Above Us the Sky

by Milly Adams

  The officers swung round, but Old Tom didn’t. After a moment he stepped forward, his hand up to prevent any help. He lifted his head, gripped his hands into fists. Swallowing, he said, ‘Straighten my jacket, old man.’ Roges did so. They could see Old Tom’s legs shaking, the muscles in his jaw working. ‘Just the bloody ladder, now. Out of my way, if you would be so kind.’

  He climbed the ladder painfully slowly, the officers followed, and the crew left in the control room double backed to the aft hatch, and tore up to the casing to join their fellows who were standing to attention as Coxswain Peters piped the captain ashore for the very last time. At the head of the gangway, Lieutenant Tom Beer turned and looked to left and right, smiling at them, his face drawn like an old man’s.

  As one, the men straightened more than they thought they could and saluted their captain, their officers at their head. Old Tom saluted in return, his shoulders back. He turned, and walked down the gangway as though he was off to a tea party, but oh so slowly, and Sammy admired him more than he had ever admired him before and wouldn’t look when he reached the quay and collapsed, like a rag doll, into the arms of the medics with such a howl of anguish that it chilled the blood. He had a child of two, and a lovely wife. He would need them.

  On 5 July, as German bombers continued their attack on allied shipping in the Channel, Mrs Frances Saunders answered the phone that had been ringing off the hook at the presbytery. ‘Father Francis’s housekeeper.’ Through the open window of the study she could hear the sound of the docks as ships unloaded, and the chatter of a group of women on their way to find some queue or other to join outside a shop, any shop. Would the bombers come here? Her mouth went dry. ‘Mrs Saunders?’

  She’d know that voice anywhere. ‘It is,’ she said. A ship’s hooter sounded. One had arrived safely carrying wood just that morning, having run the blockade, or so her son had reported when he came back for a sparse lunch. The RAF had downed several of the Luftwaffe bombers and fighters.

  ‘It’s Sammy Williams.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘How are you settling in with Frankie? Lots to do, I would think.’

  ‘He’s known as Father Francis,’ she snapped.

  There was a pause. ‘Sorry about that, I’ve been a bit … well, busy. I wondered if you’d heard from Phyllie? I’d like to drop her a line. She doesn’t know where I am, and I don’t know where she is, so it’s hard to figure out a way to keep in touch.’

  ‘No. No, I’ve heard nothing yet. She’s obviously busy, and so am I. I’ll let you know if you give me your details.’

  Sammy said, ‘I don’t know where I’ll be but she could find me through the Service Post Office. Isaac hadn’t heard from Jake either or the authorities as to where he was, when I last saw him. He’s on a different submarine and on patrol at the moment, and I’m off again any minute, so I won’t know if he hears. Sorry, this is … well, muddled.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I can’t help, so I’ll let you get on.’ Frances Saunders replaced the telephone on the receiver, thinking how strange Sammy sounded, as though he was crying, the big baby.

  Her son said from the door, ‘Who was that, Mother?’

  She resumed her dusting of the bookshelves. ‘Not someone to concern you; just one of Phyllis’s old colleagues she didn’t particularly like wanting her address.’

  ‘Well, we ought to write and tell Phyllie, surely. She can then make up her own mind. Did you take this colleague’s address? I don’t think we should tell outright lies, Mother.’

  She rubbed hard at a brass candlestick on the writing bureau. ‘Very well, I’ll mention it when I reply to her note.’ She wouldn’t, of course. She picked up the photograph of her husband, Cyril, and flicked the duster over him. She liked him to look pristine, though he never had in life, any more than that Sammy. Yes, he’d phone again, and if she answered, she’d say the same thing again, and in time Phyllis would find a more suitable friend. If the war did nothing else it would put some distance between the two of them.

  Mr and Mrs Williams were a nice couple, and she missed them now they’d evacuated, but that son of theirs had the cheek of the devil – always had, and always would. Not the type of person any grown-up daughter of hers should have as a friend, or anything more. Picked up by the police at that Cable Street riot, along with a load of godless communists. How dare they behave so badly to that handsome Mr Mosley, who was always so smart in that black uniform? She slapped the photograph of Cyril down, and shuddered at the very thought.

  Chapter Six

  Monday 26 August 1940, Little Mitherton

  IT WAS MONDAY, and Phyllie had phoned her mother early that morning, suddenly frightened and homesick for her old life and family, because the war had come too close. She looked around the classroom at the children. Though it was holiday time the children had come in to school for the day. Miss Featherstone thought it the best thing, and Phyllie agreed. She looked at the clock on the back wall of the classroom. It was almost ‘going home time’ but there was no excitement in the high Victorian classroom, no sighing, no wriggling. There were just fearful glances out of the window, up at the blue sky, and startled jumps if someone dropped even a pencil.

  Nor was there any eagerness to rush to the stream when school was over to catch minnows with bent pins, or to dash off in every direction with their friends. Instead, they wanted to stay together. Nothing was as usual; even in her classroom, which was crowded with seven-year-olds, as well as her eleven-year-olds. Elderly Mrs Whitehead, who taught the seven-year-olds, had gone home to Swanwick with a malaise of the spirit, or so said Miss Featherstone, her own grief palpable. Once more Phyllie began to take the two classes through the three times table, because there had been an error the first time.

  ‘Come along, children, concentrate; this is a valuable chance to refresh your memories for when school term really begins. Once three is three, two threes are …’

  They all groaned, and looked at one another. Well, that was normal at least.

  The children had written compositions for the first hour of the day, then they had painted until lunch break, which was taken in the playground in an effort to show that here, in Little Mitherton, they were safe. The children, though, said that the asphalt was too hot to play on, and asked to return to the classroom. It wasn’t too hot. They had all picked up brushes and resumed painting, even the eleven-year-old boys, their Cowboys and Indians forgotten.

  Phyllie strolled around as she listened to them now, breathing in the smell of powder paint, seeing the paintings produced on the back of the wallpaper Miss Deacon had found in her loft. Miss Deacon who would now become WI treasurer, now that Miss Harvey … No, enough of that. The paintings were laid out on the trestle table at the back of the classroom, beneath the clock. Phyllie leaned over to look at Marjorie’s view of the village street. There were other paintings of the village; the fields around it, the stream, the ducks on Mitherton Pond, and the sky. There were planes, some dropping what looked like large balls. There were splashes of yellow and red as they hit the ground. There was a little girl in one, lying down with an older lady.

  The chanting had stopped. She forced a smile. ‘Once more, you stumbled over three times six. Ah, you thought I hadn’t noticed, but I did.’

  They groaned but it was only a token. They began again.

  The clearing-up session after painting had been unusually quiet. There had been much washing of hands, faces and arms at the outside toilet and washrooms. There had been no splashing, or throwing of water, not even from Ron, who now lived with Mrs Campion and her two little girls. Bryan had behaved too, though now that he and Ron were members of Eddie’s gang, it was probably just a short reprieve. For the most part, though, the gang spent their time at Great Mitherton, which at least went some way to keeping Ron away from Jake.

  She dragged her thoughts back to the present, moving to the front of the class, conducting them. ‘Seven threes are …’ There would have been an empty seat in Class B. De
ar, dear little Melanie Adams, who, with Miss Harvey, had been killed on the evening of Saturday 24 August in London. If only they hadn’t gone at that time, on that day, to meet Melanie’s mother, who had decided to go to Scotland to live with relatives. Miss Harvey had volunteered to meet her at the Lyons Corner House in Oxford Street. She felt it would make it easier for Mrs Adams, and it could serve as a proper farewell to Melanie. It was reported that all three had been walking along window shopping after their tea when London suffered its first bombing raid. The only saving grace was that, as the bombs rained down, Melanie had died in the company of two women who loved her.

  Phyllie gazed out at the children, here in this room. They were all so small, so vulnerable, so dear to her, even bloody Ron. ‘Eleven threes are …’

  The war, which they watched as the summer progressed, made white vapour trails in the sky. Yes, they knew RAF fighter pilots were punching above their weight, taking on the enemy in air battles that spread miles from the Channel and their airfields. But it hadn’t been real, somehow, more like a game.

  ‘The four times now: once four is four … That’s right, Tommy. Nice and loud now.’ Thomas had sat next to Melanie in class. He had barely spoken since the news had reached them very late on Sunday. Miss Harvey’s handbag had been found in the ruins. It contained Miss Featherstone’s telephone number.

  ‘Four times four is …’

  Of course, the children knew that Mrs Symes, who grew the best strawberries, had a pilot husband who had died, and Mr Burley, who ran the Dun Cow – the village pub with the skittle alley – had lost his son. Bobby Burley had been in one of the ships that Hitler’s bombers targeted in the waters around Britain. The children had felt Bobby Burley’s death but really only because, for that week, there had been no skittles. Phyllie could still hear the cheer as they trounced Great Mitherton two weeks later, and things, for them, were back to normal.

  ‘Eight times four is …’ The seven-year-olds were having to think, but the eleven-year-olds were bored, so she grinned at them, whispering, ‘Come along, you had to learn too.’

  The children had felt vaguely sorry for Martin Smith, from Ealing Broadway, who had left them in July for Wales. His mother had moved to the Blaenavon area to be with her parents. His father was a submariner but news had come that he would never again see the sky. It had made both Jake and Phyllie shudder for Isaac and Sammy.

  ‘Eleven times four are …’ she conducted, keeping them in time. The clock on the rear wall said five minutes past three. The old Victorian windows were half open, their ropes swinging in the breeze. The window monitor would close them at the end of the day. At three thirty, half of them would go to Joe Bartlett’s wheatfields, and half to Sonny Jim’s, as James Toogood at Great Mitherton was known.

  Their task, it had been decided, was to glean the wheat dropped after harvesting. The farmers had used the horses to pull the harvester, having given up waiting for the tractor and harvester promised for August by the War Agricultural Executive Committee. The horses and carts would be there already, waiting to transport the filled sacks to the barn.

  The children’s war so far had been that of ‘playing their part’. The older children, in Class A, would rush from school to salvage scrap metal in teams, with the Boy Scouts leading the boys, and Girl Guides the girls. They would pick up prams and bike carts from their respective sheds and gardens, and then tour the villages. Householders said they were almost on the point of hiding their pans and cutlery. The salvage was then collected by an old boy with an equally old lorry and taken heaven knew where. The children were convinced, as they watched the dog fights over to the east, that one of the Spitfires would be ‘theirs’: built from the fruit of their labours. It had kept them busy, quickly making a team of the village and evacuee children.

  ‘Five times table now, children.’ Phyllie smiled as they swung into this one because the five times was easy-peasy. ‘Once five is …’

  It was the children, who, with the WI ladies, now including Phyllie, had risen early every morning to collect the fruit to be bottled and preserved. They universally hated the fiddly red-and blackcurrants, which they picked by sitting on small stools to save their backs. Joe had contributed two milking stools against Andy’s wishes, but what wasn’t. They picked blackcurrants, strawberries, raspberries, too, many of which had found their way into the mouths of the vacees. It was astonishing how many of those children had not, until then, understood the connection between the earth and the fruit.

  The WI only used fruit from gardens, allotments, hedgerows and wherever else they could find it, leaving the professional growers to supply the commercial manufacturers. Phyllie had never realised how beautiful it was at 5 o’clock on a summer morning, even with Jake’s grumbles, as he and Francois plodded alongside. Earlier this month they had gathered elderberries and late plums and these, like all the others, had been put into pails and transported in carts and prams to the Preservation Centre at Joe Bartlett’s farm.

  ‘How about the six times table …?’ She ignored the groans. ‘Once six is six, two …’

  Miss Harvey and Mrs Symes had supervised the jam making. Poor Mrs Symes – first her husband, now her fellow ‘Madam Bossyness’. Phyllie shut her mind, it was the only way to get through today, and then tomorrow, and so on …

  ‘Six sixes are …’ She walked up and down between the desks. She stroked Marjorie’s hair. Marjorie, who had started by being mean to Melanie, but had eventually become her best friend. She patted Tommy’s shoulder and that of anyone else who seemed lost and frightened. But that meant all of them.

  ‘Ten sixes are …’ The clock hand jerked and another fraction of time passed.

  The WI jam making was made possible by the extra sugar … Phyllie shut her mind, again. She didn’t want to think of the sugar at Miss Featherstone’s. She looked across at the children and moved on. Yes, here the children were safer … She gritted her teeth and set off up the aisle between the desks again. Her mother had been sad for the child; her tone had been softer than usual. It was a surprise, and had helped. Perhaps the war would bring the two of them together? ‘Seven times table now. We’re doing well. Once seven is …’

  The WI had the freedom to sell their vegetable and fruit produce at market or wherever they chose. Here, in Little Mitherton, it had been agreed that a percentage of their profits could be put into a kitty to help support their country’s war effort. So far the Mitherton WI had bought some knitting wool, new glass jars, and donated to Red Cross parcels for British prisoners of war. Not all the jars and bottles were bought, though. In July she, Miss Featherstone and Miss Harvey had scavenged for bottles in the town tip, returning smelling to high heaven, but triumphant. They had each hoped never again to meet the seagulls who flew miles inland just for the pleasure of rooting about in the rubbish. Nevertheless, they had been back there just two weeks later, to see if they could recover more jars.

  ‘Seven sevens are …’

  Miss Featherstone had told Phyllie that being pooped on by a gull was lucky. ‘Stop making a fuss and make a wish instead.’ She did so, but had still received no letter from Sammy, not a sign or a sound. Would she even be told if he was dead? His parents did not have her address and she didn’t have theirs so she had written and asked her mother if Sammy had contacted her, but she said he had not. She had asked if she had his parents’ address as she would like to contact them. She had not.

  She wanted to write to the Services Post Office with just his name and rank but what would she say to him? She had to write, though, come what may, because if she found Sammy she would find Isaac. Why on earth had there been no letter for Jake? The authorities, when questioned, had written that Jake’s details had been sent to his father. She must contact them again, for none of this was good enough any more. People were dying. Perhaps even Sammy and Isaac. No, the thought was too much.

  ‘Eight times table now, and then I think it will be time.’ It was nearly three thirty. ‘Once eight is eigh
t, two eights are …’ She arrived back at the front of the class, and perched on the edge of her desk, with the blackboard behind her. On it was written a message: We are sorry you are gone, Melanie. It was written in Marjorie’s best handwriting. She had had to stand on Phyllie’s chair to do it. Both classes had signed their names. When they knew where to send a letter, they would write to Melanie Adams’ father, though what could they really say, except they were so sorry?

  Perhaps they could tell him that it was Melanie who had suggested that some of the WI produce kitty could go towards a Christmas party for all the children, one to which the evacuees’ parents could be invited.

  Miss Featherstone had taken a vote at the last WI meeting and there had been unanimous agreement. A separate kitty had been set up, and donations had begun topping up the produce amount. The evening before she left for London, Melanie had said, ‘Perhaps my mummy will come down for it.’

  They wouldn’t tell Mr Adams that.

  The eight times table was complete. Phyllie turned to the blackboard, fisting her hands tightly as she struggled for control. Miss Featherstone entered then. ‘The vicar would like to talk to us all in the hall, as a way of saying goodbye to our friend Melanie. So up you come, into a crocodile. Each seven-year-old will take the hand of an eleven-year-old; quick march now.’

  Even Ron held a seven-year-old’s hand without a fuss, and Bryan too, as they passed Phyllie, who was smiling, somehow, just as Miss Featherstone was. Except for her landlady’s pallor you would not know that Catherine Harvey, her dearest friend, was dead.

  After dear Jack Thompson had talked to the children about everlasting life, in his usual everlasting way, and during which they had grown restless and bored, Phyllie led her classes into the playground. They stood to one side as the Home Guard, which the Local Defence League was now called, marched in to take over the school hall. They had been turfed out of the village hall a week ago, when it was given over to a first-aid lessons for Scouts and Guides, and all manner of other things. Phyllie wondered what on earth everyone had done with their time, and their premises, before the war.