inlaid work inside. ‘And it is here,’ said Mrs Oliver, raising the lid of a papier-mâché round canister, devised to contain Lapsang Souchong as opposed to Indian tea, and taking out a curled-up small brown notebook.
‘Here it is,’ she said.
‘That’s only 1968, Mrs Oliver. Four years ago.’
‘That’s about right,’ said Mrs Oliver, seizing it and taking it back to the desk. ‘That’s all for the present, Miss Livingstone, but you might see if you can find my birthday book somewhere.’
‘I didn’t know …’
‘I don’t use it now,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘but I used to have one once. Quite a big one, you know. Started when I was a child. Goes on for years. I expect it’ll be in the attic upstairs. You know, the one we use as a spare room sometimes when it’s only boys coming for holidays, or people who don’t mind. The sort of chest or bureau thing next to the bed.’
‘Oh. Shall I look and see?’
‘That’s the idea,’ said Mrs Oliver.
She cheered up a little as Miss Livingstone went out of the room. Mrs Oliver shut the door firmly behind her, went back to the desk and started looking down the addresses written in faded ink and smelling of tea.
‘Ravenscroft. Celia Ravenscroft. Yes. 14 Fishacre Mews, S. W.3. That’s the Chelsea address. She was living there then. But there was another one after that. Somewhere like Strand-on-the-Green near Kew Bridge.’
She turned a few more pages. ‘Oh yes, this seems to be a later one. Mardyke Grove. That’s off Fulham Road, I think. Somewhere like that. Has she got a telephone number? It’s very rubbed out, but I think—yes, I think that’s right—Flaxman … Anyway, I’ll try it.’
She went across to the telephone. The door opened and Miss Livingstone looked in.
‘Do you think that perhaps—’
‘I found the address I want,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Go on looking for that birthday book. It’s important.’
‘Do you think you could have left it when you were in Sealy House?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Go on looking.’ She murmured, as the door closed, ‘Be as long as you like about it.’
She dialled the telephone and waited, opening the door to call up the stairs: ‘You might try that Spanish chest. You know, the one that’s bound with brass. I’ve forgotten where it is now. Under the table in the hall, I think.’
Mrs Oliver’s first dialling was not successful. She appeared to have connected herself to a Mrs Smith Potter, who seemed both annoyed and unhelpful and had no idea what the present telephone number might be of anyone who had lived in that particular flat before.
Mrs Oliver applied herself to an examination of the address book once more. She discovered two more addresses which were hastily scrawled over other numbers and did not seem wildly helpful. However, at the third attempt a somewhat illegible Ravenscroft seemed to emerge from the crossings out and initials and addresses.
A voice admitted to knowing Celia. ‘Oh dear, yes. But she hasn’t lived here for years. I think she was in Newcastle when I last heard from her.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got that address.’
‘No, I haven’t got it either,’ said the kindly girl. ‘I think she went to be secretary to a veterinary surgeon.’
It did not sound very hopeful. Mrs Oliver tried once or twice more. The addresses in the latest of her two address books were no use, so she went back a bit further. She struck oil, as you might put it, when she came to the last one, which was for the year 1967.
‘Oh, you mean Celia,’ said a voice. ‘Celia Ravenscroft, wasn’t it? Or was it Finchwell?’
Mrs Oliver just prevented herself in time from saying, ‘No, and it wasn’t redbreast either.’
‘A very competent girl,’ said the voice. ‘She worked for me for over a year and a half. Oh yes, very competent. I would have been quite happy if she had stayed longer. I think she went from here to somewhere in Harley Street, but I think I’ve got her address somewhere. Now let me see.’ There was a long pause while Mrs X—name unknown—was seeing. ‘I’ve got one address here. It seems to be in Islington somewhere. Do you think that’s possible?’
Mrs Oliver said that anything was possible and thanked Mrs X very much and wrote it down.
‘So difficult, isn’t it, trying to find people’s addresses. They do send them to you usually. You know, a sort of postcard or something of that kind. Personally I always seem to lose it.’
Mrs Oliver said that she herself also suffered in this respect. She tried the Islington number. A heavy, foreign voice replied to her.
‘You want, yes—you tell me what? Yes, who live here?’
‘Miss Celia Ravenscroft?’ ‘Oh yes, that is very true. Yes, yes she lives here. She has a room on the second floor. She is out now and she not come home.’
‘Will she be in later this evening?’
‘Oh, she be home very soon now, I think, because she come home to dress for party and go out.’
Mrs Oliver thanked her for the information and rang off.
‘Really,’ said Mrs Oliver to herself, with some annoyance, ‘girls!’
She tried to think how long it was since she had last seen her goddaughter, Celia. One lost touch. That was the whole point. Celia, she thought, was in London now. If her boyfriend was in London, or if the mother of her boyfriend was in London—all of it went together. Oh dear, thought Mrs Oliver, this really makes my head ache. ‘Yes, Miss Livingstone?’ she turned her head.
Miss Livingstone, looking rather unlike herself and decorated with a good many cobwebs and a general coating of dust, stood looking annoyed in the doorway holding a pile of dusty volumes.
‘I don’t know whether any of these things will be any use to you, Mrs Oliver. They seem to go back for a great many years.’ She was disapproving.
‘Bound to,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘I don’t know if there’s anything particular you want me to search for.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘if you’ll just put them on the corner of the sofa there I can look at them this evening.’
Miss Livingstone, looking more disapproving every moment, said, ‘Very good, Mrs Oliver. I think I will just dust them first.’
‘That will be very kind of you,’ said Mrs Oliver, just stopping herself in time from saying—‘and for goodness’ sake dust yourself as well. You’ve got six cobwebs in your left ear.’
She glanced at her watch and rang the Islington number again. The voice that answered this time was purely Anglo-Saxon and had a crisp sharpness about it that Mrs Oliver felt was rather satisfactory.
