been to release them. So he glared up at her, his huge eyes pools of dark anger. Miss Hardcastle seemed suddenly troubled and looked away, muttering to Harry to go and sit down and that he must come to pick up his letter from the staffroom before he went home. It was over.
The last thirty minutes of school were spent writing out in loopy writing, ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ in their copy books. Harry’s hand hurt so much that he could scarcely hold the pencil. He could not see for the tears in his eyes, tears that despite all he could do dropped from time to time onto his copy book. He would wipe them away before they had time to soak into the paper and hope that no one had noticed, but everyone had. It was a strange thing, but after you’d had a beating from The Dragon, everyone was sympathetic but no one came near you, no one said anything. It was as if you’d suddenly caught an infectious disease of some kind. Harry was grateful for it, though. It meant he didn’t have to talk to anyone. He knew he’d find it difficult to talk and not to cry. He waited until he was alone in the cloakroom. Then and only then he cried. Holding onto the coat pegs, he cried up against the wall and kicked it until there were no more tears left inside him.
Miss Hardcastle was waiting outside the staff-room for him. ‘Haven’t got all day,’ she said, and she handed him the letter. ‘Go straight home now,’ she called after him, ‘and mind the traffic. It’s foggy out there again.’ He was surprised by her concern, by the gentleness in her voice, and looked back at her. For just a flicker of a moment as they looked at one another down the corridor Harry found himself almost believing she was trying to tell him she hadn’t meant all she had said, all she had done; but then the moment passed and he hated her again. ‘Go on, go on,’ she called out, ‘and mind you give it to your stepfather. I’ll be asking him when I see him.’ At least she had called him his stepfather. That was something.
He tied his scarf around his mouth as he stepped out into the smog of the playground. He ran out of the school gates and down the road towards the flashing orange beacons by the pedestrian crossing. He flexed his bruised hand inside his glove and blew on his knuckles to ease the hurt of it. And then he thought of the lectures that would be waiting for him when he got home and handed over the letter, the letter that would say how disobedient and defiant he had been. The lectures would not be from his mother, never from her, always from Bill or Bill’s mother, Granny Wesley, who had a face like an ancient crow. She was always at home these days. She had come to help Harry’s mother out – that was what she said. Harry could see it now. He could hear it now. She’d take one look at his torn jumper and his ripped trousers: ‘No tea for you tonight,’ she’d say. ‘Thoughtless child. How could you, and with your mother in the condition she’s in! Thoughtless.’ Or it could be worse still. Maybe it had already happened. They’d said it could be any day now. Perhaps it was today. He couldn’t go back home and face that, not yet.
He walked on past the Belisha beacons and made for the park. It wasn’t far. Maybe there would be a cigarette packet or two in the wastepaper bin by the bench, always a good place, that, for cigarette cards. It was worth a look, he thought.
Harry found the park gates more by luck than anything else. You could hardly see more than a few yards in front of you, the smog was that thick now. Shadows coughing in the gloom passed him by, and cars and buses crawled along the road, but headlights were all you could see of them.
Harry didn’t see anyone in the park, not until he reached the bench by the duck pond. Someone was sitting there, a man who seemed to be talking to the ducks perhaps, or to himself. ‘Ocky, Ocky. You come out of there, you hear me. It’s dirty. Why you always have to find the dirty places, eh?’ He spoke with a strong foreign accent and then seemed to give up English and broke into a different language altogether. Harry could see the man better now. He was dressed in a long overcoat with a fur collar and he wore a wide-brimmed black hat. When he sat back laughing on the bench he was shaking his head. Harry moved a little closer. There was something rustling in the wastepaper bin beside the bench, but he still could not make out what it was. ‘Ocky! Ocky! I think there’s somebody here,’ the man whispered, leaning forward and peering through the gloom at Harry. ‘You better come out of there, Ocky, before they see you.’ A head came up first out of the wastepaper bin, the head of a black monkey with a pink face and large pink ears that stuck out. And then the rest of it came out and scampered along the bench to sit on the man’s lap. The monkey had a cigarette packet in one hand and a newspaper in the other, and was looking directly at him. Harry wasn’t sure, but it seemed as if the little eyes that stared back at him were flashing yellow.
CHAPTER TWO
‘IS THERE SOMEBODY THERE?’ THE MAN SAID, AND Harry stepped forward. ‘Come closer.’ The man beckoned him towards the bench. ‘Don’t you worry, she won’t hurt you.’ The monkey squatted stock still on the man’s lap, lips pursed, eyes studying Harry as he approached. Harry came as close as he dared. ‘Who is it?’ the man asked.
‘Me,’ Harry said, not taking his eyes off the monkey.
‘Ah, it’s just a bambino.’ He sounded relieved. ‘I don’t see so good in this fog.’ The monkey hooted softly. ‘She want to make friends with you,’ he said, and he laughed. ‘But first I got to introduce you. You got a name?’
‘Harry Hawkins.’
‘Ocky, this is ’Arry ’Awkins. ’Arry ’Awkins, this is Ocky,’ said the man. ‘You got a little something for her, have you? She like the fruit, any kind of fruit. And sweets, she like the barley sugar, ’umbugs. Anything you got.’
Harry fished in his coat pocket. ‘Haven’t got much,’ he said, and produced the only thing he had, an old apple core from the apple his mother had given him for school only yesterday. He held it out, but too fast and the monkey screeched and shrunk back, clinging to the man’s coat.
‘’Arry, you got to be more slow,’ he said. ‘Ocky’s a chimpanzee, and chimpanzees they’re a bit like you and they’re a bit like me. They got to be sure you’re a friend before they like you. So, you got to show ’er you like ’er first. What you got there?’
‘Apple core.’
‘S’good. She like the apples. So you ’old it out, but gently now, and don’t look at her in the eyes. She don’t like it when people look at ’er in the eyes.’ Harry looked deliberately at the waste-paper bin at the end of the bench and offered the apple core, more cautiously this time. He understood then why the chimpanzee’s eyes were flashing yellow, because the wastepaper bin was too – it was the light from the Belisha beacons in the road behind him. It must have been a minute before he saw the chimpanzee move and then she only scratched herself on her shoulder with the cigarette packet. She shifted on the man’s lap and looked up into his face uttering faint whimpers.
‘Va bene, Ocky, va bene,’ said the man and he stroked the chimpanzee on the head. ‘It’s just a bambino. You take the apple, Ocky. It’s a nice one.’ A long black arm stretched out slowly towards him – it was longer than Harry expected – and snatched the apple core. She smelt it first and then bit it in half. It didn’t last long and she seemed disappointed there was no more. She searched avidly in the man’s lap and in her fur for any last bite of apple she might have missed.
‘Say thank you, Ocky,’ said the man, taking the chimpanzee’s hand and holding it out towards Harry. ‘Say “grazie bene”. She got to learn the good manners. You take ’er ’and now, ’Arry. She don’t mind, she’s your friend now.’ The hand felt like soft, cold leather, and it clung now to Harry’s bruised hand with a grip that hurt. The strength of it surprised him. Before he knew it and before he had time to feel alarmed the chimpanzee had swung herself up into the crook of his arm and settled there, an arm around his neck.
