The Safest Place in London (30 page)

What was he to do? No solution presented itself. But clarity came to him, in one sense anyway, for he understood now his wife's reason for coming north where no one knew them, where no one knew Abigail. If she had tried to present this other child as Abigail at home she could not have hoped to get away with it. He tried to imagine Diana planning their flight, finding the cottage, writing her letter to Inghamthorpe, saying her goodbyes and giving her explanations, arranging the journey. How had she managed it, he wondered, with a small, terrified, unwilling child and all their luggage, travelling by train all this way and with every expectation of remaining here until the war ended? A year, two years? Dreading, the whole time, his return.

For she must have dreaded it.

He had reached the edge of the village and, not knowing what else to do, he turned around and walked back. It must have been well after midnight when he arrived back at the cottage, having missed the turning three times in the darkness and stumbled a quarter-mile in the wrong direction. He had eaten nothing since a sandwich at Leeds and his weakness now was as much from hunger and exhaustion as anything else. He let himself in. On the table a candle burned very low in pool of wax, flickering wildly. We have returned to the Dark Ages, he thought, seeing the candle. We have reverted to savages.

There was no sign of Diana other than the remains of a scratch tea at the sink. She was upstairs in the loft, presumably, though he could not imagine that she slept. He found a loaf and carved
a ragged slice and ate it ravenously without margarine or jam.
It's this damned war
, Mrs Ashby had said, and he understood now how she could say this as though it no longer had any meaning. He pulled the two armchairs together and lay full length and closed his eyes.

He awoke to the sound of a child screaming. The sound tore through him and he opened his eyes with a start, heart pounding. The hearth had been lit, the blackout removed so that the cottage, which had been all dark nooks and shadows the previous night, was now bright and exposed in the weak winter sunlight. A succession of chaotic and random images filled his head, all that had happened since he had woken in the London hotel a day ago, and he lay unable to move.

And the child screamed.

He turned his head a fraction, dreading but compelled to see it.

She was squatting on the floor, hugging her skinny little knees, furiously shaking her head, squeezing her eyes shut. She was a wispy, undernourished thing, incongruous in a dainty little fuchsia nightdress, all lace and frills, and tiny child's slippers (whose nightdress, he wondered, whose slippers?) and, as he watched, she pulled first one slipper off and then the other, hurling them, not randomly but with purpose, at Diana. He saw, in a corner, a teddy bear that, too, had presumably been hurled in fury and he looked away. And the sound the child made tore through him. She opened her eyes wide and he saw the eyes of a wild animal, terrified and caged. He felt himself recoil.
He wondered how Diana could bear it for she kneeled before the child, coaxing her with a slice of bread and margarine on a plate, still in her own nightdress and slippers, and she held her arm up in front of her face to ward off the flying slippers.

‘Oh do stop,
please
!' she begged the child, and Gerald turned away so he wouldn't have to see it. He found he was holding his breath, dreading—

‘Please stop, Abigail.'

That was it. That was what he had dreaded. She had called the child ‘Abigail' and he lay quite still as the horror rolled over him, wave after wave, unrelenting. He covered his ears. He found himself remembering the voyage he had made three years ago on the troopship around the coast of Africa and into the Red Sea, a voyage full of terror and foreboding, the ship buffeted and tossed day after day so that he had wished a torpedo would strike them. He remembered the night-long flight in the de Havilland five days ago, dropping and climbing and banking through the darkness so that the only thing that had been real had been his prayers, whispered over and over and with increasing urgency to a God he did not believe in. He had prayed for dry land, he had prayed to feel his feet back on the ground. And here he was, on dry land, his feet were on the ground and the horror rolled over him.

The child continued to scream. It was the scream of a child who knew its name was not Abigail and who knew it had no control over what was happening to it. She thrust the plate of bread and margarine away so that it flew from Diana's hand and fell to the floor with a crash, scrambled to her feet and made a mad, frenzied dash for the door. The door was closed but the
child hurled herself at it, flying at the old iron door handle, her fingers scrabbling for purchase, unable in her panic to open it, screaming in her frustration. And when Diana tried to snatch her up, the child squirmed and fought and kicked and punched like a mad thing. Eventually she freed herself and, abandoning the door, scampered instead to the furthest part of room, where she crammed herself into a corner and would not come out again, her screams subsiding into a terrified, desolate sobbing.

Gerald had watched, unable to move, as this horror unfolded before him.

‘Dear God, Diana! It's no good. This must end, surely you see that?'

Diana started, perhaps not even realising he was awake, but he did not wait for her reply, getting up and striding over to the little girl—but Diana thrust herself between them.

‘What are you doing?'

He pushed her aside, surprised at how flimsy she seemed, that he could brush her aside like a fly. He went to the child and crouched down. She had curled into a ball, her arms over her head, silent now, her silence somehow more dreadful than the screaming had been.

‘It's alright,' he said very gently. ‘We're not going to hurt you. I just want to know your name. Please, can you tell me your name?'

But the child would not speak or could not, and they had done this to her, or Diana had, though he felt himself complicit. He did not know how to help the little girl and his heart was wrung.

‘Please,' he said again, reaching out to peel her tiny arms away from her face but hesitating even to touch the child, for she
seemed so utterly bereft, so broken. ‘Just tell me your name,' he pleaded, knowing it was hopeless, uncertain if the child heard his words or understood. Did the child even understand English? he wondered. She might come from any sort of family, speak any language. He sat back on his haunches, reaching for the abandoned teddy bear, which was a sorry-looking creature, one ear missing, as though it had gone through a bombing raid too, but when he offered it to her she thrust it away.

Eventually he gave up and got stiffly to his feet, turning to his wife, studying her.

‘Diana, where does she come from? Tell me where you were sheltering that night. What station?'

Diana had not moved, her arms by her side, her face with its now permanently pinched, aghast expression. But there was something else: a dreadful and desperate determination that he had not seen in her before. It was pointless, he saw. She would tell him nothing and he felt no anger or frustration, merely a sort of calm purpose. He passed her without a glance, taking up his coat and hat, the gloves Mrs Ashby had given him and the three discarded photographs. He would leave his bag. He had no need of it.

Diana had stood quite still, observing him, but when it became clear he was leaving she darted forward, panicked. ‘Gerald, please, stop! What are you doing? Where are you going?'

‘Back to London. To find her family.'

And he left at once, not giving her a chance to stop him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Septimus John Vasey had made his painful way from London's East End to Euston Station by bus and on foot, no mean feat for a man with a walking stick and a pronounced limp. He had been made lame perhaps at Dunkirk, perhaps at Tobruk. He wore a soiled bandage around his head and when he rested on a bench outside the station a woman in a smart hat and a coat with a fur collar pressed a coin into his hand.

He looked tired. He looked hungry. But so did everyone. After a time, he pulled himself to his feet and limped towards the station entrance. He had no luggage, not even a gas mask. Perhaps he was meeting someone. Perhaps he had no possessions. He wore a suit that looked like someone had died in it.

Joe paused in the entranceway to the station. It was the first day of February, a Tuesday morning at a little after nine o'clock, an overcast morning with the promise of rain. Pigeons roosted
noisily high up in the roof struts, thin and wasted because in wartime there were less crumbs to fight over, and wary because sometimes the people far below got so hungry they ate pigeon pie for their tea. Joe lowered his gaze from the ceiling and observed the many servicemen and women crowded into the station. The only civilians were wives and girlfriends come to wave someone off and mothers come up to London with small children on shopping trips or excursions or dental appointments.

So far no one had asked to see his papers.

Harry had said to be careful of the mainline stations, the entrances were watched. He had said to enter through the Underground station or jump a train once it had pulled out of the station. He had said use Euston. Joe was at Euston but no one was watching the entrance. Everyone was hurrying from place to place or standing in the middle of the concourse staring up at the giant departure board on which a large number of the trains had the word
CANCELLED
beside them. It seemed to be a feature of wartime that you always got to see what you were missing, what you couldn't have, what was no longer available. But some trains were running. The boat train departed on the hour for Liverpool and Holyhead, connecting with the Dublin steam packet. Why shouldn't he just go straight up and buy a ticket and board a train? thought Joe. Why should anyone stop him?

Why should anyone stop Septimus John Vasey?

A young woman and her little boy hurried into the station, passing by so close the woman's sleeve brushed against Joe's arm. She did not pause, pulling at the hand of the reluctant child, a handbag and a basket and a parcel tied with string balanced in her other hand. ‘Come
on
! We ain't got all day,' she
said, tugging the boy's hand, and when her parcel slid from her fingers and fell to the ground Joe darted forward to pick it up. ‘Thank you,' she said, and when he offered to carry it for her, ‘You're very kind,' putting a hand to her hair, adjusting her scarf as though she was not used to talking to strange men. And so they crossed the station concourse together, looking for all the world like an ordinary family, and no one gave them a second glance. At the ticket office signs in large hectoring black letters demanded,
Is your journey really necessary?
but despite this there was a long line of people queuing for tickets. Everyone's journey, it seemed, was necessary.

‘Oi, mister. Why you got a walking stick when you ain't limping?' piped up the little boy, regarding Joe suspiciously. ‘Why ain't you in uniform?'

‘Ssshh! Archie, none of your cheek,' hissed his mother, clipping the child around the head. She smiled wanly at Joe. She wore a cheap coat that had seen many winters with a scarf tied around her head and knotted beneath her chin. Her shoes were soaked through and her legs were spotted with mud. She looked exhausted, but even as Joe thought this he caught her looking at him, at his walking stick, at the bandage, at the decrepit old suit, and wonder. He shifted the parcel to his other arm. He needed to say something to dispel her curiosity but he could think of nothing. So they did not speak. The line inched forward.

A man at the front of the queue wanted to travel to Sheffield and was insistent he change trains at Stoke-on-Trent. The ticket clerk was equally insistent he change at Manchester and a stand-off now ensued with the man—the retired colonel type in worn tweeds with a clipped voice and a waxed
moustache—threatening to send for the station manager. Joe watched and a cold sweat broke out all over his body. His fingers curled tightly around the papers in his pocket. A man in front of him opened a newspaper and began to read, clearly expecting to be waiting a while. Behind him the mother of the little boy was pointedly not looking at him now, perhaps regretting accepting his offer of help, and now she did glance at him, showing him that same wan smile, but the muscles at the corner of her mouth were hard. She could sense his discomfort. He needed to say something light-hearted, something grumbling, the sort of thing people said to each other when they were stuck in a queue. He could think of nothing.