Thank you to everyone who has reviewed this - the encouragement is so kind and quite ovewhelming! Sorry it's taken a while to get these chapters posted. I realised after posting Chapter 6 that I'd missed out two things in Timothy's letter which set up the next few chapters because I'd rushed it [Chapter 6 is now edited and corrected] and I didn't want to do it again! Anyway, here is the next instalment, which - finally - explains the title...
A sharp stink of fish and oil and human sweat oozed into the air at East India Docks Road, carrying its stench through gritty air until the ground itself reeked. But Timothy was not there, though his schoolbag trailed over the gravel, the jarring scuffs juddering up his arm. He was far away to the north and long ages ago, shivering on the wall, homesick, staring at the bleak hills from which the evil might come. Waiting, waiting.
When they studied the Romans in History, they had learnt of an unstoppable force carving through the country with long straight roads until stopped by the brutal wilds of Northumbria, where they made their northern frontier. For most of his peers it was relentless battle gore which inspired the composition they wrote that afternoon: pretending they were Roman soldiers in Britannia and describing their experiences. It had been Timothy's first intention until Miss Norris suggested he challenge himself and he found himself on the far edge of the empire, a humble foot-soldier on night patrol, keeping watch for barbarians who might or might not lurk in the dark. How lost and confused he would have been, how tired with waiting; and, above all, thought Timothy, how extraordinarily bored. Was all war like that, he wondered? Had his father waited in darkness through heavy hours of nothing? Or was this simply what adult life was like?
Akela had described them as plotting strategies like spies, their organisation like soldiers. He had written his letters by torchlight that night and slipped them into the postbox on Saturday morning while running an errand for Mrs. Harrison. Throughout that day, so wonderful in its simplicity, the thought of his journeying letters burned brightly. But Sunday rose with a grey, sucking chill and now he waited for news which did not arrive, stuck in an endless Christmas Eve, uncertain what to do until it did. The dull sameness of life – Sunday School with Mrs. Harrison, homework and violin practice, school - was so much more dismal.
And yet, he knew that something had happened on the Saturday night after he went to bed. When he blearily wandered into Sunday breakfast, his father had already finished and was picking up his briefcase, penance for the hours they had had yesterday. Timothy had expected nothing less and made no complaint as they exchanged half-attended greetings, vaguely aware of being thanked for taking such good care of Shelagh. Then his father paused and came back, perching on the edge of the chair next to him and fidgeting before he spoke.
"I keep your pictures because they're by you. They're very precious to me." He leaned forward and instead of the hair ruffle which Timothy had begun to jerk away from, Patrick put his hand around the back of Timothy's head, pulled it towards him and kissed his brow, gently stroking the back of his head with his thumb as he did so. As abruptly as he had paused before, he then stood up, smiled from the doorway, and left.
On Tuesday evening he had not heard his father arrive home. He was changing out of clothes he had showered with flour while baking with Shelagh, who had come to make a dinner which, if not quite up to Mrs. Harrison's standard, was more recognisably food than they were used to on Tuesdays. He saw the briefcase in the hall and pottered to the kitchen, wondering if that was where they were, it seemed so silent, where he saw them. He had seen his father kiss her before and cheerfully groaned at the tell-tale change of head position, yet this closed eyed embrace stalled him. Her arms were around his father's neck, one hand slowly losing itself in his hair, his hands rested on her waist, one on either side, the pressure from his splayed fingers puckering her blouse. It was like a moment from a film, except they were so quiet and still. He wondered if he should be embarrassed, even disgusted. He giggled at couples in the street with his friends, making smooching noises at teddy boys and lip-sticked girls who walked past his school. But he only felt ignorant, unnerved by this tranquil intensity, which perhaps could never be understood by a watcher. He tiptoed back to the hall, from where he yelled and clattered his way to them, now finding them separated and predictable, ready for an evening no different from any other. The next morning, when his casual observation that according to the Romans Shelagh was a barbarian resulted in Patrick spraying tea all over the breakfast table and asking if he could please be present when Timothy told her that, he wondered if he had mistaken the minute shifts of earth under his feet. But he knew he had not and that something was changed; but around him, not to him.
Someone was calling his name.
He did not recognise the voice and even when he identified the speaker, it was some moments before he recalled the name Bill Mitchell. Picking up his schoolbag, Timothy quickened his pace. The constable shook his head, gesturing instead to the middle of the nearby intersection, where Peter Noakes was directing traffic and had been trying somehow, while unable either to wave or shout, to catch Timothy's eye for the previous three minutes. Now that he had it, those eyes were bright and questioning. Peter smiled and started to nod.
Weaving around bicycles, regardless of Peter shouting out to be careful, Timothy bounded into the intersection. "Constable Noakes, have you - ? Is there - ?" he started.
"Careful, Timothy! Stand here. You didn't half make it hard to get your attention a minute ago! You were a million miles away!"
"Sorry. I was imagining I was a soldier on Hadrian's Wall."
What was it about Timothy Turner which so frequently made him want to laugh, wondered Peter? Were small boys always so funny? He wondered if Freddie would make similarly solemn proclamations in a decade's time. There were worse boys to model himself on. "That's unusual," he began, a great ball of laughter spinning in his belly. "I'd try coming back to twentieth century London, Timothy."
"Why?" asked Timothy.
"Well, firstly because we're in the middle of intersection and I don't think the Romans worried much about lorries turning out of the docks. And," despite the clamour in the street, he lowered his voice to whisper into the inquisitive face, "a couple of letters arrived for you this morning." He did not mention the third letter, the one to him tucked away in the same envelope as Timothy's, which had lingered in his mind all day and still perturbed him now.
"Have you got them?"
"Akela does." Peter watched as joy animated the boy's face. "Calm down! Don't rush off yet!" Raising his hand, he brought the vehicles to purring halts and directed the pedestrians across, shaking his head as Timothy tore away.
The last few days had been a slingshot pulling him backwards; he thought he had run to Nonnatus House last Friday, but now he flew. Released, he sprinted, wriggling and twisting around trudging labourers, jinking through groups of playing children and women with prams, finding tiny gaps into side streets, up to Nonnatus House, hopping from one foot to the other until Jane opened the door and directed him, not to the parlour, but the kitchen, into which he breathlessly burst, exclaiming as he entered, "Akela, Akela, have you got my letters?" and stopping, aghast.
"What on earth are you doing here, Timothy?" asked Shelagh.
She was standing on a chair in the middle of the room, with Akela holding a tape measure around her waist and calling out a number to Nurse Miller, who sat at the table with a notepad and pencil.
He tried to reply, but could only gasp and heave as shock crawled over him; and now exertion made his body turn traitor. His blood screamed for oxygen and the overworked lungs pounded, while a sharp stabbing pain attacked his side. He began gulping for air, his panting became coughing and spluttering, his eyes streamed.
"Oh dear! Let's be looking at you!" said Shelagh. Her tone was cheerfully calm, but she dismounted the chair very fast to seat him upon it and steadily pat his back. "How's that?" Still breathless, he leaned over so his red face touched his knees and he had to look up to take the glass of water Nurse Miller brought. Still Shelagh slowly rubbed his back, crouching beside him now and smoothing back his sweaty hair. "Little sips, just wee ones. There you go. Better?" He nodded and she squeezed his knee. "So, what are you doing here? Not that it's not nice to see you!"
Frantically, he wondered how he could extricate himself. There would be some story he could fudge which she would believe and he turned to her. She was smiling at him, smiling with a special look, of mischief and affection and collusion. He knew she kept it only for him; and his plots and schemes began to crumble. As she twinkled at him, he realised that now he could no more lie to her than he could to his father. "I – I," He looked around wildly, for a moment afraid he might start crying. "I can't tell you." In the fleeting moment before he looked down he saw her expression alter and he looked away faster, desperate in case the surprise dissolved into hurt.
However he had an ally. "It's a marvellous thing, actually. Timothy's working on a special sort of entertainment badge at the moment."
Shelagh looked from Timothy to Chummy, and back. "This is for Cubs?"
"We talked about it during Cubs last Friday," said Timothy awkwardly. It was not a lie, yet he wanted to squirm underneath the warm hand still resting on his knee.
"Is it for Christmas? For the pantomime?"
Timothy started to mumble 'Around Christmas' but could not finish and was rescued once more by Chummy. "It's a performance that Timothy is going to be giving, quite a tricky one. It involves being extra specially prepared and having to do research. Some of the research arrived today. He's been terribly impressive really. Quite puts nativity plays and pantomimes to shame." Timothy looked up in gratitude; warm reassurance awaited for him. "I'll go and get it."
As Chummy left, Cynthia discreetly slipped away and Shelagh stood to cut him a slice of the Victorian sponge they had been sharing before he arrived. She was only looking at him sidelong when she asked her question, although she watched him closely. "Is it a surprise for Dad, Timothy?"
Relief was like letting go after holding his breath too long. He nodded, grinning as he took the cake and she sat beside him.
Her tone was sweet when she spoke, the corners of her mouth maybe pondering a grin in return, yet the penetrating blue eyes were serious and urgent. "Is it one you're sure he'll like? "
He paused in the middle of his mouthful. "I think so," he said, then deliberated. "If you really want, I can tell you what it is. I don't really mind."
Again and again her mind had rattled over Patrick's raw confessions about Timothy, lost at how to navigate a route through the layers of guilt and drain away that terrible sense of inadequacy. I know you so little, that was what she had said. Now she started to know him, only piecing together slowly the brokenness and anxiety festering below his strength, finding her way to his core and the depths and swells of intellect, purpose, integrity and love; instinct told her his needs faster than her mind did. Surging within her was a longing to protect him, to stand between him and pain, even from tiny stings which clumsiness might initially cause but brooding would nurture. Yet what protection from this could he need? She had never known Timothy to do anything cruel or unkind; she could not imagine the surprise to be motivated by anything but love. The old familiar voice of wisdom rose in her mind: Let us see what love can do.
And Timothy; was he tantalising her with the secret because he wanted to share it or was it weary resignation after she wrecked his moment of excitement? Which did he need: to have her share this confidence or to know she trusted him, even with the person they both loved most? Yet he needed to be protected too; from a hundred vulnerabilities and the grazes caused by carelessness. For a brief moment, she wondered what Elizabeth would have done.
Instead of answering, she questioned him once more. "Does Akela know all about it?"
"Yes. And Constable Noakes."
Slowly Shelagh gave her answer, discovering it as the words emerged. "I think you'd better not tell me too then, Timothy. It's your secret and I'm sure it's going to be absolutely lovely and I'd probably give it away. I'm not very good at keeping secrets from your dad."
"Did you ever try?"
"Once." She looked down at her hands, at a naked finger which had worn a ring a long, long time. "But he still worked it out in the end. Anyway," she brightened, "let's talk about more important things: how was your Maths test?"
"Easy. I forgot you put dots above recurring numbers, but I put five of the number down in those questions and wrote 'it keeps going' so she'll know I get it. I didn't like the stuff on multiplying fractions. Do you think that'll be in the Eleven Plus?"
They were watched from the doorway as Timothy told of his day. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" whispered Cynthia. "She makes it look so simple."
"Yes," said Chummy. "Pity she can't give classes on it, like she used to on breech births and performing an external version."
There was another observer in another doorway, watching even more intensely from her office, but nobody saw her strange, ambiguous expression or heard her habit's quiet swish as she turned away.
His chronicles of school exhausted, Timothy changed tack. "Why were you standing on a chair?"
Suddenly she looked shy and her laugh was nervous as she glanced at the women in the doorway, welcoming them back in. "I have a little secret too, Timothy, although I don't mind sharing mine. I was having my measurements taken. Akela is making my wedding dress."
Timothy scanned the room in growing alarm. The only cloth he could see was some very ugly brown cotton on a chair. On the table, next to the cake, was something that looked a little like a bit of a sleeve, but made from newspaper. "Out of what?"
Noticing the direction of his gaze, all three women laughed. "Not out of newspaper, Timothy!" said Cythnia, smiling at Shelagh, both remembering the smooth, fine touch of the ivory silk which Jenny had found and which now lay in Trixie's wardrobe, waiting to be transformed.
"No, we couldn't have her saying her vows with a speech by Mr. Macmillan all over the bodice," said Chummy. "Don't worry, we'll have her as pretty as a princess for your father."
In her hand lay his letters.
After bestowing a rather sweaty goodbye hug on Shelagh, he received his prize, sharing a 'quick confabulation' about their earlier ruse on the way to the door.
"Thank you for making it all alright earlier," he said. "I don't think I should come here again to get anything, should I?"
"No," she agreed. "it's probably a little too much running of the old gauntlet. Why don't we hand on any letters that arrive to Nurse Miller and she can give them to you at rehearsals for Dick Whittington?" she suggested. "She won't ask any questions, I promise."
"Alright." He was desperate to start reading, however there was one last question he wanted to ask, even though he feared the answer. "Akela, if the speech is really good, can I get a special entertainer badge? I haven't got an Entertainer badge because I got my Musician badge for the nativity play and we didn't get badges for Robin Hood because everyone else got them for the nativity and they forgot," he explained, adding wistfully, "I suppose you can't really make one up though."
She was very gentle when she replied. "I think Baden-Powell would understand," she said, "and I rather think he would approve. We'll make a new badge, the Official Entertainment badge. Make sure you leave room on your jumper! And we'll see you at little Fred's christening at the weekend?" He nodded energetically. "Super."
He knew he should go home to read the letters, if only to limit the chance of another mishap without Akela there to intervene. But too much excitement bubbled within him. When he was still only two streets from Nonnatus House, he detoured into the porch of an old warehouse, abandoned since the war, where he had once hidden during a game of hide and seek and sat on the steps to examine his mail. There were two communications. The first was a postcard of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, with a brief, neat message on the back. The second was a fat letter, two pages long with two postscripts, one in different handwriting, followed by another page where its single paragraph was headed by a dramatic query.
He read the postcard first: Dear Timothy, I got your letter – very good news. I have what you need (and plenty of it). Will write fully over the weekend. Hope this is worthy of the wall. The bridge was built by Brunel who built the Great Western Railway. Uncle Kenneth
Timothy grinned. Uncle Kenneth understood discretion as much as he did collecting things and almost as much as he liked telling him about trains. He then began the letter.
Dear Timothy,
It was lovely to receive your letter and hear your exciting news. Dad actually telephoned us the same day and thanks to your letter I enjoyed myself by asking a few questions I knew the answers to! Auntie Louisa and I are delighted you like Shelagh so much. Your father has made an excellent decision in making you Best Man, you will be splendid and I would be honoured to help you.
As regards the stag party, personally I think your dad would be as happy spending an evening with you at home, getting his usual richly deserved punishment at Monopoly. However, your theatre idea is much more imaginative. Why don't I help arrange this for you? It is quite easy for me as there are so many theatres near my hospital. I could find out 'what's on' and provide a list of plays for you to choose from, then buy the tickets and book a table for dinner.
We telephoned Uncle Kenneth after receiving your letter to discuss our favourite stories about your father. He is going to write them up, as there is a particularly funny one he wants to tell about Dad driving (more accurately, crashing) when the three of us were on holiday once. (I have popped one story in here though, to get you started.) Very luckily, he has a conference in London in the first week of December. If you held the stag party that weekend, he could come too - if you can cope with three boring old doctors like us! (I promise not to talk about disgusting things at dinner!) Uncle Kenneth could maybe give you hints for writing the speech, as he delivers lots of them and is, of course, the person we know who is most likely to end up on a stamp!
I know little about Dad's war experiences. We haven't discussed it much and were in different sections of the forces. (The RAF is definitely better!) I want you to think very, very carefully about investigating this and to promise me you will think about it for at least a week before doing anything and that you will discuss it with Constable Noakes first. Although he was extremely brave and many men owe their lives to him, Dad found the war very hard. There were a lot of suffering people he could not cure or help and you know how upset that makes him. You are right that he was at a place starting with 'D' though. It was called Dunkirk. I know that you will think carefully and I am sure you will make sensible decisions.
I hope that these ideas help a little and I will write soon with some play suggestions. If there is anything else I can do, let me know, and make sure you say thanks to Constable Noakes. Auntie Louisa sends her love. She is very excited about meeting Shelagh next week. Alex and Oliver hope you will visit soon too (and bring your Spitfire). They need reinforcements against Katherine!
Love from
Uncle David
Delight grew steadily as he read. The stag do was as good as arranged, with Uncle Kenneth there too. Better still was the place starting with 'D'; now named with a name he vaguely knew. With some satisfaction, he turned to the postscripts.
PS Auntie Louisa here. One more thing for your list of Best Man's jobs: you MUST make sure Dad gets a new suit. He cannot get married in some tatty thing he uses for work. I'm sure he won't want the whole tailcoat clobber, but get him to go a tailor and get something that fits. I'm happy to take him shopping if you don't want to. Whatever you do, DO NOT LET HIM PICK HIS OWN TIE. They are always awful. Lots of love, Auntie Louisa
PPS Uncle David again. Whatever you do, do not force your father to go shopping with Auntie Louisa. He is a good man and he does not deserve it. It will be fine if he gets a decent dark suit – as long as he remembers to hang it up for once! Uncle David
Usually Timothy found Uncle David and Auntie Louisa's brand of bickering very funny, although he wasn't sure he would want to live with it every day, but this latest spat left him in a profound gloom. Given his father frequently went to work wearing odd socks and on one particularly unfortunate occasion had seized a tie he saw on the breakfast table as he rushed to work, not realising it was Timothy's school tie, leaving Timothy having to explain to Mrs. Fletcher why his neckwear that day declared him a graduate of the St. Thomas's Hospital Medical School, University of London, Timothy did accept there was a fairly high likelihood of his father turning up to his wedding inappropriately dressed unless somebody took him in hand. Why that somebody had to be him, though, seemed most brutal. Sorting out his father's wardrobe was vastly beyond the call of duty, even if he could see what was wrong with the clothes in the first place, which he could not. He would rather barber a hedgehog. He wondered if it was cowardly to accept Auntie Louisa's offer of help: she had taken him shopping for his school uniform in August and, despite what Uncle David said, it had not been that dreadful, although, admittedly, his chief memory of the day was playing indoor hockey with Alex and Oliver in their hall after shopping was safely over, using rolled up copies of The Times as sticks and a pair of socks for the ball. With a heavy sigh, he mentally added this to his list of duties and turned to the letter's extra page.
Patrick Turner – Expert Midwife?
The first birth your father attended was when he was a student, along with myself and our friend, Tom Anderson. All began well. Your father got the contractions started, reassured the mother, impressed the midwife training us, and generally showed the two of us up no end. Then he prepared to help with the delivery. By this stage the baby's head was crowning (starting to come out). Dad took one look – and promptly passed out, knocking over a table of sterilised instruments as he fell. Nurse Bell was not impressed. She became even more furious when Tom and I threw a jug of water, which was supposed to be for helping with the birth, over him. Your father came round fairly quickly and even helped out with the last stage of the delivery, but his early good impressions were well and truly gone. Nurse Bell never liked us much after that. Dad claimed he'd been feeling ill because of the steak pie he'd had for lunch, but I had the same pie and I felt fine. Thankfully, I understand Dad is rather better at delivering babies nowadays.
Timothy knit his brows. His father with a jug of water thrown over him was certainly funny and he vividly imagined him being told off by a grumpy nurse, who had somehow acquired the face of Sister Evangelina. Nonetheless, something told him he was skirting around the edges of the real joke. Applying the same rules he did to comprehensions at school, he re-read and re-read the anecdote, identifying the phrase which he thought was the key, wondering how he could find out its meaning.
Fortune, however, had now decided she was on Timothy's side, perhaps feeling guilty for what had happened earlier at Nonnatus House. A scooter had been purposefully travelling down the road when its rider saw a familiar face with a strained expression in a most unfamiliar and, in Trixie Franklin's opinion, most unsuitable venue and pulled over to investigate.
"Hello Timothy! Are you pretending to be Christopher Robin?" she said, observing his pose on the steps.
"No," he replied, quickly standing up and scornful at the implication he should have a teddy bear with him. "I'm reading a letter. Nurse Franklin, if you've 'passed out' what does that mean?"
"You're drunk, usually," she remarked caustically.
Once, Timothy had sailed a much loved toy boat down a rapidly flowing river while on holiday. The little craft struggled against a wind that was too sharp and an unpredictable current, sliding and spinning until overwhelmed by the fight. The battered mast splintered and it capsized. Now he knew what it was to be shattered like the boat. People changed as they aged, he knew that; it was hard to imagine Dad with a nickname these days. He also knew his father was not averse to alcohol: the whisky decanter and occasional bottle of wine or beer at dinner testified to that. But his father drunk was inconceivable. He had once seen a man stumble into a gutter, stinking, and vomit over himself. He had gaped, too disgusted to be scared, while his mother moved him to her other side, telling him that the man drank, a kind of illness. But he knew his father did not feel the same about this illness as he did about others he treated. He had overheard him railing against it in fury more than once, how it made men use women as punchbags and turned them into animals, how it wrecked lives, destroyed families and condemned children before they were born. To know his father had been guilty of this filthy crime and, above all, at work, where people needed him so much, was to discover that water was poison and air was pitch.
He could not believe it. He would not. The foundation stone of Timothy's life was a simple truth: his father was a good man. It sustained him through the loneliness when forced to share his father with patients and was his confidence for the future. Two years ago he had visited Mummy in hospital the day before she came home for the last time; Dad was at work, or perhaps it was Christmas shopping, and Granny Parker took him. The nurses for once let him clamber onto her bed, to be cuddled within a grip so wasted his was stronger, while she whispered words he would never forget: he shouldn't be afraid because he would have Daddy and he was the best man she'd ever known. He would always protect him and keep him safe, as the one thing Daddy loved more than helping patients was his family. He could not believe his mother's judgment had been so wrong, or that Uncle David would think this was funny. And he would not believe his father capable of such a thing. Clenching his fists, crumpling the letter within it, he turned back to Trixie. "Are you sure, Nurse Franklin? Isn't there anything else 'passed out' ever means?"
"Oh, that's not the meaning of 'passed out'," she replied, adding corrosively, "although it's the usual cause, round here at any rate. 'Passed out' just means you've fainted."
Trixie Franklin was rarely disconcerted. Lunatic patients, their abusive relatives and temperamental scooters were dispatched without turning a single immaculate hair. However, seeing the transformation of Timothy Turner's distraught face, his jaw subsiding to his knees as he stared at her, re-read part of the letter in his lap and then collapsed into fits of uncontrollable, hysterical, whooping laughter which lasted long after he had hiccupped his thanks and disappeared, was one of the few moments in her life which came close to it.
"Peculiar boy," thought Trixie.
