Tom All Alone (6) (ii)

Mum stopped working at Gibney's and took another job cleaning at the pub where she and dad used to go in the evenings.  On some days she took him with her.  Jack and Esther who owned the pub said it was alright, as long as he didn't get up to mischief.  While mum was emptying the ash-trays and wiping the tables and vacuuming the carpets, Tom would wander around.  He wasn't allowed inside a pub when it was open, so it felt special to be able to be there when no one else was.

      It fascinated him.  All the long rows of bottles behind the bar, and the things on the top that looked like policemen's truncheons. Beer pumps they were called.  He'd seen Jack pulling them down when he cleaned the pipes, watched the brown water pouring out into a jug, just like the tap in the sink at home.  Then there were the glasses hanging on hooks and shelves above the bar, all in neat rows, with the light glinting off of them.  The bottles hanging upside down along the back.  The big rabbit with the smiley face sitting on the bar-top, with a slot in the front for coins, which he could see in a big jar underneath.  He'd never seen so many coins piled up.  He asked mum what they were for.

      "They're for a charity, for people who need the money and can't get it any other way."

      "Can't they go to work for it."

      "They can't work because they're spastic people.  They can't use their legs or maybe their arms."

      "Why not?  What's wrong with them?"

      "They've got illnesses, so their arms and legs don't work the same as yours do.  They're not as lucky as you are.  So people give them their spare money by putting it in the rabbit."

      He looked at the coins, all stacked up for the plastic people.

      "Can't we have some of it, so that we can be rich and buy a big house?"

      "No.  Because we're not ill like those people, and we can work for money."

      He wondered what it would be like if he couldn't use his arms or legs.  He tried putting his hands in his pockets and not using them.  He tried picking a beer mat up with his teeth, nudging it to the edge of the table with his chin.  He could smell the beer on the table, and something like he could smell on dad when he'd been smoking.  It seemed to be everywhere, on all the surfaces.  He could smell it in the curtains, and on the cushions of the bar stools.

      "What's that smell, mum?"

      "Nicotine.  It comes from cigarettes."

      "Why do people smoke cigarettes?"

      "Because it makes them feel better.  It relaxes them."

      "Can I smoke them, then?"

      "No.  Only grown-ups can smoke.  The same as only grown-ups can come in pubs."

      He thought grown-ups seemed to have lots of good things.  They could earn money, and go in pubs, and smoke cigarettes to make them feel better.  And they didn't have to go to school.  He wished he could be an grown-up.

      "How long will it be before I'm grown up?"

      "Not for a long time yet.  Lots of years.  When you've left school."

      "Why do I have to go to school?"

      "Everybody has to go to school."

      "But why?"

      "To learn things."

      "What things?"

      "How to read and write, and count."

      "But I can already read and write and count."

      "You learn other things, too.  You'll do drawing.  You'll play sports.  And you'll meet other children, too, just like you."

      None of it sounded like anything he wanted to do.

      "Why can't I just stay at home, and go out on the lorry with dad, and come here when you do the cleaning?"

      "Because you can't.  You have to go to school.  Otherwise we'll get in trouble."

      "Will the police come 'round?"

      "They might do.  If you don't behave."

      He was scared of the police.  Russell had told him that the police might come and take him away if he didn't behave himself.  He saw a policeman coming down the road one day, towards their house, and it frightened him so much that he ran to the bedroom and hid up on top of the wardrobe.  He'd found a way to get up there by getting on the bed board and edging over onto the mantel piece.  From there, he could clamber up onto the wardrobe.  He'd hid there, keeping quiet.  Mum had come in and called for him, and then nan had too, but he'd stayed quiet because he thought the policeman had come and they were going to send him away.  He'd stayed up there a long time.  He could hear mum and nan going around all the rooms, upstairs and downstairs, calling his name louder and louder.  Finally, he'd heard them both come downstairs.  Mum had sounded frightened, which worried him.

      Nan said "We'd better call the police."

      As soon as he heard the word, he screamed - and then they came into the room and found him, and mum was pleased, but also shouting at him for playing games like that and making her worried sick.

      If they ever went out and he saw a policeman, or a police car, he tried to hide behind mum's legs.

      "It's alright.  They're not after you."

      "Russell said they'd take me away."

      "You've got to do something wrong before they do that."

      "What would I have to do wrong?"

      "I don't know.  Steal something if it didn't belong to you.  Or if you threw a stone at someone and hurt them.  Naughty things.  That's why you have to behave yourself."

 

      There was a big yard at the back of the pub, and one of Tom's favourite things was to go out there.  But he had to do it when no one was looking because he wasn't supposed to be there.  Mum said there were too many things he could hurt himself on.

      "You might cut yourself on some broken glass or something."

      He usually waited until she was vacuuming in one of the bars before sneaking out there, so she wouldn't notice him. There was a short, dark passageway that led through to the back, past the stairs that went up to where Jack and Esther lived and past the doors to the toilets.  There was a fire extinguisher on the wall there that was shaped like a witch's hat.  It always made Tom nervous, so he'd creep slowly up to it, then run as soon as he was past it - out into the daylight of the yard.  It was the place where they put all the empty bottles, stacked up in their wooden crates, and all the empty beer barrels ready for the brewery to collect when they made the deliveries.  When they came, there was a large gate on the side wall that opened up to let the lorry in.  When they weren't coming, Jack used to park his car in the yard.  Tom liked looking at Jack's car because it was always so clean and looked so big, with shiny red seats inside.  He liked that its roof was a different colour - white - and the rest of the car was his favourite colour: blue.  It had a name in silver lettering on the front lid (dad said it was called the bonnet, though it didn't look like the bonnet that he'd seen his nan wearing in a photo she had of herself when she was younger).

      H I L L M A N

      There was another word, too - a joined-up word, also in silver lettering, on the driver's door, in the top corner by the little triangular window.  He traced over the word with his finger to try to work out what it said.  It looked like an 'M' with a squiggle that ended with a little line going across.

      "What's Jack's car called, mum?" he asked her one day.

      "It's a Hillman Minx."

      "What does that mean?"

      "It means that it's made by people called Hillman, and that car is called a Minx.  Hillman Minx."

      The word fascinated him.  It made him think of Minnie the Minx, who was in one of Russell's comics.  She was a funny girl with orange hair, and she always wore a black beret with a red bobble on top.  She also wore a black and red stripy jersey, so she looked a bit like a burglar.  She was always getting into trouble for doing things like firing her catapult at windows or people.  He'd been told that she was called a minx because that's what naughty girls were called. Minxes.

      "So, is Jack's car naughty?"

      "No.  It's just the name they give it."

      He found that a bit confusing.  Why call something a name when it wasn't what the name said it was?  It was like the hot water boiler at home, which was the Ascot.  But dad used to like putting bets on horses, and lots of the races were at Ascot.  So an Ascot was a thing that heated water up, but it was also a place where horses ran races.

      "Why do people call different things the same name as other things?"

      "It's just a name, love.  Different things can be called the same name.  Like there might be another boy called Tom, but he's a different boy to you."

      "But he's still a boy.  Minnie the Minx isn't a car.  And Jack's car isn't a naughty girl."

      Though he had heard Jack call the car 'she', like he'd heard dad say about his lorry, too. 

      "She's big, isn't she, son."

      So maybe things could be boys or girls.  He wondered how you would tell which was which.  Was the television a boy or a girl?  They always said 'it' about that.

      "Switch it off now."

      The sofa was 'it', too.  And the table in the back room.  And Tom's bed.  And Russell's bike.  But cars and lorries were 'she'.  Boats and ships, too.  One of the models Russell had made was of a sailing galleon, with lots of white sails and tiny men on the deck.

      "She's a real beauty, son," dad had said about it.

      Then, when they played 'He' outside, if someone got touched they were 'it'.

      Gotcha!  You're it!

      Why was the game called 'He', when the players became 'it'?  It all seemed very confusing.  Maybe that was one of the things that Tom was supposed to learn at school.

 

      The yard had a smell about it - a bit like in the bar, but it seemed stronger.  It came from the empty beer bottles.  Tom liked to sniff at them, sitting in their brown rows in the crates - their open tops looking like the mouths of hungry young birds waiting for their mother to feed them, like Tom had seen a picture of in the Weekend magazine mum and dad used to get.  (Tom liked Weekend because it was full of pictures, and there was always a little pink cartoon man hiding somewhere on the cover that he tried to find.) He'd inspect the bottles, lifting them from a crate one by one and sniffing them.  Sometimes, there were drops of beer left in a bottle.  He'd once tipped one back in his mouth to taste it, but it was horrible and he spat it out again.  He didn't know how dad could like it so much when it tasted so horrible.  

      The main thing that Tom liked about the back yard at the pub, though, was seeing all the tall houses behind it.  He could look up at all the windows and imagine the people who lived in the rooms.  Some of them had little balconies, and he could see plant pots hanging from them, or lines of washing.  Sometimes, a man in a vest would be sitting outside on one of them, smoking a pipe and having a cup of tea with the wireless on.  They were high houses - higher than the house he lived in.  They had brick walls and black drain-pipes going up to the roofs, which were too high for him to see - though he could see the clusters of chimneys up there, and the television aerials that looked like things made of matchsticks.  It fascinated him, down there in that yard with no one knowing he was there, looking up at all those windows, with flowers growing in window boxes, and cats sitting watching the birds on the telephone wires.

 

      "There you are!"

      He turned to see mum standing at the back door, holding up the vacuum cleaner tube, like in the photo of dad in the army standing with his rifle.

      "I've told you before about going out there.  Come inside now."

      He followed her back in and along the passage, getting the other side of her as they passed the witch's hat - not feeling safe again until they were back in the bright, patinated light of the bar.

(continued)  https://www.abctales.com/story/harryc/tom-tom-turnaround-7-i