At least they realized.
I brought two full teapots, each with one spoonful of tea in it. They would simply have to make do with that. They took the teacups with both hands and passed them in a ritual silence. I untied the blackout curtains and drew them. One of the young women said, ‘We’re very sorry about last night, Mrs Parr.’ She had fresh lipstick on, defiantly at odds with the graze that slanted across her high, pasty forehead.
‘It’s all right. You were frightened, and with good reason.’
There was a silence, broken eventually by Mrs Berrow. She was sitting in the largest armchair. ‘There wasn’t any thinking,’ she told me. ‘We just covered our heads, and as soon as we could find a bus we cleared off without a backward look. We lost our nerve, dear, is all.’ She gulped the tea. ‘This is pure nectar. Where’s that little girl of yours?’
‘Upstairs … What happened to your friend, the lady who could only say Daphne?’
‘Oh, yes. Somebody did a whopper of a sneeze right by her head and she snapped right out of it. Never saw the like. If you brought the little girl down we could have a chat. Now that we’re in our right minds, or nearly.’
‘I expect she’s still sleeping, Mrs Berrow.’
I hesitated. There were thumps on the stairs.
‘That’ll be your lads.’ Mrs Berrow chuckled. ‘Not very likely, is it?’
They slept through the Second Coming, little children. That was what she’d told me. I almost pointed it out to her.
‘I’ll fetch Pamela.’
‘So we went into the hotel because Mummy said we had to get some candles for my cake. And then we were going to bed there. Gosh, your eye is like a thunderstorm, isn’t it.’
Pamela, in blanket, knickers and knee-length singlet, was standing in front of Mrs Berrow who, seated as she was, had acquired a faintly inquisitorial air.
‘Some candles,’ I repeated. ‘For your cake.’
‘Because I’m going to be six.’ She gave me a passing glance. I was much less important than Mrs Berrow. ‘My cake’s going to be pink.’
‘Could it have been the Crown?’ somebody said. ‘The buses stop right outside.’
‘It was mayhem there.’ Mrs Berrow nodded, remembering. ‘That’s where I live, see, opposite the Crown. So when you and Mummy came out, what happened next?’
A blended howl of outrage and mirth rose from the kitchen next door, along with a crash of cutlery and a thin cry of exasperation from Elizabeth. Pamela peered through the gap in the door. ‘What naughty boys you’ve got,’ she said to me.
Mrs Berrow sighed. ‘So when you and Mummy came out—’
‘Mummy was coming.’ Pamela sat down on the floor. ‘But she was so slow. She was talking to the cake-candle man. So I went out first.’ She crossed her legs and encircled her big toe with thumb and fingers. ‘This is how you comfort your toes, especially when they’re cold. And then I banged my head on the bus-stop pole, and after that I looked for Mummy. But all I could see was the top of her head in a bus window. Then the bald lady asked me if that was my mummy, and I said it was, but that bus was going. Then the other lady, the fat one, came, and they took me on their bus. And the bald lady laid me down under a blanket with a lot of tiny holes in because I was screaming.’
‘The bald lady?’
‘Yes, the one with the special hat. She wouldn’t wear that unless she was bald.’
Her face contorted and she let loose a single, keening, tearless sob. I kneeled down and grasped her. She leaned against my chest and sucked her thumb industriously.
‘There were two women,’ I murmured to Mrs Berrow. ‘Between them they got the idea that Pamela’s mother was already aboard one of the buses. They didn’t stop to wonder how she could have got on without Pamela. They just took Pamela with them on the next bus. I was stupid, I didn’t ask them which hotel they were outside.’
Mrs Berrow patted my hand. ‘Nobody was very clever yesterday, dear.’
Pamela stopped sobbing as suddenly as she’d begun. She broke away from me and clasped her feet again. ‘Your toes you can hold all at once in one hand, look.’ Involuntarily she rolled onto her back, where she rocked like an egg. We all laughed a little.
‘Them knickers need a change.’ Mrs Berrow’s voice was gentle. ‘That much dust and dirt, I’m surprised you remember what colour they are. Come here, lovey.’ Pamela obeyed her instantly and Mrs Berrow pulled down the knickers. She frowned. ‘There’s something crackling in here.’
I put out my hand. ‘I’ll take them to wash.’
‘Wait.’ Her old nails dug along the waistband. ‘Something’s been sewn in the seam, look.’
‘Yes, they are crackly.’ Pamela nodded. ‘Mummy said it’s because they’re new. I can do handstands in them.’
My hand was still reaching out towards Mrs Berrow. ‘I’ll take them upstairs. I’ve got sewing scissors in my bedroom.’
Pa … P … Plymouth.
Small, hasty handwriting, in pencil on a piece of greaseproof paper, mostly smudged away. I folded it in my hand and looked out of the window, at a loss. Downstairs the telephone started ringing. I heard Selwyn answering.
Then I remembered the dress. It was nowhere to be seen. I searched under the bed, then turned down the sheet and blankets and found it, crumpled into a grubby ball. Just under the little collar was a square of fraying cotton tacked roughly onto the yoke. I pulled the tacking out and freed the label. The ink was bleeding into the fabric but the words were legible. Pamela Pickering, 34 Newton Road, Plymouth.
Selwyn had finished his call. He was coming up the stairs. ‘Ellen?’
‘In the bedroom, darling.’
The door opened. ‘That was Colonel Daventry. Another bus has arrived.’ Selwyn went into the dressing room. ‘Where’s my scarf? The fog’s vile out there, raw.’
‘Darling, I found these.’
He reappeared, his scarf in one hand. ‘What?’
I held out my hand. He clasped it so that the pieces of greaseproof and cotton were crushed in my fingers. His hands were thin, cool and dry. Had he been a heavier man, a man whose palms were even just occasionally damp, I could never have married him. He pulled his hand away and I let the labels slip from my grasp.
He uncrumpled them, studied them. ‘Thank goodness. We’ve got something to go on, now.’ He put the scraps down on the bed. ‘Listen, I’m off to the village hall. There’s a chance her mother’s come to Upton. She might have found out that Pamela was taken away on the bus.’ He knotted his scarf with a series of brisk tugs. ‘Imagine it. Dashing out of your hotel, frantically looking for your child, and somebody says, “I saw a little girl, madam. Two women took her away on the bus to Upton.” Good
