Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven (3 page)

On Sunday morning I awake to the sound of church bells. I am in the single bed alone, despite having crept in with Aunty Joyce again last night.

The church seems very small to me, and very old. I sit between Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack in the pews and copy their every move, although I can hardly take my eyes off the timber-beamed roof and the pretty-coloured glass in the windows. I kneel when they do, mouth prayers when they do, and open my mouth to sing, just like them. Red and violet are the colours that intrigue me most as they fall in chunks of light across the pews.They come from Jesus in the window: he is wearing a crown of thorns and rolling his eyes up to the sky. I must admit I feel a bit sorry for him, but frankly, it's not what you want to see on a Sunday morning, is it? It could be a bit more cheerful. In the front pews are the boys from Heaven House and Mr Fairly with his wife. We sit directly behind Mr Fairly, because Uncle Jack insists we are as far forward as possible. Tommy turns round and smiles at me and I smile back. He turns round quickly. I'm sure Aunty Joyce sees, and I am very, very smug. At least she can see that
someone
likes me.

But Aunty Joyce seems to be smiling a lot more than usual, and even takes my hand as we walk down the aisle on the way out. The vicar, a thin unhealthy-looking man with brown teeth, greets everyone as they come out of church with utter indifference.

“Well done, Jack; well done, Joyce. I'm glad to see you managed to take one. Well done. We must all do our bit.” And he smiles at me, but half-heartedly, as though he really would rather be down the pub.

After matins and dinner comes Sunday school. This is a group of seventy or eighty children led by Miss Didbury at one end of the village hall. I notice Miss Didbury is the same buzzard-eyed lady as the billeting officer. It is strange to return to the hall where I waited to be chosen and where I have knitted for England.

We kick off with more hymns I don't know, because I don't know any hymns. Then we sing “… Praise from the great and jelly ghost …” I will get the hang of that one. It's a laugh.

We're divided into groups, each taught by an assistant: an older girl or boy recently graduated from Sunday school. I am with Violet. We listen to stories about Jesus and Violet shows pictures of him. He had pale brown hair, a brown beard and blue eyes. He wore satin robes and sometimes rode a donkey. Jesus came from another country. Does anyone know where Jews came from, wonders Violet? I do. I know people in London who are Jews. They come from Whitechapel and they go to a synagogue. None of the ones I know have blue eyes, so I tell them. Everyone laughs because of my accent. I laugh too because I think maybe I'm being funny.

Violet smiles nervously. “
You
don't go to a synagogue, do you, Kitty?”

“No.”

“You go to church, then?”

“Nope.”

More laughs.

“She's a vacuee, Violet. She don't know what church is, do ya?”

“They all got nits in London, so don't sit too close!”

“They don't speak proper up there.”

“They don't read nor nothink.”

My eyes begin to sting and I fold my lips to stop them from wobbling. Violet hushes the children firmly and finds an excuse to give me a picture of a donkey to stick into my
Life of Our Lord
book. Then we all draw pictures of what God gives us each day, sing another round of ‘Jelly Ghost' with Miss Didbury, and go home or to ‘cadets'.

On the way back I see Tommy waiting by the church gate. I put my hand to my mouth, because I forgot to get him my shrapnel. As I approach he takes his hands out of his pockets and moves towards me.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering … I'm going up Lady Elmsleigh's after tea to see the Americans.They got tents everywhere and lorries up there an' all. Wanna come?”

“Okay,” I say.

“Meet me at the end of the path – to Heaven House.”

“Righto!”

I march on homewards, pleased as punch and just a little bit smug again.

Running down the lane I can hardly believe Tommy is there, waiting for me like he said. He is so grown-up and handsome I can't help thinking he's waiting for someone else.

“Hi there!” he smiles as I come panting up to him.

“Hi!”

I am overwhelmed by his sad brown eyes and his earnest face. I hand him a small canvas sack, and when he has looked inside he places a loud exaggerated kiss on the top of my hair ribbon.

“I never seen so much shrapnel!”

“It's everywhere in London.” I try to be cool, but I'm reeling from the kiss. “Our home got blown to bits.”

“Never!”

“It did. We had to go an' live with our Aunty Vi, but then Mum had twins and Aunty Vi had a … nerviss breakdown, so Mum went to work in a munitions factory in Somerset only they don't take children only children under two in the crèche … so … I had to come here.”

I pretend to look at the hedgerows as we walk along, but really I am taking in his manly brow and jaw, and his trumpet ears and downy soft cheeks which are still those of a child. His hair is thick and dark and too long on top, and he has a few freckles on his nose that I haven't noticed before.

“You didn't tell no one you were meeting me, did you?” he asks.

“No – why?”

“Best not to, that's all.”

I don't want to upset him, but I want to know what's going on.

“Don't they like you, then, Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack?”

“Not much.”

I frown, and say the first stupid thing that comes into my head.

“Not because you're from the boys' home, is it?”

He gives a breath of a laugh.

“No. No, far from it. They'd love to show their merciful charity to a poor orphan. Looks good in church.”

I hate these mysteries.

“So –”

“Soon as I get out of school I'm joining the RAF and then you won't have no more bombing in London, you mark my words.”

“You can't, you won't be old enough.” He has changed the subject and taken me with him.

“I can lie about my age. I'm fourteen in March, an' I'm leaving school then. Any road, I've got a
way in
.”

“How do you mean?”

“Jonathan Crocker, right, he went to school here an' he's a fighter pilot. He come back last year for a visit an' he told me he'd take me up in his plane next time he comes. Jonathan Crocker. He's going to get me in.”

“Oh!” I'm fairly certain Tommy can look after himself, but I've seen planes collide. “I hope you don't get shot down.”

“I won't,” he says very seriously. “Though I don't s'pose anyone'd care if I did.”

“I would.”

He beams. He has lovely teeth. “You're the only person who's ever said that,” and he puts his hand on my shoulder like a big brother. Or a sweetheart, perhaps. Well, I can dream.

Lady Elmsleigh's big house has become the focus of attention this week. Not long before my arrival some thirty tanks and twenty lorries parked up around her estate and tents were put up in the grounds. Young American soldiers hang about in twos and threes, roaming the fields aimlessly, starting up their lorry engines, turning them off. They offer us rides, give us Lucky Strikes and gum and chocolate, and all for the pleasure of our company. They seem bored and homesick, and perhaps because of this they seem more approachable than our own soldiers, who we hardly ever see except on leave.

They seem less formal even than the Home Guard, who take everything a bit seriously. These Americans play cards with us, wrestle with the boys, and take the clips from their pistols so we can play with them. It's the closest any of us has been to an army of soldiers, and we love it.

Some of the kids become errand runners for them, and we're all happy as Larry to bring them fresh bread or eggs in exchange for the glamour of their company. We start to loiter after school, listening to stories of faraway places called Maine and Utah told in film-star voices. The stories are rarely about themselves, and are based on whatever we want to hear: cowboys, Indians, Hollywood. When we do ask them about themselves they turn out to be mostly from farms and miss their mothers. A few of them have girlfriends, and I love to ply them with questions about their romances. The girls have names like Loretta and Dolores that conjure up such beauties I hardly dare look at the solid, dumpy girls they show me in their pocket photos.

Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack often guess I'm up there with the other kids, but I don't let on I'm with Tommy. They're so busy getting huffy about Lady Elmsleigh that it doesn't dawn on them.

Aunty Joyce is big in the WVS, you see. She spearheaded working lunches for land girls and prisoners of war, organizing mobile soup kitchens from local milk carts. She was the driving force (believe it or not) behind the weekly ‘knit for victory' sessions at the village hall.

The leader of the WVS, however, is Lady Elmsleigh, herself a local champion of ways to support the war effort. There is a curious relationship between Lady Elmsleigh and Aunty Joyce, because of course Lady Elmsleigh does not believe in God. Uncle Jack is intensely suspicious of her, certain that she is a bad influence on the village. She is a ‘soashliss' and a ‘naytheeiss'
and
she smokes cigarettes.

When her father Lord Elmsleigh was alive, the whole village voted along with the government because he was a Tory MP. Now the whole village seems soashliss. That's how it is and that's how you always choose your party here. Fair enough. But there is talk that one of her brothers died fighting for the ‘communiss' in Spain. Uncle Jack finds this all highly dodgy.

There is widespread sympathy for her, though, because her husband died in the Great War, her eldest son was shot down over Germany, and her second son is missing, presumed dead. What's more she holds regular fêtes for the whole village and parties for evacuees, orphans and war-workers, where she lets children trample freely on her flower beds and grown-ups gawp at her posh rugs and blue-patterned porcelain lavatory bowls. It is also rumoured – although no one can know for sure except the grocer, and he is sworn to secrecy – that it is she who has anonymously paid off all the outstanding debts ‘on tab' of the poorest families in Sheepcote. It is the anonymity of her kindness that clinched it for her with most of the villagers. For everyone knows that if
they
had performed such a generous act they would have wanted to bask in its glory, although Uncle Jack proclaims it “only what you'd expect from the gentry”.

As for smoking, he tries to muster up some moral indignation on the subject, but the truth is he loves his pipe and it is a tricky one for him. Nonetheless, cigarettes are a sign of decadence and gluttony in these times. It simply isn't right and proper that any woman should be seen smoking when our boys on the front line are going short of vital supplies. Everyone knows you should leave cigarettes for the men.

What he doesn't know is that the vicar and his wife are addicted to tobacco, and that their entire black market supply comes from Lady Elmsleigh. I heard it at knitting group. Uncle Jack thinks the frantic expressions exchanged between the Reverend Mr Harrison and Lady Elmsleigh are caused by heated debates about the existence of God, and not the surreptitious delivery of Players cork-tipped to the holy pocket.

As for Americans, they are just bad news all round as far as Uncle Jack's concerned. I don't know what he bases this on, but I've heard a few interesting things whilst turning out socks and mittens. Baggie Aggie reckons some poor girls are so hard up they're
selling themselves
to the Americans at the air base down the road, although they talk in such funny nods and whispers sometimes at the Sheepcote Women's Voluntary Service that I never do work out who exactly bought them and where they put them. One thing is certain, the Americans up at Lady Elmsleigh's have not bought any. They're too busy mooching over their dumpy girlfriends, their mums' meat pies or their ol' farm dogs.

At any rate, when Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce ask where I've been they are so bent on grunting over Lady Elmsleigh and Americans they forget to ask who I went with.

Then one day, in early June, they all disappear: the Americans, the tanks, the lorries, the tents. We go to see them after school and they have gone, leaving only a debris of tin cans, bald grass and tyre marks. We never see any of them again, although one or two of them leave behind more enduring mementoes which we discover only later.They quite literally put life into the village, then they go and lose theirs in two feet of sea water on a foreign beach.

People say there's another huge wave of evacuees leaving London, and I'm lucky to have a place already. But at home with the Shepherds I still don't feel very at home. Aunty Joyce seems to scrub everything in my path with carbolic soap and makes me wash my hands so many times a day that calluses are beginning to appear on my knuckles. In fairness, Aunty Joyce also seems to wash herself a lot. An awful lot, as a matter of fact.

Another thing that's odd is that there seems to be an intruder in the house, and it's not me. I've got used to saying my prayers and saying grace, but I can't stand God following me about everywhere. Uncle Jack goes on and on about him like he's an old mate, but an old mate that
I
will never get to meet, so there. Everything that happens is an opportunity for a little extract from the Bible. I've never read the Bible, but I can't see what all the fuss is about. They all live in places with funny names where they drink wine instead of beer and wear sandals and go about on donkeys and camels saying ‘thee' and ‘thou art' to each other for no earthly reason. And there are no pictures in it. Not even black and white. I can't see the point. It makes Uncle Jack feel important, though. (I'm sure he can't have read it all because he sometimes has trouble with words in the
Gloucestershire Echo
.) He seems to be in some kind of competition with Mr Fairly Himself, who is also big on biblical references.

The day of the Sunday school picnic starts off well enough, with salmon sandwiches and a tomato for everyone up at Lady Elmsleigh's big house. There is tug-of-war and pass-the-ball-under-your-chin, and what's left of the Sheepcote Brass Band with four old men, three cornets and a bugle. There's even a boogie band laid on by members of the American air base a few miles down the road, but that is for later in the afternoon.

First it's time for the Sunday school to do their bit. We give a small play in which Joe Bunting stars as Jesus and in which I mercifully do not perform, and the whole joyous sun-baked event is rounded off by some hymn singing and the fateful ‘Jelly Ghost'.

We sit cross-legged on the grass, and the Reverend Mr Harrison leads the singing in a dapper linen suit and straw boater. Because I am looking at him, I don't notice Miss Didbury's face change from blissful content into rage, and I'm surprised when she rises from her canvas seat to interrupt the vicar.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

We all fall silent and crane our necks this way and that to see what's happening.

“I'm sorry, vicar.” Miss Didbury has gone mauve. “
Who
was that?”

Everyone looks at each other dumbly.

“
Who
is singing …
who
is singing … ‘jelly ghost'?”

Some children titter. What a daft question. We all are, aren't we?

“
You
!” cries Miss Didbury, panting at me. “
You
are making fun of the Lord's anthem! Stand up!”

I scramble to my feet, heart pounding and knees like the jelly ghost.

“What are you singing?”

I begin to tremble. “Jelly ghost, miss.”

Everyone laughs treacherously.

“Be quiet! Repeat after me, young lady: ‘Praise from the great angelic host.'”

Every girl wants to be a young lady, but somehow when you're called it by a grown-up it sounds really quite nasty. I swallow. “Praise from the great and jelly ghost.”

More titters are silenced by Miss Didbury's blood-filled face.

“HOW DARE YOU!” Then in words clipped as sharp as blades, “Repeat … after … me … ‘angelic host'.”

I haven't a clue why I have to keep repeating it. I listen intently.

“Repeat it! Angelic host!”

Maybe ‘ghost' is wrong. I take a deep breath and try to steady my voice: “And jelly coast.”

More pitiless laughs. Miss Didbury calls me out to the front of the seated multitude, pushes up my cardigan sleeve (there is a lot of pushing to do) and slaps me over and over again with her Sunny Songs for Sunday School. Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! I feel my lips trembling, but not because of the pain, nor even because of the humiliation of being punished in front of the whole of Sheepcote. I am devastated by the clenched teeth and pursed lips of this woman who seems, for no reason I can fathom, to hate me with all the spite in the world.

The vicar hangs his head awkwardly, shuffles from one foot to the other, and scratches his nose. Then he rubs his hands together and says with a little too much joviality, “How about some campfire songs? ‘If you're happy and you know it …' Ready, everyone? One, two, three …”

I go back to my place and clap my hands and stamp my feet with happiness along with everyone else, then as soon as the songs are over I slip off to find Tommy before Aunty Joyce or Uncle Jack get their hands on me. The brass band starts up and I scamper past the food tables where the poorer children are stuffing paste sandwiches down their shirts and jumpers, and weave my way through the boogie orchestra which is just setting up. I see Miss Hubble arriving on the back of a motorbike with a black American airman. She waves vigorously at me, totally unaware of what I have been through. They both look so glamorous, and I am pleased for her being with him, and pleased that she wasn't there earlier, because if she had been I would have wondered why she let it happen and did nothing.

Tommy reaches out an arm from behind the summer house and pulls me in towards him. He stands facing me sadly, and rubs my arm. I look back at him frowning, and can think of nothing to say.

Every time I open my mouth, it seems, I may well make someone angry. I'm determined to get to the bottom of it, and there's only one person I can ask.

“What's facky Nell?” I ask Tommy as we escape down the lane.

He gives a little laugh, and looks at me to check I'm being serious. “It's like swearing.”

“Why?”

“What d'you mean, ‘Why?' It just is.”

“What's it mean?”

He looks a little coy. “It's like shaggin'.”

“Ah …”

“You know shaggin' 'don't you?”

“Yes.” I do know shagging. As a word. I haven't a clue what it's about.

“So … what's it mean?”

“Shaggin'? You don't know what it means?”

I shake my head. We walk on in silence. Then Tommy stops and looks at me.

“Come on!” he says, taking me by the hand. “I'll show you.”

He helps me over a gate and leads me through some knee-high barley. I am full of anticipation, part excitement because this is an adventure – and part fear, because I have been warned about Tommy, and maybe I am about to discover why.

When we reach the other side of the field he helps me over another gate and on to a path which runs between some old corrugated iron huts and chicken coops. There is an old, disused caravan on the left-hand side, with bits of old upholstery hanging out of it.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“The Lovatts.”

He grips my hand tighter and I feel a little thrill shoot up my arm.

“What's the Lovatts?”

“Just a smallholding. Used to be a big farm, now it's just bits and pieces.”

He leads me into some bushes at the side, and I see there is another small path. I follow him, still holding his hand, until we stop in front of some wooden boxes. He opens a clasp on one and I can hear scuffling. I see now it is a hutch, and he's holding a large brown rabbit.

“Hold this,” he says, and the rabbit scrambles furiously up on to my shoulder. I frantically try to pull it back, feeling its claws in my neck. But Tommy takes it back from me and places it in another hutch he has just opened.

“There,” he says. “Watch.”

We watch together, as two rabbits twitch their noses up and down at us, then at each other. Soon the one rabbit has shuffled over to the other rabbit from behind, and seems to be nudging it. I look at Tommy curiously.

“What are we looking at this for?”

“That's shaggin',” says Tommy.

“What? That?”

“Yes. That's how they make babies. That's how babies are made. The male shags the female.”

I stare at the cage in disbelief. He unfastens the cage door again, takes out the reluctant male by the ears and replaces him in his own cage.

We saunter back along the paths.

“Well, I won't say facky Nell again if it's swearing. But frankly, I can't see what all the fuss is about.”

Tommy laughs.

“So is jelly ghost shaggin' as well?” I ask.

He laughs again.

“There's nothing wrong with your jelly ghost. You can say it as often as you like. It's just that they wanted you to sing ‘angelic host',” he pronounces it in a very posh accent, “and they thought you were making fun of them.”

We weave our way back through the barley.

“What's the angelic host?”

“A bunch of angels.”

We reach the gate.

“Do you believe in angels?”

“No … do you?”

We lean on the gate together, looking out across the green and golden valley.

“Nah.”

They are not angry with me when I get home late. In fact, Uncle Jack's face is a picture of sympathy and concern.

“That Miss Didbury needs taking down a peg or two,” he confides.

“Jumped-up old hag,” adds Aunty Joyce, handing me a cup of Ovaltine.

Although it soon becomes clear that it is not concern for me but venom for Miss Didbury that drives their unusual sympathy, I lap it up with a mixture of joy and relief.

“I've told Leslie time and time again she's not the woman for the job. And Mr Fairly agrees with me. But does he listen?”

Aunty Joyce shakes her head. “She doesn't have a clue how to deal with children.”

“Not a clue.”

“Daft bat.”

“So full of her own importance!”

Maybe it is the Ovaltine, maybe it is the glow of the fire in the range, I don't know, but I feel so reassured that I take a notion to join in.

“Po-faced old twat!” I suggest.

They both stare at me in that same blank-but-indignant way sheep stare at you when you go in their field. Then they start to look not unlike Miss Didbury.

Uncle Jack makes me wash my mouth out with soap. It stings a lot. I start to cry and Aunty Joyce says I'm a very rude girl and makes me wash my hands three times.

I say my prayers trembling by the bedside, and round them off with: “I'm sorry God about the rude words but I don't know what's swearing and what's not and nobody will tell me, anyway, I don't see why Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack are so horrible to me and why they are so horrible to Tommy. Please let me understand why they don't like a poor orphan boy. Otherwise, to be honest, I just don't think I can believe in you any more –”

“Shut up! Get into bed!”

I scramble into bed, and she approaches me with a candle.

“What's all this nonsense about Tommy?”

I have hidden my face under the covers.

“Kitty? What's he been telling you?”

I peep just above the covers. “Nothing. Just you don't like him.”

“That wicked boy! What a …!”

There is a sharp intake of breath, “Now you listen to me,

Kitty. Tommy Glover is a
bad sort
. A bad
bad
boy. You are not to go near him again, do you understand?”

She blows the candle out before I can answer, and I am left in the dark once more.