Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (10 page)

When harvest is over, the world begins to change, and I see Sheepcote as I haven't seen it before. First come the blackberries, a luscious surprise among brambles I have only seen as scratchy weeds until now. Then powdery black sloes appear in the yellowing blackthorn, shiny elderberries hang in upside-down bouquets and clusters of bright orange rowanberries appear from nowhere. The hedgerows are full of fruit and colour, and the apples are swelling on the branches, ready for plucking.

Harvest Festival was just a phrase I heard before, somewhere in the autumn. Now that I have taken part in a harvest I feel utterly overwhelmed by the service in church. Standing between Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack in pews packed with children and villagers and land girls and refugees, I sing more passionately than ever before:

By the chorus I realize my eyes are filling with tears, but thankfully no one notices.

I can't imagine what has come over me, but I think that it is around about now, in this little packed church with the ancient thanks for the harvest ringing all around me, that I feel I belong here. I am part of the scenery, along with the sleepy cows and the stacks of corn, the frosty five bar gates, lichen-covered stone and fruiting hedgerows; along with the whispers of lovers in the barn and in the woods, the secret sorrows of happy people, the longings and the joys of prisoners and evacuees and refugees, orphans and gypsies and waiting mothers, the inflated importance of the Home Guard and Mr Fairly and Uncle Jack, the gossip and giggles of the knitting group; I, Kitty Green, am part of all this.

The early autumn is a time of plenty. We have stewed apple every evening and often with cream. We start to eat the fruit that was bottled in the late summer: damson, greengage, strawberry, and we forget the hardships for a while.

The leaves turn bright orange and yellow and the copper beeches turn dark pink. But the first heavy frost is followed by gusty winds, which bring them swirling down into the lanes, beautiful crimson carpets on which we walk regally to school. The linesman has his work cut out now. He sweeps the leaves all day long into great ginger heaps by the side of the road, which we selfishly stamp our way through, sending them back in all directions.

Then the heavy rains start, and turn them all to mulch, and soon the lanes and roads and woodland paths are nothing but brown mashed potato, greasy leaves and thick mud sticking to every shoe and boot and making walking a heavy business.

By October Aunty Joyce is stuffing newspaper around the cracks in the windows and putting sacking across closed doors to keep out the cold winds. We keep our coats on in school and the coke is always running out. Sometimes we keep our coats on at home too, and everyone, young and old, has several layers of knitted garments, which stay on all day and often all night.

One November morning Tommy is overjoyed. Boss Harry announces the visit of an old boy, Jonathan Crocker. He reminds the school – although Tommy needs no reminding – that Jonny has been serving in the RAF, and they must all treat him with the utmost courtesy. If we are lucky, he might speak to Standards Four to Seven about his exploits over Germany. The wooden partition between the three classrooms is folded back for morning prayers, and I can see Tommy clearly from where I'm sitting. He can hardly contain himself, although perhaps irritated that he did not have more time to prepare for this bombshell. For Jonny Crocker has not forewarned the headmaster of his arrival, having decided to come on a whim during some unexpected leave.

He comes after prayers, and I begin to panic. This is the man who will find a ‘way in' for Tommy, which means a way
out
of Sheepcote. I am certain that by this evening, Tommy will be gone.

Everyone stands up when the RAF pilot enters. Boss Harry is wearing his academic gown, which he reserves for parents' day, and some of the girls snigger.

I can see Tommy trying to catch Jonny Crocker's eye as he talks about aircraft designs, RAF training, and the advantages of youngsters joining the Air Training Corps. Then the chil-dren's hands shoot up with questions, and he gives impassive replies about missions over France escorting bombers, locating plots and chasing ME 110s, dodging anti-aircraft fire, flying blind at night and the differences between Spits and Hurris. I can see Tommy's hand is bolt upright, his face rigid and pink with desire to be chosen. I can tell his head is scrambled with questions, see the urgency in his eyes as Boss Harry slips his fingers into his waistcoat, removes his watch and looks at it. Tommy panics.

“Please, Mr Jonathan Crocker, sir,” he blurts out, “how many Germans have you killed?”

There is a general murmur of excitement from the boys – who are clearly keen to get down to fundamentals – and a hiss of disapproval from Boss Harry, who scowls at Tommy and says, “Who asked you to ask a question? Were you asked?” Then he turns to the pilot and apologizes for the rudeness. But Jonny Crocker clears his throat and asks who asked the question.

When Tommy sees the pilot's eyes on him at last, he looks as though he's going to faint. All the blood goes from his face, and I wait for the moment when he will either pass out or Jonny Crocker will give him an expansive smile of recognition. But Jonny Crocker merely nods in his direction and speaks very soberly to the whole class.

“How many Germans have I killed?” He sighs, his face seems to cloud over and he looks suddenly not like a fighter pilot at all, but like a fourteen-year-old boy. “I don't know how many.” He scratches his brow, and takes a deep breath, and starts again with a shaky voice.

“One thing I do know: they haven't just been men in uniforms with swastikas. I've escorted bombers that have killed women and children – children like you – and babies in their cradles and old people with walking sticks and people in hospital too ill to run for shelter. And I've killed German pilots too, blasted them to bits, young pilots with mothers at home like me. And I'm not proud of it, and I hate doing it, and every time we scramble my legs turn to jelly, and every time we come back I count the friends I've lost.”

There is a silence. Only the squeak of a shoe. Boss Harry looks uncomfortable. We wonder if the pilot is going to cry, or is already crying, and we look down at our inkwells.

“So,” continues the pilot, in possession of himself again, “don't be
too
keen to join up. Of course we have to do our bit for King and Country, and it is the right thing to do … I suppose. But there's no glamour in it – don't go away with that idea – there's no glamour in it at all,” I catch Tommy's face, and it has collapsed, “only misery.”

Boss Harry looks even more uncomfortable. We imagine he is unhappy about his pupils being given unpatriotic messages, and don't realize that he has squashed his mouth up, not in disapproval, but to choke a sob, and hung his head, not in shame, but to conceal his grief.

The silence is broken by a big forward girl in the front, none other than Mrs Chudd's daughter, Betty, who looks eighteen although she's only thirteen. “Please, sir, could I have your autograph?” She thrusts her exercise book under his nose and looks at him adoringly. The pilot smiles and sighs, and is then swamped with requests as children wave bits of paper at him while others rummage in their desks to find things for him to write on.

Tommy waits his turn. Maybe he has given up the cherished hope of a personal chat, but there is still time for confirmation of their agreement, a secret sign as he writes his name on the small cut-off exercise book.

To our surprise, Boss Harry allows the noise and moves to look out of the window, where he stands for some time with his back to the scramble.

At last there are only a couple of remaining books to sign, and Tommy wades in right at the very end. I am picking at my cardigan, rubbing little pieces of wool furiously into tiny balls between my fingertips, and dropping them on the floor. Tommy beams as he hands over his open book, and Jonny Crocker smiles wearily back. Tommy waits for him to write, but he continues to look at Tommy with a question in his face.

“Who shall I put?” he asks at last.

Tommy swallows. I stop picking at my cardigan.

“Tommy,” he says lamely, and may have been about to add, “You remember me!” but the pilot is already head down over his pen. When he has finished scribbling he hands it back to Tommy without even looking at him, and looks instead at the clock on the back of the classroom wall.

The other children are admiring their autographs, momentarily losing interest in the visitor, and the headmaster is still staring at clouds, and Jonny Crocker is there, for a moment, unhindered.

He begins to rise from the front desk he was perched upon, and I can see Tommy is sick with disappointment. Jonny Crocker is just a film star to the others, a celebrity who can provide them with booty to show off at home. He is no more than a good film at the pictures – a weepie, perhaps. Maybe some of the girls
will
cry when they get home, and most of the boys will remember his words. But to Tommy he is something else. He is an escape route. And I see his dear face watching all hope being extinguished like a series of lights going out one by one, and he stands by, letting it happen, sunk like an ocean liner.

“Please!” he says suddenly, clutching the pilot's sleeve in despair. “Don't you remember me?”

The young man looks round at him, startled but curious. “Do I know you?”

By this time several of Tommy's classmates have noticed him and are watching, like me, in disbelief.

“I'm Tommy – Tommy Glover. You came last year – you remember? And you told me you'd get me in somehow. You said you'd make sure I got in when I left school.”

The pilot looks blank.

“You did!” says Tommy desperately. “You … you –”

Billy Piggot, a tall boy whose pullover is too short by half, is laughing. Another boy joins in with a sneer: “Give it a rest, Tommy.You're living in cloud-cuckoo-land, you are! He don't know you from Adam, look!”

Perhaps moved by this sniggering, the pilot halts his move towards the door and turns right round to look at Tommy.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I said some cocky things when I'd just got my wings. I was probably showing off. I'm sorry.” And he is joined by Boss Harry who, smiling apologetically at Tommy, ushers his visitor away.

It is no fun to arrange meetings in this chilly, newly drab landscape; there is even a film of khaki moss on every tree trunk, as if the War Office has decided to put them in uniform. But I must see Tommy. I can't bear to let him loose with his feelings after the humiliation in class, and yet I didn't manage to catch up with him in the lane after school.

I'm told my dad's home on leave and is going to pay a visit. That might cheer him up a bit. They can talk about war and stuff, and I know Dad will let Tommy come and live with us after the war. I know he will.

After school on Friday I belt off home and still Tommy's managed to leave ahead of me. I run up the lane, panting through the stitch in my side.

“You coming up the farm, then, tomorrow?” I ask his back.

He turns slightly. “Might, then.”

“My dad's coming! He's on leave and he's coming tomorrow!”

He slows down and watches me for a moment, as if hungry for some of my thrill, but then turns back and heads slowly down the lane towards the boys' home, kicking a stone and muttering something about seeing me some other time.

“Tommy!” I look after him but just catch the last of his sullen profile as he turns his back on me. “Tom! Tommy!” His head is sunk so low in his shoulders that I reckon there are tears in his eyes. “You can meet him an' all! I want him to meet you!”

If he hears at all, it makes no impression on the dejected figure walking away from me. I want to run after him, but Aunty Joyce is already at the door up the lane and calling me in.

I am up at sunrise, combing my hair, pacing the room, running to look out of the window every time there's a noise. Downstairs Uncle Jack has polished my shoes. I am excused chores so that I can stay smart, and after breakfast Aunty Joyce gives me a newly ironed handkerchief with a rosebud on it.

At eleven o'clock he has not come. Dinner is delayed until one o'clock, but still he does not show up.

At teatime, I don't feel like the Apple Surprise with ‘emergency cream' that Aunty Joyce has made specially, because my throat is too stiff. Uncle Jack finishes it off for me.

At six o'clock Tabby Chudd sends a boy up from the post office to say that my father has telephoned. His leave has been cut short so he's spending the day with my mum and the twins. He
hopes
to come and see me before he leaves tomorrow.

I don't sleep, of course, but take the rosebud handkerchief to bed with me and try not to blow my nose in it all night. In the morning it doesn't look so good.

After milking I sit down on a rusty old cart beside the barn and cry. Tommy finds me with my head in my arms.

“How'd it go, then?” His voice is unenthusiastic.

My shoulders are shaking but he doesn't comfort me. I lift my head to see him shifting from foot to foot, looking coldly at the horizon, and I feel worse. “He didn't come.”

The solace of my disappointment seems to soften him. He puts his arm around me and squeezes my bony limbs against his. Then I feel him tensing, and he catches his breath a little.

“It's my fault,” he whispers. “I prayed for him not to come … and he hasn't!”

I look up at his face and see that it's blotchy. “Don't be daft! God don't answer prayers. I prayed for him to come. And he didn't.”

We look at each other, confused by the Lord's meanderings. “Why didn't you want him to come?” I ask. His eyes are all pink. “And what are you crying for?”

He hangs his head very low, so low that it touches my forehead. Then, in a very shaky voice, he says, “I was afraid he'd take you away.'

“Take me away! Wish he could, but he's got to go to the jungle!” I think he'll be impressed by this, and intend to elaborate with tigers and malaria and man-eating snakes, but he won't let go of his theme.

“But he'll take you away one day. After the war, he'll come and take you back 'ome.”

I lift my face and watch his lips say the words. And as I watch him he seems a bit like Popeye, breathing little wisps of heat, barely hinting at the vast pistons of fury that are smouldering inside and could explode at any moment. I feel a jab of indignation that he hasn't revealed himself before, and a colossal sadness that I haven't seen the depths of his pain.

I clasp his huge white knuckles between my hands and look at his face. He is a child, a small lost boy, hungry for a family, spoiling for love.

“You can come and live with us. I know you can!”

He gives a little scoffing sound. “No one would have me.”

“Why not?”

“No one would want me.”

“Why not?”

“Mr Fairly says so. He says lots of people want to adopt children but they never want Heaven House boys because we're the bottom of the heap, and I'm the bottom of the bottom.”

I pull my head back to look at him, furious. “Well, who's
he
when he's at home, I should like to know!”

“He knows my mother and father left me there … They left me there because they didn't want me. That's what he says.” His voice has gone all high-pitched and breathy, and his eyes are flooding again.

“Well, that's just crap – I've told you before. He
would
say that, wouldn't he?”

“Well, why else would they leave me there? You've seen it. Would
you
leave a baby there?”

For the first time I think I imagine how he must feel: abandoned, unloved and cheated. I reach my head up to kiss him awkwardly on the side of his wet nose, and squeeze his knuckles tighter.

“Well, my Aunty Babs left a baby at the awfnidge. And d'you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because she wasn't married. That's why people leave their babies. And d'you know what?”

“What?”

“She never stopped crying about that baby, my mum says, and it'll ruin her life if she tries to get it back, because no one'll marry her, my grandad says, so she'll just have to put up with it.”

He won't be consoled so easily. “Well, even Miss Hubble is keeping her baby, and it's black, and it'll ruin her life for certain. The father was killed on Omaha beach. Fairly says no one'll marry her now.” We are both quiet for a moment as we think about Miss Hubble. “You see, if you really love your baby, like Miss Hubble, you can't give it away …”

“Yes, but she
knows
. Miss Hubble knows they never let you see your baby – not ever again. My Aunty Babs thinks hers'll be going to a nice posh house where it'll have servants and things and be much better brought up than what she could've done with no husband nor nothink.”

“But she's wrong.”

“Yes. But who's going to tell her?”

“Who even
knows
she's wrong?”

“That's the thing, see. Only people what've seen awfnidges know. And you can be sure your mum is thinking of you just like Aunty Babs and I bet she blubbers every time she sees a pram and has to go to the pictures a lot so's she can cry in the dark and even her dishy boyfriend won't suspect there's anything wrong.”

Tommy is silent. He scratches the side of his head.

“And you can bet your bottom dollar none of you lot at Heaven House was left there by your mum
and
dad. My mum reckons they're all Love Children at the awfnidge, that's what she told my Aunty Babs. They're called that because they've got only love to live on, and also because their mums love them so much they give them away so's they can have a better life. That's what you are, Tommy: you're a Love Child. Means you're loved more than
anything
.”

“A love child?” He looks wistfully at the distant brow of the hill, as if he is aching for my words to be true, for there to be the remotest possibility that he isn't unlovable, and that somewhere out there, over the beechwood horizon, is a woman yearning to be his mother.

The sound of a motor makes us both look towards the road. We make our way down the lane to investigate and see a thin young man in khakis leaping down from a truck.

“Daddy!”

He doesn't look much like my dad, with his leathery tan and white crow's feet, and he does things I have never seen him do before. For example, when I take him for a walk to show him about the place, he throws his arms up and gasps, “It's so fuckin'
green
!” and bursts into tears. I want to tell him it's not at all green compared to the summer, but don't see the use. There's something disturbing about seeing your old dad crying. They're supposed to swing you in somersaults, make their thumbs disappear, tweak your cheek and say, ‘Bloody Nora, you've grown, gel!' But my dad looks away from me a lot, moved beyond words by gateposts and oak trees and Miss Lavish's tricycle, and when he does look at me, it is an intense look, gobbling me up with his eyes and holding my head in his hands as if I were a miracle.

All this leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling again that things have changed and that, even when this war is over, things might never return to normal as I know it. It is almost a relief to have Tommy lurking around, and I introduce him as my best friend who is going to join the RAF.

They get on well, my dad and Tommy, until he goes and says, “Listen, son! When you're old enough, you get yourself a job, mate. You don't want to go fighting in no war, believe you me.You stay here in these lovely green hills and get yourself a family, son. And don't you ever leave 'em. Not even for a war …” And then his eyes are all pink again, and Tommy doesn't know what to say, and neither do I.

Aunty Joyce is all ruffled because he doesn't stay long enough for a meal. He has to get to the station and hops on the truck after two cups of tea and the remains of the Apple Surprise.