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Chapter two

A Poor Boy

The teacher’s name was Mr Grey. He was grey, like his name: he was old and grey and tired. Everything about him was grey: grey suit, grey shirt, grey hair and a long, thin, grey face. When he smiled the children saw his long, grey teeth. But he did not often smile. Mr Grey did not enjoy his job. He did not like children.

‘Why does he work here?’ one of the children asked one day. ‘He doesn’t like us.’

‘But he likes the long school holidays’ said Tony. The other children laughed. They thought that was a very clever answer.

But Tony was not a clever boy. He was big and slow and silent. He did not enjoy his lessons. Usually he just sat at his desk and waited quietly for four o’clock to come, when he could go home.

But Tuesday mornings were different, because Tues-day was music day. Every Tuesday morning an old lady called Mrs Lark came to the school. Mrs Lark played the piano and the children sang. She was not a very good pianist, but she liked children and she enjoyed her work. She knew a lot of songs too. Every Tuesday her fat little fingers flew like birds up and down the keys of the piano. The children sang like birds, too. Then twelve o’clock came. Mrs Lark said ‘goodbye’ and locked up the piano for another week.

Tony did not often hear music. His family was poor, and poor people did not often hear music. There was no TV or radio in those days. There were concerts in the town, of course, but poor people did not go to concerts. Sometimes an Italian street musician came to town. He had a little piano on wheels, and a poor thin monkey which sat on top of it. The people came out of their houses to listen to his music. Then the monkey went round with a little tin cup. ‘Give us a penny’ sang the musician. But when the monkey came back, the tin cup was always empty. The musician shook his head and pushed his little piano away.

There were six children in the Evans family, and Tony was the oldest. They lived in a very small house at the end of a long, grey street. The toilet was outside, in the yard. There was no bathroom. Everybody washed in the kitchen. On Saturday evenings everybody in the family had a bath one after another in an old tin bath in front of the fire. It took all evening. Every Monday Mrs Evans washed all the family’s clothes in the tin bath. But the Evans were clean and they had enough to eat. Tony did not feel poor, because all his friends were poor too.

In those days, poor children usually left school when they were thirteen. Most of Tony’s friends found jobs in shops or factories in the town. Tony did not want to work in a shop or a factory. But he needed a job because his family needed the money.

A few days after his thirteenth birthday, Tony left school too. He began to look for a job. But he was unlucky. The factory did not want him. The shops did not want him. Then his mother thought, ‘What about farming?’

One hot summer afternoon she decided to take her son to a farm outside the town.

‘I worked on Mr Wood’s farm when I was young,’ she told Tony. ‘Then I met your father and we moved to the town. But I enjoyed farm work, and I think you’ll like it too. I wrote to Mr Wood last week and asked him to give you a job on the farm. That will be better than the factory.’