Above Us the Sky

by Milly Adams

  Ron tightened his grip on her hand. ‘Thank you, miss, I thought it might be something like that.’

  They held hands all the way back to Myrtle Cottage then Phyllie prised herself free, about to follow Andy down the path as Miss F hurried ahead to open the front door.

  Ron said, ‘I don’t think Mrs Fanny will want me back. She said she didn’t want to hear of me in trouble again, because it was too much for her auntie to put up with. I don’t know where to go, miss.’

  Jack put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. ‘We have a baby, but you wouldn’t mind a few nights with us, I’m sure, until we get things sorted.’ They walked on now, and Phyllie heard Jack saying, ‘We’ll just pop in and pick up a few of your things.’

  ‘Do I have to? Her auntie will be there, while Mrs Fanny’s pulling pints at the pub.’

  ‘I rather think you do, because you need to face people. It’s called consequences.’

  Chapter Twenty

  DR NICHOLLS ARRIVED to check Jake, bending over the sofa, huffing on his stethoscope before placing it on Jake’s chest. ‘Disgraceful carryings on. You’ll report that Eddie, of course, and get Pringle to take him in. He needs a good dose of borstal. Father’s a menace. Sons will so often follow a father’s lead, and in his case, it’s a road to nowhere.’

  ‘No need for the lecture, Toby,’ Miss F grumped. ‘Just tell us if he’s all right.’

  Dr Nicholls straightened. He still had his trousers tucked in his socks because he usually cycled from Great Mitherton. The other alternative was to saddle his horse, or try to start his car, and use his precious fuel allowance. ‘Course he is, nothing wrong with the lad that a good soak, a good sleep and a dose of common sense won’t cure.’

  Phyllie clenched her hands, relief drenching her.

  He squatted down in front of Jake, his stethoscope tangling in his tweed jacket. ‘Jake, this will not happen again; that is the first thing to understand. The second is that you will have learned from it, and will not go with idiots. The third is that you are surrounded by people who care, so you are quite safe now.’

  He left in a flurry, calling over his shoulder to Miss F, ‘I’ll be back to deal with you, too, if you don’t get to bed. I can hear your chest from here.’

  Miss F said, ‘Over my dead body.’

  Dr Nicholls popped his head back round the door, ramming on his hat, ‘Don’t raise my hopes, you ghastly old crone.’

  Miss F waved him away. ‘Sticks and stones, you old fool. Sticks and stones.’

  The doctor looked at Phyllie. ‘You don’t need excitement like this either. So get your feet up when everyone’s gone. I don’t know, a houseful of bloody women and chaos reigns.’ With that he was gone.

  Andy carried Jake up the stairs to the bathroom, with the women following like a trail of clucking ducks. Joe called from the foot of the stairs, having nipped in for news to carry back to the pub, ‘Met the doc. Says all is the usual chaos.’

  Miss F said, ‘You can keep quiet too, Joe Bartlett, and go away. Your pint will be getting cold.’ She called to Phyllie who was ahead of her, ‘There’s no nonsense about a few inches in aid of the war effort tonight. A good old hot soak is what he needs.’

  Andy knocked the bathroom door wide. ‘Rather than talking about it, would one of you like to put in the plug and turn on the tap?’

  He was pale and drawn, the bathroom was freezing, and he leaned back on the wall, Jake still in his arms.

  ‘Let me down, Mr Andy. I need to get my clothes off.’

  Andy lowered him carefully, keeping his hook clear of Jake’s legs, as Phyllie said, ‘I’ll help you; just let me get the water going.’

  Miss F said, ‘I’ll get the kettle on, chamomile, and perhaps cocoa for Jake.’ She left as Phyllie slid past Andy and Jake, to sort out the plug and turn on the tap. Hot water gushed and steam rose. The water would soak into Jake’s bones, and it would ease his mind, or so she hoped.

  Andy was whispering to Jake, who replied, ‘Yes please, Mr Andy.’ He clung to the man’s arm, his knuckles white. He was unsteady, but of course he was.

  Phyllie sat on the edge of the bath and called to Jake. ‘Come here, and I’ll help you undress.’

  Jake looked up at Andy, who smiled at Phyllie. ‘I think perhaps this is men’s business, Phyllie.’ His tone was gentle but firm.

  Phyllie felt Charlie kick. All right, she said to the baby, I get it. She smiled at Jake, ‘Of course. Meanwhile, I’ll set about doing women’s work with Miss F, so when you’re both ready, come down.’ To Andy she said, ‘If you need to leave to celebrate the New Year, I can sit in here with him while he’s soaking. I promise not to look.’

  Andy laughed. ‘I can celebrate later at the pub while you lot are all warming up in front of the Aga, hugging your chamomile. With that pint in mind, would you please take yourself and Charlie downstairs, and let us get on.’

  Andy knocked on the kitchen door half an hour later, and Jake came to sit next to Phyllie, in his pyjamas and dressing gown. Andy tucked the patchwork quilt round both Phyllie and Jake, and asked Miss F if she needed tucking in too. Her gesture was unmistakable and he left, on a tide of laughter, shouting over his shoulder, ‘Dad will be back soon, I have no doubt, just to check you’re all fine. If you want to be in bed beforehand, it doesn’t matter. He’ll just come on back to the pub. He brought down some elderberry wine this afternoon.’

  The women groaned. They sipped their chamomile, and Jake his cocoa.

  After a while, Jake said, ‘It was strange. I could see the moon through the trees and in a way, I felt warm, because Ron tried to help. They hurt him because of that, but he went on trying. I think that is so brave, and here I am, with you two, and he hasn’t really got anywhere to go. It’s not fair, is it? I suppose he’ll be quite happy at the vicar’s but he sort of drones on, doesn’t he, Phyllie? The vicar, I mean.’

  That was all. Within half an hour he was in bed, with a hot water bottle, and hot bricks at the top and bottom. Phyllie carried up more hot bricks, but this time to put in Miss F’s bed and her own. She then returned to sit by the Aga with her friend. Joe tapped on the door and thrust his head round. ‘All well here, with the young ’uns, and the old duck too?’ Miss F threw a ball of wool at him. He laughed, tipped his cap back. ‘Happy times. Happy times. The tenants from your cottage have poked their ’eads in for a glass of me wine, Phyllie. Seem harmless. Old, but harmless, from Birmingham, but you know that, of course. Happy New Year.’ Then he was gone.

  She had forgotten all about her tenants moving in today. She had meant to visit, but there was always tomorrow. The two women stayed up until after midnight. ‘Might as well see the new one in, Phyllie,’ Miss F said, coughing into her handkerchief. ‘It should be interesting, and I expect you’re thinking, as I am, that we need to clear that attic room?’

  They smiled at one another as Phyllie said, ‘Well, we can’t have Ron putting up with minute-by-minute sermons from the lovely Jack, bless him. Besides, like Jake, we know what the boy did to help. I believe there’s something good in him, which is being smothered by pain. We can start clearing tomorrow, but you, my friend, need to hit the wooden hill. Listen to that chest.’

  Phyllie bundled Miss F up the stairs, boosting her pillows while she dashed in, and then out, of the bathroom. It was icy in the bedroom but would be snug under the covers. Once Miss F was in bed Phyllie felt her forehead: she was burning. Phyllie hurried to the kitchen, and brought up water and a soaked flannel. She laid the flannel on Miss F’s forehead. ‘You must drink, all through the night, and call me, if you need me.’

  Phyllie lay awake all night, listening to Miss F coughing, and waiting for cries from Jake, but they didn’t come. Nonetheless, she was up, on and off, going from his room to Miss F’s. He never stirred, but he clutched the photo of his parents to him, and Miss F smiled, and told her to bugger off, and get some sleep. Phyllie in her turn held the photo of Sammy in his uniform that was the most precious item she possessed.<
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  The next day Jake was up before it grew light, and came down to the kitchen, where Phyllie was making porridge, with honey. ‘Happy New Year,’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘I’m glad it happened yesterday, because that was the old year. How’s Miss F?’ She sat opposite, eating her own porridge and he tucked into his, and within seconds it seemed he was scraping the bowl, and licking the spoon both sides. For once she didn’t say ‘Manners’ but smiled at the resilience of children.

  He saw her looking, and replaced the spoon. ‘Phyllie, I was thinking of Ron. Jack and Sylvia are nice, but they’re a bit boring. They’ve got a baby, and perhaps they won’t want him for long, then he’ll have to move again. What if Mr Andy and Mr Joe had him, I thought. Then I thought again, that he really needs you, and Miss F to get him right. But then I thought again that there’s Charlie coming, so perhaps you wouldn’t have time?’

  Phyllie finished her porridge, laid her spoon back in the bowl, and leaned back. ‘Goodness, with all that thinking going on, no wonder you’re hungry. Interestingly, young man, last night, as Miss F and I welcomed in 1942, we wondered if it would be a good idea to have Ron here, and, don’t worry, I can cope. We have the attic room; it was once a bedroom, where the maid slept, in years gone by. I know the stairs up are a bit winding, but they’re sound. We would need to clear the clutter, clean the windows, and so on.’

  Jake said, ‘Well, we wouldn’t need to tell him it was the servant’s room, or he might think that’s how we thought of him and get all angry again.’

  Phyllie gathered up the bowls, thinking hard. ‘Jake, Ron has been part of all the bullying and cruelty towards you for a long time. Also, as you’ve just said, he gets angry, or is angry, deep down. I want you to really mean it about Ron living here, because it might not be easy. He won’t change overnight.’

  ‘But he’s changing already. You didn’t hear him. He was nearly crying, and he really believes you sent his mum the money, and he was trying to stop them. I think he feels as muddled as I have felt, but he feels it all the time, just the whole time, because his mum won’t come. Not can’t come, but won’t come.’

  She took a hot drink up to Miss F. She was sitting up on her pillows, and clearly much worse. She did not disagree when Phyllie insisted on calling Dr Nicholls again. She apologised for calling him out on New Year’s Day. ‘It’ll set my year up beautifully, to see her twice in two days, old trout that she is,’ Dr Nicholls barked.

  He was there within half an hour, cold from the cycle ride, and asking for a cup of coffee essence to clear his head, grumbling about the Scotch he’d finished last night and the headache it had produced. ‘I only bloody well sipped it,’ he barked. ‘Must have been a bad bottle. She’ll have pneumonia, of course. She shouldn’t have been out, but you try telling her. I’ve had my stethoscope out all the way here, getting it good and cold.’

  He grumbled his way upstairs while Phyllie and Jake looked at each other, trying not to laugh, but worried too. They followed and heard Miss F saying, ‘You huff on that stethoscope, or you’re not putting it near my chest, you hear me. You’ll have made it nice and cold, you old bugger.’

  They crept down again, and only in the kitchen did they laugh. ‘You’d never think they are the best of friends, would you?’ Phyllie said as she made the coffee.

  ‘I wonder if Ron and I will be like that?’ Jake said. ‘I keep seeing him last night, in my head, fighting for me.’

  Dr Nicholls was grumbling down the stairs. The telephone rang in the hallway and Phyllie went to answer it while the doctor drank his coffee. It was Mary Nicholls: ‘Do tell that little ray of sunshine, otherwise known as my husband, that he has another call. Would he cycle his little legs along to the Andertons’ place? Mrs Anderton is in a tizz because her boy Eddie has been arrested again and Bryan, too, this time, and there is no bail. She called from the telephone box, insisting that he give her a sedative. He’ll actually want to give her a kick up the bum, but he might manage to talk some sense into her.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that …’ Phyllie began but Mary was in full flow.

  ‘Hope the old battleaxe is battling on? School term starts next week, so you’ll have to man up and step into her place. Unofficially, of course. I expect the old dear put in an order to up high to be ill, so there was a reason for you to return. Hope you’re feeling fit enough. I know you’ve been helping with homework marking and schedules at home but this is a bigger thing by far. Happy New Year, keep well.’

  Phyllie replaced the receiver and delivered the message about Mrs Anderton to Dr Nicholls who was finishing his coffee. ‘Arrested, you say? Not before time. Your young lad’s been telling me about the attic. Like you, I said it needed a long think.’ With that, he was out of the door, having given them some slippery elm tincture for ‘her highness’ and advising that wrapping her chest in goose grease and brown paper would draw the mucous.

  He finished with, ‘Good luck with that. I’d rather try it with a grizzly bear. Call me at any time, night or day, do you hear me?’ His voice was fierce, his look even more so. ‘Can’t have her flouncing off to sit on a cloud and look down on us all; we’d not have a moment’s peace.’

  They were about to take up a few drops of tincture in water when there was another knock on the door. Phyllie shot a look at a clock. It was nine o’clock, so who was visiting, when they’d rather be in bed nursing a hangover? She wasn’t surprised to see Joe stick his head round the door. ‘I’m not coming in, just checking on the lad, and the old ’un. Coughing like an old steam train. I spect.’

  ‘I think you could say that.’

  ‘And you? Bit like Piccadilly Circus for you. Tired?’ He was inching through the door, and stood on the mat in his boots. They were muddy, but he came no further.

  ‘Pleased to have Jake back, in all senses of the word, and worried about Miss F. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her.’

  Joe smiled. ‘She’s a tough old bat, and you and me, Phyllie, won’t let anything happen to her. Never you fear, I’ll sit with her in the day, cos you’ll need to be back at school until she’s well. You all right to do that? Or you too tired with the bump an’ all? I’m sure the ladies of the WI will arrange a rota for the nights.’

  Phyllie just nodded. She’d never be too tired ever again. She had Jake back, and Miss F would recover, or she’d want to know the reason why. She’d rebuild the school, if it would make the woman better. She took up the medicine and a couple of aspirin and floated the idea of a chest poultice. It was sunk almost the moment it had left Phyllie’s lips. Miss F scowled at the aspirin, downed them, and handed back the glass to Phyllie. ‘It’s the school that’s the problem.’

  Phyllie shook her head. ‘I have enough people telling me it’s not, and I agree. I’ll go in.’ She felt the smile that played on Miss F’s lips had more than a satisfied edge to it. She’d been played, and she knew it, but actually Miss F was really poorly. That night she sat with her as she grew worse, and Jake did too, bundled up in the quilt. Dr Nicholls came the next day, and every day for almost a week. Phyllie barely left her side.

  Joe slipped in every day, tiptoeing up the stairs in socks that needed darning. ‘You need a good woman,’ Phyllie whispered as they stood together at the end of Miss F’s bed, watching her battle for breath.

  ‘I don’t know any,’ Joe replied. They both laughed, feeling the frost on the air because Miss F insisted that the window should be open to let the germs escape. Joe stayed on, while Phyllie slept for two hours every afternoon.

  A few days before the start of term, Miss F allowed Phyllie to wrap her chest in brown paper, comfrey, mustard and goose grease. ‘Damned nonsense but worth a bash,’ she had muttered before falling into a fretful sleep.

  There was no obvious improvement in the morning, but she was not worse, and that was, in itself, a cause for relief. As Phyllie sat by the bed, preparing lessons for school, she heard Joe on the stairs. He entered, and took the wicker chair beside her. T
hey heard a scraping above them. Joe raised his eyebrows, ‘Still at it, is ’e?’

  Phyllie smiled. ‘Yes, he’s determined. He’s had no nightmares, no after effects, just a determination to make life better, and today, Dan is helping, so I’ve left them to it. It was a good idea of Percy Pringle’s to give Ron work on the farm as a punishment for his involvement. It means Jake’s had to work alongside him in the stables and there have been no grumbles. What’s more, Jake seems to have wangled himself into Andy’s good books and got him to heave the big stuff around or out of the attic. I’m sending some of it to my brother. He might find it useful for those who’ve been bombed.’

  She kept her eyes on Miss F, and Joe did the same. ‘You heard from your mother, have you?’

  ‘No, but Jake’s setting me a good example, Joe. I realised a while ago that my family is here, not there, not any more, and I have learned to understand and accept that.’

  ‘And Sammy?’

  ‘Ah, Sammy; I’ll always love him, always. He’s part of me, especially now.’ She patted Charlie. ‘But everyone is right. It’s become a little easier, the sun comes out more often, I even laugh. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t, because I miss him so much, but I live, go on, am grateful that Jake is safe, and Miss F is improving. That is the greatest gift.’

  There was a crash from above. Dan called, ‘Ouch, that was my foot.’

  Joe muttered, ‘If you’re all agreed, I reckon that Ron should help ’em up there. If you haven’t agreed, really agreed, then put a stop to it, because Ron’s life ain’t a game.’ He leaned on the bedstead, fingering his cigarette, his cap on the back of his head. ‘You’ll have your hands full, lass, with Charlie, and maybe teaching too, and the two lads, especially if this old lass pops her clogs.’

  He grinned, winked at Phyllie and they both waited. Miss F piped up, ‘I’m not dead and I’m not deaf, and I’m agreed, and will help Phyllie, of course I will. A child’s life is precious and should be nurtured. She might want to marry, and who’d want someone with three children, that’s what she needs to think about. But I’ll keep Ron on if there’s a problem. He’s got a good core.’