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BARNARDO YEARS: AQUALATE HALL

At first he would not take interest in nurses being in the room with him.

‘Here’s the child, Rev. Brightman; he’ll settle down.’

I was bawling away – who wouldn’t at two years of age? This was my second passing over to a stranger – and I had never before been outside the place that was my home.

‘I am sure he will,’ the Reverend replied to the departing health worker.

So, I was transferred from one stranger to another. I sat, I cried, I nestled into the coat of my temporary guardian: smokiness and stale tobacco was my last memory of that new journey. It was wartime, December 1943.

‘The small child slept all the way. He’s had a long trip, all across Shropshire. I will leave the child’s documents.’

‘Well, thank you, Rev. Brightman. He is a sickly-looking thing.’ Mrs Heard took me in her arms and stood me down beside her.

The door shut on Rev. Brightman and the outside world. It was the beginning of my incarceration: from now on, for the next nineteen years, I was a Dr. Barnardo’s Boy – a “Barnardo Boy”.

‘You can stop your snivelling for a start – follow me.’

I toddled beside her, dazed and numb. She was a woman, a mother figure, yet I wasn’t getting a feeling of comfort from her. Strange: the pattern for my future behaviour was here being laid on me; the web I was given the task to sort out later now began to weave.

Mrs Heard’s legs were large. I couldn’t see further than her swirl of skirt. She moved as a mighty tank. She smelt as the kitchen we entered, musty, dank and dark. Her voice was as uninviting as the cold, beige tiles of the walls.

‘Get your bottom down there.’ She pointed to a child-size, three-legged stool. My heart was hardening. I had to protect the precious inside of me – to keep safe the small sunshine of my lost paradise.

‘You don’t say much, do you? I hear you were a noisy little brat on the train. Well, we don’t tolerate that sort of stuff here.’ She slapped my face. I couldn’t cry. Well, my first response was to holler. I held back. This was a war I was forced to enter. I learned here my first conscious lesson of survival: how to repress my feelings.

‘You needn’t look so shocked. You’ll be getting plenty of them while you’re here.’

She rustled through my documents: ‘Eric Holden – huh, that’s what we’ll stick to here: no lovey-dovey “Eric”. You’re a bastard – no fancy words from me. That’s what you are; and a second one too, I see! Your mother a whore; it certainly looks like it.’ She slapped my face a second time. ‘I’m Matron here,’ she told me.

My eyes watered. I didn’t understand her words, what she was reading out. I knew only her care for me was unkind; her voice hard. I desperately wanted to cry: my sharpening instinct guided me not to do so. I tightened my lips.

‘Plucky little bastard, aren’t you? Better give you some supper.’ Mrs Heard opened cupboards high above my stool seat level. ‘A bit of bread and jam do you no harm.’

Hearing familiar food words, my body sagged in weakness. I hadn’t eaten for several hours; sleep had passed my time. My body let out its hunger: ‘Yes’, my first word on coming inside the Home. It was small, barely audible in the vast empty kitchen.

‘You can speak can you? Bastard boy…’

‘That the new arrival, Matron? Oh! Isn’t he puny? His bed is ready. Shall I toilet him?’

This voice belonged to a young person. She had on a white apron. She looked like a friendly helper. She was not as big as Mrs Heard.

‘Give him his bread!’ Matron instructed, and left the kitchen; she glanced at me, a distasteful expression on her face: ‘He’ll be a little devil I’ll have you know, Jane – a little devil.’

‘What’s the red marks on your face?’ The helper bent down and put her plump face near mine. Her fruity-smelling breath heaved out. ‘Have you been a naughty little boy, Eric Holden? That won’t do. Matron doesn’t like naughty boys.’

I began to understand that “naughty” and “bastard” had a linked meaning. I was taking in the education of my new being. My mind had started to know, so early in my life, that I was a thing, a separate human being: that I was “different” – and less than other human beings.

‘Here, little Eric Holden – “little Eric”, that’ll be my pet name for you.’ She smiled. I was happy at such a sight from another woman here. She was friendlier than the Matron. ‘Take your supper.’

I ate the jam sandwich on my stool – and another. I drank the cold milk. This liquid was difficult to swallow. I discovered I didn’t like milk. I would develop the ability to take many other things I didn’t like, to give the appearance of acceptance, while inside, my body repressed and bricked up the small voice of choice.

Mrs Heard noted in one of her Home reports:

At first he would not take interest in nurses being in the room with him.

He would take no interest in me or the nurses but still clings to my hand if there is a stranger in the room.