Wicked Little Joe Read online

  Well, I have never wanted to adopt Joe, but I had thought the present situation so unsatisfactory, where we had all the worry and expense, and none of the authority, that we might come to some arrangement by which Peggy and I became Joe’s guardians till he was of an age to look after himself. Now I do not believe that with anyone so inconsiderate as you appear to be, any such agreement would be the least binding or satisfactory.

  We anticipate that you will ask for Joe to be sent back to you just whenever it suits your caprice, quite irrespective of his health or happiness. It is on his account mainly that we were anxious for a fixed settlement. He is a very difficult, nervous child – and any feeling of insecurity or sense of ‘belonging to nobody’ would be very injurious to him. None the less I do not intend that Peggy’s happiness should be sacrificed to his. I must have some definite agreement with you about him or else I intend to treat it as a business matter.

  I learnt from the solicitors, when a question of guardianship arose, that though there was no legal guardianship or adoption in Ireland, parents could be sued for the repayment of money expended on their child.

  I can’t tell you how painful and disappointing it is to me to write all this. I had looked forward to a friendly meeting with you and Nat at which Joe’s future could be discussed without rancour. I may add that Mrs Symes [my great-aunt Olive] and Nat’s parents are in full agreement with Peggy and me about this question of Joe’s guardianship. All the same Peggy and I have always thought of you both as people on your own, and have not taken other people’s views of you, which are often harsh. We very greatly wished to be on friendly terms with you both.

  That is why I feel so angry and hurt now.

  Yours sincerely,

  Hubert Butler.

  PS: I am going down to the Holborn bar now and I hope I shall find you there and not have to deliver this letter.

  There is no reply to this justifiably hurt, yet ultimately generous letter. It’s possible that Hubert finally ran them to earth in the Holborn bar and never delivered it. But whatever transpired, or, as it happened, didn’t transpire, between the three of them on Hubert’s trip to London, it’s certain that as far as anyone in my own family was concerned no definite arrangements for my future were made.

  Once again, towards the end of 1942, Hubert tries to solve this issue. He writes to my grandparents, in another very fair letter:

  My dear Joe and Vera,

  How nice to see you again. I loved my time with you. I wish you didn’t live so far away or that petrol was more plentiful. I got back and found all the family very well. It’s turned out very cold and the old gent who drives the children to the Kilkenny school still bears up and we hope he’ll hold out ’till Xmas. Joe now has a College cap, which he can’t bear to take off, even at meals, and expects very frequent appreciative comments.

  I suppose some day we’ll have to tackle the question of Little Joe’s future. But, as the decision rests with neither of us, it’s difficult and awkward and one naturally shrinks from those rather fruitless debates. I told Nat that our relationship with Joe must be a commercial one (as it isn’t now), if we weren’t to be authorised guardians. I’m still ready to undertake the guardianship, but present uncertainty can’t be continued much longer. It is, I am sure, bad for Little Joe, as well as for us.

  He is old enough to feel a sense of insecurity and this reacts on his development – and may be responsible for certain little bad habits of his which occasionally alarm us. We have not noticed them in all the other children with secure backgrounds, of whom at various times we have had charge. Joe is far more gifted than most of them, but he is so extraordinarily impressionable and plastic that I can easily see all his talents going bad on him. I don’t believe even an intelligent school wd. cure him of this, if he has no stability at home. I hope he feels he will always have a home here. We’ve never let him have even a hint of any other impression, but soon he’ll be asking questions. Frankly, if he passed to Nat & Biddy – though we shd. not cease to have a strong interest in him – we shd. feel worried abt. the future relationship. We are very fond of him and would hate to break it off, but he shows no sign of loyalty or responsibility and an absolutely dazzling precocity of charm and talent. A sort of male Biddy on the fringes of our family, yet not under our control, might be a real menace …

  If there’s no word from Nat & Biddy about their intentions by the new year, I’ll make fresh suggestions – there’s nothing to be done ’till then. It seems fair, though, to tell you what’s on our mind. We are so very fond of Little Joe that I’m sure you won’t resent this candour. If he turns out badly and not a genius the world will say it’s our fault; by offering to be his guardian I’m taking that risk.

  Much love to you both.

  Yrs, Hubert

  There is no reply from Old Joe in the file to this letter either, though it seems Hubert and my grandparents may have talked of my future, as appears from Hubert’s next letter in which he has another try at getting things straight about me.

  Dear Joe and Vera,

  I daresay I can make myself clearer in writing than talking so I am sending you this letter. It’s about Little Joe … I think both for his sake and Peggy’s, and to a lesser extent Julia’s and mine, it would be better if there was some sort of security about the relationship. He is getting to an age when sudden changes would be bad for him, and Peggy is getting fond of him and used to him. I do not want her to start planning for his future and then to find that his future is somewhere else and out of her hands. Nor do I want to adopt him, or any child for that matter. I think we can offer him a completely satisfying home as Joe Hone who lives with the Butlers, and one which he will ultimately prefer, as he is already very sensitive and proud of having special relations of his own.

  What I am going to suggest is that you and Vera adopt him and that we should on our own part undertake to look after him ’till he was able to look after himself. Do you think Nat and Biddy would agree to this? They would understand that we don’t intend any slight to them by this suggestion. We hardly know them and have no grounds for any but friendly feelings towards them. But naturally it is easier for us to take over responsibility for Joe from you and Vera, than from his parents whom we hardly know and never see. We could never be sure what their intentions were (about him) supposing their circumstances changed. On the other hand we seem to understand each other well …

  If you adopted Joe it would be your business of course to decide on what terms it was done. We shd. not wish to usurp Nat & Biddy’s place as parents, so long as they have no rights over him. He always talks of us as ‘Peggy and Hubert’ and of them as ‘Mummy and Daddy’ who because of the war could not bring him up, and we shd. always speak well of them to him.

  You wd. not by the adoption be taking on any fresh responsibility. We shd. expect you, as long as you were able, to pay as you have been doing for Joe’s keep, but our engagement to look after him wd. be independent of this. The money side is not the important one. If you got richer and we poorer and vice versa, contributions cd. be altered to suit. We would apply our means test without quarrelling …

  You’ll understand why I consider the question an urgent one now. The nursery struggles are over for Peggy, when Joe was a very difficult unmanageable child; he still is but not so bad. The planning stage has begun and Peggy must know whether it is safe to begin planning for him. Otherwise there are bound to be bruised feelings on one side or the other. She has either to be rather callous and indifferent about him, or rather maternal and possessive and she must know which it is to be.

  Yrs, Hubert

  Again, there is no reply in the file about my grandparents adopting me. In any case they didn’t. Instead Old Joe resumes his financial invoices, queries, misunderstandings and manoeuvrings with Peggy and Hubert. A letter dated 7 April 1943:

  Dear Hubert

  Thank you for your letter. I am enclosing cheque for £3.5.0 for his keep this month, as follows:

  Cl
othes, from Jan 1942 5. 12. 0

  Dancing Classes 4. 8. 2

  For April 1943 3. 5. 0

  Less one week spent with us 16. 0

  For his savings account 2. 6

  £12. 11. 8

  I add 2/6 to his savings account. My sister (Olive Symes) started a small savings a/c for him long ago. Perhaps it could be amalgamated with yours? I will ask her. You say in yr. letter – lessons to 15th April, 17 weeks from 1st Jan brings us up to May 1st. I have now therefore paid for lessons to 1st May. Will you make a note of this?

  But Old Joe has got his figures wrong, so that Peggy writes to him later:

  Dear Joe,

  Thanks for the cheque but I think it’s simpler to return as it’s not quite right. The total bill for last year’s incidentals was £22.8.3. On 12th Oct you sent me £5. On 27th Oct you sent me £10. The difference between them is £7.8.3. That’s right, isn’t it? I’m keeping your letter so let me hear from you at once in case I’ve overlooked a cheque since 27th Oct. I got the new suit for Joe as Vera requested and enclose bill for £4.00. Please wait and send cheque when I let you know rail fares to Dublin and then please make it a complete payment up to date as otherwise we get muddled.

  Old Joe retaliates with an ambiguous letter, some of it indecipherable:

  Dear Peggy

  I am enclosing cheque for £10 further on Little Joe’s account. I think when I paid the cheque for £26 in April for his sojourn in Dublin you … wrote a letter … the cheque … I’d like now to go back to the 12½% query for Park House School …

  In this financial joust he has succeeded in making things more muddled still – something he continues to do in his next letter:

  Dear Peggy,

  Here is Joe’s book of coupons. He hasn’t used any. I suppose the expense for the kindergarten, if summer terms only, will be about a third of £10, (£3.6.8). But I don’t know how the terms are arranged at the Kilkenny school. And the transport about 5/- weekly; Joe’s share – say 10 weeks in term – £2.10.0. A total charge of about £6. You might let me know if that is what you calculate approx.

  There are more letters in the same financial vein – in the permanent matter of Old Joe’s settling, and not settling, his accounts with the Butlers. Matters to do with new gumboots, my transport and train fares (always, since the matter of the paid ‘escort’, a touchy subject with my grandfather), dentist’s fees, and notably a disagreement about a tube of Kolynos toothpaste bought for me, at one shilling and ninepence, which my grandfather seems to have thought he’d paid for twice. But soon the letters move on to (or in fact back to) weightier financial matters, the old theme of who will pay for my general board and lodging with the Butlers, and devolving from this who will have clear authority over me now that the earlier agreement, between my parents in London and the Butlers, had run its three-year term – an agreement which, of course, in its financial requirements from my parents, they never kept. Hubert thus writes a memorandum of the present situation for the local Income Tax Inspector, since it seems that Old Joe (more canny in such matters) had told him he could claim the unpaid cost of my upkeep (due from my father) as an expense which he has had to pay and could therefore put against his tax:

  Joseph Hone, aged 7 on 25th Feb last, has been in our charge since his mother left him with us 27th November 1939. During that period we have had sole responsibility for his upbringing, though he has paid occasional visits to his grandparents, Mr & Mrs J M Hone in Dublin.

  Mr J M Hone has paid us 15/- a week for his maintenance; they have also paid for doctor’s bills and clothes. Except for a few occasional extras paid by us. We have not heard from his parents, Mr & Mrs Nat Hone, for a very long time. But we learnt at Xmas that they are still alive and living, I believe, in Edinburgh. Because of illness, poverty and other causes they have been unable to look after any of their six children and have taken no interest at all in Joe since he has been with us.

  In March 1942 I managed to get in touch with Nat Hone in London and to extract a promise from him that he would pay a supplement weekly for Joe’s board and education. I agreed to accept 15/- a week more, as the matter was not on a business footing. Normally, when we have had charge of children, they have paid us £2.10.0 a week. No payment whatever has, however, been sent. It is now out of the question that any will be paid, as I learn that he (Mr Nat Hone) is still penniless.

  Any necessary confirmation can be given of the above facts. I have not until now sought income-tax rebate for the past five years, when he was with us, simply from inexperience. The 15/- a week granted [by my grandfather] has naturally been totally inadequate to cover his maintenance and our responsibility.

  I should mention, perhaps that our reasons for taking charge of Joe Hone has been our friendship with Mr & Mrs J M Hone and our willingness to bring up another child with our own. [Crossed out] our wish that our own child should have companionship because we only have one child of our own.

  Hubert Butler

  Susan Butler

  Whether Hubert received any income-tax rebate is not recorded. He probably didn’t, so that in his next letter to my grandfather he returns to the fray – the possibility, nay the miracle, that he might still get some of my unpaid upkeep paid by Nat:

  Dear Joe

  I had better have Nat’s address so that later he cannot say that silence gives consent. I agree with you that the miracle of his paying me is unlikely. But if financial miracles are to happen to him, I can try and make sure that one of the first will be with me.

  It is not our fault that the arrangement with Little Joe, apart from our affection for him, became largely a commercial one. I offered him (Nat) the alternative of guardianship (either ours or through you). He refused. And the agreement, which he never observed and has now expired, was made. You were not concerned in the matter as you had no authority about the guardianship and it was from Nat that I wished the balance of Joe’s upkeep to come.

  Peggy and I wish to do our best for Little Joe, but the present arrangements cannot continue and are good for nobody. If he is to keep up his association with us he must go to a good school (I don’t mean an expensive school but one where he will be properly looked after). He would then come to us for his holidays.

  From the time of his return to Maidenhall I will tell Nat that our charge for looking after him will be two and a half [this is then crossed out] three guineas a week. This is extremely reasonable, as we were being paid at the rate of two and a half guineas before the war, and with the shortage of everything we should be fully justified in charging four guineas.

  We recognize that the obligation is Nat’s more than yours, but I hope you will be able to increase the actual payment to 30/-. As regards Income Tax allowance, our shares would be in proportion to what was paid of the three guineas …

  I’m truly sorry I have to be so commercially minded abt. Little Joe, but things are not easy for us and we can’t afford to be out of pocket. Also Peggy is finding the uncertainty about his future schooling very worrying.

  Yrs ever,

  Hubert.

  Then out of the blue, at the end of the war in 1945, my mother made a surprise entrance on the stage, a coup de theatre. She arrived in Ireland, in Piltown, south Kilkenny, at the little cottage of her parents, Mr and Mrs Anthony. She would have liked to have seen me but, perhaps remembering the contretemps with Hubert three years before at the bar in Holborn, she didn’t contact the Butlers. Instead she told my grandparents in Dublin of her arrival; they told Hubert. Hubert, it seems from his subsequent letter to my mother, appeared in two minds over his feelings about my future – whether to encourage Biddy to take me away from Maidenhall or to discourage her from doing this:

  Dear Biddy

  I have heard from the Hones that you are in Piltown and would like to see Joe. Peggy and the two children will be at Annaghmakerrig on 17th July, so if you wished to see him you would have to come before then. Would that suit and would you give us a ring?

  I was very muc
h surprised not to hear from you or Nat all these years, after our conversation (in London), but it did not seem that I would gain anything by writing. We have told Joe that his father and mother have been in England and that they are very occupied because of the war, etc. At one time this puzzled him but he has not asked for some time.

  He is a fine healthy and intelligent boy, but has a very suggestible and possibly corruptible temperament. He goes to school in September and we hope that the discipline and the companionship of many other boys will be good for him. We are naturally worried about his future, as he is a child who would suffer greatly from an unstable or insecure background … We have always, for his sake, tried to make him feel that he has a home here and avoided any unsettling ideas. I mean, for example, that he was only temporarily a member of our family.

  I assume you will be pleased with him, if you come. He will naturally ask us many questions and we will naturally answer them in as reassuring a way as possible.

  Please do not think we intend to be in the very least bit possessive about Joe. For some time Peggy and I have felt that Joe needed more discipline than we are giving him here and we felt that until we had seen what effect school was having on him, we would not decide whether it was in his interests or ours that he should go on living with us …

  If a change was to be made we intended to do it very slowly, as I think the sudden realisation that a place which he had regarded as his home almost as long as he could remember, was not really his home – might have a bad effect on his nervous disposition.

  We shan’t mention a word to Joe about your visit until we know that you are coming. We would be glad to put you up for the night here as soon as we hear your plans. The situation is a difficult one for you as for us and we will do our best not to make it harder. I understand you are over here for a short visit only. You could tell him (Little Joe), what I understand is the case, that Nat is not well and you have to be in England looking after him. Peggy is rather fussed with visitors or she would write. She sends greetings to Mrs Anthony.