Running to the Flames

Britain, 1947

"Is that how I'll end up?"

A teenaged boy known as Tufty asked himself this as he looked around a high street. He looked away and focused on a youth nicknamed Salty.

That day was dry as a witche's skin. Salty pulled a cigarette from his lips and blew white smoke out. His cap sat at a rakish angle. He adjusted a yellow tie. He was leaning on a lamppost in front of a betting shop. Tufty looked up at Salty and thought "why can't I be more like him?" Tufty slid a finger into one of his pockets and felt money. He and Salty had just lied about their ages and collected winnings from a bet on a horse race. Excitement and guilt battled in Tufty's mind as he went along with his friend's plan.Two girls walked by. One of them looked over her shoulder and fixed her gaze on Salty. Her companion nudged her and they walked on. Tufty raised his cap but the girls ignored him. He put it back on feeling envious.

"It wouldn't come to anything anyway," Tufty thought. "When girls find out we're deaf they don't want to know us."

He recalled how Salty had needed to place their bet because he, Tufty, couldn't read.Salty had learned at home, from his mother. Salty had never got around to teaching his friend to read. Could it be that he enjoyed playing the leader a little too much? Both boys had struggled all the way through school. Now they were on the brink of leaving.

Across the street, a middle aged woman stood rattling a collection tin. She was trying to collect money for a charity that helped animals. Tufty crossed over to her, put a coin in her tin and returned to his friend.

"You're a bit soft hearted mate," Salty sneered in sign language.

"Pets are having it rough," Tufty retorted. He looked over the road. His gaze took in a vagrant sitting in a doorway. The shop it belonged to had been damaged by a Nazi bomb and was unoccupied. They were miles from London but that hadn't saved them. The homeless man had prompted the thought "is that how I'll end up?"

The duo checked their watches, then set off walking out of the town centre. Mothers with prams walked by. A boy on a bicyicle paused, then crossed the road.Tufty and Salty sauntered down a tree lined residential street. Privit hedges rose on either side of them. Some houses had mock Tudor half-timbering. They came to a brick wall and passed through a gateway in it. The pair were now in an extensive garden with lawns, rhododendrons and a wooded area. In the centre there stood a large Victoiran building, in Gothic style. It was a school for deaf children and teenagers. Salty and Tufty were boarders there. Each boy took his tie off, then pulled a school tie from a pocket and put that on.

"Let's go to the shed," Salty suggested. He meant the gardener's tool shed. Tufty agreed. There they could smoke and use sign language. Signing was forbidden within their school. Both had suffered beatings for using it.

They set off together, across a lawn strewn with daisies, then in amongst leafy trees. Around them leaves glowed green as if painted by children. It was like walking through a bowl of fresh salad. Ox eye daisies bloomed like piles of white gold. A mother stoat scuttled across their path, followed by her young in single file. They were lost to sight amid ferns with feathery fronds.

The boys reached the shed. Moss cloaked part of its roof. Planks of redish brown wood covered its walls. The door was padlocked. There was a window that could be forced open. Salty pushed at it, then they scrambled through it. Each of them lit a cigarette. They could see a trench that had been opened up outside. Sweaty workmen had gone home for the day. The trench contained a water pipe which needed repairing. A few large stones lay around it, atop displaced earth.

They each had an interview coming up. They discussed it, each reassuring the other.

"Is it true the woman coming to interview us is a deaf signer?" Tufly asked.

"No mate, that's the man who takes the pictures."

It was impossible to say whose fault it was, for hot embers dropped from both of their cigarettes. Perhaps they shared the blame.

They smelt burning. Looking down they saw flames rise from dry floorboards. Both boys jumped back. Salty fell over a box of tools. Tufty collided with him. Before they could recover their escape route was cut off. Terrified they raced for the door and threw their weight against it. Timber rattled but the padlock outside held firm. The boys felt intense heat on their backs. Sweat filled their armpits. Each of their bladders opened and wet their pants

Chad Parry narrates

I got out of the car and looked up at my old school. It was built in the Victorian age but in Gothic Revival style. Oak doors had been elaborately carved. Gargoyles looked down on me from the eaves. The place should've been in a frosty pine forest where wolves ran, their pointed snouts like hairy spearheads. It was actually a hot summer day. Lush green lawns surrounded the building. Rhododendrons grew further away, like mountains of red and pink.

My colleague Pamela had driven us there. She wore a hat with a red rose in it. We work for 'The Deaf Standard Magazine.'We came to interview pupils who were soon to leave, asking about their hopes and fears for the future. I was to photograph them and she would write the article. She can hear but learned signing from a deaf uncle. I was born deaf. Picking up my camera, I recalled the picture that helped me to get this job. I photographed a group of schoolboys kicking a football around in a local street. Most pictures of schoolchildren showed them standing still or sitting still, lined up in rows. Mine stood out then. Today, more and more photographers are snapping people going about their daily business. Was I still ahed of the pack? There would be few opportunities to be spontanious today.

Pamela asked "do you have to have your sleeves rolled up?"

"Its hot," I shot back. "In fact, its so hot your rose is wilting alarmingly."

Pamela inhaled sharply. She furrowed her brow, took off her hat and inspected it.She realised I was pulling her leg, glared at me and hit me on a bicep with her handbag. I laughed. She relaxed and then laughed with me.

The headmaster greeted us at an arched doorway. As we entered the school, my stomach tingled with bad nerves. I recalled getting into trouble for signing instead of lipreading. I reminded myself that I was now twenty-seven and strict teachers had no jurisdiction over me.

The temperature fell as we stepped inside. I felt smooth floorboards and smelt wax polish. We entered an oak panelled assembly hall. Adolescent boys and girls sat on hard wooden chairs. Bright sunlight poured through rectangular windows and speks of dust floated in it. Two girls squinted in the glare. The brim of my straw hat saved me from being dazzled. Some pupils had beads of sweat on their foreheads, from nerves not heat.

The headmaster counted his charges, then paused.

"Two boys are missing," he said to Pamela. "Thomas Salt and David Tuft are not present." He told her in spoken English and she translated for me.

"Do you have to sign?" the teacher asked. "Its a bad example to our pupils."

"Mr Parry isn't good at lipreading sir," Pamela explained.

She fixed a hard stare on him and made him wince.

I thought back to my school days, then remembered a shed where the gardener kept his tools. I took white paper from my pocket, wrote on it and gave it to the other man.

"I know where they'll be," I wrote. "If Miss Murcott would start interviewing, I can go and find them."

He nodded. I turned and left the hall, then walked down a corridor, past the kitchen. Aromas of coffee met my nose. I left the building via a back door and strode across a lawn. This brought back memories of kicking footballs around with other boys, of piles of jumpers serving as goal posts, of me doing a cartwheel. I approached a small patch of woodland, stepping on clover as I went.

Then I saw it, a plume of smoke rising between lime trees. Acrid smells flirted with my nose. I broke into a run.

I pounded up to the shed. Half of it was on fire. Hungry flames licked at reddish brown planks. Flecks of soot rose with billowing smoke. They danced in hot air like fat insects. The door was padlocked. It shook with the force of someone inside trying to break out.The lock held firm. Horror rose inside me and engulfed my brain.

I spun round looking for someone, anyone, who might help. There was no one else in sight. Nor was there time to fetch anyone. I started panting with stress. Blood was draining from my brain. I was afraid that I'd faint.

Then I saw a trench near the shed. There were stones lying beside it. I charged up to it, bent and grabbed one of those stones. Next I ran to the door, raised my right arm high, brought it down and drove heavy stone into the padlock. A painful recoil shot up my arm but I tried again, and again. On my third attempt I managed to break the padlock.

Two adolescent boys burst out of the shed. Both were crying. Tears made pink streaks through soot on their faces. A blast of heat followed them, like the breath of Satan. They ran a short distance, then their legs gave way and they sank to their knees. Each of them threw up his last meal. I smelt that they had wet themselves. I knelt in front of them and signed that they were safe now. My arms trembled as I did so.

I got them to their feet and hurried them towards the school. Shirts were sticky and odious with sweat. We passed trees. One had branches that reached down from its trunk and touched green grass, like slides for fairies. The sky above us was blue as a baby's eyes. Foxgloves rose up like Gothic spires.

It took quite some time to sort things out. The headmaster called in firefighters. They came too late to save the shed, but red flames couldn't be allowed to spread. Salty and Tufty needed to be examined by the school nurse, cleaned up and given drinks of water. Their parents had to be told, over the telephone. It must've been a horrible shock for them. Of course they set off to collect their sons. The boys asked us not to tell their parents, fearing they'd be angry. We had little choice but to do so. We decided to postpone the interviews. Pamela, the headteacher and myself sat in the hall with those boys, waiting for their parents. I sat fanning myself with my hat. It was tempting to take of my tie and my waistcoat, but Pamela wouldn't stand for that even now.

Tufty and Salty told us more about their ordeal and the events leading up to it. When Tufty mentioned his donation I gave him a thumbs up. I've got a cat named Misty at home. She's my pal with paws. Pamela asked Salty how he learned to read. He signed that his mother taught him at home. I could relate to that. As for his posturing for girls. I've grown out of that but I did it at his age.

The headmaster began shouting at the boys and gave each of them a thick ear. They started to sob again.

According to Pamela, he was telling them how stupid they had been, and how angry the gardener would be. He called them 'dumb oxen' more than once. I don't know how much detail they got. Shouting makes lipreading difficult so Pamela interprated. She was furious with Salty and Tufty too.

I didn't join in. You may have guessed, when I was at school me and my friends met in secret in that shed. If I hadn't known then searching for the duo would've been like looking for a kayak in the Atlantic. The shed was a place where we could sign to each other without being beaten for it. We did it by torchlight in our dormataries as well. Pamela's hands cast sharp shadows in light from a window. They fell on brown panelling. I imagined a new shed being built, rising like euculypts after fire.

There followed a brief period of calm. A chandiler with five branches hung above us. Then Salty asked me a question.

"Sir, are there any jobs going at your magazine? I could fetch and carry things for you, I could make the tea for you."

He directed a look of desperation at me. I felt guilty as I answered him.

"There arn't any job vacancies at my magazine Mr Salt. If there were you'd have to ask my editor. I don't have the authority to take you on just like that."

Salty's face crumpled with disappointment. Tufty held his right hand out. Salty grasped it and held it tight. I feared for the futures of both of them. Twenty boys and girls left this school when I did. Today I'm the only one with a job. That's only because another journalist got called up and never made it home.

Days later, I thought about Pamela's shadow on the wall of the hall. It gave me an idea. I approached a neighbour of mine and got her permision to photograph her two daughters. I took them into the street and into bright sunshine. I asked them to play leapfrog, knowing they'd cast sharp edged shadows on a house wall. The younger girl vaulted over her sister. As she did so I photographed their shadows. It was a good shot, clear but unusual. It graced the cover of our magazine. On seeing it there I felt on top of my game again.

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