A young woman who introduced herself as Miss Hatcher led Maisie to a room with a table and chairs in the center, though around the walls were boxes in various stages of leaning to the point where it seemed they might fall at any moment. Golding was standing alongside the table leafing through a file as Maisie entered. At first glance she appeared to be a no-nonsense sort of woman. Her dark brown hair was permed into tight curls, reminding Maisie of winkles, the tiny black shellfish her father favored with bread and butter and a lettuce, tomato, and cucumber salad for Sunday tea. Her cotton blouse was starched, and she was dressed in a jacket and skirt costume of pale green wool barathea. Her appearance was in stark contrast to her employee, whose blonde hair was so fair it might have been colored at home, and who had enhanced the silhouette of her fashionable narrow dress with a leather belt that matched her wedge sandals. Golding wore brown shoes that Maisie thought were akin to a style that a school headmistress might have termed “sensible.”
Golding looked up. “Thank you, Miss Hatcher, that will be all.” She inclined her head in the direction of a chair, and Maisie took a seat. Without offering a greeting, Golding continued, “Miss Dobbs. I looked up the names you’ve furnished us with, and yes, it seems we have records for the men. I just have to lay my hands on them in one of these boxes. As you know, they were passed on to us by the Ladies’ Refugee Assistance Association years ago. Normally it would have taken me ages to find them, but we’ve been having a huge sort out to make more room—and we’re moving to larger premises soon, in any case. We weren’t at all sure what to do with these records, and then the government stepped in. Most of the men and women who came through our original association—and the one Rosemary Hartley-Davies worked for—returned home after the war, and of those who remained, well, they’re here in Britain now, and no one knows any difference, do they?” Golding chattered on as she opened a heavy-duty cardboard box and began pulling out folders. “Mind you, we’ve had inquiries here about Belgian citizens, mainly to confirm details provided to the authorities when they arrived—I mean, as far as the population’s concerned, some of them could have been deserting Germans who now want to desert back the other way, couldn’t they? Personally, I’m worried that this vigilance is all going to get out of control, and anyone with a bit of an accent is going to be reported, or even worse. People start taking matters into their own hands, don’t they?”
Maisie was about to respond when Golding resumed her monologue. “Ah, here we are, yes, all in one box together.” She put the box to one side and stacked the folders on the desk in front of her, then looked at Maisie, one hand tapping the pile of folders. “The reason they are in the same place is that they came in on the same day, or thereabouts.” She opened one file after another, studying the first page before moving on. “And it seems they all lived in roughly the same area.” Golding tapped an open file. “I don’t know much about the geography of Belgium, but there’s a line for a comment here regarding place of birth and residence, and name of nearest large town or city, and it seems these men—Peeters, Firmin, Addens, and Durant—all came from the same region, or thereabouts. You will also see that there are other files here too, other boys, women, and children who were on the same boat. Of course, these men would have been too young to join the fighting—they were still boys, for the most part.” She pushed the folders towards Maisie. “You might as well look through these yourself—I’ve checked your particulars with Scotland Yard, and in any case, there’s nothing there that seems top secret in that lot, so I might as well save myself some time and hand them over to you. You can stay here in this office if you like—but not for long, as I’ve got a couple of my girls coming in soon to start boxing up files ready for transport up to London.”
“Where will they go?”
“Our instructions are to send them to the Home Office in the first instance, where the information will be catalogued. I’ve an inkling, though, that they’ll be sent to the Belgian consulate—after all, it’s their people and it’s part of their history now, isn’t it?” Golding stepped towards the door. “Right then—I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so.”