Read Online The Cuckoo Child by Katie Flynn - Free Book Online Page B

listened, Corky had seen that his eyes were sad and had known that this young man was altogether different from the staff who ran the Redwood Grange Orphanage. This young man had the imagination the others lacked; he could put himself into the shoes of a child who had never known love or a home of his own, and he had sincerely pitied the Redwood Grange boys.
    But it was something which had happened the day after the interview that Corky was mulling over now. He had been in the punishment cupboard – locked in, to be precise – when the young reporter, and one of the junior masters, had stopped just outside it, presumably for formal farewells. By this time, Corky knew that the reporter was doing a series of articles on children’s homes up and down the country and thought, vaguely, that it might be interesting to find out how Redwood Grange compared with other orphanages.
    But then the teacher had begun to talk and Corky found himself listening intently. ‘I hope you’ll give us a good report,’ the master had said. ‘You must remember we’re doing our best against fearful odds; most of these kids are the dregs of society, with scarcely any common sense, let alone brains. But we try to inculcate some rudimentary education, though of course the Board are so parsimonious that the teacher/pupil ratio is about thirty to one. Still, they’re better off in here than roaming the streets, with their bellies empty and their feet bare.’
    There had been silence for a moment and then the young reporter had spoken with suppressed violence. ‘Better off in here than on the streets? What are you saying, man? I’d rather see a happy, filthy child, with life and mischief in its eyes, even if it had to beg on street corners for a penny or two to buy bread! You may have tried to teach these kids, tried to discipline them, but all you’ve done is make them see that they’re no-hopers. Why, if I had to advise any of your boys, I’d tell ’em to get out, to see how real, honest-to-God grimy people live. And that’s what you ought to be doing. Otherwise, how can they survive when they leave here?’
    The teacher had laughed, uneasily. ‘We’ve a hundred boys in this place,’ he had muttered. ‘If there were only fifty, it might be a different story, but there isn’t much you can do with that many. The dormitories were intended to hold six and now they hold a dozen. We do our best . . .’
    But at this point, the men had moved away, leaving Corky with a good deal of food for thought whilst he waited for release. He had been in the punishment cupboard for being caught coming down from his dormitory after the midday meal. He had gone up to fetch an exercise book which must have fallen from his book bag when he had snatched it up that morning, but this had been no excuse and he had been told by Mr Evans, who had caught him coming down the stairs with the book, that he would not be released from the cupboard until after tea, which meant, of course, that he would miss the meal.
    Corky had been annoyed at the time because he looked forward to his tea. There was always a huge plate of bread and marge, though never as much as one would have liked, a tin mug of weak tea and a slice of seed cake. But because of the overheard conversation, he had been glad of the thinking time. The more he considered what the reporter had said, the more determined he became to take the young man’s advice. London was full of boys who probably looked a lot like him – oh, they were dirty and he was clean, but he could soon remedy that – and with a hundred boys at Redwood Grange, why should anyone bother to look for him, even after they discovered he was missing? They would probably be downright grateful; there was never enough food to go round, so once he was away he would be one less mouth to feed.
    The real obstacle to running away, the one the masters relied upon, was the orphanage uniform. The boys wore brown shirts and brown trousers, made of some