CHAPTER 7
Our new house was far warmer than the old grey block in Anthorn, a Victorian mid-terrace of three floors, quite deep with a narrow frontage.

Typically, an extension had been built to the rear to accommodate such things as an indoor toilet rather than a brick shed at the bottom of the garden, as Nana still had. She had a warped sense of humour, and the first time she showed me the ‘toilet paper’ it was years before I understood the joke. Squares of newspaper, threaded on string, hanging from a nail by the door.

“I always find a proper use for things, Stevie, even the News of the World.”

She received the day’s papers from her neighbour, and they were recycled appropriately, either as stuffing to dry her boots or as toilet paper.

Our new place was indeed palatial, as so few people were left to queue for the available council houses. My room had a bay window, and it was the ideal place to sit and read, especially wrapped in one of Nana’s quilts as the rain slashed across the old sash windows and the wind made them rattle in their tracks. I soon had my books in place on the mantelpiece and in a flatpack book case that Iain and I put together as Mam dozed through Coronation Street downstairs. I understand now that she was a functioning alcoholic. She had started using gin as a ‘downer’ in Singapore to counteract the effects of the amphetamines she was taking unknowingly, and after she had abandoned the speed, the bottle had clung on. She was never obviously drunk, just in a fuzz all day and every day. She kept the house clean, provided our meals, dressed us, did the shopping, and drank steadily.

I tried to find some rational order to my books. Alphabetical was obvious, but what about the Ace Doubles? Anthologies? Collaborations? And in date order, or subject? I had almost everything ever written by E.R. Burroughs, for example, so did I file it in publication order, or by world? I settled on subject, so the Barsoom books followed Tarzan, and were in turn followed by Carson of Venus and the rest. All that may seem like some version of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it wasn’t. It was just my way of building a little literary wall against the outside world.

That led to another discovery: the local library, a mile away from the house. I was n there as soon as I had some documentary proof of the new address, which was an advisory letter to Mam about her contractual obligations as a tenant. There was an astonishingly pretty redheaded girl working there, as well as an older man with a goatee beard, his thinning hair gathered into a ponytail. Karen, the redhead, booked me n, and the older man, who asked me to call him Sid, looked at me appraisingly.

“How old are you, Stevie?”

“Thirteen, mister”

“Sid. That’s Karen. You don’t look it”

I flushed, irritated by his remark and what I thought was his attitude.

“No, lad, I didn’t mean anything nasty. I just have a feeling you aren’t here for the kid’s books. What do you read?”

“SF, mostly, and travel books, wildlife, that sort of thing”

His face lit up. “A fan!”

“Pardon? Fan of what?”

“No, lad, just a fan, plural fen. A word coined by the original writers and readers and stolen by such base rogues as football supporters. Karen, issue …Steve?...with adult tickets, he’s gong to need them. Now, lad, who is your favourite?”

So there I am, the original Cumbrian dwarf, in deep conversation about obscure writers with a forty-something hippy, while a beautiful girl in a skin-tight cashmere sweater and microskirt leans off her platform shoes to write out three adult library cardholders.

Books those days carried a ticket in the front, and each reader was issued a number of little cardboard pockets to be left with the librarian to show who had borrowed the book. The due date of return was stamped in the front of the book.

“Have you tried any Larry Niven yet?”

“No…”

“Right, trust me, and I’ll pick your first three books for you”

I left the library stunned, with ‘Neutron Star”, ‘World of Ptavvs’ and ‘A Gift from Earth’

So, I had a new author, a new friend, and a particularly beautiful girl to ogle, and nothing that I could possibly do about her. I was just at that stage in life where I was recognising the difference between ‘pretty’, as in ‘pretty dress, Mummy’ and ‘beautiful’, as in heartbreaking. And it was heartbreaking. I was never stupid; half of the rationale behind my beatings, when you took away my size and vulnerability, was that I was seen as a swot, which to many children is reason enough. In reality, it’s just another aspect of ‘the Other’, who must be driven away before he infects your tribe with nasty foreignness.

I made my way back to the new house in a slight daze. I had found three adults, if I included Karen at five years older than me, who not only didn’t sneer or spit at me but who actively seemed to want to engage with me. The library would become a small sanctuary for the next few months, a place of warmth and company, the sort of thing I had lacked ever since we had flown to what my mother called ‘home’.

I was also gradually turning my allocated room into My Room, my books slowly being sorted from their boxes and ordered into a sort of armour around the walls. The bay of my window was filled with a small wooden chest with a padded top, covered in Nana’s quilt, and I had a proper desk with a small footstool to stop my legs dangling in space as I sat at it. It was my space, my personal oasis, and it even had a door that locked.

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Monday morning came along, as it always does, and after a breakfast of Ready Brek and toast Iain and I set off for Netherhall through the run-down streets of the town. Many of the shops were boarded up; others had been taken over by shops boasting that everything was sold at a pound. The clear signs of a collapsing community were everywhere to see, and the Heath government’s confrontation with the Unions had not helped in the slightest.

In our new blazers, we made our way to the school gates and the receptionist’s desk, where we were taken together to find our classes. Yet again, I had to insist that I was the elder brother, not Iain, and the process was repeated on my entry into my class, 3SL (Iain was in IN1). The desks were in pairs, and I ended up sat next to a rather overweight girl with dark hair and a wealth of early acne, called Emily Kerr. Before I sat down, though, the teacher had me do the recitation thing at the front of the class.

“My name is Steve Jones, I’ve just moved here from Anthorn up by Bowness, and this is my first day. Before we moved to Anthorn I used to live in Singapore.”

The teacher, our English teacher, as it turned out, Miss Stephenson, asked if there were any questions for “our new friend” and they started, arms up begging for attention.

“Where’s Singapore?”

“Sort of between India and Australia”

“So are you English or a chogie?”

I suddenly remembered Betson, and with a small prayer for Iain’s pardon, I tried the first joke. “I’m English, yes, but when my younger brother heard this place was for jocks he was worried you would try and make him into a Scotchman”

I was rather surprised, and very gratified, when that drew a hearty wave of laughs, and I began to relax. I was beginning to see how Paul had done things.

“What team do you support?”

“I don’t, really, but my brother is a Carlisle fan”

“Do you do any sport?”

“Yes…I run”

“Are you a sprinter?”

“No, I run on the fellsides”

“Do you know Joss Naylor then?”

“No, but I’ve heard a lot about him”

A little white lie, but never mind.

“Have you got a girlfriend?”

Think Betson. “No, are you asking me out then? I’d have to say no because you’re not a girl”

More laughter, and a crimson face.

“Why are you so small?”

A question I couldn’t answer, because nobody had ever told me. “I don’t know. My Mam’s family are all small, but the doctors are doing tests to see if they can find out why I don’t grow”

“Do you like being little?”

“No, but at least I can still get half fares on the bus. I just have to act like a kid”

More laughter, and I was getting a good feeling. Whatever Miss Graham had promised, it had only been words up to now, and yet the atmosphere here was so much warmer, so utterly different to my last school, that I actually felt able to open up a bit. Years later, Miss Stephenson told me that as I spoke I had physically unwound, my shoulders going back and my head lifting. In her words, I had come into her class as a hunted animal, and I had changed before her eyes into a cheeky imp.