Two

The Runaway Boy

The Story of Norman Bass

Let us pray.

At five years of age, I loved going to mass. My vindictive foster mother was not Catholic so, on blessed Sunday mornings, I was given an hour and a half out of her company. I could not have been happier.

Mass was my safe haven from her, a place of ritual and forgiveness, of incense and kindly priests, and songs with fine melodies, stirring choruses. God held out the promise of love and heaven. Every day, I ached for His blessed deliverance from my dark world.

Nothing bad happened to me in that church and that’s why I loved it so. Not long after my first mass I became an altar boy. At first I stood at the altar holding a giant candle. It made me feel grown up.

Then I graduated to passing Father Tucker the communion cup. I liked Father Tucker a lot. He was a good man, the kind of man you want a priest to be, so warm, so approachable, so kindly.

One Sunday, Father Tucker gathered us altar boys together, told us that a special mass would be held that week to celebrate the moment when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.

Twelve men from the congregation had already volunteered to take part in the ceremony. However, Father Tucker cautioned, in case someone failed to show, he would call upon one of us altar boys to make up the number whose feet he would wash. Be ready was his message.

He then asked us to come to church on the Wednesday morning for a rehearsal.

I duly attended the run through and then went home. I spent the afternoon alone, kicking a ball in a light rain that sprinkled diamonds on the garden. That evening I went to church expecting a huge attendance. When I walked in I saw that most of the pews were empty. Most of the volunteers had stayed at home. Mass went ahead.

When the part of the mass that required the washing of the feet arrived, Father Tucker had no choice. He gestured for every altar boy present to come forward.

I sat on the bench and took off my shoes. In a line of gleaming white feet, mine stood out unforgivably. They were caked in about an inch of mud. Playing football on a rainy afternoon will do that for you.

When Father Tucker reached me I saw a look of great holy disdain cross his face. He hastily dabbed my feet with his towel and then moved off. Worse was to follow.

In the rehearsal that morning I had not really paid much attention to Father Tucker’s instructions. As usual, my mind was in the clouds and my feet walked in other worlds.

My negligence would now come back to haunt me.

At one point in the service we had to leave the altar, kneel in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, and pray.

I was at the back of the group so when we stood and turned, I was the leader. For some reason (those clouds fogging up my brain again), I believed the mass had finished.

So I led everyone back into the vestry.

After a minute or so, one of the boys asked, ‘Where’s Father Tucker?’

Another boy looked through the curtain. ‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘He is out there on his own. I don’t think mass has finished.’

When Father Tucker finally came into the vestry, he made straight for me.

‘What were you doing?’ he demanded. ‘You led everyone away. Didn’t you hear my instructions this morning?’

My cheeks flushed violent red; I bowed my head in shame. I had never seen him this angry.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, exasperated. He moved away and addressed all of us.

‘For taking part in mass tonight – such as it was,’ he said, glancing back at me, ‘everyone is to receive a Winston Churchill Crown. These are special coins that will grow in value over the years and therefore are very much worth putting away and saving.’

Although I felt I should refuse the present given my conduct that night, treats in my life were rare. I slipped it into my pocket.

To assuage my guilt, I made a deal with myself. I would keep the coin until I was an adult. And then I would cash it in for huge amounts of money, give some to Father Tucker, and then be rich and safe for ever more. Amen.

When I returned home I made sure to carefully hide the coin from my foster mother. If she discovered it, I would never see it again.

On the day I moved into Burbank, I still possessed that coin. I handed it to Barry Isleworth, the head of the Home, with great care and watched as he placed it in the petty cash tin which was kept in his little office by the front door.

When I turned eighteen and left Burbank, I asked for my coin. A staff member went to retrieve it but could not find it anywhere. After much thought and deliberation, we realised what had happened.

Many years back the petty cash tin had been stolen. My Churchill coin was in the tin. I was stupefied. A potential fortune had been stolen from me.

‘What child stole it?’ I asked.

No one could remember.

Thirty years later I discovered the thief’s identity. His name is Norman Bass.

And this is his story.

* * *

He sat in the police station, alone. It was two in the morning and he wondered how it was that every time he ran away, the police kept managing to track him down.

I am like a human boomerang, he thought to himself, with a rueful smile. I fling myself as far as I can but somehow or other I always come flying back.

I should join the circus.

A policeman bustled past him and then there was silence again. He was glad no one was talking to him. When you have a stammer as bad as Norman’s, you are always glad when people ignore you.

That way you are not forced to watch people trying to hide their smiles or uneasiness at your malady as you try to engage in conversation.

He looked up and saw a series of small posters pinned to a noticeboard.

‘If you see a crime, tell us,’ one said. Fat chance of that, he thought to himself.

Then he saw another poster, a poster that would inadvertently set in motion dark and terrible things.

The poster in question told Norman Bass, the serial runaway boy, that British citizens could buy a one day passport and travel to France.

He read it and then read it again. A sense of excitement ran through him. Of course, why not? Next time he plans to, he will acquire one of those passports. And go to France.

France. No bugger would catch me there. And better still no one could talk to me. I am English, they are French. I can disappear. Forever.

In France.

Suddenly, Norman Bass’s life seemed a lot brighter.

The policeman came back and placed himself in front of him.

‘Mr Isleworth has just arrived to take you home, sonny.’

Norman stood up and picked up his small bag. He had already anticipated how Barry would act towards him.

Either he will be loudly shouted at, either in public or in private, or he will be submitted to the silent treatment for a number of weeks.

Actually, Norman thought to himself, I don’t care what he does. I have got a plan, now. And no one is going to stop me.

* * *

His wife Tania had thoughtfully made us sandwiches for lunch. They sat in the fridge. She sat at her work.

Norman and Tania lived in a quiet village about thirty minutes out of Brighton. Theirs was a deep relationship. Norman told me that Tania was nothing less than his saviour, an amazing woman whose love and care had healed so many of his wounds.

Love, he revealed, had been the most decisive force in his life.

Norman’s house was unprepossessing, not out of the ordinary. Good sized rooms, family photos on the wall, lamps, a certain cosiness. He surprised me when he told me it was rented. I assumed he maintained a mortgage, such was the sense of responsibility he exuded.

It was a good time for us to talk. Yesterday, Norman had organised his stepson’s thirteenth birthday. Kristian, Tania’s thirteen-year-old son, went paintballing, then had his mates to the house for a barbeque.

Norman had cooked.

At five in the afternoon, Kristian turned to Norman and said, ‘Dad, this is the best birthday ever,’ and Norman quickly felt tears gather at the back of his eyes.

His emotion was not a surprise to him. As a child, there was not one of his birthdays that he could remember with any fondness. Now he had made another’s memorable. It was a rare achievement.

He brought coffee out of the kitchen and we sat at a table.

‘Ready when you are,’ he said.

I switched on the recorder and pushed it towards him. ‘Start at the beginning,’ I said.

Norman Bass was born on 17th January 1960 in Thornton Heath in Surrey, not far from Croydon.

His mum worked for the Quaker Oats Porridge people and his dad was a factory worker.

Not long after he was born the family moved to a new council house in Camberley. Everything was going well.

Then it happened – Norman awoke one day with a terrible stammer. No one knew where it came from.

‘At first, it was very embarrassing,’ he said. ‘Then, at primary school, it absolutely consumed me. It terrified me to the point where when the teacher shouted out my name for register, I couldn’t even say, “Yes miss.”’

Eight o’clock in the morning and already the day had been made bitter and sour, made cruel beyond any repair.

‘I started to play truant,’ he said, ‘simply because that way I wouldn’t have to answer the register. I used to forge notes from my mum saying I was ill. Then my brother came along. Soon after that I started to run away from home. The first time I went was at Christmas time.

‘I pinched a tin of ham out of the Christmas hamper and my dad’s bicycle and I cycled fifty miles to my auntie’s house in Oxfordshire. I was ten years old. It took me a day. I literally turned up on her doorstep, stayed overnight, and then Dad came and got me on the train and took me home.’

This overwhelming urge to run was not hard to figure out. On the road, you rarely have to talk to anyone. That’s a very big attraction for a kid with a terrible stammer, especially one whose stammer had now started attracting the vindictive attention of the school bullies.

‘There was one incident I’ll always remember,’ Norman said. ‘There was this huge kid at school and one day he punched me so hard in the face that he split my nose wide open. I went home crying and the next day my mother took me into school to see the headmistress. Because of my stammer, all I could say to this woman was that this kid had punched me. Her reaction was to poke me in the chest really hard and say I don’t have kids in my school, kids are baby goats.’

Norman’s parents were accepting people, not ones to complain or assert themselves. They were very English in that way. Norman’s parents meekly accepted the headmistress’s dismissive behaviour towards their son. And walked away.

‘The inability of adults to understand what is being said by the young is both the joy and tragedy of childhood,’ I announced.

Norman looked at me quizzically. I had been reading a lot of Oscar Wilde lately, I explained, and his influence hung heavy on me.

Norman raised his eyebrows, continued his story.

‘One day,’ Norman told me, ‘I was so badly beaten by a gang of kids, that to this day I can still remember the savagery of their punches. But when I got home again my parents refused to do anything about it. They said they didn’t want to make a fuss and report it to anyone. I remember thinking then, why won’t you do this for me?’

Worse, Norman’s uncle came to stay at the house. He acted pleasantly. Until Sunday, when Norman’s parents would go to church. As soon as they had departed, the uncle turned, began threatening Norman with violence, with severe beatings.

In response, Norman began wetting his bed on a nightly basis. Instead of asking why this had happened, his parents became enraged with their son. They too threatened him with violence.

So he started running away from them on a regular basis.

‘My parents’ way of dealing with my running away was to bring in these heavyweights from the church to come over and threaten me,’ he said, smiling. ‘They would threaten me with purgatory and all these things. It didn’t stop me. I just ran away again.’

‘When I ran away,’ he said, ‘I never had any idea where I was going. It was always the going rather than the arriving. Anyway, I found myself sitting on Teignmouth seafront one night.

‘Then this lad, who couldn’t be any older than me, came along and asked me, was I okay? I said I had nowhere to sleep so he took me home to his mum and dad who, of course, phoned the police. Dad came down on the train the next day to get me.

‘When I came home I was told a social worker was coming to see me. I had never heard of these people before. The social worker came and she told me, we are going to take you away from home because we think you are beyond parental control. She came back a couple of days later.

‘She drove a blue Austin car. I had no idea where I was going or what was going on. All I knew was that I was going into care, whatever the hell that meant.’

I told Norman I knew that sense of confusion well. When they told me I was being put into care, it was as if they were talking a different language.

I knew nothing about children’s homes or social workers. The closest I had gotten to the subject at that point was the Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist.

‘I didn’t know either,’ Norman cheerfully replied. ‘The social worker said she was going to take me to this place and I would spend some time there with some very nice people until they worked out what was best for me.

‘So they drove me to Guildford. In the car was my mum and this social worker. I remember we turned into this long driveway with this big posh house at the end of it and as we drove up there were children running around in the garden. This was Woodrough.’

‘Woodrough? You and I and both,’ I said, excitedly.

‘So you knew the wonderful John and Molly Brown?’

‘Lovely people Molly and John Brown, or Auntie Molly and Uncle John as it was back then,’ Norman said. ‘John was this little man with curly hair and glasses and a pipe and Molly had on this housecoat. They took me in and they got one of the boys to show me round.

‘Then I was taken into this little playroom and I remember standing on this wooden floor and I watched my mum drive down the road. I had been left again. There were tears. I was crying but then Auntie Molly came in and she was great.

‘She introduced me to a couple of the kids of my own age and I was shown upstairs to this big bedroom with six or eight beds. It was all very new and a bit scary but they did try to shelter me from the strangeness of it all.’

I too knew the strangeness of it all. Entering care robbed you of your gravity. You went into free fall. Suddenly, everything you knew had gone. Vanished. Nothing was solid, nothing seemed real. No more certainties. You don’t know where you are, worse, who you are.

People you had never met before looked after you. Strangers fed you, told you to do jobs, told you when to get dressed, when to sleep, when to eat, when to work, when to play.

You were completely adrift from the life you once knew.

There was the vastness of your new home to comprehend, the big garden, the many bedrooms, the playrooms. You have never seen the like before. You lived in a house built for the rich but now populated by you and your peers, and you were known as the abandoned.

As Norman said, the strangeness of it all.

Worse, the kids there had the edge on you. They knew the rhythm of the Home’s life, the rules, the customs. They trumped you and in doing so they created a tangible and dangerous vulnerability in and around you.

You walked uncertainly, you talked carefully, you tried to hold your nerve. You lived, unprotected.

And then suddenly, there was a click, a loud click, and you woke up and found you had landed, found your feet, adapted, worked it out.

Somehow, against your will, you had become a part of this once strange world, become a part of its tapestry. That was the day you officially became an orphan.

‘At Woodrough, there was a school with two classrooms in the grounds,’ Norman said.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I remember them, but why didn’t they send us to a proper school?’

‘Don’t you know?’ Norman asked, somewhat surprised at my question.

‘Because they didn’t know how long we would be at Woodrough for?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Norman said, ‘they had to build them because the headmaster of the local school wouldn’t take orphans.’

‘What?’

‘It is true. The local headmaster wouldn’t take us. Didn’t want us in his school.’

‘But why? Why would this man reject us in such a callous manner?’

Because England was a country built on class, its people judged by blood. Blood fixed your position in English society. Top of the line, the royal family, bottom of the pile, orphans.

That is why many refer to us as having ‘bad blood.’ We are born bad, we die bad. There is no redemption. We will always be unwanted within their circles.

The headmaster’s decision to ban orphans from his school was no doubt based on that calculation. He must have worried that we would not be able to help ourselves from being wild, uncontrollable, disrupting forces, driven in fury by our bad blood.

Yet, stupid as these assumptions of his were (after all, applied to a race of people they would be automatically deemed racist) a kind of understanding for this man grew inside of me.

The headmaster knew nothing of the orphan and how could he? And in fact how could anyone? Our presence in the world was low, minimal.

We had no one to explain us. We lived in mysterious buildings, far away from the view of the community, our homes placed behind fences or large hedges.

The children’s home rarely featured in people’s lives or communities in the way the school, the church, the sports club, the pub, the bingo hall, the football ground, did. All of these are a part of people’s lives.

Children’s homes are not. They are invisible, hidden away like a bad secret.

Easy then for myths to be built around them and easy for those myths to have assumed the force of truth. I would venture that most people’s idea of the Home is that depicted in Oliver Twist, the book and film and I would not blame anyone for thinking in such a manner.

It is precisely how I thought of them until I was placed in one.

‘I started running away again,’ Norman said. ‘I wasn’t very adventurous. It was just going up the road or going into Guildford where they would catch me and bring me back. I obviously didn’t know where the staff lived so a couple of times I was actually picked up by the staff coming into work.

‘In fact I later found out that I had one of the longest records for staying at Woodrough. They couldn’t figure out where to send me because they couldn’t figure out why I was running away. I was there for about seven months.

‘Molly and John were still very good to me. They never put pressure on me to explain my actions. And one of the things I do remember about my time there was the treat of being able to go and spend the evening in the Browns’ sitting room. It was a wood panelled room at the end of the house. I remember variety shows on the telly and all of us sat around in our dressing gowns and pyjamas eating chocolate and having a whale of a time. It was great.’

I too had been given the healing treatment from the Browns and it really moved me that nearly forty years after life in their care, two grown men had met and remembered, with full gratitude, the good they gave them. The value of their work resonated to this day and beyond. It was a fantastic achievement by the pair of them.

Norman’s parents visited him at Woodrough. He was also allowed home on certain weekends. Even then he couldn’t help himself.

‘My stammer was still a problem,’ he said. ‘I had the piss taken out of me relentlessly by the other kids because whenever anyone asked me anything there were these huge pauses. I remember we had to do an IQ test at Woodrough and apparently I came out quite high. But it took me ages to answer their questions.

‘Then one day I was told I was moving to this new Home in Woking and it was called Burbank. I was really upset. I had built up this great relationship with the Browns and all the kids.

‘I thought, I know I’ve been naughty but I loved it there. It was so cosy and the Browns were so loving and so supportive. I disliked running away from there more than anywhere else because I was made to feel wanted at Woodrough.’

I recalled my last day there as well, choking in incomprehension that a child so happy should be removed from the very heart of that joy by the people who professed to care for him. I would not believe that John and Molly Brown no longer cared for me.

Norman had exactly the same thoughts.

‘So on this particular day,’ Norman said, ‘this old Morris Minor estate trundled up the drive and this big beer bellied man with a goatee, all happy and bouncy got out and that was Barry. I remember that John and Molly were stood on the doorstep when I arrived and they were stood on the doorstep when I left.

‘Molly was crying and I was crying and Barry bundled me into the car and I remember trying to look back up the drive as the car pulled away and thinking that somewhere on the drive a barrier would suddenly come down and John and Molly would run up and say he can stay! But of course that was never going to happen.’

Exactly my thoughts, I told Norman, excitedly. I really thought that just as we got to the end of the drive, Barry would stop and say, ‘Fooled you kid,’ and open the passenger door and let me out of the car and then I would run back up the drive and into the arms of the people I adored.

But the car never stopped. It just kept on going. Now I see, that car never stopped.

For any of us.

* * *

Norman thought about that first day at Burbank, the day he placed himself in my orbit.

‘We drove to Burbank,’ Norman said, ‘and again, it was the big drive with the big house and lots of kids in the garden and then into the hallway with those red tiles and I remember thinking, oh well not quite as big as Woodrough but it felt the same.

‘Barry took me through to the sitting room and there was Julie and she was very nice. Even so it was all very strange – new kids, new staff, new experience and of course because I was wound up from leaving Woodrough my stammer was really pronounced.

‘The first thing Barry did was to start taking the piss out of it. He would shout, in that pseudo Welsh accent of his, “What’s the matter with you boy?” I remember thinking hasn’t anyone told you?’

I was surprised to hear this of Barry. He was many things Barry – domineering, loud, forceful – but he never struck me as cruel. Perhaps it was his self-defence mechanism, buying time while he figured out what to do with a kid who stammered his every word.

‘I was taken upstairs, shown my bedroom. It was just two beds. Then I was taken down to the local school and enrolled there and then I started getting used to this new routine. It must have been just a few weeks but pretty soon I started to run away again. It is hard to explain the motives behind it. I just got this urge. I had to go.

‘Sometimes things would trigger it. I remember specifically we were sat in the TV lounge and there was this travel programme on about Canada and it was showing waterfalls and the scenery and the next day I got dressed, pretended to go to school and just buggered off.

‘Other times, I would leg it because of my stammer. Barry didn’t get the point of how terrified I was of being made a fool of and feeling a fool with this stammer. If I said goodnight to him he would always reply with a g-g-g-g-g-good – n-n-n-night. And then laugh.

‘I ran away so many times. One time I went off with one of the girls in the Home. I was having an occasional thing with her, the occasional snog that kind of thing. We ended up deciding to run away together. The only place I could think of to go to was my auntie’s in Oxfordshire. I don’t know how we got up there, we might have thumbed lifts. We were twelve, thirteen, and it was extremely risky, a boy and girl together like that on the road.’

‘The naivety of youth often protects its reckless nature,’ I said.

Oscar once more, and Norman, again, nonplussed.

‘I remember I nicked a cardboard punnet of mushrooms from the front of a greengrocer,’ Norman said. ‘That was all we had to eat. Soon, she had had enough, so she went into a shop near where my aunt lived, she went in there and gave herself up.

‘I panicked and went into Oxford as fast as I could and got the first train out. You could buy platform tickets then so I just did that and got on the first train and hid in the toilets. By the time I got off the train it was dark and I was in Birmingham New Street. I got back on the train and hid in the toilets again and the train moved off. Turned out it was the Edinburgh sleeper.

‘Not sure how they managed it but I got discovered and by the time we got to Edinburgh the transport police were waiting for me. They took me off to this remand home in the middle of Edinburgh. I was absolutely terrified. All these tough kids and me the little Southerner with the stammer.’

I told Norman I understood his fear.

My school once organised a day visit to the local borstal. One resident, tall, imposing, came and stood in front of me.

‘I like your shoes,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ I replied.

‘Now fucking take them off and give them to me,’ he demanded.

Luckily, a teacher was passing nearby.

Borstal boys were tough. To be locked up with them in Scotland with a stammer and an English accent was probably not the best asset to be defending yourself with.

‘I was seen by a few people and then I had to go to their little school where they left me to do drawing,’ Norman said. ‘I remember everything was in lock down. Go into a corridor it would be locked. Go into the showers and come out, it’s locked. I thought it was an awful place.

‘Then they told me that a senior member of staff from Burbank was coming up to get me. It was Maggie, her being from Scotland. All the kids, myself included, hated Maggie but she was great to me that time probably because she had got a free weekend out of it. And we flew back. None of this going back on the train malarkey.

‘I remember getting off the plane at Heathrow, coming down this escalator and there was Barry standing at the bottom looking up at me with that stern face of his.

‘I was almost wetting myself with fear thinking what is he going to say to me? I got to the bottom of the escalators and he just turned around and he walked. We got in the car and he didn’t say a word during the drive back home. It was the scare-the-shit-out-of-him-with-the-stony-silence routine. Got in, was sent to bed and told not to speak to anyone about what I had done or where I had been.’

Barry’s deepest concern soon became apparent. Had Norman and the girl coupled? Given Barry’s obsession with sex I now wonder if his questions did not reflect some form of personal interest.

He was always wolf whistling women from his car as he rushed down Woking High Street, always making lewd remarks. He once told me off when I failed to comment on a bronzed beauty who had just walked by. Of course, it was inappropriate behaviour, the behaviour of a man with a twisted mind, living in a sexless marriage.

What’s funny about his questioning of Norman is that his subject had no idea what he was talking about. Sex at that time was a mystery to Norman. He knew kisses, but that was all.

‘Barry asked me, “Did you kiss her?” I said yes. Then he lent forward and he said, “Did you do this as well?” And he made a hole with one hand and stuck a finger through it with the other. I thought, I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about? What is that? Then it dawned on me and I thought, ah so that’s how you do it, that’s what that is for. I had just been given the facts of life, thanks Barry.’

Norman’s truancy had so far been confined to Great Britain. Inevitably, that had to change. The will to show those charged with his keep how unhappy he was had to assert itself.

He now thought of the one day passport to France offer. At the same time, he made another crucial realisation. His stammer made people think he was stupid. That was fine by him. It gave him the freedom to make all kinds of moves. Of him, no one would suspect anything untoward.

To secure a one day passport to France, he needed money. So the first thing he did was to buy a larger satchel than the one he normally used for school. He carried that bigger satchel for about three weeks. He wanted everyone to get used to seeing him with it. He also obtained a large plastic bag which he hid in the satchel.

Then, one morning, he made his move.

After breakfast, Norman dawdled in the Home’s cloakroom. Jimmy and David and Graham and Sarah and Anne, and all the others, were busily putting on their blazers and shoes and adjusting ties and shirt buttons, before leaving for school; a crowd of noise and colour setting sail once more for the local classrooms.

Norman waited patiently for them to go. No one minded him. They rarely did. When the last child had departed, Norman came out of the cloakroom, and walked through the playroom into the hallway. The staff were in the kitchen.

They were clearing up from breakfast. Norman heard water taps running, and the deep murmur of adult voices, some high, some low.

He walked up to the front door as if to leave the house but suddenly stepped into Barry’s small office, which was to his right. He quickly opened up a drawer and removed the petty cash tin. He placed the tin carefully into the plastic bag which he put inside his satchel. As expected, it was a perfect fit.

He then walked out of the office, opened the front door and slipped out into the dark morning air, closing the door softly behind him.

He walked down the drive and for the first time in ages felt a great purpose about him. It was a rare feeling for Norman, rare indeed for many living in care. Norman half expected an enormous shout from behind to drag him back to the Home – but no such shout came.

The adventure was on.

He turned right at the end of the drive and then made two more rights.

At the mini-roundabout, there at the bottom of the Goldsworth Road, he failed to turn left to school as usual. Instead, he carried on forwards to Woking train station.

Just before he reached the station he darted behind a public toilet. He knelt down, removed the petty cash tin, and then he opened it.

He gulped. He had never seen quite so much money gathered in one place before. He stared at the pile for a bit. And then he picked out some coins and carefully put them into his trouser pocket.

He closed the tin, put it back in the plastic bag and satchel, and then emerged into the stream of the morning High Street.

He knew he was on the verge of something big yet it was funny to him how calm he was, as if God had placed him on automatic pilot.

He reached the ticket office, managed to get the word Guildford out to the bemused ticket man, handed over the coins in his pocket, took his ticket, walked onto the correct platform and waited for the silver machine.

When the train arrived, huffing and puffing and all out of breath, he hopped on. In a few hours he would be in Paris.

He was not quite yet a teenager.

* * *

On the train to Guildford he sat alone. Good. No one in sight. He opened up his satchel and pulled out the tin and the plastic bag. He opened the tin, took the money out, and put it all into the plastic bag.

The plastic bag then went back in the satchel. The empty petty cash tin he placed on the rack above him and hastily shoved out of sight.

He sat down and waited for Guildford to pull itself into view. Twenty minutes later, Guildford obliged. After leaving the train, he made his way to the nearby High Street, to Alders, the big department store.

Downstairs, a small passport office. It was nine thirty in the morning and Norman Bass’s big moment had arrived.

He walked up to the window and asked for a ‘one-one-one-one d-d-d-daa-yy-dayy passport.’

The cost was seventeen and six. Norman’s money was all coins. It took him minutes to count out the right amount. Three pence, four pence, sixpence, a shilling…

You would have thought that the man taking the money might think to himself, here is a kid in his school uniform with an inordinate amount of money buying a one day passport, I should ring somebody. But the man cared not.

He was far more interested in the money than the child.

Having secured his pass, Norman walked back to Guildford station and caught the train to Dover. The journey took a couple of hours or so. He spent the time looking out of the window, watching the world flash by in streaks of green.

The voice above him came on. It said, we are now at Dover, our final destination. Norman gathered his things. He left the train and went to the harbour. He bought a ticket and still no one bothered him. He boarded the boat.

On the journey to France he suddenly realised that nearly all his money had gone. He shrugged his shoulders. What could he do?

The boat arrived in Calais. Norman joined the queue for customs. A man checked his passport and by the way he looked at him, for twenty excruciating seconds Norman truly believed the game was up.

But no, the passport was stamped and Norman was in France. Inside, his nerves were haywire. He was sure that at some point he would feel a hand on his shoulder and the adventure would be stopped.

But no such hand appeared.

He reached the end of the road, turned right and felt his nerves fly away into the blue tinged sky.

In front of him, the road into Calais. He marched into town, looked around. Nothing much to see. He got bored. So he moved on out of town and into the surrounding countryside. He saw an orchard and realised he was hungry.

He sneaked in, stole apples, and munched on them ravenously.

In a fashion, it sounded kind of idyllic, this little kid in the European sunshine, innocently walking through lush countryside, eating apples.

But life was rarely so kind. Or so pure.

Dusk approached, so he started hitching. Lorry drivers stopped to pick him up. But there was a price for their generosity. Sex was required. So Norman sat in the front seat, staring into darkness, white lines disappeared underneath him as his right hand caressed the driver’s member.

Eventually, Norman reached Paris.

He did not do much sightseeing. A fellow traveller had told him about a road heading south out of the French capital where many hitchhikers gathered. That was where he had to get to.

When he found the meeting point, he found companionship. People said hello and did so warmly. They shared food and drink. He liked it here.

Words were not needed. People recognised their mutual needs. Norman felt a tinge of happiness, was glad to be where he was, began to think, they will have started the search for him in England by now – the fools: They would never think to search for him in France.

Norman got himself a lift. The man was going to the south of France. Again, with the lorry drivers, again with the hand jobs.

Soon, he was at the Spanish border. Norman thought, No turning back now, only forward.

But he had no passport, no papers, and very little money. Good. That made it all the more interesting. He surveyed the border points and realised that if he climbed a hill to the left of the border control without being noticed, he would be able to drop down into Spain.

He walked out of view of the patrolling officers, turned off the road, clambered up the hill and ran down. He heard a noise, looked right and saw a lorry approaching. He stuck his thumb out. The lorry stopped.

They drove for a bit and then Norman said, ‘Where are we?’

And the driver replied, ‘Spain.’

Blimey, Norman thought to himself that was quick. And easy. The driver now nudged Norman, gestured down to the middle of his open trousers. Norman did not flinch.

He travelled with the man for a bit, and then picked up another lorry.

Norman had by now decided to head for Alicante, halfway down the coastline he was travelling upon. He told the new driver his plan.

‘Yes, yes,’ the driver said smiling, ‘but first let us stop at my house.’

Norman looked at him.

‘To eat and drink,’ the driver said laughing. Norman was reassured. He shouldn’t have been.

They drove into a small village called Motril and pulled up outside a small cottage. Norman saw a wooden door. The driver got out and unlocked the door. Norman got out of the lorry and jumped down onto the gravel road. Stones splintered everywhere.

Norman entered the man’s living quarters.

The apartment was small but presentable. ‘Sit here,’ the man said, and he pointed to a small sofa. He left the room and then a minute later came back in.

‘Maybe you want the shower?’ the man asked, and then added, ‘after all your travelling.’

‘Thank you,’ said Norman. He felt tired and dirty. The chance to make himself clean was too good to miss.

‘It is in there,’ the man said and pointed to a door. ‘I go and make the food.’

The man left the room. Norman stood, went through into the small bathroom.

He took off his clothes, carefully. He turned on the water and felt it with his hand until it was just right. He stepped in. The water poured onto his body and it made him feel great. He relaxed into the water, luxuriating in it. This was an unexpected luxury.

He lifted his head back and let the water drive into his face and then suddenly the man was standing beside him in the shower, naked with a look on his face that Norman really did not like.

At first, Norman was confused. He quickly stepped out of the shower and went into the bedroom. The man followed and pounced. He pushed Norman onto the bed so he was lying face down – and then he raped him.

The attack lasted just under three minutes, the worst three minutes in Norman Bass’s life.

The man put on his clothes and then ordered Norman to get dressed. Norman did so in a silence that hung heavy with impurity, a silence moulded in fear.

Then the man went to the front door and opened it. He gestured for Norman to leave. Norman walked through the door back onto the gravel road which seemed to shriek in pain under his step. The door slammed.

Norman walked slowly down the dusty street, so frightened, so scared. He could not look at the men who passed him by on the street. He lowered his head as they passed, creating his own symbol of shame. What if it happened again, he thought to himself? Or what if worse occurred?

Who could he turn to? Who could he run to?

Norman now fully comprehended the consequence of his actions. And they were vast and startling. He saw himself as he really was, a small boy alone in a huge world without any protection from the lustful, the murderous, the wolves, who would consume him in a second.

He had never felt so terrified in his whole life.

On all levels – physically, mentally and spiritually – he was so close to shutting down.

He reached the small town square and, to his joy, he saw a policeman standing on the other side of the square. Please notice me, Norman thought to himself. Please, please notice me.

He continually sent this thought in the direction of the policeman, prayed that his distress signal would alert him.

The action worked. The policeman walked over to Norman and spoke to him. In Spanish.

‘English,’ Norman said repeatedly, ‘English.’

‘Pasaporte,’ the policeman repeatedly said, ‘pasaporte.’

Norman shook his head. ‘I don’t have one,’ he told the policeman.

The policeman looked at him in amazement.

Half an hour later, Norman Bass was in the local police cell.

Norman lived in this cell for a week whilst the authorities tried to figure out how a little boy from England had crossed two borders without a passport. Incredible.

The cleaner in the police station took pity on him. Coffee and doughnuts magically appeared at Norman’s cell window every morning.

Then dysentery struck him, placed him in absolute agony. Every cloud has a silver lining. His virulent illness hurried his return to England. Two days after contracting this illness, Norman was bound for Burbank.

On arrival in the UK, he was taken to a hospital where it took him a week to recover from his illness.

The recovered Norman was then brought back to Burbank, back to where he once belonged.

Of course, he was expecting the worse; a barrage of shouting and anger from Barry, it went without saying.

But his illness seemed to have dulled their angry annoyance with him. In fact, everyone was quite nice to him. He liked the feeling, liked the attention.

He suddenly started thinking, you know what, let me just belong. Let me become part of the whole. Somebody, please be my friend, and let life be normal. But then he opened his mouth and he stammered, and he could not let people know how he felt, and he knew then that he would always be the outsider.

Barry made an unusual move. He asked Norman to write down all his experiences during his time on the run onto sheets of white paper. Put it down in ink, Barry said to him, because it will be good for you.

Norman started writing. He recalled little about the trip except his route: Calais, Paris, Marseille, down the coast over the mountains, Spain, oh and the fact that he had been raped.

He took the paper to Barry, handed it over and walked away. He thought nothing more of the exercise until suddenly Barry appeared and waved the paper violently in the air, screamed and shouted, with specks of angry spit flecking his beard as he demanded to know what the hell had happened in Spain.

Norman said nothing.

A day later, Norman was taken to a sexual disease clinic in nearby Guildford and thoroughly examined. He was passed clean. Norman travelled back to Burbank and a week later did what he did best. He ran away again. Couldn’t stand all the shouting, he said to me.

Only this time, he ran to one specific place, his home, to his parents, to where he began in life.

To the authorities that was deemed a very significant action. The boy was saying he wanted to go home.

The authorities told Norman he could go home at weekends and school holidays. They believed that contact with his family would heal the scars and maybe his runaway nature.

They never thought once to look at his stammer.

His parents had acquired a new house and Norman was given his own bedroom. Still, it was not enough. He could not help himself. The urge to run persisted. He could not help himself. Every week, he ran away from home. Every week, his parents came and collected him. Just like the old days.

On one occasion, he ended up in Brighton. He sat in the police station and waited for his parents to come. Only this time a policeman told Norman he was not going home. He was being sent back to Burbank. His parents could take no more.

As he digested the news, Barry arrived.

On the drive home, Norman remembered that he looked over at Barry and noted that Barry actually seemed upset that things had not worked out for Norman. Then he closed his eyes.

When he woke up, it was back to life at Burbank again.

* * *

Norman revealed his story to me with a stoic equanimity. The rape, the abuse, the horror of it all, at no point did he break. At no point did the voice quiver or the eyes water.

Instead, he told me how all his life he asked himself one question – why did no one address the problem of his stammer? Why had no one talked to him about it?

It was so obvious that this was the cause of all his ills yet no staff member, teacher, authority figure ever broached the subject.

That was until he met a child psychologist named Dr Barnes.

Dr Barnes worked at a child guidance clinic that Norman attended after school.

Unlike others, Dr Barnes showed understanding, great sympathy.

‘I used to like collecting lizards when I lived in Camberley,’ Norman said. ‘I got quite good at it. I used to breed them as well. I expressed this interest to her and one day I went over there and instead of sitting doing tests in a classroom, she came out with a packed lunch and said, today we are going to go and collect lizards.

‘We spent the afternoon together. I showed her how you catch them and what you do and we had a fantastic day.’

Norman’s confidence picked up a bit. Quite a bit, in fact. He even got himself a girlfriend.

‘I can’t remember her name now,’ he said smiling, ‘but for some reason she liked me and we started going out. I thought I should tell somebody at Burbank that I was seeing somebody because they always wanted to know where you are going. I finally got up the courage to speak to Julie and told her I had a girl. Suddenly, it was action stations.

‘At Burbank, a lot of us had to wear hand me down clothes but Barry took me to a menswear shop near the station and I have never had so much clothing bought for me in all my life. He got me a blue Budgie jacket, tank top jumpers, Oxford bag trousers. I looked the dog’s bollocks. It was great. I remember I had to parade around the sitting room with my new clobber in front of all the older girls and they were all saying how good I looked.

‘I went on the date, all very civilised. I think we might have held hands but you can imagine what I was like. Totally nervous, stammering away, no experience around girls. I didn’t tell her I lived in a home.’

A couple of weeks later Julie suggested Norman invited his girlfriend to tea. Norman took to the idea and, on their next date together, he asked her. This took courage for it meant you had to tell someone you were in care.

She probably knew anyway, I told Norman. At school, you could not keep your home life a secret. Too many questions needed answering. Two in particular always floored me. ‘Where do you live?’ was one and, ‘What do your mum and dad do?’ was the other.

‘At school I didn’t tell anyone I was in a home apart from a couple of really close mates,’ he revealed. ‘It wasn’t shame but a lot of them wouldn’t have understood. You know what it’s like with kids, anything out of the ordinary and they take the piss out of you all day long.

‘Anyway she came up to Burbank and she was allowed to go through the front door, which was a great honour. We always had to go through the back door. I thought to myself, you don’t know what has just happened here.

‘I sat at Barry’s table with her and he started taking the piss out of me. Not in a horrible way but constantly. Then he began teasing her as well. Have you kissed him yet? All that kind of thing. Then we went for a walk and from the top window of the house you can see the whole of the garden, I can remember to this day Maggie watching me from that window, putting me under constant surveillance.’

The girl ended the relationship soon after this visit. You could not blame her. The strangeness of it all had no doubt unnerved her. Norman’s response was simple. He started running abroad again.

‘One time I got as far as Monaco where the policeman just took me to the outskirts of the city and said, that way,’ Norman said. ‘I ended up in Marseille and gave myself up. Got no money, no passport.

‘I remember I had to go for an interview and it was the same guy who had come to Spain. He recognised me and he told me that a new rule had now been put in place by the local county council. Part of my punishment was that I now had to repay the fare to get me home.’

And then Norman turned sixteen and left school. He was now obliged to leave Burbank.

At that time, the council were no longer legally obliged to house or feed any child after they left education. That person was now of work age and therefore responsible for himself.

The good old days.

‘I was sad to leave Burbank,’ Norman said. ‘I had been there for five years. In fact, I felt really desolate because I no longer had a safety net. I realised then that Barry, the social workers, all of them, had missed the point.

‘None of them had worked out why I was doing what I was doing and now I was going straight back to the environment where it all started with nothing resolved and no help given.

‘Burbank was good from a practical level. There was a roof over my head, regular meals, I got clothed, there was schooling but there was no intimate “Let’s see if we can work through this together.” Apart from that one woman who was the only one who spent some time with me.’

The only choice Norman had was to head home to his parents, the original source of his unhappiness. Once there, of course, he started running away again. One time, he lived in a friend’s house under the very nose of the unsuspecting mother.

‘I used to sleep under his bed,’ Norman said. ‘The mum was out at work all day so I would get up after she had gone and then just hang out.

‘Then I got busted for stealing milk off a doorstep. That was my first criminal offence. Anyway this guy came and picked me up from the station and instead of taking me home he took me to a hostel in Woking called Verrells.’

Verrells was run by a man named Mr Gallagher. His job was to provide for kids still subject to a care order but in employment. Gallagher was tough, not afraid to take you into his office and give you a slap, as Norman discovered.

Norman found work at a fencing manufacturer in nearby, Brookwood. He would come home stinking of creosote. All the kids complained so he was given his own room. That was about the only good thing that happened to him at Verrells.

Then he turned eighteen and that was it, he was no longer the local council’s responsibility or a ward of care. Norman Bass was out on his own.

* * *

Lunch arrived. The sandwiches were eaten, the talk between us was genial. The tension created by his rape story had dissipated, gone. Again, care had bonded us. I recalled Norman talked proudly about his life now, showed me photos of dear loved ones.

He asked about my life but I gave short answers. I wanted to keep him focussed on his own adventures. But then something occurred to me.

‘Norman,’ I said, ‘If you stole the petty cash tin, then it stands to reason that it must have been you who purloined my Churchill coin. You are the thief. You are the man who took away my fortune.’

‘Sorry about that,’ he said with a little smile.

‘As it is you, I’ll let you off the thirty thousand pounds you owe me,’ I replied. ‘Let’s carry on with the interview.’

After Verrells, chaos. Norman got married three times, bore a daughter named Nicky, who he sees regularly.

With his ex-wives, there is no such contact. There was, however, drunkenness, infidelity, the normal broken tapestry relationships that most of us in care look for when we enter the world.

How could it not be so?

Most of us leave care with our wiring made haywire. It takes years to repair the damage. In many cases, recovery is not even made.

An addiction to chaos was a major problem. We couldn’t shake it off or make ourselves resistant to its demands. We had been raised in chaos and so without it we were lost. We yearned for chaos. After all, it had been the only constant in our journey.

‘I started going from one relationship to another,’ Norman said. ‘I craved one to one intimacy but in relationships I would use people up. It would get to a point where I would think, this has run out, what do I do next?’

I knew fear of intimacy would be a common factor between the two of us. It always is for us motherless children. Norman’s played out in exactly the same fashion as mine did. You chase the girl, you get the girl, you dump the girl. Why?

Because it was the chasing rather than the getting, that provided the biggest thrill.

In this arena, deep hatred of self ran the show.

Example: Someone said, I love you. Your inner pattern read, Well, I am worthless. So you must be lower than I am to love someone as worthless as me. And because of that I am going to reject you.

We were emotional vampires. We sucked what we wanted out of people, got bored, then moved on. But if we were lucky, and if we went searching, we would be given a moment that changed our lives.

‘One day, I realised that I wanted to do a job where people were in a situation worse than I am,’ he said. ‘It was simple as that but it changed so much.’

In that moment of clarity and realisation, Norman determined he would dedicate himself to the helping of others. He would now become the saint not the sinner.

‘So I got a job in a home in Bracknell, Surrey, for adults with learning disabilities. I worked there for a year but it was very institutionalised. Because I wasn’t qualified on paper to do this kind of work I now went from one care job to another. I actually worked in a children’s home in Cheshire.’

Norman loved the Home. It was brand new, designed as the first stop for kids coming into care.

It didn’t escape Norman’s attention how things had changed for the better within the care system. More staff, fewer kids was one significant development. And there was a completely different environment from the often chaotic one at Burbank.

Norman then got lucky. Really lucky. He met Tania. They met when Norman was out canvassing for the church he attended. He rang on Tania’s doorbell and not long after saw her at mass. They got talking, and as they did, love got to work.

‘She and my other partners were as different as chalk and cheese,’ Norman said brightly. ‘When Tania and my daughter Nicky met it was like they had known each other for years. Tania is very motherly. She has got a child of her own and they clicked.

‘They were going into Mothercare together, the whole bit. I thought this is exactly what Nicky needs, someone to be alongside her. That made me very happy. I think now that there was definitely an element about being in care that impacted on my marriages.

‘I was not a rooted person, I did not have family values and I was transient. Now I can say that all the ingredients I have been craving for so long are all together.’

‘What are those ingredients?’ I asked. Late afternoon shadows were now dropping onto our faces.

Norman considered my question.

Then he said, ‘I know now that I have the love and respect of my partner Tania, and her little boy, and I have got grandchildren now. My daughter is fantastic, my work life is amazing. I am a principal carer in a company. We are given care via the primary health trust of children that have long-term health issues. I feel wanted now and I feel appreciated.

‘I have come out of that children’s home environment and I have achieved so much. I was thinking the other day that for a long time I really didn’t know what I was looking for. But now being that much older I know I can’t go for something new all the time. When I got together with Tania I told her I really don’t care what job I do, just as long as I am with you. It sounds soppy but as it turns out I got my cake and I am eating it because I have a fantastic home life and a fantastic job. And I don’t stammer anymore.’

I was coming onto that.

‘Know what happened?’

‘Tell all,’ I said.

‘I went to a church in Aldershot and I was invited to go to the front and receive healing for my stammer. Whether I received it or not I couldn’t say but it was round about that time that I began to realise that I could speak for more than one sentence without breaking out into a cold sweat. It was pretty instantaneous.

‘One day I am a gibbering wreck who can’t speak to anyone through the glass at a post office and the next I can ring up people and talk to them about all kinds of things and am able to walk into a room and talk to seven hundred people.’

Norman looked at the clock. ‘Tania will be home soon,’ he said and suddenly, he looked a bit worried.

I asked why.

‘Tania had a wonderful childhood,’ he explained. ‘Her parents were fantastic people, there were no upsets, she was really loved, so when I talk about my past she sometimes…’

‘Breaks into tears?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry, it will be fine,’ I assured him. ‘We are basically finished although one more question. Was living at Burbank, living in care, good or bad for you?’

‘Overall, I consider myself very fortunate,’ he replied. ‘I am where I am and who I am despite being in care, but also because of it. Does that make sense?’ he asked.

‘Generally, yes,’ I replied.

‘You know, even though my somewhat innocent and naïve recollections about Burbank have been blown away, I still think it was a relatively good thing for me personally. If I think about the possibility of what may have happened to me without being in care, well, it makes me shudder.’

I switched off the tape. I stood, gathered my things and extended my hand. Norman warmly shook it. A taxi was called. It arrived within the minute.

‘See you later, bruv,’ Norman Bass said to me by his front door.

‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ I told him.

‘I’d like that very much,’ he said.

Norman Bass has many things now. He has love and trust and respect but more importantly, he has knowledge of self.

So much of the orphan life is spent in confusion. Why is this happening to me? Why did I get it in the neck? Why am I being treated like this and no one else?

Why do I make actions which only serve to hurt me?

Those questions were gone now. They no longer haunted him. Norman Bass, after years of misery, had happiness – and he wore it well.

It made me so pleased for him.

Like I said, remarkable.

* * *

Norman noted Paolo staring deeply into his eyes. He had just told him about the rape in Spain and he knew exactly what Paolo was thinking. He was trying to figure out if the incident still haunted him, whether it was still of great emotional disturbance within his soul.

You can look all you like, Norman thought, but you won’t see anything and that is because I have dealt with it. The memory is burnt out, no longer able to attack me with ferocity.

Norman had enjoyed the day, enjoyed going over his life. He liked Paolo, he liked how he allowed him to speak without interruption.

He even liked the pretentious little Oscar Wilde type quotes he kept throwing at him.

Only one thing perturbed Norman. It was that moment in their talk when Paolo realised that Norman had inadvertently stolen his Churchill Crown.

Although the man had made light of the incident, Norman had detected a hurt in Paolo’s eyes. Not a big hurt but a hurt all the same.

And so an idea struck.

After Paolo left, Norman turned on the internet and tapped the phrase Churchill Crown into Google.

Numerous websites came up in front of him. He read about the coin’s history and its current value. Today, the Churchill Crown’s value is precisely twenty-five pence. Not £30,000. He smiled and bought himself one.

The next day he bought a card. On it he wrote, ‘Sorry I kept this for so long.’

When the coin arrived, he put coin and card in the post, special delivery.

Two days later, there was a red note on Paolo’s doormat, telling him to go and pick up a parcel.

He figured it must be the books he had recently ordered.

He walked to the post office. He stood in a line. He was given his package.

Then he did something out of the usual for him. He opened up the package, there and then. No idea why. Normally, he waited until he got home. But something in his mind told him to look now.

He tore apart the paper. For a second he had no idea what he was holding. Then he read Norman’s card.

As much as he wanted to hold the tears back, Paolo could not do so. A slight river slid down his cheek, and that river, slow and careful, would not stop until he had reached the safety of his home.

Norman’s act of kindness, the depth and meaning behind his action, was of immeasurable value.

Paolo sat on his sofa, and he looked at that coin for ages before he picked up his mobile and texted Norman. He wrote: ‘Norman, what I hold in my hand now is one of the best presents I have ever been given.’

And he truly meant that.

For Father Tucker was right.

The coin had proved to be worth an absolute fortune.

From: paolo@gmail.com

To: desh@hotmail.com

Subject: RE: The New Book

Des – Hope all well, amico. Just to say that in doing research for the book, two men have become heroes to me – they are Thomas Coram who created Britain’s first ever children’s home, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Coram – and John Barnardo – http://www.infed.org/thinkers/barnardo.htm – who of course created the Barnardo’s Homes. Both of these men were pioneers and blessed with great courage and compassion. Their achievements are really worth exploring if you get the time. They were men who left the world in a much better shape and without them the likes of us would have been so much poorer. I know what you mean about putting the reader off with history lessons but I think this is a valuable and fascinating history and as one of the aims of this book is to open up the children’s home to the wider world, perhaps it needs saying. I have just been to see Norman Bass. I am sure you remember him – had a stutter and always ran away. I had a great day with him. He had been through so much but seemed very much at peace with life. I was so anxious that at the start of this all the stories would be doom and gloom but half way through and everything remains very positive. Makes me happy and, yes, very proud. David Westbrook is next. He e-mailed me yesterday. (Would this book have existed without the internet, I wonder?) Up the Spurs. Paolo