Excerpt
Gerald
It wasn’t the first time I’d come across a hand. I remember thinking at the time what a coincidence it was. Two hands. Mind you, it was wartime, so I should think that must have shortened the odds a bit. I’d been with Eric on the first occasion one of the few times I can recall when he’d let me play with him. We were in the woods when we heard the plane explode. Flames everywhere whoever was on board didn’t stand a chance. We went to have a look, and I remember running neither of us had seen a plane go down at close quarters before, and I was excited; we both were. We were hoping it was German, because German souvenirs were better for swaps than British ones, and in 1943 there wasn’t much American stuff around, at least not where I lived. They were still building the new airfields. Lorries full of sand and stone rattled through our village all day, every day.
I must have been about three hundred yards away from the blaze when I saw the glove. Worn brown leather, lying on the grass, palm upward. The fingers were curled over like a violinist’s and the moment I touched them I felt the solidness inside. The glove was still . . . well, occupied. I dropped it, wiped my hand on my shorts, and carried on running toward the plane. I can’t say I thought anything more about it until I found the second one, a year later.
It was autumn and I was in the woods again, but by myself. I think I must have been playing soldiers, because I remember lying on my stomach behind a thick tree root, pretending I was shooting from behind a parapet. I wriggled forward a couple of feet to look over the top, and there it was, a couple of feet from my face. No glove, just pinkish-gray flesh, sticking out of a pile of leaves. Wrist bent, palm downward, and fingers spread out as if it were about to crawl toward me.
I didn’t try to pick it up, but pulled myself a bit nearer and stuck out my own hand in imitation of its shape. I mustn’t have been quite able to make the mental switch from my game of soldiers, because I remember thinking that the two sets of fingers, opposite each other in a sort of confrontation, were like armies on a battlefield. Then I noticed how delicate the hand was. Pretty, almost, even with the dirt on the skin and the soil that was wedged underneath the long fingernails. I inched my own hand a little closer, and I think I would have touched it, but I suddenly saw that not all of the nails were the same length. The one on the little finger was bitten off short. The instant I saw that, a picture came into my mind of my sister Vera at Christmas, the cheerful, bright sitting room and her with a sketch pad in front of the fire, drawing, and Dad leaning over her, picking up the hand with the pencil in it. “If you go on chewing your nails, you’ll grow up to look like George Formby.”
She giggled. “Then I’ll only bite the little ones, so I’ll only look a tiny bit like him.”
They told me afterward that I ran into the house covered in mud and earth, shouting Vera’s name.
Haldane M(arjorie) M(aud) (1904”“1967), creator of Tom Tyler, Boy Detective, was born in Suffolk, where she spent most of her life. Daughter of a bookseller, she wrote of her early childhood that she and her younger sister, Matilda, had “an enchanted existence, living a perpetual delight from day to day.” Their happiness was shattered in 1916, when their father returned, shell-shocked, from serving in the First World War. His subsequent mental breakdown, which Haldane was later to describe as “an evil shadow,” took its toll on both her parents’ marriage and the family finances. Both girls became actresses, although Haldane only worked briefly in the professional theater before marrying stockbroker Arthur Haxton in 1922.
When Haldane became depressed by the couple’s failure to conceive a child, Haxton suggested writing as a distraction, and in 1924 her first book, a retelling of Shakespeare for children, was published. Folk tales and fairy stories followed, and her first original work of fiction, Kitty’s Unicorn, was published in 1929. This was followed by Kitty’s Birthday Wish and Kitty’s Christmas Wish (both 1930). The “Kitty” books were followed by a series of “Amy”? books, beginning with Amy’s Secret (1931), but it was not until the publication of Big Bad Bessie in 1934, with its eponymous heroine, the naughty schoolgirl Bessie Brown, that Haldane became one of the best-selling children’s authors of her day.
By 1937 there were eight “Bessie” books, and Haldane created the boy who was to become her best-known character, the “boy detective” Tom Tyler. For the next thirteen years she produced, on average, three “Tom Tyler” books a year, culminating in Tom in Trouble Again in 1950. Tom’s adventures with his cousins Peter and Jill and their dog, Scruff, invariably include unmasking spies, bringing thieves to justice, and finding lost treasure. They have been adapted for the stage, televised, and serialized as a comic strip that ran for over thirty years in Buster magazine.
Haldane and her husband adopted a daughter, Vera, in 1928, and in 1930 a son, Gerald, was born. However, the couple’s relationship, difficult from the beginning, did not survive the tragic death of Vera in 1944. After the war, Haldane wrote little except to continue the “Tom Tyler” series.
Although her work has generally received a favorable critical reception, Haldane’s last book, Friends in Spirit (1959), thought to have been influenced by her interest in Spiritualism, was universally reviled as morbid and sentimental. It was, as one critic put it, “such a far cry from the robust common sense displayed by Tom Tyler and his fellow thief-takers that it is hard to understand how they could have been created by the person who wrote this book.” Haldane, whose health was deteriorating, was said to be very upset by such attacks. She spent the last five years of her life in a nursing home and died in 1967.
Dictionary of Children’s Literature
“Get in there, you kids,” said the man with the eye patch, “and remember, if I hear a sound from either of you, there’ll be trouble!” The tall man slammed the door shut, and Jill and Peter heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. The room was pitch black.
“At least there doesn’t seem to be any furniture to bump into,” said Peter, “but I can’t find a light either.”
“There’s something nailed across the window,” said Jill. “Boards, I think.” She sat down on the floor and rubbed her ankle. “Oh, Peter, whatever shall we do?”? Peter wanted to comfort his sister, but he could not think of anything to say. With all his might, he wished that Tom were with them. If only Tom could find them, he’d get them out of this fix all right!
“I wonder where Tom is,” said Jill, as if she could read her brother’s thoughts.
“So do I,” said Peter. “And I’m starving. I wish we had some of that delicious picnic with us.”
“We ate it all up,” said Jill. “Every scrap. I’m rather hungry too. Supposing they leave us locked in here all night?”
“Don’t worry, Jill. I’m sure that Scruff will stay by our bikes until Tom comes back, and then they’re bound to come and sniff us out.”
“Poor old Scruff,” said Jill. “I hope those beastly men didn’t hullo, what’s that noise?”
Tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap-tap! “It’s coming from the window,” said Peter. There it was again! Tap-tap-tap-TAP! Then they heard a voice, whispering, “Peter! Jill! Are you in there?”
“It’s Tom!” shouted Peter. “Good old Tom! Good old Scruff! I knew they’d find us!”
“Keep your voice down or they’ll hear us!” said Jill. “Come on, let’s see if we can get the boards away from the window.” They pulled as hard as they could, and after a moment, a crack of light appeared, with Tom’s face behind it. “How on earth did you get up here, Tom?”
“Climbed up the back porch, of course. Scruff’s in the yard. What happened?”
“Those horrible men came back to the clearing while we were tidying up the picnic things,” said Jill. “We tried to hide, but they caught us and pushed us into their van. Scruff tried to follow, but they threw stones at him. He is all right, isn’t he?”
“He’s fine. He showed me the way here. It would take more than a few stones to put him off!”
“Jill’s sprained her ankle,” said Peter. “She’s being awfully brave about it, but I know it’s hurting her dreadfully.”
“There’s something much more important than my silly old ankle,” said Jill. “You’ll never guess what we saw in the van, Tom! Aunt Sarah’s picture!”
“And half a dozen others as well,” said Peter.
“So they’re the art thieves,” said Tom. “No wonder your mother thought they were suspicious characters. Well, we’ll soon put a stop to their tricks, shan’t we?”
Tom in Trouble, 1939
