Paint on the Smiles (25 page)

Going out through the passage, he picked up his overcoat. It was misty and quite chilly. Following Phil into the darkness of the yard, he reached for the torch that usually stood on the window sill but his fingers failed to locate it. He didn’t worry; Phil would certainly have it. The darkness of the yard was unbroken and the mist had thickened into an all-concealing fog. He felt with slippered feet for the steps, no longer familiar in the dense foggy night which had obliterated even the stars.

The stable door was open and he stepped inside, calling for Phil to show a light. There was no reply and he walked to the top of the steps leading down to the shelter which Danny and Willie had built.

‘Down there, look.’ Phil appeared at his side momentarily and shone the thin beam of the torch down the steps. As Peter bent slightly and asked him to shine the torch again, he was pushed viciously and in such a way that he completely lost his balance and fell with no possibility of grasping the handrail and saving himself. The door was closed, cutting off his cry of alarm and the shout of pain as he landed awkwardly across the bottom step.

Phil appeared in the living room moments later wearing pyjamas and dressing gown, having gone up to change and give the impression he hadn’t left the house. He joined in the women’s conversation and frowned with them when Peter failed to return. As the minutes passed, he offered to go and look for him, going back upstairs to get dressed.

He came in shivering. ‘It’s freezing cold, the fog’s like a wet blanket. No sign of him, though it’s hard to see anything. The back lane door’s open but he isn’t there. I walked as far as the postbox.’

At midnight Cecily called the police, who assured her there hadn’t been a road accident reported in the vicinity. ‘Met someone and got talking, I bet,’ the policeman said, although that seemed a very unlikely explanation.
‘It’s happened to me and I’ve felt the rough edge of my wife’s tongue more than once.’

‘Peter isn’t like that,’ Cecily said. ‘He’s lying somewhere hurt, I know it. Go and search for him, please. This isn’t the weather for being outside and helpless.’

A constable arrived and Phil offered to help him search. ‘You go along the lane and I’ll look in the stable in case he’s stumbled. I’ll even look down the shelter again, although how he could have fallen down there I can’t think.’

‘If, as you say, the door is closed, that’s unlikely,’ the constable said.

‘We have to be thorough,’ Phil insisted.

They sat up all night waiting for news but none came. Cecily was white and her eyes abnormally large and she walked up and down, listening for the slightest sound at the door. Dawn broke and she went out through the stables and into the lane, looking up and down foolishly, hoping to see him walk around the corner as if nothing untoward had happened. She handed the constable the key of the next door shop without any hope of finding him there; he didn’t have a key and apart from a window that refused to close properly there was no way he could get in there.

Two more constables arrived to begin a new shift but the first one refused to go home, promising another couple of hours to search. He went into the shop next door using the key at half past six and woke Horse and his wife, who were wrapped in blankets and coats and surrounded with the remnants of a fish and chip meal and a half-empty flagon of beer.

‘Let them stay,’ Cecily said when she was told. ‘I wouldn’t want to see anyone without a roof over their head today.’ Horse rolled himself back into the blankets and went back to sleep.

‘Get that window fixed or they’ll invite all their friends,’ she was warned.

Peter called. Quietly at first, then with more and more abuse, convinced that Phil was outside the door listening to him. He had slipped into unconsciousness when he fell and had not realized how much time had passed. When he woke and tried to rise, the pain was enough to want him to scream and he had lain there panting with the shock of it, knowing his leg was broken.

Coldness rose from the concrete floor and made every inch of him
ache. If he had been able to move, there was nothing to help him. There was a first aid box but the cupboard where the blankets were stored was too far away and it was warmth he needed. Warmth and a hot drink. Fully aware of what had happened to him, he swore that he’d live long enough to make Phil face his evil act and convince Ada to accept it. To do that he must survive. Surely Phil wouldn’t leave him much longer? It can’t be his intention for me to die here? A chill of fear spread through him as he thought that, yes, that could be Phil’s intention.

He reached in as wide a circle as he was able but pain restricted it and he could find nothing that would help him. He tried to visualize the cellar contents. A brush had stood in a corner just inside the door, near the top of the steps. If he could only reach it, he might be able to make himself a splint and succeed in moving. But it might as well be on the moon as there was no chance of moving up steps to reach it.

It was a blackness he had never before experienced. There wasn’t even a crack of light around the cellar door, situated as it was, well inside the stable. Was it night? Nearly morning? How long had he been there? Where was Cecily? Hunger would have been a guide if it hadn’t been blunted by shock and the pain in his leg, which he knew was lying at a peculiar angle. That, plus the cold which drained away any other sensation. There was pressure on his back but he was afraid to move and try to ease it, although he knew he must.

If only he could have a drink. The thought of a hot, sweet cup of tea hovered before him like a tormenting nightmare. He drifted into a doze in which he saw Cecily walking towards him, smiling and carrying a bowl of soup and a warm blanket. Momentarily the dream gave him the sensation that he had in fact received these things. His thirst eased and the blanket and warm soup revived his energy. He woke with a shout of agony as he moved in his dream, to stand and walk towards Cecily, the movement reminding him of his injured leg.

The pressure of the bottom step on his spine was worse. He looked up and thought he saw a thin slit of light around the bottom of the door. Morning? Midday? Where was Cecily? He concentrated on listening but there was no sound of feet above, encouraging him to shout, but he shouted anyway. He had to move. He tried, shouted in agony and knew that without a splint of some sort he would never succeed.

Why didn’t someone come? Where was Cecily?

The search which had centred around the shop and the back lanes was extended. No one went near the stables any more. The police and friends went over to the beach, in case he had wandered over there with some kind of memory loss, but although they approached the stall and the cafe owners who knew him, there was no information to cheer Cecily during that long and terrible day. They called on Sharon in case he had called at his house where he had lived until he and Cecily were married. She had seen nothing of him, but offered to help search.

Ada served in the shop where curiosity brought a larger than usual number of customers and Phil followed her around, never leaving her, frequently glancing back to where Cecily sat huddled near the phone, with his strange, nervous smile but not speaking to her.

Peter knew that unless he did something soon, hypothermia would gradually weaken him and he would lose the strength to try. The dream, in which he imagined he was warm and fed, was dangerous. The first aid box was his only hope, as long as Phil hadn’t moved it. He called for a while but there was no response. He tried to move, reach for the first aid box, but the movement caused so much pain he fainted.

The policemen had gone to be replaced by others, who went over the same ground as the others had done several times before. One actually looked into the stable, saw it was empty and didn’t go to the cellar door. It was locked from the outside so there couldn’t be anyone down there. He called softly but Peter was unaware.

A while later, while the search went on through the stables and sheds alongside the lanes, Peter decided he had to make an effort to support the injured leg. He removed his braces and tie and, using the good leg as a splint for the broken one, he tensed himself to tackle the steps.

He slowly, painfully moved, inch by inch, to the edge of the step on which he was half lying and lowered himself down to the floor. He rested a while, then moved again, slipping in and out of consciousness, each time taking longer to recover sufficiently to go on. He reached for the first aid box and pulled it down, scattering bandages which he used to add to the support for his leg, winding them around to strengthen the bonds. Then he tensed himself to get up the steps to the door.

It seemed to take hours but he slowly managed to rise backwards, step by painful step, towards the door at the top, thankful that the steps were shallow. When he reached the top he pushed the door and called but his
voice was alarmingly weak. He sobbed. He would never get out of this prison created by Phil.

The latch was on the door and as he couldn’t possibly stand he was unable to reach it. To have freedom so close but denied him was even worse than lying helpless at the bottom of the steps, to have reached the door and be found dead here so near success was a cruel fate. He was so tired but, determined to resist death, he felt around him in the dark. Less dark than when he had been entombed below but dark all the same, a different kind of darkness. He couldn’t see it but knew there was a yard brush, which they used to lift the loft door and swing it back on its hinges. He found it with a gasp of satisfaction and dragged it into position. Steadying it was extremely difficult, his arms were so weak. It rattled against the door as he tried to position it under the latch and lift it. It was then he realized that the door had been locked on the outside.

Cecily knew she wouldn’t sleep. She went out and stood at the back door staring across at the stables as if somehow the building held the secret of Peter’s disappearance. Where could he have gone? Why had he left her? He went out to post two letters and the postbox was only on the corner at the bottom of the lane. What could have happened between here and there? She gave a big shuddering sigh. If he were ill, surely he wouldn’t go away from her? Where else was there for him to go?

Something in the darkness made her stop and listen. Something was moving, and there was the slightest of sounds at the stable door, which was closed. She heard the sound again, a door rattling. Someone was in there. Picking up the torch from the window sill, she walked up the yard, afraid to hope. She opened the stable door and called, ‘Anyone there?’ The cellar door rattled and she heard the sound of the broom falling and clattering down the steps inside.

‘Peter!’ She opened the cellar door and saw Peter lying on the top step.

She knelt beside him and took in the white face and the film of sweat, the legs tied together and heard him say weakly, ‘Phil. Phil threw me down the cellar – locked me in – my leg, it’s—’ He once again slipped into unconsciousness.

Running, shouting, she told Ada to call the ambulance and the police. She paused only long enough to see these things done then, grabbing some coats, ran back to stay with her arms around Peter until help arrived.

They knew Peter’s story was true. It all added up so neatly; the way Phil had been the one to search and re-search the stable, the way he had
prayed aloud that there shouldn’t be an air raid although there hadn’t been one for many months. The way he had encouraged the searchers to go further afield. He didn’t even deny it when the police came, but boasted about his skill in organizing it.

The constables were reprimanded for not undertaking the proper searches when they admitted leaving it to Phil, and argued that they had no reason to suspect him of involvement. He played the part of a concerned relative too well.

Phil was taken away, and with Peter in hospital, the two sisters were thrown back to the time after their father’s death. They were alone in the house without even Van to comfort them. Van, whose twenty-first birthday had been marked with the birth of her own son, who they were rarely allowed to see.

The temptation to hurl abuse was strongly felt by Cecily, but she desisted, superstitiously believing her tolerance would be rewarded by Peter’s full recovery.

Silently they sat, hour by hour, waiting for the time of their next visit to the hospital. Cecily wondered bitterly why Ada had ignored Phil’s growing strangeness but was honest enough to admit that if it had been Peter she would have acted the same way. She would have protected him, tried to ease him out of the cocoon of confusion he had woven around himself, convinced that with her love she could help him without involving the experts.

Peter was her life. Her strength and happiness were tied up in him. She couldn’t imagine a world without him and prayed silently for his health to return. She needed him and his love and his unfailing support. He had fitted into her life so perfectly and completely that ‘being made for each other’ no longer sounded like a romantic fantasy.

Days and nights passed in a blur of anxiety. Cecily and Ada visited their husbands every hour that it was allowed, and between times, Ada opened the almost empty shop and Cecily went up the hill to Waldo’s.

Peter developed pneumonia and seemed likely to be in hospital for a while. For Ada, there was little hope of Phil ever returning home.

As Peter gradually regained strength, sympathy grew in Cecily for both Ada and the confused and unhappy man who was her brother-in-law. She occasionally found time to go with Ada to the hospital where Phil, looking smaller and older, seemed likely to remain.

The sisters heard the news of the Allied victories from customers and friends, but their reaction to them was less enthusiastic than it would
have been weeks before. They smiled when it was announced on 23 April that Berlin was surrounded. They cheered with the rest when told that Mussolini and his mistress had been shot, but they rarely read a newspaper or listened to the wireless. All their thoughts were close at home on Peter and Phil and on worries for the future if one or the other didn’t come home again. But they did actually hear the announcement: ‘This is London calling. German radio has announced that Hitler is dead. I repeat, German radio has announced that Hitler is dead.’