‘Yes. They need mending.’
We mounted the stairs. The suit of armour glimmered in the darkness of the upper corridor next to the door of Sir Michael Brock’s bedroom, the gloom now permanent with the blackout. In former days it stood in the hall, lit around with candles so that its reflection hung, an inverted ghost in the depths of the polished oak floorboards. Candles but no candle man, no candle men here. Lady Brock had been faithful. What kind of a woman comported herself in that way, shouting at a man all night with her child in the room? Too busy to notice when her curious little girl crept off outside? The floorboards were dried out and dusty now, the armour tarnished. ‘Mrs Hicks wants to get up here and apply elbow grease,’ said Lady Brock. ‘But I’m not having it. We both need to conserve our strength. Who knows how long this is going to last?’
I helped Pamela onto a stool. She lifted the visor and replaced it, transfixed by the grille, the blackness behind, the small creak as it settled into position. ‘Peep-bo,’ she said softly. ‘Peep-bo.’
‘I’ve always felt guilty about you, Ellen.’ Lady Brock’s voice, unused to speaking low, was husky. ‘I felt we didn’t do enough.’
Creak. Peep-bo. I remembered the grate at the Absaloms, black with past coal but no coal in it to burn, the cold looming from the walls.
‘It was very difficult to do anything for my mother,’ I managed to say at last. ‘She wouldn’t be helped.’
We left Lady Brock at her front door and went down the steps. ‘Perhaps my boys could buff up these floorboards for you,’ I said, as I helped Pamela onto the bicycle. ‘They’re always on the lookout for a job.’ I was exaggerating the case somewhat, but they were helpful boys on the whole, not overly given to skulking.
She stared out over my head, at the turned earth of the potato beds and the mud of her drive. ‘I’ll be down there with William, you know,’ she said. ‘In the old dairy. With my rabbit gun.’
‘And I hope that William would send you straight back again, Lady Brock. We need you.’
‘Not before I pot one for Michael.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I promised him, you see.’
We went home, pushing the bicycle through the kitchen garden and out through the back gate. The sky was the same light blue. I let Pamela chatter on, about the bicycle spokes, the brick wall, the crows in their high nests.
Selwyn opened the front door as we came up the path. ‘Give Pamela to Elizabeth,’ he murmured. ‘Let her go in.’
‘What news? Selwyn? Have you found Mrs Pickering?’
Pamela slipped past him into the house. Perhaps Mrs Pickering had come to the village hall. Perhaps she was even now indoors. Yes. Selwyn had let her in for Pamela to find, as a surprise. My heart battered my chest.
‘In a manner of speaking.’ He ran his hand over his eyes. ‘The Crown was bombed last night.’
4
‘WE CAN’T BE EXPECTED to behave as if we’re made of Derbyshire peakstone.’ Selwyn wielded his handkerchief. ‘That poor little child.’
The woman’s face was untouched, he told me. Her ration book was in her handbag, in the name of one Amelia Pickering, residing at the same Plymouth address she had sewn into her child’s clothes. ‘I called Waltham police station after you left,’ he went on. ‘Sit down, darling.’
I did so, and so did he. We faced each other in our sitting room’s comfortable armchairs. The lower part of my face, my cheeks, felt strange; the skin numb, tingling.
‘They managed to get through to Southampton. Then Southampton called them back about an hour ago.’ He blew his nose. ‘Mrs Pickering contacted them when Pamela disappeared, but they couldn’t get to the hotel until this morning. By which time it had been hit.’ A hollow, wooden rumble came from the kitchen, followed by a scream of pleasure. ‘What on earth is that?’
I cocked my head. ‘I think it’s Lord Plumer.’
Lord Plumer was an ancient croquet ball, legendarily unbeatable, named by Selwyn’s uncle after the general who, in turning the course of the Battle of Messines, had, in his estimation, spared the life of his nephew. Old Mr Parr, bereaved of both his sons at the Somme, had been grateful for small mercies. When he gave up croquet he had planed a flat underside onto Lord Plumer, fastened a lead plate thereto, and used it as a doorstop for the pantry. No one else was allowed to win a game with Lord Plumer.
The rumble returned. ‘That’s the way!’ we heard Elizabeth say, in a high, breaking voice. ‘Off it goes.’
‘You’ve told Elizabeth, then.’
‘Yes. She’s taking it badly.’ He spread his hands, clasped them as if washing. ‘Apparently Mrs Pickering called the police and then ran out to look for Pamela, only coming back at nightfall. And then, along with a dozen other unfortunates, she placed too much faith in the cellar. The ceiling came down on them all.’
I pictured her returning tear-stained in the evening to her certain death. For even while she was running in the streets, shrieking Pamela, Pamela, the bomb for the Crown was being loaded into its bay.
‘God damn them.’ I swallowed the stone in my throat. ‘I wish them eternal perdition.’
Selwyn breathed in. ‘That attitude helps no one, darling.’
‘It helps me.’ I swallowed again. ‘The police will come now, won’t they? And take her away?’
‘They will. Eventually.’ He took out his spectacles and started cleaning them. He was going to read the Bible: he always gave the lenses fastidious attention before doing so. ‘They’re looking for her father, obviously, and other relatives. They’ll be in touch soon.’
I pushed away a lock of hair. The bicycle ride had made it messy. ‘You could try the Book of Job,’ I told Selwyn. ‘We need his God now. One who can shut the sea with doors. Unload granaries of hail.’
Pamela was sitting on the kitchen floor, wrapping the croquet ball in a tea towel. Elizabeth was putting onions in a baking dish.
‘Baked onions,’ I said. ‘They take me back. Do you know how lucky we are, to have got all that precious onion seed from Upton Hall? Most people’s mouths are watering for onions. They haven’t seen one in months and months.’ I babbled on, in the same bright tone. ‘Months and months.’ Elizabeth’s eyes were brimming. I made to embrace her, my hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged me away.
‘No, Mrs Parr,’ she murmured. ‘It’ll only start me again.’
‘Dolly needs a headscarf.’ Pamela held up her swaddled ball. ‘Otherwise she might get earache in the wind. Do you know what happens then? Somebody irons your ear.’
‘No!’ I feigned amazement while Elizabeth dashed her tears away. ‘With a hot iron?’
Pamela sucked her teeth. ‘They put a towel over your ear first. And then they put the iron on the towel, and it’s so lovely and warm. Mummy’s being very slow.’
‘Yes, Pamela. She must be very busy.’
Elizabeth put the dish in the oven. ‘Perhaps she’s gone to see your auntie. Have you got any aunties?’
Pamela’s face puckered. ‘Why would she go and see Aunt Margie without me?’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Of course she wouldn’t do that.’
‘Aunt Margie’s a long way away. She’s in Cape Town. They have grapes there and lots of flowers. I haven’t been there but Mummy went before I was born. She says it’s wizard. She wouldn’t go and visit Aunt Margie without me.’ She hummed a little and unwrapped the ball to fold the tea towel into an uneven triangle. ‘Bad headscarf.’
‘Let me.’ I took the tea towel and made a neater job of it, and knotted it as best I could under Lord Plumer’s flat chin.
Pamela cradled the ball experimentally, in each elbow, and then set it on the floor to take bobbing steps. ‘Pamela, we’re going shopping. Oh, do come on, darling. Do hurry up. Honestly, it’s like wading through treacle.’