I don’t want anyone to know. I’m trying to be quiet about it, but the floorwalker has found out.
‘What’s this, Welsh?’ he says.
I don’t answer, just stand there, but he sees me shivering and pulls back the blankets.
‘You’ve pissed the bed, you little bastard.’ He slaps me. The sound of the crack on my head echoes in the room, and I duck away to avoid the second blow. But I’m too slow.
‘Ah, leave it!’ I shout out. There’s boys mumbling now – they know what’s happened. I want to run or find something hard to hit the floorwalker with. He yells again, but I don’t hear the words, just feel the grip of his hand on my neck, the fat fingers digging into my flesh. The pain of it is making it difficult to walk. I have to go up on tiptoes and he drags me along, into the bathroom.
The floorwalker sticks my head in the toilet bowl and pulls the chain. He holds me there, and I wonder will I drown, but then he yanks me out and I gulp deep breaths. That’s when I see the others; the boys are gathered at the door – silent, watching.
‘Piss the bed, eh?’ he yells.
I vomit now. A little at first, just on my nightshirt, and then more splashes on the toilet-room floor. I’m smacked again, on the head, and again, in the stomach this time. I fall over and land on my hands and knees.
‘Pick it up!’
‘What with, I have nothing.’
‘Your bloody hands or your mouth, I don’t care which.’ He plants his boot on my backside and I fall into the vomit, and that’s when I feel more of it coming. I grab the rim of the bowl and retch loudly.
‘You little . . .’ The floorwalker grabs my head and pushes it into the toilet bowl again. There’s my vomit in there, floating in the water. The smell of it makes me sick once more. I hear the boys jeering.
‘Get back to your pits, there’s not one among you that isn’t liable to this sort of performance.’ He takes a short step towards the boys, one hand raised over his head, and they scatter.
I’m out the water now, resting and gathering my breath on the floor. I’m soaked through and stinking of my vomit.
‘On your feet.’
I stand up and I see even my feet are wet.
‘Mop up that mess – now.’
‘I’ve no mop.’
‘With your hands, you fool.’
I kneel down and try to scoop up my sick with my hands. It escapes through the gaps in my fingers and runs down my arms. There’s fuller bits, undigested lumps of lamb from the broth we had earlier, and I pick those up with my fingertips as he watches. There’s still some there, some sick, when he says give it a wipe with my sleeve. My nightshirt is filthy smelly.
‘Right. Wait here. Don’t move.’
The floorwalker returns with a tin pail and there’s a wooden handle sticking out the top. He takes a bottle of powdered bleach and tips some in the pail. There’s water there and it mixes.
‘Clean this floor. Every inch of it.’
I take the mop and do as he says. The water and the bleach splash on my feet and legs and it stings me. It’s still stinging when I’ve mopped the whole floor and there’s grey water running down the gutter at the middle of the tiles and into the drain that gurgles.
‘Are you done?’
I nod.
He grabs the pail from me and turns it on its side. I see the grey water with the bleach in it as he sprays it over my legs. It splashes on to my knees and thighs and wets the hem of my nightshirt. The smell makes me feel sick again but I swallow it down.
‘Stand in the corridor – go on.’
I walk out to the dormitory, through the heavy doors, and into the brightly lit corridor. It’s cold but I stand by the great iron radiator that reaches my shoulder.
‘Not there, in the middle of the floor.’
I walk away to the middle of the floor, under the glare of the white light. My eyes are stinging with the brightness of it, but my legs are stinging more. They’re pink-red now like the colour of the pork sides hanging in the kitchen freezer. I feel as cold as that pork too, shivering where I stand in a shrill draft that blows under the door.
The floorwalker turns the knob on the radiator to off and says, ‘Don’t you move. Don’t you dare move until the morning. Do you hear me?’
I nod at him but say nothing. I think I want to kill him as he points the broom handle at me and says, ‘I’ll teach you to piss the bed again. See how a week sleeping out here suits you.’
He makes me sleep there all week. And for weeks after, every night, I’m woken with other boys who have pissed the bed once and made to queue up to use the toilet. Those who don’t perform to order are not allowed back to their beds but have to sleep on one of the bentwood chairs, back in the corridor.
I’ll never wet the bed again. I know that for sure.