The Girl With No Name (52 page)

‘They all thought I was dead,’ Charlotte went on and she explained why. Her eyes filled with tears as she told Caroline about Hilda and her family. How kind they’d been to her when she’d arrived as a refugee, how Hilda had befriended her at school and how they’d all helped her with her English. ‘I can’t believe they’re all dead, Hilda, her brother, her parents. All gone.’ She pulled out a hankie and blew her nose. ‘All this time and I didn’t know.’

‘What was Harry doing at the house?’ Caroline asked, more to change the subject than wanting to know.

‘He said he was keeping an eye on it.’

‘Keeping an eye on it?’

‘Yes, he told me he’d stayed with the Federmans for a while when he had nowhere else to live. When they moved, so that Aunt Naomi was away from the bombs when she had her baby, he said he’d stay and keep an eye on it.’

‘But it’s a ruin.’

‘I know,’ agreed Charlotte, ‘but when he found me with my hand on the cellar door, he thought I was trying to go down there to see if there was anything to steal.’

‘And is there?’

Charlotte shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I couldn’t open the door and then Harry came. Still,’ she brightened a little, ‘I know Aunt Naomi and Uncle Dan are alive... and that they’ve had a baby. I didn’t know they were having a baby!’

‘How exciting,’ Caroline said. ‘And where are they now?’

‘Harry doesn’t know. He just knows they were moving away from the bombing.’

That’s strange, Caroline thought, if he promised to keep an eye on their house, he must know where they’ve gone. But for the time being she kept this thought to herself.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s a pity, because I’m sure you want to find them and tell them you’re alive and well.’

This drew a smile. ‘Oh yes,’ cried Charlotte. ‘Oh, I do want to find them.’

‘Well, we’ll have to see what we can do,’ promised Caroline. ‘I expect if we ask around in that area, someone’ll know where they went. At least then you can write to them, if nothing else.’

‘I wrote to them before,’ Charlotte said, ‘but they didn’t answer.’

‘I know you did, but that’s almost certainly because they never got your letter. The posts went completely haywire during the Blitz. There could be a hundred reasons why they never got your letter.’ Or there could be just one, she thought privately. Harry.

When Charlotte went up to bed, Caroline stayed sitting at her desk, thinking. In her desk drawer was a letter she’d received from Avril only a couple of weeks earlier. It brought news for Charlotte and Caroline had been deputed to tell her about it at an opportune moment. Up until now she hadn’t managed to find the right moment and with the reappearance of Harry Black, she was glad that she hadn’t. It wasn’t news she wanted to share with him. She got the letter out and re-read it.

St Mark’s Vicarage

Wynsdown

Dear Caro,

I know you’re safely back at Livingston Road now and hope that Charlotte is settling in. It can’t be easy for her to come to terms with yet another loss, but I’m sure you’re keeping her busy which will help!

We had some interesting news the other day with regard to Charlotte. A few days after you left, Mr Thompson of Thompson, Harris and Thompson came up from Cheddar. He was Miss Everard’s solicitor. Anyway, he came to see David about her will. Apparently she’s left a small bequest to the church but everything else is left in trust for Charlotte. Till she’s 21. You can imagine we were amazed! What’s more, she’d named David as a co-trustee with Mr Thompson. You could have knocked us down with a feather! David had no idea. She certainly hadn’t asked him. Mr T says he told her to speak to David about it first and he assumed that she’d done so. David can refuse if he wants to but he’s not going to. In the meantime it means that Charlotte is quite well off. Miss Everard had some shares or bonds or something that gave her a reasonable income and all that is Charlotte’s now. Mr T said Miss E made the will several months ago. Blackdown House is Charlotte’s as well, of course, so she does have somewhere to live if she wants to leave London again.

All this is most unexpected. Mr Thompson is also the executor, but he agreed to leave it to us to tell Charlotte of her inheritance. David and I have discussed it and decided that it isn’t something to put in a letter. It would be better to tell her face to face and be ready to answer the questions she will surely have. So, dear Caro, we’d like to leave it to you to break it to her at a suitable moment. You’re in loco parentis now... maybe not legally but certainly de facto. What about all my Latin tags!! Father would have been impressed, don’t you think? Still, I know you’ll agree it’s better to deal with this face to face. I think Mr T is opening a bank account for her, so that she’ll have access to some of her money. Not the capital of course, enough to pay her way and for a few little extras, but not so that anyone with an eye to the main chance can get his hooks into her.

Do come down and see us again soon, Caro. Poor Henry is pining away!

Give my love to Charlotte and lots to you,

Avril xx

Though she doesn’t know it, Caroline thought now, Charlotte is a wealthy girl and with the recollection of Harry, standing charming and confident in the front hall, she was glad he didn’t know it either. He seemed to be a cross between a spiv and a docker and she didn’t trust either of them.

Naomi was catching a few minutes’ rest while Nicholas was having his afternoon nap when there was a sharp rap on her door. She heaved herself to her feet and when she opened the door she found Shirley Newman outside.

‘Shirley,’ she said, standing aside for her to come in, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘I got some news I thought you’d want to hear,’ Shirley said, flopping down into a chair. She and Naomi had remained friends over the months they’d both been living in Feneton, but they were not close. Naomi was busy, living and working at the Feneton Arms and Shirley, tired of being at the beck and call of her cousin, Maud, had found work in a factory outside Ipswich and went in daily on the bus.

‘What’s happened?’ Naomi asked.

‘Derek’s come home on leave,’ Shirley said.

This wasn’t news to Naomi. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know, you both come in the bar on Saturday.’

‘Yeah, but on Sunday we went down to London. Back to Kemble Street.’

Naomi looked at her in surprise. ‘Did you? And how did it look?’

‘Well, there ain’t nothing been done to our house. Looks just like it did before, ’cept that there’s weeds growing in the walls. Thing is, Derek says we ought to be repairing it before it gets worse. The bombing’s stopped now, so we could try and get it mended.’

‘Mended?’

‘Well, some repairs anyway. If we could get the roof fixed and board up the windows – you know, make the place water-tight – well, Derek says we could probably move back there.’

‘Move back?’ Naomi couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘Not now, not straight away, but after the war.’

‘That sounds a long way off,’ Naomi said.

‘I know, but when it does end everyone’s going to be looking for places to live, ain’t they? Means we’d have a head start. People are going to live in damaged houses to begin with, ain’t they?’

Naomi shrugged. She hadn’t ever thought that far ahead. She was happy enough as they were now. She had her job, working for Jenny, and Dan was working at the nearby RAF base.

When Dan had come to live there permanently, Jenny had given them two upstairs rooms as their home and they were comfortably settled. Would they, she wondered now, ever go back to Kemble Street? It had always been Dan’s home, but they didn’t own it and since the fire had made it uninhabitable, they had ceased to pay rent. All their possessions had been destroyed with it. Naomi was in no hurry to go back to face the wreck of what had once been her home. They’d started a new life, here in Suffolk. Nicholas, now two and a half, had made up for his early appearance in the world and was growing fast. He wasn’t threatened with death from the skies, he was fed, warm and cared for. Why should they change that?

‘So, who’s going to pay for all these repairs?’ she wondered.

‘Landlord’ll have to,’ said Shirley. ‘But listen, Naomi, this isn’t what I came to tell you.’

‘So, what is?’

‘While we was looking at the house, I saw someone going into yours.’

‘What?’ Naomi stared at her. ‘Who?’

‘Dunno who,’ replied Shirley, ‘just a bloke. He went inside but we didn’t see him come out.’

‘But what was he doing?’ demanded Naomi. ‘I mean, the whole place is burnt out, least, that’s what Dan says.’

‘Dunno what he was doing,’ returned Shirley, ‘just poking about, I expect. He may have come out again when we wasn’t looking. Before we left, Derek went over and looked in. He didn’t go inside, but he couldn’t see no one and no one answered when he called. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘Derek said I should come and tell you, case Dan wants to go and have a look-see.’

‘Thanks,’ Naomi said. ‘I’ll tell Dan when he gets in, but I don’t suppose we can do much. People must be poking about bomb sites all the time.’

When Dan got home that evening Naomi told him what Shirley had said. ‘Who d’you think it was?’ she wondered. ‘And what was he doing in our house?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dan said with a shrug, ‘but I bet there are people like him all over London.’

‘There isn’t anything of ours he could steal, is there?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you brought all that wasn’t burnt with you.’

‘I brought all I could carry,’ Dan said. ‘There was stuff left in the cellar, of course, but that weren’t worth nothing. You know, just that old mattress and them chairs. Not stuff I could bring with me, but not worth stealing, neither.’

‘Did you lock the cellar door?’

‘Couldn’t lock it, it was off its hinges.’

‘So anyone could get in there.’

‘Well, suppose they could. I mean, well, I pushed the door back into place and wedged it. You could open it, but not easily. And why would you even go into the house, let alone try to go into the cellar?’

They had a quick supper and then Naomi went down to do her stint in the bar. Sometimes Dan went down too, to sit in the snug by the fire, but tonight he stayed upstairs. He thought over what Naomi had told him. It did seem odd that someone would go into the burnt-out house and stay there. Of course Derek and Shirley might have missed whoever it was coming out again, but even so, Dan didn’t like the idea of someone poking about his home, even if it was a ruin.

He was in bed by the time Naomi had finished closing up downstairs. He heard her go over and look at Nicholas asleep in his cot before she slipped in beside him.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said as she snuggled close, ‘I think I’ll go down on Sunday.’

‘Down?’ Naomi was tired and she sighed. ‘Down where?’

‘Down to London. To Kemble Street. Have a look around and see what’s what. It’s months since I was there. I ought to have a shufti.’

‘There won’t be anything to see,’ Naomi said. ‘That bloke’ll be long gone.’

‘P’raps,’ agreed Dan, ‘but I think I’ll go all the same.’

‘Well, I can’t come with you,’ Naomi said.

‘Know you can’t, love, but even so, I think I’ll go. I can have a look and then we can put it out of our minds.’ He smiled in the darkness and added, ‘I can have a look at the Newmans’, too, see if they really can do enough repairs to save it.’

Sunday afternoon saw Dan walking from the Hope Street bus stop into Kemble Street. He walked slowly along the road in which he’d lived all his life, looking at the houses, those with families still living there, those damaged beyond repair and the one or two, like the Newmans’, in between. All so familiar and yet bitterly unfamiliar.

There were people about, but no one paid any attention to him. When he reached number sixty-five he paused for a moment on the pavement, looking through the open doorway then, with sudden determination, he stepped across the threshold into the ruins of his home. A glance into the front room told him no one was there. The remains of the stairs in front of him led nowhere; no one would risk going up those. Softly he walked down the passage to the kitchen at the back. There were definitely footprints in the dirt, but they could have been there for months. The kitchen was just as he’d left it on that dreadful day after the fire... except for the door to the cellar. It was still wedged shut, but from the sweep marks in the dust on the floor it was clear that it had been opened, probably quite recently. He crossed the kitchen and looked hard at the door. He could see now that it had been pushed back into the doorway and a piece of rubble had been forced under it to fix it firmly in place. It’s what he’d done himself, except that he had used a piece of wood for the wedge, not a stone. Dan looked at it, considering, then he reached down and with several sharp kicks, he dislodged the stone with his boot and the door moved. He eased it open and peered down the steps. No one was there. He’d brought a torch with him and so, with great care, he made his way down into the cellar. Flashing the torch around he saw that the cellar had indeed been in use. The mattress was there with blankets piled on to it. The chairs were there and the small table, but on the table there was a Tilley lamp. They hadn’t had a Tilley lamp. That proved it. Someone was using their cellar. Dan looked round to see what else he could see. There was a bottle of water and a row of tinned food on the shelf. Dan was certain he hadn’t left any food there. He couldn’t remember if there had even been any. Biscuits perhaps? Certainly not tins. Where had they all come from? Too many to have been bought legally, he thought. He wished he had something he could put them in, so that he could take them with him. He didn’t know whose they were, nor where they’d come from, but they were in the cellar of his house and as far as he was concerned, that made them his. He picked up a couple of tins of salmon, the like of which he hadn’t seen for years, and slid them into his pocket. A treat for Naomi and the boy; at least he’d have something to show for his trip down to London.

He went back up to the kitchen and manoeuvred the cellar door back into place, kicking the piece of rubble underneath it to hold it firmly in place. With one last look round the kitchen he walked back through the house and out into the street. It was still daylight, though it wouldn’t be long before the dusk turned to twilight and darkness. He was walking back down the road to catch the bus to the station when he saw someone coming towards him. The man was walking slowly along the road, looking from left to right. A familiar figure and one he immediately recognised.