Goodnight Mister Tom (29 page)

Although there were no signposts to welcome them, Tom felt sure the fishing village they rode into was the place. It was called Salmouth. They weren’t the only holidaymakers but, as the roads to Salmouth were very narrow, most of the people who ventured there were cyclists like themselves or ramblers. Tom walked from cottage door to cottage door asking if anyone would take them, including a dog, for bed, breakfast and an evening meal for a fortnight. After several refusals they chanced upon a middle-aged widow called Mrs Clarence. She was delighted to have them stay with her. Her four sons had been called up and she lived alone with a dog called Rumple. Unlike Sammy, Rumple was ancient and spent his days lying lazily cushioned in layers of his own wrinkled fat.

Tom and Zach wheeled the bicycle and tandem along a tiny stone pathway at the side of Mrs Clarence’s cottage, towards her neat and well-stocked garden. Will untied the panniers and together they carried them in.

‘You jest go for a walk,’ announced Mrs Clarence cheerfully. ‘It’ll give me a chance to sort your rooms out.’

They happily agreed to this suggestion and strolled leisurely down the tiny main street in the direction of a small harbour. Two tiny cobbled alleyways sloped gently down towards it. At the corner of one stood an old weather-beaten pub called the ‘Captain Morgan’. A wind-battered sign with a picture of some old sea-dog on it hung outside.

‘By George, I say,’ whispered Zach, clutching Will’s arm in excitement, ‘I wonder if there are any smugglers or pirates round here.’

Tom and Sammy had carried on down the lane and were standing at a tiny landing dock. Will and Zach joined them.

They passed a fishmonger’s where clusters of crawling crabs and lobsters, inert cockles and shellfish were placed in the front window on display. A heavy odour of fresh fish emanated from the doorway.

A few yards down was a shop filled with what Zach called ‘Sea-things’, from fishing tackle and compasses to long johns and thick navy-oiled jerseys. Zach stared wistfully through the glass and sighed.

‘Oh to be a pirate!’ and he began to murmur something about ‘Drake being in his hammock’ and ‘Captain art thou sleepin’ thar below.’

Will was drawn like a magnet towards the small dock. He stood on the ancient wooden jetty and gazed in wonder at the sea. The waves lapped gently against the timbers below him. He had imagined that the sea would terrify and engulf him but instead he felt surprisingly calm. It seemed as if his mind had suddenly opened and all his worries, painful memories and fears were flooding to the surface and drifting away. Sammy barked at the seagulls that caw-cawed and swooped above his head but Will was quite deaf to his yelps.

Around the jetty itself were groups of men in fishing boats; long high-masted wooden vessels with wet nets hanging over their sides. Left of the jetty, a mile away, lay a sheltered bay. A handful of small anchored sailing boats bobbed on the surface. Will plunged his hands into his pockets. He felt overwhelmingly happy at the thought of spending a fortnight in Salmouth. Fourteen whole days. He could sit by the quay and sketch to his heart’s content and there was so much to see, new shapes to draw, new colours to store into his memory. There were some things, though, that he could never capture, things like smells and feelings and sensations of touch. They were ‘now’ things to enjoy only for a moment.

‘Are you coming, Will?’ yelled Zach.

He turned quickly.

‘We’se gooin’ further along towards that long V,’ said Tom pointing to the estuary. ‘You want to stay here or come along?’

‘I’m coming,’ he replied, walking towards them.

They turned up a second alleyway and pressed their noses against the dirty glass of an old second-hand bookshop. It was a treasure house for all three of them. If it hadn’t been for Sammy tugging at Tom’s corduroys they might have disappeared into the shop and stayed there for the remainder of the afternoon.

‘That’s a rainy-day shop,’ commented Tom.

Across the alleyway was a shop called ‘The Bucket and Spade’. Colourful tin buckets and large wooden spades, rubber balls and brown rubber swimming tyres, cricket bats and woollen swimsuits were out on display in front of it. A chubby three-year-old girl was standing outside it. She stumbled up the sloping alleyway after her brother who was wearing a sailor suit. Will, Zach and Tom strode past them and turned a corner which led them back to the main street. They walked by a row of crooked whitewashed cottages, a small grocery store, a Boot’s Library, a baker’s, a wool shop and a cobbler’s with a toy mender sign in the window.

The nearest beach was a mixture of sand and pebbles. They sat on it and gazed out at the bay.

Three or four families and a few couples were sitting on deckchairs or swimming in the sea. Tom had previously read in the newspapers that most of the beaches in England were heavily populated. Salmouth, to his delight, was relatively quiet.

By the time they returned to Mrs Clarence’s, they were ravenous.

‘I’ve took your bags to your rooms,’ she said. ‘I’ve put you two boys together in the back room and Mr Oakley,’ she added, ‘you’re in the front bedroom next to mine.’

Tom thanked her and they all sat down to a meal of fried mackerel, freshly picked broad beans, potatoes in their jackets, and slices of fried courgettes. Tom offered Mrs Clarence his ration of sugar and butter and anything else she might need.

Zach had eaten fish many times. He had spent several summers by the sea when his parents were doing summer seasons but it was the first time he had ever had a companion of his own age to share those summer joys. Most of the time he used to wander alone, chatting to people, but his odd appearance and forthright ways seemed to annoy them and they tended to ignore him. With Will, he felt that he could do and be anything and anybody and Will would still like him.

Will was eating fish for the first time. Mrs Clarence showed him how to gently make an incision, fold the fleshy parts to either side and carefully pull out, intact, the long skeleton.

Mrs Clarence’s cottage made a great impression on her three guests for she not only had a separate kitchen and dining-cum-sitting-room but she also had a bathroom. It was upstairs at the top of a narrow crooked stairway. It astounded Will that anyone should have a special room for having a bath in. It also had running hot and cold water that came out of two taps and she had a toilet with a chain that you pulled, to flush it. It was all very different from the tiny lean-to shed that stood outside Tom’s back door. The toilet inside there was a plank with a hole in it which was balanced above a deep earthen pit.

After the fish meal, they had baked apple with honey poured over it. Mrs Clarence had been talking so much that she had forgotten that they were in the oven and they had burst into oddly-shaped foaming heaps. She apologized profusely but Tom, Will and Zach said that they preferred them exploded.

During the meal Tom observed Zach and Will. Will’s skin which had gone through various stages of pink on the journey was now approaching a bronze hue. A profusion of freckles now covered his entire face.

‘I say,’ exclaimed Zach, also noticing the new phenomenon, ‘you’ve got hundreds of freckles.’

‘Have I?’ remarked Will in surprise.

‘Yes. They must have been lurking under your skin for years and years and years.’

Will glanced down at his arms. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up to above his elbows.

‘I’ve got lots on me arms too,’ he commented. ‘How strange.’

Zach licked his mouth.

‘My mouth tastes salty, does yours?’

Will licked his lips and nodded.

‘Mine too,’ added Tom.

‘I’m going to re-name this village Salt-on-the-mouth,’ said Zach, sitting back and looking very pleased with himself.

‘I like that,’ said Will smiling.

The sea air caused Zach and Will to feel sleepy and, as they were excited about sharing a room, they went to bed quite willingly, leaving Tom and Mrs Clarence to listen to ‘Henry Hall’s Guest Night’ on the wireless. While she knitted and talked, Sammy tried vainly to stir some life into Rumple who now occupied the best position by the hearth.

Upstairs Zach and Will undressed and put their pyjama trousers on. Their beds stood on either side of a bay window which overlooked the sea. There were two window frames with thin strips of painted white wood which criss-crossed across the glass. Both windows had a latch that pushed them outwards. They were now flung open, for Mrs Clarence had said that as long as they kept the lights off, they needn’t have the blacks up. Zach and Will leaned out and allowed the cool night air to brush their faces. A full harvest moon hung in a clear navy sky. Waves slapped against the shore below the tiny back garden.

Downstairs Tom sat reading, when he wasn’t interrupted by Mrs Clarence. She was a shy woman and her shyness manifested itself in great bursts of incessant chatter. Tom felt sure that once she had got used to the three of them she would calm down.

Mrs Clarence didn’t understand the relationship of the two boys to Tom. It was obvious to her that he and the fair one were related but the dark precocious one didn’t look like either of them. She also wondered if Will was Tom’s son or grandson. When she discovered that he was a widower it unnerved her a little. She thought him a very attractive man and to her dismay found herself talking and chattering like an adolescent schoolgirl. It was really quite embarrassing. They had just finished listening to the eight o’clock news bulletin when she put down her knitting.

‘Is Zach a friend of your son’s?’ she asked.

Tom looked up from his book, surprised.

‘My son?’ he asked.

‘Will. He’s very like you. Has your ways.’

‘Evacuee,’ he began, but he didn’t get any further. She took it that Zach was the only evacuee.

‘How kind of you, Mr Oakley, to take an evacuee on holiday,’ and she couldn’t praise him enough.

The praise made Tom feel awkward so rather than mention that Will was also an evacuee, he said nothing, hoping that the matter would be dropped. He went up the stairway to Zach and Will’s room and found them still leaning out of the window staring at the sea. He tucked them both into bed, ruffled their hair and closed the door behind them.

Zach lay on his back, his arms up-stretched above him, his head leaning on his hands.

‘I say,’ he said. ‘Isn’t this the most wondrous, scrumptious, exciting thing that’s ever happened in the whole wide world.’

‘Yeh,’ agreed Will.

They lay in silence in the semi-darkness, the moon shining its beams across the whitewashed floorboards.

‘Ent it a fine sound,’ whispered Will, staring happily up at the ceiling.

‘What?’ asked Zach sleepily.

‘The waves.’

Zach turned over and gave a grunt. Will was sitting cross-legged on the window-sill with a sketch pad on his knees. He glanced down at Zach’s brown face and wiry black hair lying against the crisp white pillow case and returned to his drawing. Zach gave another grunt, opened his eyes and looked over at Will’s bed. Seeing the empty sheets, he rolled out of bed quickly and then caught sight of him on the window-sill.

‘How long have you been up?’

Will shrugged.

‘About an hour, I s’pose.’

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

‘Thought mebbe you wanted to lie in.’

Zach leaned on the window-sill next to Will’s legs. A slight mist hung over the sea.

‘I say, it’s going to be a wizzo day. A real scorcher.’

He glanced at Will’s drawing which consisted of two gulls hovering above a tranquil sea. Will sighed.

‘I wish I could get the sun shinin’ on the waves, sort of sparklin’ like.’ He leaned back against the wall. ‘Oh, Will,’ retorted Zach. ‘It’s smashing. If I drew that, it would be just one long wiggly line in the middle of the page, a couple of silly clouds above it and a few wavy lines below.’

Will gave a laugh.

Mrs Clarence knocked on their door.

‘Breakfast in five minutes, boys,’ she sang.

‘Rightio,’ yelled Zach.

Will climbed down and put his sketch-pad on the small white wooden table under the sill.

It was the beginning of another of Zach’s ‘glorious’ days. Tom had also risen early and had already been out with Sammy for a walk along the beach.

The three of them all sat down to a generous breakfast and then set off immediately with a picnic lunch to the beach. They walked for a mile along the coast towards some cliffs and climbed up a rough pathway that had been hacked out of the grass and bracken. Once they reached the top they carried on walking until they came to a small opening in a clump of gorse. They scrambled down another rough pathway and came to a sheltered and sandy cove. The cliffs curved round on either side of them like the arms of an enormous armchair. Zach and Will peeled off their clothes down to their underpants while Sammy dug into the sand sending cascades of it into a pile behind him. Tom rolled his trouser-legs and shirt-sleeves up and put a four-knotted handkerchief on his head.

Zach and Will walked down towards the sea. Will stood at the edge while Zach splashed and yelled about the coolness of the water. He shrank back as an icy spray cascaded over him.

‘Come on,’ yelled Zach, who was treading water. ‘There are warm bits if you keep moving about.’

Will nodded mournfully. He waded in as far as his ankles and allowed the water to swirl around his feet.

Tom sat on the shore and watched. Will turned and gave him a casual glance. He wanted Mister Tom to be near him and at the same time he didn’t want to appear a coward. Tom wanted to help but didn’t want to mollycoddle him. The glance from Will moved him into action.

‘Corne on, Samuel,’ he said, eyeing the hot furry heap that was now sheltering in a hole.

‘Come and have a bit of salt water, boy,’ and with that he picked him up and carried him in his arms to the water’s edge.

Once Will saw Sammy barking at the sea, chasing it and being caught by it, some of his fear disappeared for Sammy was very funny. Tom paddled in after him.

‘Come on, Will,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Take some handfuls and splash some around you. You can git used to it then. I’ll catch you if you fall.’