he said, “Where is the half-crown?”
“I don’t know, sir,” I replied honestly, a feeling of trepidation growing inside my chest.
He rubbed his chin and nodded slowly. “Wait outside,” he ordered bluntly.
I gulped and turned, hurrying back out into the corridor and perching on the edge of the nearest of the row of four wooden chairs lining the wall beside his door. Nervously, I rubbed the palms of my hands together, and then, using my left thumb, massaged the spot on my right hand where I had been caned by Master Norton for trying to speak to my sister over the garden wall.
A couple of minutes later, the door opened and I jumped up out of my seat as though I’d heard a gunshot. Mr Bunton’s face appeared around the door, and he handed me another envelope. “Take this back to Master Norton,” he said abruptly. I took the letter from his hand and the door slammed shut in my face.
Feeling considerably relieved that Mr Bunton must have believed me after all, I wandered back down the stairs before running back across the fields and the plain to the cottage home.
Once there, I went straight back upstairs to Master Norton’s rooms and knocked gently on the door. “Come in!” he shouted impatiently. I went inside, still red in the face from my run across the fields, and handed the letter directly to Master Norton.
Taking a letter-opener from his desk, he swiftly tore open the top of the envelope and removed the letter inside, waving for me to leave as he did so. I turned smartly and started towards the closed door; I had just reached out for the doorknob when Master Norton barked, “Wait!”
Stopping in mid-stride, I turned tentatively around and looked up at Master Norton. His normally ruddy face had turned a disturbing shade of purple, and a vein stood out on his forehead as if it would burst. I recoiled, backing away a step.
“Where,” he growled, “is the half-crown, boy?”
“I didn’t see a half-crown, sir,” I replied quietly, beginning involuntarily to shiver.
“Well, Mr Bunton says my letter arrived without it, so you must have it. Give it to me now, you thief!”
“Sir, I am no thief. There was no half-crown in the envelope when I arrived at the school,” I explained, lifting my chin and trying to look a great deal more confident than I felt.
“If you deny there was a half-crown, then you are calling me a liar, Thompson!” he roared, turning yet more purple in the face.
I looked down at my feet, already knowing my likely fate. “No, sir,” I mumbled, trying to figure out what had happened to the half-crown. “Maybe it dropped out of the envelope…”
“Oh, don’t try to make excuses, boy! Empty your pockets out: now!”
I stuffed my hands into my trouser pockets and pulled the linings inside out. The only thing in them was a rather dirty handkerchief in the right one.
“Then you have hidden it somewhere!” he concluded. “And your lies make the situation even worse, boy! Will you give me the half-crown, or do you choose to pay the price?”
“I don’t have your half-crown, sir,” I reiterated. “I never saw it.”
Opening one of the desk drawers, he pulled out a rubber strap about 15-18 inches long and about an inch thick. Glaring at me with a look of disdain on his face, he ordered me to pull down my trousers and bend over the armchair by the window.
I had no choice but to obey. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no-one to help me. As he hit me again and again with the strap, I counted each blow to my back and legs as tears – more of anger than of hurt, despite the intensity of the pain – ran down my cheeks into the soft padding of the chair. By the time he stopped at twelve whacks, I felt as though I would pass out.
“Now leave,” he said simply, turning to look out of the window, the strap still hanging limply from his right hand.
I pulled my trousers back up over the raw wounds left by the strap, and left as quickly as my unsteady legs would carry me. I used the dirty handkerchief to wipe away my tears as I stumbled back downstairs to the dormitory, shaking with anger at being labelled a thief and at the brutal punishment for something I had not done.
The next day, Master Norton’s son, James, came to see me. James was a young man of sixteen and was known amongst the inmates for his friendly manner and for treating us boys more like equals than like the paupers we were. He took me to one side and said that his father had told him about the stolen half-crown, but he could not believe that I would do such a thing. He asked me what had happened and which way I had walked to get to Pilkington School. He said that he would go directly to his father and tell him that he believed me to be honest and arrange a search party to scour the route I had taken to see if the coin could be found. Grateful at his offer of help in proving my innocence, I did not argue with his plan.
That afternoon, James and three of the senior boys from the cottage home retraced my route to Pilkington School. A short distance outside the entrance gate, James himself found the missing half-crown, witnessed by the three other boys.
Back at the home, James returned triumphantly waving the half-crown above his head, to the delight of all the boys; especially me. He ran straight off up the stairs to tell his father what had happened, and a small group of us waited in the lower hall.
Ten minutes later, an angry-looking James returned to the waiting group of boys. “He will not apologise,” he said, glowering towards the door of his father’s rooms, “so I’m afraid I shall have to do so on his behalf, Thompson: I am sorry that you were falsely accused of theft and punished by my father. I hope you can forgive him for his pride in not delivering an apology in person.”
I just shook my head, turned and walked away.
One Friday evening some three weeks later, when the external evidence of my punishment had begun to fade away, I was asked by Cook to take Master Norton’s cup of cocoa up to his rooms. She handed me the steaming cup, then bustled off into the pantry.
I looked down at the brown liquid in the cup, and an idea struck me. Quickly, I crossed the room to the cupboard where the Epsom Salts were stored and stirred a large spoonful into the cocoa. Then I climbed the stairs to Master Norton’s rooms where he instructed me to leave the cup on his desk. My conscience unaffected by my actions, I placed the cup on his desk with no hint of an expression of guilt upon my face and left the room.
Downstairs, I told Freddie what I had done, and the story soon spread to all the boys who shared my dormitory. Wanting to see the result of my actions, many of them found hiding places along the route between Master Norton’s rooms and the Masters’ toilet outside and patiently waited to witness the consequences of my deed.
That night, none of the boys in my dormitory slept at all because of the continual whispering and giggling and the comments that, “the look on his face was a picture!” or, “he was almost running!” or “I saw him at least a dozen times!”
I lay there in my bed wearing a wide grin that must have stretched from ear to ear; satisfied that I had justly repaid him for his wrongful accusation and heartless punishment.
“Well, I suppose you could call that ‘Poor Law justice’!” laughed Freddie.
Road Traffic Accident
The mother and son stood side by side on the grass verge, watching as a stream of cars, lorries and motorbikes raced past them on the busy dual carriageway.
A short distance away, two twisted, bloody bodies lay at the edge of a lay-by. A young girl stood looking down at the corpses, with tears in her eyes and a hand covering her mouth. About twenty feet beyond the bodies, two cars with crumpled bodywork had pulled hurriedly into the lay-by. Their hazard lights flashed angrily as if in competition with one another.
None of the passing motorists seemed to notice the mother and son – although plenty of faces turned in morbid curiosity as they sped past the scene of the accident. Perhaps it was because the pair’s white, translucent bodies were camouflaged in the light mist that settled peacefully above the road on this chilly November morning.
“Look at them, they
go so fast! I don’t know why anyone needs to get from one place to another so quickly,” sighed the son.
The mother shot him a long-suffering look. “It doesn’t matter why they go fast, does it? I’ve taught you about the dangers of roads since you were tiny. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, never cross the road by yourself! But no – you always have to be the brave one, don’t you? Honestly, kids these days! They all think they’re immune to danger, or immortal or something. Well, look where it got you!” She looked his shimmering body up and down. “And me too – thanks for that, by the way.”
“It’s not my fault you ran out after me, is it?” the son said petulantly. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“I’m your mother. Looking out for you is something I’m programmed to do. It was instinct to run out and try to get you out of the way of that car, not a choice to get myself run over too.”
There was an uncomfortable silence between the pair, matched by a momentary lull in the traffic.
A police car pulled into the lay-by, its blue flashing lights joining the strange, sporadic blinking from the other cars.
The girl, her hand still covering her mouth, hurried towards the police car, where a middle-aged officer with a spreading waistline hauled himself wearily out of the vehicle.
“Sorry,” said the son, looking dolefully up at his mother.
“Humph!” she