Goodnight Mister Tom (6 page)

‘Go on in, dear,’ they chorused.

Willie opened the door and stepped in. He found himself in a room, at the end of which was a small counter with a piece of netting above it. To his right were stacked stationery and pens, jigsaws, and wool, needles, scissors and assorted oddments and to his left sweets and bottles of pop.

Standing next to the netted window was a young boy. He was leaning on a wooden sill, writing intently. A young man in his twenties, with short cropped hair and glasses was sitting behind the netting talking to him.

‘They’ll never read that,’ he said.

‘Yes, they will,’ the boy replied.

Willie edged forward to see what was happening. The boy was holding a magnifying glass over a postcard and writing on it in the tiniest hand.

‘Mother’s got one of these, too,’ he said, waving the glass vaguely in the direction of the postmaster. It was the boy’s appearance more than anything which attracted Willie’s attention. He was taller than him but at a guess about nine years old. His body was wiry and tanned and he had a thick crop of black curly hair which looked badly in need of cutting. All he wore was a baggy pair of red corduroy shorts held up by braces, and a pair of battered leather sandals. Several coloured patches were sewn neatly round the seat of his pants. Apart from these, his back and legs were completely bare. Willie could not take his eyes off him.

‘Can I help you, son?’ said the postmaster.

Willie blushed and slid his card across the counter. The man glanced down at it.

‘Stayin’ with Mr Oakley, eh? You’ll have to watch yer Ps and Qs there.’

Did everyone know that he couldn’t read? He glanced across at the strange boy again. His nose was practically touching the card, he was so close to it. He smacked his lips. With a flourish he drew a line at the bottom, screwed on the top of his fountain pen and hooked it into a buckle on his braces.

‘Have you a blotter, sir?’

The postmaster slid a piece over to him. ‘Anything else?’ he remarked wryly.

The boy gave a small frown.

‘No, I don’t think so, thank you.’ He blotted the card and slid them both under the counter. ‘When will it arrive, do you think?’

‘Tuesdee, mebbe.’

‘That’s ages,’ he moaned.

‘Should a’ sent it sooner, then,’ said the postmaster.

The boy looked aside at Willie. His white teeth and brown oval eyes stood out in stark contrast against his dark tanned skin. He smiled, taking in Willie’s crumpled grey shorts and jersey. Willie turned quickly away and walked out of the door, his ears smarting. Tom was standing on the stone steps of the shop at the corner, waiting for him.

‘There you are,’ he muttered. ‘Comin’ in or not?’

He nodded and walked towards the shop past three women who were talking outside.

He looked inside the door and stepped in. Boxes, bags, sacks and coloured packets were piled along the right side of the store. On the left was a long wooden counter with weighing scales at one end and a large wicker basket filled with loaves of bread. Crates of fruit and vegetables were stacked at the other end. Above the boxes and sacks on the right were shelves with cups, plates, saucepans, bowls, nails, and an assortment of coloured tins on them. Willie peered gingerly outside to see if he could catch a glimpse of the strange boy from the Post Office.

‘Thanks, Mrs M,’ said Tom to a middle-aged couple behind the counter. ‘I’ll drop in that baccy for you tonight, Mr Miller. Tea, sugar, torch batteries and elastic, you reckon?’

‘Sure as eggs is eggs,’ said the man. He caught sight of Willie standing by a sack of flour. ‘Ere, wot you want?’ he cried angrily. ‘Eh?’

‘Don’t be too ’arsh,’ said his wife.

‘Be soft with this London lot and they take you for a ride. I had cigarettes, chocolate, fruit, allsorts stolen when that last batch of kids come in.’

Willie blushed and backed into the sack.

‘Boy’s with me,’ said Tom.

‘Oh,’ said Mr Miller, taken aback. ‘Oh, sorry, Mr Oakley. That’s different then.’

‘William, come over here and meet Mr and Mrs Miller.’

‘Pleased to meet you, dear,’ said Mrs Miller, who was endowed with so many rolls of fat that her stomach almost prevented her from reaching the counter. She leaned over. Taking hold of Willie’s hand in her soft pudgy one she shook it.

Mr Miller, a short, stocky man with thinning mouse-coloured hair, leaned over and did the same. As Tom and Willie were leaving Mrs Miller lumbered towards them, polishing a large apple in her apron.

‘’Ere you are, me dear,’ she said to Willie. ‘This is fer you.’ Willie gazed at it, dumbfounded.

‘Go on, take it, boy, and say thank you to Mrs M.’

‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

They left the shop and headed back along the road, Sammy crawling miserably along behind them. They were outside Mrs Fletcher’s cottage when someone began shouting at them.

‘Mr Oakley! Mr Oakley!’

A short ancient gentleman with a droopy moustache was running towards them. He was wearing an A.R.P. uniform.

‘That’s Charlie Ruddles,’ muttered Tom. ‘He thinks he’s goin’ to win the war.’ The old man came puffing up to them.

‘Where’s yer gas-masks then? Yous’ll be in trouble if you don’t carry one. Don’t you know war’s goin’ to be declared any second,’ and he waved at Willie. ‘He should have one, too.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Tom, and continued to walk up the road with Charlie still shouting after them.

‘Yous’ll wake up one of these mornin’s and find yerself gassed to death,’ he yelled.

‘All right,’ shouted back Tom over his shoulder. ‘I said I’ll get one.’

They walked past the cottage with the sunflower. People were still standing outside talking intently. Willie stared at them puzzled. Why did they appear so anxious?

‘Come on, William,’ called Tom sharply. ‘Don’t dither! We’se got to go into town.’

4
Equipped

Dobbs clopped slowly past cornfields and cottages, bees and cream-coloured butterflies. Tom and Willie sat in the front of the cart. They had left Sammy behind to collapse in the cool darkness of the tiled hallway. Willie clutched on to the long wooden seat and, as they jolted over the rough cobbled road, his eyelids drooped and he became drowsy. Suddenly he gave a frightened start, for he had nearly fallen asleep and the ground below seemed a long distance away. Tom squeezed on the reins and they came to a halt.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘you hop in the cart and take a nap.’ He helped Willie into the back and threw him an old rug to cover himself with for he still looked terribly pale. As soon as the rhythmic motion of the cart began Willie fell into a disjointed sleep. His thin elbows and shoulder blades hit the sides of the cart at frequent intervals so that he would wake suddenly, only to fall back exhausted into a chaotically dream-filled sleep. He was just about to be attacked by a horde of anxious faces when he felt himself being gently shaken.

‘We’se comin’ into it, boy. Raise yerself.’

Willie staggered to his feet and hung on to the side of the cart. They jogged past a river that was sheltered by overhanging trees. It curved and disappeared from view behind some old buildings.

‘Remember any of this?’

Willie shook his head. ‘No.’

They halted at a blacksmith’s. Tom stepped down and lifted Willie after him. He untied Dobbs and led her into a large dark shed. Willie heard him talking to someone inside. It wasn’t long before he reappeared and swiftly removed his haversack, bags and boxes from the back of the cart. He placed a hand on Willie’s shoulder.

‘We got a lot to do, boy. You reckon you can keep up?’

Willie nodded.

Tom handed him one of the two small buff-coloured boxes and they both slung them over their shoulders and set off. They passed a bicycle shop and a cobbler’s and turned a corner into the main street. It curved round a large square.

‘On market days that be filled with all kinds of stalls,’ said Tom.

In the centre of the square was a stone archway with a clock in its wall and on the ground below, surrounding it on four sides, were wooden benches.

They stopped outside a newsagent’s shop. Two placards were leaning up against the walls. ‘Poland Invaded!’ read one and ‘Turn your wireless low. Remember, someone might be on duty,’ read the other. The door of the shop was already propped wide open.

‘Hot, ent it?’ said a tiny old lady from behind the counter. ‘Your usual is it, Mr Oakley?’ she added.

Tom nodded.

She reached up to a yellow tin of tobacco on one of the shelves. A pile of comics caught Willie’s eye. Tom glanced at him.

‘One sweet and one comic,’ he said sharply. ‘Choose.’

Willie was stunned.

‘Don’t you hurry, sonny,’ said the old lady kindly. ‘You jest takes yer time.’ She pointed up at some of the many jars. ‘We got boiled ones, fruit drops, farthin’ chews, mint humbugs, there’s lollies, of course. They’se popular. There’s strawberry, lemon, lime and orange.’

Tom was annoyed at the long silence that followed and was just about to say something when he caught sight of Willie’s face.

Willie swallowed hard. He’d never been asked to choose anything ever.

‘A lolly, please, Miss,’ he said at last.

‘What flavour?’

He frowned and panicked for a moment. ‘Strawberry,’ he answered huskily.

The old lady opened the jar and handed one to him. It was wrapped up in black-and-white striped paper and twisted like a unicorn’s horn.

‘Now what comic would you like, dear?’

Willie felt hopeless. What use would a comic be to him, he wouldn’t be able to understand the words. He loved the colours, though, and the pictures looked so funny and exciting. He glanced up at Tom.

‘I can’t read, Mister Tom.’

‘I know that,’ he replied shortly, ‘but I can, after yer Bible.’

Willie turned back to look at the comics so that he missed the surprised expression on his face. The words had leapt out of Tom’s mouth before he had had a chance to stop them. He felt a mixture of astonishment at himself and irritation that his rigid daily routine was going to be broken after forty undisturbed years. Willie at last chose a comic with his sweet and Tom paid for them. It was his first comic. His hands shook as he held it.

‘Get movin’, boy,’ barked Tom’s voice behind him. ‘Are you deaf?’ Willie jumped. ‘Come on,’ he repeated.

Willie followed him next door into a chemist’s shop and then into a grocery shop. They stopped outside Lyons’ tea house where there was a selection of cakes in the window. A man in uniform sat at a table near by, with a young, weeping girl. Willie looked up at the shadow that the man’s body was casting across her face.

‘Later, perhaps,’ said Tom, thinking that Willie was eyeing the buns.

As they were crossing the square, Willie tugged at Tom’s sleeve.

‘Mister Tom,’ he said urgently. ‘Mister Tom, I knows this place. I remember. That’s where I were yesterday.’

They looked across at the railway station. A group of young soldiers were standing outside talking excitedly, their bulging kit-bags leaning up against their legs. A batch of children accompanied by a young woman and the billeting officer who had brought Willie had walked past them and were heading towards the Town Hall. They shuffled forward in a dazed manner holding hands, their labels hanging round their necks. They were a motley bunch. Some with rosy cheeks in brand new coats and sandals, some thin and jaundiced, wearing clothes that were either too small or too large.

‘Come on, William,’ said Tom. ‘I got a list of things a mile long fer the drapers.’

The drapers’ shop stood on the pavement opposite. Next to it was a toy shop.

‘You want to look at the toys while I go in here?’

Willie shook his head. He didn’t want to be left on his own.

‘As you please,’ said Tom, and they stepped into the darkness of the drapers.

The shop was piled high with rolls of materials. Tom and Willie inched their way between them. At the end of a roofless tunnel they found themselves standing in front of a long, high wooden counter. A smartly-dressed, middle-aged man with a gleaming set of new false teeth, and a moustache that twirled into a curl at either side of his mouth, was cutting a piece of cloth.

‘Good morning, Mr Hoakley,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Blacks hall right, hare they?’

Tom grunted in the affirmative.

A sound of light organ music came from a large wireless at the end of the counter.

‘For the latest news,’ the draper explained. ‘I must say, this waiting is getting hon my nerves. That Chamberlain’s so slow. We’re ready for ’itler. I ses let’s get on with it and stop this shilly-shallying.’

‘I bin hearing that blessed organ music on and off all blimmin’ day,’ said Tom grumpily. ‘Can’t he play no other instrument?’

‘That’s Sandy Macpherson,’ said the draper. ‘Wonderful man. Holding the B.B.C. together hin this national time hof stress, Mr Hoakley.’

‘Sure he ent causin it?’ retorted Tom.

‘Oh, Mr Hoakley,’ said the draper. ‘I’m sure you don’t mean…’ His words were cut short at the sight of Willie’s dull, sandy hair on the other side of the counter.

‘He’s with me,’ said Tom quickly. ‘I brung a list from Mrs Fletcher for materials.’ He pushed a list across the counter. ‘Boy’s only got what he’s standing up in.’

The draper beamed. ‘A pleasure, Mr Hoakley. I’ll ’ave to measure ’im myself. I’m a bit short-staffed hat present.’ He flicked the long tape measure from around his neck and eyed Willie.

‘There’s not a lot of ’im, his there?’ he remarked disappointedly.

Willie craned his head over the counter and watched him measuring and cutting two rolls of grey and navy flannel. A roll of corduroy lay at the end of the counter. He reached out and touched it. It felt soft and firm. He let his fingers drift gently over the ridges. Tom caught sight of him.

‘Might as well bring out several colours of that cordeeroy,’ he said.

The draper looked surprised. ‘Really. Oh well, if you say so, Mr Hoakley.’

‘Two colours you can have, William. Takes yer choice.’

The draper laid out rolls of green, brown, rust, navy, grey and red. Willie eyed Tom’s green trousers. He pointed to the green roll and after a pause to the navy.