(Note - There is violence here, but it is not explicit)

What makes a loving mother call their son Timothy. It is one of those names that really doesn’t let one visualise a beefy six year old who can take on the World with a rapier wit and a fist to match.

Well this Timothy matched the perception. He was slightly built with flaxen hair. He lived with his Mum in a farmworker’s cottage on a big agricultural Estate owned by some bigwig from London. His father was the Estate Manager. The Bigwig only turned up occasionally when he wanted to show off his hobby farm to guests.

Timothy played on his own a lot. He had dumper trucks, and model Police Cars, Milk Floats and Limousines. They were pushed enthusiastically through sand, grit and mud. It did not do their paintwork any good and the rain finished off the good work until they were shadows of their former selves. He loved them none the less.

His small rural primary school had only 35 children from Reception to Year Six, arranged in two classes taught by two caring women who had been Head Teacher and Assistant Teacher since Timothy’s grandmother had been at the school. They knew everyone who had lived in the village for years and years and years.

The gender balance at the school was not in Timothy’s favour with an average of only five children in each year group. His year had six children but four of them were girls, and the one boy was his nemesis, a born bully who often made his life a misery. Even the children a year older and younger kept themselves to themselves and this left Timothy very much alone.

During the weekends and after school he did things with his father, but during the harvest and at lambing time for instance, he was left on his own for much of the time and played fantasy games with his battered toys.

Sometimes his mother would see him pottering about in the garden with a worn car or truck being dragged behind him on a piece of old binder twine.

“He seems contented enough” she would say to herself. “He is a solitary child who enjoys his own company.”

It was far from the truth. Timothy was perennially lonely and desperate for friends. He thought things might be better if he was a girl, but there was no obvious means of becoming one. Once he dressed up in a dress quietly snatched from the discard pile at a Church Jumble Sale, but he didn’t look anything like a girl. He just looked like a boy in a grubby, ill-fitting, baggy frock. Even at his age it didn’t cut the mustard. His mother cut his hair. There was no escaping that. It was a pudding basin cut with the kitchen scissors.

The farm dogs liked being petted and so did the cats, but the cats had fleas that bit him and made him itch, and the dogs were only able to play with him when their owners were there. For the rest of the time they were on guard and would growl at him if he wanted to tickle their tummies or stroke their floppy velvety ears.

During the Holidays and at each half term Timothy was bored and his loneliness hit him full square. He didn’t know he was lonely except that he was perennially sad and often cried himself to sleep. His parents were trying to make ends meet and keep food on the table. There wasn’t time to entertain him. At six years old he didn’t have the ability to make friends easily. He would wander from one farm worker to another. Each would give him a few minutes while they were doing something less demanding. Timothy would ‘help’ his father with the milking, or turn the big wheel to chop the Mangle-wurzles that fed the cows when they were in the parlour being milked. He fed the chickens and geese and would talk to them, but hated it when they ‘disappeared’ near Christmas. Luckily at six years of age he didn’t know that the meal he had at Christmas was intimately linked with ‘his’ chickens and geese that he had nurtured during the year.

He had a sand pit but the cats used it for their business and it smelled horrid.

He found a litter of kittens once, and took several with joy in his eyes to show his father, who took them roughly from his son, put them in a sack with a brick for company and threw them in the river without a second thought.

He dried himself to sleep that night.

One afternoon in the October half term the sun was shining, and his father had been out working since day up. His mother was working at her crochet that paid for a few luxuries when items were sold at craft markets in the area. Timmy was on his own as usual, and was occasionally supervised by his mother through the French doors in her craft room. She looked at him, but not enough, if the truth be told. Had she looked at him more closely she would have seen the tears in his eyes, and the grubby marks on his cheeks where his emotions had got the better of him.

He walked round the garden for the fourth time, occasionally kicking an old tin can or a stone. He picked up one stone. It had a nice round feel and he threw it ineffectually at the corrugated iron shed wall, where a dull thud came back to him giving him some momentary satisfaction.

Wandering aimlessly on he tripped on something sticking up just proud of the rough path he was walking along. It was a piece of flat topped stone. This peaked his interest and decided to get a trowel that he had been given to uncover a bit of the stone. After all, his father couldn’t be annoyed at some interesting stone, could he.

After working away at the soil for some minutes Timothy had exposed enough to know that this was a grave stone. He saw many of them as his family spent much of their Sundays in the Parish Church … but even as a six year old, he knew that a grave stone didn’t belong in a farmyard, or garden.

After a few more minutes of scratching away the soil, he saw writing. He knew what writing was, but hadn’t got to grip with his letters yet in the little village school and of course he had sat on his father’s knee when the man had read haltingly and aloud from scripture by running his finger over the words as he read.

A young female voice came. as if from nowhere.

“What are you doing?”

“I am trying to see what this stone is. It has writing on it, but who are you?”

“I am Ada. I live near here.”

“I am Timothy. I have never seen you before.”

Timothy had a chance to turn round and look at the girl. She was about his age and had ringlets of blond hair tied up with ribbons. Her dress was ornate and stretched down to her calves. White stockings poked out of the button boots she was wearing. The dress had several petticoats and was a pale yellow. Timothy didn’t know the names of all the things she was wearing but he thought it must be quite tight and uncomfortable.

“I have never seen you here before.”

“You have been crying. Why?”

“I am here alone. My mother and father are busy and there is no one to play with.”

“We will play with you. Edith, Iris come here. We are needed. These are my sisters”

Two more girls appeared. Both were dressed like their sister in dresses with several petticoats, stockings and button boots. Their blond hair was curled. Their dresses were pale blue for Edith and lilac for Iris. Edith shook Timothy’s hand most formally and he noticed that she had lace gloves on up to her elbows. He sister, Iris hid her face behind her hand and was perhaps only five.

Shall we play marbles?

Timothy had a cache of marbles, and he soon came back with an old tin filled with the coloured glass balls.

“All our marbles were white. They came from old ginger beer bottles.”

The girls were quite adept at the game and had soon won most of the marbles. Timothy didn’t mind. He had friends at last. It was the first time he had laughed in a very long time.

After the marbles they did skipping and Hop Scotch. The girls were very good, and their skirts seemed to have lives of their own falling like cast off feathers after every jump.

From somewhere the girls brought out loops and sticks and showed Timothy how to roll the loops down the path with the guidance of the stick.

After several hours, Timothy found he was hungry.

“I must go”, he said.

“Why do you need to go?”

“I am hungry and my mother will be worried.”

“Will she really be worried?”

“Probably not.”

“Why don’t you come with us. You wouldn’t be lonely and there are some lovely dresses you could try on.”

“Can I really come with you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then yes. I will come with you.”

Timothy’s shorts and Tee shirt were replaced with a white dress with layers of gauzy cloth over several petticoats. The dress was not uncomfortable and the leather button boots fit him better than his old trainers. His hair was the same brunette, but the ringlets framed his face beautifully.

The four children promptly disappeared.

When it was getting dark. Timothy’s mother at last realised that Timothy was missing. Torches were used to search the garden. His father found the partly uncovered gravestone and with a few strokes of the trowel uncovered the message.

In one of the buildings they found Timothy’s body where he had got caught in some unguarded machinery. The farm workers carried the little crushed corpse into the farmhouse and laid it on a table then left the grieving parents to ponder.