Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (17 page)

What Joyce Shepherd had told no one was what she was doing on the day Rosemary went missing.

More than seven years had passed since the birth of their daughter, Rosemary, and in all that time she and Jack had tried hard to keep their romance alive. She remembered how he had come home when they first married, bathed by the fire, eyes wide with tenderness. And she had ached each evening for his return, every part of her sprung like an arrow.

It had been such a gift when Rosemary befriended the lovely Tommy. Sweet, gentle Tommy from the boys' home, two dreamy souls delighting in each other's company. And they had welcomed him – oh, how they had welcomed him! How good it had looked in the church to bestow so much love on an orphan boy, and how dearly they had grown to love him like one of their own.

What a delight – that day when Tommy and Rosemary went fishing – to spend some time together, just Joyce and Jack, lovers again. It had been her idea, and that was the pity of it now. But Jack had been keen too – oh, yes – he had been very keen! He had gone upstairs while she made sandwiches, and he had fiddled breathlessly in a cupboard for a blanket.

They had set off hard on Rosemary's heels to give themselves plenty of time, and they had chosen a spot well hidden by willow trees a mile or so downstream, knowing that the children were heading upstream. It was their own special spot, where once ten years before Jack had first told her that he loved her more than any man ever loved a woman. And in accordance with God's holy law, they had gone forth and been fruitful, and it was those care
free days of galloping blood that Joyce hoped to recapture on that modest outing in June.

It was all there, just as they remembered it. The willows dipping their leaves into the dark water, the blue dragonflies, the soft grass reeking of pollen. They lay down and made love to the smells of a full-blown summer.

They both heard it.At first it sounded like a human scream, but they dismissed it as a bird without interrupting their kissing.Then it came again, and again: a kind of squawk, the scream of a bird or the scream of a child.

Jack had stopped. “Listen!” he'd said, and propped himself on an elbow. It came again, an angry, frightened bird-scream.

“It's only a bird,” she had whispered huskily, and then (oh, shame!) she had rolled him in the grass and pinned him down. “A
bird
, Jack. No one's coming. And
you're
going nowhere!” She had planted her naked breasts on his chest and sunk her lips on to his hot face. He had succumbed.

So it had all been her doing, hers, that they went home with their Marmite sandwiches uneaten, unaware that they had listened to their only child drown and felt nothing but lust.

We are on the move at the first sound of voices, and set off across the fields.

We make our way through the sodden edges of the ploughed furrows, collecting mud on our boots and adding to the weight of our steps. We head for the road to relieve our feet, and the biting wind makes a clearing in the clouds, so that we are bathed in sunshine for a while.

The hedgerows are speckled with green now, little hawthorn buds and elder leaves pushing their way into spring. It is hard to believe that in a few weeks' time this will be the heaving, leaf-clad world that greeted me last year.

When we can, we take cover in woods, plodding on soggy paths through drifts of snowdrops, having lost the purpose of our escape, but unable to turn back.

By mid-afternoon we seem to have been walking for ever. My feet are so sore I can barely keep up. I'm still wearing the large wellingtons I slipped on to go up to see Aunty Joyce, and they seem to stay on the ground when I lift my feet. Most of the food has gone now, and we sit down on the roadside until teatime, weary and aimless.

A horse and cart clops along, and the driver stops to give us a lift. He sets us in the back with his sheepdog.

“You local?”

“No. We're from London,” says Tommy in his local burr. “Stayin' with relatives.”

“I see.” The driver is chewing on something green in his mouth – a leaf, perhaps. “Where's that, then?”

“Er … Bristol … well … near Bristol … past Stroud – you wouldn't know it.”

The driver carries on chewing, his back to us. “You're a fuck of a long way off, then.”

“Yes … well …”

“We got bikes,” I suggest. “Only, they got punctures.”

There is a silence. I feel uncomfortable that we can't see his face. He makes clicking noises to his horse.

“You want me to find someone to drop you 'ome, then?”

“No! No, that's all right. Thanks ever so much. Take us wherever you're going. That'll do us.”

The driver clicks to his horse again. “What about your old irons?”

“We'll get my Aunty Agatha to pick them up tomorrow in the car,” I say, affecting a much posher accent than I did the first time I spoke.

The driver turns and looks at us, still chewing. Then he turns his back on us again.

“Right you are.”

He takes us home to his farm where his wife feeds us fried bread and eggs and makes us sit by the fire. Then she puts us to bed in an old musty room in the loft, end-to-end in a single bed.

In the morning, with the trilling of a skylark rising over a ploughed field outside, Mr Fairly comes for us.

On my return, I am not sent to my room as I expect, but wrapped in a blanket and given a mug of Ovaltine beside the range. It is an overwhelming welcome, and I'm confused. I can hear Mr Fairly talking in the front room with Uncle Jack, and I'm afraid for Tommy. Aunty Joyce watches me closely as I take each sip. When the mug is empty she takes it and, to my amazement, she kneels down on the floor in front of me and throws her arms around me.

“Oh, Lord above, we've been that worried! Whatever possessed you? Have we been so awful?” She buries her face in my blanket and begins to cry. “Oh, my Lord! Oh, I'm so sorry! What have we done to you?”

I sit bewildered, then lift a hand to stroke her hair. “Please don't cry, Aunty Joyce.”

This makes her cry even louder. She lifts up a blotched face and whispers, “Am I so terrible?”

I try to wipe the tears with my own fingers. “It's not that, honest. I thought you didn't love me, it's true …” (more sobs) “… but Tommy had to leave, and I love him. He
had
to go. He couldn't stay, you see …”

Aunty Joyce recomposes her face. “So it
is
him, is it? Jack said it was all down to him, but I –”

“No! No, it's not
his
fault. It's Mr Fairly. Don't you realize what he's doing to them?”

“Kitty,” she sniffs, sitting back on her heels, “you mustn't listen to Tommy. You mustn't – ” She breaks off suddenly and clambers to her feet, smiling. Mr Fairly has come into the parlour with Uncle Jack and Tommy.

“What have you got to say for yourself, boy?” Mr Fairly pronounces the words slowly, savouring each one.

Tommy raises his eyelids tentatively and looks at Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce in turn, remembering perhaps the last time he was in this room, eating sponge cake. “I'm … sorry.I'm really sorry.”

“Go on!” he is prodded.

“I … I wuz wrong to run away an' wrong to take Kitty with me. She's only small an' she might've got 'urt.” He looks across at me and I try to send him a little cuddle in my eyes.

“At least she's safe,” says Aunty Joyce crisply, “and there's no harm done.”

Uncle Jack looks at her, perhaps surprised by her easy acceptance. “Yes,” he says. “That's the main thing. We've been worried sick, but at least she's safe.”

We are all five of us standing around the parlour table, as if in reverence to a pot of tea and a jar of marmalade that are standing upon it. I feel anything but safe.

“No!” blunders Mr Fairly. “It is not all right, I'm afraid. You see, you haven't considered, have you, whether Kitty is … well …” he assumes a gentler tone together with a look of mild disgust, “… intact?”

“What
?” whisper Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack in unison.

Mr Fairly looks pleased at this reaction, and nods sadly. “Yes, I think you know what I mean.”

“But Kitty's only nine! For goodness' sake!”

Mr Fairly gives a shrug of a look. “I know. Exactly. But you see, you don't know Tommy.” He leaves a meaningful gap for them to digest this horror. “And I do.”

Uncle Jack scratches his neck. “You're not suggesting … that Tommy has defiled our Kitty in some way? … Are you?”

It is the first time I have ever been ‘our Kitty' before, and it gives me an odd feeling. Everything is different from usual today. Even though Uncle Jack is still trying to use his posh voice, something significant has changed since the last time Mr Fairly visited – and not just because I know what I know: it has something to do with us standing at the uncleared breakfast table, and something to do with being ‘their' Kitty.

I notice the muscles in Tommy's cheeks flinch, and I realize with terror what Mr Fairly is capable of and what he would be capable of if he found out that Tommy had told his secret. I have already almost broken my promise, and the five of us stand around the table oozing secrets about each other, each in the thinnest of bubbles that could burst at any moment.

“Well, let's ask Kitty, shall we?” smiles Mr Fairly. “Where did you sleep during your little holiday with Thomas here?”

My throat is knotted in panic. “In a barn, sir.”

“And with whom?”

“With Tommy.”

“And at the farm?”

“In a bed, in the attic.”

“And with whom?”

“With Tommy – but it wasn't like that, it –”

“Did he cuddle you?”

I see Tommy's face: bright red and cringing.

“Yes, but –”

“Did he … touch you?”

“Yes, but –”

“Oh, stop, for heaven's sake!” cries Aunty Joyce, surprising everyone. “She's only a child. She doesn't know what you're driving at.”

“I do!” I pipe up, grateful for a moment to gather my thoughts. “What you mean, Mr Fairly, is did he shag me, isn't it?”

Everyone falls silent.

Aunty Joyce speaks first. “She doesn't know what it means.”

“I do!”

Uncle Jack clears his throat. “We need to talk about this sensitively. What Mr Fairly is suggesting, Kitty, is –”

“I
know
!”

Tommy covers his face.

“Kitty, don't be silly,” says Aunty Joyce. “You're only nine.”

“And I bloody
do
know what shagging is!”

“Kitty, you don't seem to –”

“It's what you were doing in the barn with Heinrich!”

My head fills with blood. I think I even hear a little pop. We are still all here, standing around the breakfast remains, but I have silenced them all. One, two, three grown-ups and Tommy, and I have shut them all up. I am screaming inside for someone else to speak. It isn't right that I should have this power. I don't want it. I shudder, trying to shake off the ugly omnipotence that has suddenly stranded me in this household. All I want is to go home and be insignificant again.

I chance a look at Uncle Jack's face, but it has crumpled like waste paper and distorted all the features. In Mr Fairly, I detect the faintest smile on his heavy lips before he clamps Tommy on the shoulder and says, “I think we'll return to this another time.”

As he goes out he looks Aunty Joyce full in the eyes, a trace of smugness creeping into his own.

I wish it had been a desire to protect Tommy that made me blurt out my revelation. I wish I could say I only wanted to save his reputation. But the truth is, it was nothing more than childish vanity. I wanted so much to prove I was a grown-up and understood grown-up things. After all the trouble language had got me into, I wanted to show off the fact that I wouldn't be caught out by it again. But here I am, watching the world of 1 Weaver's Terrace collapse around me, and it is all my fault.

As soon as they have left, Jack gathers up his half-made sandwiches and clamps the lid of his sandwich tin shut. He hovers for a moment to look his wife in the eyes. But it isn't a look of contempt or even hurt. He looks more like a trapped animal than anything else, cornered and frightened and unsure where to move next.

Then he is gone. He slams out of the back door and wheels his bicycle through the side gate on to Farm Lane. I feel he ought to say something, although I don't know what. He can't leave without a proper reaction, it's all wrong. At least he could show us how angry he is. So I follow him outside.

“Uncle Jack!” I call over the gate.

“What?” He does not look at me, but throws his leg over the cross bar.

“She loves you. She told
him
that an' all.”

He blows out a sudden puff of air contemptuously through his nose.

“She does! She loves you!” I insist desperately. I have to make amends for my treachery, but I'm afraid I'm making matters worse. He ignores me and starts to cycle off down the lane, and I don't know what to do for the best.

“She loves you!” I shout. “Everyone knows it!”

He turns into Church Road, cycling fast without looking back.

I am packed off to school with a note. It rains all day. Babs Sedgemoor and all the others want to know what happened, but I find it surprisingly easy to keep my mouth shut, because I never want to open it again.

The rain never stops, and I plod home along a muddy, puddle-filled road, with new leaves glistening above me and dripping down my neck. Tea is a silent affair with the two of us, after which Aunty Joyce washes herself to the bone – over and over: her hands, her arms, her face, her entire drawer of underwear.

I go to bed early, but can't sleep. She and I are both still waiting for him to come home, but there is no sign of him. Then at some stage in the night, after I must have dozed off, I hear their voices – so loud I can hear it all.

It seems Uncle Jack can't live with her because she has made him a laughing stock, and Joyce can't live with him because he has become a cold fish. There is sobbing and silence and more loud exchanges. On and on. All sorts of strange stuff.
She
doesn't think she's had enough to eat,
he
thinks she has an unnatural appetite, but she is convinced she's starved. I want to intervene and tell them to stick to the subject. All right, there may be something a bit unnatural about Aunty Joyce's love of offal, but no one starves in this house and no one is greedy. Now he is telling her she's rubbed his nose in the dirt. This is Aunty Joyce we're talking about. She doesn't rub anything in dirt.

My ravenous curiosity is defeated by sleep. When I awake it is to door-slamming, and Uncle Jack goes off far earlier than he needs to, leaving me alone on a Saturday with Aunty Joyce.

I find her sitting in front of her dressing table, staring into the three-way mirror.

“You all right, Aunty Joyce?” I venture after a while.

She doesn't turn to look at me, but keeps on staring.

“I'm sorry,” I murmur.

“It's not your fault.” She covers her face with her hands for a moment. “I brought it on myself.”

I want to put it all back together for her, I want to make things right because I've made everything go so wrong.

“He does love you, you know.”

She turns her pale face to me and tries to smile. “No,” she says, “I've ruined it all.”

I stand for a moment, wondering if she wants me to go, but I don't know where to go.

“Aren't you coming up the farm to do the teas?”

“How can I?” Her lips are trembling. “I can't show my face again. They'll all be talking.”

“Why should they? They don't know anything.”

Her eyes are fixed and empty.

“It's only a matter of time.”

“Well, Tommy won't say anything, I know he won't. And Mr Fairly won't, will he?”

“Oh God!” She covers her face again. “Oh God! To think that
he
knows! Whatever must he think of me? Oh God!”

“Well,
he
can't talk, can he? After everything
he's
been up to.”

“What do you mean? Whatever's Tommy been telling you?” She lets out a huge sigh. “Oh, that boy! It's all his bloody fault! If only we'd never set eyes on him!”

“If only
you
knew what
I
know, you'd … you'd …”Here I go again. “If you knew what Mr Fairly did to Rosemary, you wouldn't be so cruel to poor Tommy!
He
never killed Rosemary! It wasn't
Tommy
! Don't you see –”

“What do you know?” She grabs me by the shoulders, her eyes darting now. She has turned white. “What do you know? Tell me! Tell me!”

“I can't – it's a secret. I promised Tommy.” I wish to God I hadn't fed her these clues.

Aunty Joyce tightens her grip and shakes me. “TELL ME!”

So I tell her.

She disappears for the rest of the day. I don't know where to start looking for her, so I go up the farm and stay there doing odd jobs.

At around five o'clock, when I'm helping to bring the cows in for milking, she turns up. Her face is blotchy and her hair is all tatty and frizzy with rain. “Time for tea!” she calls breezily. She is not carrying a tray. She is calling me home. “Come on, Kitty! We'll be late for Uncle Jack!”

I wonder if she is scared to go home without me, but I'm flummoxed by the lightness in her voice. I follow her across the mire, my wellingtons sinking six or seven inches into the mud. The cows are swishing their tails, moving slowly into the cow barn. Aunty Joyce has plain shoes on, and she places a hand on a cow's back to steady herself through the slime. The cow moves forward suddenly, and she slips. She falls on her bottom, and sits bolt upright in a sea of wet cow dung.

The prisoners are inside the barn and have already started milking. One of the land girls spots her and asks, giggling, if she needs a hand. Aunty Joyce says no, she doesn't, and then does something really quite odd.

She sits back in the dung, then lies back. She stretches her arms wide and sinks her fingers into the muck. It is frothy and green and running with fresh cow's piss. And she giggles. She giggles like the land girl, but at the sky. Then she turns her head from side to side, covering her hair in the filth. I reach over to give her a hand, and she takes it, sitting up. As she climbs to her feet she falls over again, and laughs.

“Aunty Joyce! You're covered in it!”

“Yes!”

Her dress is like brown leather and her hair and hands are dripping with the reeking sludge. My own hand is covered in it too, and I lead her out on to the lane home. As soon as we start walking, Uncle Jack appears, coming up the lane to look for us.

“You're right, I'm filthy!” she shouts. “Absolutely filthy!” But then instead of laughing, she kneels down in the lane and sobs like a child.