Chapter 4: Running while others walk

May 1965, age 10

The next few weeks established my routine that would last for years. I would drag myself out of bed in the morning (I’ve never been a morning person), wolf down my breakfast, go to school (where I would try my hardest but not get anywhere fast), be entertained by Peter, come home, swim, do homework, watch television (which I had only discovered since living with Grandpa), hear more stories demonstrating my grandfather’s clinical insanity, and go to bed.

One addition to that routine came a week or two after starting school. Grandpa called me into his study one afternoon and introduced me to a young looking man in slightly scruffy clothes. “Finn, this is Tony Rothman. He’s going to be your tutor.” Horror! A tutor?!

“Grandpa, no! I don’t need a tutor. Please?”

Grandpa had an understanding look on his face but wasn’t about to give in. “I knew you’d hate this, but it’s for a good reason, and it’s not forever. In a few months, you’ll be taking the eleven plus exam. Do you know what that is?” I shook my head. “Everyone in Class 6 has to take a series of tests to work out what secondary school they should go to. The smartest people go to Grammar School, kids who are good at science and engineering go to Technical School, and everyone else goes to Secondary Modern School. I want you to have a tutor for the next few months so you can do as well as you possibly can on the exam, and have your choice of schools.”

I told him, “If secondary moderns are where the thicko’s go, then that’s where I’ll be.”

He looked a little deflated, but persisted, “Which school do you think Peter will go to?”

My shoulders slumped as I had to answer, “Grammar”.

“So will you at least try to do your best? Even if it’s just to stick with Peter?”

I wanted to grumble, but in the end, had to concede with a little shrug.

“Good”, Grandpa said. “I know you don’t find school easy, but learning is an important fight that goes on, and on, and on through school and when you’re grown up too. I promise the fight is worth it: all the hard work will pay off eventually. And Tony’s going to help you.”

I looked Tony over again. He was not what I expected of a university student. Not preppy at all, just ... ordinary.

So Tony came to help me with my homework most weeknights and on Saturday mornings. To be fair, I quite liked him. He was down to earth and took the time to explain things that had gone completely over my head at school. Little by little my knowledge and understanding improved, so that by the end of the school year in July, my school report said nice things about me like ‘tries hard’ and ‘making progress’. (I think Miss Cooper’s positivity must have been to celebrate my moving up to Class 6 and no longer being her problem!) Anyway, Grandpa was happy which made me feel good.

The other new person in my life was a grief counsellor that Grandpa forced me to see. I thought I had been doing okay, to be honest. I hadn’t felt the need to cry since the funeral; I hadn’t fainted (thank God); I had even started feeling cheerful again. So I wasn’t keen on losing an hour of my freedom each week. But the things she made me start thinking and talking about quickly had me feeling shaky again. The way she explained it was that I’d built my house upon the sand, and if I wanted my house to be strong I needed to rebuild on the rock. So we drilled down to my foundation of insecurities, talking about my anger toward the drunk driver that had crashed into my parents’ car, bitterness to my old friend Luke because he still had his parents, feelings of inadequacy over protecting Caity and fears of abandonment generally. It was slow, slow progress.

During May and June, I wrote a few letters to Harry and eventually received replies. But boys being boys, the letters were neither frequent nor lengthy. My counsellor categorised Harry as a safety blanket, and Peter as a bar of chocolate. She wanted me to stop relying on others to make me feel happy or safe. I thought she was bonkers. They were simply my friends.

Grandpa had managed to persuade the orphanage to let Caity and I each have a friend come to stay with us for three whole weeks over the summer. I couldn’t wait to see Harry, but I dreaded seeing the orphanage again. My counsellor had said to me, “In your head, I think that building represents all your pain and fear and anxiety. It’s linked to your parents’ deaths, and now you’ve got to face it head on.”

In response, I plotted to have Harry meet us at the hotel, but that witch encouraged Grandpa to make me face the spectre of the orphanage ‘for my own good’.

Caity was as quiet as I was on the journey back to Sheffield. I don’t know whether our counsellor had said the same things to her, but I thought the same principal probably applied. I took her hand and gave it a squeeze, which earned me a sad smile. We stayed that way for most of the journey.

Getting out of the car in front of Castle Doom was downright scary. I had my emotions firmly locked away and kept Caity’s hand in mine as we stepped up to the imposing building. The gloom quickly dissipated as I was greeted by a beaming Harry, who unceremoniously grabbed me for a hug. Ten-year-old boys don’t always like being hugged, but this time, I felt completely at ease and unselfconscious about returning it.

“Told you I wouldn’t forget you”, I said to him as we broke apart.

He just grinned and replied, “I guess you’s not nutty as a squirrel’s dinner aft’all”.

I noticed Grandpa watching us, smiling. When I introduced them, Grandpa put his hand on Harry’s shoulder and told him we were all going to have a great time. Then I noticed Grandpa had a tear in his eye like it was a reconciliation with a long-lost friend. No Finn! No time travellers here!

On the journey back to London, Harry and I had a car to ourselves, which we thought was supremely cool. Dan was driving of course, but Grandpa and the girls were in a different car so we weren’t squashed. Anything to be away from giggly girls! Ours was the boys’ car, and we sang boys’ songs and played boys’ travel games all the way. Life was good.

When Harry saw our house, he seemed flabbergasted. Over the last few months, I had come to accept our new standard of living and the great big house was just somewhere we lived. For Harry, it was a palace, or a castle or something. That proved to be a problem, as he was suddenly very reserved. Despite my protestations of being the same Yorkshire kid I’d always been, he was obviously uncomfortable. That really frustrated me: I wanted my friend, not someone who would treat me differently because of stupid money. We finished our grand tour at the pool where I decided on a radical tactic to break through his attitude. So I grabbed him and jumped both of us, fully clothed, into the water. His face was a picture of utter shock, but when we resurfaced and started a splash war, the invisible barrier between us was gone.

Swimming with clothes and shoes really isn’t to be recommended! Grandpa sternly called us out of the water and had us strip down to our underwear. Then we were straight back in and playing happily. Caity and her friend Ester gave us looks of superior disgust and left to do their own thing. I was glad to find out that Harry was a good swimmer. I hadn’t thought of that when I threw him in the pool!

“Hi, Dan. What’cha doing?”, I asked on an especially wet British summer day. Harry and I were racing around the house finding ways to get in trouble, and had found Dan in the garage with the bonnet of one of the cars open.

“Just changing the oil and tuning up a few things”, he replied.

“Can we help?”, Harry asked eagerly.

“Of course, but you’d better go and change into clothes you don’t mind getting grubby.”

So we dashed off to my room, where I pulled out the tattiest old things I could find for us to wear. Harry was several inches taller than me now, and it was amusing to see him try and squeeze into things that were obviously too small.

Harry seemed fascinated with the car engine Dan was working on. He already knew the names to various bits of the engine and Dan was explaining the things he did. Car engines didn’t have quite the same attraction for me as they did for Harry. I’ve always been more interested in how sleek and powerful cars were.

“Where did you learn so much ‘bout cars?” Harry asked Dan at one point.

“In the army”, he replied to my surprise.

“Really? I thought they would have taught firing guns and fighting?”, I commented.

“Well yes, obviously. But there was no point in Sandhurst teaching us officers how to be good leaders if we were going to be bamboozled by simple things like changing a tyre. Saved my bacon once too. If I didn’t know how to get a car engine started, I’d probably be dead.”

“Cool”, I said, then thought twice about it. “Well, not cool, but ... you know.” Dan and Harry were laughing at me.

“No, you’re right it wasn’t cool. It was in Egypt so it was fairly warm. I was a young Captain, just joined the 3rd Paras, and we were ordered to drop on an airfield by the Suez Canal. That was the stupidest bloody war in history. The Egyptian President wasn’t playing nicely with the other children, refusing to let some of them use his canal. So Britain, France and Israel sent a hundred thousand soldiers, sailors and airmen to give him a good spanking!”

That had Harry and me laughing, until Harry asked, “What are paras?”

“Soldiers with parachutes”, Dan replied. “We jumped out of planes over that airfield, then fought the Egyptians to take control. Next day, after most of the fighting was done, I was being driven from one of our positions to another when the jeep packed up. I knew there were locals nearby, and we didn’t have a radio, so if my driver and I hadn’t been able to fix it, we might have been goners.”

We spent an hour or so with Dan doing various bits of maintenance on several cars, getting thoroughly messy along the way (which was half the fun of it!). When we were all finished, a question occurred to me. “So did you win the war in Egypt?”

He gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, we won. We did what we were told to do and did it well, but that didn’t matter because the government had made the wrong decision to send us in the first place. The rest of the world was outraged, so we were pulled out. Complete bloody waste of time. Literally.”

It wasn’t until later that I worked out what he meant by ‘literally’, and when I did, that got me thinking about bad decisions impacting others. I’d liked hearing Dan’s story, not just because I liked stories but because his past was kind of mysterious to me. As we headed back into the house he told us, “You know, there a classic car show on Saturday that’ll have lots of old sports cars and races. We could go if you want?”