Off To See The Wild West Show Part 2: Prologue (June 1904: Hull, Yorkshire) (2/3) By Frank Beill 1886: Hull, Yorkshire

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3). Part 1 Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Part 2 Prologue, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4.

'When were these children here? What were their names? Come to that, what is your name?' He was suspicious. He had every right to be. 'I'm Sammy Smyle.' Would this name only be remembered for the circumstances of my sudden departure? 'I'm trying to find my sister, Mary ... and my friend, George Smith ... and his sister Selina, as well.' 'You're not English, are you?' He was stating what must have been obvious. Before him stood a dark skinned man speaking with an American accent and wearing long black hair tied in a ponytail.

'I used to be ... once. Maybe I still am but I've been away a long time.' 'Smile, you say?'

'Smyle with a Y. Old Stoney ... I mean Mr Mason ... the Master always called me Samuel.' It felt strange using this forename again. It was never my real name. 'I came here in 1886 and left in 1888.' His head twitched uncomfortably inside a starched collar and for a moment he looked lost in thought. 'This was all before my time, of course.' He pondered, pursing his lips as though sucking a sour pear drop. 'I will need to examine the record books from the safe. Give me the details of the children you mentioned and I will search. Perhaps you could return tomorrow ... at say, four o'clock?'

I nodded in agreement and tried to persuade myself one more day wouldn't make much difference after all these years. I gave him all the information I could recall before going back out into the sunlight to examine the changes that had taken place in my old hometown. ***

Spring Bank was the main road into the town centre. Maybe I'd become too accustomed to things on a larger scale but Hull still only felt like a town to me, despite being decreed to be a city by 'Grand Mother England,' as Red Shirt named Queen Victoria. Perhaps I'd become blasé in my absence. I'd walked along this road many times as a boy but today it didn't feel as wide as it used to or any of the buildings as high. It was now a modern thoroughfare. The electric trams were shiny and new in their maroon and cream livery. They clattered into and out of the town centre along tracks separated from each other by the trees in the middle of the road.

Each tree trunk was protected from passing traffic by a metal cage. Was the cage for their protection or were the trees being held prisoner - just as I was once? Passengers on the open top decks had no protection from branches full of early summer leaves. Was nature taking revenge for false imprisonment?

Locals - clearly bemused by their strange visitor - told me the electric trams had been introduced only a couple of years earlier. They replaced the old horse-drawn ones I could never afford to use. Many times Jolly Rodgers sent me out into the streets around the orphanage with a bucket and shovel to collect horse droppings to be used as fertiliser on the garden at the back of the orphanage. No wonder the crops of rhubarb were so good. This strange fruit provided a delicious filling for Mrs G's pies and jam pots. Funny how those steaming fibrous lumps appalled me when I was forced to shovel them up from Hull's streets. In my new life they were an accepted part of everyday living.

Continued... Next Page (3/3)

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