by Jane Bailey
You may not be an angel …
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 c
ry 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.
Blueberry Hill
It is the thick of summer, a time of heavily leafed trees rustling overhead and lazy love songs predicting lovers returning. I’ve no idea when I’ll see my mum again, and with Tommy banned, I feel heavily rationed in love. I don’t know how many times Tommy and I manage to see each other, but those secret meetings seem to fill the summer.
One Sunday, during cadets, eight of us are selected for the paper collection. The vicar opens the shed at the back of the village hall, and Tommy and Will Capper pull out the cart. It’s simple enough through the village, but for the farms we tend to split up into groups of two. Neville Adlard, a scruffy Heaven House boy, my age, with long eyelashes, keeps pestering Will Capper about having a go at the cart, and as soon as Will gives way Babs is on at Tommy to let her have a go. Of course Tommy is off like a shot and, grabbing two flattened cardboard boxes from the cart, he signals me to follow him.
“We’ll collect up Russells,” he shouts back to the group, meaning the farm on the opposite valley. “See ya!”
And we’re off.
Up the lane, over the five bar gate, through the cow field, over the stile, across the smaller stream, up the next field, over the next one, until we’re in our field: our valley. It is so steep here that even the war has left it to pasture: sheep on the top slopes, cows at the bottom near the lush grass of the stream.
As soon as we arrive I can feel something almost like music, a galloping through the whole of my body, and instead of flopping down with exhaustion, I whirl about, running circles, arms outstretched. Gallop, gallop, gallop. There is space – so much space. We both spin, we soar, we are airborne.
Gasping, breathlessly we cling on to our oak tree. Tommy knows the feelings I have in this place, and I know from his eyes, darting and smarting and invigorated in the nippy wind, that he shares them.
“Come on!” he says, handing me a flattened box and setting his own on the grassy slope. “I’ll race you!”
He sits on the cardboard and pushes with his feet, and before I can do the same he has shot off down the slope, gathering an uncanny momentum on such a crude vehicle. I try to follow, but feel stuck and afraid. I push with my feet and hands, but in the hope that I won’t move too far too fast. Tommy’s voice is tinny and distant now, and he is climbing back up holding his makeshift sledge. He smiles as he approaches, throws his cardboard down and climbs on to mine behind me. He puts his arms over my shoulders and grips the front edge of the cardboard, and suddenly we’re away.
It is slow and bumpy at first. I try not to scream. Then, as we hit a ridge, we are tearing along: flying, soaring, whistling down to the hawthorns by the stream. I scream. He laughs. We come to a halt just inches from the branches.
After a while I become an expert with my cardboard. The more sheep shit it collects and the more journeys it makes, the shinier and more leathery it becomes. And the faster.
Resting up by the oak tree he signals me suddenly to listen. Expecting the sound of footsteps, I hear nothing.
“Listen,” he says again.
A soft cooing comes from the trees behind us.
“A bird?” I ask.
“Simon.”
“Simon?”
“A tawny owl. He was a chick last year.”
I crane my neck but can see nothing, and can’t help being impressed that Tommy is on first-name terms with owls.
“You can’t see him, but he can see you,” says Tommy, looking up as well. “An owl can hear a mouse’s heartbeat at thirty feet!”
“Thirty feet! A heartbeat!”
I put my hand to my own heart, and listen.This is a magical place, and no mistake.
“Will this really be ours one day?” I ask, wanting to hear him talk about our future together.
“Well, by rights, it won’t ever belong to no one.”
“I thought you said … after the war …”
“It’ll be shared out, don’t worry. Just you have to know: the land don’t belong to us – not really. We belong to the land.” He puts the palm of his hand on the grass and strokes it gently.
I watch him, out of my depth now. “Can we belong to this bit, then?”
“After the war I ’speck you’ll be back with your mum and dad.”
“You can come with us – I promise.”
“Well … I’m building a farm right here.”
I feel shut out. “When I’m grown up –”
“You in on it?”
“Yes!”
“Right!”
He lies back and puts his hands behind his head. He looks so thoughtful and competent, I am ecstatic to be included in his plans.
“We’ll have sheep, shall we?” I suggest.
“An’ cows. We’ll have a dozen or so. We’ll keep it small.”
“How much do sheep cost?”
He props himself on an elbow. “What we need is a copy of the Farmer and Stockbreeder. Then we’ll be able to work out all the costs.” He looks excited. “I’ll have to get some work first to save up for it all. But we need to work out costs.”
“Where can we get a Farmer and Stockbreeder without any money?”
We both light up at the same moment. We jump up and st
art running, but by the time we reach the lane the cart has made its way back to the village hall shed, laden with newspapers and magazines.
Another group of children is sorting the paper into piles, and we volunteer to help.
It’s not long before Tommy finds what we’re looking for, but he says we must keep going.We need two or three farming journals at least if we’re to sort out all the different stock. I feel so important leafing through the piles of paper, and so joyously mischievous.
Suddenly my contented grin droops at the sides. Tommy notices straight away and catches my eye. “What?”
I say nothing and show him what I have found.
“What is it?” he asks gently, still not understanding.
It is a painting of a knitting group. A masterpiece.
“I gave it to Aunty Joyce.”
He takes the picture from me and looks at it. “It’s lovely,” he says kindly. And then, to make me feel better, he declares, “I’ve never seen anything like it!” I try to smile, but feel utterly winded and lifeless. Tommy looks at me anxiously, and then says more tenderly than I have ever heard him, “Please, can I have it? I’d love to put it on the wall by my bed. It’s the best picture I’ve ever seen. Honest.”
I don’t care what anyone says about him. I don’t care what on earth he’s supposed to have done. I love Tommy Glover and I always will.
You are my sunshine
In mid-August a parcel arrives for me. It is my ninth birthday, but I have never received a parcel before, and I dance around it after breakfast, hardly daring to break the string or spoil the thick brown paper.
“G’won – open it!” says Uncle Jack, full of curiosity himself. “It won’t bite you!”
I can see from the writing on the label that it’s from my mother, but if I open it, the parcel will be gone for ever, so I sit and stroke its crinkled pre-used paper, lift it up and smell it and weigh it and run my cheek along the knotted string, as if I might hear it speak to me.
“I might wait till dinnertime,” I say.