Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (8 page)

It is August, and for the past few days Uncle Jack has been practising the lesson he will read in church. He stands in front of the range with his Bible lifted high in front of him, and spouts forth the gospel. It is something about the Sun of Man and separating sheep from goats. Aunty Joyce looks up from her darning from time to time and tells him to mind he doesn't drop the ‘h' on this word or that, or to keep his shoulders back.

When Sunday comes I find myself all caught up in Uncle Jack's excitement as the first hymn ends and he makes his way to the golden eagle for the lesson.

It is the first time I've listened to it properly all the way through. There seem to be some sheep sitting on a king's right hand, and some goats sitting on his left one. So it is either a very giant king or these are some pretty small animals. One way or another it doesn't sound too comfortable, but it does sound interesting, and I'm quite keen to hear what the king's going to do about it. Uncle Jack, who looks very small behind the golden eagle, and has been mumbling a little with his head down, suddenly catches Aunty Joyce's eye and must remember her advice, for he thrusts his shoulders back and booms out: “
THEN THE KING WILL SAY
…” (he is loud for a few seconds) “
to those on his right
…”

Mr Fairly is listening with his head tilted back, giving the impression of a connoisseur awaiting the moment when he might be called upon to give his marks out of ten. His eyes are fixed on the uppermost panel of a stained glass window (Jesus with some sort of shepherd type) which tilts his nose in a distinctly up position.

“
Then the righteous will reply
,‘
Lord, when was it that we saw you
HUNGRY
and fed you
,
or thirsty and gave you drink, a stranger and took you
HOME,
or naked and clothed you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and come to visit you?' And the king will answer, ‘I tell you this
:…”he catches sight of us again and booms out, “…
ANYTHING YOU DID FOR ONE OF MY BROTHERS, 'OWEVER
HUMBLE – HOWEVER
'UMBLE
–
YOU DID IT FOR ME
.'”

I have been lulled by his soft rolling accent, but now I lift my head and listen intently.

“
Then
HE
will say to those on
HIS
left HAND
,‘
The curse is upon you; go from my sight to the eternal fire that is ready for the devil and
HIS
angels. For when I was
HUNGRY
you gave me nothing to eat, when thirsty nothing to drink; when I was a stranger you gave me no
HOME;
when naked you did not clothe me; when I was ill and in prison you did not come to my
HELP.'
And they too will reply, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you
HUNGRY
or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and did nothing for you.' And
HE
will answer, ‘I tell you this: anything you did not do for one of these, 'owever
HUMBLE – HOWEVER
'UMBLE – you did not do for me
…'”

Everyone rustles and rumbles to their knees. I peek out from between the fingers which cover my face as he walks proudly back to his seat. I think Aunty Joyce and I both feel relieved that it is over, and I feel oddly protective of him as he kneels beside me in a sweat. I stick two thumbs in the air to show my approval, and I can't help cupping my fingers and commenting, in a loud whisper, “Fackin' ace!”

He shoots me a furious glance, and she rolls her eyes in despair. I put my palms together and pray loudly:

“Our Father, which art in Heaven, Harold be Thy name …”

The next day we are just starting tea when there is a visitor. It is really frustrating because there is half an apple pie to finish up and I have been looking forward to it. But it turns out to be someone Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce are honoured to see. At last I am to meet Mr Fairly Himself.

He comes alone and strides into the front room before Aunty Joyce has time to suggest it. Uncle Jack is soon up from the table and wiping the jam from his mouth. He barges past me with an outstretched arm for Mr Fairly.

“Mr Fairly – Charles, delighted to see you!” He seems to have got a new voice altogether. “To what do we owe this pleasure? Do take a seat.”

I loll around the doorway pretending to examine the paintwork. He is shorter than Uncle Jack but somehow quite imposing.

“This must be Betty!” he booms, smiling, as he catches sight of me fingering the wallpaper. I step forward and look him in the eyes. They are pale blue with pupils like full stops.

“I'm Kitty,” I say. “Not Betty.”

Aunty Joyce laughs like a bell chime and whisks me away to make a cup of tea. “She's from London!” she chirps over her shoulder, as if to apologize for me, and hisses, “Don't be so rude!” as soon as we reach the parlour.

We watch the kettle boil on the range and say nothing. Every time I'm about to open my mouth she sends me to fetch cups or wash spoons. From the front room we can catch words like ‘unhealthy' and ‘stop' from time to time.

“I should've made a cake today – I was going to, wasn't I? Oh hang! I haven't even any biscuits.
What
am I going to offer him? Look in the biscuit tin, Kitty.”

I lift the lid of a rectangular tin and a stale smell comes out. There is half a malted biscuit that must have been there for weeks.

“The apple pie!” Joyce is triumphant. She snatches it from the table and cuts a huge wedge from it, placing it in one of the china bowls we never use from the dresser.

I hold open the door as Aunty Joyce takes in the tray.

“Tea, Mr Fairly – Charles.”

It is as if they have been given leave to call him by his Christian name but can't quite believe they deserve it.

“I'm ever so sorry there's no biscuits, but would you like some apple pie?”

“Well, really, this was only a fleeting visit …” Then he eyes the pie and moistens his lips. “Well … it does look delicious, Joyce. Perhaps I will be tempted. But then I must fly.”

Aunty Joyce sits with them and I am shooed away as Mr Fairly munches his way through half of our evening meal. I alternately sit by the shoes in the hall or drape myself around the parlour door, listening carefully.

“I've told Jack it's got to stop … I'm worried for the girl. She's only – how old is she? Nine?
Eight
? Well … I ask you … I'm afraid boys of thirteen …” and then his voice becomes lower and it is harder to make things out. “… Boys' home lads … Tommy … there's no … what he'll get up to … but you … the blame if anything happens to her.”

Then his voice is suddenly louder: “Please – now I've upset you, Joyce – I'm so sorry.” And I can hear Aunty Joyce sounding muffled and upset, and then offering him more apple pie, and
he accepts
!

Out pops Joyce's head smiling meekly; she says, “Fetch some more pie, there's a poppet, and use a clean plate! And put the kettle on!”

He's just finishing the pie, when Aunty Joyce springs towards my tray in the hall and grabs the pot. “More tea?”

“No, thank you, I'd best be off.” He stands up, brushing the crumbs from his trousers on to Aunty Joyce's spotless floor rug. “I hope you don't mind my calling round, but you can see how serious this could be.”

“Of course. Indeed,” says Uncle Jack, in his voice borrowed from the Gaumont cinema screen. “Well, many thanks for letting us know, Mr Fairly – Charles.”

“Bye-bye, Betty!” he says, stroking me under the chin, and beaming.

“Bye-bye, Mr Hairy,” I say in my own best toff's voice. He chuckles amiably.

“And you look after Mr and Mrs Shepherd, now. They're very special people.”

Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack glow as they see him off.

So, that is Mr Fairly. He has come with a very mysterious message. He is smiling and friendly and important. And he has eaten all our pie.

Now there is a new mystery. A few days after Mr Fairly's visit Uncle Jack stops my extra lessons with Miss Hubble, and forbids me to visit her again. This makes no sense at all. It can't be because they're afraid of stuff I'll write to my mum, because I can write my own letters now, without anyone's help. Something is going on, and I want to know what it is.

In an effort to keep me away from Tommy, Aunty Joyce packs me off as often as possible to play with another evacuee girl of my own age, Babs Sedgemoor. Babs lives near the pub with Mrs Marsh (of the small moustache and lost sons) and Mr Marsh who delivers the milk with his white carthorse called Boxer. Babs was evacuated four years ago when her mum was killed in the Blitz. Her dad is a prisoner of war somewhere. I like Babs. She has straight jet hair and eyes as blue as Elizabeth Taylor's. In fact, when she shows me Boxer to stroke I could swear I'm in the film
National Velvet.
She's got a local accent though, because she's been here so long, and she seems to know a lot of things I don't. She tells me Mrs Marsh can't bear to see the young men working in the fields or in reserved occupations when hers have died for their country because it isn't bloody fair. Babs thinks it isn't bloody fair either, and I agree. She says she feels like Mrs Marsh too, sometimes, when she sees Sheepcote children with their mums and dads. Although I point out that not many of them have got both parents at the moment.

“Still,” she says, “it's not bloody fair.” And I agree.

Some days we play skipping with Iris Holland in the street. Iris has tight little pigtails and embroidered pockets. We sing “Kitty's in the kitchen, doin' a bit of stitchin'” and “Vote vote vote for little Iris …”

Iris says her mum doesn't like her playing with me, and when I ask her why she just snorts and says it's because I'm friends with Tommy Glover and he's ‘a bad sort'.

“He's not,” I say.

“She says he's trouble.”

“Why's that then?”

“Dunno. Says he killed someone or summut. Don't bother me. I'll play with who I like, I will.”

But one day Mrs Holland comes calling down the street, “Iris? Iris!”

“Oh, bugger,” says Iris, and she has to go home and stick stamps in her savings book.

It is on this day, when Babs and I are left alone with two ends of a skipping rope, that I spot a strangely familiar figure coming up the road. It starts as little more than a blob of colour, and turns into a woman with a baby on each hip and the unmistakable penguin walk of my mother.

At first I feel put out, not just because it is unexpected, but because I'm with Babs and I can't be as overjoyed as I'd like when I know she'll think it bloody unfair. But as my mother comes close and bursts into a look of joy, and I see the beads of sweat and her exhausted fat calves, I make a run for it, almost knocking her over in my hugs and kisses.

“Steady on! Phew! God Almighty, I feel like I've just climbed bleedin' Everest! It's like carrying two sacks of potatoes with these two. Here y'are – you wanna hold one?”

She hands me one of the twins – Peter, judging by his knitted blue jerkin. I smile at him, and he looks at me indifferently.

“Look, Babs!” I shout, trying to include her. “It's my baby brother, Peter. And this is Shirley. And this is …”

“Hello, Babs, I'm Kitty's mother.”

Babs smiles with one side of her mouth, and takes Shirley to hold only because my mum plonks the baby in her arms.

I want to throw my arms around my mother and squeeze her tight, but I'm hampered by the baby and the presence of Babs. It is something I look forward to later on.

“This where you live then, is it?”

“No, I'm further up the road – I'll show you.”

“Gawd Almighty! More mountains to climb! It's dead pretty though, I'll grant you. You landed on your feet here, didn't you?”

I start up the road, and Babs hands the baby back to my mother. We climb the gradient in the noonday sun and, although I'm over the moon and showing it on my face, my back is burning with guilt as Babs looks after us till we disappear around the hedgerows.

Aunty Joyce greets us in a flap. She hasn't done her hair and she hasn't made a cake and the parlour is a tip and whatever must Mrs Green
think
of her?

“You keep a very tidy house, Mrs Shepherd,” reassures my mum. “I should've let you know but I only found out yesterday I could have the day off. An' it's so difficult with twins – I can't tell you,” and all the time she's looking around her as if she's in some kind of palace. That's because we're in the Front Room. I'm proud to think Aunty Joyce deems my mother fit for this privilege, but it's a daft place to take us.

“Oooh, I'm sorry, Mrs Shepherd, you 'aven't got anywhere I can change Shirley, 'ave you? Only it's been a long journey an' they're both sopping wet, but Shirley's worse than that. Phwoar! Bet you can smell it too! What a welcome, Shirl! That's no way to say hello!”

When she stops for breath Aunty Joyce takes her into the parlour and the back kitchen. I need hardly describe Aunty Joyce's face as she fetches a bucket, fills it with water and bleach and holds it out at arm's length for Mum to put the soiled nappy in. Then she tells me to take it outside.

When all the fuss is over, my mother gets talking to Aunty Joyce about the journey and the munitions factory and the crèche for the twins, over a nice cup of tea. I forgot how much my mother talks. On and on she goes about this and that, and I am still waiting for the moment when I can hold her like she holds me in my dreams.

“I hope our Kitty's been behaving herself, Mrs Shepherd.” She gives me a wink and holds her free arm out to stroke my head. “Must be hard, takin' in other people's children, 'specially not havin' any yourself. I don't blame you, mind, believe me. I'm tellin' you, you're well out of it! No offence, Kitty – you're a darlin' an' always have been – hope she is with you as well, Mrs Shepherd – no, but what I mean is you can't
imagine
how hard it is with
babies
.”

Aunty Joyce folds her lips together and looks at the rim of her teacup.

“I'm still breastfeeding, you see, so on the train – blimey, can you imagine? – it's not so bad at work, we have breaks and there's the crèche – oooh! I don't know what I'd do without the crèche. Working there's been the saving of me, really …”

I have an idea.

“Mum, let me show you the chickens! Come on!” I pull at her hand and after some flustering I get her into the sunshine of the back garden. She stands for a moment in awe at the view. “Lord above. Look at that! Fancy you living in a paradise like this!”

I feel an enormous pride showing my mother around, especially when she sees the eggs underneath the hens. “Blimey! Whatever next!”

When we go back in, Shirley and Peter are just about sitting upright on the rug in front of the range, and Aunty Joyce is shaking a jar of dried beans in front of them and making them smile. My mother has brought the twins with her because she thinks I want to see them, but she is wrong. It's not that I don't like them – they're very cuddly and much more interesting than when I left. It's just that they seem to take up all her attention, and she hasn't seen me for months. I suppose I resent them in their little knitted jerkins, so when I see them teetering gleefully on the floor with Aunty Joyce, I seize my opportunity.

“Come upstairs and see my room! Is it okay, Aunty Joyce? I'll only take her in my room and I've made the bed!”

“Made the bed?” says my mum, already following me upstairs. “And pigs might fly!”

I give one fleeting nervous glance at Aunty Joyce, half expecting to go back downstairs and find the twins drowned in a pail of water with a lid on top, but I selfishly carry on with my plan.

It works. We are alone. I fling myself at my mother and don't let go. I nuzzle into her and breathe in the milky breasts, still heaving with feeding. I am supposed to cry now: that is how I have always imagined this meeting. But somehow nothing is quite how I expect it to be, and there are no tears inside me, only mild irritation. I wish she would stop being so talkative and so pally with Aunty Joyce. I wish she would be like the mothers at the pictures whose eyes fill with tears in a soft-focus haze and say, “Oh Kitty! Oh Kitty, my little love! What have they
done
to you?” But she doesn't.

“I want to come home!” I say, in a pathetic half-whimper. “Please, please take me home.”

“We haven't got a home no more, love.” She says it in that half-jokey way I'm beginning to resent.

“But I miss you! I don't care where you are, I want to be with
you
!”

I cling on tight, and she starts to soften a bit. She crouches down to my level and says, “I can't have you at the factory because you're over two. I can't stay in London with you, love, because we'll all be killed. There's doodlebugs all over the shop. And in any case the war'll be over very soon …” She strokes my hair and kisses my cheek. “An' all I want is for us all to be
safe
and together again when it's over …” The tears come now, and I sob into her best blue dress, adding spots of wet to match the damp patches under her arms. “There, there …” She holds me very tight, and when I look up I can see that she is crying too, only very quietly, and trying not to let it show. “Be brave, my little sweetheart, and I'll be back to fetch you home before you know it.”

Then, as quickly as it started, it is over. She has got out a piece of paper and a pencil from my school bag and is drawing around my foot.

“I'll get you some nice new shoes next time I come.”

My mother looks out of the window and I join her, feeling cheated by this arrest of emotions. As we look out we can see Aunty Joyce with the twins, one in each arm, crouching down by the hen coop and showing them the chickens. She is talking to them in a sweet voice, which I've never heard before, and she is
smiling
at them.

“She's not such a bad old stick,” says Mum.

“You don't know the
'alf
of it …!”

I start recounting everything I can think of to get some sympathy, and my mother does listen, but I never again get that moment of warmth when her eyes welled for a second and she abandoned herself to me. I'm so confused I don't know what to do next. I feel strangely betrayed by events, frustrated beyond belief.

When we go downstairs, there are the twins again, billing and cooing and weeing and pooing and giving my mother every reason to be distracted from the main purpose of her visit: me.

When we see her off at the bus stop I feel swizzled. (Even so, I don't forget to tell her
exactly
what sort of shoes I would like: red with a bar.)

The bus disappears around the bend of the road, and I am devastated. It's not bloody fair.