Sadler's Birthday (15 page)

Until one day in 1930 He summoned you again. He brought you back to His door after all that time. A spring day in April, a breeze like a child's breath. And there you stood, obedient as a child, and because someone had told you all that while ago that God is Love, ashamed, mortally ashamed of your anger. Summoned by letter. A shaky, almost indecipherable hand, Milady's, nearing her seventy-ninth year and widowed now, speaking of her sorrow, her real sorrow ‘because I'd grown so fond of Annie your dear Mother, who has been such a loyal servant to me these past years', and it was God who passed back into your head, the friend you'd abandoned when you were young and who now exacted a price for your disloyalty.

There was laurel by the cemetery gate. You touched one of the leaves, rubbed it between finger and thumb as you waited for the people to arrive. You stood and waited and waited and no one came. Then you went inside and you looked up at the fretted blue behind Christ's head on the window and you wept. Ghastly, uncontrollable, convulsive sobs that made you retch, and you knelt down, not because you wanted to kneel to God, but because you couldn't stand up, because you had to hold on to something, hearing, feeling nothing but the grief that swelled and heaved inside you. Then there was a cold, soft touch on your shoulder, a touch you knew was meant to heal and comfort, but which only made you aware of your shame, silenced you, but left your body rocking back and forth, back and forth, unable to be still, but searching now somewhere for a name, the name of the hand that touched it, aware that there was a time when it would have recognized that hand, known that name. And little by little, you brought yourself back to stillness, the hand stayed on your shoulder and in your head you said to it, give me time, stay and comfort me till I can look up and see your face, because I know that when I look up I'll know your face, even though I haven't seen it for so long and then I'll remember . . . But you had remembered the name: Stooks. You'd conjured it from somewhere, found it through your feeble fumblings in absolute darkness and run to it as towards a tiny prick of light. Stooks. And with the name came the remembrance of a face. You saw it clearly now, just as it used to be, could even picture it standing above you and smiling. Your body was still now, still and silent and light was seeping back under your eyelids. You reached out a hand and held on to the hard wood of the back of the pew and you turned your face as you felt the hand lift off your back and looked up. And you saw a stranger.

Sadler was staring at the wire meshing on the front of the old wireless. His eyes had fixed themselves on to this square, following intently the journeying of the brown threads that had woven it. His eyes were dry and smarting so he closed them. He began wondering why he'd been looking at the wireless, and then he remembered that he'd been going to turn it on. Good idea to turn it on, he thought now. Far better to listen to a song than to all the snatches of sound he'd been drubbing up in his head.

V

‘Cor!' Tom said.

Wren had been into town, driving Madge who wanted to do some shopping and he'd returned with Tom's
Champion
, as promised.

‘Thanks, Mr Wren.'

‘Last one in the shop.'

‘Cor. Was it?'

‘Lucky to get it. I reckon that might have gone if I'd been a bit later.'

‘I'm glad you got it.'

‘Good, is it?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Can't remember what I read when I was a lad.'

‘Comics, didn't you?'

‘I can't remember anything like that.'

‘What then?'

‘Books, I suppose, just books.'

‘My Ma says no one's got time for books, 'cos of the war.'

‘That's probably true, Tom. There must be a lot of things people don't have time for now.'

‘Why aren't you in the war, Mr Wren?'

‘Too old, son, too old to fight.'

Here was a straight answer, one Tom understood. Rare, though, in the life he now led, which seemed to be full of confusions, of questions that went unanswered. At home, there'd been his Ma to ask about things and he'd always believed in the truth of her answers, never once questioned it. And when there wasn't his Ma, there was Martha-Ann, who always started her answers with a reassuring, ‘Well, Tommy, you know what I'd say to that?' And when there wasn't Martha-Ann, there was an ‘auntie' of some shape or colour. All of which had led Tom to believe that only women knew the truth about things, that in them resided most of the world's wisdom. But Vera had disappointed him. So busy, she always seemed to be – her thin arms sinewy from the unceasing activity, backwards and forwards with the rolling pin, round and round with the spoon – that questions seemed to get in her way and she'd trip over them. Like on the afternoon, during Tom's first week, when, sitting in the kitchen watching her, he'd felt homesick and said:

‘'Ow long am I staying 'ere, Vera?'

‘What, love?'

She was dusting a pie with sugar. She'd made a flower out of the bits of pastry left over and stuck it on the top.

‘How long am I staying 'ere?'

‘Rest of your life, I wouldn't wonder.'

‘Why?'

‘What, duck?'

She wasn't listening. She was carrying her pie to the oven.

‘Why?'

She was holding the pie in one hand, opening the oven door with the other. But then, just as she was about to answer him, she bumped her pie with the oven door and the flower fell off on to the floor.

‘Flamin' 'ell!'

‘
Why
, Vera?'

‘Cos Mr 'itler sez you must.'

‘'E never . . .'

‘Ask no questions and get told no flippin' lies, duck.'

And that was really disappointing. Schoolmasters, he'd noticed, often slithered round questions by asking you one back, but women usually told you something you could believe in.

Tom opened his
Champion
as soon as Wren had gone. He'd been sitting on his bed most of the afternoon, waiting for it. The last one he'd seen had been three weeks ago and it was in that issue they'd announced a new adventure series with a new hero, Rockfist Rogan of the RAF. He'd missed two weeks. Two Fridays had come and gone and he and Rockfist were still unacquainted. But now, on page five, there he was!

Tom laughed. And an hour later he had read it all. Not just the story about Rockfist Rogan. He'd been on tour with the Roving Rovers, Fireworks Flynn the Wizard Sports Master had captured a mystery sharpshooter, Colwyn Dane, Mark Grimshaw's famous 'tec, had solved the Riddle of the Vanished Speedster and the Mantamer from Muskrat had won again. Everything was right in the world of
Champion
. So Tom had gone to sleep on his bed and the
Champion
had fallen on to the floor. His tea-time had come and gone and Vera, having one of her bad days, had sent Sadler off in search of him.

‘Tea's all ready, Mr Sadler, but I won't 'ave it sitting on the table till dinner-time. He can go without.'

Sadler went up to the coconut matting landing. Tom's room was two doors along from his own, smaller than his, but with the same view over the orchard from its high window. There were no pictures in it, only a little embroidered motto:
Friday's child is full of grace
.

‘I wasn't born on a Friday,' Tom had remarked.

‘What day were you born on, Tom?'

‘Dunno. Not a Friday.'

Sadler knocked before going into Tom's room. The boy was entitled to the illusion that this at least belonged to him and that he had some rights over it. But there was no sound at all from inside it, so Sadler opened the door quietly and went in. Tom was lying on his back with his fist above his head.

‘Tom,' Sadler whispered. But he didn't stir.

Sadler looked at him and thought, I could reach out and touch him and he wouldn't know. Then he saw Tom's
Champion
lying on the floor and bent down and picked it up. The word
CATAPULTS
in large letters in an advertisement box caught his attention. A special offer, it said, for four and ninepence, carriage paid. ‘Polished aluminium fork with wide spread, square quarter-inch elastic. Leather sling. State age when ordering.' Sadler had always been able to file things in his memory, hadn't needed to write everything down like the Colonel. So he noted the address and the sum of four and ninepence.

Tom woke up to see Sadler standing by his bed, looking at his comic.

‘That's mine,' he said.

Sadler smiled.

It was some weeks before the catapult Sadler had ordered arrived, and it was during this time that Tom discovered the ballroom.

The ballroom was a huge, rectangular room, originally painted light green, but with brownish patches now, where the damp had seeped into the walls.

‘I don't know,' said Madge, ‘how long it is since anyone gave a ball in there. The Colonel and I gave one in about about 1930, but it was perfectly ghastly! Muriel Portsmouth drank too much and vomited on the bandstand and someone started a conga round the garden – a conga! – the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen, and all my roses were ruined. I think I must have put my foot down after that.'

It had become a place to put things in. Things you didn't want any more. It was chilly and dark because all the windows were shuttered.

Tom had managed to open the shutters on four of the windows and there, with an old sofa, broken lamps, a picnic hamper, photo albums, a garden bed on wheels, empty picture frames and piles of magazines and newspapers he decided to pitch his camp. The room became his den. He wanted to have his meals in there, but Vera said: ‘Good 'eavens, duck, you don't imagine me an' Betty's going ter traipse up there with your dinner, do you?'

He would have slept in there, only Sadler said it was too cold. But it was his place, and he shared it with five ‘others'.

He discovered the ‘others' the day he discovered the ballroom. Five flat men, made of thin wood, painted but faded now with age and sunshine, their eyes pale as mothballs and their bodies shot through with tiny holes.

The Colonel had set up a rifle range years ago in the field above the orchard. There had been one or two of his army cronies who'd been keen and he'd had the figures built so that they could hold competitions. They only held one competition and the Colonel won, so he thought he'd stop it at that, quit while he was ahead. But the flat men had stood out in the range for years, growing paler and paler as seasons passed and no one shot at them, until one summer Madge had hit upon the idea of lending them to the local fête. They were loaded on to a lorry and driven off to the football ground where the Hentswell fête was held. They were shot at for a whole afternoon, a hot Sunday in August, and then that same lorry brought them back, and Sadler and the lorry driver carried them one by one into the ballroom. Here Tom found them and stood them up round the room and gave them names – Ginger, Soapy, Norman (his favourite), Hans (a German) and Roger. They all looked exactly the same. The only way to tell them apart was by the different patterning of little holes in them. But Tom told Sadler countless things about them as individuals, a layer of complex detail covering their sameness, obliterating it.

‘Roger's an orphan,' he said, ‘that's why he had spots.'

Roger's face, it was true, was horribly pitted with holes.

‘Norman's my best one.'

‘Why, Tom?'

‘Well, he listens to me.'

‘What about Hans?'

‘He's a German.'

‘What's he doing in England?'

‘He's a prisoner.'

‘Oh.'

‘And the others don't like him because 'e's a German and that.'

‘And Ginger?'

‘He's called after Ma's cat. Cats are his favourite animal. He has cat exhibitions, see?'

Tom had picked some of the largest leaves he could find off the virginia creeper that grew outside the ballroom, and laid them out, evenly spaced, on the long table. They were different shades of red and orange.

‘That's Ginger's cat exhibition. You can judge it if you like.'

So Sadler judged it, selecting three leaves and designating them first, second and third.

‘What can we give as prizes?'

‘Pick something out of Soapy's shop.'

Soapy had been stood in a corner and at his feet had been laid all the smaller items Tom had found – broken crockery, dusty old decanters, an alarm clock, a cutlery tray, two piles of the
Illustrated London News
, an empty jewel case, an assortment of lamps.