by Jane Bailey
“What happened to him?”
“Heinrich? You know the Russells? Russells’ farm up the other valley? Well, not long after you left he went up Russells’ sheep farm to work. And old Mr Russell, he was pleased as punch with him. And then when he died he left him the farm. Didn’t surprise anyone either – and no one minded! Oh – and you’ll never believe who he married …”
“Miss Hubble?”
“My goodness!” She looked at me closely. “You have done your homework!”
“Just took the register, that’s all.”
She laughed and looked down at her handlebars.
“You see all the good things that have come out of all those wretched years?”
“Maybe not come out of, maybe just come after …”
Miss Lavish brought her bike to a sudden standstill, although we were still thirty yards from the bus stop.
“Perhaps we have no power for good at all, no way of helping to change the course of events whatsoever. You’re the last person I would expect to hear that from …”
“Why?”
She raised her eyebrows as if expecting me to answer my own question. “The little girl from London who comes and changes everything?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
I started to move on but then stopped: the Shepherds had come to a halt further on, outside the village hall.
Miss Lavish said nothing, just smiled and looked ahead. Aunty Joyce was laughing, and almost toppling over as she knelt down to give her youngest girl a giant hug. Uncle Jack had said something to make the other two laugh and they were giggling. I looked back at Miss Lavish.
“Come on!” she said. “You don’t want to be late.”
She was full to bursting with something. Whether it was tears, laughter or some mischief I couldn’t be sure.
“Harry had a phone call earlier.”
“You said.”
“Yes. It was from Tom.”
“Tommy?”The nose of the bus appeared through the thickening hedgerows. “What? What did he say?”
Miss Lavish stepped up to the road and put out her arm, since I was clearly not going to.
“He’s coming to tea tomorrow – can you join us? About five or so?”
The bus stopped. I stared at her radiant scheming face. I saw suddenly how beguiling it could be, and thought of Tosser’s Lavinia story of love under the beech trees. And then I could see why she wanted me to grab my chances, and I hoped she wasn’t misconstruing things a bit just to try and nudge events along which were never going to happen.
“Not wishin’ to hurry you or nothin’.” The bus conductor was hanging out of the door. “Which one of you lovely ladies is wanting my carriage this evening?”
I stared at Miss Lavish in panic. “Does he know I’m coming?”
“No – go on! They’ll go without you!”
I’ll be with you to change your name to mine
I didn’t want to meet him over tea with Miss Lavish and Boss Harry. What on earth would I say to Tommy over scrambled eggs and tinned peaches? I had spent a tortured night in the bed at my digs, frustrated at the time we had lost, angry with him for his deceit, furious with myself for not staying in touch, fearfully, painfully, outrageously excited to be seeing him again.
I was up so early I caught a bus at six thirty, and went for a walk before school. I swung over the five bar gate with my briefcase and stomped through the long damp grass up over the fields. I began to hope I would meet him here, away from everyone. I thought if I kept on walking he would appear on the horizon, possibly with a few violin players.
My feet were getting wet, but I hurled them down one after the other, raking them through the dew, in rebuke for not leading me back here years ago.
I stopped at the next stile and caught my anguished breath. What if I had come back sooner? What would I have been to him? A little friend, a chum, a pal. He had never shown the remotest interest in me romantically. That had all come from the daydreams of a little girl. At least now I had something new to show him; the grown-up Kitty I’d so wanted him to see. I looked down at my breasts. I would never be Betty Chudd, but I might just do.
Even so, I knew that the reason my pulse pounded was not only a nervousness about how he would find me, but a terror of finding he was not anything like the Tommy presented in my memories.
Miss Pegler was still full of apologies for my ‘baptism of fire’, begging me not to mention it to my college. I could just sit and observe this morning. I was relieved. Joy and terror were having a tug-of-war in my throat, and I didn’t feel like speaking.
After the children had filed in, she held up a plan of the new school buildings. They all leaned sideways and elbowed each other to squint at a collection of thick black rectangles with gaps in them. As soon as they saw it they frowned and lost interest. She might as well have been holding up a copy of the Financial Times.
“This is what we call a plan. It’s like a view from the air.” She drew a rectangle on the board to represent the classroom, and put in a little diagonal line to represent the door. “Now, what you’re going to do this afternoon is design your own plan of your ideal school.” There was a muffled sigh from the back row, and a ripple of excitement from the rest of them. “Don’t forget to include the sort of facilities you’d like to see in your ideal school. By that I mean cloakrooms, assembly halls … a gymnasium even – why not? Anything you would like to see in your dream school.”
“A juke box!” shouted one of the boys.
“A smokin’ room,” grunted another.
The girls, on the other hand, could think of no greater luxury than indoor toilets. Miss Pegler tried to hush them, and she set the monitors to work, handing out sugar paper and pencils. I wandered between the desks from time to time, smiling and pretending to show an interest, but I saw nothing.
I kept imagining how he would be, and different versions of him kept popping up. There was an old sea-dog with a great scrubbing brush of a beard, trailing wafts of tobacco and farting without apology. He slapped me on the shoulder and said he’d waited eleven years for me, and I ran so fast I actually found myself accelerating up the aisle between the desks with my hand clapped to my mouth. Then I saw him with his hair slicked back, a teddy-boy suit, winkle-pickers and his own London flat. I walked up to his front door just as he was coming out, and he said, “Hey, doll!” and a swarm of pony-tailed girls came from nowhere and thwacked me with their roomy handbags. Then he just turned up in Sheepcote school one day with his gum boots on, sucking on straw and smelling of dung. He kept asking me to marry him and when I said I’d think about it he pushed me up against the corridor wall and said I had to: I couldn’t let him down, he’d bought the buttercup field – no, he’d even built a cottage on it and now he needed some children to help work the land. It was all arranged. Aunty Joyce had made my wedding dress and Miss Lavish had already knitted the baby bootees. I tried to say no, but Mrs Chudd shouted, “Shame on you!” and threw her knitting down, then Mrs Glass and Mrs Tugwell and Mrs Marsh and the whole of Sheepcote were throwing stones at me and slabs of mud. So I said yes, and the next thing I knew I was knee deep in cow dung for the rest of my life.
Then I remembered him drawing my picture, and he was suddenly a depressed and damaged artist, forcing me back to his studio where every picture was a picture of me – in oils, watercolour, gouache; portrait, nude, abstract, classical, two-headed – but always me, staring wistfully or ghoulishly out of the canvases which he had manically amassed in crateloads, and he had done so many that he had had to rent a warehouse to store them all, and he had turned to drink, belching out a proposal which was more of a command as he handcuffed me to his easel and hissed, “Together for ever!”
Then something interrupted my ramblings, and it was something Miss Pegler was saying:
“That’s right. An architect is someone who designs buildings. This is the architect’s sketch of what it will look like when it’s finished. And do you know, the archi
tect who drew this was actually an orphan at Heaven House when it was a boys’ home – ”
“He’s comin’, miss!” A boy from the back was looking out of the window. “Just got off the bus! I can see him comin’.”
Miss Pegler looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “Would you …?”
But I was out of there.
I was running out of the door, my head turned sideways at the windows, catching glimpses of the umbrella bobbing up and down above the railings. It must have begun to rain. I sped down the narrow corridor and out of the front door, breathless, my eyes still fixed on the bobbing umbrella, watching it come closer.
Raining violets
As you turned into the gate I stood there, panting, blocking the way so that you couldn’t help noticing me. You smiled and tipped your trilby hat, rushing onwards.
Did you hear my heartbeat, at thirty feet, like the owl?
You put down your umbrella and then you turned your head a little – just a fraction – as if to check something. You were just turning it back again to face the door when you saw that I too had turned, and you swung your head swiftly round to consider me with your conker eyes. The pulse in my head was soft urgent footsteps on gravel. Your face was much longer and your jaw much wider than I’d known it. There was nothing terrifying about you, and if I was at all frightened it was on account of the raging stew of emotions that I was trying to conceal.
I found myself slowly whispering, “Facky … Nell …!”
You removed your trilby and took a pace towards me.
“Kitty!”
I was willing that space between us to close up, but I didn’t know how to do it. The couple of yards of playground seemed like miles and miles. And then there was a hoot from the school window: a boy was leaning out – no, three boys – girls too – the whole class lolling out of the windows, crowding to see.
“G’won, miss!”
“Is it ’im, miss? Is it Tommy?”
“Kiss ’er!”
You smiled. I found that I was smiling too. You kept on smiling, and we seemed to just stand there, simmering, the sound of crude suggestions coming at us from the windows.
I stupidly held out my hand to shake yours, and you took it with your left hand, because your other one was full of umbrella and briefcase. And we stood there holding hands on one side like a couple in a gavotte, only we were shaking them up and down foolishly as if some Charlie Chaplin film had got stuck. All the time you were tracing my face with your eyes, as if you recognized it from drawing it all those years ago.
Up and down went our joined hands, and we waited in the fine drizzle for something to happen. Then you dropped your briefcase and umbrella, and I threw my arms around your neck, and you hugged me back. It was easier than looking at you.
“G’won! Kiss ’er!”
Then, to hide your reddening eyes and perhaps to hide mine too, you did as you were told.
The classroom behind us was in uproar, and children were pulling up plants from the flowerbeds outside the windows, throwing great wads of flower petals at us.
A sketch of heaven
It’s been good to catch up with all the news. I can’t believe how much has changed: most of the shops gone; and the school will soon be moved to Heaven House; Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack have three children; the village hall has got central heating and a proper stage with velvet curtains; and you are all grown up with a trilby hat and umbrella and a face like Gregory Peck.
No, really. That’s how you look.
If I’d only known … Lady Elmsleigh panting up the road that day … Ah Tommy! You’d’ve been welcome in our house, you know. And we weren’t that far away. We moved to Bristol in the end and Maurice got a good job with Wills where he used to work before the war.
It’s funny really, what evacuation did. I mean, most people have to wait till they grow up and leave home to take a long look at their parents, but there I was by the age of eight seeing my mother through new eyes. It was like I’d stood back from it all, and could see she wasn’t all-powerful, all-wonderful after all. She was just my very blemished, bumbling mum, muddling through and making the most of it. I gave poor Maurice a run for his money, but looking back, I’m ashamed now, really. He was just doing the best he could to get through it all, doing the best he knew for his own child: finding her a mother. And my mum was just doing the best she could for us. They weren’t made for each other – and they knew it. But they had that one thing in common: they knew the children mattered. And the funny thing is, they’ve become pretty inseparable now. They go for long walks on the Downs holding hands like lovers, sharing memories, talking things through. I take my hat off to old Maurice – to both of them – I do really.
And what a hotchpotch it all was for you – the war, I mean. You say it brought you me, and that I changed everything. Me and my big mouth, that would be. Well, I’m glad if I changed everything, but it wasn’t intentional. Children do that, don’t they? They change everything.
And now you’re talking about us having children ourselves.
I don’t know … reliving the past has made us both see things we didn’t quite see before. Those poor hurt people, with childhoods sabotaged by poor hurt people, with childhoods … all unwittingly …
I know you told me things, but I was only small. I sensed things, like an animal makes out wafts in the air. It’s only talking of it now that lets me really pick up the trail. Now I know what made you run.
I’m not saying let’s not have children – I’m not even saying let’s wait. It’s just … Well, there’s something that’s got to happen first, isn’t there? It’s no problem for me or anything. I mean, birds do it, bees do it, even educated … okay, I’ll shut up.
No – I mean, fall in love. Although that as well. The bunny thing. Not that it would have to be quite like the bunnies. Not that I object to that … I wouldn’t know whether I would … I mean … please stop smiling and shut me up.
As you say, it’s a huge and exciting thing to embark on. The hugeness and excitement of it all is almost too much. But we know things now, you and I, so it can’t have been all for nothing.
And Uncle Jack. Crumbs! All that stuff about trying to be someone, trying to leave his mark … When all he needed, to be a hero, was to lift a child on to his shoulders and make her laugh.
If we’re lucky enough … if we do … if everything works out …
Yes.
You’re right.
Let’s not scribble some indelible script on their tender childhood, or allow a single blot on the blank page. Instead, let’s take a soft pencil from behind our ear, and lightly sketch something beautiful.
An interview with Jane Bailey on how she came to write Tommy Glover’s Sketch of Heaven
I wanted to write a mystery and a love story, but something gripping, not mawkish. I wanted to move people, but also make them laugh.
Unlike other novels I have written, the entire story of Tommy Glover’s Sketch of Heaven came to me one day as I was gazing out of the window. I let it ferment for a year, played around with the tense and narrative voice a bit, but then it just seemed to write itself.
It was sparked by the idea that it might be interesting to look at a dysfunctional couple through the candid eyes of a child. I knew the child would have to be an outsider, because offspring are far too enmeshed in the politics of family relationships to view things with the candour I was looking for. The obvious answer was to make the protagonist an evacuee, a child from an impoverished but loving background, thrust into the bizarre private relationship of an inscrutable couple.
Although I hadn’t chosen it deliberately, as soon as I started writing, I knew the Home Front of the Second World War was the ideal setting. Everything was stripped down to basics then: love and death. It was a good, clear canvas to work on.
When I was about three-quarters of the way through the novel, I woke in the middle of the night and scribbled down the last paragraph. It wasn’t until I wrote those lines
that I realized what the book was really about. It is about how much children matter. In the book we see a whole range of ways in which human beings hurt each other, the deepest and cruellest being those hurts inflicted as children. They range from physical child abuse involving the lonely Tommy Glover to the devastating emotional cruelty suffered by Aunty Joyce at the hands of her mother, and which she subsequently took from her husband. This damage and hurt is passed on from generation to generation, and it takes the unwitting astuteness of a child – the outspoken evacuee Kitty Green – to break the chain.
I found it very easy to slip back into that childhood persona who wants to know everything but is told nothing. I well remember finding out the most juicy information from sitting behind the sofa at home and humming softly so that chatting adults would think I was fully engaged in a game. Similarly, Kitty uncovers breathtaking secrets by keeping her head down at the women’s village knitting group. She may not always interpret things correctly, but she is certainly proactive with the information. Everything that happens to us in childhood is magnified one hundredfold in our experience. And yet children are dismissed, talked over, pushed out of conversations and deemed not to feel things which they cannot articulate.
Tommy Glover’s Sketch of Heaven is a book about the many ways people find to hurt each other, and the immense redemptive power of children, if only we look after them. It did turn out to be a mystery. It is also, by the way, a love story.
About the Author
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.
