Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (22 page)

Miss Pegler's elaborate preparations produced scrambled eggs on toast and tinned fruit.

“Would you like salt and pepper on your eggs?”

“Both, please.”

“I'm afraid I've run out of pepper.”

“Oh, well. Just salt's fine.”

“Good, good.”

She ate slowly, watching me take each mouthful.

“Do you like pineapple?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“I'm afraid I don't have any. I only have peaches.”

“Peaches are lovely too.”

She put them in front of me, and smiled. I knew I should make conversation but I could think of nothing cheerful to say.

“I'll buy pineapple tomorrow,” she said.

Beyond her shoulder, perched on the piano, was a framed photograph of a young RAF officer, looking slightly embarrassed at having his picture taken. Normally I would ask about him, not just out of politeness, but out of curiosity. But this evening I couldn't face the unhappy, heart-rending story that I knew would follow. He would've begged to marry her, she would've said let's wait until after the war, he would've been shot down two days later, and she would've regretted it ever since. Better to let her chew on her peaches and chat on about how much she wanted a proper staff room. I didn't want to hear that other stuff. No thanks. Although I might as well have done, for the thinking about it affected my ability to swallow.

What was it with dead people? There he was, preserved forever in his frame, youthful as the day it was taken. Miss Pegler had had no chance to see whether, at their very next meeting, he might have pissed her off a bit, flirting with some other girl, getting a bit too drunk with his mates, making fun of her slightly beaky nose or her ever so slightly goofy teeth. She hadn't had a chance to see whether he patronized her opinions or beat her black and blue after a night's drinking or broke wind loudly after every meal. He was just there – like Tommy really – preserved forever in his perfection.

I could barely eat. The peaches had become sweet young flesh (young officer, perhaps?) preserved in some chemical fluid.

Miss Pegler began to pour the tea, and then looked anxiously at me. “Would you prefer coffee?”

It felt like a trick question.

“No, thank you.”

“Good.”

I took some forget-me-nots I had gathered into the classroom on my way to catch the bus. As I came out of the school I spotted Miss Lavish leaving the school house by the wicket gate and waving to Miss Pegler.

“Kitty!”

I looked away anxiously towards the bus stop.

“I was hoping I'd catch you. Harry had a phone call – oh …” The bus rounded the corner and sailed past before I could reach the road. “Oh, heavens! Was that your bus?” She must've taken my frown to indicate annoyance about the bus. Much as I longed for Miss Lavish's warmth and cocoa, I felt trapped by her bad news. “When's the next one?”

“Seven o'clock. It's the last one.”

“Of course it is. Come on back with me for some cocoa. Harry's going out to his Sheepcote Players thing. They're doing
The Pirates of Penzance
.”

I feigned interest, and went reluctantly up the hill to her house.

Miss Lavish was smiling when she sat me down (good sign). She poured me cocoa and force-fed me biscuits, then she sandwiched one of my hands between hers and frowned at my lap (not good at all).

I could feel the nausea coming back. It was so sudden I had to put down the bourbon biscuit I had just munched into.

“It's Betty Chudd, isn't it? It's all right, I know. She's had a child, hasn't she?”

“Betty Chudd? Heavens, she's only been married two months. A dentist – lives in Gloucester.Tabby Chudd is pleased as punch – ”

“But there's a Chudd in my class.”

“Mrs Chudd's! She said it was an accident, but we're not so sure. What with Joyce and Jack starting all over again, I think she got a bit broody.”

“I see.”

The clock on the wall seemed to tick very loudly, and Miss Lavish renewed her squeeze on my hand. I was certain I didn't want to hear what was coming, but she was going to tell me, and I would have to bear it.

“Tommy was so afraid of what Fairly might do to him that he ran away. Only he didn't go to sea at all. Apparently he found work on a farm in Wiltshire or some place, and he telephoned Lady Elmsleigh every week to hear whether Fairly had gone or not, and begging her not to say where he was.”

“But … he wrote to me – from his ship.”

“He sent it to Lady Elmsleigh –
she
gave you the letter. I've had long, long chats with her, I can tell you. She's never forgiven herself. Anyway, when he heard Fairly was looking for him he faked that telegram you had.”

“Faked it? But he –”

“Thought it was better
you
heard, you see, because if it went to Fairly, he'd have known it was a fake straight away. Also he was afraid you were too small to keep a secret like that – especially if Fairly got hold of you. He thought that if Fairly heard about his death second-hand, and especially if he saw you genuinely grieving, then it would be more convincing.”

“But he wouldn't have –”

“He was going to tell you a few days later.”

Right, of course. I couldn't have kept my mouth shut for more than two minutes about anything. But this didn't make sense. I knew Tommy was dead. I knew Tommy was dead because I had grieved for him for eleven years. I had ached with guilt and longing throughout the dregs of my childhood and right through my teens. Every old song on the wireless, every lark in the morning, every moth, every spider, every reeking lane in spring, every whiff of wild garlic, every cow's breath, every owl's hoot, every boy's head from the back … It had been a long, slow, messy burial. But he was dead. The smells of this room with its old piano came rushing at me like a gale. These too had been buried, but here they were: that musty, dusty, dead smell, redeemed by the vibrant one of leather from the sofa and apples on the sideboard. I saw my free hand on my lap and it didn't seem to belong to me.

“Of course, when he told Lady Elmsleigh what he'd done she was appalled. She came tearing round here – can you remember? – to tell you, only it was the day you were leaving –”

“– and I'd just had some other bad news …”

She reached out a cool hand and placed it on mine. “I'm so sorry, Kitty.”

I stared at her elegantly veined hand. Strange words shot out from my lips. “Tommy's alive!”

She smiled. I looked at her intently. Everything seemed to hang on that smile.

“Is he here now?”

“I think so. But –”

Her clock started to chime the half-past loudly.

I stared at her sparkling grey eyes, trying to read what else there was to be said, parched for more information. But I was so excited by now that I wanted her to cut to the chase, I wanted to wind her up so she'd reach the conclusion. I was dying to hear as fast as possible, and the tension was so numbing that I couldn't open my mouth to ask what I really wanted to know.

“Come back after school tomorrow if you like.”

I swallowed, disappointed, impatient. I felt unable to move, as though if I went out of her front-room door any number of unknown things could happen to me, and I wouldn't be ready for them.

“Go on,” she said, smiling in exactly the same conspiratorial way she had twelve years ago when she bent down and whispered, ‘Call me Lavinia.' “Don't be late for your bus!”

She took pity on me and walked with me to the bus stop.

“I suppose he's …”

“Mm?” That glint in her eyes again. “He was so desperate to get married that he proposed to the first girl he met. That was after looking for you in London with Jack, of course.”

“So …”

“She turned out to be no good, with a man in Painswick, a man in Stroud, another in Cheltenham. Gracious, she was a terrible mistake! Then he made another big effort to find you again. He went to live in London to study – heavens! – he must've worn some shoe leather looking for you, Kitty. Anyway, he got engaged again last year – ”

“So he's …”

“Married?” Her eyes sparkled gleefully at me again. “No. She broke it off.”

“Poor Tommy!”

She stopped and gave me a rebuking sort of a look. “You don't mean that.”

“I …”

“She said he was too clingy. But we all knew the real reason.”

“What?”

She raised one mischievous eyebrow. “Well … it's no fun being second best, is it?”

There ahead of us was a woman whose walk looked familiar, and whose hairstyle had not changed in eleven years. She was wearing a splendid green-flowered dirndl and was flanked by children: a boy about eight, a girl about five or six, and another girl of about ten trailing behind – the Shepherd girl from my class. And beside them a man walking a bicycle – the same bicycle, lovingly maintained down the years.

Miss Lavish looked at me and smiled expectantly. But the sudden vision took me by surprise, and I felt a little overwhelmed. I took deep breaths and gazed at Aunty Joyce's hands holding the two smallest children, and at the five pairs of Shepherd feet clopping on the tarmac that used to be yellow stone.

I slowed my pace. I didn't want to catch up with the Shepherds, not yet anyway. I was seeing them as I'd always hoped they would be, all those years ago, and I wanted to keep my big mouth shut.

“They're going to the rehearsal in the hall. All the little Shepherds are in Harry's production. Oh – and someone else you'll remember: Heinrich Schmidt.”

“What happened to him?”

“Heinrich? You know the Russells? Russells' farm up the other valley? Well, not long after you left he went up Russells' sheep farm to work. And old Mr Russell, he was pleased as punch with him. And then when he died he left him the farm. Didn't surprise anyone either – and no one minded! Oh – and you'll never believe who he married …”

“Miss Hubble?”

“My goodness!” She looked at me closely. “You have done your homework!”

“Just took the register, that's all.”

She laughed and looked down at her handlebars.

“You see all the good things that have come out of all those wretched years?”

“Maybe not come
out
of, maybe just come
after
…”

Miss Lavish brought her bike to a sudden standstill, although we were still thirty yards from the bus stop.

“Perhaps we have no power for good at all, no way of helping to change the course of events whatsoever. You're the last person I would expect to hear that from …”

“Why?”

She raised her eyebrows as if expecting me to answer my own question. “The little girl from London who comes and changes everything?”

“I didn't do anything.”

I started to move on but then stopped: the Shepherds had come to a halt further on, outside the village hall.

Miss Lavish said nothing, just smiled and looked ahead. Aunty Joyce was laughing, and almost toppling over as she knelt down to give her youngest girl a giant hug. Uncle Jack had said something to make the other two laugh and they were giggling. I looked back at Miss Lavish.

“Come on!” she said. “You don't want to be late.”

She was full to bursting with something. Whether it was tears, laughter or some mischief I couldn't be sure.

“Harry had a phone call earlier.”

“You said.”

“Yes. It was from Tom.”

“Tommy?”The nose of the bus appeared through the thickening hedgerows. “What? What did he say?”

Miss Lavish stepped up to the road and put out her arm, since I was clearly not going to.

“He's coming to tea tomorrow – can you join us? About five or so?”

The bus stopped. I stared at her radiant scheming face. I saw suddenly how beguiling it could be, and thought of Tosser's Lavinia story of love under the beech trees. And then I could see why she wanted me to grab my chances, and I hoped she wasn't misconstruing things a bit just to try and nudge events along which were never going to happen.

“Not wishin' to hurry you or nothin'.” The bus conductor was hanging out of the door. “Which one of you lovely ladies is wanting my carriage this evening?”

I stared at Miss Lavish in panic. “Does he know I'm coming?”

“No – go on! They'll go without you!”

I didn't want to meet him over tea with Miss Lavish and Boss Harry. What on earth would I say to Tommy over scrambled eggs and tinned peaches? I had spent a tortured night in the bed at my digs, frustrated at the time we had lost, angry with him for his deceit, furious with myself for not staying in touch, fearfully, painfully, outrageously excited to be seeing him again.

I was up so early I caught a bus at six thirty, and went for a walk before school. I swung over the five bar gate with my briefcase and stomped through the long damp grass up over the fields. I began to hope I would meet him here, away from everyone. I thought if I kept on walking he would appear on the horizon, possibly with a few violin players.

My feet were getting wet, but I hurled them down one after the other, raking them through the dew, in rebuke for not leading me back here years ago.

I stopped at the next stile and caught my anguished breath. What if I
had
come back sooner? What would I have been to him? A little friend, a chum, a pal. He had never shown the remotest interest in me romantically. That had all come from the daydreams of a little girl. At least now I had something new to show him; the grown-up Kitty I'd so wanted him to see. I looked down at my breasts. I would never be Betty Chudd, but I might just do.

Even so, I knew that the reason my pulse pounded was not only a nervousness about how he would find me, but a terror of finding he was not anything like the Tommy presented in my memories.

Miss Pegler was still full of apologies for my ‘baptism of fire', begging me not to mention it to my college. I could just sit and observe this morning. I was relieved. Joy and terror were having a tug-of-war in my throat, and I didn't feel like speaking.

After the children had filed in, she held up a plan of the new school buildings. They all leaned sideways and elbowed each other to squint at a collection of thick black rectangles with gaps in them. As soon as they saw it they frowned and lost interest. She might as well have been holding up a copy of the
Financial Times
.

“This is what we call a
plan
. It's like a view from the air.” She drew a rectangle on the board to represent the classroom, and put in a little diagonal line to represent the door. “Now, what you're going to do this afternoon is
design
your own
plan
of your
ideal
school.” There was a muffled sigh from the back row, and a ripple of excitement from the rest of them. “Don't forget to include the sort of
facilities
you'd like to see in your
ideal
school. By that I mean cloakrooms, assembly halls … a gymnasium even – why not? Anything you would like to see in your dream school.”

“A juke box!” shouted one of the boys.

“A smokin' room,” grunted another.

The girls, on the other hand, could think of no greater luxury than indoor toilets. Miss Pegler tried to hush them, and she set the monitors to work, handing out sugar paper and pencils. I wandered between the desks from time to time, smiling and pretending to show an interest, but I saw nothing.

I kept imagining how he would be, and different versions of him kept popping up. There was an old sea-dog with a great scrubbing brush of a beard, trailing wafts of tobacco and farting without apology. He slapped me on the shoulder and said he'd waited eleven years for me, and I ran so fast I actually found myself accelerating up the aisle between the desks with my hand clapped to my mouth. Then I saw him with his hair slicked back, a teddy-boy suit, winkle-pickers and his own London flat. I walked up to his front door just as he was coming out, and he said, “Hey, doll!” and a swarm of pony-tailed girls came from nowhere and thwacked me with their roomy handbags. Then he just turned up in Sheepcote school one day with his gum boots on, sucking on straw and smelling of dung. He kept asking me to marry him and when I said I'd think about it he pushed me up against the corridor wall and said I had to: I couldn't let him down, he'd bought the buttercup field – no, he'd even built a cottage on it and now he needed some children to help work the land. It was all arranged. Aunty Joyce had made my wedding dress and Miss Lavish had already knitted the baby bootees. I tried to say no, but Mrs Chudd shouted, “Shame on you!” and threw her knitting down, then Mrs Glass and Mrs Tugwell and Mrs Marsh and the whole of Sheepcote were throwing stones at me and slabs of mud. So I said yes, and the next thing I knew I was knee deep in cow dung for the rest of my life.

Then I remembered him drawing my picture, and he was suddenly a depressed and damaged artist, forcing me back to his studio where every picture was a picture of me – in oils, watercolour, gouache; portrait, nude, abstract, classical, two-headed – but always me, staring wistfully or ghoulishly out of the canvases which he had manically amassed in crateloads, and he had done so many that he had had to rent a warehouse to store them all, and he had turned to drink, belching out a proposal which was more of a command as he handcuffed me to his easel and hissed,
“Together for ever!”

Then something interrupted my ramblings, and it was something Miss Pegler was saying:

“That's right. An architect is someone who
designs
buildings. This is the architect's sketch of what it will look like when it's finished. And do you know, the architect who drew this was actually an
orphan
at Heaven House when it was a boys' home – ”

“He's comin', miss!” A boy from the back was looking out of the window. “Just got off the bus! I can see him comin'.”

Miss Pegler looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “Would you …?”

But I was out of there.

I was running out of the door, my head turned sideways at the windows, catching glimpses of the umbrella bobbing up and down above the railings. It must have begun to rain. I sped down the narrow corridor and out of the front door, breathless, my eyes still fixed on the bobbing umbrella, watching it come closer.