Time to Say Goodbye (31 page)

‘I’ll be all right, but thanks, Debby,’ Imogen said. ‘I had a really horrible dream. I thought I’d never be able to sleep again, but I’ll be all right now. Thanks ever so much; you’re a real pal.’ She slithered down her bed and, to her own surprise, presently slept.

Chapter Ten

DESPITE HER BROKEN
night, Imogen woke, as she usually did, just before the alarm went off. She had a theory that the clock must make some little noise prior to starting to ring its bell and it was that which woke her. She leapt out of bed and began to wash, adjuring Debby to get a move on because the warm summer air coming through the window meant that they could work at the harvest, as they had the previous day, from daybreak until dusk.

‘Ooh, aren’t you horribly hearty,’ Debby grumbled, climbing rather stiffly out of her own bed. ‘Did you have a good night? After your nightmare, I mean?’

Imogen sloshed water into the round blue basin, soaped her face and neck, then ducked her head under the water to rinse off the suds before she rubbed herself dry and began to dress. ‘Nightmare?’ she said vaguely. ‘Did I have a nightmare? I can’t remember what it was about; in fact all I can remember is you waking me up. Here, I’ve finished. We needn’t save any water for Rita because she’ll have brought her own up last night. I keep meaning to ask Auntie if we can all have a go at sleeping in Jill’s room, turn and turn about. I don’t see why Rita should have it all to herself, do you?’

Debby, happily splashing water about, reached for the towel. ‘I don’t know,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I think the reason I stopped having nightmares was because I knew you or Rita would wake me. It’s the fear of nightmares that’s the worst thing about them, I think. So if you want to take a turn at sleeping alone, I suppose I’ll have to put up with sleeping with Rita. I just hope she’s forgotten we fell out yesterday, but one thing I will say for her, she doesn’t usually bear a grudge.’

‘True, but that’s just about the only thing you can say in her favour,’ Imogen said ruefully. She slipped on the old dungarees she always wore for farm work, shoved her feet into a pair of plimsolls and went over to the door. ‘Come on, lazy bones. Mrs P gave Auntie four eggs and four rashers of bacon so we could have a cooked breakfast like the one she gives the boys on harvest days.’

‘I’m ready,’ Debby said and the two girls abandoned the bedroom and clattered down the stairs to where Auntie was already at the range.

‘Morning, girls,’ she said cheerfully as they entered the kitchen. ‘I heard you stirring so I knew it wouldn’t be long before you were down, wooed by the smell of frying bacon. Where’s Rita?’

Imogen was beginning to say that she was probably still sulking when she clapped a hand to her mouth, then spoke through her fingers. ‘Oh Lor’, I forgot! Jill took her alarm clock away with her when she joined the WAAF. I’ll just nip up and give Rita a shake, though I can’t imagine she’ll still be in bed with that smell wafting up the stairs towards her.’

She left the room as she spoke, ran up the stairs, tapped perfunctorily on Jill’s bedroom door and burst into the room. Rita was neither in bed nor at the washstand, and the room was in considerable disarray. Imogen sighed. She must have got up early and gone straight to the harvest field – or more likely she’s gone to the farm to have breakfast with the Pilgrims and the boys – without saying a word to us. But it is rather odd, because as Debby said earlier, Rita doesn’t usually bear a grudge. Perhaps she really is sorry for being nasty to Debby yesterday so she’s started the chores early and will have finished them by the time she comes in for breakfast.

As all the girls did, Rita had pulled back the curtains, rolled up the blackout blind and thrown open the window, and now a slight breeze scented with summer wafted into the room. Imogen had been about to return to the kitchen but she paused, frowning. Something was different, something was here which should not have been, or possibly something was missing. She looked carefully at the muddle of clothing and possessions on the floor. Rita had been in this room for three nights; how on earth had she managed to get it in such a mess? They all knew Debby was the tidy one, but even so . . .

Imogen scanned the room again, and this time she saw what had caught her attention. Pinned to the pillow was a note, and even from across the room Imogen could see that it was in Rita’s round, rather sprawly writing. Feeling almost like a spy in a novel, she tiptoed across the room and unpinned it. It was addressed to Auntie, but Imogen felt no scruple in unfolding the piece of paper and reading the brief contents.
I’m not staying here
, Rita had written.
Nobody likes me. Imogen and Debby are jealous cats and they want to keep Woody and Josh to themselves. Well, they’re welcome. I’m off. Sorry, Auntie. From Rita.
Imogen was still standing by the bed, staring down at the note with complete stupefaction, when Debby joined her.

She looked round the littered floor, then at the note in Imogen’s hand, then up into her friend’s face. ‘What on earth . . .’ she began. ‘Where’s Rita?’

Imogen shrugged helplessly. ‘Run away,’ she said briefly. ‘Oh, dear, trust Rita to go off in the middle of the wheat harvest! We’d best tell Auntie, though I don’t imagine she’s gone far. She’s probably hiding in one of the outhouses, or maybe she’s gone down to the Pilgrims’ place. I mean, I bet she spent all her pocket money ages ago and you can’t stow away on a bus or a train these days. I’m sure she can’t have gone far.’

They thundered down the stairs once more, waving the note, and Auntie, dishing up bacon and eggs and thick rounds of home-made bread, listened in bemusement whilst Imogen and Debby, in chorus, told her not only about the note but also about the litter of clothing on the bedroom floor.

Auntie sighed, fished up her spectacles which she wore on a cord round her neck, took the note with fingers already greasy from handling bacon and read it aloud. She was about to put it down on the table when Debby spoke urgently. ‘Hang on, Auntie; there’s a PS on the other side of the paper.’

Auntie turned it over and read in silence, and Imogen saw her mouth begin to work, and her eyes to fill with tears, before she spoke. ‘You’d better read it for yourselves,’ she said, laying the note down on the table and fishing out her handkerchief. It simply read:
I’m sorry, Auntie. I do love you. Your Rita. xxx

Auntie sat down with a thump on the nearest chair. ‘What happened yesterday?’ she said in a resigned tone. ‘You needn’t tell me Rita started it, because she nearly always does. But one of you must have said something to send her flying off. I suppose it was you, Immy my love. I can’t imagine our little peacemaker losing her temper, not even with Rita.’

Debby took a deep breath and then exhaled it in a long sigh. ‘It was me,’ she admitted. ‘Rita said that when she went back home she would be pointed out as the girl who lived in the house with no windows, and I said better a hotel with no windows than a yellow star on your clothing – and your house too – which shows you are an “undesirable” and could be sent to a concentration camp.’ She looked appealingly at Auntie. ‘I know I shouldn’t have said it; I know my grandparents told me not to speak or think of such things . . .’

Auntie crossed the kitchen and enveloped Debby in a warm and loving hug. ‘You did the right thing. It’s time Rita realised that there are others, many, many others, not just worse off than herself but suffering unimaginable horrors. In fact, I think even kind little Imogen here should know that the world can be a wicked place. You’ve learned it the hard way, Debby, but it hasn’t made you believe all men are evil. It’s time Rita learned that Mrs Jeffries’s windows can scarcely be put in the category of war crimes. And now come and eat your breakfast, because part of our war effort is to provide food for the country and the harvest won’t wait, so sit down, the pair of you, so I can dish up.’

All three of them sat down at the table and began to eat, but naturally enough the main topic of conversation was Rita, and where she had gone. ‘We won’t despair too soon,’ Auntie said briskly, wiping a slice of bread around her plate. ‘You two must go up to the farm, ask if anybody has seen her and explain she’s lit out. If I hadn’t known the reason I’d have thought it would be kindest to keep quiet and wait until she comes back with her tail between her legs, but I’d take a bet that she said something cutting even after you’d mentioned the yellow stars.’

Debby blushed and looked anxiously at Imogen. ‘She didn’t mean it; I’m pretty sure she didn’t,’ she said uneasily. ‘She was cross, you know, and – and asked why I didn’t wear a yellow star here. Because I was just as undesirable to her as I was to the Germans.’

Auntie clasped her forehead. ‘That girl!’ she said. ‘Of course she didn’t mean it – she was just hitting out the way she always does. Dear Debby, try to forget it. And now I’ll go up to Jill’s bedroom and see if I can find any clues, and I’m afraid you two had better come back here if she’s not with the harvesters.’ She clapped her hands briskly. ‘Off with you! If I don’t see you within about an hour I’ll assume that all is well.’

Before leaving the kitchen, Auntie remembered that Rita had had no breakfast, or not what you might call an official breakfast at any rate. Bearing this in mind, she went into the pantry and found that half a loaf and a pat of butter as well as a bottle of cold tea and a bag of apples was missing. Oddly enough, this cheered Auntie considerably, because it was the sort of food the children took whenever they went off on an impromptu picnic. So having checked carefully that nothing else had gone, Auntie climbed the stairs and entered Jill’s room, where Rita had been sleeping, and looked with dismay at the untidy mass of garments on the floor. She opened the wardrobe and saw at once that Jill’s haversack was missing; no doubt it was now hanging on Rita’s shoulder with the food and bottle of cold tea inside, as well as such garments as Rita had seen fit to take with her. Jill’s best blue dance dress, a pre-war relic, had gone as well as some of Rita’s own stuff. Two pairs of knickers, a white blouse and her grey pleated school skirt, Auntie calculated. Grimly, she began to tidy, to put away, to make the bed and to return anything of Rita’s to the attic room the three girls shared. Up there she examined Rita’s bed closely, then lifted the mattress and withdrew from beneath it a small pile of letters, all addressed to Rita in Mrs Jeffries’s large and careless hand. Auntie nodded grimly to herself, but she finished tidying the room and made the beds before going downstairs to sit at the kitchen table and beginning to read the letters, telling herself that this was her duty though normally she would never have read a letter addressed to anyone but herself. The letters did not say much but it was very clear where Rita got her prejudices from: every single letter contained grumbles about the small private hotel run by a Jewish family a few doors away from Mrs Jeffries’s establishment. She even blamed them for the fact that she had still not managed to get glass put in all her windows, though in the last letter she grudgingly admitted that a neighbour had managed to acquire some sort of Perspex – or was it celluloid? – so that at least light could now enter the building.

Auntie put down the last letter and sighed. When they found Rita, she, Auntie, would have to speak seriously to her. She would have to tell her what happened to Jewish people under Nazi rule; she just hoped that when she did so Rita would apologise to Debby and take back every word. Imogen would have to know as well, having been present when Debby had told her what Rita had said. And she supposed that Woody and Josh should be told too.

Auntie sighed; never before had she regretted Jill’s absence quite so passionately. Jill would know how to treat the subject without upsetting what had once been a harmonious relationship between the three girls. Automatically Auntie got up from her place at the table, scooped the letters into her overall pocket and then thought she saw one way out of her difficulty. She would show the letters to Imogen and Debby when they came in, and hope that this would make them regard Rita’s cruel words as being merely an echo of Mrs Jeffries’s feelings. Perhaps that would be the best way to deal with the dilemma.

When the girls returned from the harvest field to say that no one had seen Rita, Auntie’s immediate thought was that perhaps the girl had gone home to Liverpool. After all, she was an intelligent youngster and must know that Debby would repeat her words to Auntie, if no one else. But there were the rail and bus fares to be considered. Auntie kept a drawstring purse behind the clock on the mantelpiece in the kitchen, and there was always a float in the money drawer behind the bar. It was possible that Rita might have raided one or both, might have left a note in either saying how much she’d taken, but when Auntie checked she could see at a glance when she opened purse and drawer that neither had been touched. Not wishing to admit that there was a possibility money might be missing, she nevertheless felt impelled to ask Imogen and Debby to check their cash. Imogen had given a little snort of amusement. ‘I’m no saver,’ she had admitted readily. ‘Neither is Debby, for that matter. Last time we were in the village we bought liquorice sticks and a quarter of mint humbugs, which was all we had coupons for. Rita isn’t keen on liquorice, but as far as I can remember she spent the same as we did and got Little Gems, because she said they lasted longest.’

‘Then if she’s not gone home, where could she be?’ Auntie asked. ‘Have you looked in your hut down by the river? She took half a loaf, some butter and a bottle of cold tea. Maybe she’ll just stay out all day and come home this evening after you’re both in bed, with her tail between her legs.’

‘I should think that’s very unlikely; Rita’s far too proud to come back and admit she was wrong to say what she did,’ Imogen observed. ‘Look at the note she left for you, Auntie. She more or less said she was running away because we had been nasty to her. But no, we’ve not looked in the hut yet, or the Lookout. I suppose she might easily be at one or the other, planning to come home, as you say, late at night with some story she’s concocted. Only I do think you ought to tell the police, just in case we don’t find her.’