‘Upstairs … What happened to your friend, the lady who could only say Daphne?’
‘Oh, yes. Somebody did a whopper of a sneeze right by her head and she snapped right out of it. Never saw the like. If you brought the little girl down we could have a chat. Now that we’re in our right minds, or nearly.’
‘I expect she’s still sleeping, Mrs Berrow.’
I hesitated. There were thumps on the stairs.
‘That’ll be your lads.’ Mrs Berrow chuckled. ‘Not very likely, is it?’
They slept through the Second Coming, little children. That was what she’d told me. I almost pointed it out to her.
‘I’ll fetch Pamela.’
‘So we went into the hotel because Mummy said we had to get some candles for my cake. And then we were going to bed there. Gosh, your eye is like a thunderstorm, isn’t it.’
Pamela, in blanket, knickers and knee-length singlet, was standing in front of Mrs Berrow who, seated as she was, had acquired a faintly inquisitorial air.
‘Some candles,’ I repeated. ‘For your cake.’
‘Because I’m going to be six.’ She gave me a passing glance. I was much less important than Mrs Berrow. ‘My cake’s going to be pink.’
‘Could it have been the Crown?’ somebody said. ‘The buses stop right outside.’
‘It was mayhem there.’ Mrs Berrow nodded, remembering. ‘That’s where I live, see, opposite the Crown. So when you and Mummy came out, what happened next?’
A blended howl of outrage and mirth rose from the kitchen next door, along with a crash of cutlery and a thin cry of exasperation from Elizabeth. Pamela peered through the gap in the door. ‘What naughty boys you’ve got,’ she said to me.
Mrs Berrow sighed. ‘So when you and Mummy came out—’
‘Mummy was coming.’ Pamela sat down on the floor. ‘But she was so slow. She was talking to the cake-candle man. So I went out first.’ She crossed her legs and encircled her big toe with thumb and fingers. ‘This is how you comfort your toes, especially when they’re cold. And then I banged my head on the bus-stop pole, and after that I looked for Mummy. But all I could see was the top of her head in a bus window. Then the bald lady asked me if that was my mummy, and I said it was, but that bus was going. Then the other lady, the fat one, came, and they took me on their bus. And the bald lady laid me down under a blanket with a lot of tiny holes in because I was screaming.’
‘The bald lady?’
‘Yes, the one with the special hat. She wouldn’t wear that unless she was bald.’
Her face contorted and she let loose a single, keening, tearless sob. I kneeled down and grasped her. She leaned against my chest and sucked her thumb industriously.
‘There were two women,’ I murmured to Mrs Berrow. ‘Between them they got the idea that Pamela’s mother was already aboard one of the buses. They didn’t stop to wonder how she could have got on without Pamela. They just took Pamela with them on the next bus. I was stupid, I didn’t ask them which hotel they were outside.’
Mrs Berrow patted my hand. ‘Nobody was very clever yesterday, dear.’
Pamela stopped sobbing as suddenly as she’d begun. She broke away from me and clasped her feet again. ‘Your toes you can hold all at once in one hand, look.’ Involuntarily she rolled onto her back, where she rocked like an egg. We all laughed a little.
‘Them knickers need a change.’ Mrs Berrow’s voice was gentle. ‘That much dust and dirt, I’m surprised you remember what colour they are. Come here, lovey.’ Pamela obeyed her instantly and Mrs Berrow pulled down the knickers. She frowned. ‘There’s something crackling in here.’
I put out my hand. ‘I’ll take them to wash.’
‘Wait.’ Her old nails dug along the waistband. ‘Something’s been sewn in the seam, look.’
‘Yes, they are crackly.’ Pamela nodded. ‘Mummy said it’s because they’re new. I can do handstands in them.’
My hand was still reaching out towards Mrs Berrow. ‘I’ll take them upstairs. I’ve got sewing scissors in my bedroom.’
Pa … P … Plymouth.
Small, hasty handwriting, in pencil on a piece of greaseproof paper, mostly smudged away. I folded it in my hand and looked out of the window, at a loss. Downstairs the telephone started ringing. I heard Selwyn answering.
Then I remembered the dress. It was nowhere to be seen. I searched under the bed, then turned down the sheet and blankets and found it, crumpled into a grubby ball. Just under the little collar was a square of fraying cotton tacked roughly onto the yoke. I pulled the tacking out and freed the label. The ink was bleeding into the fabric but the words were legible. Pamela Pickering, 34 Newton Road, Plymouth.
Selwyn had finished his call. He was coming up the stairs. ‘Ellen?’
‘In the bedroom, darling.’
The door opened. ‘That was Colonel Daventry. Another bus has arrived.’ Selwyn went into the dressing room. ‘Where’s my scarf? The fog’s vile out there, raw.’
‘Darling, I found these.’
He reappeared, his scarf in one hand. ‘What?’
I held out my hand. He clasped it so that the pieces of greaseproof and cotton were crushed in my fingers. His hands were thin, cool and dry. Had he been a heavier man, a man whose palms were even just occasionally damp, I could never have married him. He pulled his hand away and I let the labels slip from my grasp.
He uncrumpled them, studied them. ‘Thank goodness. We’ve got something to go on, now.’ He put the scraps down on the bed. ‘Listen, I’m off to the village hall. There’s a chance her mother’s come to Upton. She might have found out that Pamela was taken away on the bus.’ He knotted his scarf with a series of brisk tugs. ‘Imagine it. Dashing out of your hotel, frantically looking for your child, and somebody says, “I saw a little girl, madam. Two women took her away on the bus to Upton.” Good God.’
‘I don’t think we can imagine it.’ I turned to face him. ‘The ladies downstairs think she might have left from the bus stops outside the Crown Hotel.’
‘You need to find those two women who put her on the bus. Why don’t you go up to see Lady Brock? She took a great crowd. Didn’t you say they were in the last group? I’m almost sure they’re at Upton Hall, with Lady Brock.’ He spoke hurriedly, crossing the landing ahead of me. ‘We’ll try to ring the police. Though the Colonel tells me you can’t get through to Southampton for love nor money.’
‘We could ring Waltham.’ Our nearest country town, it had a big telephone exchange. ‘I’ll take Pamela with me to Lady Brock. Elizabeth’s got far too much to do.’
‘If you want.’ He gave me a careful, wide smile. ‘Clever of you to find those little clues,’ he said, and led the way downstairs.
Pamela was sitting on the lavatory with Elizabeth in attendance. ‘And after church they gave us a biscuit,’ she was saying, ‘with icing on it, and I bit mine so I could see the biscuit and then the icing on top like a layer of snow. Snow,’ she repeated, rounding her eyes.
Elizabeth turned to me. ‘They’re saying they’re off home.’ She jerked her head towards the sitting room. ‘And there’s not even any water in the taps.’
‘But we only got one biscuit,’ Pamela went on. ‘I kept a piece in my pocket for a long time but then it crumbled up. Can you wipe my bottom? My arms are still too short, Mummy says.’
A slap resounded behind the sitting-room door, followed by a girlish cry of pain and fury. ‘That’s for ladderin my stockings, you little cow,’ said an older, husky voice. ‘I should put you over my knee, never mind how big you are.’
‘The poor devils.’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘But I shan’t mind if they clear off.’
‘Ellen, can you wipe my bottom?’
‘You see the ladies out, Mrs Parr.’ Elizabeth was firm. ‘I’m used to bottoms, with my nieces.’
I stood aside as the file of women came out of the sitting room, the older ladies scrupulously combed and buttoned, the young women’s hair slicked penitently against their
scalps. As they passed they thanked me one by one. Phyllis Berrow was the last to leave. She peered over my shoulder at Pamela, who was coming out of the lavatory. ‘Any the wiser, dear?’
‘You were right. There was a piece of greaseproof. I couldn’t read it, but the label in the collar of her dress says Pickering. Of Newton Road, Plymouth.’
She mused. ‘Plymouth, indeed. Plymouth.’ She scrutinized me. ‘Lucky about that other label.’
I nodded. ‘Mrs Pickering was taking no chances.’
‘Would you, with a little sugar plum like that?’
‘I wouldn’t have let go of her hand.’
She smiled. ‘Sometimes you has to. Even if just for a minute. And you shouldn’t be punished for it. Take care, dear.’
‘Good luck, Mrs Berrow. Please come again.’ Which was absurd, as if she was an afternoon-tea visitor.
‘Yes,’ said Pamela. ‘Please come again.’
3
OUR BOYS TOOK a good look at Pamela, who held my hand tightly under their scrutiny. The two brothers, Jack and Donald, gave her an especially thorough once-over from beneath their fringes. Hawley, being older, was more discreet.
‘Why’s she still here?’ Donald asked me.
‘I’m waiting for Mummy,’ Pamela told him.
Hawley, sharp as a tack, held my gaze.
‘Take your cousins to school, Hawley, please.’
I washed Pamela’s knickers and dress and hung them over the range. She watched me while I rummaged in the chest in the attic. I pulled out a smock my old friend Lucy Horne had given me when I was waiting for the evacuees, before I knew they were all to be boys. The smock was beautifully made by old Mrs Horne, Lucy’s grandmother: I could easily picture Lucy in it, a small, pale, dark-eyed child. I would have liked to take Pamela to the Hornes’ cottage, show them the beneficiary of the smock, but this was unlikely to happen. For reasons I had yet to discover, Lucy hadn’t spoken to me for almost a year.
I sighed. There was nothing I could do about Lucy, especially today. I started to pull the smock over Pamela’s head.
‘This is brushed cotton, Pamela. It’ll keep the warmth next to your body.’
Pamela shut her eyes, and when she opened them again she was a small shepherdess, robed to the ankles. I gave her long socks and my smallest pair of drawers.
‘These are giant’s knickers!’
I pulled the elastic through a gap in the waistband and knotted it at her waist, or rather, the completely circular middle of her little body. ‘They’re like breeches for you.’
She beamed. ‘Mummy will laugh.’
‘Yes, she will. But we might not see her today. Mr Parr’s going to find out where she is. But we might have to wait another day or so.’
The smile vanished. ‘That’s not what the bus ladies said.’ Her eyes glistened. ‘I don’t know why she doesn’t come.’
I kneeled down and took her hands in mine.
‘Those ladies,’ I said, ‘are good ladies. They thought it would be an excellent idea for you to get on the bus, because it’s safe here for children. Very safe. Mummy’s safe too.’ My eyelids fluttered, I couldn’t help it.
She gave a small cry and stepped from foot to foot but she didn’t pull away from me. I let my thumbs stroke the soft backs of her hands. Her knuckles were dimples. ‘They were naughty.’ She sniffed. ‘They shouldn’t have said “We’ll find Mummy”, because they haven’t. Mummy was shouting at the candle man all night, you know.’
Shouting at the candle man.
‘Did you stay in the hotel just one night, darling?’
‘That’s what you do in hotels.’ She explained it to me. ‘You stay all night. They give you soft pillows. We took the pillows to the cellar when the raid started. I was comfy in the cellar but Mummy wasn’t.’
Her voice was so clear.
‘You don’t know what the hotel was called?’
‘No. But Mummy can tell you when she comes.’
I leaned back on my heels. ‘I thought we’d go and visit those bus ladies. They’re staying in an interesting house called Upton Hall. They have an enormous vegetable plot.’
Pamela looked unconvinced.
‘And a suit of armour. Like knights wear.’
That was more like it.
She had no coat, so I got a clean flour sack and pulled holes in the seams for head and arms. It did very well. I lifted her onto the bicycle rack and she clung to the saddle, face set.
‘Is it all right, Pamela?’
‘The bicycle is digging my bottom.’
I lifted her down again, glancing somewhat shamefully at the rack. No one could sit on those black bars. I went and got my old sheepskin from where it lay, somewhat yellowed, on the bedroom floor by my dressing table. Rolled up and tied tightly, it was perfect padding. Pamela screamed with delight as I pushed down hard on the pedal and we sailed off.
‘Ow, ow! You’re sitting on my fingers!’
‘Hold my waist, like I said. Arms round my middle.’
Selwyn’s fog had cleared and the sky was a pale, uncertain blue marked across with high, motionless bars of pearl-grey cloud. I heard a tinny rattle. ‘Take your feet away from the wheels, Pamela Pickering.’
‘How did you know my name?’
‘Mummy wrote it in your clothes.’
‘Well I never.’ She gave a breathless, adult little laugh.
We crossed the main road. The lane wound on, ruttier now. She was lighter than a quarter of grain, if more mobile. The hedges grew higher: nobody had cut them, and soon they’d be as tall as they had been when I was a child, and walked these lanes alone with one wet foot, my left foot. ‘I had a hole in my shoe when I was young, you know.’
‘Didn’t your mummy mend it?’
‘She didn’t know how.’
We came to the Absaloms. A row of cottages sunk into the damp of the lane. Mother and I had lived at Number One. It was derelict now, and should have no power to hurt me, but I never came by here if I could help it. Only today, with the child, because it was the quickest route to the Hall. ‘See those walls? They’re called the Absaloms. They were cottages once. I used to live in the end one.’
‘It’s got no roof!’
‘It did have. The others didn’t. They were already ruins.’
‘Can we play in those ruins?’ Pamela said.
‘Not today.’
I dismounted at the beginning of the drive to the Hall. The potholes were now deadly. It was hard skirting them with Pamela on the back of the bicycle. I whistled under the trees to keep our spirits up, and eventually we reached the old dairy which was alive with the chip of metal on stone.
‘Hello, young’un,’ said a familiar sunburnt face of forty or thereabouts, quizzing us through a rough new gap in the bricks. It was William Kennet, who gardened for Lady Brock. When he wasn’t turning over the grounds to food crops he was busy with Home Guard duties – in this case, fitting the old dairy out with gunsights. So many things, these days, had to be seen to be believed.
‘Morning, Ellen,’ he said. ‘Who’ve you got there?’
‘Morning, Mr Kennet. Sergeant Kennet, I beg your pardon. This is a little girl from Southampton.’ I spoke meaningfully, and he gave a slow nod. ‘Say hello, Pamela!’ I used my brightest tone.
Pamela waved from her perch but said nothing. Her face was pinched. I was hungry, so I knew she must be too.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked William.
‘Giving this old wall a few holes,’ he told her. ‘To make a nice breeze in the dairy.’
‘It must be awfully difficult with that bad hand.’
‘Oh Pamela, that’s not polite.’
William smiled, held out the hand to her. ‘Look, it holds a chisel right well. So I can hammer away with my hammer.’ He made a claw, to show her. His thumb and finger were huge beside hers, calloused and bent from overuse. Behind the finger was a single nub of a third finger, and then nothing. What remained of the palm and back of the hand w
as bound by scar tissue, now silvered and braided. It was a creation of a shell, during the Great War, at the Battle of Messines. He was a copper-beater before that shell screeched over, a high craftsman, but I never knew him as such. To me he was a gardener, with a potting shed that was a refuge throughout my later childhood, a charcoal stove that was the only warm thing in my life.
Pamela, awed, was mimicking him, trying to make her own claw, her small perfect little forefinger sliding off the soft top of her thumb. ‘Mummy’s still in Southampton,’ she confided to him. ‘But she’s coming to fetch me this afternoon. Do you know, we saw a house with no roof!’
‘Did you now?’ He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘That’s not a lot of use, is it? A house with no roof. Now, Upton Hall certainly has a roof, and a tower too. Wait till you see it.’ He glanced at the bicycle. ‘I’m glad you found a use for that old sheepskin.’
‘It’s not old. It’s lovely. I used to sleep on it when I was tiny.’
‘I know.’ He gave me his square grin. ‘It was me that gave it you, when you were newborn.’
‘Oh, William, how very kind!’ I was astonished. ‘I never knew! I would have thanked you for it long since!’
He shrugged, still smiling. ‘It was a cold winter, and I had it to spare. And your ma and pa thanked me on your behalf, very civilly.’
‘I keep forgetting that you worked for my father.’
‘You were too young to remember. And I wouldn’t call it work. More like a day here and there.’ Mr Kennet tipped his hat with the remains of his right hand. ‘Now, I can’t linger, my dear. Come and have a cuppa when you get time.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said, wondering when I would ever get time.
Lady Brock opened her front door, boots spattered and mackintosh hemmed with mud.
‘Good morning, Ellen. How do you like our defences? Have a care, William Kennet will soon be asking you for the password of the day.’ She came down the steps. ‘I saw you, skirting the quagmires. Sometimes I’m glad Michael’s no longer with us, you know. He wouldn’t have minded the ploughing –’ she indicated, with a wide sweep of her arm, the great pathwayed allotment of ragged, nutritious brassicas and rich, black potato furrows which had replaced her lawns and rose garden ‘– but he’d have loathed the drive. We only needed a few ruts for him to say it looked like bloody St Eloi.’ She turned to Pamela. ‘I do beg your pardon, dear, for my foul language.’
We Must Be Brave Page 3