Free Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven by Jane Bailey Page B

make no sense, do it? Tiz like he’s punishing her.”
    â€œTwuz hardly her fault.”
    â€œMakes no sense at all.”
    Clicking of needles. Things are hotting up. I put my nose down and knit furiously.
    â€œThese things make people behave in strange ways,” says Miss Lavish, generously. “I should think it can tear a couple apart.”
    â€œIt takes its toll for certain,” says Aggie.
    â€œIt do that,” says Mrs Marsh, her moustache unmoved.
    â€œBut tiz no one’s fault …”
    â€œWell …”
    â€œThey do say that lad Tommy –”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œWell, there was something fishy going on,” says Mrs Chudd, pulling decisively at her ball of wool to unravel another yard.
    â€œTommy would never do a thing like that. I’m sure of it,” says Miss Lavish.
    â€œWell … that’s not how she sees it. I don’t know how she puts up with it. Seeing him around.”
    â€œShe’s a saint is Joyce.”
    â€œShe is that.”
    Then all faces suddenly freeze as Aunty Joyce turns up with my cardigan and decides to stay till the end. We talk about Gregory Peck and Betty Chudd’s amazing arithmetic, and I am left yet again with this notion that Tommy has done something too dreadful to speak of, and also with the more curious notion that Aunty Joyce is, of all things, a ‘saint’.
    When we get back it’s still light, but time for my bed. I go out the back to the lav, and try hard not to think of the many-legged creatures scuttling around the wooden seat and in the murky corners. After I’ve flushed I go round the back of the shed to the kittens, but they’re not in the box. I look under the wooden crates and in the bushes and over the wall. At last I see Kemble and she comes to rub up against my legs.
    â€œWhere are those naughty kittens?” She continues to rub up against me, but makes strange mewling noises. “Have you lost them? Let’s help you find them.”
    I search behind the hen coop, in the cinder pile and between the rows of beans. Then I lift the lid of a pail, which is sitting by the shed, and see a pile of wet fur with pink flesh visible underneath.
    I drop the lid and it clatters off down between the runner beans. Kemble comes up and sniffs the pail, miaowing pathetically. I take them out one by one and lay them on the grass, but Boomer I pick up in my arms. I hold his little soggy body close to mine. His head rolls right back and I support it in my hand, catching my breath as giant angry sobs build up like a tidal wave.
    â€œNO!” I scream. “No! No! No!” I run indoors, Boomer’s little head flopping backwards as I trundle into the parlour.
    Uncle Jack covers his face with his hand, but not in shock, more as though he saw it coming. I plant myself in front of Aunty Joyce, face burning with tears and nose running over my lips, ready to rebuff all her excuses.
    She looks at me unmoved. It is not the look of a saint.

Sketching heaven
    Once again the solace of touch is taken away as I awake. There was a human warmth surrounding me and now it has gone with the sunlight on the curtains.
    Yesterday’s horror steals over me. I remember my wakefulness for hours and lean out of bed to reach for the bundle I have left hidden beneath it. I unwrap Boomer from my cardigan and stroke his dried fur gently.
    I am a bag of nerves and sorrow and anger. I will run away. I will kill myself. I will kill Aunty Joyce, smash this house to pieces, scream in church, stab Miss Didbury, swear in Sunday school, facky, facky, facky Nell! And facky Jesus and facky jelly ghost!
    Instead I pound the eiderdown with my fists, grit my teeth, and go straight out of the house without any breakfast, leaving Aunty Joyce standing by the range with a pot full of porridge.
    I go to the only grown-up I can think of who might understand my grief. He is still busy milking, but he stops when he sees me with