Missing From Home

by Mary Burchell

  “There was a street accident,” the girl began reluctantly. Then once more the words came tumbling out, as though, once she had begun to speak, she could keep nothing back. “She went out of here with the two pounds in her hand, and almost immediately I heard car-brakes screaming. The way they do when someone’s avoiding an accident, or not avoiding it. I went to the door and there was a crowd round a car at the crossing over there, and in a minute there was an ambulance. And when the people moved aside I saw there was a red beret in the road. She’d been wearing a red beret.”

  “Oh—Pat,” said Clare in an agonised whisper, and she groped for her husband’s hand and held it.

  “Then someone slammed the ambulance door,” the girl went on, “and it drove away, and the crowd dispersed. I asked someone who came past what had happened, and he said it was a young girl who was knocked down. And I—I guessed she wouldn’t come back for her bracelet.”

  “But she might have when she recovered,” cried the optimistic Marilyn.

  “No.” The girl hesitated again and then said flatly, “The man said she was a goner.”

  “A—a goner?” repeated Marilyn. “You mean she was—”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence. But the small moan from her mother did that for her.

  “It was kind of mean to take the bracelet,” the girl conceded. “And unlucky, I guess. But I wanted it,” she added, as though that constituted a reason for her conduct, though perhaps not a very good one.

  “Wait a minute—wait a minute—” Suddenly the police sergeant’s voice broke in, subtly comforting in its matter-of-fact tones. “Your informant wasn’t quite right about that, young woman.” He studied a page of his notebook. “There’s been no fatal accident reported in this district in the past week. That young lady’s still alive, in one of the local hospitals, and she’ll be coming for that bracelet one of these days. You’d better fetch it back, and be more careful of other people’s property in future. You nearly put yourself on the wrong side of the law that time.”

  “Oh, never mind the bracelet!” cried Clare. “It’s Pat that matters. Pat—ill in hospital and alone. Where is she most likely to be? We must go there now. Oh, Greg—” she turned to her husband—“it—it—”

  “Yes, it looks like the end of the search,” he agreed, putting a strong, loving arm round her. “Keep up your spirits, darling. She may not even be very badly hurt.”

  “The man said—” began the girl offendedly. But no one was listening to her. They crowded out of the shop, even the sergeant infected by a certain degree of excitement by now, and piled into the two cars.

  “She may have given her name as Miss Foster,” Marilyn remembered to say. “That was the name she used while—while—” Her voice tailed off as the sergeant’s glance rested on her.

  “While you two were playing the fool, you mean, miss,” he suggested grimly.

  “Yes,” agreed Marilyn, with quite unwonted humility. But her morale was indescribably restored when she glanced contritely at her father and received in return the very faintest suggestion of a wink.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and pressed hard against his arm as she slipped into her seat once more between him and her mother.

  At the first hospital enquiries for both Miss Collamore and Miss Foster yielded no result at all. But at the second one the sergeant who, as the one in authority, had undertaken the enquiries, came back to the waiting family and said,

  “I think we’ve got her this time. They have a young girl in recovery unit not yet identified. Regained consciousness only this morning and either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer questions. No handbag and nothing on her to establish identity.”

  “That’s Pat!” they cried in relieved chorus. And Clare added anxiously, “Is she badly hurt?”

  “Fractured skull, but she’s now off the danger list,” replied the sergeant, with such beautiful brevity and exactness that Clare very nearly embraced him.

  After a short telephone conversation between the clerk at the enquiry desk and the sister of the ward concerned, the family were told they could go and see the unidentified patient.

  “I’ll wait here, sir,” the sergeant told Greg. “But perhaps you’d slip down and let me know if we’ve got the right young lady, then I’ll get back to the office and get on with some other things. We can tie up any odd ends later.”

  “Yes, indeed!” Greg looked for a moment as though he thought perhaps he should apologise in some way for his two daughters and the trouble they had caused. But the sergeant had already turned away, his attention obviously reaching ahead to another of his manifold and various duties. So Greg said nothing, but just hurried after Clare and Marilyn into the waiting lift.

  They all looked a trifle strained and anxious by the time they had traversed a long, polished corridor and reached a door which bore the admonition, in big letters, “Silence. No Admittance.” But, even as they paused, a nurse came out of a nearby room and said, “Are you Mr. and Mrs. Collamore?”

  They nodded, Marilyn nodding too, although apparently she didn’t count. Then the nurse opened the door and they stepped into a high, quiet, clinically white room.

  And there, lying very still in her hospital bed, was Pat.

  “Darling—” Clare went forward, her hands out to touch, though very gently, the child who had seemed so completely out of reach for so cruelly long.

  There was a slight flutter of the heavy eyelids. Then Pat opened her eyes, gazed with incredulous joy at her mother, looked beyond her at her breathlessly waiting father, and seemed quite unable to control the two big tears which then rolled down her cheeks.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart.” Clare kissed her fondly and took one of the slack hands in hers. “Don’t worry about anything now. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “I expect she’d like to have it a bit more specific than that, Mother,” declared Marilyn, coming forward. And, standing beside her sister’s bed, speaking astringently if affectionately, she stated categorically,

  “We shouldn’t have done what we did, Pat, but it’s all explained and forgiven now. And anyway, it worked. At least—” her confidence suddenly wavered and she glanced back at her father.

  “It worked,” he agreed gravely.

  “Well, there you are, you see!” Smiling, Marilyn turned back to her sister. “It worked. Mother and Dad have come together again, and now you only have to get well. And we’ll even be able to get your bracelet back, so don’t cry any more.”

  Whatever cloud still dimmed Pat’s immediate powers of grasping a complicated situation, it was obvious that her sister’s forthright speech had dispelled most of her worries. A tremulous smile flitted across her face and, with a sort of feeble eagerness, she held out her free hand to her father.

  “Darling child—” He came forward and, taking the hand, put it affectionately against his cheek. “Everything’s all right. We’re together again.”

  “The whole family,” stated Marilyn, with a gusty sigh of satisfaction, “is together again.”

  “We’re sorry—for the trouble—and anxiety,” whispered Pat.

  “We’re all sorry for one thing or another, dear,” her father said, bending down to kiss her. “But tomorrow is another day, and maybe we’re all a little wiser than we were.”

  “I’m afraid she’s had enough excitement for the moment.” The nurse, who had been a distant but interested spectator of all this, rustled forward now. “Perhaps her mother might stay with her for a while. But, if you don’t mind, I’m going to turn you other two out now.”

  Marilyn and her father looked meekly ready to be turned out.

  “I’ll see the sergeant and then wait downstairs for you,” Greg told his wife. “Don’t hurry things.”

  “I might be quite a while,” she warned him.

  “Do you think I mind how long I wait for you now?” he said softly, and they exchanged the kind of glance which made the years roll back to the lovely loving days when they had
understood each other’s every look and word.

  “I’ll wait too,” Marilyn declared. Then a thoughtful expression came into her eyes, as though a good idea had presented itself. “Or maybe—I’ll do something else.”

  No one pressed her to be more specific. So she and her father kissed Pat and took their leave, and on the long walk back to the reception desk and the waiting sergeant, Marilyn said diffidently,

  “I didn’t bounce you and Mother into a final reconciliation, did I? I mean, you hadn’t actually said anything to me about it. But I did think, from the way you both looked—”

  “Some things don’t need putting into words, Mari.”

  “To the person most concerned they do,” Marilyn asserted quickly. “To Mother, for instance. I don’t think you should leave her in the slightest doubt that—”

  “I have not left her in the slightest doubt.” Her father’s smile was dry but not unkindly. “The family reconciliation is complete.”

  “O-oh,” said Marilyn. And slowly the delicious realisation began to dawn upon her that perhaps her parents could manage their own affaire without any intervention from her.

  The sergeant offered brief but sincere congratulations on the news that Pat had been found, and even smiled a trifle sourly when Marilyn added generously, “Thanks to you, really, of course.”

  “Well, miss, you insisted on taking a hand too, didn’t you?” he observed.

  “Only to quicken things up, as you might say,” Marilyn insisted.

  “Just so,” agreed the sergeant. And then, after a word or two more with Greg, he went away. At which point Marilyn dived into her handbag, came up with what seemed to be a rather unsatisfactory result and observed,

  “I’d like to make a phone call, but I haven’t any change.”

  Her father obligingly remedied this situation, and Marilyn hurried to a call-box, dialled rapidly, listened to the chink of coins falling and gasped with relief and satisfaction when an extremely indifferent voice said, “Morgan & Petersfield.”

  “Is Mr. Penrose still there, please?”

  “It’s after hours,” was the unpromising reply. “Most people have gone home and—”

  “Yes, I know. But he’s probably working late. He was out most of the afternoon and had some work to finish. Will you enquire, please?”

  Grudging enquiries were evidently made. Then Jerry’s voice—deep and strangely satisfying to the ear—said, “Yes? Penrose here.”

  “Jerry! It’s Marilyn. We’ve found her! She’s in hospital after a street accident.—No, not very seriously hurt, but she was knocked out, and when she came round this morning she either couldn’t or wouldn’t give any account of herself. Everything’s all right, though. Mother’s with her now, and Dad’s waiting at the hospital for Mother. They’ve made it up. I guess they’ll go out afterwards and have a quiet celebration together.”

  “And you?” enquired Jerry’s voice. “Where are you? And what are you going to do with your evening?”

  “I’m at the hospital too. But I shan’t stay on. I reckon Mother and Dad ought to have this evening to themselves. I—hadn’t thought of doing anything special. I’ll just go home, I expect.”

  “You’d better come out with me. I’m a bit low in funds, after the holidays, until my end-of-the-month cheque comes in, but I can stand us a coffee-bar sort of meal, and it’s a nice evening for a walk through the Park.”

  “I could pay my own share,” Marilyn offered. But he said,

  “No, that isn’t necessary. I’ll get on the blower to my mother and tell her I’ll be late. Meet me in half an hour’s time under the clock at Charing Cross Station.”

  “I’ll be there!” she cried joyously. And then, as unmistakable sounds indicated that she had had her money’s worth and the line had gone dead, she replaced the receiver and rushed back to her father.

  “Is it all right? I’m going out with Jerry Penrose this evening.”

  “Since when did you ask my permission to go out on any evening?” enquired her father. But he looked as though he were oddly flattered by the query.

  “You haven’t been there to ask,” Marilyn reminded him a trifle pertly. “But if you’re going to be around in the future, I might ask you sometimes.” And suddenly she dropped a cheeky but affectionate kiss upon his cheek.

  “Yes, ask me sometimes.” He returned her kiss with a smile. “I’d like that. It makes me feel like a real parent again. With Jerry Penrose, you say? Yes, that will be all right. But don’t be late. I expect your mother will be jumpy about both you girls for some while. She’s going to need a lot of—of tenderness and consideration from all of us.”

  “Yes, I know. I won’t be late,” Marilyn promised virtuously. And, with a daughterly—almost protective—pat on her father’s shoulder, she smiled and left him to wait for the lost love he had rediscovered.

  With an incredibly lightened heart she went out into the early evening sunshine. It was still the rush-hour, and she had to wait for a bus and then stand for most of the journey. But the smile that hovered happily round her lips suggested there was no easier nor more delightful form of travel.

  She was so happy that she could have embraced everyone. Her father was restored to the family circle. Her mother looked happier than she had for years. And Pat had been found. No wonder the world seemed a wonderful place!

  But, over and above all that, a lovely, indefinable sense of radiant well-being permeated every bit of her. She could not have given a name to it. She thought perhaps it was just the sense of infinite relief after so much anxiety and distress. But whatever it was, it carried her on golden wings through the crowded rush-hour and right into the gloomy cavern of Charing Cross Station.

  She stood there for a moment, half confused by the crowds of people hurrying for their trains. And then she saw Jerry, waiting there for her, and suddenly she knew why it was that she was happy, happy, happy beyond expression.

  “Jerry—” she ran to him with outstretched hands—“Jerry, I’m here!”

  He caught her hands in his and for a moment they just stood smiling at each other without a word. They were unaware of the crowds that were milling round them, for a timeless, golden vacuum enclosed them in glorious isolation.

  Most of the people who passed were too busy or worried or absorbed to notice them either. But just one or two of them glanced at those radiant young faces and smiled. And as they went on their way it seemed to them too that perhaps the world was not such a bad place, after all.