Anna and the Black Knight: Incorporating Anna’s Book. Fynn

      Growing up in our little street meant only one thing – getting to the top of the railway wall. A red brick wall nearly ten feet high. Getting to the top of that wall was one thing all the boys wanted to do. It was then that you were grown up. Grown up enough to get a job and earn some money. Grown up enough to stay out late and have a girl friend of your own. It was almost like some sort of ceremony, attempting that wall. Everybody watched you and groaned in sympathy when you failed, which was most likely, and cheered on those very few occasions when somebody managed to get to the top and sit astride the wall. There were a number of ways to get to the top, like swinging from the lamp post to the top. It was not more than four or five feet away.

      You could also climb out of Norman’s top window. Anybody could do that. Of course, you could always ‘borrow’ a ladder from the builder’s yard but that wasn’t growing up, that was just plain cheating. Our kind of growing up was something entirely different. It was simple really. Run as fast as you could for about sixty yards or so, jump as high as you could and hope that your speed and that last mad scramble would take you to the top. As there was nothing to hold on to until you reached the top the inevitable happened – you crashed to the ground! It was easy to see who had tried the wall that day – a bloody nose, a fresh bandage, a torn trouser. Such little things were reminders for all to see.

      Getting to the top of that wall was one thing I was determined to do. I don’t know how many times I had failed. I never kept count, but it was on such an occasion when I had landed with a crash from that wall that it happened. I know that my nose was bleeding a bit, so I sniffed. Bleeding noses didn’t matter at all, as Mum so often said, it lets out the mad blood. Lying on my back I was aware of two people looking down at me. I had no idea who the lady was, but there was no mistake about the man. It was Old John D. Hodge himself.

      I had heard a lot about Old John D. He was one of the Senior Masters at the posh school, but I had never seen him. Many people had described him to me and I didn’t like him. Not one bit. He was slightly hunchbacked with a club-foot and a hare-lip which he kept covered with a large bushy beard. That sounded bad enough to me, but I was told that he also carried around with him a length of bunsen burner tubing, which he used instead of a cane and which he had no hesitation in using when things didn’t go to his liking, which from the sounds of things was often. The tubing was called the ‘persuader’ by everybody. He was the stuff that nightmares were made of.

      Looking down at me looking up at the sky, he laughed at me. He didn’t realize how important this wall was. Nobody laughed at that. It was much too important to laugh at … I was going to have another try at it, and so I did, but the result was just the same. I failed and, as usual, ended up a heap on the floor.

      ‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ He was still there and smiling down at me. No, I didn’t like him. Not one little bit. I bet he couldn’t climb that wall either. I was a bit fed up with that silent and quizzical look he gave me when I failed with the wall, and that slow shake of his head annoyed me. ‘Only heroes never say “No”. Neither do fools.’ I just wished he would go away and leave me alone.

      I was very surprised when the postman handed me that letter one morning. The one that said I had passed my examinations with good marks. I had got that scholarship and a small grant of money which was so important to me, and I could go to one of the posh schools. I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was the Maths paper that was the problem. The first nineteen questions were so easy that I never bothered with them, but the last question was the one that interested me most of all, so I tried it. I didn’t get very far with it. An hour’s work left me a few pages of notes and lots of scribble, but no answer to the problem. I was a little comforted to be told some months later that nobody had ever attempted to answer that question before.

      So there I was. All polished and dressed up in my nice new school uniform just off to catch the bus.

      ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘what is the point of going to school to learn some more?’

      ‘You’ve got to learn more,’ she replied, ‘to protect your self from what you already know,’ which is one of those sayings that takes you months to understand, but Mum always did have a way of turning things upside down. She had this odd way of putting things that left me standing on my head.

      So it was that we all sat waiting for something to happen. I had managed to get the corner seat at the back of the classroom and soon we heard someone limping along the passage. We all held our breath as the door opened. There he stood, exactly as I had been told: Old John D. Hodge – our form-master!

      ‘I will talk,’ he began, ‘and you will listen. Is that understood ?’

      We nodded.

      ‘I will teach and you will learn. Right?’

      Again we nodded.

      ‘If any of you don’t want to learn there is always another way of going about it,’ and he hit the desk with the ‘persuader’.

      ‘Who arranged the order for you to sit in?’

      For the next few minutes we were all changing places until he was satisfied. I suddenly found myself at the front of the class. Somebody was detailed to hand out exercise books and we were told to write our name, form and address of the school on the cover of the exercise books and, like so many other pupils must have done, mine ended up with:

      London

      England

      Europe