by the bus stop’. So Sally looked for a bell.
She found a big brass handle, a bit like the wooden one that worked Mrs Spinks’s downstairs lavatory. Under the handle was a card with curvy writing. It said Mr G. Button and Miss A. Button. Sally pulled it and from somewhere inside she heard a far-away tinkling noise, then the slow shuffling of feet.
The door opened and the voice she had heard on the telephone said, ‘Sally Bell?’ and she was looking down into the face of the smallest lady she had ever seen. ‘Are you Sally Bell?’ she repeated.
But Sally forgot to reply. She was too busy thinking, Well, she’s not all that small. Amber’s granny’s very little and Mrs Spinks is quite little, too.
Then the little lady said again, ‘Well, are you Sally Bell?’
‘Oh yes, yes, that’s me,’ she spluttered, all in a rush. ‘I mean, yes, that’s who I am.’ ‘That’s me’ didn’t feel quite correct, and the very little old lady sounded just a bit school teachery.
‘Come in, then,’ said Miss A. Button. She led Sally down a long cold passageway into a kind of greenhouse in which the walls and roof were covered with trailing plants whose leaves and stems had got all tangled together making a lovely greeny light. They sat down, in two creaking chairs made out of stuff that looked like raffia matting.
It suddenly went very quiet. The raffia chairs creaked and Miss Button made little wheezing noises in her chest, and some goldfish in an old sink kept plopping up to the surface with open mouths. ‘They want me to feed them,’ said Miss Button and she sprinkled some fish food into the water.
‘Mrs Spinks says goldfish are a good idea,’ said Sally. ‘She says they’re much better than mice.’
‘Who is Mrs Spinks?’
‘She lives next door. I’m staying with her while Mum’s in the hospital. Alan’s in the army now and Dad’s Abroad. He’s doing a very important Dig. I think it’s in the desert. Mum says he mustn’t be worried because she’s going to get better very soon. But I don’t think so. She’s in a special room, in case she gets germs.’
‘Which hospital, Sally?’ Miss Button had leaned forwards in her creaky chair.
‘The big white one, the one on the hill.’
‘Oaklands Hospital?’
‘I think that’s it. But I can’t go and see her at the moment, because of the germs.’
‘I am very sorry, Sally,’ said Miss Button. ‘You do seem to have a lot of troubles.’
Sally didn’t answer at first. Then, because Miss Button had a kind voice, and had been Dad’s teacher when he was a little boy, she said, ‘I’ve not told you my biggest trouble. It’s why I phoned up,’ and she explained all about the clock.
The little old lady listened very carefully. Then she gave the greedy goldfish a bit more food. Then she took off her spectacles, rubbed at them and put them on again. Then she looked at Sally. ‘And that’s why you wanted to talk to God?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Sally, ‘but you said he’d gone to hospital. I didn’t understand that.’
‘No,’ Miss Button answered. Then she said, ‘Sally, you seem like an intelligent girl. Did you really believe that, by ringing a telephone number, you could talk to God?’
‘Well, Amber said you could,’ Sally told her, ‘and Amber’s right about lots of things. She’s not much good at lessons but she knows about all sorts of, you know, special things. I just thought this God person would be the one to talk to. I get these hunches.’
Miss Button thought for a moment, then she said, ‘Sally, my brother is called Godfrey Button, and he is in hospital. He fell down the stairs and broke his hip. I think he is the person you were trying to speak to. I can’t imagine how your friend Amber would know that some of his old friends used to call him “God”, which was rather naughty of them I think. It was because his name is Godfrey, and also because he used to be in charge of a church.’
‘Amber knows all kinds of things,’ Sally whispered. Secretly she was thinking, No God to talk to, only an old man whose friends joked about his name. Just for a minute she felt as if the bottom had quite dropped out of everything. How could this help with the clock?
She said, ‘Why was it naughty, calling your brother God?’ She thought it was quite funny herself but she didn’t dare say so.
‘I suppose some people might think it wasn’t very reverent,’ Miss Button replied. ‘I mean, you have to treat God with respect.’
‘Have you ever seen Him?’ asked Sally.
‘Not exactly.’ Miss Button looked down at the greedy goldfish and said quite snappily, ‘You’ve had more than enough.’
Somewhere in the house a clock chimed once. That meant it was half-past twelve. Sally stood up. ‘I’ll have to go home,’ she said. ‘Mrs Spinks gets cross if I’m late for my meals.’ Then she had a thought. ‘Was that a grandfather clock striking? It sounded a bit like ours.’
‘Well, sort of. It’s a grandmother clock. It’s a wee bit smaller than yours, I should think. Come along. You must go home in a taxi cab. I’ll ring Ron.’
They went back into the chilly hall where a telephone stood on a table. Miss Button picked it up and asked for Appleford 123. That was an easy number to remember, Sally thought wistfully, thinking too of how she’d pedalled off so furiously, to find Amber.
‘Arabella Button speaking,’ said the old lady. ‘Please will you send a taxi to Seventeen, Norland Avenue. I have a visitor who has to get to The Cedars, Villa Road. It’s Professor Bell’s house. Thank you.’
‘I think I would like to speak to your Mrs Spinks, Sally,’ she said, as they waited. ‘I think I should phone her. I would like to write to your father. I could send him a telegram, that would be quicker.’
But Sally clutched so hard at her thin old-lady arm that Miss Button jumped. ‘Oh no, please don’t talk to Mrs Spinks. You see, she doesn’t know about the clock, or anything. If you could just. . . don’t you know anyone who could help me? You’ve got a clock, too.’
Someone rang the doorbell and a voice said, ‘Taxi to Villa Road.’
Miss Button opened the door and said, ‘Good afternoon, Ron. This is Miss Sally Bell. She must be home by one.’
‘Rightio,’ the taxi man said cheerfully.
‘But I have no money,’ Sally whispered.
Miss Button put some coins into her hand. ‘If there is any change you can give it back when we next meet. Could you be by your phone tomorrow at ten o’clock?’
‘Yes,’ Sally said, ‘and thank you very much.’
It was steamed fish for dinner. The peas were a sickly bright green and the boiled potatoes had no taste at all. Sally said, ‘Please could I have some butter, Mrs Spinks?’
Mrs
