by Jane Bailey
“When April showers …”
I try to turn it down and stand next to the wall while she puts the kettle on, but she turns it back up again.
“So when it’s raining, have no regrets,
Because it isn’t raining rain, you know–
It’s raining violets …”
She tells me Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack need some time on their own together, and she gives me a nice cup of tea.
At teatime Aunty Joyce calls me back, although none of us has the stomach for eating. We sit at the table, Uncle Jack, Aunty Joyce and I, fiddling with a jar of last summer’s greengage jam and pushing slices of bread around our plates. Uncle Jack wants me to repeat the whole story again, to tell him exactly what I told Aunty Joyce. I have never been allowed to speak so much at table, but my words put such a torment into his face that the telling of it makes me feel sick.
They talk more than they’ve ever talked in front of me.
“If it’s true … what a fool I’ve been!”
“It is true,” says Aunty Joyce. “Look at the way he behaved in church!”
“Of course it is! It all makes sense!”
“What have we done to that poor boy? Poor, poor Tommy!”
“Yes, poor Tommy.” He closes his eyes as if to block out the sight of it all. “What wretches we are!”
“To think that … bastard pretended to be our friend!” Aunty Joyce speaks through gritted teeth, her eyes still red with hours of crying.
Uncle Jack hears the swear word and lets it go. Free as you please. And uses one of his own: “If I ever get my hands on that monster, I’ll … bloody well tear him limb from limb!” His mouth is turned down and rigid, as if trying to stop itself doing anything reckless, like crying, perhaps. “I bloody well will!”
She puts her hand across the table and lightly presses his fingers into the cloth.
“Jack!”
It is half pleading, half comforting. It is a hand stretched out, that is all. But I look at the raw pink knuckles of her pretty hand, the hand that’s made do and mended for seven long years, and realize that I haven’t seen it there before, touching his. I am invisible again, and glad to be.
There is a knock on the door, and Lady Elmsleigh comes straight through to the back kitchen, resisting all attempts to show her into the front room.
“Mr Fairly has been arrested,” she says. “I thought you would like to know.”
It seems that after the church service, Tommy took all the boys to Lady Elmsleigh’s, all twenty-one of them, and Lady Elmsleigh heard their story and telephoned for the police. “He’s been taken to Gloucester, and let’s hope that’s the last we’ll see of him.” She stands up and goes over to Aunty Joyce, taking her hand in both of her own. “You’ve had such a dreadful time of it, Joyce! I don’t know how I can help, but you must let me do anything I can.”
She doesn’t stay long, but I’m shooed off to bed, and I can just hear Uncle Jack’s gratitude as she leaves, and mention of Tommy. So it all seems to have turned out for the best, my betrayal of Tommy’s secret. I shouldn’t have done it – I promised I wouldn’t tell, but now there are twenty-one happy boys and the monster is where he should be.
But, I should have known, nothing is quite that simple.
The following day, a Monday, Tommy is not at school, and neither are any of the other Heaven House boys. I am the centre of attention, of course, and everyone flocks around me, thirsty for more of the bad news they heard in church. I play my part happily enough, but when Tommy doesn’t appear on Tuesday either, I begin to feel uneasy.
It is on the last leg of my journey home, the bit I do on my own between the Heaven House path and Weaver’s Terrace, that I see him. He is suddenly there, fox-like, in the hedgerow. He emerges from behind an ivy-clad tree so silently I don’t see him until I am almost upon him.
“Tommy!”
“Listen!” He looks around and lowers his voice. “I’m leaving this evening. This time you can’t come with me. I’ll be out the back of your house to say goodbye at eight o’clock, if you want.”
I laugh in disbelief. “Again? But why? Fairly’s locked up.You don’t have to go now.”
“Oh, I do all right!”
“No, you can stay and work on the farm. Or go on to study till you’re old enough to be a proper pilot.”
“He’ll be out again soon.”
I’m not smiling now, because I can see that he’s serious. He really is going to go, and I don’t think I can stop him.
“It’ll be years before he’s out. You’ll be a proper pilot by then.”
“No.” He leads me off the lane and behind the tree, still looking in all directions. Then he takes me by the shoulders and looks as if he must make me understand something I am too young to grasp. “It’s like I told you, Kitty. If I say anything, I’m a dead man. Even if they put him away, he’ll find me. And if they don’t – and he’s a clever man with friends in the right places – if they don’t, I’m as good as dead. I’m the only witness, see. He’ll be after me. I’m not saying nothing. I’m just gonna go.”
“But then he’ll go free!”
“Yes – and I’m gonna be out of here!”
“But what about the others? Don’t you care about the others?”
He draws his hand over his face slowly. “Of course I care. Lady Elmsleigh’ll take care of things. I know she will. And any road, any one of them boys could put him away if they wanted. Let them do it. I said I saw nothing. And I’m saying nothing.”
I can’t understand his wish not to tell. It goes against one of my greatest childish instincts: to tell on someone who’s done wrong, to save my own skin. Sunday school may have taught us to turn the other cheek and so forth, but if Tommy’s being godly then I want to thump him. I can’t imagine what strange force is holding him back. The thought of this odd resignation makes me so angry with him I want to shake him into telling the truth to the world.
“Where’ll you go?”
“To sea,” he says, confidently.
“You can’t – you’re not old enough.”
But one look from those anxious conker-coloured eyes reminds me it was I who betrayed his trust in the first place, who dug him this terrible dark ditch.
At eight o’clock I say goodnight and slip out of the house to the lav. Up the back of the garden I hover behind the newly creosoted shed and see his dark figure waiting for me. I put my hand out to touch his gabardine coat, to get the feel of him.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry I broke my promise. Facky Nell. I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”
He gives me a huge, deep bear hug, holding me against him so tightly I know he forgives me. He puts his nose in my hair and I nuzzle mine into his neck. We smell each other like sheep sniff their lambs. Even now a whiff of creosote brings back the smell of parting and the oily wool of his pullover, and a longing that seems to grow as each year passes.
“I’ll write,” he says, and picks up his bag to go.
“Behave,” I say, remembering my father’s words to me when I left. “And no fackin’ swearing.”
Then, as though this is wholly inadequate, he puts it down again, holds me again. “You’re the most precious thing in the world to me,” he says. I cling on to him, aware at last that this is no game, and that in a few moments he will be gone. “Don’t ever forget that. Wait for me. I’ll find you.”
We hold hands, and then just fingertips. I feel like a film star, but before I can really take it all in, he has gone: halfway across the field with no moon.
When I go back in the house no one notices the state I’m in because Lady Elmsleigh is there, sitting in the parlour again in Uncle Jack’s armchair.
“Out?” breathes Aunty Joyce. “Free?”
“I’m so sorry,” says Lady Elmsleigh. “Tommy wouldn’t repeat his story – even though he’d told me – so there was no case to answer for.”
“What about the other case – the other boys?”
&n
bsp; “None of them will speak out.”
“Not one?”
“Not one.”
“What are they playing at?” Uncle Jack is cross.
Lady Elmsleigh frowns sadly. “It makes you wonder what on earth they’ve been through. They’re all so very frightened. Tommy is the oldest, and he was fourteen yesterday, so he’s free to go. Perhaps if we all work on Tommy …” She turns to me. “Kitty, perhaps you could persuade him how important it is to tell his story – to get this monster locked away …”
“And we could do something,” whispers Aunty Joyce. “We could welcome him back into our house.” She fiddles with the neck of her housecoat. “We’ve been so unkind. He needs to feel safe.” She puts her hand to her mouth and looks so full of sorrow that Lady Elmsleigh insists it is not her fault.
“That man must not be allowed back near any of those boys. I’ll keep them with me if needs be.”
I want to go home now. There’s no point me being here without Tommy, so I say one of the boys can have my room. But all the grown-ups agree there are still V2s over London, and I must stop here for the time being.
I want to scream, I want to smash everything. I can’t believe Tommy was fourteen yesterday, and I forgot. I can’t believe I am being charged with setting the world to rights just moments after I have let the possibility slip through my fingers for ever. I feel all the wretchedness of being only nine.
Try a little tenderness
I mix the ink at school, and its camphoric smell reminds me of writing, and the letter I’m still waiting for. I am something of a celebrity, of course, the centre of a murder mystery, a mystery that has hung over this village for years. And every face, at every inkwell I fill, looks at me in that searching way they did when I first arrived: trying to read me for some clue.
The Heaven House boys are back in school today, so they have taken some of the pressure off me. It seems some man from the council came round to Lady Elmsleigh’s and told her she had to return them all to the boys’ home, or else. Mr Fairly was a free man, because all charges had been dropped. Of course everyone wants to know if it’s true – what he’s supposed to have done – and all the boys are saying it is, but it didn’t happen to them personally. And no one can find anyone it did happen to, or exactly what ‘it’ is, although there are all sorts of interesting stories of Nazi-style torture. It is not long before Mr Fairly becomes a Nazi, after all, and not a child molester: it’s just that the police can’t see it. By home time he is Hitler’s right-hand man, and we are all immensely sorry for the Heaven House boys, having to go home to him for tea.
* * *
In the days that follow there are strange goings-on in the Shepherd household. My first suspicion that something different is afoot comes with a peculiar little ritual just before Aunty Joyce makes our Ovaltine one evening. She thinks I can’t see her, because I am deep in a comic, but I do. She takes a very bright white towel from a pile of laundry and lays it on Uncle Jack’s knees. Then she kneels before him, takes his hands and lays them on it, stroking his hands on the towel and, as he watches incredulously, she lifts his hands and turns them over, and strokes the back of them against the towel too. He says not a word, but lets her continue, laying her own hands on the towel where his have been, and performs the same ritual. “Now I’m clean,” she whispers, leaning back on her heels and closing her eyes in relief.
When I look up officially from my comic, Aunty Joyce has a definite spring in her step as she puts on the milk to boil.
The following evening it happens again, only this time, something even stranger happens after I’ve gone to bed.
I’m woken in the night by a curious whimpering noise. I get up and open my door carefully, but it becomes clear that the noise is not coming from their bedroom, but from downstairs. I tread very gently on the landing and lean just far enough forward to see over the banister into the parlour.
There, in front of the range, Aunty Joyce is sitting in the bath, her slender back towards me. Her shoulders are shaking, and I can tell she is crying. And that’s not all – I can barely believe what I see – Uncle Jack is kneeling beside her, sponging her down. He dips the sponge in the lightly steaming water and squeezes it gently over her shoulders. And this is the oddest thing: his eyes are full of tears. And he keeps saying the same thing over and over in a voice high-pitched with sorrow: “Not dirty, Joyce … not dirty …”
* * *
March turns to April, and still no letter. The school holiday is short and barely noticeable. There is blackthorn blossom appearing above the hedges and, from my bedroom window, the evening sun slants low over the back field, giving every blade its own blaze of green and shadow. The wireless hums sad love songs downstairs and competes with the frenzied twitter of a few excited birds. The evenings are getting lighter now, and this mock summer sunset reminds me so much of last summer that I ache with grief at the thought of empty sunny days to come.
A couple of giant rabbits are on the back field. The largest one circles the other and then quite suddenly leaps into the air on long, outstretched legs. He continues to make wide circles, then goes for another wild leap, and I realize that it is not a rabbit at all, but a hare. My first mad March hare – and in April. I envy its joyous bounding into spring. For some reason it gives me a nauseous memory of Betty Chudd with her tight blouse, and Nancy the land girl with her loose one. At the same time there is something exciting – almost dangerous – about this crazy energy that appears from nowhere and races off into the undergrowth without a trace.
In the middle of April I get a letter, written in Tommy’s unmistakably neat hand.
HMT Alexandrina
April 16th 1945
Dear Kitty,
I am in the Merchant Navy! Today is my first day as a galley boy! It’s all very different to Sheepcote, and I’m treated like one of the men!
This morning we had sardines on toast for breakfast! I haven’t been seasick once!
Who knows when I’ll be back? Promise you will write soon! You can give your letters to Lady Elmslee and she will send them on.
Promise you won’t give up on me! Even if we lose each other in this war, I will find you!
Write soon! Lots of love,
Tommy
I am thrilled. Apart from those from my mother, it is the first letter I have received in my life, addressed solely to me. I parade it around school, I show it to Aunty Joyce, I read it to Babs Sedgemoor, and she reads it back to me.
I write back straight away. Some silly mushy stuff about love and marriage that probably makes him tear it up the moment he gets it. At any rate he’s not in a hurry to reply. The days stretch on uneventfully.The countryside slyly unfurls its greenery when we are none of us looking, so that all of a sudden a green mantle appears on every stem and bough, and those mighty green tunnels sweep me off my feet again like they did when I first arrived.
I get out last year’s old flattened cardboard and Babs and I go sliding down the slope in the buttercup fields. It hasn’t rained for two days and the grass is just right for sliding. We race and tumble all the way to the bottom, sending sheep bleating in all directions. As we scramble back up to the top, inspecting our vehicles for sheep shit, Babs sings “Tommy Glover’s gone to sea, Silver buckles on his knee, He’ll come back and marry me – ”
“Neville Adlard’s gone to sea,” I start, teasing her about the boy she likes in our class. “Neville Adlard’s done a wee …” We are giggling so much we can hardly stand up, when someone comes walking up to us.
“Hello, Kitty.”
It is Mr Fairly.
We both stop giggling, and say nothing in reply. It’s an odd place for him to come walking.
“I’m glad I found you here. You heard from Tommy, I hear?”
I swallow hard, and look at Babs.
“Yes,” I say. I can’t imagine why I feel the need to reply to him. Because he is a grown-up, I suppose. There is something imposing about him, and neither of us could dare t
o be rude to him, although we would like to be.
He smiles and scratches the corner of his mouth. “I wondered if you might give me his address.”
I feel cornered.
“She can’t,” says Babs. “He’s gone to sea.”
“Ah yes!” He nods, as if he knew this already, then takes out of his top pocket a slim bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. Babs and I stare at it. “He told me … what was the name of the ship again …?”
“I can’t remember,” I say nervously.
He fingers the chocolate bar and we both look at it longingly. “HMS Charlotte, wasn’t it?”
“No – HMT – A –” I clap my hand over my mouth.
Mr Fairly smiles, “Ah, Merchant Navy,” and hands over the chocolate.
“I don’t want it, thank you,” I mutter.
“I’ll ’ave it!” says Babs.
I’m shaking by the time we reach the lane, although the sun is out and there’s hardly any breeze. To my shame, I scoff half of the chocolate with Babs, but afterwards I feel like retching.
Victory polka
Hitler is dead, and the war has been as good as over for ages. Everyone says so. I really can’t see why I have to stay here now.
Then on the first of May everything changes.
I’m woken, along with everyone else in Sheepcote, by a bugle call. It turns out to be Mr Tugwell, who played his bugle in the last war. But this time he is signalling the beginning of May. At school there are flowers everywhere, and at playtime we are all ushered out to line the main street and cheer a motley procession of children who have been practising for some weeks. But then again, they have been practising with Miss Miller …
They spill out of the school porch and skip or run towards the school gate: little girls in long-discarded bridesmaid dresses with rumpled skirts and boys in grubby tennis shoes. Miss Miller organizes them into two raggedy lines behind Mr Marsh’s milk cart festooned with flowers. They fidget with excitement as the May Queen emerges from the school entrance hall, accompanied by her two maids-in-waiting, and processes towards the waiting cart. The May Queen is huge: tall and plump with widely spaced grey teeth, a full bosom, and a white 1920s dress several sizes too small, swathed in tiers of torn and crumpled chiffon. She carries a posy of forget-me-nots and may blossom, and on her head she wears what appears to be an entire basket of flowers.