Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (12 page)

The next morning after milking Tommy lies in wait for me and pulls me aside as I'm about to head back down the lane. “Follow me.”

I expect him to lead me across the fields to an adventure, but he scrambles up some large stones behind the cart at the side of the barn and beckons to me, putting his finger to his lips to stop me asking questions. Although the barn is made of Cotswold stone, its top half has been renovated with corrugated iron, and in it is a rusted gap which Tommy now puts his cheek to. “Come on!” he whispers. “Look!”

I look. We press our faces on the cracked iron and watch. There is nothing to see. Three POWs are heaving milk churns on to the cart. And there is Aunty Joyce pouring the milk pails into the churns. She wears brown corduroys and wellingtons. Her blonde hair curls out from under a red headscarf, tied gypsy-like at the back of her neck.

“What are we looking at?” I whisper.

“Keep looking.”

So we do. Aunty Joyce continues to pour milk from the pails, and the three men continue to shift it. The horse lifts its tail and does a poo. I whisper a laugh, thinking this is it. But Tommy is still pressed up hard against the rusted iron, concentrating, and I can hear his breath next to my ear.

Then I see something. It is only a small difference, so slight I wonder if I'm on to the right thing at all. But I'm intrigued.

As Heinrich bends down to pick up the churn next to Aunty Joyce, their eyes meet. She flushes, and continues to look at him for a moment, then reaches for the next pail. As he lifts the churn on to the cart we can see her steal a glance at him, then look down quickly.

“She's in love!” I whisper.

“Ssssh,” Tommy whispers gently, putting a hand on my arm.

I pull away from the spy-hole and look at Tommy's hand on me, then I look up at him, trying to recreate some of Aunty Joyce's drama for myself. But Tommy is too busy spying to notice me.

We hear the two other POWs leave the barn and walk, chattering, up to the farm. Tommy beckons me to look with him again.

Aunty Joyce is gathering the empty pails and Heinrich walks over to her. He stands in front of her for a moment, then enfolds her pink knuckles in his giant hands. She stands there looking at him, as if waiting for something.

“Joyce!” he says. “I luf you!”

Suddenly Aunty Joyce has shaken her hands free and is walking towards the barn door. She turns to look at him, bright red and shaking, and says quietly, with a note of apology, “I'm a married woman!” Then she gathers her tray of tea things with wobbly hands, clunking cups all over the place. “And I love my husband.”

She is out of the barn door and coming this way, so we duck down behind the old cart until she's passed us.

“Golly! D'you think Uncle Jack knows?”

“'Course he don't.”

We sit quietly for a moment on the cold stones, each pondering what we've seen. Much as I like Heinrich, I find I'm not at all happy about this turn of events. I want things to be as they should be: wives with their husbands, children with their mothers, fathers tumbling about with their children and not crying when they see a tree.

“Tommy …”

“Yeah?”

“Why doesn't Aunty Joyce have another baby?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. P'raps Jack can't get it up.”

I frown and say, “Oh, right.”

“Like the rabbit,” Tommy explains. “The rabbit
could
get it up, Jack
can't
. I 'speck. Dunno for certain.”

Ever so briefly I picture Uncle Jack in a cage with Aunty Joyce. “Still, she did say no to Heinrich. She did say no, didn't she? She said she loves Uncle Jack, didn't she?”

Tommy looks thoughtful. “Yes, she did.”

We get to our feet and amble down the farm lane.

“You wanna meet my mum? She's coming Boxing Day.”

He shrugs.

“I want you to meet her.” He kicks at the muddy stones, so I add, “So's we can arrange for you to come an' live with us, after the war.”

“I … I …”

“I, yi, yi, yi, yi I like you very much!” I say, attempting an exotic accent like Carmen Miranda.

He tries to look indifferent, but smiles at the bare hedgerows, and then at me. “Okay, then.”

On the last morning of term I have a sudden urge to ask Aunty Joyce a question as she sees me out of the door.

“Can I have a cuddle?”

“Pardon?”

“Will you give me a cuddle?” I look up at her earnestly. “I haven't had one in ages.”

She stops tying my ribbon for a moment, and with a look of mild exasperation she kneels down and puts her arms around me. I cling on as tightly as I can. I can smell the soap in her housecoat and the deeper woman-smell, and I can feel her softness. I squeeze and squeeze and just can't bring myself to let go. She is a familiar scent to me now, and I want more of it. Eventually Aunty Joyce wrenches herself free and begins to do up my shoelaces, which I usually do up myself. She is biting her lip and fumbling furiously with them.

Then she packs me off to school, and when I turn to wave I see her sheltering her eyes with one hand, and I could swear she is crying. But she couldn't be, because Aunty Joyce never cries.

On Christmas Eve the church is full. Whole families with grandparents and children and soldiers home on leave squash into the pews, and babies' heads pop up between shoulders. Candles have been lit in all the windows. The organist is playing a medley of carols at a lethargic pace as the last few people arrive and say their silent prayers.

I wait with the Sunday school and older children at the back of the church ready to process forward at the sign of the vicar. I wanted to be a lamb or an angel, but Miss Didbury made me a donkey. I'm wearing cardboard ears, attached to a donkey head made out of a cardboard box. An old grey woollen skirt (that belonged to Aunty Joyce's mother), slit at the seam, makes a tent-like cloak tied above my head, upon which the donkey-effect head perches precariously. I keep peaking out from the slit in my cloak. I want to see the look on Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce's faces when I arrive with Mary and Joseph. I find, inexplicably, that I want them to be proud of me.

Everyone seems to have arrived now. A tune ends, and as the organist pauses a gust of wind comes from the porch at the back of the church as the outer door is opened again. Heads begin to turn to see the latecomer. It is Miss Hubble, carrying her baby close to her chest.

A low murmur begins.

Peeping out from my cloak I can see Uncle Jack's drained face turned towards Miss Hubble. He looks at Aunty Joyce who looks back at him with a frown. Then Uncle Jack rises to his feet and walks slowly towards Miss Hubble, head bowed. He is going to find a seat for her, and I begin to feel little pangs of pride. With an avuncular arm around her shoulder, he steers the young mother back towards the door, and all the shepherds and angels and farm animals distinctly hear him say, “This isn't the place for you,” for all the world as if she were an infant who had mistakenly wandered into the senior school.

I am furious. I look at the lantern-holder next to me – who is Tommy – and I can tell he feels the same, only Tommy is so used to the unfairness of everything that it only just surfaces on the rigid set of his mouth. I don't know if he slips out for a fag stub with the older boys or what, but at about that moment he seems to disappear.

Uncle Jack returns to his seat, the self-appointed do-gooder applauded by the quiet relief of the treacherous congregation. The organist begins to play, pulling out all the stops, as we process to the crib at the front of the church carrying candles and lanterns. After depositing our lights around the manger, we disappear into the vestry, where Lady Elmsleigh has offered to help ‘backstage' despite her lack of belief, and where Tommy is miraculously waiting for us by a little external door for the vicar's use only.

When the music stops the vicar welcomes everyone and says a prayer. It is accompanied by rustling and giggles from the vestry as shepherds struggle to secure their blankets' safety pins and wise men run about looking for their tobacco tins of frankincense and myrrh.

At last an innkeeper emerges and stands under the pulpit, with Mary and Joseph hobbling after him.

“Is there any room at the inn?” asks Joseph in a soprano voice, lifting his head a little to reveal a beard of boot polish.

“I'm sorry,” says the innkeeper, “we're packed like sardines in 'ere.”

“You sure? My wife is with child.” He nods at Babs Sedgemoor who is wearing a blue candlewick bedcover.

“Sorry. Nothink 'ere, Joseph.”

The parishioners smile, babies shriek and sing from the depths of the pews and the vestry continues to bubble with noise.

After two more innkeepers, Tommy eventually takes pity on the pair.

“Well, I've no more rooms left,” says Tommy, “but if you're really desperate like, I've got a stable you can 'ave.”

“That's very kind. My wife's … with child.”

“Oh, is she? I'll get some fresh straw.” He heaps some more straw on a hay bale set out for Mary to sit on, and takes her hand to help her.

Then the prisoners of war stand and face the congregation. They sing ‘Silent Night', and their voices are beautiful. Some of the women have to wipe tears from their eyes, ashamed and confused at how they can be so moved by their enemy. Aunty Joyce does not take her eyes off them, and even
her
eyes are glistening when the song is over.

While Betty Chudd reads the first lesson, it is my job to fetch the baby Jesus doll from the vestry door, secrete him under my cloak, and hand him miraculously to Mary.

“Thanks be to –”

A small blanketed figure in the central aisle cries out before Betty Chudd can complete her last word: “It be a cold night, me masters!”

The shepherds all give an exaggerated shiver and exclaim at the brightness of the clouds. Iris Holland tiptoes up in a sheet with a paper plate perched on her head, and everyone sings ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night'.

A short reading by Mr Fairly heralds the arrival of the wise men, who deliver their gifts with suitable awe at the baby Jesus. Then as the entire assemblage of Sunday school and other children sing ‘Away in a manger', shepherds, wise men, cattle and innkeepers all crane to see the holy infant.

During the hymn the baby begins to cry, and a few members of the congregation look uneasy.

At this, the Lord Jesus does indeed fall silent. A lamb takes an unwarranted interest in him, and the innkeeper gazes at the donkey with a fond look of complicity.

Joyce and Jack eye the exchange with curiosity, then sit open-jawed with the rest of the congregation as the holy infant raises a chubby arm towards the bosom of the virgin mother.

The verse ends, and in the slight pause the silence is filled with glances and gasps. In the confusion we children continue, primed to sing our song to the end. The vicar, now in his pulpit, can see better than anyone that Jesus is what everyone has suddenly noticed he is: a real, live brown baby.

After the service Miss Lavish offers Miss Hubble a cup of tea in the vestry, lighting a little camper gas ring in the corner, and the vicar offers her a cigarette. Miss Hubble accepts both, and I get to cuddle the baby, who is a beautiful coffee-colour and called Jerome like his father.

As soon as we have changed we are all ushered back through the church and out to where the grown-ups are waiting for us by the gravestones along the church path. But just before we reach them a group of POWs have lined up by the porch and are handing out presents to us. They are all gifts they have made: little baskets of bark with flowers and moss, ships and dolls made out of sticks or even carved from wood, corn dollies, miniature toys made out of match boxes or acorn cups. Heinrich hands me a small piece of wood and wraps my hands around it, as though I must not show it to anyone else. I take a peek and see that it is an intricately carved cat.

“Boomer!” I whisper. I am so overcome that I throw my arms around him, all churned up and eyes full to bursting.

Uncle Jack comes over and pulls me away. “Come on, you've caused enough trouble already,” he hisses.

I am saved from a bollocking on the way home by Miss Lavish, who catches up with us and trills about the lovely service as we climb the sunken lane towards the terrace. But as soon as we sit down for our Ovaltine, Uncle Jack switches off the wireless that Aunty Joyce has turned on.To my surprise he starts off with her.

“I couldn't help noticing in church that you're wearing nylons.”

Aunty Joyce cups her mug in her hands and does not look at him. “So I am.”

He flares his nostrils slightly and bangs his pipe on the hearth.

“Are you going to tell me where you got them? … Or should I ask
how
you got them?”

He is beginning to turn pink, and I feel I should help her out. “I gave her them, Uncle Jack. It was when we was up at the American base. My GI guide gave them to me.”

“A
GI
!” He spreads his hands flat on the chair arms as if he is about to get up, but just breathes heavily instead. “And I'm supposed to just sit here and do nothing while my wife goes round like a
slut
wearing the nylons some
American
has given her? What do you think everyone has made of it, hmm? You tell me that!” He points a finger at Joyce, and his spite makes me angry.

“That's not how it was!” I protest from my position at the table. “
All
the GIs were giving treats out to the children for them to take home to their families and friends.”

“And what was
your
GI called?”

“Ted.”

“So, a GI called Ted gives my wife stockings and I don't know about it?”

Joyce stares vacantly from her armchair towards the tablecloth. Heinrich's carved cat is sitting there: it really is very good.

I thought she was in a defiant mood, but now she just seems to have given up. I wish she would say something, but she doesn't.

“Look, I wish I'd just saved them for my own mum,” I say. “
She
wouldn't have worried where they came from and neither would my dad.
He'd
just've been pleased to see a smile on her face. And
he'd
have trusted her enough to
know
she wasn't no slut.”

Uncle Jack twitches a bit and begins to stuff his pipe with tobacco. Aunty Joyce shoots me what might be a grateful glance. Then he starts on me.

“There's no need for rude language like that,” he says, forgetting that he'd just used it himself. He lights the tobacco and takes one or two puffs, filling the air with vanilla. It seems to soften him a little, for he leans forward and says in a much gentler voice, “You know what you did in church was very wrong, don't you, Kitty?”

“I'm sorry, Uncle Jack, but I just don't understand.”

“Well …” He puts his elbows on his knees in a thoughtful manner. “You may not understand it all yet, but … having a baby outside marriage is a wicked thing to do. And people
do
have a choice, it doesn't just happen.”

I assume a bewildered look. “Are you saying Miss Hubble is wicked, then?”

“Well! I know you liked Miss Hubble, Kitty, but we must all respect the teachings of Christ, and I'm afraid … it was wrong of her to bring the fruits of her sin to church – to a
family
service as well!”

Now I
am
bewildered. It wasn't fruit that Miss Hubble brought in at all. I want to get back to the point, and why Uncle Jack is wrong about Miss Hubble. I think for a moment about what he did in church, and I can't let it go. I have tried hard to understand the bible stories I've heard in Sunday school and church to please Uncle Jack, but this just doesn't add up.

“But Uncle Jack, ‘Whoever receives a child in my name is really being nice to me.'”

There is a sharp intake of breath. “Don't quote the Bible at
me
, young lady!”

“But Uncle Jack, aren't you afraid of the millstone?”

“What millstone?”

“The one that you have to wear round your neck if you're horrid to one of God's … you know … little ones.” I'm on uncertain ground here. There's a millstone in the field behind the school and it doesn't look like the sort of thing you could hang round your neck at all.

He begins to turn pink. I scratch my nose and say in a singsong voice, “I'm only saying … that's all.”

“Upstairs NOW!
You'd
better watch out you don't get cinders in your stocking!”

But Father Christmas doesn't leave me cinders. When I awake in the morning my stocking is full, with an apple, a biscuit, a small colouring book, a pencil and an intricately knitted doll. The doll has long black hair in plaits with a red skirt, and if you turn her upside down she becomes a lady with blonde plaits, and a blue skirt. Each doll has little ribbons, one has a handbag, which opens, and the other has an apron, which comes off if you want.

I have never had anything like this before. I am so thrilled I can't wait to tell everyone. Not only was God on my side over the Miss Hubble incident (because he didn't tell Father Christmas to leave me cinders), but I have the most amazing present I have ever known (apart from Heinrich's cat).

“Look! Look! Look at my beautiful doll! Look!”

When I come hurtling down the stairs to show Aunty Joyce, she gives me a smile so tender I can hardly believe it, and pours us all porridge.