Without a Trace (36 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ted Bridgenorth arrived at Charley Sanderson’s address in Bethnal Green and winced when he saw how squalid it was. It was a shabby, three-storey terraced house in a row of eight equally run-down ones. The other side of the street had fared even worse for, though the bomb sites between some of the houses had been cleared of rubble, weeds had taken over, and only partially covered the piles of dumped rubbish.

As it was a pleasant day a great many people were sitting out by their front doors on boxes or chairs, and dozens of children were playing in the street. A gang of children had surrounded the car as he drove into the street and, though they appeared to be admiring it, Ted wished he’d come on a school day instead of a Saturday, as they might just let his tyres down while he was talking to Charley.

He rapped on the door of number twelve.

‘There’s no one in. Who you after?’ a strident female voice called out from the street.

‘Charley Sanderson,’ he called back. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Well, I do ’is washing, so I ’ope I do.’ A woman with red hair broke away from a group of other women and came towards him. She was in her twenties, an attractive, shapely woman with a look of Rita Hayworth.

‘Are you his girlfriend?’ Ted asked. He really hoped Charley hadn’t been playing fast and loose with other women, but he wasn’t the kind to tell tales or to cause trouble for another man.

‘No fear,’ she laughed.

‘Well, that’s good, as I came to tell him that Molly’s in hospital. I sent him a telegram, but I think he must’ve been away as he didn’t get back to me. Do you know how I can get hold of him?’

She moved in much closer to him. ‘Is it an emergency?’ she whispered.

‘Well, yes, something really nasty has happened to Molly, and she needs him.’ Ted thought the woman was being a bit odd, but then he wasn’t used to London girls of her class.

‘Then you’d better go round and knock him up at Balaclava Street,’ she said. ‘’E’ll be at number five, it’s only a couple of streets away. ’E’ll be with ’is mate Alan.’

She gave him directions and, as he was getting back in the car, she leaned forward to speak to him through the window. ‘Is Molly ’is sister?’

‘No, his girlfriend,’ Ted replied.

To his surprise, the woman spluttered with laughter.

Ted drove off, a little puzzled by the woman’s attitude, but found Balaclava Street easily. It was almost identical to the first street he’d been to, and equally squalid, except that the houses here were only two storeys.

He rapped at the door of number five and was just about to rap again when the door was opened by a very attractive young blond man wearing a pair of trousers but with his chest and feet were bare.

‘What can I do for you?’ the young man said.

Ted was taken aback by his effeminate manner, and the way he spoke. If this was Alan, he understood why the red-haired woman had laughed. ‘Are you Alan?’ he asked.

‘Yes, who wants to know?’

‘I was told that Charley Sanderson is your friend. Is he here?’ Ted asked. ‘I have a message for him.’

‘Charley!’ Alan yelled, still looking at Ted. ‘Someone to see you.’

Ted heard someone’s feet coming down the stairs. When the man got to the hall he was buttoning up his shirt. His feet were bare, too.

‘I sent you a telegram,’ Ted said hesitantly, so shocked he wanted to drive off in his car. ‘You didn’t reply.’

Charley looked puzzled for a moment, and then suddenly apprehensive. ‘Oh, couldn’t place you for a moment,’ he said, then flashed that wide smile of his. ‘It’s Mr Bridgenorth, from the George in Rye. I haven’t been home, so I haven’t seen a telegram. Don’t tell me something has happened to Molly?’

‘It has, I’m afraid.’ Ted hastily told him the bare bones of it. ‘We heard this morning she was going to be all right, but I’m sure she’d appreciate a letter, a phone call or visit from you.’

Charley’s eyes were wide with shock. ‘Of course! I’m just sorry I didn’t get the telegram. I would’ve come straight away. What a terrible business!’

The young, blond man was standing just back from Charley, his anxiety showing clearly in his face. Ted had met other homosexuals since he’d been in the hotel trade and didn’t have a particularly strong view on homosexuality. His attitude was, each to his own, as long as no one wanted to try anything on with him.

But this was totally different. Both he and his wife had got the distinct impression that Molly and Charley loved each other. Molly would be destroyed if she knew he preferred men to women.

‘I must go now,’ Ted said, unable to get away fast enough. ‘It’s busy at the hotel, and my wife and I had planned to visit Molly this afternoon.’

He saw Charley glance over at Alan. He couldn’t have looked guiltier if he’d been caught in the act.

As Ted got into his car Charley shot over to him and leaned in at the window, just as the redheaded woman had.

‘I know what you are thinking, but it’s not like that,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’ Ted raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’

Charley turned scarlet. ‘Alan and I are just friends, nothing more,’ he insisted in a shrill voice. ‘I love Molly and want to marry her.’

‘I don’t doubt you care for her, as my wife and I do, too,’ Ted said. ‘But I saw for myself how it was between you and Alan, and marrying a woman you have no physical desire for is doomed from the start.’

‘You don’t know how it is with Molly and me,’ Charley said belligerently. ‘I ought to knock your block off for suggesting I’m homosexual.’

‘Charley, stop right there,’ Ted said firmly. ‘I know, and you know, so there’s no point denying anything. I don’t give a damn about your preferences, but I do care about Molly. So you’ve got to be fair to her and let her down gently.’

He didn’t stop for a reply but drove away quickly, feeling faintly sick. It wasn’t about Charley’s persuasion – the man couldn’t help that – but only that he was trying to cover his tracks and avoid the risk of being prosecuted by being seen to be a happily married man. Such a marriage would be a disaster, especially for someone like Molly.

The question was, what should he do about it? Tell her, or
keep quiet and hope Charley was man enough to do the right thing?

Evelyn was probably naïve enough to imagine that a good marriage would ‘cure’ Charley, but Ted knew that couldn’t happen. In the days when he was an accountant he’d had two clients who had married, perhaps even fooling themselves they’d be cured. But neither of them was: one was caught by the police and went to prison; the other committed suicide in the end because he was so unhappy. He guessed that their two wives had been through hell.

Any intelligent, humane person could see that the law against homosexuality ought to be abolished. But while it was still in place Ted felt that he must protect his employee. She was worth far more than a cowardly man who wanted to hide his dark secret behind a flimsy veil of marriage.

The irony of it was that Molly already had a man who loved her truly, someone she’d grown up with and knew all about and was ideal for her. Ted felt sure she could love him, too, if he would just make his feelings known.

‘Over to you, George,’ he said aloud. ‘Over to you.’

On Sunday afternoon Molly remarked to the nurse that she was feeling almost like her old self again. Food, drink and lots of sleep had restored her spirits and, even though her head hurt where she’d been hit and probably would for some time, even after the stitches came out, it wasn’t too dreadful. ‘I could almost convince myself I imagined the whole thing. Well, that is, until I look in a mirror and see my bald patch.’

The nurse laughed. ‘And there’s this little one to remind you,’ she said, nodding towards Petal, who was snuggled up on a small bed beside her.

Molly smiled. Petal looked so adorable in a pair of red pyjamas someone had donated, and clutching a teddy bear Evelyn and Ted had bought her.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ Molly said. ‘Once you aren’t really hungry any more, you can’t quite remember what it was like.’

‘I believe childbirth is much the same,’ the nurse joked. ‘I’d avoid that one if I were you. It might make you remember being hungry, too.’

Molly laughed. She felt she had a dozen reasons to be joyful. She’d finally found Petal, she had Charley, and a job she loved with people who clearly cared about her. Mrs Bridgenorth had left a message at Warwickshire House for Dilys to contact her, and her friend had rung last night just before the Bridgenorths came to visit her. Dilys had sent her love and said she would come down to Rye on Wednesday, her day off. Molly had also had a telegram from her parents, and she was inclined to believe her father was as worried about her as her mother was.

Petal wasn’t right, of course. What child could be after such a terrible, long ordeal? She didn’t sleep calmly, she woke frequently with bad dreams and was fearful when anyone new came into the room. Sometimes she sat staring into space, and who knew where her mind was going to.

But she was talking to Molly, even if she wasn’t to anybody else, and she’d told her about the car ride from Sawbridge to Brookland. She said Christabel kept talking about someone called Sylvia who was going to come and join them very soon, and that they were all going to the house she’d lived in when she was a little girl.

‘But she told me lies,’ Petal said indignantly. ‘Sylvia was what she called my mummy, and she said Sylvia was going to join us.
Miss Gribble told me the truth in the end, she said Mummy was dead because she’d got a bang on the head. She said if I didn’t do what she told me, she’d kill me, too. They gave me horrible food, and when I couldn’t eat it Miss Gribble brought it back the next day when it was cold and made me eat it or have it again the next day when it had gone off. She said I was a spoiled brat and she was going to teach me how nice girls behaved, and if I didn’t learn she would beat me.’

Molly felt sick to think that Petal’s hideous ordeal hadn’t been just for a few days but for months. She could imagine, too, the struggles Petal had had with that fearsome woman. She must have felt totally abandoned, locked up in that attic room, scared out of her wits whenever she heard a footstep on the stairs.

Luckily, she hadn’t seen what had happened in Stone Cottage, as she’d been out in the car. But Petal cried when she told Molly about how the two women had tricked her into thinking they were taking her to the Coronation party but just kept on driving.

‘She slapped me really hard, too,’ Petal sobbed out. ‘Just for saying I wanted Mummy. I didn’t know why she was being so mean to me, or where they were taking me. It was so scary.’

Petal didn’t know how they’d found her and her mother, or why they’d taken her away with them. She said that Christabel and her were out in the car while Miss Gribble was talking to Cassie, and they stayed there until Miss Gribble came out and then drove away. It was a blessing she hadn’t seen her mother lying there by the hearth with her head caved in. That was something even an adult would struggle to get over.

An examination of Petal when she was admitted to the hospital showed numerous bruises on her small body, proof of many cruel attacks on her since the women had got her into Mulberry House. She said Miss Gribble took her out into the garden most days, but always on a pair of baby walking reins or, latterly, with a rope around her waist so she couldn’t make a bolt for freedom. She said that the first couple of times she had screamed really loudly, trying to attract a passer-by, but the beating she got for it put her off trying again.

The strangest thing was that Petal had seen very little of Christabel, in fact so little that Petal had the idea that ‘the younger lady’, as she called her, was locked up like her, and felt sympathy for her. It was quite clear that, although Christabel had gone along with keeping Petal at Mulberry House, she hadn’t had a hand in any of the cruelty.

Molly wasn’t sure that any child, however strong and determined, could go through all that and remain normal. But, for now, Petal derived comfort from getting into bed with her and listening to stories.

What would happen next was anyone’s guess. Molly had already been told in no uncertain manner by a social worker from the Children’s Department that they would make the decisions on her future. Molly didn’t think they were going to think it important that Petal stayed in close contact with her mother’s friend. She wondered, too, if anyone would care enough to try to rebuild Petal into the happy, well-adjusted child she’d been before all this? Just thinking about that made her so sad.

Molly was lying back against the pillow daydreaming that she and Charley would be allowed to adopt Petal once they
were married when the ward door suddenly opened, and there he was. He looked very smart in a dark-grey suit and striped tie.

Molly was unable to hold back her tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘It’s just that it was only thinking about you that kept me going while they had me locked up. And I was afraid I’d never see you again.’

She expected him to embrace her, to tell her that no one was ever going to frighten her like that again, but he didn’t, he just stood at the side of the bed with his arms against his sides looking awkward, distant and embarrassed.