All My Brother's Secrets by Terence O'Neill

Author:Terence O'Neill [Terence O'Neill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter Twelve

On 13 February, a Tuesday, Mr Bolton drove me to Pontesbury Court for the inquest. It was only when he mentioned the date that I realized my tenth birthday had been and gone without me noticing and I told him as much.

He frowned. ‘I thought your birthday was back in December,’ he said.

‘It was, but the Connops moved it to the third of February. That means I’m ten now. Ten days ago.’ I felt I should have had some kind of celebration to mark the day, but there was no one to celebrate with. I hadn’t received any birthday presents. Ten felt like a very grown-up age. When Dennis was ten, the Connops had made a huge fuss about it.

Despite Mr Bolton’s assurances, I was still anxious that I might bump into the Goughs in the courtroom and I kept peeking round corners and glancing down corridors, but fortunately there was no sign of them.

I was taken into a room and introduced to a Mr Maddocks, an important-looking man in a black gown and woollen wig, who explained to me that when we were in court, he would be the first to ask me questions about life at the Goughs, and then the next day another man, called Mr Gough Thomas, would have some different questions. All I had to do was tell the truth.

I was overawed by the surroundings, the dark walls, people in smart suits rushing about, and the clerk of the court who kept shouting things that I couldn’t understand, telling everyone what room to go to. Noises echoed in the stairwells and people rushed around in a hurry.

We were led into our courtroom and I saw four men sitting behind a long table, who all looked up as I came in. They seemed friendly, but spoke with posh accents that made me a bit ill at ease. It was very serious at the beginning, when I had to read out an oath from a card, swearing that I would tell the truth and the whole truth, so help me God. I caught Mr Bolton’s eye and he smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. When I sat down, my feet didn’t reach the floor because the chair was too big for me and I kept slipping down the seat.

The questions were easy enough that day. Mr Maddocks asked where Dennis and I slept at Bank Farm, so I described our bedroom and the covers we had on our bed. He asked about our meals, and I told him it was almost always bread and marg. Earlier on, we had occasionally been given a piece of trout, or some rabbit stew, but in that case we got fewer slices of bread. He asked what we had to drink, and I told him we had tea without sugar, and that we got milk at school.

Then he asked what happened if we were naughty, and I was struggling not to cry as I told him about the stripes. I

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