots of them,’ Ruth said. ‘All sorts of songs and things, he knows.’ She wanted to ask Sammy more about his home and family, but he was looking suddenly white beneath the grime. He’s worn out, poor little chap, she thought. He needs to be put to bed, but he can’t go in that state. She got up and began to clear the table.
‘I’ll bring the bath in now.’ She went out to the backyard.
The bath wasn’t a full-length one. It was a short, oval tub, just big enough to sit in. Ruth took it down from its nail and between them they manoeuvred it through the door and into the living room. She then fetched a galvanised bucket and began to fill it with hot water.
Sammy stood looking at it, doubt in every line of his body. ‘Have I got to get in that? With no clothes on?’
‘Yes, of course. You’ve had baths before.’ Presumably by the ‘municipal’ he meant public baths. ‘And I’ll wash your clothes and hang them round the fire so they’re clean and dry for you in the morning.’
He looked at her. ‘But you’ll see me bare.’ The anxiety was back in his face and voice.
‘Well, that doesn’t matter. I’m a nurse. I see people without clothes on all the time.’
‘Boys?’ he asked unbelievingly.
‘Lots of boys,’ she assured him. ‘Look, there’s nothing you’ve got that I haven’t seen a hundred times.’ She poured in the last bucket of water and tested it with her hand. ‘There, that’s just right. Now, you take off your clothes and get in and I’ll fetch a nice new bar of soap to wash you with. You’ll feel a different boy when you’re clean.’
She went out into the kitchen and got a bar of Lifebuoy from under the sink, returning to find Sammy very slowly
unbuttoning his shirt. Ruth knelt in front of him and helped him, talking soothingly, as if he were one of the frightened children who had come into the hospital to have their tonsils out. She peeled off his shirt. ‘Hullo, what’s this brown paper for?’
‘It’s me vest,’ Sammy said. He’d struggled to cobble it together himself, remembering how his mother had done it for him the year before. ‘I always has a brown paper vest in winter.’
‘I see.’ Ruth had heard of such things before – some of the country children, years ago, had been ‘sewed into’ their flannel underclothes for the entire winter. But Sammy’s paper vest didn’t seem enough to keep a flea warm – though it was obvious he’d had plenty of them – and it was sewn badly and ruckled around him, tearing in places. She sighed and then looked in dismay at the thin body.
Why, it looks as if he’s never had a square meal in his life, she thought, touching the prominent ribs, and went out to the kitchen, feeling like weeping. Dirt she’d expected, fleas and nits she’d been prepared for, but starvation she had not even considered. The child had been really neglected and nobody seemed to have done anything about it. What sort of a mother had he had? What about his teachers at school? Had nobody realised what was happening to this poor child?
She went back into the living room. Sammy was standing where she’d left him, looking uncertainly at the bath of water, while Silver watched from his perch, quiet for once.
‘Come on, then,’ she said gently. ‘Get in and sit down.’
‘Sit down?’ he repeated.
‘Yes. What did you do at home?’
‘Mum used to wash me face with a bit of flannel. And sometimes she’d make me stand in the sink so she could wash me bum. We never had a bath we could sit in.’
‘Well, we have here,’ Ruth said firmly, ‘so now you can
sit down. It’s all right, it’s not too hot. Try it with your foot first.’
Distrustfully, he lifted one foot and dipped it in the water. With a wary eye on her, he stepped in and stood for a moment, thin and shivering – more with nervousness than from cold, Ruth thought – and then, with an air of someone going to his doom, sat down.
‘It’s
hot
.’
‘It only feels hot because you’re a bit cold from having no clothes on. It won’t scald you.’ Ruth knelt on the rag rug beside the bath, picked up her flannel and dipped it in the water. She dabbed it gently over his narrow shoulders and he gasped.
‘Don’t do that!’
‘It’s all right. You have to be wet, to be washed. When I’ve soaped you all over, I’ll bring in a bucket of clean water to rinse you with, and then I’ll wash your hair.’ She soaked the flannel in the water and rubbed the bar of Lifebuoy on it, then began to wash him. He squirmed away from her and she continued to talk to him in a soothing voice. ‘It’s all right, Sammy. I’m not going to hurt you. Just let’s get this dirt off you. It’s nice and warm here, in front of the fire, a nice place for a bath. Afterwards I’ll wrap you in the towel and you can sit in front of the fire for a bit, while I find you something to wear in bed. Or have you got your own pyjamas?’
‘I dunno. I dunno what pyjamas is.’
‘Well, I’ll find you something for tonight, and maybe tomorrow we can get you some.’ Ruth wondered if you could ask the billeting office for clothes or if you were supposed to provide them yourself. It didn’t seem right that children should be sent to foster homes without the right clothes, but Sammy didn’t seem to have anything with him, other than a paper carrier bag which had shown some suspiciously greasy stains. Perhaps Mrs Tupper will bring his case tomorrow, she thought, and wondered again
what kind of home he came from. Not a loving one, that seemed certain. And where was his brother Gordon?