Original Sin by Wayne Silver

Author:Wayne Silver [Silver, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2025-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-One

1977

New boys.

The flotsam of neglectful, broken, or violent relationships. And by the time the bureaucratic machine of social care ground to a halt at 4 p.m. every Friday, some of them washed up on the shores of Belthorn Park.

Their arrival was always heralded by a blue Morris Marina van, seen in the distance making its way along the winding road towards the home. As soon as it was spotted, a single whispered codeword would spread across the quad, along the corridors and through the classrooms like a sonic Mexican wave.

Newbies.

Newcomers always prompted keen interest from every echelon of the boys’ hierarchy as they gauged any potential shift in the existing pecking order. For some, it was an opportunity to climb to the next rung of the food chain. For others, it was a nervous time, anticipating a possible demotion in the event that bigger, more battle-hardened boys arrived to climb above them.

When this particular newbie got out of the van that day in April 1977, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and some now dreamt of a guaranteed move up the perches.

Through the refectory window, Emery could see the small boy standing by the side of the van, his tousled light brown hair falling across his face as he looked down, scraping the sole of one canvas shoe in an aimless circular motion across the ground. Yet to be provided with the Belthorn Park monochrome standard issue, he wore knee-scuffed green corduroys and a gingham-checked shirt. Emery thought he had the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, as sapphire blue as a kitten’s. The boy trailed along in the uniformed driver’s shadow as the doors to the main building opened and sixty-odd pairs of vapid eyes watched the dark doorway swallow them up.

It wasn’t until he was back in his room that evening that Emery saw those eyes again. For reasons that were never explained, the state machine would sometimes snag one of the boys and whisk him away to another home or hand him a ticket to enter the dubious lottery of the foster care system. Since his last roommate, a boy with short, fat hairless legs and tight ginger curls called Glover, had been removed to a foster family near Stoke, Emery had been inhabiting his twin room alone. Two single beds were set on either side of a window, a long trestle table and two chairs between them. The mustard-coloured curtains were thin and two small wardrobes on the far wall puffed out clouds of woodworm dust each time they were opened and closed.

Emery sat on his bed, scratching his pen across the page of an exercise book. He’d been trying to write poetry but didn’t know how. In English class, the teacher had read poems to them. He’d copied his favourite from memory; “Happy thoughts” by Robert Louis Stevenson. He read it again now to see if it would help him write his own.

The world is so full of a number of things,

I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

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