Little Girl Lost (23 page)

Ramsey smiled, and Lydia raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘Vincent has forgotten what it's like to be young and free,' she said. ‘William enjoys his curricle, don't you?'

‘I do,' he agreed. ‘One day when I settle down with someone special, and I will, then I'll buy a fine carriage and team of horses, but a barouche, Vincent, not a brougham! But for now I'm happy with my curricle and pair.' He smiled at Rosamund.

Rosamund felt delightfully relaxed as she walked with them to the door two hours later. Florrie helped them on with their outdoor coats and Lydia and Vincent thanked Rosamund for a lovely luncheon, with Lydia cooing that it wouldn't be long before Rosamund would be out and about. William Ramsey lingered over releasing her hand as he said goodbye, and expressed a hope that they would meet again under happier circumstances. She answered that she hoped so too.

As they went down the steps to the waiting carriage Hugh Webster happened to pass by. Seeing the departing guests, he paused in his stride and raised his hat to them. She saw Vincent do the same in return and Lydia inclined her head. Then Webster looked up at her in the doorway and raised his hat again, holding it momentarily to his chest. He nodded, replaced it and walked on, and though she couldn't think why, she felt slightly disturbed, as if caught out in a misdemeanour.

Christmas Day was dismal for Margriet. Although her mother had given her a box of French bon-bons obtained from an advertisement she had seen in the
London Illustrated News
, and several books she had ordered by post from a bookseller, she still felt unhappy. She missed her papa so very much. Because her mother still couldn't go out into the world, they couldn't even go to the Christmas morning service.

‘I don't think that life will ever be happy again, do you, Mama?' she said as the two of them sat down to a breakfast of crisp bacon and coddled egg.

‘It will be different, certainly,' Rosamund answered. ‘But you will be happy one day, I expect.' Privately, she wondered if she herself ever would be or indeed had ever been truly happy. If she was honest with herself, she didn't think she had that joyfulness of spirit that most people seemed to have, at least at some time in their lives.

‘Will I?' Margriet said. ‘Will I ever be as happy as when Papa was here?' Her mouth trembled as she spoke and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I don't think …' she shook her head and swallowed, ‘I ever will be.'

Rosamund didn't know how to respond. Having had a distant, disinterested mother herself, she didn't know how to console her, so she simply said, ‘Get on with your breakfast, Margriet, before your eggs go cold.'

Florrie had been given the day off to visit her sister and wouldn't be back until the evening, so Margriet didn't even have her company after breakfast. Cook was roasting the Christmas birds, pheasant for Margriet and her mother and a fowl for herself, Mrs Simmonds and Lily, so they wouldn't want her in the kitchen, and her mother had gone up to her own small sitting room to read and sew.

Giving a huge sigh, she picked up the books that her mother had given her and carried them up to her room. Lily had lit the fire and it was blazing away merrily so she sat down and idly turned the pages. Miss Barker had said she might find consolation in books and words; she thought of the teacher's sympathetic understanding on her return to school, and her advice that she should try to take comfort from happy memories of her father. One of the books contained an anthology of poetry, ballads and sonnets from Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle and other writers of long verse, but some were sad and others she didn't understand and she wasn't in the mood for reading anyway.

She shuffled down in her chair. She could paint or draw, she thought, or start the sampler her
oma
had sent her as a Christmas present. She had said that embroidery might help to take Margriet's mind off her sorrow, but it wouldn't, Margriet thought miserably. She didn't think anything would.

Although she wasn't cold, she pulled a shawl over her shoulders and stared into the fire. The sun was shining outside her window and creating coloured motes that danced around the room. If only she could go out, she thought, but Florrie wasn't there to take her. Would anyone notice if she slipped out alone after luncheon? Her mother would have gone to her room, Mrs Simmonds and Cook would be eating their own lunch, and Lily wouldn't notice one way or the other.

A smile played around her lips. She would slip out and take a stroll about the town. Maybe she'd walk down to the pier and look at the Humber and then come back through Market Place and the king's gardens and call at Anneliese's house and ask if she was at home, even if it was Christmas Day.

At lunch Margriet was allowed a small glass of wine mixed with water with which to toast happier times, but she was not very enthusiastic either about the wine, which she found too bitter, or about the toast to the future, which she couldn't believe would ever be happy again. To please her mother, however, she raised her glass and murmured, ‘Happier times.'

After they had eaten and Mrs Simmonds and Lily had cleared away, Margriet's mother, as predicted, said she was going up to rest in her room. She asked Margriet how she would pass the time.

‘Oh, I'll do the same, Mama, and perhaps read one of the books you gave me.' Margriet had embroidered her mother a pretty bookmark and she saw that it was already in use inside a magazine that Rosamund was taking upstairs with her.

‘Very well. I'll see you at teatime, then,' her mother said, and Margriet thought wistfully of the times when her father would come upstairs and share afternoon tea and crumpets by her fireside, and then go down and have another tea with her mother. Now she was allowed to have tea downstairs to keep her mother company. She gave another sigh. She seemed to sigh a lot, she thought. It was as if she were trying to move a heavy weight that was sitting on her chest.

She went upstairs and took her warm coat from the wardrobe and placed it on her bed, and instead of her bonnet she brought out a shawl. She thought she would wrap it round her head, so that no one would recognize her. Not that there would be many people about on Christmas Day now that the church services were over. The market and the shops would probably be closed and the town quite still.

She lay down on her bed and waited. Waited for her mother to settle into her rest; waited for Cook and Mrs Simmonds to finish their meal, and waited for Lily to finish washing the dishes. When she thought it was safe, she climbed sleepily off the bed and put on her coat, slipped on her outdoor boots and gloves and lastly draped the shawl over her head. She quietly crept downstairs to the front door, closed it softly behind her and ran down the front steps towards Whitefriargate.

It was colder than she had thought it would be and she wrapped the shawl firmly round her head, tucking the ends inside her coat. She reached the end of Whitefriargate and sped along Trinity House Lane towards the King Billy statue, where several children were playing on the plinth beneath the feet of the golden horse. She waved to them as she went past and they glanced towards her; she crossed over into Blackfriargate and on to Queen Street towards the Humber and the pier.

She leaned over the railings and saw the rough waves crashing against the wooden uprights, filling the slope where at low tide market traders and others would bring their horses to wash the mud off them.

‘'Ere, who are you? What 'you doin'? You're not from round 'ere. What 'you doin' by 'oss wash?'

Margriet turned and gazed at the dirty-faced, ragged boy standing behind her with his arms crossed against his thin chest. ‘Sorry. What did you say?'

‘Ooh, la-di-da! Who are you?'

‘I'm …' Perhaps she shouldn't tell him her name.

‘Don't ya know who you are?' the boy asked. ‘Are you lost or summat?'

Margriet could barely understand what he was saying. She stared at him, thinking he might have been one of the children she had seen near the statue. ‘I'm not lost,' she told him. ‘I've come out for a walk.'

‘Where d'ya live?'

‘Erm, near Whitefriargate.'

‘In an 'ouse?'

She laughed. ‘Of course in a house. Where else?'

The boy shrugged. ‘I dunno. Anywhere. Have ya had your dinner?'

‘Yes, thank you. Have you had yours?'

‘Yeh. Sandy brought it and Immi came as well. We had pork 'n' mash an' loads o' gravy an' then a plum puddin'.'

‘Oh,' Margriet said. ‘That sounds nice. Is Sandy your mother?'

It was his turn to laugh, wrinkling up his dirty face. ‘Nah! She's Immi's ma. They brought dinner for all of 'bairns, cos of it being Christmas. Did you know it was Christmas Day?'

‘Yes, I did.' Margriet didn't know what to make of this boy. She thought her mother would have called him an urchin and wouldn't have allowed her to speak to him, but he had a cheeky grin and although he didn't look very clean she liked him. ‘But we couldn't go to church this morning because my mother is in mourning and isn't allowed out.'

‘Why's that then? Who's she in mourning for?'

Margriet's lips trembled and her eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘For my father,' she whispered and wiped her eyes on a corner of the shawl.

‘Aw! Don't cry,' he protested. ‘Do ya want to come ower and talk to us? Most of us don't have a fayther an' some of us don't have a ma either. But we all manage one way or another, 'specially when Sandy or some of 'other women bring us summat to eat.'

She began to walk alongside him, sniffling into the shawl. She hadn't understood what he meant at first, but now she realized that if these children hadn't any parents, then perhaps they might be the deserving poor she had learned about at school. The ones for whom she had collected her unwanted clothes and given them to Florrie to distribute. She couldn't ask him if they'd got them, she thought, in case he might be offended by the act of charity.

By the time they reached the King Billy statue, some of the children had gone and there were only four of them left, sitting below the plinth.

‘Who's that wi' you, Billy?' one of the boys asked. ‘Is she new round 'ere?'

‘Says she lives in Whitefriargate.' He grinned at Margriet. ‘Didn't tell ya I had 'same name as King Billy, did I?' He turned to the others. ‘She's just lost her da, so I says for her to come ower to us.'

‘She can't live with us,' one of the girls said. ‘There's not enough room.'

‘I don't want to live with you – thank you,' she added, not wanting to appear ungrateful. ‘I live with my mother. I only came over to talk to you.'

‘What 'you want to talk about?' the other girl asked.

‘I – I only wanted to say hello, that's all,' Margriet answered hesitantly, thinking that these children, a couple of whom were slightly older than her, seemed very grown up and sure of themselves. ‘I'm on my way to call on a friend.'

‘Where does she live?' Billy was asking questions again.

‘She lives on Land of Green Ginger.' Margriet smiled. ‘Do you know the story about the name?' She thought that if they'd like her to she would tell it to them just as her father had told her. But they all nodded and said that they knew it and that some of them had lived down there. ‘So do you know Anneliese Lindegroen?' she asked eagerly, and was disappointed when one after another they shook their heads and said they'd never heard of her. ‘I'll have to be going now,' she said. ‘It's getting late but it's been very nice to meet you all,' and she wondered why they all grinned at each other and the boys larked about and gave each other little bows and one of the girls got up and dipped a curtsey.

But Billy didn't. He just gazed at her curiously and then said, ‘Sorry about your da. You can come back sometime if you like and talk about him. Was he a fisherman and lost at sea, like mine?'

‘He wasn't a fisherman,' she said, ‘but he was lost at sea. I didn't really know what it meant at first, and then we were told that the ship's boiler had blown up and everyone was killed. Instantly.'

Immediately they were sympathetic, and one of the girls came and put her arm round her. ‘Poor little lass,' she said sorrowfully. ‘That's really hard.' She patted her shoulder. ‘You come an' talk to us any time you want. We're generally round here about teatime. We wait to see if there's owt left ower from 'market stalls.' She seemed to cotton on to Margriet's bafflement, and added, ‘You know – food 'n' that.'

‘Of course,' Margriet said. ‘Thank you. I'd like that. Goodbye, then. Goodbye, Billy.'

Billy silently nodded and lifted his hand and she set off down Market Place towards Silver Street, still determined to call on Anneliese in Land of Green Ginger.

She stood in her usual position and looked up at the window. Daylight was diminishing and clouds rolling in, whilst above her seabirds were heading inland. She shivered. There was no light in Anneliese's window and she felt a shred of disappointment. Perhaps it was true what her father had said all that time ago, that the house was empty. What was it that his colleague had answered? That the house was haunted! She had asked Papa what it meant – she took a small breath and felt that she could almost see his face as he'd waggled his ears to tease her for listening – but what answer had he given her?

She gazed up at the window and thought for a second that the curtain had moved slightly; did it or not? Yes, there it was again. She saw a small hand lift the muslin. Papa had said that if a place was haunted it meant that there was a ghost living there, or something like that anyway. She laughed and waved but knew it was too late to call; Florrie would be home soon and would demand to know where she had been. But there was Anneliese, not a ghost at all, waving back to her.