Chapter 9 #2
His father folded his fingers over it. His voice was quiet.
‘I made it for – for your mother, Tom. It was a promise. A symbol.’ His father was still standing there watching Tom, and there was a pleading note to his voice that Tom hated, as if he knew it was a terrible present.
‘But I was too late … too late to give it to her.’ He rubbed at the back of his neck and stared out of the window, and Tom thought how grey his skin looked, how sad he was, and how he hadn’t always been like that.
‘I promised her a home. I whittled it for her so she’d know I meant it.
But she was gone before we could get there. ’
‘Gone where?’
His father shrugged, his generous mouth twisted into a painful hook. ‘My dear boy. She died, I mean.’ He stroked his cheek, with a sharp inhalation as his fingers closed on Tom’s skin. ‘She died.’
One day about a year ago after school, as he was crossing the bridge over the Fleet and had stopped to look for kingfishers, Ian Forsyth had shoved him to the ground and said, ‘Your ma’s a mad whoor and they locked her up and threw away the key and she died, me ma said so,’ and knocked him on to the metal bridge, punching him in the stomach and winding him.
When he could breathe, Tom had turned and said, ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Yon da was half-cut at the pub, he was sayin’ all sorts, all sorts o’ nonsense, about stones, and ghosts and how your ma was mad,’ said Ian confidently.
‘Well, your ma stinks,’ said Tom, instantly regretting this, as Ian’s mother did smell, very badly, of the farmyard. Ian had turned bright red, raspberry staining his cheeks, and had kicked him again before walking away.
Tom had picked himself up and dusted himself down very carefully – his father was punctilious about appearance – and walked the two miles back along the Old Military Road; and, when he reached home and his father was in the workshop making a bookshelf for the vicar and he called out as he always did, ‘How was school, my boy?’, Tom merely said, ‘Great, Dad, thanks,’ and fetched himself an apple, settling down by the range to reread a Rupert Annual that the vicar’s wife – along with the farmer’s wife, the source of most of the hand-me-downs and the mothering Tom received – had given him.
And so, while he wanted to know more about his mother, he was also afraid to know.
What he knew was: she was called Irene, and she was from London, and her father was a painter, and she had met Tom’s father in the war.
But now, he felt, his father was asking him to ask.
‘She was flying with her colonel up to York. Your mother was very high up in the WRAF. The Women’s Royal Air Force, you know.
’ Tom didn’t know. He nodded. ‘There was still lots to do after the war – she was awfully busy, busier than old dogs like me. The plane – it was a Lancaster – took off near Lincoln but the wing had a fault. It crashed into a tree. Four people died.’
Tom was silent.
‘I never liked the Lancasters,’ his father said, and he drove a finger into his pipe, tamping down the tobacco.
‘In Irene’s family, they celebrated the ninth birthday.
Her father, he used to say the ninth birthday was when you stopped being a really little child and started becoming an adult.
They had a party for every child at that age. Rather a nice idea.’
Tom was silent, turning over the tiny house in his hand.
This was the kind of story he wanted to hear.
There was a small panel drawing on the wall in the bedroom by Julian Caldicott, and Tom knew he was his grandfather, and a famous artist. Once, he had gone to a gallery in Glasgow with his father on the train, and his father had shown him one of Julian Caldicott’s paintings: a portrait of a red-haired girl called Laughing Cruelty . But he knew no more than that.
Edward slid the potato cakes on to a plate, and handed them to Tom.
‘When I was growing up, we didn’t call ourselves the Ravens, you know.
No call for it. I was Bessie and Ed’s lad and that was it and if you stepped out of line there were plenty of people who’d give you a thick ear for it.
We weren’t …’ He searched for the right expression. ‘They were good people.’
Tom knew all about the little Cumbrian town by Ullswater, the little flat above the ironmonger’s that was Edward’s father’s business, Tom’s long-dead grandparents. His father happily told stories about that, about diving into ice-cold lakes, fishing, scrambling up steep hills.
‘You caught a trout when you were five and the mayor said you were a right good ’un,’ Tom said on cue, helping himself to baked beans.
‘That’s it! Your mother’s family, they were very smart.
And London was – oh, it’s a grand place, London.
The grandest place I ever was. Not that your mother ever behaved like she was too good for anyone.
In fact, she wanted to get away. We were going to – to get away …
’ He pointed at the wooden house with his pipe.
‘I made her this, you know. To show – everything would be all right. And I never got the chance to give it to her. Well, it’s your ninth birthday and I thought that –’
But his father stopped speaking and slowly stood up. He looked out of the window. ‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘Someone coming up the road.’
‘I saw them a few minutes ago. A black speck.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ His father’s voice was sharp and Tom, for the second time, was taken aback by it. ‘Why didn’t you say, Tom?’
‘I didn’t – we were talking –’ Tom said, his eyes wide. ‘Sorry, Dad – I –’
They didn’t have visitors, unless they were walkers lost on the hills, or riders wanting water for the ponies.
Tom’s father was moving around the small room, pushing their scant possessions – a shelf of books, photographs, his whittling kit, the bottle of whisky they never talked about – into a wooden box. ‘Quick –’ he said. ‘She’s coming. Tom, quickly –’
There was a knock on the door. Three sharp blows. Tom looked at his father, astonished; he did not understand what was happening. Silence, and then the knock came again.
Rat. Tat-tat.
A firm English voice said, ‘Edward. Let me in. Please.’
His father remained in the middle of the room, not moving. Then swiftly he took two steps to Tom, grabbed his shoulders.
‘You are nine today. I should have said it might happen. I should have said. I love you, Tom. There.’ His pale face was twisted, his eyes filled with tears. ‘My dear, dear boy. Let her in. Yes. I have to let her in.’
The last moments, the last seconds, of the two of them, and Tom knew everything was about to change.