WARNING – This is a disturbing account of child abuse. It is based on a reality many would prefer to pretend didn’t exist. The language used in this chapter is the language that would have been familiar to and used by Waverley which is very different from that used by Bling and Suzie in the last chapter.

There is a word usage key at the end.

28th of Towin Day 1

Waverley had had a good life with wealthy caring parents, expensive holidays and most of the things most nine year old boys like himself could only dream of. The only thing he had ever really wanted had been siblings, but his parents had only wanted one child and had lavished all their care on him. They had all been going for a holiday that Christmas in the Caribbean, his parents had flown out a week before he went, they had insisted he finish the school term at his prep school, [expensive private boarding school] and he was going to fly out to meet them when school broke up for the holidays. It had all been arranged. Two days before the end of term the head had sent for him and explained his parents had been killed in an accident three days before when two water skiing boats had collided. Numbed, he had asked, “What happens to me now?”

The head had explained his father’s brother and his wife, whom Waverley had never met and all he knew of them was his parents didn’t like them, would be coming to collect him that evening and would apply to the courts to be his official guardians. The head also explained his entire school fees had been paid years ago in a lump sum for a special discount as had his fees at Winchester [an expensive, exclusive, private, all boys boarding school] which he would be attending in four years, so there was no need to worry over school. Waverley just nodded, he’d known of the fees, but school was the last thing on his mind, though other than overwhelming grief he didn’t know what was on his mind.

What the head hadn’t told him, because he had only been in post two years and didn’t know, was Waverley’s parents had taken out an insurance policy such that in the event of either of their deaths Waverley’s fees as a holiday border at both schools would be paid, even if he stayed on to take Oxbridge entrance examinations.[examinations for entrance to Oxford or Cambridge university requiring a pupil to stay on after he would normally have left school] The tragedy was Waverley didn’t know of the policy either.

He didn’t like his aunt and uncle on sight, he didn’t know why but they struck him as nasty grasping people, and they didn’t look too clean. As he got into the car with them he was aware they stank and the car stank, mostly of stale cigarettes, but there was a disgusting under stench of public lavatories too. They took him home to a shabby, disgusting dump of a house which he realised even if they didn’t have much money they could at least have tried to keep clean, and they had clearly never heard of air freshener. Within twenty-four hours he had realised his aunt and uncle couldn’t have cared less for him, and they just wanted the money they would receive from his parent’s estate for looking after him.

His uncle had spent the whole of his first evening with them complaining bitterly of the waste of money his education was costing and speculating whether the court would allow them to recover it from the schools and send him to the local secondary school down the road. He expected Waverley to go along with the idea, and told him he would have to agree with him when they went to court. He didn’t like Waverley’s name either, he told him it was stupid and posh,(1) and from now on he would be known as Wayne. A single minded child, Waverley immediately developed a stubborn streak he didn’t even know he possessed, ‘Oh no. It’s not going to happen like that. I’m leaving,’ was his immediate thought. ‘If I’m not here, they can’t get any money if they have had to report me as missing, and they’ll be too frightened of not getting any money not to, and I won’t have to live with that terrible smell, or eat anything that comes out of that kitchen, and there’s no way I’m being called Wayne.’

Early next day, Waverley entered his guardians’ bedroom and took his uncle’s wallet from the dressing table, which he was relieved to see still contained his money that his uncle had insisted he hand over for safe keeping. He left the squalid terraced house and started walking towards the town centre. At six he was near a bus stop when a bus appeared. He ran to the stop and caught the bus the rest of the way. He caught the six forty-five train to the city and arrived just after eight. The train seemed to have stopped at every telegraph pole, and desperate to escape from his aunt and uncle every stop had been agonising. He knew his money would soon run out and he had to find a safe place to live and a source of money, or he would be found and taken back to his aunt and uncle. He slept that night in the station waiting room, and the following evening, he was wandering the streets of China town seeking work when he met Bellie, who was maybe a year older than he. He never asked.

They introduced themselves to each other, and Bellie asked, “You a runaway too?”

“Yes. I’m seeking work, but there doesn’t seem to be any.”

“Waste of time here, Mate. The slant eyes(2) only employ their own kind. You could try going on the knock.”(3)

Bellie had explained he worked the city and exactly what that entailed. He also explained how much he earnt from it. Waverley was horrified, but it was better than eating humble pie and going back to his aunt and uncle and that stinking cess pit they called home. The smell in the house was bad, but the bedroom had stunk so badly he had nearly vomited when he had taken his uncle’s wallet. The life Bellie described was sordid too, but at least he would keep the money. “Where do you live?” he asked Bellie.

“Four of us have a room over a pet shop, the man doesn’t ask any questions as long as he gets paid, and it’s always warm. Nobody knows we’re there, costs us fifty a week. Why? If your looking for a place to crash you’re welcome, but it’ll cost you a tenner a week, and you’ll need to get a doss bag.”(4)

Waverley knew to pay the rent money he would have to have work, for his money would soon run out. He nodded to Bellie, who took him to a fire salvage shop where he bought a cheap sleeping bag, and that was the beginning of his new life. By the time his school had realised his parents had safeguarded his future it was too late, he had disappeared and safeguarded it himself, as a rent boy.(5) There was a strange smell in the room over the pet shop, not unpleasant, and Bellie explained it was from the animals below.

The crudity of his new life was a shock, even worse was the pain the first time a punter sodomised him. Oral was all right, but it was a long time before his bottom stopped hurting, though the anaesthetic cream Bellie telt him to buy from the pharmacy did help. A year and a half later Bellie was knifed one hot Saturday night in late July, and Waverley, who had seen it happen, gutted by the loss of someone whom he had come to regard as the brother he’d never had and always wanted, left the city as soon as he could. He’d have stayed if it could have helped Bellie, but Bellie, cold in the mortuary, was beyond help.

Not short of money, he caught a train to a city more than a hundred miles away. On the train he thought hard on what he was going to do, and how he was going to establish the next phase of his life. He thought of a new name, Jonnie Smith, it wasn’t original but it would be hard to trace. The man at the Salvation Army was kind, he accepted Waverley had not given him his real name, and there was no way he was going to allow them to learn enough to trace his family. “If I think you’re even trying I’ll just go somewhere else,” Waverley had said to him. The Salvation army left it at that, they were there to help not judge. They had a hostel where he could live, and he helped out with the cooking and cleaning. At his request they arranged a school for him to start at in September.

The woman from Social Services had tried to bully and bluff him into giving her his real name, date of birth and where he had come from. She had also insisted he couldn’t stay in the hostel but had to have foster parents, and if necessary she would have the police enforce what she had said. He had disliked her on sight, and her patronising attitude and intellectual short comings freed him of all restraint, consideration and manners and, though fundamentally the same boy his parents had reared, he was much tougher than when he had left his aunt and uncle.

That she thought his native rather plummy accent was contrived she somewhat contemptuously made no secret of as he kept breaking into the accent he’d learnt on the streets, a version of the, what he considered to be low class, accent she spake.(6) Using his learnt accent he was blunt, “You’re talking shite lady. I’m not going nowhere and I’m not telling you nothing. I’m happy here and I’m going to be learning stuff at school. The police aren’t going to be interested because I haven’t done nothing. You try to do anything and I’m gone. I lived on the streets before, and I can do it again only next time I won’t talk to the Sallys,(7) and I won’t be going to school. Now I suggest you go and fuck up someone else’s life because mine’s sorted.” He’d walked out without waiting for a response.

He had no idea how the Sallys did it, but after that one interview with Social Services they left him alone for the Sallys to deal with. The Sallys informed him Major Jones had been to the children’s services and had been put down as his contact person, in lieu of a next of kin, and she would liaise with his school for him.

Now running short of money, he soon found out where the scene for working the punters was. For safety, and to make sure the Sallys never found out, he always used a taxi for the twenty-odd mile journey to the city centre and often met the same drives.(8) The drives were only there to earn a living, and were non-judgemental, some of them friendly even. It was a shock when he met his form teacher on the third of September. He was ‘Tango twenty-one’, one of the pleasanter drives, and he recognised Jonnie. Mr. Edwards, who knew he lived in the Sally’s hostel and how he earnt a living, quietly said to him as the class left for break, “Different places, different times, different people. Never mix them up, Jonnie.”

The state school he now attended as a first year pupil was different from his prep school, and from having been a moderately bright boy in middle sets at his previous all boys school he had now become an academic super star and soon was in all the top sets in a school that had girls too. It was also much rougher, but after working the streets for a year and a half he was more than able to hold his own. On Jonnie’s third day at school, Ace, a bigger and older boy, who was known as a bully and a thug, challenged him to fight and threw the first punch which missed. Jonnie’s three punches all landed where he had intended, which put Ace writhing in pain on the floor, but it was his two subsequent kicks that put Ace in hospital. Jonnie’s street cred(9) was established, and he was never bothered again.

Mr. E. never treated him any differently from any one else and never again referred to anything outside school. Mr. E. was a hard but fair man who taught mathematics, he was a good teacher who made what for most pupils was a difficult subject exciting, and he tolerated no poor behaviour in his lessons. He insisted everyone, including himself, was polite to everybody else. He also had a reputation for being able to deliver a brutal, natural justice without leaving any bruises, though Jonnie had never had reason to discover that for himself. Jonnie was happy at school where he usually did his homework at the after school homework club in the school library, but he occasionally took some, especially reading, back to the hostel. Parent’s evening which Major Jones attended dressed in a dress rather than her uniform went well, though Jonnie had been a little nervous when they sat down in front of Mr. E..

By the time he had done nearly a full year at school, he and his form teacher had met many times outside school from time to time when both were working. Mr. E, he discovered, owned the taxi company, but though they chatted in his cab, an unusually luxurious top of the range French vehicle, it was casual chat, never of any significance and never referred to school. At school both ignored their outside contacts. As Mr. E. had said, “Different places, different times, different people. Never mix them up, Jonnie.” Jonnie considered that was perhaps the most significant thing he had ever learnt any where.

To start with, Mr. E. had seemed to be a complex man and, to Jonnie, completely impossible to understand. He was a superb teacher and someone whom, even if they didn’t like him, the kids trusted, which set him apart from most of the other teachers. He didn’t seem to care he didn’t have any friends on the staff, and it soon became clear he and the senior management just tolerated each other probably because, as all the kids knew, he dealt with them by his own code and not the school rules. He was completely indifferent to the school uniform rules, and the girls were convinced he didn’t even see their make up and jewellery which they weren’t supposed to wear. He ignored bad language in his lessons, but he went mental if he were sworn at, though he referred to it as bad manners. Jonnie knew all that of him, but he assumed unlike most of the other pupils, he also knew Mr. E. had another life. Eventually he came to understand Mr. E., and it turned out to be simple, he was his own man and didn’t give a damn what any one thought about it.

Late one Saturday night in the new year, he had been working, and Mr. E. was taking him back to the hostel when he heard over the radio, “Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite! Yanky forty-six is in front of the Square Edward and one of the bros(10) has a knife at his throat. Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite! Yanky forty-six is in front of the Square Edward and one of the bros has a knife at his throat.” He knew dynamite was the drives’ emergency call for help, though he had never heard it before, and wondered what was going to happen, if anything.

The message was repeated several times, but at the first hearing Mr. E. had slowed, U-turned the cab and was heading back into the city. He said, “Sorry. A drive needs help. Don’t worry, I’ll get you safely home, and it won’t cost you anything.” He hit the meter button twice, and first it read ‘FARE CANCELLED. METER OFF.’ and then ‘NOT FOR HIRE.’ He drove past the crowd waiting for taxis outside the theatre on their right, some of who tried to flag him down by standing in the road, but they soon jumped out of his way when they realised he was not going to slow down for them. He turned left into a tiny cobbled one way street, going the wrong way, before pulling up in deep shade.

Jonnie knew the street, which was only eight feet wide and was one of a pair that formed a link between the major road into the city which they had turned off and King Edward Square which was part of a major street complex within the city centre and had a statue of King Edward VII at its centre. Mr. E. turned the engine off and said, “You coming? If not stay out of sight in the car and keep the doors locked.” Jonnie got out of the car saying nothing. Mr. E. pulled his hood out from the back of his coat over his head, tightened up the strings so only his eyes were visible and picked up something heavy from the side of the drivers seat which was three quarter of an inch in diameter and three feet long saying, “The jack handle.” He quietly shut the driver’s door, and as Jonnie followed him he heard the central locking system activate.

Mr. E. kept close to the wall of the Square Edward hotel on their right as he walked towards the square. As they approached the brightly lit square Jonnie could see it was packed with cabs and forty or fifty persons, many of them wearing drives’ badges looking at something off to his right in complete silence. He heard a single voice shouting somewhere. Mr. E. slowed down, and still in the shadows looked around the corner. Jonnie did the same and saw, ten feet away from them, in front of the hotel steps, a heavily built, big black man wearing the suit and bow tie of a nightclub bouncer with his left arm locked round the neck of a small blond man: Yankee forty-six. It was the big man who was shouting. He had a knife in his right hand and was making threatening gestures with it. Jonnie noticed something at the man’s feet and recognised it as a drive’s identity badge.

Mr. E. didn’t hesitate, and before any one was aware of his presence he was out of the shadows, behind the pair and swinging the bar he carried with both hands. It hit the big man on his right arm above the elbow and his knife clattered to the ground. The man screamed in pain, and from the way his arm was hanging it must have been broken. Mr. E. turning with the impetus of the heavy bar followed through with it to hit the man again over one of his kidneys. The man still screaming in pain hit the ground, and Mr. E. kicked him in the face, twice. Jonnie noticed for the first time Mr. E. was wearing heavy steelies.(11)

The small blond man, who looked as though he had just left school, though Jonnie knew he’d have to have been twenty-one to get a drive’s badge, picked up the badge and quietly said, “Thanks, Boss,” before melting into the crowd.

Without acknowledging him, Mr. E. turned and was back in the shadows, he’d been a hooded figure seen for only a few seconds, and his face had not been visible. He calmly said to Jonnie, “That’ll do. The boys will deal with this now. Let’s get the fuck out of here before plod(12) arrives.” Jonnie was shocked. He was no stranger to violence, he saw plenty of it in the city, and he’d been involved in a fair bit too, and like Mr. E. he was completely indifferent to the screams of the man on the ground who was spitting blood and teeth, but he had never heard Mr. E. swear before.

He nodded, and they were back at the car before they heard the roar of the crowd in the square. Mr. E. wiped the jack handle carefully with a rag and replaced it. Pushing his hood back into the back of his coat he carried on the wrong way up the narrow street and turned left off it before reaching the square. Indifferent to the one way signs, he worked his way through a maze of narrow, cobbled, Victorian streets before hitting a main road. Behind them they could hear the wail of police sirens.

“What happens when the police find out?” Jonnie asked.

“They won’t. The drives are known by them as rent a witness. The police have more sense than to even ask, and I should appreciate it if you kept your mouth shut. By the time they get there there’ll be nothing to see, even the bro will have been dropped off at casualty, and he won’t be saying anything.” Without even looking at Jonnie to check his collusion, Mr. E. picked up the radio microphone and without giving his call sign or in any other way identifying himself said, “End of dynamite. The boy is ok. End of dynamite. The boy is ok.” All through the incident Mr. E. had maintained his usual cool and dispassionate demeanour, which hadn’t surprised Jonnie.

The radio squawked, and Jonnie could hear the desk man say, without asking for identification or providing any, “Thank you that car. Thank you that car. End of dynamite. End of dynamite. The boy is ok. The boy is ok. Sierra seven you want the Regent for Wilkinson. Delta seventeen you want 71 Springfield Road for Mr. and Mrs. Graham. Radio me as soon as you clear the airport. I want four cars for the Palace. Four cars for the Palace now. Read on Yanky forty-six.” The desk man continued with the work of the night.

Mr. E. put the rag he’d wiped the jack handle with into a bin when he dropped Jonnie off at the Sally hostel, and said “Sorry it took so long, heavier traffic than usual, there’s no charge,” and the matter was never referred to again. Different places, different times, different people. Jonnie had learnt never to mix them up, but he mentally added, different rules too. He knew the radio communication even if intercepted would not have helped the police, and like all who had any dealings with the drives was aware they looked after their own which was why Mr. E had kicked the man in the face. Every time he looked in a mirror he would remember the incident, and he would never bother a drive again.

Jonnie would have loved to have known why Mr. E. said ‘the boy’ because it seemed to be more than a matter of preserving anonymity, it had seemed like a name as in ‘The Boy’. Jonnie knew most of the drives, including Yanky forty-six, but that Yanky forty-six was the youngest of seven brothers, who all worked for Mr. E. as drives, including the desk man who was the eldest of them, and because he looked so young the other drives had nicknamed him ‘The Boy’, he neither knew nor was ever to learn. He knew Mr. E. had said so little so if questioned he could give nothing away, and he respected that. Mr. E. was a much harder and more leal man than any of the other kids at school realised, but he was not going to wise them up. Mr. E., possibly without realising it, but then again maybe not, it was after all one of the reasons why he had become a teacher, had provided Jonnie with the template of manhood he was to follow for the rest of his life.

It was during the summer holidays, and Jonnie was almost twelve when he awoke on Castle. Waverley sloughed off Jonnie and his persona like a snake shedding an old skin, which is to say mostly with no difficulty, but there were portions he had to work at. Refreshed and rejuvenated in spirit at his reversion to his real self and name, which was the title of a book(13) his mum had liekt, he taekt(14) up his old persona. As far as he was concerned Jonnie had joined Bellie. He would never forget either and knew he had learnt a great deal from both. His only regret was Bellie hadn’t lived to come to Castle with him.

That he would never inherit his parents wealth mattered nothing to him compared with the prospect of new parents which would allow him to finish being a child. That his aunt and uncle would receive nothing because his parents had written wills that specified if he died within twelve months of the surviving one of them of them, as a minor, or as an intestate adult their wealth was to go the cancer charity his mum worked for to fund research, his dad had been an academic involved in cancer research, maekt(15) him maliciously happy. He knew probate would hold all in abeyance till he had been officially declared a missing person presumed dead, which took seven years, and as a minor, the charity would receive it all eventually. If his uncle and aunt managed to hold up matters it would avail them nothing because as an intestate adult again the charity would receive it it all.

He telt Tarn, the young woman from the Master at arms office, his parents had died, and he had been on his own for some time. He would like siblings and he’d enjoyed school. The last had perplexed Tarn, and he had to explain what that meant. He said he had no idea what he would like to do for a craft to be telt there was time aplenty to make his mind up. That was as may be, but what ever he did he was determined to adhere to the values he had learnt from Mr. E. because to him, Mr. E., small, fat and dangerously vicious though he may have been, had pushed manhood to its very limits because he was also kind and generous to all, but most of all because he looked after his own regardless of the cost or risk to himself.

Notes on word Usage.

1 Posh, word usually used by the lower classes to describe the moneyed classes, though the latter have started to use it in jest. It is said to derive from the days of the British Raj when ships’ passage from England to India or back was more expensive in a cabin or suite on the side of the ship in the shade. Such accommodation was said to be ‘Port Out, Starboard Home’, POSH.
2 Slant eyes, pejorative term for anyone with oriental looking eyes.
3 On the knock, prostitution.
4 Doss, sleep, so a doss bag is a sleeping bag.
5 Rent boy, young male prostitute.
6 Spake, spoke.
7 Sallys, nick name for the Salvation Army.
8 Drive, a taxi or cab driver.
9 Street cred, street credibility, status.
10 Bro, vernacular used by black and white alike for a black man. Short for brother.
11 Steelies, workman’s boots with steel toe caps.
12 Plod, pejorative term for police. Mr. Plod was a fictional bumbling police officer in the Noddy series of children’s books by Enid Blyton.
13 Waverley, by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1814.
14 Taekt, took.
15 Maekt, made.