The Hurdy Gurdy Boy and the New York Kidnap

By Peter John Cooper

Tamara’s in serious trouble. The young violinist is held captive in a New York hotel room and, deeply scared, she pleads for help from the only person in the world who can help her. But Tommy is the ghost of a Victorian street urchin. He knows nothing about the world outside the streets of Stepney in the East End of London and certainly nothing about the 21st century which appears so alien to him. But, by using all his ingenuity, he embarks on an extraordinary journey that involves getting to grips with cars, tube-trains, telephones and undertaking his first ever aeroplane journey to New York. But finding Tamara is only the beginning of a startling chase across the United States ending up in a small mining town in South Dakota while a blizzard rages.
The story is suitable for adults and young adults. It is both funny and touching and, because it aims to be entirely truthful, it can at times be disturbing. As a reviewer said about the first novel in the series “The Death of the Hurdy Gurdy Boy” It is dark as history is dark

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter John Cooper
• Release date: Dec 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311936318

Peter John Cooper

Peter John Cooper is a British playwright and poet as well as a novelist. His poetry is dramatic and his plays are poetic. He has been a playwright for forty years and has written dozens of plays which have been performed all over the UK. Recently he began putting them online so that people can perform them for audiences all over the world. He reads his poetry in clubs in the town of Bournemouth where he lives and throughout the South of England. He lives in a flat which looks over the cliff to the sea.which joins him to his readers all over the world He started writing stories for his daughters when they were growing up and he’s now happy to be publishing some of them for others to enjoy.

Book preview

I’m glad I don’t live now. There’s so much to think about. What did I have to think about then? Just keeping warm and finding something to eat. I feels sorry for Tamara, She lives in a complicated world where you have to read and think as well as doing the other things. Yea, I was lucky I lived when I did.

One other thing: there is a good reason why the mad woman killed me. It wasn’t through bad feeling towards me or anything like that. Tamara’s worked it out and she’s going to tell me one day if we ever meet up again. You can probably work it out yourself. You having all those books and reading and such like. It don't matter to me really. I don’t bear a grudge. I couldn’t change anything now anyway and, besides, I feel sorry for the Old Dear. She was kind to me when things were hard and she had other things to worry about. So was Monty Solomons. And a lot more people I didn’t mention. I hope they all sleep peacefully and that there won’t be anything to bring them back.

Mind you, I didn't know I was going to meet up again with Tamara. But from somewhere far away I can hear her calling. She needs my help. I can't refuse after everything she did for me and I believe she can tell me that final answer in the puzzle about the death of the Hurdy Gurdy Boy.

Chapter 1

I can see the look on Tamara’s face. Sort of strained, white. Frightened. Yes, something is happening. Something she don’t like. I can see her mouth fixed in a straight line but inside she’s sort of shouting. She’s too afraid to say anything out loud but in her head it’s like one of those boilers where they cook pigs’ heads out the back of the butcher’s. All bubbling and swilling. I can see her getting into a yellow carriage. Like those I see going up and down Stepney High Street but this ain’t Stepney. It’s... I don’t know where it is. Somewhere far away. It’s all sort of blurry and hazy, like the streets on a November evening when the fog is closing in. But she’s... Where is she? I can’t work it out. She’s shouting out to me without making a sound. She’s very afraid. She’s getting into a big yellow carriage and driving away. But I can’t get to her. I ought to be able to do that thing where I can just sort of think myself into a place and I can be there. But I can’t do that this time. She’s too far away. I ain’t got anything to hang on to. Where the hell is she, Tommy? I says. But I’m not getting an answer. And I’m afraid for her. Something is going to happen and I can’t help her. All I can see is her going away into the distance looking back out of that little window in the back and shouting for me to help.

I ought to sleep. I want to sleep. I’m so tired after that last little effort. Thinking about my murder over again. And feeling all that pain, a different pain, but more pain finding out the truth about who coshed me and left me dead and I’m sort of torn apart by feeling glad I knows who done it and sad because I knows who done it. And somehow still a bit stirred up because I still don’t know why she done it. So tired, I thought I’d never come back up again. But here she is shouting for me to help. Come on, I ain’t going to sleep with all that commotion going on. You’re going to have to do something about this, I’m saying to myself. So I pushes my way up through that dark fog to see what I can know and what I can do.

I dunno. Where to start? Up here it’s all so mad. So much hustle this way and that. All the colour. All these strange buildings and roads. And all this traffic. These carriages dashing back and forth. And people running and riding bicycles. Where are they all going? What are they all rushing for? You never see anybody running in my day. Not unless they’re scarpering from the peelers. Why don’t they just keep still for a minute? Got to be somewhere I can think. Yes. Back to the churchyard. Bit quieter there and I can see Tamara’s house across the way. Yes. Take it easy. This is where I used to hang out. Leaning against the wall with the other down and outs. When I had a back to lean with. Where the line of grease showed where we huddled. Not there now. Does that mean there’s no poor people like me anymore? Tamara talked about refugees. Yes, plenty of refugees without a home or even any country they could feel safe in. But I don’t see them. I don’t know where they are. They don’t wear a uniform to tell you they’re a refugee but they know it themselves. Lonely, afraid, in a far-off place where they don’t know where to turn for help. Me, I suppose I’m a sort of refugee. No home. No family or any of that. No, that’s daft. I am, was just ordinary. Plenty more like me. And there’s plenty others worse off.

So there’s her house across from the churchyard. But she ain’t there. I know she ain’t there. I remember she was going to sort everything out with her Dad before he went back wherever it was he come from. I hopes she has sorted it out. She was so sad about it. I stood over here in the churchyard and I saw her in there eating her dinner and arguing with her Aunt. That ain’t right. You don’t argue with your family, do you? You don’t want any aggravation from those who should be close. Now it’s all shuttered up. Empty. A house that stood there right from my days and well before. A bit battered, a bit wonky but just about the only thing still in one piece apart from the church. She began telling me about this Adolf Hitler that did for all the rest of it but she never finished I don’t think. Still there it is. Sort of staring at me from across the street. And she told me she didn’t want me poking about it there. So I wouldn’t, except... Except there might be something in there that would tell me something about where she was.

What if..? I’m thinking suddenly. What if she went off with her Dad? And her Aunt and all. What if they all went back to finish sorting things out where he come from? It’s a thought. Now I’m trying to rack my brains for where it was she said he lived. Didn’t she say...? What was it? New York? Yes, even I’ve heard about New York. Lot of people I knew packed a few things and headed off that way. Getting away from here. From all this bloody hopeless starvation. From the docks. Funny, the same docks where there’s all these refugees arriving, escaping their lives and there’s people from here sailing off trying to find a fortune in America. Yes. America. That’s where New York is. Somewhere out there across the sea in America. I expect it’s still there. Where it was. Unless that Adolf Hitler had a go at that as well. So, all I’ve got to do is to get to America. Easy enough. Find a ship. Plenty of ships in the docks. Bound to be one heading that way. Across the briney as the old tars down the docks used to say. Don’t know what to do when I get there but one thing at a time. Get a ship first. A bit off my patch but I been down there plenty of times scraping about for bits and pieces. Bits of all sorts. Bags and boxes burst open. Crates accidentally on purpose coming apart, spilling all over the road. There’s plenty of stuff falling off wagons. Accidentally, I don’t think. It’s help yourself time down at the docks. Trouble is there’s a lot of rougher kids down there. They don’t like people like me. They reckon all that bunce is theirs by rights. Suppose it is. They have to make out same as I do. But I don’t need none of their stuff now. Me being as I am. So I can just drift through, find a boat and off I go. All I got to do is to listen out for those American voices. American sailors will soon enough get you there.

And all the time I can see Tamara. Looking out the back of the carriage and she’s thinking Help me, help me, Tommy because I’m the only one she can think of.

Chapter 2

Right, so the docks don’t seem to be what they were; no more than anything else in this time. Can’t see anything resembling a bleeding ship along the waterside. Nothing big enough. It’s a long enough distance to New York, so you need a boat with plenty of sails. Or big funnels for the steam. You need something substantial. All they got down there is little water craft. All shiny and whatever but definitely not big enough. Dunno where they’ve all gone but the river is pretty well empty. Big warehouses. Not like what I remembers. Big. Flat like the shops in the High Street. Big flat, glass sort of warehouses but nothing going in and out. None of the piles and heaps of stuff. All the people. Big men with big hooks grabbing bales of stuff off the cranes. Cranes. Where’s all the cranes? And the people, where are they? It’s funny. Everywhere seems to be all as busy. Crowds of people going this way and that. The streets stuffed with these little carriages and wagons but what are they doing? Nobody doing anything. Nobody unloading or loading. No streams of wagons pushing and shoving and jostling. Everything clean and new looking. I remember this bit of the dock was where all the sugar came in from. And the smell of sugar everywhere, big and thick and sweet. You could almost lick the air it was so sweet. Big nets full of sugar sacks. Stacks of sacks on the quayside. Wagons loaded with sugar off to the refinery down the road where they did whatever and turned it into sweet stuff for people to eat. All coming from the Empire. That’s what the Empire was for. Sugar. Sweet.Those ships for all those places I’d heard of in the Empire: India, Jamaica, Barbados, Africa. Where’s all that gone?

And if there’re no ships, how the hell do I get to New York to help Tamara? Now I’m in a right state. I don’t know what to do.

Then something sticks in my head. Something I didn’t want to think about. She said her Dad... No. Can’t be, I’m thinking wrong. No, it’s right. I knows what she said. Don’t know what she meant though. Said he was flying over from New York. What did she mean by that? Some sort of bridge over the ocean? Not flying. Not actual flying. Surely not. I mean, everything might have changed but people don’t go round with wings now. Do they? Come to think, I haven’t looked. Haven’t thought to look. All right, let’s do that. Let’s have a shuftie at some of these crowds. See if they’ve got anything folded up under their shirts and whatever.