by Jane Bailey
“Or is it that you can’t get it up?”
There is a clatter as he drops his sandwich tin on the footplate. He leans both hands flat on his knees and glares at me. “Who …? What …? Wherever did you hear that? Who’s been saying that?”
“No one …” I wing it. “It’s just this friend at school, she’s got rabbits, and the daddy rabbit can’t have babies because he can’t get it up. That’s what her mum said.”
Uncle Jack rolls his eyes, and heaves a sigh.
“Well! Look, I don’t want you to repeat that expression, all right?”
“Is it rude, then?”
“Yes, it’s rude.”
“But is it true? Is that your problem?”
“NO!” He bangs his fist on the bunker and a piece of coal topples down. “Has anyone said that about me?”
I shrug. “I don’t think so.” Then I add mischievously, “Still … if they had, you could always prove them wrong …”
George has come back and is up beside me, winking. “Where to next, Driver?”
Uncle Jack lets me work the lever, and the pistons steam like a giant angry bull.
When we get back it is bitterly cold, and he walks me all the way home from the bus stop holding my hand. It is a giant, brown, warm engine driver’s hand, and it completely covers my own. He is as pleased as Punch to tell everyone we meet that I have driven a seventy-seven tank engine, and I am as pleased as Punch to be wearing his driver’s hat, even if I can only see the road.
More secrets revealed
Back at school we go out to play in the numbing wind, almost longing for the bell so that we can huddle again around the schoolroom stove. A crowd of us are playing dub-dub, and I stand at the dubbing post staring up at the sky and the hills. The bare trees are mouse brown on the humps and hollows, making Sheepcote woods like the secret hair of a woman.
A few twitters of joy go up as the first snowflakes fall on us, soft as thistledown, but melt to nothing on the old tarmac.
I venture from the post, trying to spot people hiding, and see Tommy standing with the big boys. These days they rarely bother with the schoolyard, and spend their playtimes in the lanes smoking or checking rabbit traps in the wood.
I’m sure he is cross with me because I didn’t introduce my mum to him like I promised. He probably spent all of Christmas Day and Boxing Day hanging around the farm waiting for me to bring her to see him.
“Hiya!” I say.
“Oh … hi, Kitty!” He smiles at me, then returns to his conversation with Will Capper and Eddie Wragg as if I were invisible. I hang about for a while, then pretend to kick a stone which isn’t there, and hum to myself as I wander away.
“Dub-dub in!” scream Babs and Iris together.
“You’ve lost, Kitty! You’re out!”
I wonder if Tommy knows how much I’ve missed him, and that it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t get to see him. I wonder if I’ve lost him for ever.
I am nervous at the first knitting group after the holidays, anxious they might ask me questions again like Miss Lavish warned me. I stick to Miss Lavish and stare intently at her thick wool stockings and lace-up shoes, hoping to become invisible once more.
I need not worry, however, for on this particular day Lady Elmsleigh turns up and shows us all the photographs that were taken at her house during the Christmas and New Year’s parties.
We gather round and gawp, trying to spot each other in the crowd.
“And I brought this along as well,” says Lady Elmsleigh, holding up a large, framed photograph. “It’s a summer fête at Elmsleigh – the last time we had one, it seems – in 1929. I thought we could revive the tradition this year – what do you think?”
There are murmurs of agreement, and already the women are planning what stalls they could have, who could play the music, entertain the children. She gives the picture to Miss Lavish, and one or two of us lean over to see it.
“Oh, look!” says Miss Lavish. “That’s me when I was younger! My goodness, look at my hair! What was I thinking?”
I giggle, and she points out some other people I would know: Mrs Chudd and Mrs Glass in their teens with low-waisted dresses and bobbed hair; Mrs Marsh carrying a toddler with another little boy in tow. Baggie Aggie Tugwell in a hat standing next to a young man and both laughing at something together. I am intrigued by the photograph. It is undeniable evidence that old people were young once, that they are just like me, that we really are all alike; and I find this both deeply reassuring and astonishing.
Soon everyone is craning to see it, and Miss Lavish yields up the photograph to Mrs Spud, and there are whoops and cries of wonderment for the next five minutes.
“Who’s that then?” asks Mrs Big-fat-arse, pointing at the picture.
“Dunno. Looks familiar.”
“Never seen ’er.”
“Who’s that, then, Annie?”
Tosser takes the picture and sucks in her cheeks, then chews on something imaginary in her mouth. “Where am I, then?” she says. “Oh aye. There I am. Ha! An’ there’s Tilda … See that? We looked smart then, didn’t we? Heh!”
“Yes, but who are these two over here?” Mrs Arse points at two women on the edge of the photograph.
“You remember them! That’s Mrs Shorecross and her daughter – only stayed a while. Now she was related to my neighbour Tilda, that’s why she come over to Sheepcote, when ’er husband died.”
“I can’t remember no Mrs Shorecross.”
“Oh! Tiz a tragedy about ’er, it is. Now, this’ll make you think twice about that tosser Fairly. You listen to this …” Tosser is enjoying the attention. “Well, she had three children, only one boy died of scarlet fever and the other one died of … diphtheria I think twuz, and she only had the daughter left … Kath, she was called. Lovely girl. Well … oh, it breaks your heart, honest, she was engaged to a lovely young man an’ they wuz about to be married an’ off ’ee went to a TB sanatorium. Too brave for ’is own good ’ee wuz. ’Course, ’ee fought very young in the Great War – got all kinds of medals, ’ee did, but the mustard gas messed up ’is lungs good and proper, didn’t it? Never come back from the sanatorium … An’ there wuz that lovely girl with a baby on the way …”
“Never!”
“Whatever happened to her?”
“Well … Mrs Shorecross, she didn’t ’ave a penny to ’er name, so she goes an’ works at Heaven House an’ takes Kath with ’er. But ’twuzn’t Mr Fairly then, ’twuz old Mr Northwood, remember ’im? Dear old soul, ’ee wuz, an’ ’ee took ’em in an’ gives ’er time off with the baby – ooh! She doted on that baby, she did. An’t would’ve gone on well enough, but trouble wuz round the corner …”
“What happened?”
“What trouble?”
“Well … Mr Northwood died, an’ Mrs Northwood went into a ’ome, an’ Mr Fairly come along, remember?”
“Oh yes!”
“He made some changes.”
“Smartened it up a bit, didn’t he?”
“Well … Mrs Northwood made ’im promise to look after the two women like before, but …”
“What?”
“Well … young Kath got taken poorly, an’ she died. An’ then ’ee made poor old Mrs Shorecross go too, an’ she died of a broken heart. All ’er family gone before ’er. S’enough to break anyone’s heart, that is.”
“Mr Fairly did that?”
“Yes … tosser!”
“Mr Fairly? You sure?”
“Oh yes. Some do say ’ee ’ad ’is wicked way with the girl, too!”
“Never!”
“Annie Galloway! Listen to you!”
“I’m not saying tiz true. Only some do say …”
“What happened to the baby?”
“Oh, ’ee stayed there.”
“There’s no Shorecross boy, is there?”
“Kath made ’im take ’is father’s name, seeing as they wuz about to be married. Glover. Edwin Glover wuz ’er young man.”
/> Everyone looks at each other. People who haven’t been listening look up. Lady Elmsleigh goes over to Tosser and leans over her, pointing at the photograph. “You mean this young girl is Tommy Glover’s mother?”
“That’s the one. Kathleen Shorecross. Barely stayed six months. If that.”
Now everyone is letting out gasps of amazement, but they are not really bothered – not like I am. Before long they are knitting again, and wittering on about pork rinds and tripe, and I am so churned up I wonder I’m not sick.
Still, I have something to tell Tommy now, and he will have to take notice of me.
Paper doll to call my own
It is so cold on Saturday morning that Aunty Joyce suggests I stay in by the range and do some colouring, but it is my only chance to see Tommy, so I climb the frozen lane to the milksheds with her.
The cows are steaming in the cold, and we rest our cheeks against them, glad of their warm twitching hides. I wait until Aunty Joyce has popped into the farmhouse before I go down the line of cows and find Tommy. “Wait for me behind the barn!” I hiss. “Really important news. Really important!” He looks unmoved, as though he perhaps thinks I’m going to tell him my mother is coming or something, so I add, “About your parents!” and dash back to my cow.
He does wait for me, of course, and I draw him back down the lane to be out of earshot of everyone. As we lean on an old wooden gate I feel heady with power. I tell him everything as I remember it, and he hangs on my every word, making me repeat things over and over. When I see his face light up with completely new expressions of joy, I feel I have worked the magic all myself.
“Doted on me, you said. Are you sure those were her exact words?”
“She doted on you. That’s what Tosser said. You can ask her.”
I take him to the village hall and we push open the door tentatively. There is no one there, but the picture is hanging by the noticeboard, where Lady Elmsleigh left it.
“Which one do you think she is?” I ask, overcome with my own importance.
“She’s here? In this picture?”
“And her mother.”
Tommy lets out a whistle and swallows in anticipation as he looks along the rows of Sheepcote villagers in their outlandish hats and hairstyles.
“Tell me! Tell me!”
I savour the moment. Raising my hand I point slowly to the smiling dark-haired girl and her mother standing by the flowerbed at the edge of the picture.
He seems to stop breathing. He puts his finger on her face and strokes it, over and over.
I thought I was in control, but now I see that I’m not. He doesn’t speak or answer me for a long time, and when he moves it is his shoulders, which are shaking, and tears, so powerful I know he is wishing I wasn’t there. I am way out of my depth. I try to think of something funny to say to snap him out of it, because I think that’s what he’ll want me to do. But nothing comes to me. So I just push my head into his chest and give him a hug. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me for dear life, as if I was his dead mother come back to him.
Shagging in the barn
All through January and February the winds tear at the bushes, wrenching them this way and that, and huge trees are pulled about like seaweed underwater. These are winds so bitterly cold that no one wants to venture out. They slam doors shut, rattle bolts and loosen catches, and they flatten trousers and skirts against us so that every contour of our legs is visible. Still it doesn’t snow, but on the highest slopes and Sheepcote woods there is a scattering of white.
The sheep are brought in from the fields and penned up for lambing. Three barns are now full of them, divided according to how many lambs each is carrying. They are due the last weekend in February, and all our efforts concentrate on getting them well provided for with bales of straw, making space in the barns, fixing pens.
Heinrich comes into his own now. He was a sheep farmer in Germany, and knows exactly what’s going on. Thumper says he’s his best worker and is quite happy to let him take over a little, and you would think he was an old friend of Thumper’s and not a German at all.
“Three lems,” says Heinrich, nodding at one pen. “And over here, two lems, and there one lem each.” I am impressed that he can tell what’s inside these great woolly boulders, and I smile, taking his hand between mine for warmth. He smiles back. “You will have one, I sink, to hold and feed.”
I run up to the barns every day after school, hoping the lambs have started. The sheep stare at me in that funny way they do, always smiling no matter what I say to them. They are gigantic barrels on twig-like, knock-kneed legs, and it is a wonder they can remain standing at all.
Then, at the very end of February, we hear bleating on the way home from school. I run up to the barns with some other children to see that four lambs have been born in the big barn and the mothers are in separate little pens with them. Thumper takes the children off to see the lambs in the next barn, but Heinrich sits me on a straw bale and lifts out a lamb for me to hold. It bleats a little, then sits very still, as still as me. I am shocked by it being there in my lap, alive, newly born and smelling of hay. I am surprised by the feel of it, like tough carpet, not soft at all. I close my arms more confidently around it, and it bleats and rests its chin on my arm. I can feel its warm tummy moving in and out under my hand, smell the rich, maizy lamb-smell, and I sit immobile, mesmerized by the miracle under my nose.
Its mother honks loudly a few feet away, so Heinrich lifts the lamb and places it gently back by its mother’s side. Aunty Joyce comes in with a tray of tea, and Heinrich takes a cup, smiling.
“Watch this one now,” he says, and we both look at a ewe who is lying at the front of the pen. She is rolling her eyes back and her top lip rolls back too.
“Is she all right?” I ask.
“Fine,” he says. “Watch.”
The ewe continues to roll her lip back every now and then, and makes an uncharacteristic sigh or two. Heinrich checks her back legs and takes a piece of cord from his pocket. He puts a little lasso over some hooves which are protruding from the ewe’s behind, and tugs gently. With a rush of liquid a lamb shoots out on to the straw. He swings it by the legs and puts it in front of the ewe, who seems to lick life into it.
Aunty Joyce is sitting on a hay bale next to me, and I jump up to loll over the pen and ogle the newly born lamb. I am so busy marvelling at it that I don’t see Heinrich sit down beside Aunty Joyce and put his arm around her.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” I ask, but when I turn there are tears in her eyes, and Heinrich is comforting her. I frown. “What is it, Aunty Joyce?”
Heinrich looks across at me. “It can be very moving, I sink, to see a lem borning.”
I nod sagely, but I have no idea what he is talking about.
That same night I am woken in the early hours by Uncle Jack getting up for his shift. I don’t usually wake up, and soon realize there are voices. Aunty Joyce has got up too, and they are moving about downstairs and talking. I hear the front door go, and then footsteps on the stairs. My door creaks open.
“Kitty? You awake?”
“Yes.”
“I’m just going to do teas for the lambers. I won’t be two ticks. Stay in bed till I get back.”
I hear the front door close again, but I can’t stay in bed. I’m awake now, and I can hear lambs bleating. I lie in bed for a while then look out of my window and see glints of a brazier or an oil lamp glowing inside one of the barns despite the blackout. I want to see more lambs being born. I want to hold one again. I have no intention of missing any of it.
* * *
When I get to the lane I head towards the cracks of light escaping from the broken corrugated iron and slatted wooden doors of the barns. As I draw near, there is no sound at all, except the occasional rustle of sheep’s hooves on straw, and an owl in the trees beyond the farmhouse. Barns two and three are pitch black, and there is an eerie movement now and then, which turns out to be a ewe getting to her feet or sit
ting down. The big barn is shut, and I have never known the door shut before but guess it is because of the light. It is too heavy to open, so I peep through the broken door and am relieved to see Heinrich and Aunty Joyce standing in the glow of a hanging oil lamp. He looks tired, and I suspect he has been up all night lambing. But just as I am about to call out to them to let me in, something happens. Aunty Joyce puts a hand on his arm, then takes it away again. They stand looking at each other and saying nothing. And there is something about the way they say nothing that stops me from opening my mouth. It is a very telling nothing they are saying. He is a little bit closer than he needs to be, and she is not at all intending to step back. I can see her face clearly from where I am, but not all of his. She is very flushed and looks down at the floor then up again, each time holding his gaze a little longer.
The next thing I know he has put his hand on her hair, and is stroking the back of her head. She leans into him and rests her head on his chest. I am freezing cold, but I can’t bring myself to interrupt. Something tells me this is a significant moment, and I might learn something.
She lifts her head for an instant and he takes it between his two giant hands. He is leaning forward … is he kissing her? … I think he is! I stop shifting my weight from one wellington boot to the other and stare. Heinrich is kissing Aunty Joyce on the lips, and she is letting him!
He runs his hands up and down her back, and then, to my amazement, he passes them over her hips and her bottom. She has taken his neck in one hand and is pulling his face down towards her, pushing her lips on to his like they do at the pictures, only a bit more hungrily. Now he is pushing up her skirt with his hand, and I can hardly believe it of Heinrich. He seems such a gentle shepherd-like person and here he is doing rude things to Aunty Joyce. But she doesn’t seem to mind a jot.
I want to interrupt, to tell them to stop, but I find I can’t. I am too intent on what is happening to call it to a halt, and so I go on watching.
