Someone to Love Us: The shocking true story of two brothers fostered into brutality and neglect. Terence O’Neill
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the door again. Behind the house there was a field of tall grass. We could hear the tinkling of water somewhere so we ran through the grass until we came upon a brook, which was about two foot wide, sparkling in the late afternoon sunshine.
‘Let’s dam it,’ Dennis suggested. ‘Go and collect all the rocks you can find.’
Freddie and I splashed around collecting rocks while Dennis arranged them across the width of the brook. We didn’t talk about whether we would be staying there or what the mix-up might be but the worries were niggling away in my head while we played.
It was about an hour later when Mr Easterby came out and summoned us. He and Mrs Pickering were sitting at the table with the little girl and he introduced us in turn. ‘This is Dennis, who’s eleven; Terence, who’s nine; and Fred, who’s seven.’ He looked at us. ‘Boys, there’s a problem in that Mrs Pickering was originally going to take the three of you but now that young Dorothy here has arrived, she doesn’t have the room. She can take two of you, but not three.’
We looked at each other in horror. My chest felt tight with a panicky feeling. ‘But we have to stick together,’ Dennis said.
‘I understand that, boys,’ Mr Easterby said. ‘That’s what the Newport authorities want as well, but we’re in a bit of a bind because there’s no time to find you somewhere else tonight. What Mrs Pickering suggests is that Terence and Fred stay here and I take Dennis to one of the farms up the road. He’ll be really close by.’
I shouted out ‘No! You can’t do that.’
Mrs Pickering rushed to reassure us. ‘It’ll just be for sleeping. You can see each other during the daytime. Dennis can come down here. He’ll only be a few minutes away.’
‘I’m afraid it’s the only solution, boys. It won’t be so bad. You’ll see.’
I looked at Dennis and his eyes were wide with anxiety but he didn’t say anything more. It seemed the decision had been made.
‘You can’t,’ I argued, but with less conviction because I could tell that nothing I said was going to change their decision. ‘Where would you take him anyway?’
‘Do you remember that farm we passed called White Gates?’ Mr Easterby asked. ‘Mrs Pickering thinks they might take him in.’
I nodded, eyes to the ground and a big lump in my throat. Dennis had always been there, all my life, and I couldn’t imagine how I would cope without him. Tears were pricking my eyes but I knew I was too old to cry so I held them back. This was the worst thing ever. Worse than leaving the Connops. Worse than being hit by the staff at Stow Hill.
I watched as Dennis picked up his suitcase and brown paper parcel and followed Mr Easterby up the path. He turned once and caught my eye just before they went round a bend that took them out of sight. I hugged myself, feeling very lonely and vulnerable. Anything could happen now and I’d have to deal with it because I was older than Freddie. I had to be the responsible one. But I didn’t feel responsible. I felt very young and very scared.
Mrs Pickering made us fried eggs with bread and butter and a cup of tea and tried to chat to us as we ate, but I couldn’t speak because of the lump in my throat. Freddie answered her questions in his high-pitched babyish voice and I stayed quiet. We went to bed soon after our meal, but I couldn’t get to sleep. It was high summer and still light outside, so I lay going over everything in my head. Why couldn’t we have stayed at the Connops? We’d been happy there and I’d thought that’s where we would stay until we left home. Now we’d been dumped in a place that seemed a bit rundown and scruffy and much smaller than the Connops, and worst of all we’d been separated for the first time ever. I remembered how upset I had been when Dennis started school six years earlier and couldn’t spend the days playing with me, but this was incomparably more awful. I needed the comfort of him being there when I closed my eyes at night. If I woke in the early hours, I needed to hear his breathing before I could go back to sleep again. What would I do without him?
Next morning, we got up bright and early and were eating our breakfast downstairs when Dennis appeared. Mrs Pickering invited him in.
‘So are you staying at White Gates then, dear?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘They couldn’t take me because the lady is expecting a baby soon and they said they’ve got their hands full. They suggested we tried some people called the Goughs, at Bank Farm. It was quite a bit further on but when we got there they said they’d take me.’
‘The Goughs, eh?’ Mrs Pickering said. ‘I’ve never been up there. Does it seem all right?’
‘I like being on a farm, ma’am,’ he replied.
‘Well, that’s just fine, then,’ she said. ‘You come down here to see your brothers whenever you like.’
After breakfast, we ran outside back down to the brook and I was delighted just to be by Dennis’s side again, hearing his voice, looking at him. It made me feel safe. We found that our dam had held up overnight, creating a nice pool above it where we could paddle. When we explored further, we came across a small wood with some cottages on the other side. A kind lady who lived in one of them gave us a biscuit each, which was very welcome. There were cows grazing in a field and we fed them handfuls of grass, then stroked their heads through the bars of the gate. The lump in my chest was softening slightly. Maybe it was going to be all right here after all. So long as we spent our days together, surely it didn’t matter too much if we spent the nights in different places? It was only for sleeping, after all.
A couple of days later, Dennis took me over to see the Goughs’ place for the first time. It was a long walk, right the way back past the school and the village store where we’d got off the bus and then along the main road to a five-barred gate opposite a petrol station. After that you had to follow a footpath through a field up to the house, which was fronted by a vegetable garden.
‘So this is Terence!’ Mrs Gough exclaimed, coming out of the house to say hello. ‘Welcome to Bank Farm.’
My first impression was that they must be very poor people because her clothes were worn and faded and her ginger hair was messy like a bird’s nest. Mrs Connop had always looked smart, in a skirt and blouse with neatly set hair. Mr Gough came round the corner of a shed and I thought at first he looked a bit scary, with short dark hair, a craggy forehead and bushy eyebrows that gave him a scowling expression, but he greeted me in a very friendly manner.
‘You must be missing your big brother,’ he said. ‘Seems a shame the three of you had to be split up like that.’
I shrugged and looked at the ground. ‘You’re welcome here whenever you want to see Dennis,’ he said. ‘Any time.’
His accent was quite different from the Connops’: rougher, and with an emphasis on the R’s that was like a growl.
Dennis showed me round and I was impressed with all the animals they had: two big horses, lots of cows and some chickens as well.
‘I helped to feed them this morning,’ Dennis told me proudly, and I was jealous of that. I’d always liked feeding the animals at the Connops’.
The next day when he came to see me at the Pickerings, he said, ‘The Goughs have got room for one more and they were wondering if you want to come and stay with them instead?’
I thought about it. ‘Nah!’ I said. ‘I’m fine here.’ I felt that I’d only just made a move and Mrs Pickering seemed really nice. I didn’t fancy having to move again, even if it meant I would be with Dennis. ‘Why don’t they take Freddie instead?’
‘They said they wanted you. They said they were going to speak to the authorities about it.’
‘Is it OK up there?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, it’s fine.’
‘Well, we’ll see what happens,’ I said gloomily. It wouldn’t be up to me then. Grown-ups would make the decision for me, as usual.
And