We crowded into my hall and removed our coats. I sloughed off my waders and hurried upstairs, returning with two thick blankets, long socks, a towelling dressing gown. The girl obediently removed her wet shoes, trousers and socks. I was glad to see she had a woollen polo-neck jumper. I stoked the sitting-room fire and put coal in the kitchen range. There was no electricity, as I had feared, but we would do well enough without.
The girl’s mother stood clutching her handbag. ‘Shouldn’t we put her in a bath?’
This truculent tone, I thought, must be her natural manner of speaking. ‘No.’ I spoke tersely, pumping the bellows until the logs in the grate flared into life. I pulled my small armchair close to the fireplace. ‘Come here … what is your name, dear?’
Now swathed in my robe and socks, she stepped forward and sat where I bid her, and I folded the blankets around her. She was still wearing her school beret. ‘Penny,’ she whispered.
‘Well now, Penny, don’t worry. This is a watermill, and I know what to do when people get cold and wet. Wrap up and sit near the heat. You’ll feel better in a jiffy, especially with a hot drink inside you. It won’t be long until the kettle boils.’ I turned to her mother. ‘I have a solid-fuel range. It’s a boon at times like this. I expect you’d like a cup of tea as well, Mrs …’
‘Lacey. Veronica Lacey.’ The mention of tea seemed to mollify her somewhat. ‘Awfully decent of you. This whole thing. Rescuing, and so on.’
‘Please don’t mention it. It’s nothing more than any villager would do in a flood. I’m Ellen Parr, by the way.’
‘Nice to meet you, Miss Parr.’
‘It’s Mrs, actually.’
‘Beg pardon. Just thought you looked like a Miss. Don’t know why.’
I searched in vain for a civil reply to that comment.
I went into the kitchen and started to prepare tea. After a few moments Penny slipped into the room.
‘You should stay by the fire, dear. You must get warm.’
‘It’s warm next to this stove.’
No truculence here. The words came out soft in her little treble voice. And it was true: she was spreading her hands over the closed lid of the hotplate. As pale as before, but the violet line had disappeared from the edges of her lips. She watched me from beneath the brim of her beret. The hat, and the wary look, were familiar.
‘I saw you at Lady Brock’s house, didn’t I.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You’re the lady who came in. How do you do.’ She darted a look towards the closed door to the sitting room. ‘Sorry about the fuss.’
Her voice had dropped back to a whisper. That, and the light of fear in her eyes, stopped all the questions in my mouth.
‘Look. We’ll have toast.’ My voice was almost as quiet as hers. ‘And then we’ll think what to do.’ I fetched down the hotplate toaster. It was a simple thing, made of two round grilles joined by a hinge and furnished with wire handles. ‘Would you like to make it?’
She picked it up. ‘What a funny contraption.’ Under my instruction she loaded the grille with four slices of bread, folded the top half over, and slid it under the lid of the hotplate. ‘How can you tell when it’s done?’
‘The room fills with smoke.’
She allowed herself to smile. I hadn’t expected the word contraption from so small a person. I wondered how old she was. They took them as young as eight, at Upton Hall. When the toast and tea were ready I draped her wet trousers over the closed hotplates and put the shoes on a piece of newspaper in the bottom oven. The hems of the trousers were frayed, the shoes hardly visible through their coating of mud.
‘Well now!’ I said, as I put the tea tray down in the sitting room. ‘Hopefully we’re all a little warmer?’ This sort of brisk inanity being the only course, in the face of such bizarreness, such daunting cold and distress. I remembered William telephoning before dawn, the sandbags in Church Walk, my savaging of Lucy, Colonel Daventry’s cheerful chirping. I could hardly believe it was still the same day. As if in response my lower back began to ache, a compressed feeling around the cradle of my hips.
My guests were hungry, I was certain, and so was I. For a while the only sounds were the crunch of toast and the series of noisy gulps made by Mrs Lacey. The teacup empty, she set it down.
‘That hit the spot,’ she said. ‘Sorry to be a barbarian.’
She was sitting with her coat round her shoulders now, a cigarette held jauntily between two fingers, as if it were the morning after an all-night party. Not a good party, I felt: there was a sort of accidie emanating from her, something compacted, an impasse reached. Her eyes swivelled, her pearls were dirty. A tideline of tan make-up scuffled along her hairline.
‘Don’t apologize, Mrs Lacey.’ I pushed an ashtray towards her. ‘This is rather a trying time for you.’
‘I’ll have to take her all the way home again, I suppose. They could have phoned.’
‘They did try. Anyway, all is not lost.’ I explained about the girls’ refuge at The Place. ‘You’ll have to go back to the main road, though, and enter the village at the other end. The water this side is too deep for your car.’
She grunted. Not a single word, kind or otherwise, had passed between this woman and her daughter. I turned to the child.
‘The others are having a grand time at The Place, Penny. They’re all fixed up on those inflatable beds, the ones you can float on. People loll about on them now, instead of having a proper swim. What are they called? Lidos.’
Penny stared at her hands, rubbed them together. ‘Lilos,’ she offered.
‘Lilos. Of course. Because you lie low on them. That is clever.’
Mrs Lacey abruptly stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. ‘Right. Well, if you give me directions to this house, we’ll get out of your hair.’
There was something odd about the way she was standing, feet planted wide apart, giving her daughter a stony, befuddled stare. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I wasn’t certain she was thinking at all. I pondered this for a second or two, and a strong impression began to form in my mind. I rose to my feet.
‘Mrs Lacey, you can’t go yet.’
‘I’m sorry?’ She frowned.
‘Penny’s clothes are still wet.’
‘So what. She’s got more in her case.’
‘Mrs Lacey.’ I looked her full in the face. ‘Please sit down again, and I’ll bring you some black coffee.’ For it had dawned on me what the problem was.
‘I’m absolutely fine.’
A warm, intimate blast of fermentation, the same fruity odour that I had smelled in her car and which I now recognized of course as half-digested alcohol, hit me full in the face. I breathed out, hard.
‘Of course you are,’ I said. ‘I’m simply suggesting you wait a while, before taking the wheel.’
‘And I’m simply suggesting it’s none of your business.’
I stood silently, Penny’s miserably hunched outline in the corner of my eye, my heart racing with the sheer nastiness of the scene. Suddenly Mrs Lacey let loose a startling bray of laughter.
‘OK, if that’s how you want it.’ She began rummaging for her keys. ‘You can take my daughter into the village. And I’ll clear off.’
She turned and left the room. Dismayed, I listened to her striding steps on the hall floor, the creak of the front door. By the time I came to my senses and hurried after her she was opening her car door.
‘Mrs Lacey!’ I ran towards the car. She was getting in now and starting the engine. ‘Mrs Lacey!’
‘You’ve been very kind!’ she shouted back. ‘Very kind!’ Then she pulled away with a squirt of gravel from her tyres, some of which spattered over my legs. I watched her lurch out onto the track and proceed, engine roaring, up to the lane. The car disappeared, and I heard it gather speed as she made her way back towards the main road.
A small blue suitcase lay on its side, dumped on the damp gravel. I picked it up. I swallowed convulsively, two, three times, to get rid of the sordid taste on my tongue. Slowly I made my way back inside.