Southend U3A

Tap, Tap, Tap - Marie Day

It’s been said you can choose your friends but not your family. How true in our family at least. My Mum’s younger brother was always a trial to hers. Mum was one of eleven. Not unusual in the 20’s and 30’s. She was Hettie, number three behind elder brothers Jackie and Eddie. Following her were Minnie, Ellie, twins Billy and Jimmy, Maisie, Charlie, Annie and last but not least (in his own estimation anyway) baby of them all, Tommy. Her Mum was naturally pretty exhausted by this time and her Dad spent every minute working to provide for his ‘football team’ as he called it. Luckily, they all helped out as best they could. All that is except ‘Mummy’s little precious’, Tommy. From the minute he drew breath he was her Mum’s favourite. They all knew it and accepted it. Not sure I would have. My Mum said that when it became obvious he was Gran’s favourite they all just shrugged and got on with life. What else could they do?

As he grew older is also became apparent that Tommy had not only an odd relationship with his older siblings but a completely invisible one with the truth. In fact, he wouldn’t have recognised the truth if it had jumped up and bitten him on the nose. That brings us nicely to one of his many irritating habits. Whenever he was caught out in a lie, found to be where he shouldn’t be or spied poking his fingers in places they shouldn’t poke, he would always do the same thing. He’d look from left to right, look decidedly shifty and tap the side of his nose three times. Tap, tap, tap! As if to say to lesser mortals he had good reasons of his own that no one else could be privy to for his actions. Hence as he grew up, he became known to everyone in the neighbourhood, except his mother of course, as ‘Tommy the Tap’! Friends, neighbours, family, even his father could see where he was headed. Not Gran; to her he was and always would be her ‘darling, misunderstood baby.’

Needless to say, his huge family were encouraged to cover any misdemeanours with minimal fall out to Gran’s blue-eyed boy. Tommy was oblivious to the chaos he caused or perhaps he didn’t care. Like the time he sent a whole ferry full of people at Woolwich into a panic by rushing around screaming that the boat had sprung a leak and it was sinking but he would lead them to safety. The first his ‘nearest and dearest’ knew of this was when the local bobby was on their doorstep holding Tommy by the collar and depositing him into the loving arms of his family. Oh how they all laughed – not! Even then my grandmother excused him by saying he was sensitive and must have felt something was wrong and he just wanted to help! There were so many other incidents too numerous to recount, my mother said that it was a wonder the whole family weren’t grey haired by their 20’s.

I expect with a few mishaps on the way they could have kept him on the straight and narrow, or at least the leaning to the left or right without falling but world events intervened. Tommy was 18 years old and the year was 1939. All her brothers joined the army, navy and air force. The sisters who were working in a textile factory stayed when it was turned over to munitions production. Later Maisie and Annie became some of the first land girls. Granddad was an air raid warden and Gran joined the WVS. All doing their bit. Tommy however developed at this time a pronounced limp and a cough that would have covered the noise from a Luftwaffe raid! Gran’s ‘poor lamb’ was ministered to with ‘Vic’ chest rubs and ‘White Horse’ lineament ‘for his poorly leg’. This however didn’t stop the call up papers dropping loudly through the letterbox one day in 1940. Called for his medical to see where he could most help the fight against Hitler, Tommy hobbled off to the local church hall. A few hours later he arrived back minus the limp and surprisingly cough free to tell everyone he’d been classified unfit as he had flat feet and chronically myopic eyesight. Totally unashamed he looked from side to side, smirked and tapped his nose. Tap, tap, tap! This, Mum scoffed, was the boy who could climb an eight foot fence escaping the wrath of the local constabulary on one of his regular scrumping expeditions in the nearby orchard and who could spot a shilling in the gutter from fifty paces.

After this, the family’s ‘wounded soldier’ was left to his own devices. Mum said they should have kept him on a tighter rein but what with rationing, air raids and the possibility of an invasion Tommy the Tap slipped off the radar. It began to be his habit to leave home only when darkness fell and not return till the early hours of the morning. If anyone did ask where he’d been as he crawled into bed for the rest of the daylight hours, he’d look at them in what Mum thought he thought was a mysterious way. She said he looked like a shifty gangster in one of those bad Hollywood B Movies. As usual he tapped the side of his nose – tap, tap, tap. Then he’d smile like a poor man’s James Cagney before closing the bedroom door (his own now as the boys were away) and then locked it. No one heard any more from him until he went out again as dusk fell.

The war rumbled on through the Blitz, Jackie and Eddie thankfully came home from Dunkirk, aircraft bombed the towns and cities every night. Still Tommy trotted off every night and returned at sunrise. Even when his brothers shared a bedroom again for a while Tommy didn’t let on where he was going and why he insisted on locking the door in the daylight hours. Then one day in 1941 after a particularly bad night of air raids when only my Mum was at home Tommy didn’t stroll in at dawn. Gran was feeding bombed out families. Granddad was dealing with fires in the ruins of homes. The boys had rejoined their regiments. There was a knock at the door. On the doorstep was a man in a trench coat and a trilby hat which covered most of his face. He hissed at her to get Tommy. When she told him he wasn’t at home he became agitated and tried to push past. My Mum had grown up in a household of thirteen. She knew how to hold her own.

Finally, the man snarled, ‘Tell Tommy the Tap to keep his nose out of my business.’ He turned and shot off, furtively looking from side to side. Mum said she half expected him to tap his nose three times as he ran off.

From that day onward there was no sign of Tommy. Gran was beside herself, imagining all sorts of outcomes. Nothing could console her. Years passed; slowly the war came to an end. Not a clue ever surfaced as to Tommy’s whereabouts even though we all asked questions of anyone who knew him and the police knew he was missing. VE day came and the family was reunited. Life continued; weddings, new babies, new homes. Gran and Granddad stayed in the house we grew up in. She was worried that if Tommy came back, he wouldn’t find them if they moved. Maisie, trying to cheer her up, wanted to call her first son Tommy but Gran forbade her, saying there would only ever be one Tommy in the family. The little one was named Winston instead. Gran would sit for hours at the kitchen table; one hand outstretched. The index finger tap, tap, tapping on the tablecloth as tears ran down her face.

Gran and Granddad passed away within months of each other in 1981 leaving a huge family behind. Life continued as it does until a letter from a solicitor’s office arrived addressed to Mum’s parents. It was Eddie who opened it. He got his brothers and sisters together and with a shocked look on his face explained the contents. A homeless man had been taken to a local care home. He seemed unable to tell anyone who he was or where he’d come from. All he kept doing was a movement of an index finger and a whispered, repeated ‘tap, tap, tap’. It seemed in the same care home was one Dolly Sidebottom. She’d been their neighbour as they’d all grown up. Apart from that they all remembered she pronounced her surname ‘Siddy Bot Ohm’ in a posh accent. As if that could stop kids working out the real pronunciation. As soon as the man arrived, she had told a nurse that the only person she ever knew with that kind of gesture had lived in her road in the 40’s. The thing was he went missing and broke his mother’s heart. It was decided that Eddie, Jackie and my Mum as the eldest would visit. It was too much of a coincidence to ignore this mystery man.

On arrival they were met by the head nurse who told them the man had been named Vinnie after St. Vincent’s church where he had been found wandering in the churchyard. He had responded well to the medical care but said and did very little. Eddie got a nudge from my Mum when he said, ‘Sounds like our Tommy.’ under his breath. The nurse stopped them before they entered his room. ‘Be prepared for a shock. This sounds like your brother from what you’ve told me but a lot has obviously happened to him in 40 years.’

She didn’t sound as if it had been anything good Mum said, ‘He just moves an index finger to his …. well, you’ll see for yourselves.’

She seemed to be very uncomfortable. They went in and there was a small, elderly man sitting in an armchair. He was looking out of the window.

‘Hello Tommy.’ Eddie tried to sound cheerful. ‘It’s Hettie, Eddie and Jackie. Long time no see.’

The man in the chair turned slowly, looked from left to right, a gummy smile twisted his mouth. He lifted his index finger to his ..... That’s when they realised that where his nose should have been there was a jagged scar badly healed over.

That’s also when my Mum remembered the day when she opened the door to the man in the trilby hat. She was glad for the first time that Gran wasn’t there to see this.

‘Tell him to keep his nose out of my business.’

Tommy never did know when to leave well alone. From the armchair came a soft sound.

TAP, TAP, TAP!