Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven

by Jane Bailey

  “Well, let’s ask Kitty, shall we?” smiles Mr Fairly. “Where did you sleep during your little holiday with Thomas here?”

  My throat is knotted in panic. “In a barn, sir.”

  “And with whom?”

  “With Tommy.”

  “And at the farm?”

  “In a bed, in the attic.”

  “And with whom?”

  “With Tommy – but it wasn’t like that, it –”

  “Did he cuddle you?”

  I see Tommy’s face: bright red and cringing.

  “Yes, but –”

  “Did he … touch you?”

  “Yes, but –”

  “Oh, stop, for heaven’s sake!” cries Aunty Joyce, surprising everyone. “She’s only a child. She doesn’t know what you’re driving at.”

  “I do!” I pipe up, grateful for a moment to gather my thoughts. “What you mean, Mr Fairly, is did he shag me, isn’t it?”

  Everyone falls silent.

  Aunty Joyce speaks first. “She doesn’t know what it means.”

  “I do!”

  Uncle Jack clears his throat. “We need to talk about this sensitively. What Mr Fairly is suggesting, Kitty, is –”

  “I know!”

  Tommy covers his face.

  “Kitty, don’t be silly,” says Aunty Joyce. “You’re only nine.”

  “And I bloody do know what shagging is!”

  “Kitty, you don’t seem to –”

  “It’s what you were doing in the barn with Heinrich!”

  My head fills with blood. I think I even hear a little pop. We are still all here, standing around the breakfast remains, but I have silenced them all. One, two, three grown-ups and Tommy, and I have shut them all up. I am screaming inside for someone else to speak. It isn’t right that I should have this power. I don’t want it. I shudder, trying to shake off the ugly omnipotence that has suddenly stranded me in this household. All I want is to go home and be insignificant again.

  I chance a look at Uncle Jack’s face, but it has crumpled like waste paper and distorted all the features. In Mr Fairly, I detect the faintest smile on his heavy lips before he clamps Tommy on the shoulder and says, “I think we’ll return to this another time.”

  As he goes out he looks Aunty Joyce full in the eyes, a trace of smugness creeping into his own.

  Filth

  I wish it had been a desire to protect Tommy that made me blurt out my revelation. I wish I could say I only wanted to save his reputation. But the truth is, it was nothing more than childish vanity. I wanted so much to prove I was a grown-up and understood grown-up things. After all the trouble language had got me into, I wanted to show off the fact that I wouldn’t be caught out by it again. But here I am, watching the world of 1 Weaver’s Terrace collapse around me, and it is all my fault.

  As soon as they have left, Jack gathers up his half-made sandwiches and clamps the lid of his sandwich tin shut. He hovers for a moment to look his wife in the eyes. But it isn’t a look of contempt or even hurt. He looks more like a trapped animal than anything else, cornered and frightened and unsure where to move next.

  Then he is gone. He slams out of the back door and wheels his bicycle through the side gate on to Farm Lane. I feel he ought to say something, although I don’t know what. He can’t leave without a proper reaction, it’s all wrong. At least he could show us how angry he is. So I follow him outside.

  “Uncle Jack!” I call over the gate.

  “What?” He does not look at me, but throws his leg over the cross bar.

  “She loves you. She told him that an’ all.”

  He blows out a sudden puff of air contemptuously through his nose.

  “She does! She loves you!” I insist desperately. I have to make amends for my treachery, but I’m afraid I’m making matters worse. He ignores me and starts to cycle off down the lane, and I don’t know what to do for the best.

  “She loves you!” I shout. “Everyone knows it!”

  He turns into Church Road, cycling fast without looking back.

  I am packed off to school with a note. It rains all day. Babs Sedgemoor and all the others want to know what happened, but I find it surprisingly easy to keep my mouth shut, because I never want to open it again.

  The rain never stops, and I plod home along a muddy, puddle-filled road, with new leaves glistening above me and dripping down my neck. Tea is a silent affair with the two of us, after which Aunty Joyce washes herself to the bone – over and over: her hands, her arms, her face, her entire drawer of underwear.

  I go to bed early, but can’t sleep. She and I are both still waiting for him to come home, but there is no sign of him. Then at some stage in the night, after I must have dozed off, I hear their voices – so loud I can hear it all.

  It seems Uncle Jack can’t live with her because she has made him a laughing stock, and Joyce can’t live with him because he has become a cold fish. There is sobbing and silence and more loud exchanges. On and on. All sorts of strange stuff. She doesn’t think she’s had enough to eat, he thinks she has an unnatural appetite, but she is convinced she’s starved. I want to intervene and tell them to stick to the subject. All right, there may be something a bit unnatural about Aunty Joyce’s love of offal, but no one starves in this house and no one is greedy. Now he is telling her she’s rubbed his nose in the dirt. This is Aunty Joyce we’re talking about. She doesn’t rub anything in dirt.

  My ravenous curiosity is defeated by sleep. When I awake it is to door-slamming, and Uncle Jack goes off far earlier than he needs to, leaving me alone on a Saturday with Aunty Joyce.

  I find her sitting in front of her dressing table, staring into the three-way mirror.

  “You all right, Aunty Joyce?” I venture after a while.

  She doesn’t turn to look at me, but keeps on staring.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur.

  “It’s not your fault.” She covers her face with her hands for a moment. “I brought it on myself.”

  I want to put it all back together for her, I want to make things right because I’ve made everything go so wrong.

  “He does love you, you know.”

  She turns her pale face to me and tries to smile. “No,” she says, “I’ve ruined it all.”

  I stand for a moment, wondering if she wants me to go, but I don’t know where to go.

  “Aren’t you coming up the farm to do the teas?”

  “How can I?” Her lips are trembling. “I can’t show my face again. They’ll all be talking.”

  “Why should they? They don’t know anything.”

  Her eyes are fixed and empty.

  “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Well, Tommy won’t say anything, I know he won’t. And Mr Fairly won’t, will he?”

  “Oh God!” She covers her face again. “Oh God! To think that he knows! Whatever must he think of me? Oh God!”

  “Well, he can’t talk, can he? After everything he’s been up to.”

  “What do you mean? Whatever’s Tommy been telling you?” She lets out a huge sigh. “Oh, that boy! It’s all his bloody fault! If only we’d never set eyes on him!”

  “If only you knew what I know, you’d … you’d …”Here I go again. “If you knew what Mr Fairly did to Rosemary, you wouldn’t be so cruel to poor Tommy! He never killed Rosemary! It wasn’t Tommy! Don’t you see –”

  “What do you know?” She grabs me by the shoulders, her eyes darting now. She has turned white. “What do you know? Tell me! Tell me!”

  “I can’t – it’s a secret. I promised Tommy.” I wish to God I hadn’t fed her these clues.

  Aunty Joyce tightens her grip and shakes me. “TELL ME!”

  So I tell her.

  She disappears for the rest of the day. I don’t know where to start looking for her, so I go up the farm and stay there doing odd jobs.

  At around five o’clock, when I’m helping to bring the cows in for milking, she turns up. Her face is blotchy and her hair i
s all tatty and frizzy with rain. “Time for tea!” she calls breezily. She is not carrying a tray. She is calling me home. “Come on, Kitty! We’ll be late for Uncle Jack!”

  I wonder if she is scared to go home without me, but I’m flummoxed by the lightness in her voice. I follow her across the mire, my wellingtons sinking six or seven inches into the mud. The cows are swishing their tails, moving slowly into the cow barn. Aunty Joyce has plain shoes on, and she places a hand on a cow’s back to steady herself through the slime. The cow moves forward suddenly, and she slips. She falls on her bottom, and sits bolt upright in a sea of wet cow dung.

  The prisoners are inside the barn and have already started milking. One of the land girls spots her and asks, giggling, if she needs a hand. Aunty Joyce says no, she doesn’t, and then does something really quite odd.

  She sits back in the dung, then lies back. She stretches her arms wide and sinks her fingers into the muck. It is frothy and green and running with fresh cow’s piss. And she giggles. She giggles like the land girl, but at the sky. Then she turns her head from side to side, covering her hair in the filth. I reach over to give her a hand, and she takes it, sitting up. As she climbs to her feet she falls over again, and laughs.

  “Aunty Joyce! You’re covered in it!”

  “Yes!”

  Her dress is like brown leather and her hair and hands are dripping with the reeking sludge. My own hand is covered in it too, and I lead her out on to the lane home. As soon as we start walking, Uncle Jack appears, coming up the lane to look for us.

  “You’re right, I’m filthy!” she shouts. “Absolutely filthy!” But then instead of laughing, she kneels down in the lane and sobs like a child.

  Sheepcote blitzkrieg

  In the morning the church bells remind us that it’s a Sunday. We breakfast in almost total silence, with the occasional word from me. I feel uncomfortable without a bit of talking. But I soon see I don’t know the rules to this game, and I shut up.

  Then Uncle Jack rises from the table and starts to put on his coat. “Church,” he says. We put our coats on too, and our gloves and hats. Just as we are about to go out of the door, Aunty Joyce unhooks a brush from the hall wall and brushes Uncle Jack’s coat collar.This is what she always does, but today I feel a huge relief that he lets her do it.

  As soon as we arrive at our place in the third pew from the front, we all kneel down to pray briefly. I’ve become used to doing this with them, although I usually just say, “Blah, blah, tits and bums. Our men,” in my head for a few seconds, whereas I’m sure they are saying something more meaningful.

  Today I imagine Uncle Jack is saying, “Please God, let it not be true” about Aunty Joyce, but I can’t imagine what she is saying. I’m cross with her, actually, for not believing me about Mr Fairly. She obviously hasn’t said anything to Uncle Jack. And now she’s happy to sit behind Fairly, without so much as hitting him over the head with her Book of Common Prayer.

  It is morning service, and to top it all, Mr Fairly is giving the sermon as a lay preacher. He stands at the golden eagle because he has been quoting from the Bible.

  “We have endured a long and taxing war,” he begins, gripping the sides of the eagle. “Everyone has had hardship, and some …” he affects a dolorous pause, “… more … than others.” He looks genuinely grief-stricken for those who have lost loved ones. “And it is not surprising that we wish to enjoy ourselves, to eke out every last bit of pleasure we can from these days of shortage, of grief, of loneliness.” He looks around at the faces in the congregation, like a reproachful headmaster. Aunty Joyce looks down at her prayer cushion, and Uncle Jack adjusts his hymn book.

  “LUST!” cries Mr Fairly suddenly, seizing the golden eagle by the wings as if it might take off. “We must all soar above it! Look around at what it has done to our community! Look around at the relaxation of values we used to hold dear! Where were your daughters last night? And where …” he looks around again, over his reading spectacles, “… were your wives? Oh, yes! It’s easy to think that anything goes in times of crisis, but while our young men are away fighting, what favours are we doing them if they come back home to find their wives and daughters and fiancées the victims of unhealthy matches made in the heat of the moment, born out of a loss of self-control, born out of lust?”

  I’m not too sure about ‘lust’, but I get the gist of it. I can feel Aunty Joyce shrinking on my left, and on my right Uncle Jack rearranges his hymn book, re-counts his collection money and furiously brushes dust from his trousers that does not exist.

  “No one knows more than I do, in charge of Heaven House, what the fruits of such slack self-control can be. Oh, yes! Be in no doubt, that lust will find you out! Even those of you who come to church every Sunday and sit there with your collection money in your spotless Sunday best, not even you …” (here he looks directly at Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack, and I see her begin to tremble) “… can escape the weakness of the flesh! And I say to you – I say to you all – confess your sins, and God will forgive you. Put Satan behind you, arrest your slide down the shameful slippery slope …”

  I feel a sudden movement on my left, and realize that Aunty Joyce has stood up.

  People don’t turn round, as such, since she is standing in the third pew from the front; they merely divert their attention from the preacher and land it, with intense curiosity, on Aunty Joyce. They are curious perhaps about whether her sudden stance means she objects, has left a pie in the oven, or is merely busting for a wee. But interest turns to surprise when the blonde enigma of Weaver’s Cottage squares up to Mr Fairly and opens her mouth to speak. Since few but me, Uncle Jack and Mr Fairly can see the look of defiant rage on her face, it is not until the words come out that the shivers of awe go bristling round the nave.

  “How DARE you! HOW DARE YOU!”

  People brace themselves. This is going to be a good one.

  “You! You stand there and preach to us about lust! YOU!” (Mr Fairly’s face alters slightly, but only a twitch betrays the nerves behind his composure.) “You, who have betrayed the whole neighbourhood with your lust for young boys –” A sharp collective intake of breath makes her turn towards the congregation: “Yes! While we’ve been falling over ourselves to admire this … pillar of the community, Mr Fairly here has been satisfying his own warped pleasure with the orphans in his care –”

  “That is utterly –” he begins.

  “Don’t even think about denying it, you … you self-righteous little …” She looks up at the ceiling for help.

  “Bully!” I supply in a whisper.

  “… bully!”

  “Joyce!” hisses Uncle Jack, leaning across me and trying to tug his wife inconspicuously back to her seat. “Joyce!”

  Mr Fairly musters a half-smile at Joyce. “Well, I think we all know why my sermon got you worked up, don’t we?”

  It is a powerful counter-attack, and one which makes Uncle Jack cover his face with his hands. But Mr Fairly has underestimated Aunty Joyce. She rounds on him with such venom that children grip their mothers, and ladies dig ridges into their handbags with their nails.

  “You evil, slimy little BASTARD!”

  Nice one, Aunty Joyce. She raises her arm and points one of her beautiful fingers at him. “You murdered my daughter!” Her voice begins to wail: “You killed my little girl!” She sobs. Then she takes a great breath and rallies, turning to the congregation again. “Yes! He killed Rosemary. He did! Because my little girl saw him at it one day! He watched her drown! He kicked her and kicked her and watched her die! And she screamed … oh God … I know she screamed … and he didn’t … and he …”

  She is heaving with rage and tears, and Uncle Jack, now horrified and confused at the revelation, looks at Mr Fairly for a clue, along with the rest of the congregation.

  And it is all there: the anger in his face, as he smarts with fury, betrays a far less kindly pillar of the community than they have seen before. This is a new face, with narrow eyes and f
lared nostrils, and only to the front two pews – the Heaven House boys – is it utterly familiar.

  I find myself taking Aunty Joyce’s hand, and she clings on to me, sobbing. Uncle Jack puts his arm around both of us. Whether instinctively, or to keep up appearances, I don’t know, but it’s a good move. I’m so proud of him I could cry.

  The gasp at Aunty Joyce’s revelation makes the church seem full of whispers, and people exchange glances for support and direction. Mr Fairly makes one last bid for his good character, slamming shut the heavy Bible in front of him and striding down the side aisle, snarling, “You’ll be very sorry for this, Joyce Shepherd. Very sorry!” The fierce words are interspersed with his heavy clop clop on the stone floor, and just before his exit he beckons roughly to his wife, who rises and shuffles after him, her hand clasped over her mouth.

  Run, rabbit, run

  If anyone was confused by all the goings-on, Mr Fairly’s sudden change of character convinces them. And before long the fact that he is ‘not frum round ’ere’ – whereas Joyce Shepherd was born and bred not two miles away – becomes a significant factor too.

  I have never seen Uncle Jack in such turmoil. He has watched as his wife’s treachery was so nearly revealed to the world, braced himself for perpetual humiliation, and all of a sudden the plot has changed. And it is much darker than before. It is as though he were sentenced to death, but now he’s let off the hook, only to be told that the world might explode at any moment.

  The church service disintegrates. People hang around the churchyard for ages afterwards, but we go home as soon as we can. Miss Lavish takes me next door into her house for some reason, and I’m most put out. I try to hear noises coming through the wall, try to work out if the wails and sobs and silences are shared grief or not. But Miss Lavish spots my game and puts the radio on.