Tom All Alone (1)

      Their house was halfway along, and from the bay window in the upstairs sitting room he could view the street from one end to the other.  He could see the streams of traffic passing along the main road towards the bridge or the common.  He tried counting them all - the cars, buses, vans.  Big lorries, like the one his dad drove.  But there were too many and they were too fast, like a train - like they were eating each other up.  He turned his head to the quieter end, with the sweet shop, and Gibney's Stores where mum worked - where she was working now, chatting to the shoppers, ringing up their money in the till.  Where she would be coming from soon, with his Jamboree Bag and lollipop.  He'd see her walking down towards him in her brown coat and zip-up boots, and her hair tied back in a scarf.  The red of her lipstick showing there, her dark ringlets poking through, her figure getting bigger and bigger as she approached, and her smile at the moment she saw him.  He pressed his face against the window pane and could see the shop - the people crossing and going inside, then coming out again with a bag, or a loaf of bread tucked under their arm.

      He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.  The long gold hand was on the seven, the short one between the twelve and one. 

      Twenty-five to one.

      Uncle Len had taught him the to tell the time - sitting him on his knee in the evenings in the back kitchen when he called for dad to go to the pub, while he waited for dad to wash and change.  Giving him a ha'penny when he got it right, digging it out of his rattly pocket while his other hand held his cigarette.  He wasn't his real uncle, mum said.  Just dad's friend.  Real uncles had cousins, like Kevin and Gillian, and Uncle Len didn't.  He had a car, though, which no one else they knew did.  He would drive off with dad in the car, smoking their cigarettes, and Tom watching from that window - his ha'pennies warm in his hand.

      Mum finished when the long hand was on the twelve, the short one on the one.  That meant she would be home soon.  He could feel the excitement already, down in his guts.  Russell called them that, though mum didn't like it.

      "You shouldn't use words like that in front of your brother."

      Russell came home from school when the long hand was on the three and the short one on the four.  The big school, now - over the bridge in Fulham, where mum and Auntie Phyllis were born, and Uncle Reg.  They were real aunts and uncles.  Everyone had to go to school, mum had told him.  He would, too.  Soon.  He wondered what soon meant.

      He decided, when the time came, he was going to hide somewhere.  In a wardrobe, perhaps, or down in the cellar.  He'd hide until they'd given up looking for him, and everyone had gone out.  Then he'd sneak in behind the curtain in the bay window again and stay there all day.

      A front door opened in a house over the road and old Mrs Cooper came out, pulling her trolley that looked like a big basket with a walking stick tied on.  The wheels were just like the wheels on his old pushchair, with white tyres and little spokes, and a silver knob in the middle.  Matthew and Patrick and the other kids in the street said she was a witch, and she flew around the sky on the trolley at night when they'd gone to bed.  She had a black and white cat that slept in her front window, or out on the sill in the summer. They'd tried to look in her front window to see if they could see her pointy witch's hat and her cauldron pot in the fireplace, like they'd seen in a picture book.  But all they'd seen was a big bed, and a big wardrobe like Tom's nan had downstairs.  They thought she must keep the witch stuff upstairs instead, or else down in the coal cellar. 

      Tom hid behind the curtain as he watched her go up the road, walking in that strange way she had, with her head rocking from side to side.  He thought she probably knew he was watching, anyway.  Matthew said witches always knew when you were hiding from them.

      Just as he had the thought, she stopped and looked back.  He dropped to the floor.  When he peeped back up, she'd crossed the road and was heading for Gibney's - her trolley wheels wobbling like the ones on his scooter.  She didn't really look like a witch, Tom thought.  She looked too big to be a witch.  But Matthew said that witches were good at disguising themselves, so he guessed that was what it was.  At night, she would look different - all thin and bright-eyed and cackling as she flew across the stars, with her cat in the basket of the trolley behind her.

      He looked back at her house again.  It was like all the others in the road - yellowy bricks, like honeycomb, and a red shiny doorstep. Big windows, like the one he was hiding in, and a window above the front door.  It was joined to the house next door - their front doors next to one another.  There were arches over the doors.  They made Tom think of the bridge over the river.  The roofs were grey.  Tom thought they looked like the sides of matchboxes, where the matches were struck.  He imagined a big match coming down from the sky and running along them until it sparked into flame.  On the tops of the roofs were orange tiles that were pointed like a line of monster's teeth.  Between each line were the chimney stacks.  It was summer now, though, and warm, so none of the chimneys were smoking.

      He looked down as a car came along.  He found the bubble in the window glass and watched the car through it, laughing at the way it made the car go fat and round, like a bubble car, as it passed by.  When it got to the end, the car stopped for a moment.  Then it pulled out into the traffic going off towards the bridge.

      A roaring sound suddenly started to build, way back behind the house.  As it grew louder, Tom crouched down and lined up his eye with the bubble again.  When the plane went over, the bubble turned it into a big grey blob.  He imagined he was in his own plane and the window was his cockpit.  He was in a dog-fight with the jet - uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh - chasing it across the sky, like the models Russell had on their bedroom ceiling.  He kept firing his guns until the jet vanished behind the rooftops, going down in smoke and flames like the cotton wool Russell used with orange and red fire painted on.

      A man walked along the street.  He was wearing a brown coat and trilby hat like dad's, smoking a cigarette.  He had a small white dog on a lead, and kept stopping for the dog to sniff at lamp-posts and front walls. Tom caught them in the bubble and they merged - a brown and white blob, like one of those chocolates mum sometimes had, with a cream ripple in it.  He followed them up to the end of the street, where they went around the corner. 

      The window was smeary from Tom's breath.  He breathed harder on it to make the patch bigger, huhh-ing over and over until he felt dizzy.  Then he drew a Noughts and Crosses grid on the smear, like Russell had shown him.  He breathed on another bit of the window and drew little matchstick people, their arms longer than their legs, their hands like fat bunches of bananas, their heads huge with spikes for hair.

      Soon the whole window, as high up as he could reach, was covered with squiggles and drawings.  He stopped then, knowing what he'd done - remembering what mum had told him when she'd cleaned the windows. 

      "You and your fingermarks, you naughty boy."

      He grabbed one of the curtains and wiped the window, pulling hard to reach the farthest corner.  He pulled and pulled.  And then it gave - the curtain rod falling. It fell against Skipper's cage, sending the bird into a flapping frenzy. A shower of husks and sand and feathers sprayed over the carpet.  Then the other end of the rail slipped out and fell to the floor.  The cage stand tipped over and crashed down, too...

      ...and then nan was there in the room, come up to see what he was up to, catching him there with the curtain bunched against his chest and the fear in his eyes.  Her mouth dropped open.  Her top set of teeth dropped loose against her tongue.

      "You little blighter!"

      He dodged around the back of the armchair as she came in to grab his arm, then slipped behind her and ran to the door, getting through it before she had chance to turn around on her slippered feet.  He ran along the landing and down the stairs, no idea where he was going except to get away.  At the bottom of the stairs he made for the cellar door.  But as he reached it, a shadow fell across the front door glass, and he heard mum's key slip into the lock.  He stopped, trapped now - wanting to see her, but scared of what was going to happen.  The door opened and she saw him - the smile in her eyes dropping as she saw the look on his face.

      "What have you been up to?"

      He tried to speak, but nothing would come. Instead, he ran to her and wrapped his arms around her legs, pushing his face into her coat and crying like he'd never cried before.  He felt hands going under his armpits, felt her lifting him.  She pulled him to her, and he hooked his legs around her back.  She held him there.

      "I... I... I... I didn't mean it," he sobbed.

      "What is it?  What didn't you mean? It's alright.  Mummy's here now."

      Her hand patting his back as he cried into her neck. Her voice comforting like a cat's purr against his ear.

      And then nan's voice, calling down the stairs behind him.

      "Wait 'til you see the mess he's made up here.  Can't take your eyes off him for a minute."

      He hugged her tighter and she rocked him.

      "Alright, alright.  Shhhh..."

      As she carried him towards the stairs, he pushed away from her and wriggled until she put him down.

      "Let's have a look," she said, still quietly.

      She went up the stairs and he followed behind, keeping in as close as he could, his fear rising with each step.  The two women went into the room and looked at the scene - the curtains lying across the carpet, the mess from the budgie cage everywhere, the holes in the wall where the rail had fallen.  He heard the breath go out of her as her shoulders slumped.  He stood there, just back from them, as they turned their heads and glared down at him.  He saw the anger in the older woman's eyes.  But it was the sadness in his mother's eyes that caught him the most.

      "What have you done now?" she said, witheringly.  "Why can't you behave yourself just for once?"

      "Wait 'til his dad gets home," nan said.  "He'll have something to say about this."

(continued)  https://www.abctales.com/story/harryc/tom-tom-turnaround-2