The Girl With No Name (26 page)

‘Don’t be ridiculous, child,’ snapped Edith. ‘You’ll do no such thing.’ She was taken aback at and not a little impressed at Charlotte’s confrontation. ‘I’m merely asking you to help with some of the chores, while I get on in the garden. Be ready to go at quarter past ten.’

Charlotte washed up the few breakfast pots and then went back upstairs. She was just going into her room when she noticed the door of Miss Edie’s room was ajar and curiosity overcame her; pushing it wider she crept into the room and looked about her. It was much bigger than her own and had probably been that of Miss Edie’s parents when she was a child. It was furnished comfortably enough, but the furniture was old and shabby and it was clear that nothing had been done to smarten the room up for many years. The walls were papered with a floral wallpaper, but the colours were dim and in places the paper was torn. A threadbare rug covered much of the floor and the blackout curtains hanging on either side of the window had seen better days. Charlotte tiptoed over to the window and peeped through a gap in the curtain. In the garden below she saw Miss Edie, busy hoeing. Safe from interruption, Charlotte turned her attention back to the room. There on the table by the bed lay a book, a pair of spectacles and an old photograph in a silver frame. A uniformed soldier with curly hair stared out at her with smiling eyes.

Who was he? she wondered as she picked him up for a closer look. A husband? A brother? A boyfriend? The photo looked quite old.

There was nothing much else to see. The bed had been neatly made and Miss Edie’s dressing gown hung on a peg on the back of the door. Charlotte left the room, making sure that the door was left a little ajar as she’d found it. There was one more door on the landing and, wondering what was in that room, she gently turned the handle. The door was jammed or locked. Either way, it wouldn’t open. Charlotte went back into her own room and made her bed as she’d been told. She was still sorely tempted to pack her case and take it with her to the meeting in the church hall. She hadn’t lied. If Miss Edie didn’t want her here, she didn’t want to stay. She would ask Miss Morrison if she could go back to London with her, then she’d return and fetch her things.

She went back downstairs and looked into the two other rooms. The one next to the kitchen was a dining room, rather dark, its heavy furniture covered with an overlay of dust. Clearly it hadn’t been used, or cleaned, for some time. The other door opened into a sitting room. It was furnished with shabby but comfortable-looking armchairs and could have made a cosy place to sit and read or listen to the wireless had the fire been lit. A piano stood against one wall and a bookcase full of books against another, but this room, too, felt cold and unused. These two rooms had no blackout curtains or screens and Charlotte guessed they didn’t need them, so seldom were they used. She was just investigating the cupboard under the stairs when she heard the back door open and, not wanting to be found prying, she beat a hasty retreat upstairs; by the time Miss Edie reached the landing, Charlotte was sitting on her window seat staring out across the Mendip Hills.

Together they walked back into the village and arrived at the church hall just as it began to fill up with the evacuees and their hosts and hostesses. Mrs Vicar was at the door greeting everyone and as soon as Charlotte saw Clare she broke away and went over to say hallo.

Clare was sitting next to a large woman wearing a cross-over apron and a scarf tied round the back of her head. Charlotte flopped down on her other side.

‘What’s your place like?’ she muttered.

With a quick sideways glance to make sure Mrs Prynne wasn’t listening, Clare said, ‘Not too bad. Had some sort of stew last night. Weren’t too bad. Have to share a room with Sandra, Mrs Prynne’s daughter. Don’t like that, she snores something rotten. What about you?’

‘Got a room to myself,’ Charlotte admitted, ‘and the supper was good. She don’t like the Germans though.’

‘Nor does anyone!’ exclaimed Clare.

‘But she thinks I am one.’

‘But that’s stupid!’ cried Clare. ‘You ain’t!’

‘Think I might be,’ Charlotte said. ‘That’s the trouble.’

‘Well, even if you was, you ain’t one of
those
Germans, are you? Stands to reason. If you was one of them you’d be in Germany, wouldn’t you?’

‘Anyway, I think she’s going to say she won’t have me, an’ if she does I’m going to ask Miss Morrison to take me back to London. I don’t like the country. There’s no houses, just fields and sheep an’ that.’

At that moment Avril Swanson moved to the front of the hall and clapping her hands, asked everyone to sit down so she could start the meeting.

‘First of all I’d like to ask my sister, Caroline Morrison, to say a few words about the children she’s brought down here and her reason for doing so. After that I’ll explain how we plan to make these children welcome in our village and to integrate them into village life.

‘What’s “integrate”?’ Charlotte murmured to Clare, who shrugged and said, ‘Have to wait and see.’

Caroline Morrison got to her feet and, looking at the expectant faces before her, treated them to her most charming smile.

‘First of all I’d like to thank you all, all the people of Wynsdown, for making the children from St Michael’s home in Streatham so welcome. St Michael’s is a home for children who, due to the war, have been left with no other home and often with no family to care for them. We at St Michael’s take these children in and look after them until we can find them somewhere, better, safer to live. Sometimes they are able to return to their families when they have been rehoused, others may move on to another home, perhaps more suitable to their age, and yet others may be evacuated to villages like yours, which are, we hope, too small to interest the bombers. The trouble with St Michael’s is that it is close to Croydon airport and thus in a target area for the bombers. Many of the houses round our home have been completely destroyed or at the least made uninhabitable. There have been casualties, sadly some fatalities, and so I have been allowed to bring these children here, to you, knowing that it may be this that saves their lives. You, taking in these children, are doing more than offering them a home. You’re offering them a future, a future they might otherwise not have. So we all thank you and will do our best to make sure that you never regret your generosity.’ Miss Morrison treated them all to another smile and, to a round of applause, sat down beside her sister.

Avril, applauding too, stood up again. ‘Now, this afternoon we’re going to have a party here in the church hall so that we can all get to know one another. All the children in the village are invited, as are those of you who are looking after them. The sooner we get to know everyone the better it will be. However, in the meantime, we need to sort out schools. Now, children, if I call your name please stand up so we can see who you are and I’ll tell you what you’ll be doing after the weekend. Fred Moore, please stand.’ Flushing a furious red, Fred stood up, followed by Malcom Flint, Molly Hart, Charlotte Smith and Clare Pitt, as their names were called.

‘Now, all of you will be going down to Cheddar on the school bus with the other children who attend Cheddar Secondary School. You must be on the village green, outside the Magpie, by a quarter past eight. The bus won’t wait for you if you’re late, so please do be there in plenty of time. Right, children, you can sit down again now.’ Clare and Charlotte subsided on to the seats, pleased that at least they’d be going to school together. ‘That’s if I stay,’ muttered Charlotte. She had seen Miss Edie speaking to Mrs Vicar before the meeting began and she was wondering what had been said about her.

‘Course you’ll be staying,’ replied Clare softly. ‘Not going to send you back to all them bombs now, are they?’

As they had been whispering together, the rest of the children had been called to stand and be recognised. When they’d all answered their names they were told to sit down again and Mr Hampton stepped forward to introduce both himself and Miss Mason, who would be teaching this group.

‘No need to be frightened,’ he assured them with a grin. ‘Miss Mason and I are both very nice and we don’t bite. Just come to school a little bit early on Monday morning and we’ll get you settled in before the other children arrive.’

The meeting broke up, but before it did Avril reminded everyone they were asked to the party that afternoon. ‘And there’ll be roast chestnuts for us all. Dr Masters has collected loads from the tree in his garden and he’ll be roasting them here this afternoon.’

As soon as she could, Charlotte edged her way through the crowd to where Miss Morrison stood.

‘I don’t like it here,’ she said without preamble. ‘I want to come back to London with you.’

‘Charlotte, my dear,’ Miss Morrison replied, ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. We’ve managed to get you all safely away from the bombing and I’m afraid you won’t be able to come back until the war’s over.’

‘But that may not be for years,’ wailed Charlotte.

‘I know, but it’s for your own safety. Charlotte, dear, we don’t even know, yet, where you belong. When we do we want to be able to hand you back to your family, safe and sound.’

‘What happens if I remember?’ Charlotte demanded. ‘If I remember who I am? What happens then?’

‘If you remember, write to me at St Michael’s and tell me. Then I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, you have to stay here.’

‘That Miss Edie, the one what I’m staying with, don’t want me,’ she said.

‘Actually you’re wrong there, Charlotte. I was talking to her earlier and she told me and my sister that she did want you. She wants you to stay.’

‘She doesn’t like me because I’m German,’ said Charlotte flatly.

‘That’s not quite true, but I will tell you something if you promise not to mention it to Miss Everard.’

‘What?’

‘She is still very sad because the man she was going to marry was killed at the end of the last war. He was in the trenches and was killed. You have to understand it’s very difficult to get over something like that,’ Caroline said, thinking as she said it that Edith Everard ought to make an effort and not wallow in self-pity for twenty years.

Charlotte remembered the photo she’d seen in Miss Edie’s bedroom that morning of a soldier in uniform. A young man, much younger than Miss Edie, she had thought, but of course not much younger than Miss Edie would have been in 1918.

‘Give it a few days, Charlotte, and see how you get on. If things are too difficult, tell my sister and I promise you she’ll move you.’

At the end of the morning the two of them walked home to Blackdown House. Miss Edie heated some more of her special soup, saying as she did so, ‘I managed to get some mince at the butcher in Cheddar yesterday, so I thought I’d make a cottage pie for this evening. Do you like cottage pie?’

‘I don’t know,’ Charlotte said cautiously.

Miss Edie gave her a smile and said, ‘Well, we’ll find out tonight, won’t we?’

The party in the church hall was only a qualified success. The village children all turned up, seduced by the promise of roast chestnuts and jammy buns. Marjorie Bellinger produced the buns and Avril raided her stock of home-made blackberry jam to go inside. The evacuees were brought along by their host families and the two groups stood on either side of the hall eyeing each other up.

‘It’s like when we were youngsters going to the village dance,’ Janet Tewson said to Sally Prynne. ‘Remember how we used to be one side of the hall, watching the lads on the other?’

Sally laughed. ‘I remember you trying to catch the eye of your Frank,’ she said.

Janet laughed too. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘caught more than his eye, didn’t I?’ She beckoned her twins over. ‘Dick, Chris, you look after our Polly, she’s your little sister now, remember.’

Dick pulled a face, but Chris went across to Polly who was hiding among the other children from St Michael’s. He grabbed her by the hand and said, ‘Mum says you’re to come with us.’ Polly started to cry and he said angrily, ‘What you making that din for? I was going to get you a hot chestnut and a bun.’

‘Don’t like hot chestnuts,’ wailed Polly, who had never had one.

‘Bet you like jammy buns though,’ persisted Chris. ‘Come on, Polly-dolly. Mum says come over and have a bun.’

Gradually, the two groups began to mix. Dr Masters was doing a roaring trade with his hot chestnuts and once the London children had tasted them they were back for more.

‘I thought you had hot-chestnut men in the streets of London,’ Nancy said to Caroline.

‘Used to and probably will again,’ answered Caroline, ‘but just now the streets of London are not what they used to be. The older kids might remember, but some of these are only five or six.’

Caroline was watching Charlotte quite carefully. She had decided to stay another night before returning to London and not simply because her old friend, Henry Masters, had asked her round for supper, but because she was genuinely worried about Charlotte and her placement. Avril had been accosted before the morning meeting by Edith Everard, demanding to know why she hadn’t been told that her charge was a German.

Avril, a little thrown by the vehemence of her question, said, ‘We’re not sure she is. But does it really matter?’ She was about to say, ‘She’s a child that needs a loving home, isn’t that what you were offering?’ when Miss Everard interrupted.

‘It matters to me,’ she said. ‘We’re at
war
with the Germans... for the
second time
in twenty years!’

‘I’m well aware of that, Miss Everard, but we aren’t at war with Charlotte Smith.’

At that moment Caroline looked across the room and seeing the expression on Miss Everard’s face realised that Avril was having problems, so she walked over to join the two women.

‘Everything all right, Avril?’ she asked cheerfully.

‘I’m afraid we shall have to move Charlotte. Miss Everard doesn’t want her and—’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t want her,’ snapped Miss Everard. ‘I simply said it would have been a courtesy to tell me in advance that the child was German. I’m perfectly happy to give her a home, but I think you should have warned me.’