Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (7 page)

Term ends. Spurred on by the impact of Tommy's picture of me, I decide to present Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack with a picture I have been painting at school for two weeks. The title Miss Hubble gave us was ‘Friends Talking', and I have painted a masterpiece.

“Thank you,” says Aunty Joyce, chopping cabbage at the table.

“Where shall I put it?” I ask, but I have already put it in pride of place on the dresser, propping the thin paper in front of a plate.

“That's nice,” says Uncle Jack, trying to show an interest. “What is it?”

I point out the lollopy figures with heads like balloons and weedy legs mixed up with thick chair legs. “It's the knitting group,” I say in disbelief. “See …” I point out the gangly arms and the brown wool – as thick as my paintbrush – streaming from each shovel-like hand. “That's Miss Lavish – never-been-ravished … that's Mrs Chudd – face-like-a –”

“
What
did you say?”

Uncle Jack suddenly takes out his pipe. I think perhaps I'm going to make them laugh, so I repeat it.

“Miss Lavish – never-been-ravished!” I'm smiling, waiting for them to smile too.

Uncle Jack leans forward from his armchair and says very, very slowly, “Go … and … wash … your … mouth … out – now!”

“But –”

“Now!”

I try to think how I could've made such a terrible mistake this time. It must be ‘ravished' that is causing the problem, but when I think how I know this word, it's just my dad home on leave, seeing my mum washing up and rushing towards her crying, “Oooh! I could ravish you!” and plonking a kiss on the back of her neck. Is kissing a dirty word in Sheepcote too?

They both think my half-smile is a sign of insolence. But I am so deeply hurt, and so embarrassed by my hurt, that I find myself playing with the edge of the table and humming. I walk over to the sink with lips trembling, still trying to trot out a little hum, but sobbing inside.

Ravishing soon begins to change its meaning. Mrs Chudd is obsessed with the idea of Germans entering Sheepcote by force and ravishing all the women, young and old, in their own back rooms. She has stories from her sisters or sisters' friends' neighbours about how one woman in the Channel Islands was tied up with good strong rope and bent over her kitchen table. “You wouldn't believe it, but she still 'ave the rope burns. Oooh …! They're brutes, you mark my words!” And then there is the German who tortured her sister-in-law's friend's piano teacher, and made her do ‘monstrous things' to him until she confessed to the whereabouts of the ARP headquarters. She always takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and exhales slowly, “
Filth
!”

I can't imagine why the German would want monstrous things done to
him
. Was he mad? Had war wounds made him a bit confused, or was he punishing himself for being such a baddie? And what was he doing with dirt? There's a connection here, I think, with Aunty Joyce's disinfecting, but I can't quite make it out for now. These knitting sessions are brilliant, though, and sure to reveal all at some point.

Another thing Mrs Chudd is fond of doing is being a woman.

“Don't forget, Aggie – it's hard in this war, I know: you're a war worker, you're a cook, you're a mother …” and here her voice would deepen huskily, “… but you're also a
woman
!”

Everyone nods in vague agreement, for they have heard it all before. I find it an intriguing statement coming from someone who resembles nothing so much as a potato. I suppose it is important, if you look like Mrs Chudd, to remind yourself occasionally that you are not in fact a root vegetable. Poor Mr Chudd! However does he cope? The postmaster is a quiet slip of a man who means no one any harm.

On one occasion I arrive first at knitting group, with Aunty Joyce trailing up the road behind me. Tommy is there playing a beautiful tune on the village hall piano. I've never heard him play before, and the little point of hair on the back of his dusky neck, and his magical fingers dancing over the keys to produce such sweet unexpected music, make me love him even more.

“What's it called?” I ask.

He turns round, surprised, and stops playing abruptly. “It's bollocks.”

Aunty Joyce appears at the doorway, and the sudden silence seems to become even more intense.

She stares at him: a chilling, haunted look that makes me bite my nail. And Tommy stands his ground, gazing back at her with such a curious mix of hurt and defiance that I don't know what to make of it. There is something between these two that is so powerful it fills the hall, and I am utterly relieved when Aggie Tugwell breezes in. “Oooh! Someone get the stove on! Tiz chilly in here today!”

Aunty Joyce makes her excuses and says she can't stay, and I feel confused. But as soon as she's gone, Tommy apologizes for being in the way, and starts to go. Then Lady Elmsleigh, arriving laden with old jumpers to unravel for wool, insists he must stay and play for us all, at least for a few minutes.

So as the chairs are set out and everyone straggles in, Tommy plays. People smile in approval and start on their socks and balaclavas. Then he finishes his piece, closes the piano lid, and says he must be off.

“That was beautiful, Tommy,” says Lady Elmsleigh, looking up from her circular needles. “What's it called?”

“Bollocks,” I inform them.

Everyone stops knitting and looks at me.

“That's what you said, wasn't it, Tommy? You said it was Bollocks.” I look at him, hopefully.

Lady Elmsleigh starts to laugh, and this gives everyone else leave to laugh too. I'm not quite sure how I've managed to entertain them this time, but it seems to be a success and I feel sure they're not laughing
at
me. Even smelly old Mrs Galloway seems to be laughing wheezily: “Tiz all bollocks if you ask me!”

Tommy leaves, but only after Lady Elmsleigh has extracted a promise from him that he'll come and play her piano whenever he wants to. This causes a little ripple amongst the two-ply, but no one is going to discuss him with Lady Elmsleigh there.

Instead they move on to their favourite topics of local gossip: love and lust. Lady Elmsleigh doesn't seem to mind, and I don't count. The thing is, these women have a strange way of forgetting there's a child present even after I've just spoken, or else they are so determined to exchange news that they ignore the fact. It's true I have perfected the distracted look, and they happily believe that I really am in a constant daydream. I can frown over a mistake, or gaze wistfully out of the window, mouthing the words of a song, and no one cares a jot what they are revealing to me about the inhabitants of Sheepcote.

It's at knitting group that I learn to spell. I only ever went to school for a year, if that, and I have a dim memory of the alphabet and buying things from a pretend shopkeeper. Aunty Vi taught me to read a bit, but I never really got started on writing. Since Miss Hubble's been helping me out, I'm beginning to get the hang of it, but it's the knitting group that really gets me going on the spelling. This is because occasionally, when they're on a very fruity topic, they do pay lip-service to my presence. They might speak of some girl getting in ‘ti-ar-oh-you-bee-elle-ee' and some couples in Sheepcote (notably Jack and Joyce) are thought to have not made ‘Hello VE' for years. Ess
i
ex is mentioned quite frequently, and I want to correct them and say I know it's pronounced ‘Essex', because my Uncle Frank comes from there, but then I'll give myself away.

As the weeks go on, though, I learn to spell with a zeal that surprises Miss Hubble, and I begin to throw myself into knitting for England with glee. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, clicking my needles quietly and producing intricate cable patterns while breaking the grown-ups' code, I am declared an asset to the Sheepcote Knitting Circle.

I go to Miss Hubble's house – or the classroom – for an hour or so every Wednesday, before tea. I copy out rows of the same letter, we practise sounds, I copy out poems, and she even helps me write letters to my mum.

And then it all begins to bear fruit, because one morning I get a letter.

My mum is not much of a letter-writer, but she does use joined-up writing, and I have to ask Aunty Joyce to read it for me. She plonks the tea-cosy on the pot and begins:

‘
Dear Kitty, Thank you for your letter. My you can write now too. I'm so proud of you. What a pity you don't like it
…' Aunty Joyce hesitates briefly. ‘…
there. I'm sure you will get to like it, even if the lady does seem a bit
…' She looks up, but I am running my nails along the chenille table-cover, ‘…
of a sourpuss. She probably just isn't used
…' More hesitation (I comb the tablecloth ferociously, without looking up). ‘…
to children.
'

“Hmm,” she says to herself.

‘
Well don't you worry the war will be over soon. And I hope to be coming up to see you Saturday week.Well must go to catch the post, Lots and lots of love, Mum.'

“She's coming!” I yelp. “When's Saturday week?”

Sourpuss informs me it is in eight days' time, and I can hardly contain my excitement. In fact, I am so busy picturing showing Mum the hens and how I can milk a cow that I forget to feel sorry for Aunty Joyce. Perhaps if she would just show a little hurt it would help. But she simply clears away the breakfast things poker-faced, and it doesn't seem to be worth apologizing.

Tommy is not happy about my mum coming. I can tell by the way he says, “That's nice for you,” and looks all put out. I have to scoop him out of his sulky misery by promising to introduce him to her and asking if he can come and live with us. Then we are both excited, and the eight days pass slowly but busily. We set rabbit snares together, and run home through barley fields high as my waist and awaiting the harvest. We go into town on the back of a cart and sell our rabbits, then use the money for fourpenny tickets at the Gaumont to see
Going My Way
, and a bag of chips on the way home.

When the appointed day arrives I am up early and Aunty Joyce puts a blue ribbon in my rigorously brushed hair. She makes me scrub my nails and pull up my socks, and Uncle Jack has polished my shoes.

We wait at the bus stop for the eleven o'clock and I am bubbling over with all the smiles I will smile when I see her, my mum, after so so long.

It is five minutes late and I fiddle with my collar as the passengers get off. One old lady and a GI.

“Ta-ta, then,” the bus conductress says to the old lady's back.

“Ta-ta – I'll tell Iris you wuz asking after her.”

And with a laugh and a clink of her money bag, the bus is gone.

We wait for the ten-to-twelve but she isn't on that one either. I feel so bereft I can hardly breathe, but I refuse to give up. We go to the post office to see if there are any messages, but Mrs Chudd just shakes her head decisively: “No messages, my love.”

We go to the shops until the next bus, when Aunty Joyce goes home but I hang around. And so the whole day is played out in this way, with me hanging around the bus stop for ten minutes before each bus is due, and then wandering off to kill time before the next one.

At seven o'clock Uncle Jack comes and takes me home.

My mother's non-arrival is a huge betrayal. In a world where there are murdered kittens and dead girls' clothes and rampant germs and words too dangerous to speak, I was certain my mum would provide some reassurance, certain she would be my champion in every way, and I would be safe. But now that she's let me down I am more alone than before, and I have to put up with knowing that they're whispering about her. Now they'll never know how normal I really am, and how much someone can love me.

Still, Aunty Joyce seems to mellow a bit during the days that follow. She lets me make cakes with her on Sunday, and on Monday she tells me I'm a real help to have around on washdays.

With all these germs to contend with, you'd imagine washday was the highlight of Aunty Joyce's week. Actually, I don't think she enjoys it that much, although the other women say, “She dun 'alf do a good line of washing, do Joyce,” and a good line of washing is the greatest compliment a Sheepcote woman can have.

On washday – always Monday – the parlour and the back kitchen turn into a steam bath, with all pans on to boil and a ruthless stench of strong soap. In the corner of the back kitchen a metal tub encased in stone is filled with water, and underneath it a little trapdoor in the stone is opened, coal is shovelled in and set alight. It takes an age for the deep tub of water to reach boiling point, and as it does the windows start to stream. Our faces turn a deep pink, our skin becomes clammy and our clothes stick to us.

Some weeks, a mystery lidded pail is brought in from the back yard, and I watch at a distance as Aunty Joyce pours a bloody liquid down the sink, then vigorously washes some rags under the cold tap as if it is a race against the clock. She drops them in one boiling pot, and handkerchiefs and knickers in each of the others.

When the tub is ready, in go the sheets and shirts, and Aunty Joyce pumps them up and down with a wash dolly. Meanwhile, as I'm home on holiday, she lets me do some scrubbing of dirtier items on the washboard in the sink. When I've finished I put them in the tin bath ready for rinsing, but she always comes and washes each item again, finding stains I just can't see, however hard I try. After the first few weeks I stop questioning her, and accept that my washing will never be quite up to scratch.

The tin bath is set up on two chairs near the boiler tub, and when things are ready she fishes them out with wooden tongs and slops them, steaming, heavy and lethally hot, into the cold bath for a rinse. She tells me to stand well back and screws her face up at the hot snakes of material that she eases at arm's length into the icy water.

We always have the wireless on all morning for washday. We listen to
Music While You Work
, the news, and all sorts of songs that get us humming and singing along. Aunty Joyce is a bit shy about singing at first, but I hold the broom handle and pretend to be Carmen Miranda or The Squadronaires and she rolls her eyes as I belt out ‘I, yi, yi, yi, yi I like you very much' or ‘A Little on the Lonely Side'. I can never catch all the words so I get lots of things wrong, and that always makes her smile.

On one particular occasion I make her smile a lot, and it is so lovely to see her in this mood I lark around even more.

I point the broom handle to her mouth to make her join in, and both together, very loudly, we sing:

“
IT'S RAINING VIOLETS!”

She giggles. Aunty Joyce actually giggles. At one point I even notice her hips swaying to ‘In the Mood'.

“Aunty Joyce …” I capitalize on our new-found intimacy to ask the question that's been nagging me for some time. “Why don't you have another baby?”

I see the back of her housecoat freeze for a moment, then her elbows start to move again, and her head bows. All I hear is the slop and scrunch as garments are rinsed at the sink.

“Aunty Joyce …?”

She doesn't turn round, but flops a wet wrung pillowcase on the draining board. “We could do a lot of things if things were different … But there! They're not. We must just make the best of it.”

I feed one of Uncle Jack's shirts in between the rollers of the mangle and turn the handle very slowly. “My mum always says, it's not what you
could've
done
if
, it's what you
can
do
despite
.”

“Your mother's a very smart woman.” She turns a little to see me and lowers her voice. “But then, your mother hasn't had to put up with what I've been through.”

I am indignant. I think back to the bombed-out houses, the babies' rattles, photograph frames, bits of leg, half-eaten pies, peeping through the rubble.

“A lot of people have,” I say.

She clenches her lips and wrings some poor garment to death. “Well, I can't bring her back, can I? I can't ever bring my little Rosemary … back …”

It is the first time I've heard the name, and we catch each other's eye as if she has let slip a huge secret.

“You could have another one.”

Her eyes are on me with such fury I'm afraid she's going to lose it altogether like when I wore Rosemary's clothes.

“I could
what
?”

Maybe she misheard. I take up the challenge, hopefully: “You could have another baby. I know it wouldn't be the same an' that, but it would be just as lovely, and then you wouldn't have time to be so sad.”

She is gasping for air like a drowning woman, and I suspect she may not like the idea.

“You don't understand!” she hisses through the steam. “How could you? You're far too young.”

Actually I'm quite grown up. Miss Lavish and people like that always stop me and Aunty Joyce in the street and say things like “Poor mite, away from home – they grow up so fast in a war” or “It's the children I worry about – they've been robbed of a childhood.” I'm convinced that because I've suffered, I understand all suffering. And maybe I do understand much of it, but I have no idea of the sad demons inside Aunty Joyce. But there it is. I think I have her sorted. I think I have the whole world sorted, and that in my new war-enhanced, child-wrenched-from-the-bombing status, I have wisdom beyond compare, so I frown at a wet sock and say glibly, “What don't I understand? I'd've thought a new baby would be better than no baby.”

Aunty Joyce takes in a long slow breath and seems to forget to breathe out. It is a long time before she speaks. After much thwacking and wringing of garments she sighs again and says, “Even if you're right, Jack would never … would never agree.”

“Oh, why worry about that? Anyway, he'd crack up when he saw it. Just think, it might be a little boy next time and Uncle Jack could take him on the trains. You could call him Glen or Frank – or Gregory – and you could knit him blue woollies, and when he grows up he'll sing on the wireless or act in the pictures and you could have a load of grandchildren. Just think –”

“Stop it! And don't you dare say anything to Uncle Jack, for pity's sake.”

I fall silent, hurt that she doesn't see I'm trying to help.

“I'm sorry, Kitty, but you don't understand. Having a baby … the man needs to … to agree. A woman can't have a baby by herself …”

I can't get the hang of this agreement lark. Of course you can have a baby on your own. My Aunty Babs had a baby and she wasn't even married. I'm sure you don't have to get anyone's agreement.

“I don't think that's right, Aunty Joyce. If you really want a baby, then I don't think Uncle Jack has much say in the matter.”

She brings over a bucket full of wrung clothes for me. I try to read her face: it's not cross, it's more troubled.

“A baby can't just happen, look. It has to be made … and that's … where the disagreement starts. There!”

She plonks the bucket down decisively as if that's an end to it. I picture Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce making a baby from modelling kits, carefully gluing bits of balsa wood together – like the boys do in school – and suddenly having a row over where to put the nose. Suddenly I remember the rabbits. I wonder if Aunty Joyce knows the Facts of Life, and how she managed to have Rosemary without noticing she'd been shagged first. Perhaps Uncle Jack just nudged her a bit while she was asleep. She looks very hot and bothered, and I think it might be too cruel to tell her the true facts at this moment. Anyway, a good Bing Crosby song starts up on the wireless and I jump up to grab the broom handle again.

“Imagine I'm Uncle Jack:

I'm so busy exaggerating my passion to the broom handle, it is a few moments before I notice she has turned away and taken a deep breath again, and she is not smiling.

I sit at the mangle and feed the rinsed garments into its rollers, while Aunty Joyce tries by the sink to wring out the larger unwieldy items. I am not allowed to help as I see her wrestling with a sheet like an enormous steaming serpent about her neck.