Chapter 13 #2
It took Tom a while to take in what he’d heard.
Someone’s mother was lying under all that rubble, years after the bombing.
Overwhelmed by everything, and very tired, Tom stopped still in the street.
A sudden, irrational panic gripped him. Everything here was black and white: the white buildings, the black railings, the rubble, the front door that had belonged to someone once.
No green, no blue, no yellow-silver skies, no amber.
Black and white. He ran, his legs like jelly, and the five-bob note fell out of his hand but he carried on running.
He banged into someone, winding them; then he fell backwards.
It was a Black man in a brown suit. He gripped Tom’s wrists and said, ‘Hey! What’re you doing, going so fast? ’
Tom pushed him out of the way, gasping for breath.
He ran, and ran, not listening, a tide of panic washing over him.
He hated it here. He didn’t want to be here.
It was too different, and they didn’t feel right, they weren’t his family, these two odd people.
He didn’t care about school or being a Caldicott.
And in his mind, he could only hear his dad agreeing to let him go, and a voice saying, He didn’t want you any more.
Someone was calling him, running after him. Tom carried on running, his strong legs bearing him back home, although it wasn’t home. Home was hundreds, thousands of miles away – he didn’t even know how far away. And the voice was still calling out to him. Tom, Tom!
Eventually he had to stop – he didn’t know where he was – and, as he did so, someone clapped a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it tightly. He turned round, his face crumpled. It was the Black man again, and he was peering down at Tom.
‘Hey, you. Sorry to chase you. But I think I know you. Are you Tom? Tom Raven?’
Tom nodded, too exhausted to speak, his shoulders heaving.
‘You’re so small,’ said the man. ‘But you run like a cheetah.’ He smiled at him.
‘Listen, I’m Gordon! Listen!’ he said again, because Tom was sobbing so loudly now he could hardly be heard.
‘Hey! Shush.’ Gordon rubbed his back gently, then patted it, then rubbed it, then patted it, and the motion was hypnotic, warming, and Tom stopped crying and stood, shoulders still rising and falling, gulping for air until his breath slowed.
‘How do you know my name?’ said Tom, staring at Gordon, because he had never in his small, remote life seen someone with skin a different colour to his own.
‘I’m a friend of Jenny,’ Gordon said. ‘I saw you on Portobello, with Henry.’
‘Oh,’ said Tom. ‘Do you live in her road too?’
‘Not me. I knew her in the war. Jenny helped me; she’s helped a lot of people. She’s –’ He stopped. ‘She’s glad to have fetched you back; she’s glad to have you here, Tom.’
‘I don’t like it. I want to go back, I want to –’ Tom tried to run off again, but Gordon caught up with him, held on to his arm.
‘I knew your dad, Tom, in the war. And your mum. Jenny, she’s giving up everything for you, you understand?’
Tom rubbed his eyes. It was so new, all of it. ‘I want to go home,’ he said. ‘Do you know the way back to Montpelier Crescent, by any chance?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Gordon. He bent down.
‘Hey, Tom. Hey. You think you’re alone, and I promise you, you’re not.
’ And he put his hand on the back of Tom’s head, cupping it gently, and Tom felt the warmth of his skin against his scalp, and the touch of another person was so comforting in that moment, but then he pushed it down, and they walked together to Montpelier Crescent, side by side.
Gordon showed him where Jenny kept the spare key: under a plant pot with some waterlogged spindly plant that had long since died, then left him with a wave.
‘I’ll see you, Tom.’
‘When?’ said Tom, not wanting him to go, the first truly friendly person he’d met in London.
‘Soon,’ Gordon said.
‘Thank you,’ said Tom. He had recovered a little by then. ‘Sorry about earlier.’ He looked at Gordon curiously. ‘Where are you from?’
‘I’m from Trinidad, my boy,’ said Gordon. ‘The most beautiful place in the world.’ He nodded. ‘Plant a stick in the ground, the stick flowers.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Gordon solemnly. He adjusted the cuffs of his neat suit and cleared his throat rather formally.
‘But I’m here now. Came back after the war.
’ Gordon crouched down, so he was eye level with Tom.
‘You feel like an outsider, don’t you? So did I, even though I was fighting for England.
And Jenny and Henry and Irene, they made me feel like Sevenstones was home. ’
‘Home,’ Tom said the word blankly.
‘Yes, home.’ Gordon was brisk. ‘This is your home now. Make the most of it. This is who you are now!’
He sounded a little like a teacher, which Tom was to discover was one of the many jobs Gordon could have done well. ‘Thank you very much,’ said Tom, shaking his hand. ‘I’m fine now.’ He held the key. ‘Good morning.’
‘You’re polite, aren’t you? Goodbye, little man.’ And he lifted his hat to Tom and walked away. Tom let himself in and shut the door. The dank cool of the house overwhelmed him for a moment. He stood in the hallway, shivering.
‘Is that you, Tom?’ Jenny’s voice echoed up from the kitchen. ‘I’ve been to the uniform shop. When you’ve a moment, come down and wash your hands please!’
Tom walked slowly upstairs, carefully examining the house as he went, for he felt it was like a detective film, something new to notice every time.
A couple of spindles were missing on the banisters.
There were marks on the striped silk wallpaper where pictures had once hung.
One of the windows on the landing was boarded up.
He stopped and looked at it, as his aunt emerged from the basement and followed him upstairs to the first-floor landing.
She looked pale, and unformed, her white lace shirt loose, her hair astray, quite different from the smart woman who had arrived to take him away.
‘It was blown out in 1940 and we never got round to replacing it,’ she said, pointing at the window. One hand gripped the newel post, and she brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes with the other.
‘Was it bad here, the bombing?’ Tom said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Dreadful. The war changed everything.’ Her eyes were large and unfocused.
She moved towards him and brushed something away from his face.
‘You’re her son,’ she whispered, her soft voice cracking, and she leaned forwards and kissed him, then stepped back, as if he’d given her an electric shock.
‘Her son, and you’re here, finally – you’re here –’ Tom thought about what Henry had said, not mentioning Sevenstones.
‘Come on, then, let’s measure you for these clothes. ’
Tom washed his hands and obediently followed her into the pale yellow drawing room, where she shut the heavy wooden shutters. ‘Take your clothes off, Tom.’
The feeling that everything was wrong, too large, too black and white, no green, no wilderness, overwhelmed him again, and his eyes hurt.
Digging his hands into his pockets, he drew something out of his shorts.
It was the wooden house. The tip of the chimney stack had snapped off.
Sevenstones. Tom laid it quietly on the side, as his aunt ran a tape measure round his chest, staring at him with those wide, empty eyes.