Missing Person

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘No, she’s saving it up until you both go indoors,’ said Rosie, sitting down again. ‘She said you’re both disgraceful music hall comics, and then she asked Mummy what there was to laugh about. Mummy said she wasn’t laughing, she was having a fit about Nana being married to one of the comics and herself to the other. She said she and Nana just had to live with it, that it was the sort of cross lots of wives had to bear. Nana said just wait till I see the pair of them. Oh, lor’, Daddy, I think you and Grandpa are really going to catch it. You’ll be safest if you stay out here all night.’

  ‘Something has to be done,’ said Mr Finch.

  ‘Right, you’re the patrol leader, Rosie,’ said Boots. ‘Sneak up to our rooms, get hold of a fairly decent pair of trousers for each of us, then sneak back here with them.’

  ‘Got you, Daddy,’ said Rosie, and away she went. She reappeared from around the side of the house after a while, carrying two pairs of trousers. Boots and Mr Finch retired to the shed, took off their relics and put on the presentable replacements. They came out and gave the relics to Rosie, who promised to hide them.

  ‘They’re old and cherished friends of ours,’ said Mr Finch.

  ‘Yes, I know, Grandpa,’ said Rosie, and away she went again, a girl of quicksilver. When she reappeared once more, she looked victorious.

  ‘They’re out of Nana’s reach?’ said Boots.

  ‘Oh, not half,’ said Rosie, ‘and I don’t suppose she’ll burn them now, in any case. I cut them up with Mummy’s dressmaking scissors and put them in the dustbin. D’you think that was a good burial for old and cherished friends?’

  ‘Say that again,’ said Boots, coming to his feet.

  ‘Well, they were a bit past it – oh, crikey, is that you looking like thunder and lightning? Oh, help.’ Rosie ran, Boots in pursuit. Over the lawn she ran, and around the kitchen garden, little shrieks escaping. Boots caught her as she travelled over the lawn again. She swung round, flushed and laughing.

  ‘Minx, you plotted that with your Nana,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know, Daddy. Well, Nana has to win sometimes.’ Boots laughed and shook his head at her. Rosie impulsively hugged him, thinking as she often did that her happiest moments were always those she shared with her adoptive father.

  ‘Anything else up your sleeve?’ asked Boots.

  ‘No, nothing,’ she said, ‘except you owe me seven-and-six for my money-box.’

  From the open kitchen door, Tim called.

  ‘Someone wants you on the phone, Grandpa.’

  ‘Who is it, Tim?’ asked Mr Finch, getting to his feet.

  ‘A man,’ said Tim, and Mr Finch entered the house, Sunday’s phone call on his mind. In the hall, he picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘George here, Edwin.’

  ‘Problems?’ said Mr Finch. George Duncan was a close colleague.

  ‘Not really. The file you took home with you to study, can I rely on your bringing it back tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course. I intended to, in any case.’

  ‘Good. Sorry to have bothered you at home, old man.’

  ‘No bother,’ said Mr Finch, and said goodbye. The doorbell rang. He answered it. General Sir Henry Simms, very military-looking with his spruce iron-grey moustache and his straight back, smiled at him. Still on the active list at the age of fifty-six, his looks were deceptive at first glance. He was no old-fashioned, hidebound soldier. He was a very reasonable and percipient one, with a dry sense of humour. He’d become a family friend, mainly because of his great liking for Boots, to whom his daughter Polly was incurably attached.

  ‘Good evening, Edwin,’ he said, ‘I rang Boots earlier about coming over.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr Finch. ‘Come in and have a light ale with us in the garden.’

  ‘Lead me to it,’ said Sir Henry, and followed Mr Finch through the house to the garden. Passing through the kitchen, he said hello to Emily.

  ‘Oh, pleased to see you, Sir Henry,’ said Emily, just a little flustered, despite being a woman who was rarely like that. But she sometimes found it difficult to believe this distinguished man had actually become a family friend. He and Lady Simms had even been to Sunday tea, with their daughter Polly, and Sir Henry and Polly had both joined in the garden cricket. Chinese Lady frequently said she just didn’t know how it had come about, it wasn’t any of her doing, Boots had sprung it on her some months after the wedding of Sammy and Susie, and only a few days after Polly Simms had come back from darkest Africa. Kenya, said Mr Finch. It’s all darkest Africa to me, said Chinese Lady. Boots just casually mentioned he’d invited them, which put her into the kind of state that shouldn’t be allowed. That only oldest son of mine, she said, I wouldn’t be surprised if he came home one day to say he could raise the dead, then ask if there was any tea in the pot.

  Boots, standing beside the garden table when Mr Finch appeared with Sir Henry, moved to greet the General. Rosie was at her father’s elbow.

  ‘Not interrupting anything, am I, Boots?’ said Sir Henry, shaking his hand.

  ‘Only a discussion with Rosie on how I came to owe her seven-and-six,’ said Boots.

  ‘How are you, Rosie?’ asked Sir Henry genially.

  ‘Oh, one up on Daddy, I can tell you that, Sir Henry,’ said Rosie, who never lost any of her composure, however exalted the company. She was very much like Boots in that respect, even though she wasn’t his natural daughter. She didn’t question how it was that he’d come to be a friend of the aristocratic Sir Henry when he’d only been a sergeant during the war. It simply seemed something that had happened. Sir Henry and his daughter Polly had actually attended her fifteenth birthday party a few weeks ago. Lady Simms, Polly’s step-mother, would have been there too if she hadn’t had to go up to Yorkshire to visit her sick father. Sir Henry and Polly joined in the garden cricket and later, after tea, in all the compulsory party games, when Polly discovered what a yell it was to participate in Forfeits as devised by Boots. She demanded that Chinese Lady lock him up, and Chinese Lady said she’d given up trying to make a gentleman of her eldest son. Boots said he’d always preferred to be a common or garden bloke. I’m a leg man myself, said Uncle Sammy. Same thing, said Boots. Count me in, said Uncle Tommy. Chinese Lady said you’re all reprobates, and Sir Henry said he was one himself. Rosie thought him a very nice man. He’d come this evening to see Boots about something.

  ‘Rosie,’ said Boots, ‘would you like to fetch another bottle of ale and a glass?’

  ‘Love to,’ said Rosie, ‘and I’ll do it for nothing.’ Off she went, and the three men sat down. Sir Henry drew a large folded brown envelope from his jacket pocket and passed it to Boots.

  ‘It needs filling in, Boots, and signing,’ he said. ‘If you’ll then let me have it back in a day or two, I’ll see it arrives on the right desk accompanied by a recommendation from me.’

  Boots drew out a comprehensive form relating to enlistment in Officers’ Reserve. Sir Henry had been after Boots for years, on the grounds that there would be another war with Germany sometime during the Thirties, and Boots had finally agreed to apply. He’d been given to understand that if such a war did break out, he would probably take command of a training camp for recruits. However, what Sir Henry actually had in mind for him was a position on his staff, for Sir Henry, providing he was still active, was intent on securing command of a corps.

  Boots skimmed through the four-page form, noting the information he had to supply.

  ‘Frightening?’ smiled Mr Finch, who shared Sir Henry’s expectations of another war, even though few other people did; not after the carnage of the Great War. Mr Finch knew, however, that it was a consideration in the minds of certain elite German military men, as it was in the ambitions of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party, now known as the Nazi Party.

  ‘Not frightening, no,’ said Boots. ‘Challenging.’ He put the form back in the envelope as Rosie reappeared with a fresh bottle of ale and a tumbler.
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br />   ‘What’s that, Daddy?’ she asked.

  ‘Who’s asking questions?’ smiled Boots, who would choose the time to tell his family.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Daddy, nosy me. Shall I go and have ladies’ talk with Mummy and Nana?’

  ‘You can still stay and have men’s talk with us,’ said Boots.

  ‘Love to,’ said Rosie, ‘I’ll go and stick on a moustache. Oh, Mummy’s putting Tim to bed and wants us to go up and say goodnight to him first. There, Sir Henry.’ She unscrewed the stopper of the bottle.

  ‘Thank you, Rosie,’ said Sir Henry, understanding why Polly adored this girl.

  ‘Will you excuse me while I go with Daddy?’ asked Rosie, and off she went with Boots. When they reached the stairs, she said, ‘Love you, Daddy, so I’m not charging you for opening Sir Henry’s bottle of beer.’

  ‘Well, love like that, kitten, does wonders for my pocket,’ said Boots.

  Dan Rogers, who had somehow found himself and his daughters trapped by gossipy Mrs Higgins, managed to eventually break free. Alice Higgins had been a bit desolate about her fractured ankle, heavily encased in plaster. It was making her housebound. But she’d suggested to Dan that he could ask Cassie Ford, that funny but likeable friend of Freddy Brown. Cassie was still waiting to be apprenticed to a florist. Dan, who knew Freddy and Cassie, said yes, he’d ask Cassie if she’d stand in for Alice, and he knocked on the Brown family’s door after leaving Mrs Higgins talking to thin air. Cassie, however, wasn’t with the Browns, Freddy had taken her to the pictures, saying she needed a change from her potty parrot. Dan said he’d call at Cassie’s house sometime tomorrow. Mrs Brown wished him luck, saying Cassie was a very capable girl and did a lot of housework for her widower dad every day. She’d probably be happy to look after Bubbles and Penny-Farving until Alice was back on her feet. It’s a very trying time for you, Mr Rogers, she said, with your wife away with a travelling circus. She thought it was also disgracefully hard on a husband and father, but didn’t say so. Mrs Brown, that most agreeable woman, rarely let words of criticism escape her lips, and she wouldn’t have upset Mr Rogers for the world, him being such a happy-go-lucky man.

  Tilly heard the girls enter the house with their father, at a time when she thought they should have long been put to bed. But no, she wasn’t going to interfere, and certainly she wasn’t going to offer to put the girls to bed herself. Mind your own business, that’s what you’ve got to do, Tilly Thomas, she thought. On the other hand, she might just do him a good turn by keeping on at him about getting married to the girls’ mother. That would be a good turn for the girls as well. Otherwise they’d grow up illegitimate, which would be downright shocking.

  She heard him come up with the girls a little later, the girls noisy. And they were noisier still when they were in bed, giving little shrieks of laughter at things their dad was saying. They’d never get to sleep if he didn’t act sensible with them. Eventually, however, she heard him say goodnight to them. Then he paused on the landing to call to her.

  ‘Everything all right, Tilly?’

  Her door was ajar.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ she called back, and got up and closed the door, just in case he took it on himself to come in.

  ‘Hope you sleep well tonight,’ he called, and went downstairs.

  Tilly resumed her work. Twilight turned to dusk and she lit the gas mantle. Sitting down again, she noticed light showing at the windows of the kitchen next door. She could see the windows over the yard wall. A man appeared and drew the curtains.

  Tilly resumed work at her sewing-machine.

  Bubbles and Penny-Farving went soundly to sleep.

  Dan made himself a pot of tea and listened to his new wireless set. He thought about his girls and their wandering mother.

  I suppose I ought to get married or I’ll give my kids a bad name. Still, we’re happy as we are, and their mum chucks things about. She’s taught herself to have an Hungarian temperament. Silly woman. But I’m daft meself. It was her spangles and tights that did it. What legs.

  He grinned at the wireless set.

  Dan Rogers really was a happy-go-lucky bloke.

  The woman known as Mrs Agnes Harper woke up in the night, in the bedroom that lay between the kitchen and the parlour. What had woken her? Whispers and rustles. Where from? Everywhere, or were they mostly from the kitchen? She thought they were, except it wasn’t as if she was sleeping just outside the kitchen door. It couldn’t be Percy. Once his hood was on he never made a sound.

  It was one of the men, of course, or both of them. What had they come downstairs for? You couldn’t always tell with their kind, secretive and close. They’d only confided so much to her, the rest they were keeping to themselves. But they were clever all right, coming here to use this house of all places, and she’d been willing to help.

  And why shouldn’t she? She was the daughter of a German immigrant and an East End cockney woman. Her father, a cobbler, had been building up a modest little business doing boot and shoe repairs until the war came along. Not long after it broke out, an anti-German mob smashed up his little shop in Shoreditch and left him lying near to death before the police arrived. He managed to stay alive, but was still a bit of a cripple. She’d never forgive that mob.

  More whispers and rustles. Hold on, Agnes me girl, is it one of the men shuffling about and trying to make up his mind about slipping into bed with her? They had good bodies, both of them, and one of them might be thinking of helping himself to what he fancied. Well, come on, then. Wait a tick, it might be both of them shuffling about and whispering who’s going to have first go. I’m not having that, I don’t mind one of them, but two would make me look like a tart from Whitechapel.

  She slipped from the bed, the lino cool beneath her feet, and in her flannel nightgown she quietly opened her bedroom door. The darkness of the passage confronted her, and the rustles reached her ears more clearly. Her body turned a little cold, but she felt her way to the kitchen and pushed the door open. The whispers and rustles fled into the darkness, and the silence that followed seemed to offer a ghostly hello to her. She knew then that no-one was there. No-one human. Icy fingers ran down her back.

  Oh, did yer know it’s haunted?

  The remembered words of that girl slid into her mind, and she rushed blindly back to her room and into her bed, pulling the sheet and blanket up over her head. It took her some time to get to sleep again. When she next woke, light was streaming in, lovely light that made her laugh at her imaginings, the kind a kid could suffer in night darkness.

  ‘Yer daft woman,’ she said to the ceiling.

  She heard the men about upstairs. They’d have breakfast, then go out and not come back until evening, much as if they’d been at work all day.

  They’d made a good job of fixing a blind to the upstairs back window.

  Chapter Seven

  THEY WERE UP, Dan Rogers and his angels, and so was Tilly. She was having breakfast, a cheap but satisfying meal of a poached egg on toast, to be followed by an apple. Down below were the sounds of Bubbles and Penny-Farving larking about over their own breakfast.

  Tilly wondered if the carefree father had made arrangements for anyone to come in and look after the girls for the day.

  She heard him then, coming up the stairs, his footsteps quick.

  ‘Tilly, you there?’

  The enquiry was followed by a knock on her door.

  ‘All right, come in,’ she called, and Dan came in, his blue serge suit fairly commonplace, but fitting him well. Dan kept his overalls at his place of work.

  ‘Mornin’, Tilly,’ he said cheerfully. She eyed him suspiciously.

  ‘What’re you after, Mr Rogers?’

  ‘Call me Dan.’

  ‘What’re you after, Mr Dan Rogers?’

  ‘Just thought I’d let you know I’m off to me job now,’ smiled Dan.

  ‘Good,’ said Tilly, ‘it’s nice to know you’re responsible enough to ’ave a job. Well, don’t let me keep you. Mi
nd, while you’re at work do some thinkin’ about that woman who thinks she’s ’Ungarian. You owe it to them young gels to drag ’er off ’er tightrope and to turn ’er into a proper mother.’

  ‘All right, love, I’ll—’

  ‘Don’t call me love,’ said Tilly, who was looking a treat. The splendid top half of her figure was wrapped up in a clinging yellow jumper. ‘I don’t want any familiarity.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Dan. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d let you know I’ve been talkin’ a bit of turkey to Bubbles and Penny-Farvin’. They know they’re not to go out, except in the back yard, which saves me havin’ to say a prayer for them. They’ll stay indoors, bless ’em, so I’m relieved I don’t have to ask you to look after them. Still, if you could just listen out for them in case one of them falls down the stairs or gets her head stuck between the banister rails, I’d be much obliged. That’s all, then, have to go now. Thanks, Tilly, I’ll—’

  ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ said Tilly, getting up to put herself between him and a quick sneaky departure, ‘you’re not leavin’ me landed with the same responsibilities like yesterday.’

  ‘It’s only if one of them looks like she might break a leg—’

  ‘Nothing doin’,’ said Tilly.

  ‘All right, understood,’ said Dan, and slipped by her in a flash. Down he went and out of the house, and Tilly was left fuming again.

  The offices of Adams Enterprises Ltd, situated on the first and second floors above their shop a little way from Camberwell Green, were fully staffed. There were three companies, the affairs of Adams Fashions and Adams Scrap Metal being looked after by the parent company, Adams Enterprises. Boots, general manager, held the administrative reins securely and competently, while Sammy provided the driving force that ensured a profitable turnover year after year. That in turn ensured all the Adams’ families were comfortably off.

  Sammy was currently in favourable consideration of an offer for Adams Scrap Metal Ltd. He was in Boots’s office, giving his eldest brother the good news. The offer had come from Johnson and Company Ltd, a rival firm well-known in the trade. Boots, however, wasn’t too sure it was good news, and said so.