The Girl With No Name (33 page)

Avril looked anxiously at David. ‘What do you think she’s remembered? Everything?’

David shook his head. ‘Who knows? She’s remembered someone called Harry, but goodness alone knows if that’s a good or bad thing.’

‘It sounds as if they came over on one of those refugee trains, you know, the ones we heard about bringing Jewish children out of Germany?’

David nodded. ‘Yes, does indeed.’

‘In which case, do you think Miss Everard is the right person to deal with... well, whatever it is?’ Avril was thinking about Miss Everard’s reaction when she’d discovered that Charlotte was probably German. Now it appeared that Charlotte’s memory had come back, at least in part, and that she was indeed German, how would Miss Everard react?

‘I don’t know,’ David said, ‘but I think we have to let her try. They’ve been living together for nearly six weeks now and they seem to have come to an understanding. I think having Charlotte to think about instead of just herself has probably been a turning point for Miss Everard.’

‘Yes, it has.’

They both spun round to find Miss Everard coming back into the room. Clearly she had heard some of their conversation, but all she said was, ‘If you’ll excuse us, vicar, Mrs Swanson, I think Charlotte and I’ll be going home now. Thank you for inviting us today, it’s been a lovely Christmas.’

‘Shall I walk home with you?’ offered the vicar. ‘I could do with a breath of fresh air.’

Miss Everard shook her head. ‘No, thank you. You’ve the other children here. We’ll be fine.’ She gave a brief smile and said to Avril, ‘You don’t have to worry about Charlotte, Mrs Swanson, I’ll look after her.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ replied Avril, ‘but if there’s anything I can do—’

‘I won’t hesitate to ask,’ interrupted Miss Everard, ‘I promise you.’

Avril saw them to the door and stood watching them walking together through the winter afternoon, Charlotte clutching her coat around her and Miss Edie tempering her steps to match those of her charge. It was dusk and the evening closed round them as they followed the beam of Miss Edie’s torch.

Avril closed the door and returned to the drawing room, where David was helping with the puppet show, and Christmas Day went on. The king had said that everyone should do all they could to make it a happy day for children wherever they were and the Swansons were doing all they could to make it so for their evacuees.

When the three children were at last tucked up in bed, the girls cuddling their glove puppets and Paul with his arms round his football, Avril came back downstairs and flopped into her armchair.

‘What a day!’ she said. ‘It seems an age since we woke up this morning and opened the children’s stockings with them.’

David opened Miss Edie’s bottle of elderflower wine and poured a glass for each of them. He handed Avril hers and raising his own said, ‘Cheers, darling. You made it a very special Christmas.’ They both took a sip of the wine and then, spluttering, David said, ‘Goodness, what has she put in this?’

‘Don’t know, but,’ Avril took another mouthful and smiled, ‘I think it might grow on me!’ She put down her glass and went on, ‘I’ve been thinking, David, perhaps I ought to ring Caro and tell her that Charlotte has remembered her name and where she comes from. What do you think?’

‘I think I’d leave it for a couple of days until we know a little more,’ David replied, risking another sip of the wine.

‘But now she’s remembered her name, perhaps her family can be traced.’

‘It sounds to me as if her family is still in Germany.’

‘Yes, but she must have been living with someone in London. They must be worried sick about her. They may even think she’s dead.’

‘I still think we should wait and see what else she can remember,’ David said. ‘She may not have total recall yet. And she may find it difficult to reassimilate what she does remember, specially if it’s painful.’

‘So what do you think we should do? We can’t leave it all to Miss Everard. Charlotte may need specialist help; at the very least I think she should see Dr Masters.’

‘You can keep a watching brief, my love,’ said David, ‘but I don’t think you can interfere.’

‘Is it interfering to want what’s best for the child?’ asked Avril hotly.

‘Calm down, darling. All I’m saying is that we give it a couple more days to see how she is and then we’ll contact Caroline and see if having Charlotte’s real name can help us find out more about her. What she was doing in London. Who this Mr Peter Smith was; you know, the man they found her with? And why she was out in the street in the middle of an air raid. All that.’

‘But the sooner we get on to Caro the sooner we can start to discover the answers,’ Avril protested.

‘Darling, it’s Christmas Day, tomorrow is Boxing Day. With the best will in the world Caro wouldn’t be able to discover anything until after the weekend. So, let’s wait and see what Charlotte can remember.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Avril sighed. She didn’t want an argument with David now that they finally had a couple of hours to themselves. Instead, she held out her glass for a refill and they drank another glass of the wine before they went upstairs to bed. When they reached the children’s rooms, Avril looked in on them as she always did. The girls were both fast asleep, heads under the blankets, and Paul was lying on his back, his new football still clutched in his arms. Avril stood at the door for a moment, smiling, but her smile faded as she turned away, wondering if Charlotte was asleep or if she lay awake, memories flooding her mind.

*

Charlotte was still up, sitting by the fire in the living room and trying to come to terms with what she had remembered.

When Miss Edie had followed her out of the vicarage drawing room, she’d found Charlotte sitting on the stairs, her whole body heaving with sobs, tears pouring down her cheeks. Miss Edie sat on the stair beside her and held her close, knowing there was nothing else she could do while Charlotte’s grief at what she’d remembered consumed her. Gradually the sobs subsided and Charlotte, turning her tear-blotched face to her said, ‘Can we go home now?’

Miss Edie handed her a hankie. ‘Of course we can. Blow your nose and then we’ll say goodbye and go.’ She got to her feet and went back into the drawing room, leaving Charlotte to dry her eyes.

They had walked home in silence, each wrapped in her own thoughts. When they got in, Miss Edie put a match to fire she’d laid ready in the sitting room and then went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Charlotte went straight up to her room.

‘I’m making some tea,’ Miss Edie called up to her. ‘Come down when you’re ready.’

Upstairs, Charlotte lay on her bed and stared bleakly at the ceiling. She knew who she was now, she knew her name, she recognised the people in the photograph that stood by her bed. Miss Morrison had put it into a frame for her, so that she could have it at her bedside, perhaps to jog her memory. She picked it up now and looked at it. There they all were, Mutti, Papa and Martin, smiling for the camera. How could she have not recognised them? She’d looked at that picture a thousand times without recognition and yet now she knew them at once. She’d had this picture, but surely, there should have been letters, too. She remembered that she’d had a letter from Mutti saying they were well and that Papa had come home again. She’d written back but her letter had been returned to her marked GONE AWAY. Her letters, where were they? She opened the drawer in her bedside table and tipped everything out, but there were no letters. A feeling of panic overcame her and she crossed to the chest in the corner, pulling out its drawers and upending them on to the floor, clothes, underclothes, socks, hankies, school books, pencils, pen, a bottle of ink, a ruler, everything she owned all heaped together as she searched frantically for her letters. They were not there. Desolate, she sat down on her bed holding the picture of her family in her hand. GONE AWAY, she remembered that clearly now, stamped across the envelope. But where had they gone? Harry had shrugged and said they weren’t coming back. ‘You got to make your own life now,’ he’d said. ‘I learned that the hard way, too.’

Harry. Harry kept coming into her mind. He came from Hanau. She remembered coming on the train. Harry said he’d been on the same train, but she hadn’t seen him. It had been he who had recognised her. But where? School. But where was school?

Charlotte heard Miss Edie call from downstairs, but she didn’t go down. She wasn’t ready to talk about her family. Miss Edie wouldn’t understand what it was like, not to know what had happened to them. So Charlotte simply sat on her bed, holding her photograph. She didn’t cry, she felt dried up inside, a husk with no tears left.

At last there was a tap on the door and Miss Edie came in, carrying a cup of tea. She looked at everything, heaped on the floor, but she made no comment.

‘Charlotte,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea. You need something to warm you up. It’s cold up here.’ She put the tea down on the bedside table and then sat down next to Charlotte on the bed and took her hand. Charlotte didn’t pull away, but her hand was icy in Miss Edie’s and Miss Edie chafed it in her own before saying, ‘Come on, Charlotte, drink a little tea.’ She reached for the tea, holding the saucer while Charlotte sipped from the cup.

‘I’ve lit the fire downstairs,’ Miss Edie said, ‘so the sitting room is lovely and warm now. Why don’t you come down? We can make some toast by the fire and I’ve got some crab apple jelly I bought at the bazaar.’

Charlotte didn’t answer, but when Miss Edie pulled her gently to her feet she didn’t resist. Still clutching the photograph, she allowed herself to be led back down into the warmth of the sitting room and settled into one of the armchairs beside the fire. Miss Edie had already brought the bread and jelly in from the kitchen and now she reached for the toasting fork. Spiking a piece of bread on its prongs, she held it towards the fire.

As the bread began to toast she said, ‘Oh, I’ve left my tea in the kitchen. You do this while I fetch it, will you?’ She handed Charlotte the toasting fork and left the room.

Normality, she had decided. Normality was the thing. She had to get Charlotte thinking about everyday things, doing everyday things, so that her memories could gradually become absorbed into her life that was now. She was about to drink her tea when she smelled burning and dashed back into the sitting room.

Charlotte had been staring into the flames, the heat from the fire warming her cheeks, so that they flushed red. Where are they now? she wondered. How’s Martin coping in another new place without being able to see? She paid no attention when the toast caught fire and Miss Edie rushed back into the room in time to snatch the toasting fork out of her hand and shake the blackened toast into the fire.

‘Don’t want to burn the house down,’ she said mildly. She made more toast and spread it with the crab apple jelly, then she passed a piece to Charlotte and began to eat a piece herself.

‘I didn’t think I’d have room for any more food today, after that lovely lunch,’ she said as she munched her toast. There was no response from Charlotte and she let the silence lapse round them before she said, ‘Is that your brother in the photo?’

Charlotte looked down at the picture lying in her lap. ‘Martin,’ she said. ‘He’s my brother and he’s blind.’ Silence wrapped them again and then Charlotte said, ‘I can’t find my letters.’

‘Your letters?’

‘I had a letter from my mother when I got here and I wrote back but she didn’t get it. It came back to me marked “Gone Away”. I don’t know where they are and now I can’t find the letters.’

‘Are they what you were looking for upstairs?’

‘They aren’t in my room.’

‘I don’t think you had them with you when you came here,’ Miss Edie said. ‘No one mentioned to me that you had any letters. Just the photo which had been in your pocket. It was the only thing you had when you were found, the only thing that might identify you.’

‘I must have dropped them in the raid,’ Charlotte said miserably.

‘Where were you when your mother wrote to you? When you first got here? Can you remember? You said you came on the train. Who met you in London?’

‘Aunt Naomi and Uncle Dan.’

‘And where did they live, your aunt and uncle?’

‘They weren’t my aunt and uncle. I’ve no one left and I don’t know what’s happened to them. The Gestapo took Papa and we had to move out of our home. We lived with my aunt Trudi for a short while, but then Mutti found somewhere...’ Her voice trailed off.

After a while Miss Edie said, ‘And then you came on the train.’

‘Yes, but I don’t know what happened to them.’ Charlotte’s voice rose to a wail. ‘My letter came back with “Gone Away” on it. I don’t know where they are.’ She looked at Miss Edie almost accusingly. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like to lose your family and not know what’s happened to them.’

Miss Edie looked at her for a moment. She knew all right. She knew what it was to lose someone and not know what had happened to them. Herbert had simply disappeared in a battle, probably blown to bits. That vision had haunted her for years, an explosion and Herbert... gone. She had never spoken of her grief at his loss, of her misery at the emptiness it left; the sliver of hope that perhaps, just perhaps, he’d survived and would come home. She’d been young at the time, but not as young as Charlotte. She couldn’t leave this child to bear her sorrow alone, thinking that no one could understand. Now, for the first time, she must tell her own story; make it clear that she did understand.

Taking a deep breath, Miss Edie reached for Charlotte’s hand. ‘Not to lose my family, no, I don’t. But I do know what it’s like to lose someone I loved and not know whether he’s dead or alive. To wonder every day if there’ll be news of him.’ She pressed Charlotte’s hand to her cheek for a moment. ‘In the war, the last war I mean, I knew a soldier. His name was Herbert and we were going to be married. He came home on leave and on the day he went back to France, he asked me to marry him.’ She was still holding Charlotte’s hand and as she spoke she felt a quickening interest in what she was saying. She went on quietly. ‘Herbert wasn’t someone my parents knew. We met in Bristol when I went there to help pack Red Cross parcels. He came from Yorkshire, but he’d been wounded at Passchendaele and been in hospital for several months. My parents wouldn’t have approved of him, he wasn’t an officer, just a corporal in the infantry.’ She lapsed into silence as she thought of their brief courtship.