Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (16 page)

The clump and thud of Uncle Jack leaving wakes me up, and I can hear Aunty Joyce clattering about downstairs although it is still dark. She pops her head round the bedroom door and whispers, “Kitty?”

To her probable disappointment I show that I am awake. “What time is it?”

“Early. Go back to sleep. I'm just off to do some teas.”

But I can't go back to sleep now. I don't like being in bed when the house is empty. As soon as she's gone I get dressed and go downstairs. It is four thirty in the morning, and I'm suspicious. Lambing finished last week and there won't be anyone up all night waiting for Aunty Joyce to bring them a cuppa.

I give her a ten-minute start, then set off and turn into the dark lane that leads to the barns up behind the house. The light is flickering from behind the broken slats as before, but when I peek inside there is only Thumper and the farmer, talking about some ewe that seems to have been in difficulty overnight. I have to step back quickly as they make their way to the barn door, cover the oil lamp, and head across the yard. Their voices trail off towards the farm door, and when it opens I can see Aunty Joyce for a moment, holding a kettle and bathed in the kitchen lamplight, until the door clatters shut and they have all three disappeared behind it.

The lane behind me is so black I don't want to go back home, but I can think of nothing else to do. Slowly, I pick my way along the hedgerow, wishing there were a moon.

Suddenly I hear footsteps. They are coming towards me. I stand stock-still and stare into the dark, but can see nothing. Then I hear breath and I try to hold mine. The footsteps get nearer and nearer until they are almost next to me, and I can make out a tall, dark figure.

I must catch my breath or something, because it stops.

“Who is it?” I ask.

There is no answer, but the dark figure moves in closer towards me. I can no longer keep the panic out of my voice, and I ask again in a high-pitched whisper, “Who is it?”

“Kitty!”

“Tommy?”

“Kitty! What you doing 'ere?”

“What …? Oh, God! You gave me such a fright. Christ alive!” I take deep breaths of relief. “What on earth are you doing so early?”

Tommy puts his arm on my shoulder and whispers urgently, “Listen! I'm running away. Whatever you do, don't say you saw me, okay?”

“But you can't! What about me? Where are you going?”

He sighs, as if he knew I wouldn't understand. My eyes are accustomed to the dark now, and I can see the outline of his face. “Look, Kitty. I have to go. I can't explain it now, but I'll write to you.”

“What d'you mean, you
have
to go? Who's making you?”

“Fairly's my bloody father, isn't he?”

“Of course he's not! How d'you make that out?”

“You wouldn't understand. I've got to go. Just believe me.”

“Are you going for ever?”

“Yes.”

“But … you mean I won't see you again? Not ever?”

He sighs again. “I'll write.”

I'm horrified. I hold on to him tight, as if I can keep him here by force. “You can't go without me! I'm coming too!”

“Don't be daft. I'm going to sea.”

“I'm coming! If you go now, you'll never see me again. Don't you
mind
? Don't you care about me at all?”

“Of course I'll see you, one day.”

I am beside myself with frustration. I feel so powerless and confused I want to shriek.

“Tommy! Listen to me! The war'll be over soon, my mum said, and I might be gone from here and never get your letter! Who knows where I'll be? And then you can't come and live with us, can you? She said you could, I asked her, my mum said you could.”

“She didn't even want to meet me.”

“That's not true! She came unexpectedly. Look! We can go there now – she'll give us somewhere to hide at least. An' she'll give you money for a ticket – she earns lots at the factory. Honest she will. Let me come with you!”

I'm pulling at his coat sleeve and jumping up and down. He keeps sighing.

“If you come with me an' we're
found
, I'm as good as dead. They'll all reckon I kidnapped you.”

“Well, I'll say you haven't.”

“You don't know what they say about me. There's rumours …”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“We won't have to
be
found, then, will we?”

He sighs again.

“Five minutes. You got five minutes, okay? Get summut warm to wear an' food – an' a blanket. Five minutes an' I'm off.”

I dart into the blackness of the lane, turn on to the road and into Weaver's Cottage. I find an old canvas bag of Uncle Jack's under the stairs and grab the remains of a loaf of bread and a tin of meat from the shelf. I run upstairs for a blanket, but decide against taking one as it's sure to be noticed straight away. I go back to the cupboard under the stairs and unhook an old oilskin and sou'wester from underneath a heavy coat. It will have to do. I roll it up and stuff it in the bag, and run out of the house and back up the lane in dread that Aunty Joyce might come back home before I leave.

The sky is turning from black to royal blue. We don't go through the farm fields in the end. We let the March wind blow us down the lanes in search of escape. By the time the sky has turned pale we are beyond the woods. With a canvas bag of bread and Spam, a rolled-up blanket of Tommy's, socks and the old sou'wester, we make our bid for freedom: two specks bobbing along the budding hedgerows into the verdant, wood-fringed horizon of the wolds.

I have always known that Tommy has a secret. I have always known that he will tell me one day, and that when he does it will uncover some much deeper mystery, something vast.

He is the one person I haven't been able to badger with my constant curiosity. He will tell me when he is ready, and I feel certain it is going to be now, on this journey.

He is like a wild animal, testing the ground, wary of sudden movement, biding his time. And I have waited, motionless, letting him get the scent of me. Beneath all my laughter and endless babble I know I am marking time, inching closer.

Do I realize what I'm doing, running away with someone who is thought to be a killer? Have I any idea, as we turn off from the hedgerows into the secret smells of the woods, what dramatic train of events I have set in motion? The sun ducks in and out of the wind-blown trees, lighting up the spikes of dog's mercury that are beginning to carpet the ground. There are hints of cow parsley, along with the first fierce green arrows of arum leaves unfurling along our sappy woodland path. Spring is on its way, and it is unstoppable.

When the sun goes down on our first day, we make our bed on a blanket of sorrel waiting to flower, and spread the oilskin beneath a leafing canopy of hazel branches.

As light fails, Tommy pulls his blanket around us and begins to point out birdsong. The yellowhammer, mistle thrush and chaffinch sing their last notes, while the blackbird goes on way into dusk before it falls silent.

We wait.

Then the song thrush gives a tuneful nocturne, then the robin. And when at last, from deep within the woods, the tawny owl gives its first tentative hoot, Tommy is ready to tell his story to the darkness.

It had been a hot day in June seven years ago when Tommy and Rosemary took their nets to go fishing. Their hopes were pinned on minnows, nothing more. If there was a leader, it was Tommy, but only because he knew the stream so well, and because Rosemary was quiet and more inclined to follow. Otherwise they were two peas in a pod, two seven-year-olds with time on their hands and a summer afternoon to explore.

They padded down the valley towards the willows, heading downstream.They talked of sticklebacks, but didn't extend their hopes that far. Identification was their joy. If they could see beneath the dark surface those creatures who were meant to be there, they would go home happy, satisfied that all was right with the world, and just as it said it was in Rosemary's
What to Look For in the River
. Although neither of them said as much, fish spotting was much more fun than fish catching, because they never really knew what to do with the ugly blobs they took back in jam jars, and there was always an awkwardness as the day went on and they were still there, dying or dead.

For Tommy, the pleasure of outings like these was going back to Joyce and Jack's for tea. Not the home-made sponge cake or the gooseberry jam, but the tender look from Joyce, and the smell of a home.

They had been by the bank for an hour, and must have dozed off in the shade of a willow, when a noise startled Rosemary. She stared at two figures wrestling much further up the grassy bank some fifty yards off. She nudged Tommy, without taking her eyes off the writhing figures, who were performing something she had only ever seen done by animals.

Tommy looked up, his face dotted in sweat, his head swimming with sleep. Rosemary was sitting up with her mouth open.

There, in the long grass of a hollow, shaded by a willow, was a man, holding down a small boy of eight or nine. The boy was crying, and the man seemed to be hurting him. Rosemary gasped in horror, and Tommy, suddenly panicking, pushed her down into the grass. But the wrestling stopped. The man sat up.

Rosemary began to whisper, barely able to breathe under Tommy's grip. “Let me go!” she hissed.

The man had stood up, and hastily buttoned his trousers. He had seen them, although Tommy was hopeful he might not have recognized them at a distance.

“Come on! Quick!” Tommy yanked Rosemary to her feet, but she just stood there, gawping in horror.

“Mr
Fairly
!” she breathed, not loud enough for him to hear, but directly enough for the man to know that he had been spotted by the Shepherd girl, who sat in the third pew at church.

“Run!” screamed Tommy, grabbing her away. “Run, Rosie! Come on! RUN!”

And they ran – they both did – and Mr Fairly ran after them, leaving a bundle of a boy in the grass.

Back along the stream they went, Tommy leading, Rosemary just yards behind. And Tommy could think of only one thing as he ran, and that was the punishment he would receive for witnessing this dreadful act. Not for what he had seen – for he had seen it all before – but for allowing Rosemary, an outsider, to see it. Mr Fairly would never live it down. No one knew about his secret except people who were too terrified of him to betray it. But Rosemary Shepherd would tell her parents and Tommy would be punished for the rest of his days. He would have to run away. He would have to run, run, run …

“Run, Rosemary, RUN!” he screamed, and Rosemary ran, and the dry grass rustled, and the stingers burnt, and the mud and the cowpats were rock hard and bumpy. The air was thick with pollen and summer smells, acrid and heavy.

They put a good distance between themselves and the panting ogre, and Tommy was hopeful that he hadn't been recognized after all. But as he made for some undergrowth he heard a scream several yards behind him. Rosemary had slipped and fallen into the stream.

If he stopped for her, he would be caught. There was no point going back. Mr Fairly would probably grovel to Rosemary, make up some excuse. He might not even see her if she lay low, for the banks were quite steep here.

But Rosemary was calling out.

“Tommy! Tommy! Help!”

Why
did she have to use his name?

“Tommy!
Tommy!
I'm stuck!”

Was it deep enough to drown there? It could only have been a couple of feet at most. But anyway, Fairly had arrived. Tommy crouched until he heard that Rosemary would be safe.

“Mr Fairly! Help me! I can't get out!”

He watched Mr Fairly go down to the water's edge, and then he began to run again. He ran like a hare, and he didn't turn round until he was a safe distance away and could hide behind a cluster of hawthorn. And there, turning back, he saw Rosemary's face as she clutched at the side of the bank, and there, as he watched, was Mr Fairly's boot in her face, pushing her back again. And again. And then no more.

In the stillness Mr Fairly turned and looked about, and Tommy ducked behind the hawthorn where he crouched, sobbing and shaking with terror, until dusk and the first beams of torches from villagers.

It was the next morning they found Rosemary, hooked on some low branches a mile downstream. Tommy was questioned for hours, but knew nothing. Someone had made certain of that. Mr Fairly was relieved that Joyce and Jack Shepherd cut off all links with the boy, in case he was ever tempted to blurt out the truth. But that was unlikely. Mr Fairly had ways of keeping boys' mouths shut. He'd had plenty of practice. In fact, Mr Fairly actively encouraged the odd rumour about Tommy, both because it helped transfer suspicion and because it emphasized his own charity in keeping the boy on.

When he finishes speaking, Tommy does not look at me, but gazes up at the hazel branches. A creeping chill makes me shiver, and we wait for the tawny owl to give its wavering hoot from the heart of the dark woods.

The injustice of it all smarts like the icy cold of the night. I cling on to Tommy for warmth and to give him comfort, trying to take it all in, make all the connections, but I feel overwhelmed. I burrow into his pullover, feel his chest heaving suddenly, and I know he is crying.

His tears terrify me. Aunty Joyce I can handle, but Tommy, Tommy is my rock. This isn't supposed to happen, and I don't know what to do except cling on tight and hope it will pass.

At some point I notice that the shaking is no longer crying, but shivering, and I venture to speak.

“Why now? Why run away now though, Tommy? You'll be fourteen this month, won't you? You can go off and find work.”

He puts his hands over his face and groans. “Oh … that's what I wuz going to do. Only when you said that about my mum an' Fairly … Oh God! It all makes sense … see, I think I'm his son! I'm that … thing's
son
… an' I can't bear it … I can't –”

“No you're not.”

“Why else would they say he had his wicked way with 'er? See, Kitty, what it means, is Fairly and my mum … it means …”

Tommy frowns at me curiously. Then he reaches into his own canvas bag, rifles around, and brings out a tube and a torch. Carefully he pulls out a little scroll of paper and unravels the photograph Lady Elmsleigh had put on the wall of the village hall.

“You stole it!”

“I 'ad to.”

The photograph is unruly, constantly springing back into its new rolled shape. We hold it open together, and he strokes her face again.

“Look,” I say, “she's expecting a baby.”

“Me!” he sobs.

“Yes! You. And look, over here …” I point to a little collection of boys with identical trousers and jackets, “these are the Heaven House boys, aren't they?”

“I suppose …”

“And this old man, see? He's Mr Northwood, and that's his wife.”

“I know.”

“
Well
then!”

“Well then what?”

“Tosser said Mr Fairly didn't come until after Mr Northwood died. So if that's you in that tummy … well … you're already there …”

He looks at the photograph and begins to wipe his face, smiling. He looks at me and laughs. “Ha!” Then he lets out a huge sigh and hugs me.

“So … my father
wuz
Edwin Glover. Ha!” His breaths are tumbling over themselves with excitement. “Tell me what Tosser said about him again.”

“She told it all to you.”

“I know, but what did she say the first time? What were her
exact
words when she told the whole knitting group?”

“She said he was gentle and kind …” I see an opportunity to please him, and I just can't help myself: “She said he was the kindest, bravest and most handsome man you could ever hope to meet.” Although, given the way Tommy turned out, he probably was.

He is smiling wistfully across the torchlight into the night.

“You might have cousins,” I say.

“No … her brothers died, remember?”

“Or second cousins.”

He lets go of his side of the photograph and it spins into a roll.

“Second cousins!” he breathes, and I realize what a strange and lonely place he has been living in to see such treasure in such remote kinship.

“It's facking cold!” I say.

“Yes, it fuckin' is.”

“Shall we go home?”

“No! We can't do that. It's like I said, they'll kill me. And you must never,
never
tell no one what I told you. If 'ee thinks I've told anyone, I might as well be dead.”

I think about this. After what Tommy has told me about Mr Fairly, I don't want him to have to be punished in any way.

“Well, okay. But can we find a farmhouse?”

“That's how I got found last time. No. We've got to stay hidden.”

But after an hour or so even Tommy gives up, and we go in search of shelter. We find an old lambing barn and settle down in the hay with a couple of fat sheep. There isn't much warmth here either and we spend a sleepless night, shivering and whispering to each other.

“You will still marry me, won't you?” I ask.

“What?”

“If you go to sea. You'll still come back and marry me?”

“You're
eight
!”

“
Nine!
Anyway, when I'm sixteen you'll be … nineteen, twenty, twenty-one! That's all right, isn't it?”

He chuckles.

“I
will
marry you, Tommy.”

He tells me to stop making so much noise, but I put my head under his pullover and lie in a cocoon with him, and he lets me.

I cannot sleep. I doze from time to time, but true sleep will not come. I keep thinking of what Tommy has told me, and the burden of secrets he has had to carry for so long. And I can't stop thinking of Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack, and how it all makes sense now, their distrust of Tommy, their inability even to smile at the boy they once loved so much they were willing to adopt him.

But one thing still does not add up at all. If I can understand their behaviour towards Tommy, I cannot make out their behaviour towards each other. I can't imagine why Uncle Jack is so cold towards Aunty Joyce. Why would he punish her for something which wasn't her fault, and after all these years? I know that she isn't the Jezebel he makes her out to be. I sense that the incident with Heinrich was the first time she has betrayed him, and I'm sure he doesn't know about it. I've seen the way she pushes all men away – I've seen it, watched it over a year – the way she punishes herself and lets him do the same.

There is some other mystery, something she is keeping to herself, but it will be a good eleven years before I discover Aunty Joyce's secret.