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.
The door to the tower was stiff and would not open. I pushed it hard, too hard, and it flew open, the wind catching it suddenly. I stepped out into the welcome warmth of day, dazzled by the light. At first glance I could see nothing. But then there he was. Big Joe was lying curled up under the shade of the parapet. He seemed fast asleep, his thumb in his mouth as usual. I didn’t want to wake him too suddenly. When I touched his hand he did not wake. When I shook him gently by the shoulder he did not move. He was cold to my touch, and pale, deathly pale. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, and Charlie was calling up at me from below. I shook him again, hard this time, and screamed at him in my fear and panic. “Wake up, Joe. For God’s sake, wake up!” I knew then that he wouldn’t, that he’d come up here to die. He knew you had to die to go to Heaven, and Heaven was where he wanted to be, to be with Bertha again, with Father too.
When he stirred a moment later, I could hardly believe it. He opened his eyes. He smiled. “Ha, Tommo,” he said. “Ungwee. Ungwee.” They were the most beautiful words I’d ever heard. I sprang to my feet and leaned out over the parapet. Charlie was down there on the church path looking up at me.
“We’ve found him, Charlie,” I called down. “We’ve got him. He’s up here. He’s all right.”
Charlie punched the air and yahooed again and again. He yahooed even louder when he saw Big Joe standing beside me and waving. “Charie!” he cried. “Charie!”
Charlie hopped and limped into the church, and only moments later the great tenor bell rang out over the village, scattering the roosting pigeons from the tower, and sending them wheeling out over the houses, over the fields. Like the pigeons, Big Joe and I were shocked at the violence of the sound. It blasted our ears, sent a tremor through the tower that we felt through the soles of our feet. Alarmed at all this thunderous clanging, Big Joe looked suddenly anxious, his hands clapped over his ears. But when he saw me laughing, he did the same. Then he hugged me, hugged me so right I thought he was squeezing me half to death. And when he began singing his Oranges and Lemons, I joined in, crying and singing at the same time.
I wanted him to come down with me, but Big Joe wanted to stay. He wanted to wave at everyone from the parapet. People were coming from all over: Mr Munnings, Miss McAllister and all the children were streaming out through the school yard and up towards the church. We saw the Colonel, coming down the road in his car, and could just make out the Wolfwoman’s bonnet beside him. Best of all we saw Mother and Molly on bicycles racing up the hill, waving at us. Still Charlie rang the bell and I could hear him yahooing down below between each dong, and imagined him hanging on to the rope and riding with it up in the air. Still Big Joe sang his song. And the swifts soared and swooped and screamed all around us, in the sheer joy of being alive, and celebrating, it seemed to me, that Big Joe was alive too.
I was once told in Sunday school that a church tower reaches up skywards because it is a promise of Heaven. Church towers are different in France. It was the first thing I noticed when I came here, when I changed my world of home for my world of war. In comparison the church towers at home seem almost squat, hiding themselves away in the folds of the fields. Here there are no folds in the fields, only wide open plains, scarcely a hill in sight. And instead of church towers they have spires that thrust themselves skywards like a child putting his hand up in class, longing to be noticed. But God, if there is one, notices nothing here. He has long since abandoned this place and all of us who live in it. There are not many steeples left now. I have seen the one in Albert, hanging down like a broken promise.
Now I come to think of it, it was a broken promise that brought me here, to France, and now to this barn. The mouse is back again. That’s good.
There was a brief time just after we’d found Big Joe when all old hurts and grudges seemed suddenly to be forgiven and forgotten. Forgotten too was all talk of the war in France. No one spoke of anything that day except our search for Big Joe and its happy outcome. Even the Colonel and the Wolfwoman were celebrating with the rest of us up in The Duke. Molly’s mother and father were there too, celebrating with everyone else, and smiling — though being strict chapel people, they didn’t touch a drop of drink. I’d never seen Molly’s mother smile before that. And then the Colonel announced that he was paying for all the drinks. It wasn’t long — it only took a couple of pints — before Farmer Cox began singing. He was still singing when we left; some of the songs were getting a bit rude by then. I was there outside The Duke when Mother went up and thanked the Colonel for his help. He offered us all a lift home in his Rolls Royce! The Peacefuls in the back of the Colonel’s car, and the Wolfwoman in the front, being friendly! We couldn’t believe it, not after all the bad blood between us over the years.
The Colonel broke the spell on the way home, talking about the war, and how the army should be using more cavalry over in France.
“Horses and guns,” he said, “in that order. That’s how we beat the Boers in South Africa. That’s what they should be doing. If I were younger, I’d go myself. They’ll soon be needing every horse they can find, Mrs Peaceful, and every man, too. It’s not going at all well out there.”
Mother thanked him again as he helped us out of the car outside our gate. The Colonel touched his hat and smiled. “Don’t you go running off again, young man,” he said to Big Joe. “You gave us all a terrible fright.” And even the Wolfwoman waved at us almost cheerily as they drove off.
That night Big Joe began coughing. He’d caught a chill and it had gone to his lungs. He was in bed with a fever for weeks afterwards, and Mother hardly left his side, she was so worried.
By the time he was better, the whole episode of his disappearance had been forgotten, overtaken by news in the papers of a great and terrible battle on the Marne, where our armies were fighting the Germans to a standstill, trying desperately to halt their advance through France.
One evening, Charlie and I arrived home from work a little late, having stopped on the way for a drink at The Duke as we often did. In those days, I remember, I had to pretend I liked the beer. The truth was I hated the stuff, but I loved the company. Charlie might have bossed me about on the farm, but after work, up at The Duke, he never treated me like the fifteen-year-oId I was, though some of the others did. I couldn’t have them knowing that I hated beer. So I‘d force down a couple of pints with Charlie, and often left The Duke a little befuddled in the head. That was why I was woozy when we came home that evening. When I opened the door and saw Molly, sitting there on the floor with her head on Mother’s lap, it seemed I was suddenly back to the day Big Joe had gone missing. Molly looked up at us, and I could see that she had been crying, and that this time it was Mother doing the comforting.
“What is it?” Charlie asked. “What’s happened?”
“You may well ask, Charlie Peaceful,” Mother
