‘Pamela?’
She opened her eyes and regarded me, blinking. She took the slice of bread, dropped it on the floor. I kneeled in front of her and retrieved it and tore off a dusty piece. She chewed without haste, her jaw moving roundly like a small calf. ‘Excuse me,’ she said through her mouthful. ‘Are we in a village?’
‘Yes. A village called Upton.’
‘So is this village bread?’
I smiled. ‘I made it, and I’m a villager. So I suppose it is. It’s a little stale, darling, that’s all. My fresh bread is much softer.’
She continued chewing, eyes steadily on me, not the least reassured. The front door opened and Selwyn came in. He took his coat off, and smiled at me. ‘You look like a supplicant, and she your princess. It’s the high-backed chair, I suppose. What is there to eat?’
‘Bread, and a sausage. About three ounces of tea. Plenty of oats.’
Pamela had been looking from one of us to the other. Now she stopped chewing. ‘Horses eat oats.’
‘Yes, they do.’ Selwyn bent over her. ‘Are you warm enough?’ She nodded. He patted her on the head, absently, as if she were his good dog. ‘Now I think about it, I haven’t got much of an appetite. I’ll sleep on the little bed in the dressing room. You put her with you, in our bed.’
The buttons on the back of Pamela’s dirty little dress were tiny. One of them was broken, a shard which slipped under my nail and stabbed me. I pulled the puffed sleeves down off her shoulders. Her arms were as cold as china.
‘Didn’t Mummy give you a coat, Pamela?’
‘It was so hot in the hotel, she said, “Let’s take our coats and cardigans off.” So we did that.’
‘What hotel?’
She turned her head to look up at me. ‘The hotel that we were inside,’ she said patiently. ‘I want to keep my knickers on.’
She went to the lavatory. I found an old singlet and put it on her. It fell almost to her ankles, the shoulder straps drooping, the low neck leaving her chest bare. I knotted the straps to bring the neckline higher.
‘This is a funny nightie.’
‘Isn’t it.’
Our bolster made her head jut forward, so I fetched a flat cushion from my sewing seat. The bed creaked in the dressing room: Selwyn was retiring. I went in and found him sitting there in his pyjamas. He needed a good diet to keep his weight up, did my husband, and now he was beginning to remind me of my brother Edward. They both went lean in hard times, weathered and springy like the spars of a ship. Selwyn was naturally slighter than Edward, sandier, his blue eyes paler. A cleverer, more far-seeing man.
‘She says that she was in an hotel,’ I told him. ‘She doesn’t know which one.’
He nodded slowly. ‘We’ll think about it in the morning.’ He looked up at me. ‘Where’s your pearl brooch?’
With a jolt I remembered the bus, my first grasp of Pamela’s body. ‘Don’t worry. It’s in my jacket pocket, for safekeeping.’
Selwyn had pinned the brooch on this morning, deftly, and kissed my lips. It seemed like a week ago now. I went and sat on the bed next to him. My eye fell on a small, flat, brown-paper parcel. ‘You haven’t opened your present.’
Exclaiming, he reached for it. ‘Shame on me. My first gift of this kind, too.’ He pulled the knot in the string and removed the paper from a copy of Edward Thomas’s The South Country. ‘Ellen, sweetheart. This is so thoughtful.’
‘I found it in Bradwell’s. Now you really have the complete works.’
He gave a single laugh and put down the book. ‘I promise you one thing, Ellen. Not all our wedding anniversaries will be like this one.’
I put my arm across his back and pressed my face against his shoulder. He embraced me in turn so that we were encircled by each other’s arms. ‘I shall complain next year,’ I said, with my eyes shut, ‘if you don’t supply at least one busload of refugees.’
The brooch was there, in my jacket pocket. I put it into my jewellery box and hung the jacket in the wardrobe. Closing the door, I saw the child’s image flash into the mirror, a pale face with large, grave, light-brown eyes. I undressed and put my nightgown on, all the while feeling those eyes upon me.
She’d moved towards the middle of the bed. When I got in, one small, hard foot scraped against my calf. ‘Shift over, Pamela.’
‘But I was just on the way to my side.’
‘Oh. I didn’t realize you had a side.’
‘This is my side. The other is Mummy’s.’
What about Daddy? I didn’t say that. It was a question for tomorrow.
We arranged ourselves to her liking. She occupied her little space with self-possession, lying neatly on her back with feet together. I remembered sharing the coldest nights in one bed with Mother. Mother, and in the beginning with my brother Edward too. They had both been bigger than me. I’d never lain down beside such a small person.
‘My name’s Ellen.’
‘I know.’ Her head remained still; only her eyes darted towards me. ‘But you haven’t said if I may call you it.’
I smiled. ‘You may.’
How old was she? Her nose was still snubbed, a perfect curve, her cheeks round. I couldn’t ask her about her surname again, not now.
‘Will we find Mummy tomorrow?’
‘I’m sure we will.’
I was woken by a rising siren of wails, as sharp and sudden as if rehearsed. I slid out of bed and went out onto the landing. The boys were asleep – two had rolled off the mattresses and were lying legs tangled in the curtains, leaving the third uncovered. I picked my way among them and went down to the sitting room.
The women had pulled the blackout curtain away from the side of the window. They were all crowded around the slit they had made, crying out and clinging together as if they were in a lifeboat on a high sea. ‘How can they, how can they, the devils.’ ‘Bloody fucking bastards.’ ‘It’s vicious. It ain’t human.’
They’d left the lamp on. The light was shining out through the naked glass.
‘Replace that curtain.’ I spoke in a voice of steel.
One of them sobbed at me, ‘You should see it, dear, before we do.’
Darting to the table, I turned out the lamp. ‘You’ve broken the blackout. And you may also have broken the fastenings.’ I shouldered my way in among them and started lashing the blackout tapes back onto the hooks in the window frame. There it was again, the same rumbling, fleshy stain on the undersides of the clouds, punctuated by white flashes, that I’d seen last night rising over Beacon Hill. I tried to avert my face but with each flash I felt sicker.
‘Those are the flares,’ said one of the girls behind me. ‘They make it like daylight. So you can see the bomb doors, you see, you can see them opening up.’
The other girl burst out into noisy weeping, and several others joined her.
‘Please don’t wake our evacuees.’ My voice and fingers were shaking as I worked. ‘I can’t have them seeing this raid. Their families are in the city.’ The curtain secured, I fumbled for the lamp and lit it again, and saw Mrs Berrow in the doorway.
‘Mrs Parr’s right,’ she said. ‘And that light would have carried twenty mile in the blackout. You want their leftovers dumped on us?’ She folded her strong arms. ‘Now pipe down, and no more of that language, thank you very much.’
Chastened, the women began to settle themselves down, sighing and murmuring. Mrs Berrow and I left the room. Just as we reached the stairs Mrs Berrow spoke again. ‘Any whisper of that little girl’s mam?’
Her face was benign, expectant, in the shaft of dull light from the sitting room.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
At three o’clock I was startled by a sturdy punch in the back and a long, grinding grizzle.
‘Mummy. Mummeee.’
She sat up, eyes half open, arms outstretched. She wasn’t awake. I pulled her to me and her arms went tight round my neck, her hot cheek pressed against mine. Very small breaths she took, just puffs of air. Then I laid her down onto her small pillow.
*