You see, what I’d really been hoping for was this: Mr Tait would build his hut, with help from me and the boys and perhaps some of the men, and while he was doing this he would visit my mum every so often in hospital and win her over with daffodils and oranges (perhaps not the daffodils – he’d already tried that) and then she’d come to Carbeth. By then the hut would be finished and she’d have seen Mr Tait for the lovely man that he is and we’d all live together in his hut until the war was over. Naturally Mavis would have turned up by then and Mr Tait and my mum would be the best of pals. The best thing would be that she loved Carbeth so much she’d change her mind about going to America and Uncle James, and we’d all live happily ever after. This is what I dreamt about when I wasn’t having nightmares.
My plan wasn’t quite working.
That morning I was woken by some kids shouting outside the hut. Others were hiding behind it, dragging their bodies along the outside where I’d been hiding the night before, and then they were gone. There were birds cackling in the trees and Joey, Mr Tait’s budgie, was still on the dresser with a cloth over him to keep him quiet. Poor Mr Tait could probably have done with his company.
I got up to light the stove, which had died in the night. My mum lay sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, her face smooth and restful and her breathing soft like a distant whistle. There were old copies of the Daily Worker behind the coal box. I scrunched a couple of sheets into a ball and pushed them into the stove, piled some coal on top and whisked a match to light it. Then I closed the door, adjusted the vents, and crossed my fingers that it would work. I put the kettle on the floor by the water bucket and scooped in the water with a glass, then heaved it onto the stove where it rasped and spat at me until the heat silenced it.
And still my mum slept.
The kettle wasn’t long in boiling, even though I was watching it. I made tea and warmed my hands on the cup. Mr MacInnes was breathing rhythmically on the sofa, like my mum, but to a different tune. I tiptoed outside to a chair and fumbled for Mavis’s shoe.
But Mavis’s shoe wasn’t there.
It really wasn’t there. It didn’t matter how I tried to turn the belt, which was still there, or lift my dress right up past my waist (it was an emergency), the shoe was not there. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen it. But I had to find it quick before someone else did. Bad George for instance.
So I gulped back my tea, then ran three steps up the hill and six down before I decided up was best. But no-one at the swing had seen the shoe, not even Dougie and he was searching for something too. He was searching for bad George.
‘He didn’t stay at Mrs Mags’s,’ I said.
‘No?’ he said. ‘I was just coming down for him. My dad wants a word, if you know what I mean. I’d scarper too if I were him.’
I really didn’t care.
‘Do you think he went to the ruined cottage?’ he said. ‘Or an empty hut? Maybe he slept out under the trees. He might have died of the cold! He’ll be frozen to a tree trunk with his eyes staring at the sky.’
‘I don’t think there are any more empty huts.’ Who cared anyway? Where was my shoe?
But he hadn’t seen Mavis’s shoe and he was being nosey, so I left him by the swing and began to retrace my steps, first to where the wheelbarrow had been and then down our zigzaggy route to the road and along it, the length of four buses, to the bus stop. No shoe. It wasn’t in the cludgie in the hall either, and when I came out Dougie was standing there. He said we should ask Jimmy Robertson. I hadn’t met Jimmy Robertson then so I didn’t know what he was talking about.
Jimmy Robertson, who, by the way, was rumoured to have built the dance hall near the bus stop with the toilets that my mum had used, Jimmy Robertson owned a shop that was next to the bus stop that was next to the hall, just on the brow of the hill, four bus lengths up from the Halfway House pub. But this was no ordinary shop. This was a shop in an old bus, and it had a tree growing up through the floor and out of the roof. There were baskets and boxes piled high and old newspapers stacked against one wall. I’d never been somewhere like that before. Dougie said I should wait outside if I was scared so I kept very close behind him when we went in.
Jimmy Robertson was very interested in Mavis’s shoe (he made me explain why it was so important), but he hadn’t seen it. He got me to describe the shoe in great detail even though it was just an ordinary shoe, and he nodded as if he was writing himself a note inside his head, and said he’d keep an eye out for it. My dad told me once that you could take your eye right out of its socket and look behind you, but I don’t think it’s what Jimmy Robertson meant. I was glad he was taking Mavis’s shoe so seriously.
When we stepped back down from Jimmy Robertson’s shop-bus, Dougie told me in a loud stage whisper that Jimmy Robertson lived in the bus too, in at the back of it amongst the boxes of cabbages, and he took me to the end of the bus and pointed to some dusty old curtains across the back window to prove his point. It didn’t seem very likely to me that a grown-up would live in a bus, even if it was also a shop, but Jimmy Robertson was watching us so I didn’t like to argue.
There was no sign of the shoe and no sign of George.
‘Does it really matter?’ said Dougie. ‘She’s bound to have another pair by now.’
Well, yes, I had to concede this was probably true, but it wasn’t really the point, was it?
We went back to Mrs Mags’s hut.
‘Lenny!’ my mum beamed.
I plumped down beside her and eased into the space under her arm.
‘Bad George has . . . I mean,’ I said. Whoops! Oh, dear.
Old Mr MacInnes let out a snort.
‘What has bad George done now?’ said Mrs Mags with a rub of her very round tummy.
‘He’s gone missing!’ broke in Dougie.
‘Missing? Oh, dear,’ said Mrs Mags with a pat to the tummy. ‘Well, that’s peace for all of us.’
Dougie was not happy. I could tell. His eyes looked like his brother’s, small and sharp. I hadn’t seen him like that before, not even at the canal.
‘We think he might be under a tree somewhere,’ I said. ‘Or maybe in another hut.’
‘You’re the expert when it comes to sneaking into huts!’ said Mrs Mags.
‘Oh?’ said my mum. ‘Why?’
So while Mrs Mags was explaining things, I went hunting for Mavis’s shoe.
Soon I was lost among the paths behind the rope swing. Clouds slid over the sun and a harsh grey coldness hung about me. The sun was not burning its way through the haze but suffocating behind it instead. I didn’t know where I was and then I hit a road. There was a wooded area to the right which was thick with the sound of bang-bang-bang and other building noises, and a bit further on, a few yards, maybe a mile, was a lorry and some men. (I still hadn’t got the hang of distance but reckoned I’d covered at least twenty miles that morning already.)
Mr Tait was so well camouflaged in his brown tweed suit that I didn’t notice him at first, leaning against a tree trunk with a tin mug in his hand.
‘Mr Tait!’ I said.
‘Lenny! Hello there!’ he said. ‘You are always full of surprises!’
‘George!’ I said.
He had been hiding behind the tree where a tiny bonfire was burning. A battered old saucepan was sitting over it astride some bricks.
‘Hi, Lenny!’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘Fancy a cuppa? We’ve got milk. Mr Tulloch the farmer came by and said he knew you.’
This was too many surprises at once.
‘They’re out looking for you,’ I told George. ‘Even Jimmy Robertson’s looking for you, in his bus.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, giving his little fire some extra special attention it didn’t need. ‘I stayed with Mr Tait last night, in his tent. It’s great! There was a huge bonfire by the burn and lots of . . . .’ He suddenly stopped speaking and a frown spread across his face. I think he’d forgotten he hated me. ‘I’m glad you weren’t there,’ he said weakly.
‘So your mother didn’t actually send you down here to help, did she?’ said Mr Tait slowly in his quiet voice.
‘Well, no, not exactly,’ said bad George, ‘but she would have done if she noticed me at all, which she doesn’t.’ He was muttering now and neither Mr Tait nor myself could make him out.
‘You’ve got bricks!’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Tait, ‘not many but it’s a start, and a shovel, on loan from our nice new neighbours. I can’t really dig of course, but I’ve marked it out, you see? There and there and there?’ He pointed with his fancy bedpost stick. ‘I’ve marked where it needs dug. The men down there at that lorry said they’d help as soon as they’ve got time. Very nice lads, I must say, very nice, and I’ve got George here.’
‘His mum’s frantic,’ I lied.
‘Is she?’ said bad George. He seemed very pleased about this, which I didn’t think was very nice. Of course I’d no idea whether she was frantic or not; it was a lie and probably not a white one like my mum said was alright. And, like Mrs Mags, George’s mum might well have been delighted at his disappearance, for all I knew.
‘Well, no, I don’t really know, but Dougie is, was.’ The truth was Dougie and Sandy had probably forgotten all about George, and for a second I was tempted to tell him that. Mr Tait saved me from my deliberations.
‘How’s your mother?’ he said. George handed me some tea in a jam jar, with milk.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I need to get back to find out. I’ve been away for ages looking for Mavis’s shoe. I lost her shoe last night and I haven’t found it yet.’ The smoke suddenly blew sideways into my eyes. ‘I need to tell my mum what happened.’
‘Is it hard having her back?’
‘It’s wonderful,’ I said. I moved out of the smoke which had decided to persist in my direction. I wiped my eyes with my trusty coat sleeve.
‘But strange,’ he said. ‘It’s not quite how we planned it, is it?’
I looked at him in surprise. Good Mr Tait. He’d understood.
‘I’m going to tell her everything that happened,’ I said, ‘so she knows you’re kind. She just doesn’t know it yet. She’ll change her mind when she knows what you did, I’m sure of it. She won’t listen just now at all, not even to Mrs Mags; she won’t even hear it. But she’ll be worried sick that I’m not there. Thank you for the tea but I’m afraid I can’t drink it. I’m so long away already.’ I tried to give George back his cup of tea, but Mr Tait shook his head and wouldn’t let him take it.
Instead Mr Tait said, ‘Excuse us a minute would you, George? Why don’t you run down to the lorry and see if they need a hand.’ George threw the dregs of his tea manfully into the bushes, set his cup by the fire and swaggered off down the road. Mr Tait seemed to have taught him a thing or two already.
Mr Tait sat himself down on an old chair that was beside the little stone fire and I sat on a log a couple of feet away.
‘Can I come back over here?’ I said.
But before Mr Tait could answer me, George came swaggering back up the road. ‘I suppose you better have this,’ he said. ‘It was behind my Auntie Mags’s hut.’ And he thrust Mavis’s shoe into my hand as if he was a big gruff man shaking hands with another big gruff man. Into my palm it went, thwack! And he strode off.
‘Thank you!’ I called after him as he swayed back down the road. I turned the shoe over in my hand to make sure it really was hers.
‘Goodness gracious!’ said Mr Tait. ‘Wonders will never cease. I had no idea.’
‘All I need now is Mavis.’ She was all I needed and perhaps the return of her shoe was a lucky omen. I wanted to strap it back round my middle IMMEDIATELY, as Miss Weatherbeaten would have said, but that would have involved wheeching up my dress, so I couldn’t.
‘I think you’d better go straight back to your mum and see what’s going on over there. As far as I’m concerned, you can always come back down here, but your mum is in charge now.’
‘What did you do to George to get him to stop being horrible?’
He told me that George had come over after dark saying his parents had sent him to help build the hut, but he had suspected George was avoiding some sort of trouble at home. I told him George had been ‘expelled’ from the school and Mr Tait nodded slowly.
‘Mrs Mags thinks he should be here anyway,’ I said, ‘so you can teach him about building and other things. Looks like she’s right.’
‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’
He laughed a little and swayed backwards into the old chair and I noticed his foot for the first time – his bad foot which had no sock and seemed to have something sticking out of it, something I didn’t want to see, something I shouldn’t have looked at. But I did, so it was all my own fault.