Mad Joy (26 page)

And then the birds came. The starlings had been singing softly to themselves in hedges all winter through but I hadn’t noticed them. It was the mistle thrush I noticed first, its short garbled verses ringing out on a bright morning that January. Then the tsee tsee of the robins, the high-pitched bluetits, the explosive, jubilant little wrens, a dunnock or two and a song thrush, could all be heard limbering up for the spring if you only listened. In February and March they were joined by tree-creepers, nuthatches and woodpeckers, and a few keen blackbirds joined the swelling chorus of impending spring. By April, great arrows of summer visitors arrived, until in May there was a flood of song: a kee-kee-kee, su-su-su, tyu tyu, tuk-tuk-tuk, teee-ip teee-ip, tyup tyup tyup, tissik tissik, chee-chee-chee-chee-chee, tooey tooey, liddle-iddle-iddle-iddle, dzwee dzwee, hoo-ee hoo-ee hoo-ee, choodle-oodle-oodle-oop, chip-chip-chipper-chip, haw … haw … haw, chook-chook-chook as every bird alive joined ranks and heralded the sunshine with such urgent, boundless rapture that you couldn’t help but be carried along in their joy.

Everything started to grow again. By the spring of 1946 our family had doubled in size like the hedgerows: the children had
a father, a new uncle and two old Wallock sheep pets. Were they happy? Their childhood had been spliced by the war. Half of it without a father, half of it with one. Half with their mother’s sadness, half with her joy. How did we fare, then, as parents? What phantoms or pleasures dance through their memories? Only they can tell you that.

And what of us? Young people say that our generation had it easy with love: we
had
to stay together, so it’s no wonder we celebrate the anniversaries they will never reach. But when we got to the bottom of that curve, we clung on to the moments of joy, and we just kept on going until we came up again. Love hangs constantly in the air between us, gentle and warm as cow’s breath. We cannot disappoint each other. We know too much. Although sometimes, when the moon has risen and the stars multiply softly on a balmy summer night, we can still surprise each other.

Out now in Robinson paperback

Tommy
Glover’s
Sketch
of
Heaven

by Jane Bailey

In 1944 eight-year-old Kitty is placed as an evacuee in a Gloucestershire village with a cold, unhappy couple, Joyce and Jack Shepherd, who seem to find her cockney chirpiness and comic observations repugnant. Neither of them approves of Kitty’s friendship with Tommy Glover – an older child from the boys’ home – and even seem to nurse a mysterious hatred of him.

Kitty’s relentless curiosity slowly transforms the strangely troubled marriage of Joyce and Jack, and when she exposes a terrible secret, the lives of nearly everyone in the village are changed forever.

£6.99

JANE
BAILEY
is the author of
Promising,
An
Angel
in
Waiting
and
Tommy
Glover’s
Sketch
of
Heaven.
Her first novel was shortlisted for the Dillons Prize and she received a Royal Literary Fund award. She was born and brought up in Gloucestershire where she now lives with her two daughters.

Promising

An
Angel
in Waiting

Tommy
Glover
’
s Sketch of Heaven