Missing Person (20 page)

The door opened. Tilly in a dressing-gown appeared, hands gripping one end of the bolster. She swung it. It collided with Dan’s face again, and the blow nearly knocked him backwards over the banisters.

‘How’d you like your eggs fried?’ panted Tilly, and went for him again. Dan ducked and ran. The bolster, of course, followed him down the stairs, as it had before, Tilly chucking it at him. It landed on the floor of the passage. He stopped and looked up at her.

‘No hard feelings, Tilly, hope you ’ave a nice quiet day,’ he said.

‘Hope you break your leg,’ said Tilly.

Dan grinned.

What a woman.

He’d written to Gladys – no, Elvira – last night and set out plainly what he thought was owing to Bubbles and Penny-Farving. Married parents, that was what he and she owed them. All right, he’d written, he and she needn’t live together, he wouldn’t force her to do that, knowing her life was with the circus. But they ought to get married for the girls’ sake, and he was hoping to arrange for a young woman to come in every day on a permanent basis to see that Bubbles and Penny-Farving had some kind of mothering. They were running wild. He hoped she would answer
his
letter and agree to a wedding ceremony, a quiet one. Could she answer fairly quickly?

He addressed the letter to Miss Elvira Karola, c/o Blundell’s Circus, Margate, Kent.

‘Sammy, have you thought any more about keepin’ the one scrap yard for the sake of Freddy and my dad?’ asked Susie, just as Sammy was leaving the house.

‘Susie, I’m workin’ on it,’ said Sammy.

‘You sure you are?’ said Susie.

‘Now, Susie, do I ever tell you porkies?’

‘Sometimes, Sammy, you tell me things that don’t always mean what I think they do.’

‘Me, yours truly?’ said Sammy, a well-set-up and personable businessman whose blue eyes looked as honest as the day was long, which was saying something considering the number of competitors he’d left floundering in his wake. ‘You’re thinkin’ of Boots, me treasure. Even when he says pass the salt, you get a feelin’ he means it’s goin’ to be foggy tomorrow.’

‘Yes, I adore Boots,’ said Susie a little wickedly.

‘You can’t,’ said Sammy, ‘I forbid it.’

‘Oh, you do, do you, Sammy Adams?’

‘You bet I do, Mrs Adams,’ said Sammy, ‘I’ve got to hold you to love, honouring and obeyin’.’

‘Ha-ha,’ said Susie, and Sammy winked, kissed her and set off for his office.

It was a quite beautiful June morning, in this, the twelfth year of peace since the Great War had come to an end. The devil, however, was still exacting his price from victors and losers alike, so much so that one could have said there had only been losers.
Unemployment
, economic depression, anarchy, the rise of Stalin and the emergence of Hitler, both acolytes of the devil, all contributed to the woes and sufferings of people in Europe and elsewhere. Secret societies and secret services were more active than ever.

Nevertheless, the morning was so beautiful that Mr Finch, a secret service gentleman himself, phoned a colleague in a department in Whitehall and informed him he was taking the day off.

‘Well, good luck, old man, do you have an outing and a fast filly in mind?’

‘I’ve an outing in mind, yes,’ said Mr Finch, ‘but with my wife, not a fast filly.’

‘Allow me in haste to point out I meant a visit to the races at Lingfield and a fiver on Merry Maid in the three-thirty.’

‘Allow me, George, to accept your apology.’

‘Very decent of you, old man. Enjoy yourselves.’

‘We will,’ said Mr Finch. Accordingly, he and Chinese Lady prepared for their outing, Chinese Lady quite delighted by the idea of a motorcar ride into the country, even if she would have preferred to travel by horse and cart. What she actually had in mind was a pony and trap, but all such conveyances were horses and carts to her. She still didn’t trust motorcars. Well, even though Edwin was a very reliable motor driver, that didn’t mean the engine wouldn’t blow up.

Mr Finch came out of the house some time after ten to check the petrol gauge of his Morris car and to place Chinese Lady’s umbrella in the back. Chinese Lady was apt not to trust the weather, either. She was going to do a little country shopping and the umbrella was a precaution.

A car pulled up on the other side of the road as Mr Finch approached his Morris in the gravelled drive. It
tucked
itself up behind a grocer’s parked delivery van. Its occupants glimpsed Mr Finch. Chinese Lady put her head out of their bedroom window.

‘Edwin, where did you say we were goin’?’ she called.

‘Farnham, Maisie. For lunch at the Red Lion Hotel.’

‘Oh, yes, there should be some nice shops in Farnham,’ said Chinese Lady, and withdrew her head to put her Sunday hat on.

They left ten minutes later, making for Merton, Epsom and Leatherhead. The Morris hummed along amid a fair amount of traffic, which became lighter once they reached Leatherhead, from where they took the road to Guildford. The countryside was green with early summer, the Surrey Hills arousing a comment in Chinese Lady.

‘I must say, Edwin, I used to think Hampstead ’Eath quite countrified, but it was never like this.’

‘Hampstead Heath, of course, is somewhat urbanized, Maisie.’

‘Is that a government word, Edwin? I don’t like government words, specially as Boots always says they cost taxpayers money. I will say he does talk sense sometimes. My, doesn’t everything look pretty? We do have some very nice scenery in this country.’

‘Our small island, Maisie, has an infinite variety.’

‘Mind you,’ said Chinese Lady, looking very nicely dressed in a lightweight costume and her Sunday hat, ‘I like seein’ trams and buses and London markets – Edwin, what’re you tryin’ to do?’

‘Overtake the slowcoach in front,’ said Mr Finch.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘we’re not in any hurry and we don’t want a wheel to fall off.’

‘There’s traffic behind, Maisie,’ said Mr Finch. The car in front was dawdling, its passengers probably just enjoying a leisurely outing, he thought. He overtook on a straight stretch, much to Chinese Lady’s discomfort. She simply didn’t trust the feeling of the Morris moving fast. Mr Finch, however, accomplished the manoeuvre smartly and quickly. The other traffic behind moved up on the slow car.

‘I’m sorry people don’t drive horses and carts like they used to when I was younger,’ said Chinese Lady.

‘Alas for progress, Maisie,’ smiled Mr Finch, ‘it causes the disappearance of much that we hold dear.’

‘Yes, like modesty,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘which I’ve always held in natural respect. When I think of them 1926 fashions and my daughter and daughters-in-law showing their legs like they did, well, that was when young women simply didn’t ’ave no modesty at all.’

‘Fashions can be a revelation, Maisie.’

‘I don’t like that word, Edwin.’

‘I note your disapproval,’ said Mr Finch, smiling. His wife was never going to be less than incurably Victorian. He motored through the little villages of Surrey towards Guildford, rarely clocking more than thirty miles an hour in indulgence of her preference for safe travel. The traffic behind, having passed the slow car, caught him up, and two or three motorists overtook him, making Chinese Lady frown.

‘I don’t know why some people are in a hurry to break their necks,’ she said. ‘I must say you drive quite nice yourself, Edwin.’

‘Thank you, Maisie. Are you enjoying the outing and the countryside?’

‘Yes, ever so much,’ said Chinese Lady, and her enjoyment was very apparent after they left Guildford
behind
and were travelling along the Hog’s Back with its panoramic views of Surrey in the sunshine of June. Passing the Hog’s Back Hotel, Mr Finch suggested that after lunch and shopping in Farnham, they could, on their return journey, stop at the hotel for a pot of tea. Chinese Lady said well, that sounds very nice, Edwin.

When they reached Farnham, he signalled a left turn before he pulled into the carriage yard of the old-established Red Lion Hotel, and following cars passed them.

In the Red Lion, Chinese Lady enjoyed an excellent lunch with her worldly husband. They dined leisurely, and followed that with what Chinese Lady considered was country shopping. That was leisurely too, so that when they stopped at the Hog’s Back Hotel on their return journey, Chinese Lady was more than ready for a welcome pot of tea. She also fell in with Mr Finch’s suggestion that some buttered toast would go down well with the tea. She thought the latter, when poured from a silver pot, was extremely high-class, but no more satisfying as a reviver than that which she had poured a thousand times from an old glazed pot during her years of penury in Walworth. She said so, but immediately assured Edwin that it was still a lovely treat to take tea here.

Mr Finch smiled. An intelligent man, a university graduate and widely travelled, he had seen much of the world and run up against the idiosyncrasies of many different peoples. All the same, he considered Chinese Lady worth a mention in the journal of any traveller. He had come to know she was what the English called ‘a character’. Her cockney origins had endowed her with fortitude and resilience, and also with a belief that proper behaviour and a proper way
of
speaking made people respect you. Most of all she believed in the omnipotence and infallibility of the Almighty, and that marriage and the family had been ordered from Above.

At fifty-three, she was still pleasant to look at, and grey had not yet touched her brown hair. Further, she still had a quite proud walk, which stemmed from the days when, as a striving young wife and mother, she carried herself in very upright fashion to show that although she was poor she was also respectable, with nothing to be ashamed of. Mr Finch was extremely fond of her, although they were far apart intellectually. But, then, he had never found that a drawback in his relationship with her, first as her lodger and later as her husband. His admiration for what she and her family had achieved had no ifs or buts about it.

‘Are you ready to go now, Maisie?’ he asked when the buttered toast was no more and the pot empty.

‘If you don’t mind, Edwin, I’ll just go to the Ladies’ first.’

‘I’ll settle the bill and then wait for you outside, by the car,’ he said.

But when she reached the car several minutes later, he wasn’t there. She looked around. There were other parked cars, one with its bonnet up and a tall man in tweeds tinkering with its works. But there was no sign of Edwin. He must have gone to the Men’s, she thought. So she waited. Five minutes went by, and as he still hadn’t appeared she went back into the hotel and to the restaurant, thinking he had perhaps forgotten he was to meet her outside. He was probably still sitting at the table. But he wasn’t, he was nowhere in the restaurant. She went outside and back to the car again. But he was still missing. A little worried and a
little
confused, Chinese Lady approached the gentleman who was still tinkering with his car. She asked him if he had seen her husband. She described Edwin and how he was dressed.

‘So sorry, but no, I don’t think I have seen him,’ said the gentleman. ‘All I have seen out here was a car driving out as I drove in ten minutes ago.’

‘Oh, that wouldn’t of been anything to do with my husband,’ said Chinese Lady. ‘That’s our motorcar over there.’

‘When I arrived, my plugs were spluttering,’ said the gentleman, ‘and I’ve been out here cleaning the points since then. Apart from that car which passed me as I drove in, I’ve noticed nothing else. Certainly, I’m sure I haven’t seen your husband. But he must be around somewhere. Why not ask the receptionist? She’s very helpful. I’m staying here a few days myself.’

‘Thank you, I’ll do that, I’ll ask her,’ said Chinese Lady, and carried herself briskly back into the hotel again. There she asked the receptionist, an attractive and friendly young lady, if she had seen her husband. Again she described him.

‘You’re not residents here, madam?’

‘No, we just came in for a pot of tea and some buttered toast, which was very nice.’

‘Oh, yes, I remember now, you came in about an hour ago,’ said the young lady. ‘Your husband left about thirteen or fourteen minutes ago, and you followed several minutes later, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I went to the Ladies’ first,’ said Chinese Lady, experiencing the first pangs of real worry.

‘Perhaps he’s gone round to the terrace at the back of the hotel, madam. From there, the views are lovely.’

‘Oh, I’ll go and look,’ said Chinese Lady.

‘I’m sure he’s out there somewhere, madam.’

‘He’d better be, I wouldn’t like to think I’d lost him,’ said Chinese Lady, making a brave attempt to lighten the moment.

At four-twenty, someone knocked on the door of Boots’s office in Camberwell.

‘Come in,’ he said. He was signing letters.

In came Rosie and Polly, Rosie in her gymslip and school hat, Polly in the kind of plain costume suitable for a schoolteacher, although it took little of her vivacious air away.

‘Hello, Daddy, are we interrupting?’ asked Rosie.

‘Oh, I don’t count the entry of light into the darkness of heavy labour an interruption,’ said Boots.

‘Crikey, listen to you,’ said Rosie. ‘Did you hear him, Miss Simms?’

It was always Miss Simms during the hours when the relationship was that of teacher and pupil. ‘Can he really mean we’re the light in his darkness, or does he say that to all the girls?’

‘Oh, I think he’s just showing off, Rosie,’ said Polly. ‘It’s his age.’

‘Poor old thing,’ said Rosie. ‘Daddy, Miss Simms—’

‘Polly?’ said Boots.

‘Oh, all right, Aunt Polly,’ said Rosie. ‘She gave me a lift from school in her car, and would have treated Annabelle too, only Annabelle went home early with a bad cold. Anyway, we stopped here to ask if she could take me to her home for tea, and supper later on. She’ll drive me home afterwards. Is that all right?’

‘I can’t think of anything against it,’ said Boots.

‘Well, bless your Sunday cricket belt,’ said Rosie.

‘And thanks for the loan of Rosie, old sport,’ said Polly.