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“Well, she’s always been my favourite ever since. And then this afternoon the Colonel comes by the kennels and tells me … he tells me he’s going to have to shoot Bertha. So I ask him why. Because she’s getting a bit old, a bit slow, he says. Because whenever they go out hunting she’s always going off on her own and getting herself lost. She’s no use for hunting any more, he says, no use to anyone. I asked him not to, Tommo. I told him she was my favourite. ‘Favourite!’ he says, laughing at me. ‘Favourite? How can you have a favourite? Lot of sentimental claptrap. She’s just one of a pack of dumb beasts, boy, and don’t you forget it.’ I begged him, Tommo. I told him he shouldn’t do it. That’s when he got really angry. He said they’re his foxhounds and he’d shoot them as and when he felt like it, and he didn’t want any more lip from me about it. So you know what I did, Tommo? I stole her. I ran off with her after dark, through the trees so no one would see us.”
“Where is she now?” I asked. “What’ve you done with her?”
“Remember that old forester’s shack Father used, up in Ford’s Cleave Wood? I’ve put her in there for the night. I gave her some food. Molly pinched some meat for me from the kitchen. She’ll be all right up there. No one’ll hear her, with a bit of luck anyway.”
“But what’ll you do with her tomorrow? What if the Colonel finds out?”
“I don’t know, Tommo,” Charlie said. “I don’t know.”
We hardly slept a wink that night. I lay there listening out for Bertha all the while. When I did drop off, I kept waking up suddenly thinking I had heard Bertha barking. But always it turned out to be a screeching fox. And once it was an owl hooting, right outside our window.
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I haven’t seen a fox while I've been out here. It’s hardly surprising, I suppose. But I have heard owls. How any bird can survive in all this I‘ll never know. I've even seen larks over no-man’s-land. I always found hope in that.
“He’ll know,” Charlie whispered to me in bed at dawn. “As soon as they find Bertha gone, the Colonel will know it was me. I won’t tell him where she is. I don’t care what he does, I won’t tell him.”
Charlie and I ate our breakfast in silence, hoping the inevitable storm wouldn’t break, but knowing that sooner or later it must. Big Joe sensed something was wrong — he could always feel anxiety in the air. He was rocking back and forth and wouldn’t touch his breakfast. So then Mother knew something was up as well. Once she was suspicious Mother was a difficult person to hide things from, and we weren’t very good at it, not that morning.
“Is Molly coming over?” she asked, beginning to probe.
There was a loud and insistent knocking on the door. She could tell at once it wouldn’t be Molly. It was too early for Molly, and anyway she didn’t knock like that. Besides, I think she could already see from our faces that Charlie and I were expecting an unwelcome visitor. As we feared, it was the Colonel.
Mother invited him in. He stood there glaring at us, thin-lipped and pale with fury. “I think you know why I’ve come, Mrs Peaceful,” he began.
“No, Colonel, I don’t,” said Mother.
“So the young devil hasn’t told you.” He was shouting now, shaking his stick at Charlie. Big Joe began to whimper and clutched Mother’s hand as the Colonel ranted on.
“That boy of yours is a despicable thief. First of all he steals the salmon out of my river. And now, in my employ, in a position of trust, he steals one of my foxhounds. Don’t deny it, boy. I know it was you. Where is she? Is she here? Is she?”
Mother looked to Charlie for an explanation. “He was going to shoot her, Mother,” he said quickly. “I had to do it.”
“You see!” roared the Colonel. “He admits it! He admits it!” Big Joe was beginning to wail now and Mother was smoothing his hair, trying to reassure and comfort him as she spoke. “So you took her in order to save her, Charlie, is that right?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have done that, Charlie, should you?”
“No, Mother.”
“Will you tell the Colonel where you’ve hidden her?”
“No, Mother.”
Mother thought for a moment or two. “I didn’t think so,” she said. She looked the Colonel full in the face. “Colonel, am I right in thinking that if you were going to shoot this dog, presumably it was because she’s no use to you any more — as a foxhound I mean?”
“Yes,” the Colonel replied, “but what I do with my own animals, or why I do it, is no business of yours, Mrs Peaceful. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Of course not, Colonel,” Mother spoke softly, sweetly almost, “but if you were going to shoot her anyway, then you wouldn’t mind if I were to take her off your hands and look after her, would you?”
“You can do what you like with the damned dog,” the Colonel snapped. “You can bloody well eat her for all I care. But your son stole her from me and I will not let that go unpunished.”
Mother asked Big Joe to fetch the money mug from the mantelpiece. “Here, Colonel,” she said, calmly offering him a coin from the money mug. “Sixpence. I’m buying the dog off you for sixpence, not a bad price for a useless dog. So now it’s not stolen, is it?”
The Colonel was utterly dumbfounded. He looked from the coin in his hand to Mother, to Charlie. He was breathing hard. Then, regaining his composure, he pocketed the sixpence in his waistcoat and pointed his stick at Charlie. “Very well, but you can consider yourself no longer in my employ.” With that he turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door behind him. We listened to his footsteps going down the path, heard the front gate squeaking.
Charlie and I went mad, mostly out of sheer relief, but also quite overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration. What a mother we had! We whooped and yahooed. Big Joe was happy again, and sang Oranges and Lemons as he gambolled wildly round the kitchen.
“I don’t know what you’ve got to be so almightily pleased about,” said Mother when we had all calmed down. “You do know you’ve just lost your job, Charlie?”
“I don’t care,” said Charlie. “He can stuff his stinking job. I’ll find another. You put the silly old fart in his place good and proper. And we’ve got Bertha.”
“Where is that dog anyway?” Mother asked.
“I’ll show you,” Charlie said.
We waited for Molly to come and then we all went off up to Ford’s Cleave Wood together. As we neared the shack, we could hear Bertha yowling. Charlie ran on ahead and opened the door. Out she came, bounding up to us, squeaking with delight, her tail swiping at our legs. She jumped up at all of us, licking everything she could, but right away she seemed to attach herself particularly to Big Joe. She followed him everywhere after that. She even slept on his bed at nights — Big Joe insisted on that no matter how much Mother protested. She’d sit under his apple tree howling up at him while he sang to her from high up in the branches. He only had to start singing and she’d join in, so from now on he never sang his Oranges and Lemons unaccompanied. He never did anything unaccompanied. They were always together. He fed her, brushed her and cleared up her frequent puddles (which were more like lakes). Big Joe had found a new friend and he was in seventh heaven.
After a few weeks going round all the farms in the parish looking for work, Charlie found a job as dairyman and shepherd at Farmer Cox’s place on the other side of the village. He would go off before dawn on his bicycle to do the milking and was back home late, so I saw even less of him than before. He should have been much happier up there. He liked the cows and the sheep, though he said that the sheep were a bit stupid. Best of all, he said, he didn’t have the Colonel or the Wolfwoman breathing down his neck all day.
But Charlie, like me, was very far from happy, because Molly had suddenly stopped coming. Mother said she was sure there could only be one reason. Someone must have put it about — and she thought it could only be the Colonel or the Wolfwoman or both — that Charlie Peaceful was a thieving rascal, and that therefore the Peaceful family were no longer considered fit folk for Molly to visit. She said Charlie should just let things cool down for a while, that Molly would be back. But Charlie wouldn’t listen. Time after time he went to Molly’s cottage. They wouldn’t even answer the door. In the end, because he thought I’d have a better chance of getting to see Molly, he sent me over with a letter. Somehow, he said, I had to deliver it to her. I had to.
Molly’s mother met me at the door with a face like thunder. “Go away,” she yelled at me. “Just go away. Don’t you understand? We don’t want your kind here. We don’t want you bothering our Molly. She doesn’t want to see you.” And with that she slammed the door in my face. I was walking away, Charlie’s letter still in my pocket, when I happened to glance back and saw Molly waving at me frantically through her window. She was mouthing something I couldn’t understand at all at first, gesticulating at me, pointing down the hill towards the brook. I knew then exactly what she meant me to do.
I ran down to the brook and waited under the trees where we’d always done our fishing together. I didn’t have long to wait before she came. She took my hand without a word, and led me down under the bank where we couldn’t possibly be seen. She was crying as she told me everything: how the Colonel had come to the cottage — she’d overheard it all — how he’d told her father that Charlie Peaceful was a thief; how he’d heard Charlie Peaceful had been seeing much more of Molly than was good for her, and that if he had any sense Molly’s father should put a stop to it. “So my father won’t let me see Charlie any more. He won’t let me see any of you,” Molly told me, brushing away her tears. “I’m so miserable without you, Tommo. I hate it up at the Big House without Charlie, and I hate it at home too. Father’ll strap me if I see Charlie. And he said he’ll take a gun to Charlie if he ever comes near me. I think he means it too.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why’s he like that?”
“He’s always been like that,” she said. “He says I’m wicked. Born in sin. Mother says he’s only trying to save me from myself, so I won’t go to Hell. He’s always talking about Hell. I won’t got to Hell, will I, Tommo?”
I did what I did next without thinking. I leant over and kissed her on the cheek. She threw her arms around my neck, sobbing as if her heart would break. “I so want to see Charlie,” she cried. “I miss him so much.” That was when I remembered to give her the letter. She tore it open and read it at once. It can’t have been long because she read it so quickly. “Tell him yes. Yes, I will,” she said, her eyes suddenly bright again.
“Just yes?” I asked, intrigued, puzzled and jealous all at the same time.
“Yes. Same time, same place, tomorrow. I’ll write a letter back and you can give it to Charlie. All right?” She got up and pulled me to my feet. “I love you, Tommo. I love you both. And Big Joe, and Bertha.” She kissed me quickly and was gone.
That was the first of dozens of letters I delivered from Charlie to Molly and from Molly to Charlie over the weeks and months that followed. All through my last year at school I was their go-between postman. I didn’t mind that much, because it meant I got to see Molly often, which was all that really mattered to me. It was all done in great secrecy – Charlie insisted on that. He made me swear on the Holy Bible to tell no one, not even Mother. He made me cross my heart and hope to die.
Molly and I would meet most evenings and exchange letters in the same place, down by the brook, both of us having made quite sure we were not followed. We’d sit and talk there for a few precious minutes, often with the rain dripping through the trees, and once I remember with the wind roaring about us so violently that I thought the trees might come down on us. Fearing for our lives, we ran out across the meadow and burrowed our way into the bottom of a haystack and sat there shivering like a couple of frightened rabbits.
It was in the shelter of this haystack that I first heard news of the war. When Molly talked it was often, if not always, about Charlie — she’d forever be asking news of him. I never showed her I minded, but I did. So I was quite pleased that day when she started telling me about how all the talk up at the Big House these days was of war with Germany, how everyone now thought it would happen sooner rather than later. She’d read about it herself in the newspaper, so she knew it had to be true.
It was Molly’s job every morning, she told me, to iron the Colonel’s Times newspaper before she took it to him in his study. Apparently he insisted his newspaper should be crisp and dry, so that the ink should not come off on his fingers while he was reading it. She didn’t really understand what the war was all about, she admitted, only that some archduke — whatever that was — had been shot in a place called Sarajevo — wherever that was — and Germany and France were very angry with each other about it. They were gathering their armies to fight with each other and, if they did, then we’d be in it soon because we’d have to fight on the French side against the Germans. She didn’t know why. It made about as much sense to me as it did to her. She said the Colonel was in a terrible mood about it all, and that everyone up at the Big House was much more frightened of his moods than they were about the war.
But apparently the Colonel was gentle as a lamb compared to the Wolfwoman these days (everyone called her that now, not just us). It seemed that someone had put salt in her tea instead of sugar and she swore it was on purpose — which it probably was, Molly said. She’d been ranting and raving about it ever since, telling everyone how she’d find out who it was. Meanwhile she was treating all of them as if they were guilty.
“Was it you?” I asked Molly.
“Maybe,” she said, smiling, “and maybe not.” I wanted to kiss her again then, but I didn’t dare. That has always been my trouble. I’ve never dared enough.
Mother had it all arranged before I left school. I was to go and work with Charlie up at Mr Cox’s farm. Farmer Cox was getting on in years and, with no sons of his own, was in need of more help on the farm. He was a bit keen on the drink too, Charlie said. It was true. He was in the pub most evenings. He liked his beer and his skittles, and he liked to sing, too. He knew all the old songs. He kept them in his head, but he’d only sing if he’d had a couple of beers. So he never sang on the farm. He was always rather dour on the farm, but fair, always fair.
I went up there mostly to look after the horses at first. For me it couldn’t have been better. I was with Charlie again, working alongside him on the farm. I’d put on a spurt and was almost as tall as him by now, but still not as fast, nor as strong. He was a bit bossy with me sometimes, but that didn’t bother me — that was his job after all. Things were changing between us. Charlie didn’t treat me like a boy any more, and I liked that, I liked that a lot.
The newspapers were full of the war that had now begun, but aside from the army coming to the village and buying up lots of the local farm horses for cavalry horses, it had hardly touched us at all. Not yet. I was still Charlie’s postman, still Molly’s postman. So I saw Molly often, though not as often as before. For some reason the letters between them seemed less frequent. But at least with me now working with Charlie for six days a week we were all three together again in a kind of way, linked by the letters. Then that link was cruelly broken, and what followed broke my heart, broke all our hearts.
I remember Charlie and I had been haymaking with Farmer Cox, young buzzards wheeling above us all day, swallows skimming the mown grass all about us as the shadows lengthened and the evening darkened. We arrived home later than usual, dusty and exhausted, and hungry, too. Inside we found Mother sitting upright in her chair doing her sewing and opposite her Molly and, to our surprise, her mother. Everyone in the room looked as grim-faced as Molly’s mother, even Big Joe, even Molly whose eyes I could see were red from crying. Bertha was howling ominously from outside in the woodshed.
“Charlie,” said Mother, setting her sewing aside. “Molly’s mother has been waiting for you. She has something she wants to say to you.”
“Yours, I believe,” said Molly’s mother, her voice as hard as stone. She handed Charlie a packet of letters tied up with a blue ribbon. “I found them. I’ve read them, every one of them. So has Molly’s father. So we know, we know everything. Don’t bother to deny it, Charlie Peaceful. The evidence is here, in these letters. Molly has been punished already, her father has seen to that. I’ve never read anything so wicked in all my life. Never. All that love talk. Disgusting. But you’ve been meeting as well, haven’t you?”
Charlie looked across at Molly. The look between them said it all, and I knew then that I had been betrayed.
“Yes,” said Charlie.
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. They hadn’t told me. They’d been meeting in secret and neither of them had told me.
“There. Didn’t I tell you, Mrs Peaceful?” Molly’s mother went on, her voice quivering with rage.
“I’m sorry,” said Mother. “But you’ll still have to tell me why it is they shouldn’t be meeting. Charlie’s seventeen now, and Molly sixteen. Old enough, I’d say. I’m sure we both had our little rendezvous here and there when we were their age.”
“You speak for yourself, Mrs Peaceful,” Molly’s mother replied with a supercilious sneer. “Molly’s father and I made it quite plain to both of them. We forbade them to have anything to do with each other. It’s wickedness, Mrs Peaceful, pure wickedness. The Colonel has warned us, you know, about your son’s wicked thieving ways. Oh yes, we know all about him.”
“Really?” said Mother. “Tell me, do you always do what the Colonel says? Do you always think what the Colonel thinks? If he said the earth was flat, would you believe him? Or did he just threaten you? He’s good at that.”
Molly’s mother stood up, full of righteous indignation. “I haven’t come here to argue the toss. I have come to tell of your son’s misdemeanours, to say that I won’t have him leading our Molly into the ways of wickedness and sin. He must never see her again, do you hear? If he does, then the Colonel will know about it. I’m telling you the Colonel will know about it. I have no more to say. Come along, Molly.” And taking Molly’s hand firmly in hers she swept out, leaving us all looking at one another and listening to Bertha still howling.
“Well,” said Mother after a while. “I‘ll get your supper, boys, shall I?”
That night I lay there beside Charlie not speaking. I was so filled with anger and resentment towards him that I never wanted to speak to him again, nor to Molly come to that. Then out of our silence he said: “All right, I should’ve told you, Tommo. Molly said I should tell you. But I didn’t want to. I couldn’t, that’s all.”
“Why not?” I asked. For several moments he did not reply.
“Because I know, and she does too. That’s why she wouldn’t tell you herself,” Charlie said.
“Know what?”
“When it was just letters, it didn’t seem to matter so much. But later, after we began seeing each other … we didn’t want to hide it from you, Tommo, honest. But we didn’t want to hurt you either. You love her, don’t you?” I didn’t answer. There was no need. “Well, so do l, Tommo. So you’ll understand why I’m going to go on seeing her. I‘ll find a way no matter what that old cow says.” He turned to me. “Still friends?” he said.
“Friends,” I mumbled, but I did not mean it.
After that no more was ever said between us about Molly. I never asked because I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want even to think about it, but I did. I thought about nothing else.
No one could understand why, but shortly after this Bertha began to go missing from time to time. She hadn’t wandered off at all until now; she’d always stuck close to Big Joe. Wherever Big Joe was, that’s where you’d be sure to find Bertha. Big Joe was frantic with worry every time she went off. She’d come back home in the end of course, when she felt like it, either that or Mother and Joe would find her somewhere all muddied and wet and lost, and they’d bring her home. But the great worry was that she’d start chasing after sheep or cows, that some farmer or landowner would shoot her, as they’d shoot any dog they found trespassing on their land that could be molesting their animals. Fortunately Bertha didn’t seem to go chasing sheep, and anyway up until now she had never been gone that long, nor strayed too far.
We did our very best to keep her from wandering. Mother tried shutting her in the woodshed, but Big Joe couldn’t stand her howling and would let her out. She tried tying her up, but Bertha would chew at the rope and whine incessantly so that in the end Big Joe would always take pity and go and untie her.
Then, one afternoon. Bertha went missing again. This time she did not come back. This time we could not find her. Charlie wasn’t about. Mother and Big Joe went one way looking for her, down towards the river, and I went up into the woods, whistling for her, calling for her. There were deer to be found up in Ford’s Cleave Wood, and badgers and foxes. It would be just the sort of place she’d go. I’d been an hour or more searching in the woods with not a sign of her. I was about to give up and go back — perhaps she’d gone home anyway by now, I thought — when I heard a shot ringing out across the valley. It came from somewhere higher in the woods. I ran up the track, ducking the low slung branches, leaping the badger holes, dreading, but already knowing what I would find.
As I came up the rise I could see ahead of me the chimney of Father’s old shack, and then the shack itself at the side of the clearing. Outside lay Bertha, her tongue lolling, the grass beside her soaked with blood. The Colonel stood looking down at her, his shotgun in his hands. The door of the shack opened and Charlie and Molly were standing there frozen in disbelief and horror. Then Molly ran over to where Bertha lay and fell to her knees.
“Why?” she cried, looking up at the Colonel. “Why?”
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There’s a sliver of a moon out there, a new moon. I wonder if they’re looking at it back home. Bertha used to howl at the moon, I remember. If I had a coin in my pocket, I’d turn it over and make a wish. When I was young I really believed in all those old tales. I wish I still could believe in them.
But I mustn’t think like that. It’s no good wishing for the moon, no good wishing for the impossible. Don’t wish, Tommo. Remember. Remembrances are real.
We buried Bertha the same day, where Big Joe always buried his creatures, where the mouse had been buried, at the bottom of the orchard. But this time we said no prayers. We laid no flowers. We sang no hymns. Somehow none of us had the heart for it. Perhaps we were all too angry to grieve. Walking back through the trees afterwards, Big Joe was pointing upwards and asking Mother if Bertha was up in Heaven now with Father. Mother said that she was. Then Big Joe asked if we all go up to Heaven after we die.
“Not the Colonel,” Charlie muttered. “He’ll go downstairs where he belongs, where he’ll burn.” Mother darted a reproving glance at him for that.
“Yes, Joe,” she went on, her arm around him. “Bertha’s up in Heaven. She’s happy now.”
That evening Big Joe went missing. None of us was that worried, not at first, not while it was still light. Big Joe would often go wandering off on his own from time to time — he’d always done that — but never at night, because Big Joe was frightened of the dark. Our first thought was to look down in the orchard by Bertha’s grave, but he wasn’t there. We called, but he didn’t come. So, as darkness fell and he still had not come home, we knew there was something wrong. Mother sent Charlie and me out in different directions. I went down the lane calling for him all the way. I went as far as the brook where I stood and listened for him, for his heavy stomping tread, for his singing. He sang differently when he was frightened, no tunes or songs, but instead a continuous wailing drone. But there was no drone to be heard, only the running of the brook, which always sounded louder at night. I knew Big Joe must be very frightened for it was by now quite dark. I made my way home, hoping against hope that either Charlie or Mother might have found him.
As I came into the house I could see neither of them had. They looked up hopefully at me as I came in. I shook my head. Out of the silence that followed Mother made up her mind what had to be done. We didn’t have any choice, she said. All that mattered was finding Big Joe, and for that we needed more people. She would go up to the Big House right away to ask for the Colonel’s help. She sent Charlie and me up to the village to raise the alarm. We knew the best place to go was the pub, that half the village would be in The Duke in the evening. They were singing when we got there, Farmer Cox in full voice. The hubbub and the singing took a while to die down as Charlie told them. By the time he had finished they were all listening in absolute silence. Afterwards, not one of them hesitated. They were putting on hats, shrugging on coats and heading homewards to search their farms, gardens and sheds. The vicar said he’d gather everyone he could in the village hall to organise a search around the village itself, and it was agreed the sounding of the church bell would be the signal that Big Joe had been found.
As everyone dispersed into the darkness outside The Duke, Molly came running up. She had just heard the news about Big Joe. It was her idea that he could be somewhere in the churchyard. I don’t know why we hadn’t thought of it before — it was always one of his favourite places. So the three of us made for the churchyard. We called for him. We looked behind every gravestone, up every tree. He was nowhere. All we heard was the wind sighing in the yew trees. All we saw were lights dancing through the village, down along the valley. Beyond, and as far as the dark horizon, the countryside was filled with pinpricks of moving lights. We knew then that Mother must have persuaded the Colonel to mobilise everyone on the estate to join in the search.
By dawn there was still no word of Big Joe, still no sign of him. The Colonel had called in the police, and as time passed everything was pointing towards the same dreadful conclusion. We saw the police searching the ponds and river banks with long poles — everyone knew Big Joe could not swim. That was when I first began to believe that the worst could really have happened. No one dared to voice this fear, but all of us were beginning to feel it, and we felt it in each other too. We were searching over ground we had already searched several times. All other explanations for Big Joe’s disappearance were being discounted one by one. If he had fallen asleep somewhere, surely he must have woken up by now. If he’d gone and got himself lost, surely, with all the hundreds of people out looking, someone would have found him by now. Everyone I met was grey and grim-faced. All tried their best to raise a smile, but no one could look me in the eye. I could see it wasn’t just fear any more. It was worse. There was desperation in those faces, a feeling of complete hopelessness that they could not disguise however hard they tried.
Round about noon, thinking it was just possible Big Joe might somehow have found his way home on his own, we went back to check. We found Mother sitting there alone, clutching the arms of her chair and staring ahead of her. Charlie and I tried to raise her spirits, tried to reassure her as best we could. I don’t think we were at all convincing. Charlie made her a cup of tea but Mother would not touch it. Molly sat at her feet and laid her head in her lap. A ghost of a smile came to Mother’s face then. Molly could give comfort where we could give none.
Charlie and I left them there together and went outside into the garden. Clinging to what little hope we had left we tried to go back in time, to work out what might have been in Big Joe’s mind to make him go off like that. Perhaps it could help us to discover where he had gone if we understood why he had gone. Was he looking for something perhaps, something he’d lost? But what? Had he gone off to see someone? If so, who? There was little doubt in our minds that his sudden disappearance was in some way connected to Bertha’s death. The day before, both Charlie and I had felt like going up to the Big House and killing the Colonel for what he had done. Maybe, we thought, maybe Big Joe was feeling the same. Perhaps he had gone out to avenge Bertha’s death. Perhaps he was skulking up at the Big House, in the attics, in the cellars, just waiting for his opportunity to strike. But we realised, even as we voiced them, that all such ideas were nothing but ridiculous nonsense. Big Joe didn’t have it in him even to think of doing such a thing. He had never in his life been angry at anyone, not even the Wolfwoman — and after all, she’d given him reason enough and plenty. He could be hurt very easily, but he was never angry, and certainly never violent. Time and again Charlie and I would come up with a new scenario, and a different reason for Big Joe’s disappearance. But in the end we had to dismiss every one of them as fanciful.
Then we saw Molly come down the garden towards us. “I was just wondering,” she said, “I was wondering where Big Joe would most want to be.”
“What d’you mean?” Charlie asked.
“Well, I think he’d want to be wherever Bertha is. So he’d want to be in Heaven, wouldn’t he? I mean, he thinks Bertha’s up in Heaven, doesn’t he? I heard your mother telling him. So if he wanted to be with Bertha, then he’d have to go up to Heaven, wouldn’t he?”
I thought for one terrible moment that Molly was suggesting that Big Joe had killed himself so that he could go up to Heaven and be with Bertha. I didn’t want to believe it, but it made a kind of dreadful sense. Then she explained.
“He told me once,” Molly went on, “that your father was up in Heaven and could still see us easily from where he was. He was pointing upwards, I remember, and I didn’t understand exactly what he was trying to tell me, not at first. I thought he was just pointing up at the sky in a general sort of a way, or at the birds maybe. But then he took my hand and made me point with him, to show me. We were pointing up at the church, at the top of the church tower. It sounds silly, but I think Big Joe believes that Heaven is at the top of the church tower. Has anyone looked up there?”
Even as she was speaking I remembered how Big Joe had pointed up the church tower the day we had buried Father, how he’d looked back up at it over his shoulder as he walked away.
“You coming, Tommo?” said Charlie. “Moll, will you stay with Mother? We’ll ring the bell if it’s good news.” We ran down through the orchard, scrambled through a hole in the hedge and set off across the fields towards the brook — it would be the quickest way up to the village. We splashed through the brook and raced across the water meadows and up the hill towards the church. Trying to keep up with Charlie was difficult. I kept looking up at the church tower as I ran, all the while urging my legs to keep going, to take me faster, all the while praying that Big Joe would be up there in his heaven.
Charlie reached the village before I did and was haring up the church path ahead of me when he slipped on the cobbles and fell heavily. He sat there cursing and clutching his leg until I caught up with him. Then he called, and I called, “Joe! Joe! Are you up there?” There was no reply.
“You go, Tommo,” said Charlie, grimacing in agony. “I think I’ve done my ankle in.” I opened the church door and walked into the silent dark of the church. I brushed past the bell ropes, and eased open the little belfry door. I could hear Charlie shouting, “Is he up there? Is he there?” I didn’t answer. I began to climb the winding stairs. I’d been up into the belfry before, a while ago, when I was in Sunday school. I’d even sung up there in the choir one Ascension Day dawn, when I was little.
I dreaded those steps then and I hated them again now. The slit windows let in only occasional light. The walls were slimy about me, and the stairs uneven and slippery. The cold and the damp and the dark closed in on me and chilled me as I felt my way onwards and upwards. As I passed the silent hanging bells I hoped with all my heart that one of them would be ringing soon. Ninety-five steps I knew there were. With every step I was longing to reach the top, to breathe the bright air again, longing to find Big Joe.
