Come on. Strip right off. Get a move on.’

‘Um…er…’

‘Come on. Let’s see what you’re made of. Now!’ Darcy Pearson lit another cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke.’Whew! Could break your back as well as wring your flaming neck. Talk about a scrawny, scraggy little rooster! Boy oh boy, I’m going to have fun with you! Dammit, I can hardly wait.’ He chuckled to himself.

Still chuckling, he led his victim towards the lights of the house, stopped for a moment and pointed. ‘That there’s the dunny,’ he announced.

‘The what?’

A coarse laugh. ‘The shit-house. If you don’t want to piss or shit your pants that’s where you do it. It’s a bloody hole in the ground,’ and he turned to face Jake, grasping the boy’s arm in a strong hand. ‘And remember this,’ he hissed. ‘You get on my goat and you’ll end up down there.’

‘On your…goat?’

‘You know what I mean,’ grunted Darcy.

II

He would get used to the food. In the end it would be the least of his troubles. ‘You’ll be living off the fat of the land and the pig’s back,’ the woman had said when he got on the train. Well, he seldom knew what he was eating, nor did he give it much thought, but one thing was for sure, he doubted that what he ate was any respectable portion of a pig or of any other beast, for that matter. Even during the worst years of the war, with Mum and Dad and Janice, then with Gran, before she died, even the year at the convent after Mum had been blown to smithereens, he’d never tasted food worse than that served up by Mrs Pearson.

He ate to stay alive—and that was the sum of it. Porridge in the morning, after milking—porridge that was either grey and watery or the consistency of mixed cement. Never halfway between. As much milk as he wanted, and that was the only good thing. Bread, generally dry, for lunch. Bread with a skerrick of butter or a scrape of dripping. Supper—tea, as the Pearsons called it—varied slightly. Sometimes it was grey stew served with potatoes. Sometimes it would be grey stew served with bullet-hard little dough-balls, dumplings. Sometimes it might be grey stew served with slabs of the dry bread.

The woman would serve it at the bench and her husband, son and Jake would take their plates from her. There would be a sneer on her face as if challenging any one of them to make comment, to say something. None of them did.

Jake ate the slops and came back for more. He never knew if the others ate everything. He didn’t eat with the family.

‘You’ll have your food in the wash-house. There’s a bench out there.