After he had made his bed, David set out to explore his new home. Out front the lawn sprouted a stand of bamboo, and at the side of the house the lawn was wide and open. David walked across the lawn, feeling the spongy, close-clipped grass beneath his bare feet. As he rounded the corner of the house and headed into the backyard, he stopped in his tracks. He could scarcely believe his eyes. Right in the middle of the yard was a large swimming pool. David had never before seen a house with its own swimming pool. It was barely spring, but David imagined himself floating in the pool on warm summer afternoons.
Beyond the pool was a large garden stocked with all kinds of vegetables growing in neat rows. Behind the garden were fruit trees and a chicken coop full of squawking chickens.
This is an impressive place, David thought as he turned and headed back toward the house. Just then he heard the dinner bell ring, and not wanting to be late for his first meal at the home, he ran for the dining room. His stomach was already rumbling from hunger.
The dining room was paneled with kauri, a native wood noted for its fine grain, color, and toughness. Long tables covered in cream-colored tablecloths filled the room. The forty or so boys who lived at the home filed into the room, and each boy found a place at one of the tables. Miss Menzies and her assistant, Miss Adams, and any visitors sat at the top table.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” came a voice from behind. David recognized immediately that it was Wocky.
David shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. My mum sent me and Bruce here,” he replied.
As he spoke, Wocky burrowed into a place at the table beside David, who noticed Miss Menzies giving his friend a stern glance. But Wocky didn’t seem to notice or care.
“This is great. We’re going to have fun. We won’t have to wait for the school holidays to play anymore,” Wocky said as a plate of mutton stew was placed on the table in front of each boy.
David looked down at his plate. The food smelled delicious, but he just wished there were more of it on the plate. Didn’t they realize he was famished? Nonetheless, he reached for his knife and fork to begin eating, but Wocky reached out his hand and stopped him. “No, wait,” he said.
David did as his friend told him. When a plate of stew had been placed in front of each boy, Miss Menzies rose to her feet. Instinctively the boys bowed their heads, and David followed their lead. Miss Menzies then recited grace, and at the end of the prayer, everyone in the room said “Amen” in unison. The dining room then erupted into a flurry of motion as the boys reached for their knives and forks and began eating their stew as fast as they could. Within moments David’s plate was empty. He wished he could have some more, but none was offered. David resigned himself to still feeling hungry until breakfast, though he did wonder about Wocky’s bragging that there was always plenty of food to eat.
After dinner, Wocky filled David in on life at the Anglican Boys’ Home. “It’s not going to be easy at first. You’re going to get picked on because you’re new, especially by that boy over there.” Wocky pointed in the direction of a medium-built boy with dark brown hair sitting two tables away. “That’s Ross Mense. He’s a bully, and he’ll pick on you for sure, so try to stay out of his way.”
David nodded.
“We play all sorts of sports here after school and on the weekends. You’re going to like it. And did you see the swimming pool? We use it all the time.”
The next morning David discovered that Wocky had not been exaggerating about using the pool all the time. Despite the fact that it was cold outside and heavy dew lay on the lawn, at first light the boys were lined up naked and made to swim two lengths in the frigid water of the pool. David’s teeth chattered as he waited to get into the pool. Wocky later told David that Miss Menzies believed that the morning swims would toughen the boys up. David hoped so. There had to be some payoff for being that cold so early in the morning.
After the morning swim, the boys dressed for school: khaki shorts and a grey shirt, which were supplied for David from a large box of hand-me-downs kept in the outdoor laundry. Then the boys headed to the dining room for breakfast, which consisted of a steaming bowl of oatmeal porridge. Next it was time for the homies, as the boys from the boys’ home were called, to walk to nearby Eastern Hutt School for the day. Despite the fact that it was still bitter cold, none of the boys wore shoes.
After school David learned that an endless procession of chores had to be done around the house. The vegetable garden needed constant weeding, digging, and raking, while vegetables had to be peeled by hand for dinner. The chickens needed to be fed and fruit picked from the trees in the small orchard at the back of the property. And after dinner, a mountain of dishes had to be washed, dried, and put away.
Like most of the other boys, David liked best the job of polishing the linoleum floors in the house. The job occupied six boys, and after polish had been applied to the floor, three of the boys sat on an old blanket while the other three towed them along. With each succeeding pass, the surface of the linoleum was buffed to a gleaming luster. Sometimes the buffing got a bit rough as the boys hauling the blanket would hurl those on it into the walls.
After dinner and all the chores had been taken care of, it was time for homework. The boys would bring their books to the dining room, where Miss Menzies and Mr. Kimberly, the gardener, supervised them. David tried his best, but he found it hard to concentrate on schoolwork. He also quickly learned that Miss Menzies spent her time helping and praising those boys—among them Wocky—who seemed to have a natural aptitude for schoolwork, while she left the “underachievers” to themselves. It didn’t take long for David to establish himself as an underachiever in order to be left alone.
It also didn’t take David long to realize that Wocky had been right; it wasn’t easy to fit in at the boys’ home at first. Sure enough, Ross Mense picked on David, as did several of the other boys. David, though, stood his ground as best he could. Slowly the other boys began to accept him, especially when they discovered that he was a natural sportsman that they wanted on their team.
Things were tougher for Bruce, however. Bruce was small for his age, and no matter how much he combed his hair, it just seemed to stick straight out. The other boys teased him mercilessly about both his hair and his size. David wanted to help his little brother fit in, but so much of his energy was taken up trying to fit in himself that in the end he had to leave Bruce to fend for himself, which seemed to be the rule that each boy in the home lived by.
Several weeks after David and Bruce Williams arrived at the Anglican Boys’ Home, they were summoned to Miss Menzies’ office. David wondered whether it had something to do with his birthday. After all, he was turning nine in a few days. But when he and Bruce arrived at the office, they found their mother sitting in a chair.
“Boys, your mother is ready to have you back. Go pack your bags,” Miss Menzies said. Their mother smiled nervously.
“Yes, I want you boys to come home. Things are better now. You’ll see,” Marjorie Williams chimed.
Before David realized it, words were flowing out of his mouth, words he had no idea he would say. “I’m not going home with you. I won’t go back there. This is my home now.”
“But David, everyone misses you. I promise things will be different. We went through a bad patch, but that’s behind us now. You and Bruce must surely want to come home!” There was a pleading edge to his mother’s voice. It made David feel guilty, but not guilty enough to give in. Now that he had said the words, he was not going to back down. There was no way he was going back to knife fights in the night and drunken brawls at home. No! Sometimes it was tough at the boys’ home, but at least he felt safe there. The boys’ home was where he was going to stay.
“I’m not going back there! Just leave me alone,” David snapped as he glared at his mother. Then he turned and stormed out of the office, with Bruce right behind him. Little did David know at that moment that this would be the last time he would ever see his mother.
David Williams had a new home, the Anglican Boys’ Home in Lower Hutt. That was where he now belonged.
Chapter 2
“Homie” Life
This is God’s house. He is here today. He hears each song we sing and listens when we pray to Him.” With these words, which she intoned each Sunday morning, Mrs. Bonifant, a neighbor of the boys’ home, called the Sunday school class to order. Sunday school was something new to David. Back in Moera his family had no time for church or religious activities. But David found he liked Sunday school, especially the lively singing and Bible stories Mrs. Bonifant told them. The whole thing was so much more exciting than the dreary services they attended at St. James Anglican Church every other week.
On this Sunday morning Mrs. Bonifant opened her Bible and read a passage from Psalm 27. As she read, the words of verse ten seized David’s attention: “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up.” David said the words over and over in his mind until he had memorized them. All week long he repeated the verse to himself and thought about what it meant. Yes, his mother had loaded him onto a bus and sent him off, and yes, his father had walked out on the family when David was a toddler. This verse clearly said that God would be his new Father and would look after him, no matter what. Deep inside, David relaxed. Things were going to turn out all right.
While David embraced God as his Father, at the boys’ home he found in Miss Adams a nurturing mother figure. Miss Adams, an older woman with graying hair tied into a tight bun, came from a wealthy family and volunteered as an assistant at the boys’ home. From the start David could tell that she wanted the best for the boys. Miss Adams was affectionate, encouraged them in all they did, and comforted them when they were hurt or depressed. At night she would read them bedtime stories.
From time to time, Miss Adams would also take a small group of boys on an excursion to her home. David loved the times when he got to go on these excursions. They would ride the train from Lower Hutt north up the Hutt Valley to Silverstream, where her large, two-story house was located. The house was surrounded by a croquet green, a tennis court, and an orchard. At her home, Miss Adams would serve the boys hot tea in huge white cups and give them two slices of homemade cake each. Best of all, she shooed them outside to explore her yard and orchard. The boys were allowed to eat all the fruit they wanted. David always felt sad when they had to leave her house and head back to the institutional routine of the boys’ home.
While Miss Adams nurtured and encouraged the boys, Miss Menzies remained the strict disciplinarian. The rules of the home were to be obeyed, and if a boy did not keep to them, a heavy dose of punishment was meted out to him, usually in the form of a leather strap across the buttocks. Of course, David soon learned that no matter how hard you tried, at some point you would break one of the rules and incur Miss Menzies’ wrath. But as his time at the boys’ home went on, David, like the other boys, learned to take being strapped without flinching. As he discovered, however, not flinching while being punished could also lead to dire consequences.
Tony, one of the boys at the home, was caught talking during quiet time, an offense punishable by six strokes of the strap across his backside. As David would have done, Tony stood stone-faced and did not flinch as Miss Menzies gave him six swift strokes with the strap. This time, the fact that Tony did not flinch seemed to enrage Miss Menzies. David and the other boys watched in horror as she gave him six more whacks with the leather strap. And when Tony still did not flinch, she gave him six more whacks. It wasn’t until he had received twenty-one hits with the strap that Tony finally broke into sobs. Tony’s backside and the top of his legs were crisscrossed with a mass of red welts that were so painful he was forced to lie facedown on his bed while Miss Adams tried to comfort him.
