Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (14 page)

Just before term starts Uncle Jack announces that he is taking the bus to work for a change, and he is taking me with him. I help Aunty Joyce pack sandwiches, and we set off on the seven-thirty to Gloucester through the cold January morning.

At first I think I must have done something wrong, and that he is trying to keep me out of mischief. But it soon becomes clear that this is Uncle Jack's treat, and I begin to get very excited as he tells me about the train we will ride and the fireman I will meet, how the coal fires the steam and all about the signals. It occurs to me that Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack seem to be falling over themselves to give me treats at the moment – almost competing with each other – but I am too busy enjoying myself to pay it too much attention.

The engine shed is a bewitching place, full of strange new smells and echoing metallic sounds. I have always marvelled at the size of trains when they come into the station, their impossible power, the blaze of glory in which they steam to a princely halt. But here, standing on the ground beside it without the platform to diminish it, I look up to see the engine is a colossus. It towers above me, dark and smelly and mysterious. Even the steps up to the footplate are mountainous.

“So
this
is the new driver!” says a friendly face, peering down from way up high.

“This is Kitty,” says Uncle Jack, lifting me in the air so that I can reach the first step.

The fireman grabs me under the armpits and pulls me up, smiling. “I'm George, your fireman. I 'ope you don't make me work too 'ard.”

I smile, and Uncle Jack skips up the steps with impressive ease and is beside me. There is something about the way he is with me today that makes me feel he is almost proud of me. But this can't be, because I am a wicked, disrespectful and foul-mouthed girl and always letting him down.

We soon get the engine up to steam, and set off along the track to who knows where in the late morning winter sunshine. There is an almost frightening energy in the pulsing of the pistons, and the way the footplate sways from side to side, rocking us about on our feet, makes it feel that we are riding some giant, untamed animal.

George opens a round oven door from time to time and shovels in the coal from the bunker behind. He stands on the left, and Uncle Jack on the right, and I sit on a wooden seat that pulls down from the side. Every time we approach a bridge someone waves to us from it, and the steam is pushed back from the chimney into our faces so that we drive blind for a few seconds when we come out the other side. Tunnels are even more fun, and we emerge in a huge blanket of steam as if we are in the clouds.

Uncle Jack lifts me up to see through the portholes at the front, then he sets me down and gives me his hat, and I stand in the driver's position for the rest of the journey.

“When you get home you can tell your friends you drove a seventy-seven class tank engine,” says Uncle Jack.

We are carrying freight, and when we reach our destination Jack goes off to the lav while George and I tuck into our sandwiches.

“You're doin' well,” says George, his mouth full of bread. “You'll make a good driver, you will.”

I tilt my head right back to smile at him under my driver's hat. “I didn't know I was coming today.”

“Didn't you?”

“Uncle Jack never said.”

George shovels some more sandwich in before speaking. “ 'Ee always says 'ee'll bring you down one day. Always talking about you, 'ee is.”

“About
me
?”

“Oh yes! Talks about nothin' else! Thinks the world of you, 'ee does!” Then he adds with a wink, “An' I don't blame 'im.” He takes a shovel and wipes it with a cloth, then balances the shovel on the coals and breaks an egg on it from his lunchbox. “Miss Lavish – never-been-ravished!” He laughs, loudly. “You're priceless, you are!”

“But how …?”

Uncle Jack comes back, and they talk for a while before George goes off to the station lav. “You want to go?” Uncle Jack asks. “George'll show you where it is.”

“No, ta,” I say. “Got a bladder like an elephant, me.”

They both laugh, and George goes off, leaving me alone with Uncle Jack and our cheese and Flag Sauce sandwiches. I consider now might be a good time to broach things.

“Uncle Jack …?”

“Yes?”

“Why don't you and Aunty Joyce have another baby?”

He stops munching for a second, and then continues with an exaggerated nonchalance.

“Just one of those things, I s'pose … and not for you to go worrying about.”

I frown under my hat. “Why do grown-ups say things like ‘just one of those things' when it obviously isn't? You can have one if you
want
one, can't you?”

He says nothing, and a blackbird trills furiously from a tree on the other side of the track.

“Is it because you don't like children?”

“Don't
like
children?” He turns to look at me, confused. “Do you think I don't
like
children?”

He looks a little hurt, so I quickly take it back. “No, no. It's just … I don't see why you don't have another. You'd be a good father. In fact, I think you'd be a very good father.”

He gives a modest smile. “It's not as easy as just wanting one, Kitty.”

Of course I can't just shut up and
wait
for him to speak, I have to keep goading him. “Aunty Joyce wants one.”

This is not a clever thing to say, for I don't strictly know if it's true, but it gets him going.

“Does she? Who said that? Did
she
say that? What's she been saying?”

I scratch the side of my face hastily. “Well … it's not that she said it
as such
, but I reckon she would be on for it. I can tell these things.”

Uncle Jack sighs. In disappointment? In relief? There is a long silence with just the rustle of paper bags, the crunch of apples, and the crotchety blackbird throwing another tantrum.

This is not good enough. I have to set things in motion.

“Or is it that you can't get it up?”

There is a clatter as he drops his sandwich tin on the footplate. He leans both hands flat on his knees and glares at me. “Who …? What …? Wherever did you hear that? Who's been saying that?”

“No one …” I wing it. “It's just this friend at school, she's got rabbits, and the daddy rabbit can't have babies because he can't get it up. That's what her mum said.”

Uncle Jack rolls his eyes, and heaves a sigh.

“Well! Look, I don't want you to repeat that expression, all right?”

“Is it rude, then?”

“Yes, it's rude.”

“But is it true? Is that your problem?”

“NO!” He bangs his fist on the bunker and a piece of coal topples down. “Has anyone said that about me?”

I shrug. “I don't
think
so.” Then I add mischievously, “Still … if they
had
, you could always prove them wrong …”

George has come back and is up beside me, winking. “Where to next, Driver?”

Uncle Jack lets me work the lever, and the pistons steam like a giant angry bull.\

When we get back it is bitterly cold, and he walks me all the way home from the bus stop holding my hand. It is a giant, brown, warm engine driver's hand, and it completely covers my own. He is as pleased as Punch to tell everyone we meet that I have driven a seventy-seven tank engine, and I am as pleased as Punch to be wearing his driver's hat, even if I can only see the road.

Back at school we go out to play in the numbing wind, almost longing for the bell so that we can huddle again around the schoolroom stove. A crowd of us are playing dub-dub, and I stand at the dubbing post staring up at the sky and the hills. The bare trees are mouse brown on the humps and hollows, making Sheepcote woods like the secret hair of a woman.

A few twitters of joy go up as the first snowflakes fall on us, soft as thistledown, but melt to nothing on the old tarmac.

I venture from the post, trying to spot people hiding, and see Tommy standing with the big boys. These days they rarely bother with the schoolyard, and spend their playtimes in the lanes smoking or checking rabbit traps in the wood.

I'm sure he is cross with me because I didn't introduce my mum to him like I promised. He probably spent all of Christmas Day and Boxing Day hanging around the farm waiting for me to bring her to see him.

“Hiya!” I say.

“Oh … hi, Kitty!” He smiles at me, then returns to his conversation with Will Capper and Eddie Wragg as if I were invisible. I hang about for a while, then pretend to kick a stone which isn't there, and hum to myself as I wander away.

“Dub-dub in!” scream Babs and Iris together.

“You've lost, Kitty! You're out!”

I wonder if Tommy knows how much I've missed him, and that it wasn't my fault I couldn't get to see him. I wonder if I've lost him for ever.

I am nervous at the first knitting group after the holidays, anxious they might ask me questions again like Miss Lavish warned me. I stick to Miss Lavish and stare intently at her thick wool stockings and lace-up shoes, hoping to become invisible once more.

I need not worry, however, for on this particular day Lady Elmsleigh turns up and shows us all the photographs that were taken at her house during the Christmas and New Year's parties.

We gather round and gawp, trying to spot each other in the crowd.

“And I brought this along as well,” says Lady Elmsleigh, holding up a large, framed photograph. “It's a summer fête at Elmsleigh – the last time we had one, it seems – in 1929. I thought we could revive the tradition this year – what do you think?”

There are murmurs of agreement, and already the women are planning what stalls they could have, who could play the music, entertain the children. She gives the picture to Miss Lavish, and one or two of us lean over to see it.

“Oh, look!” says Miss Lavish. “That's me when I was younger! My goodness, look at my hair! What
was
I thinking?”

I giggle, and she points out some other people I would know: Mrs Chudd and Mrs Glass in their teens with low-waisted dresses and bobbed hair; Mrs Marsh carrying a toddler with another little boy in tow. Baggie Aggie Tugwell in a hat standing next to a young man and both laughing at something together. I am intrigued by the photograph. It is undeniable evidence that old people were young once, that they are just like me, that we really are all alike; and I find this both deeply reassuring and astonishing.

Soon everyone is craning to see it, and Miss Lavish yields up the photograph to Mrs Spud, and there are whoops and cries of wonderment for the next five minutes.

“Who's that then?” asks Mrs Big-fat-arse, pointing at the picture.

“Dunno. Looks familiar.”

“Never seen 'er.”

“Who's that, then, Annie?”

Tosser takes the picture and sucks in her cheeks, then chews on something imaginary in her mouth. “Where am I, then?” she says. “Oh aye. There I am. Ha! An' there's Tilda … See that? We looked smart then, didn't we? Heh!”

“Yes, but who are these two over here?” Mrs Arse points at two women on the edge of the photograph.

“You remember them! That's Mrs Shorecross and her daughter – only stayed a while. Now
she
was related to my neighbour Tilda, that's why she come over to Sheepcote, when 'er husband died.”

“
I
can't remember no Mrs Shorecross.”

“Oh! Tiz a tragedy about 'er, it is. Now,
this'll
make you think twice about that tosser Fairly. You listen to this …” Tosser is enjoying the attention. “Well, she had
three
children, only one boy died of scarlet fever and the other one died of … diphtheria I think twuz, and she only had the daughter left … Kath, she was called. Lovely girl. Well … oh, it breaks your heart, honest, she was engaged to a
lovely
young man an' they wuz about to be married an' off 'ee went to a TB sanatorium. Too brave for 'is own good 'ee wuz. 'Course, 'ee fought very young in the Great War – got all kinds of medals, 'ee did, but the mustard gas messed up 'is lungs good and proper, didn't it? Never come back from the sanatorium … An' there wuz that lovely girl with a baby on the way …”

“Never!”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“Well … Mrs Shorecross, she didn't 'ave a penny to 'er name, so she goes an' works at Heaven House an' takes Kath with 'er. But 'twuzn't Mr Fairly then, 'twuz old Mr Northwood, remember 'im? Dear old soul, 'ee wuz, an' 'ee took 'em in an' gives 'er time off with the baby – ooh! She
doted
on that baby, she did. An't would've gone on well enough, but
trouble
wuz round the corner …”

“What happened?”

“What trouble?”

“Well … Mr Northwood died, an' Mrs Northwood went into a 'ome, an' Mr Fairly come along, remember?”

“Oh yes!”

“He made some changes.”

“Smartened it up a bit, didn't he?”

“
Well
… Mrs Northwood made 'im promise to look after the two women like before, but …”

“What?”

“
Well
… young Kath got taken poorly, an' she died. An' then 'ee made poor old Mrs Shorecross go too, an' she died of a broken heart. All 'er family gone before 'er. S'enough to break anyone's heart, that is.”

“Mr
Fairly
did that?”

“Yes … tosser!”

“Mr
Fairly
? You sure?”

“Oh yes. Some do say 'ee 'ad 'is wicked way with the girl, too!”

“Never!”

“Annie Galloway! Listen to you!”

“I'm not saying tiz true. Only some do say …”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Oh, 'ee stayed there.”

“There's no Shorecross boy, is there?”

“Kath made 'im take 'is father's name, seeing as they wuz
about
to be married. Glover. Edwin Glover wuz 'er young man.”

Everyone looks at each other. People who haven't been listening look up. Lady Elmsleigh goes over to Tosser and leans over her, pointing at the photograph. “You mean this young girl is Tommy Glover's mother?”

“That's the one. Kathleen Shorecross. Barely stayed six months. If that.”

Now everyone is letting out gasps of amazement, but they are not really bothered – not like I am. Before long they are knitting again, and wittering on about pork rinds and tripe, and I am so churned up I wonder I'm not sick.

Still, I have something to tell Tommy now, and he will have to take notice of me.