‘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.’