20. A Really Good Shower

THROUGH THE GATES OF TIME - Part 20

“Who’s your little friend, Roger?” asked May, “and how did he sneak in here without me seeing? Did you bring him from that monastery for a good square meal, the poor little tyke, by the look of it he needs one?”

Roger was staring at the boy. Ragged, unclean and certainly infected with every variety of lice known to man, he stood there, a pathetic creature from another century. Roger had never read any of Charles Dickens’ novels (though he had ploughed through A Christmas Carol when he’d been in his teens, and that is a novella rather than a novel), but he had seen versions of many of them on the television and was reasonably steeped in a variety of interpretations of conditions for the poor in Victorian England.

“He came through the closet door...” he whispered.

“You what? I thought you’d shut it!” he replied, “and if you hadn’t I heard you say you said it should never be opened again! What are you playing at, Roger?”

“The boy … he says he’s Oliver twist...” mumbled Roger.

“A fictitious boy? This is getting beyond a joke, Roger!” May was beginning to feel that her patience was being stretched by events that so far added up to a rapid tour through a history she didn’t like the look of.

“He says that he’s a different Oliver Twist,” muttered Roger, “and I don’t know what to think any more.”

Apple chose that moment to hurtle down the stairs, excitement shining in her eyes.

“I love the pram,” she said, “and it’s got headlights! Would you believe it: I can take it our when it’s dark, and see where I’m going!” Then she paused and looked at the boy Oliver, “who’s that?” she asked.

“I’se Oliver,” said the boy, answering for Roger who was having trouble keeping his mouth closed or his brain in gear.

“You poor boy! You look as if you could do with a good wash and then something to eat. We’ve got no end left over from Christmas dinner. We always do have and make it last at least a week after Christmas!”

“That’s an exaggeration, Apple,” put in May.

“Come on! I’ll show you the bathroom,” said Apple, “and don’t worry: I won’t peep when you get undressed!”

And before either parent could do anything about it she had led the boy called Oliver up the stairs and into the bathroom, where she left him wondering, like a stone age pair before him, what on Earth he should do with all the shiny pipes and bottles of wonderfully coloured liquids. They were soaps and shampoos, but such luxuries were unknown by boys from the poorer classes of Victorian society, assuming that’s where he hailed from, and in Apple’s eyes that seemed to be where he had somehow come from.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said, ignoring the confused look on his face.

“But … but what do I do?” he asked helplessly, “and who are you?”

Apple was good at assuming the dominant role when it came to children of her own age who she deemed might be in some way inferior to her.

“I’m called Apple,” she said, and pointed to the sink. “That’s a tap, hot to the left and cold to the right and nice and warm in the middle, here, let me show you… I say, do you want a shower? You smell a bit, I don’t want to sound awful or anything, my teacher says you should never show off to people worse off that yourself, and you look worse off than I am, if you don’t mind me saying it...”

Oliver was rescued by May who had followed her daughter and the strange boy up the stairs in the certain knowledge that Apple was bound to both take charge and not really understand what was needed.

“Outside,” she said to Apple, quite firmly, “I’ll see what’s what. Now let me see. Yes, I think we’d better take all of your clothes off you, Oliver. They do smell rather dirty. Come on, get undressed, you can undress yourself, can’t you? And I’ll make sure the shower’s not too hot for you.”

Apple left them and went outside to where Frodo was busy trying to fit batteries into a model jeep.

“That boy stinks,” she said.

“What boy?” asked Frodo curiously.

“The boy who came through the wall downstairs,” she said, “you weren’t there, and neither was I, but I heard dad telling mum that he came through the closet door even when it was shut! I mean, have you ever heard of anything so dramatic? That closet’s spooky, don’t you think, but we’re lucky to have it. I’ve never heard of anyone else having a closet door like ours...”

“I don’t understand,” confessed Frodo, who had yet to learn that people and things haven’t always been the way they are now and that history’s a marvellous hotchpotch of humanity doing often stupid things in a wide variety of circumstances.

“Well, it seems to be a gateway,” began Apple, and she had the perfect authority to go back to when she was explaining. “My teacher says there might be gates that lead, not so much to another place as to another time, like last Christmas or a hundred years ago, and people we’ve never heard of come through that gate and into our living room and even watch our telly!”

“Cool,” responded Frodo, “so there’s a boy? Can I play with him? I wish I had a brother.”

“Mum’s scrubbing him,” Apple told him, “he smells. Quite a lot, to tell the truth, though my teacher says it would be unkind to tell him.”

“Your teacher says too much,” said Frodo, echoing a conversation he’d heard more than once between his parents.

The bathroom door opened and May popped her head out of it. “Apple,” she said, “you know that old pair of jeans of yours, the one you’ve grown out of but you’re saving to give to the poor and needy when you meet some?”

Apple nodded. “My teacher...” she began, then eyed Frodo who was grinning, and stopped herself. “I think there might be some poor girls who need new jeans,” she said, “and they’re nearly new. I didn’t make any holes in the knees or anything scruffy like that.”

“Well, be a love and fetch them. Oliver’s own trousers are falling to bits. And Frodo, you’ve got to have a spare pair of boxer shorts, you’ve got so many, and Oliver’s not much bigger than you, is he? Fetch some. He doesn’t seem to have any underpants at all.”

“Yuk!” said Apple.

“I think I can put my hands on a jumper,” added May, “so if you’ve got a tee-shirt that you actually hate, Apple, bring that as well.”

The two youngsters ran off while May returned to attend to Oliver Twist, who was having the time of his life under the stream of warm water cascading from the shower. He’d never known such joy, not in all his lifetime.

© Peter Rogerson, 11.12.20