It seemed as if the strange terrible thing that had happened had taken from the children the power of speech. Gussie did ask:
“What happened?”
And Francesco did answer:
“I don’t know.”
Then, without any more talking, as best they could because of the cracks in the earth, the children hurried up the hill towards home. At the top of the hill they stopped. Opposite them they should have seen the village quite distinctly. Jardek and Babka’s little cottage with Togo in the field opposite which he shared with some cows and a donkey. The other cottages, the shops, the tea house, and the little mosque. But none of it was there. Where the village had been there was nothing – nothing at all.
SIR WILLIAM HOOGLE was a famous archaeologist and writer. He was travelling in Turkey when the earthquake happened which destroyed Jardek and Babka’s village, in fact he was near enough to feel the earth tremors himself. On the radio he heard how terrible an earthquake it had been for those living at the centre of the disaster. He learnt about the village which had disappeared, and of how difficult it was to carry out rescue work because the ground was so full of fissures that no aeroplane could land. Such help as was reaching the afflicted areas was being dropped by parachute.
Now Sir William not only spoke Turkish but also understood most of the local dialects. In his mind he could see the planes flying over the scene of the earthquake, dropping bundles by parachute on people almost certainly too shocked by what had happened to know how to use what they were being given. There were of course doctors and nurses being dropped but would they have time to help anybody but the injured?
“I think I could be of use,” Sir William told himself. “Anyhow, I shall go and find out.”
All round the areas affected by the earthquake, railway lines had become twisted, the roads had fissures across them and were blocked by piles of rubble which had once been buildings. If there is one kind of help no country wants in times of national disaster it is unskilled labour. So when Sir William asked officials how he could be transported to the scene of the earthquake he was told politely – for he was very distinguished – but firmly he could not go. As soon as aeroplanes could land help was coming, meanwhile those on the spot were doing all that could be done.
Sir William quite understood the officials. After all, he was not a specialist in disaster work, but all the same he was still convinced he could be of use. So he bought a camel – he turned out to be very bad-tempered – called Muzzaffer, filled a light case with his toilet articles and a change of clothes and things he thought might be useful and rode off in the direction of the afflicted part of the country.
It was a long way for Sir William to ride for he had to make constant detours to avoid fissures. His journey was not helped by Muzzaffer, who complained loudly the whole way that Sir William and the case were too heavy for him – which was not true – and that he hated earthquakes. All the same he carried Sir William safely first to the village where the children had taken Christopher’s picture to be framed, and then to the centre of the disaster area. From the moment they saw their village had gone a sort of silent frenzy had come over the children, then, without saying a word, they stumbled and ran all the way to where they thought the little house had been. There they knelt down and dug and dug with their fingers. But though they dug without stopping they could not find any sign of their family – just nothing – nothing at all.
Nor was the place where their own little house had been the only place where the children dug, they dug in the field Togo had shared with the cows and the donkey. They dug where they thought the tea house had been. They dug where the shop had once stood. They dug for the other cottages and the mosque. On they went, dig, dig, dig until their nails were broken and their hands covered in blood. And still they never spoke.
Although the children’s own village was gone others were not, but the damage everywhere was terrible and very widespread so each district had to help itself. To begin with all who were not injured tried to get the wounded out from under fallen buildings. Presently the first of the aeroplanes arrived and a doctor, a nurse and a tent came down by parachute. Later came more doctors and nurses and piles of blankets and packets of food. It was when the blankets arrived that the people noticed how cold it was. By now the tent was up and all the wounded that could be found had been taken into it. The doctors then decided that as it would soon be dark looking for wounded must stop for that day, that the women should build a fire and cook a meal, but that everyone else should put a blanket round them and search the countryside for any people who might be homeless and bring them to the tent.
It was only by accident that the children were found, for who would look for people in a village which had disappeared? But a man and a boy decided to climb the hill to see if anyone was about on the other side. That was how they fell over the children. At no time did the children speak much Turkish and now they couldn’t speak at all, they couldn’t even hear, they just went on dig, dig, dig. The man, who had a big voice, roared for help and presently two more men turned up and after discussion the three men took off their blankets, rolled the children in them, picked them up, slung them over their shoulders and, sending the boy ahead to tell the doctors what they had found, they marched off towards the tent.
The children knew nothing of what happened after that, for the doctor who examined them almost at once gave them an injection and laid them in the hospital part of the tent covered in blankets.
The arrival of Sir William two days later on Muzzaffer caused quite a sensation in what was now called “Camp A”. By that time help of every kind had arrived: troops to mend and clear the roads, helicopters to fly wounded to the hospitals, rescue squads to dig in the ruins and help of other types, particularly clothes, food and medicines. A very important man who knew the neighbourhood was in charge of relief work so it was to him Sir William, with a parcel under his arm, presented himself. He explained who he was and asked if there was any way in which he could be of service.
“You are British?” asked the official.
Sir William nodded.
“I am.”
“Then you may be able to help me. We have in camp three children. We believe them to be British.”
Sir William liked the facts.
“Why?”
The official opened a drawer and took out a large envelope. “The children do not know this. But caught in a crater we found the remains of what probably was a caravan, there was little left of it but this.” He took out of the envelope a British passport. “This belonged, as you can see, to a man called Christopher Docksay. His wife’s name was Olga and there are three children listed – Francesco, Augustus and Anna.”
“Did Christopher Docksay live here?” Sir William asked.
“No, not live,” the official explained. “But the locals say that Madame Docksay was the daughter of an old Pole who, with his wife, lived in that village which has gone. This daughter, whose name was Olga, married this Christopher Docksay and every year they came to stay, travelling by caravan. He was an artist.”
“He was indeed,” Sir William agreed. “He’ll be a great loss. You say the locals told you all about the family but what do the children say?”
The official threw up his hands.
“The doctors say it is shock and will pass, but so far the children have said nothing, not to each other, not to us. They just sit, well-behaved you understand, but like deaf mutes. They were found digging with their fingers for their family where that village once stood. The doctors say the children do not yet want to remember, when they do they will talk.”
Sir William thought for a moment, then he showed the official the parcel under his arm.
“I found this today. It is a picture of Christopher Docksay’s, the children took it to the village over that hill to be framed on the day of the earthquake. The picture framer was showing it to everybody because the painting is of the village which has gone. I paid him for his work and
promised to see that the picture was delivered to Christopher Docksay’s executors, whoever they may be. If the doctors permit I shall show this picture to the children. It might get through to them.”
The children could not stop shivering. They sat on the floor of the tent with blankets round them. One of the nurses had combed their hair and washed their faces and they had been fed with soup. They paid no attention when a doctor led Sir William over to them. Nor were they interested when Sir William sat down opposite to them and opened a flat parcel. Then he spun the contents of the parcel round so that it faced them.
There was the little house just as they had last seen it except that on the porch only Olga, Jardek and Babka were drinking tea for, of course, Christopher was painting the picture. There was a second’s pause, then Francesco fainted, Gussie was sick and Anna screamed.
Cecil Docksay lived with his wife Mabel in Essex. His house was in a place called Fyton. Much of Essex is very pretty but Fyton was not because it was mostly badly designed new houses which crowded round the church, a village green and three thatched cottages. But Cecil Docksay thought his house perfect because, as he was always saying, it was so labour-saving and therefore easy to run.
It was a neat house outside and in. Upstairs it had three bedrooms: one the big main room which they shared, two small spare rooms in which everything was always in dust-sheets because they never had a visitor to stay. There was, too, a magnificent bathroom.
Downstairs there was a big room which they called the lounge. This was full of green velvet furniture and had a white wallpaper with a design on it of trellis work up which climbed ivy. On the walls there were no pictures but a trail of ceramic geese in full flight.
The lounge looked on to the garden, which was even more labour-saving than the house for everything in it was made of plastic. The garden was covered in concrete pretending to be crazy paving. In the middle of the concrete there was a small pool by which sat two scarlet gnomes apparently fishing, only there were no fish in the pool, not even a tadpole in the spring. Instead of flower beds there were metal containers and in these lived plastic plants which were changed to suit the season. In the spring they were full of daffodils and hyacinths. Then those were sponged and put away and out came rose trees and other summer flowers. When the autumn came it was goodbye to the summer flowers and a splendid show of plastic chrysanthemums took their place. Everybody else living in Fyton grew real flowers and, though their gardens were small, they worked very hard to make them look and smell beautiful.
“So foolish,” Cecil Docksay would say to Mabel as he watched their neighbours struggling with greenfly or deadheading their real chrysanthemums. “What I say is why make work?”
Mabel did not answer for she liked real flowers but to say so would only mean an argument.
At the front of the house was the dining room, in which the table and chairs were made of something which looked like wood but was unmarkable, because it was heat-resisting, dirt-resisting – in fact there was nothing it did not resist including being nice to look at.
The kitchen was Mabel’s pride. It was quite a large room and had been bought exactly as it stood at an exhibition called “The Home Beautiful”. It was the most labour-saving kitchen ever invented. The house was called Dunroamin.
The day the letter arrived was wet and stormy. Cecil and Mabel Docksay were having breakfast, Cecil looking with pride at the way their plastic rose tree stood stiff and resistant to the rain and wind, while their neighbours’ roses, which had been beautiful, took on that sad stuck-together look which roses have on wet days.
Mabel Docksay had always been a shy person. Her mother had been good-looking and popular with a large circle of friends. She would have liked to have a pretty little girl of whom she could have been proud. So it was annoying for her that she had a child who tried to make herself smaller than she was so that she would not be noticed. If her father had been about he would have understood and sympathized with Mabel for he was shy himself, but he was out at work all day so had never seen much of his daughter.
Mabel had worked hard at school but she was more a plodder than clever, so she was not able to fulfil her dream which was to be sent to a university, which would mean living away from home. Instead she had settled for a job in the local bank. “Well, I suppose at least it’s a safe job,” her mother had said to her friends, “and she needs a safe job, poor darling, for she’s so shy and I’m afraid rather dull, so she will never marry.” Of course Mabel knew this was what her mother believed so she thought herself the luckiest girl in the world when the assistant manager at the bank, Cecil Docksay, asked her to marry him. She was so grateful to be asked, which meant getting away from home and living in a house of her own, that she mistook gratitude for love. Her father did worry about the marriage for he thought Cecil Docksay a terribly dull man.
“You’re very young, Mabel,” he had said. “Don’t rush into anything you might regret.”
Mabel with shining eyes had replied:
“I’m rushing to do what I want to do.”
Just about the time Cecil Docksay, by then manager, retired from the bank his father and mother died so, since Christopher was forgotten, he inherited all the money there was and was able to buy Dunroamin. Mabel thought Dunroamin was a pleasant house and knew she should be happy to live in it and grateful to dear Cecil for buying it, but somehow she didn’t feel any of these things – only rather depressed.
Who wants two silly gnomes? she thought resentfully and secretly looked enviously out of her windows at other people’s children. Oh, if only she and Cecil had had a child!
On the wet and stormy morning when the postman knocked on the door Mabel jumped up to get the post, for Cecil was not the sort of man whom anyone would ask to open a front door.
There was only the one letter – a long white envelope with Turkish stamps. Cecil opened the envelope carefully with a knife for it was a good envelope which could be used again, and he was nothing if not careful. He noticed it had been sent from a hotel in Istanbul. Then he looked at the end of the letter to see who had signed it but he couldn’t read the signature. But the hotel secretary who had typed the letter had typed at the bottom “Sir William Hoogle”. Cecil knew that name for having been a bank manager he prided himself on knowing who was who.
All the papers had carried the news that Christopher Docksay had been killed in the earthquake. To Cecil, Christopher’s name was not one to be mentioned, for having run away to Paris with his father’s possessions he was a thief so best forgotten. In Fyton it had not yet crossed anyone’s mind that the odd Mr and Mrs Docksay who lived in Dunroamin and planted plastic flowers instead of real ones could possibly be related to anyone famous, especially not to a famous artist.
On the radio the newscaster had said that of recent years Christopher’s pictures had fetched a lot of money, which had made Mabel ask:
“Are you his heir, dear?”
“I suppose so,” Cecil had agreed. “No doubt someone will communicate in time.” Now, as he started to read his letter, he said to Mabel: “This is from Turkey, no doubt about Christopher’s estate. Wonderful how quick they were finding my address.”
But as Cecil read the letter a great change came over him. He made so many grunts and growls that Mabel trembled. That was how she saw his colour change from yellow (he was a pasty man) to red and finally to purple. When he came to the last word he thumped his fist on the table so hard that if anything could have marked it that would have.
“I won’t have it! Prying busybody! Why should he take it upon himself to find my address? How does he dare dictate to me what I should do or not do?”
“Who, dear?” Mabel asked.
Cecil could hardly speak he was so angry.
“Sir William Hoogle. It seems Christopher was married to some Polish woman and they had three children.”
Mabel did not know who Sir William Hoogle was, or what Cecil was so angry about, so she said, trying not to sound as thrille
d as she felt:
“Three children!”
Cecil could have hit Mabel for repeating every word he said. He’d give her something to repeat.
“Listen!” he roared. “This is the last paragraph of the letter: ‘I plan to deliver the children to you at the end of the week. I will cable the time of our arrival.’ ”
The day after Sir William arrived at Camp A the children were better. The terrible cold which followed the earthquake was gone, so they sat in the sun outside the hospital tent to eat their breakfast and that’s where Sir William found them. They looked, he thought, a pathetic lot of little ragamuffins, for you can’t be thrown about by an earthquake and finish up either clean or tidy.
“You lot want some new clothes,” he said. “We must go shopping.”
Anna looked surprised at such ignorance.
“There are not shops here and the clothes at the relief places are not yet for children.”
“Some will be coming,” Gussie explained. “The nurse told us.”
“I don’t think we’ll wait for that,” said Sir William. “Let’s go to Istanbul. Good shops there.”
The children stared at him. Of course they had heard of Istanbul but they had never been there. Christopher had never gone to a town unless he had to. Towns were tiresome about parking a caravan. Francesco, used to travelling at a speed chosen by Togo, suggested:
“Isn’t Istanbul rather a long way away?”
Sir William took a cigar from his pocket and lit it.
“A long way away from where?” he asked.
Well, that was a question. It brought all three children slap up against the things they did not want to think about. Where now was home? Everybody was gone – Christopher, Olga, Jardek, Babka and Togo, the little house and the caravan. When they went away from where they were now they had no place at all to come back to.