Ellie glanced at Miss Gilbert. She seemed confused, clutching her prayer book to her thin chest like a shield against expected Germans, staring into the middle distance.
Ellie grasped the opportunity and slid through the crowd in the road towards the woman in the pink hat.
‘Excuse me, miss.’ Ellie tugged at her sleeve.
‘Yes?’ The woman turned to Ellie with a look that showed her displeasure at having her conversation interrupted.
‘I’m Ellie Forester,’ Ellie said breathlessly, one eye on Miss Gilbert, less than fifteen yards away. ‘I’ve been put with Miss Gilbert.’
Suddenly a terrible noise broke out, a wailing sound which made everyone look around in astonishment, covering their ears.
‘Bombs,’ someone yelled. ‘They’re coming!’
Ellie was rooted to the spot in shock. All around her people began to run, some back to the safety of the church, others bolting for their homes, dragging children by the hands. She looked up and saw nothing but blue sky, and at the same time someone pushed her firmly in the back and hissed at her to get in the church.
It was Mr Gilbert who’d pushed her, but once inside he seemed calm. His sister, however, was already cowering in a pew. She had her hands over her head, her face ashen, her lips moving as if gabbling out a prayer.
‘I’m quite certain they are only testing the siren,’ Mr Gilbert remarked, nudging his sister in a gesture that said she should pull herself together. ‘I really don’t think the Germans have got themselves organised this quickly.’
Some of the older ladies looked quite faint with shock. The lady in the pink hat, whom Ellie so badly wanted to speak to, was offering her smelling salts around.
The siren stopped, and a few minutes later a different one wailed out.
‘That’s the “all clear”,’ Mr Gilbert said knowledgeably. ‘You see, I was quite right, they were only testing. But in future, Ellie, you must act as soon as you hear it. Next time it could be the real thing.’
Ellie wasn’t concerned with next times. She’d lost her opportunity to speak to the lady in the pink hat and she had a horrible feeling she would be stuck with Miss Gilbert for several days before she got another chance.
‘You can sit in the living-room and write to your mother this afternoon,’ Miss Gilbert said as she sluiced the kitchen sink round.
They had eaten roast beef for dinner, followed by apple pie and custard, but though it was the biggest meal Ellie had eaten here, she was still hungry. She’d seen Miss Gilbert pour some thick dripping into a stone basin and her mouth had watered imagining it spread thickly on bread.
Mr Gilbert had gone into the parlour, a room at the front of the house which Ellie had been told to keep out of, and for the past hour she had helped with the washing up and yet more cleaning of the kitchen.
Ellie brightened up at the prospect of writing home. It seemed simple: she’d tell her mother the truth about this place and she’d come and get her.
‘You’re a good cook,’ Ellie said, hoping to ingratiate herself with the woman, if only to get some peace until she left. ‘We ’ardly ever ’ave roast beef at ’ome.’
‘I wouldn’t expect a child from the slums to eat such things.’ Miss Gilbert pursed her lips and looked pointedly at a gravy stain on Ellie’s dress. ‘You are a very slovenly girl. Perhaps when you’ve spent a few hours scrubbing clothes, you’ll learn to be more careful.’
Ellie sat at the small table in the living-room scribbling away, happy enough now that Miss Gilbert had left her alone.
It was a small, bare room overlooking the yard. Just two wooden-armed easy chairs either side of an ugly fireplace, a wireless on a shelf and the table she was using by the window. The bookcase offered no entertainment, only a set of encyclopaedias, a large Bible and three or four recipe books. As in all the rooms she’d been into, the walls were dun-coloured. Any design on the paper had long since faded, and the only picture was of the King and Queen at the coronation.
Writing to her mother wasn’t as good as talking to her, but it was close. She poured out all that had happened since she arrived, the slaps, the hunger and her conviction the woman was barmy. But spite wore thin after a bit and she moved on to describe the place.
‘I’m writing this in the living-room,’ she wrote, smiling as she thought of it. ‘I don’t know why they call it that as it’s as dead as the bodies in Mr Gilbert’s coffins. They only come in here to listen to the wireless and the chairs are placed just so. The window looks on to the yard and there’s a row of headstones and a few urns out there which give me the willies. I think the bodies are in the room across the passage which she said I mustn’t poke into. There’s a funny pong coming from it. But I’ll try and get a peek before I leave. You should see the parlour, Mum! It’s packed with the kind of old furniture like in the props room at the Empire. But I’m not allowed in there either, except to dust. The only place I kind of like is Mr Gilbert’s workshop. It used to be a stable when he had a horse-drawn hearse and it’s still got old bits and pieces hanging up. It smells lovely in there, all different kinds of wood, but I suppose it’s a bit spooky with all the coffins standing up on end. Mr Gilbert told me today he’s going to start me trimming coffins tomorrow. Is this what you meant about me learning something useful?’
Ellie started to laugh to herself, imagining her mother reading it to Marleen, for a moment forgetting how awful it was here. She moved on, explaining how Miss Gilbert watered down the milk and measured the loaf with string, and her conviction the woman gorged herself in private because two or three times she’d seen her with crumbs round her mouth.
‘Please let me come home, Mum,’ she finished off. ‘I’m no good away from you. We should be together.’
Finally finished, she folded up the three pages, put them in the envelope and sealed it down. She was just addressing it when Miss Gilbert came in.
‘Can I go and post it?’ Ellie asked. ‘Mum gave me a stamp.’
‘Go and get it then,’ Miss Gilbert said, half smiling, as if pleased Ellie had kept quiet for so long.
Had Ellie been used to devious adults she might have wondered why she was allowed upstairs suddenly. But all she could think of was being allowed out on her own and the chance of doing a little exploring.
She scampered up the stairs, found the stamp she’d been given and even stopped for a moment in the bathroom to dab away the gravy stain on her dress. But as she ran back downstairs and saw Miss Gilbert, her stomach turned over.
The woman was sitting down, the envelope ripped open on her lap. She was reading the letter.
Ellie didn’t stop to think as she lunged forward and grabbed it from Miss Gilbert’s hands.
‘Oih, that’s private,’ she said. ‘You ain’t got no right to read it!’
‘It’s just as well I did.’ Miss Gilbert snatched it back, ripping it into shreds. ‘How dare you write such slanderous lies?’
‘There ain’t no lies,’ Ellie said, her legs turning to water. ‘You know there ain’t.’
Miss Gilbert moved quickly, slamming the door and standing in front of it. ‘You minx,’ she said, eyes narrowing behind her glasses. ‘If you think you can laugh at me behind my back and make up stories, then you’re mistaken. Hasn’t it occurred to you your mother sent you here to get rid of you?’
‘No she never,’ Ellie said indignantly. ‘She sent me away to be safe.’
For a moment there was silence. Ellie was shaken by her own stupidity at not anticipating that Miss Gilbert would find a way to read the letter, but she was also cut to the quick by the woman’s last remark.
Miss Gilbert was also shaken, not only by the girl’s startlingly incisive, well-written letter, but the knowledge that if this got out in the town she might find herself in trouble.
Grace Gilbert was what her own father called ‘a tortured soul’. Even as a child she had never been quite right, a strange, solitary child who hid herself away talking to imaginary friends. Old Mrs Gilbert h
ad blamed a severe attack of impetigo when Grace was eighteen for most of her problems. It may indeed have been the start of her obsessive cleaning, but hardly explained her maniacal fits of temper, or her spiteful and vicious nature. But her father must have been keenly aware of his daughter’s instability, for when he finally died he left the house and business to Amos with the proviso that his son was to take responsibility for his sister.
She was forty-five, three years older than Amos, and over the years she’d become more and more cranky, spiteful and bitter. She had no friends and no interests aside from her home and reading this letter had somehow stripped away the illusion she’d clung to that she was better than other people.
‘I wanna go ’ome,’ Ellie said. She was frightened by the strange intensity in Miss Gilbert’s eyes, but she was also just a little ashamed of what she’d written. ‘I’m sorry for what I said about you, it weren’t very nice. But I’m missing my mum.’
Miss Gilbert thought quickly. She had decided to take in an evacuee first and foremost to raise her standing in the church. Just last week the vicar had told the whole congregation that it was their Christian duty. When she discovered she would get ten shillings a week too, that put a seal on it. She desperately wanted to punish the girl, but she knew if she lashed out now, so soon after the girl’s arrival, the billeting officer would soon get to hear of it and before long it would be right round the church and town. Besides, Amos approved of the girl and he might take her part. Perhaps it might be better to overlook this incident for now. The girl was at least useful. There was more than one way of killing a cat.
‘We’ll get one thing straight.’ Miss Gilbert wiggled her finger at Ellie, but she softened her voice as far as she was able. ‘We all have to make sacrifices for the war effort. My brother and I took you in to do our part. You must do yours by following our rules. Now you’ll sit down again and write your mother a proper letter, telling her how pleasant it is here. Do you want to make your mother miserable?’
‘Course I don’t,’ Ellie agreed, although she felt like crying. ‘But she wouldn’t like me to make out I was ’appy ’ere when I’m not.’
Miss Gilbert sniffed. She had picked this girl because she was fat and plain, assuming she’d be docile and suitably grateful too. But her appearance was deceptive. The girl was sharp as a razor, inquisitive and bold, and she’d need watching continuously.
‘What have I done to you?’ Miss Gilbert rolled her eyes alarmingly. ‘You have a nice room, you’re fed. Clearly, from what I’ve read, you are a very greedy girl, and that’s why you’re so fat. Am I wrong to give you a suitable diet?’
This insult was the last straw. Ellie began to cry. ‘But you don’t like me. I don’t want to be in someone’s ’ouse what ’ates me.’
Grace Gilbert was unmoved by the girl’s tears and a little baffled by this last statement, as she didn’t really know what ‘liking’ someone meant. In fact Ellie’s face disturbed her: those dark eyes were too penetrating, her mouth too wide when she smiled. Amos had already expressed the view that she was ‘a happy soul’ and that sounded too much like approval.
‘You haven’t given me a chance to like you,’ Miss Gilbert said crisply. ‘From what I’ve seen so far you are a liar, greedy and lazy. You don’t even speak correctly. Now sit down and write a proper letter to your mother and let’s have no more of this.’
Ellie wanted to defend herself, but at the same time she was relieved no punishment was about to be dished out. ‘I’m none of those things, and Mum didn’t send me away to get rid of me,’ she said stubbornly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘She hoped I’d have a better ’ome than in London, that’s all. And I can’t ’elp the way I speak.’
Miss Gilbert half smiled. Inadvertently the girl had shown her the tack she must take. ‘Well, my dear, just write and reassure her. I’m sure she’s got worries enough without you adding to them. Let me have the letter when you’ve done and I’ll enclose one from myself and my brother too. We’ll say no more about this unpleasantness.’
‘Might I speak to Ellie in private?’ Mrs Dunwoody said, ignoring Miss Gilbert’s offer of a chair at the kitchen table. ‘Perhaps in your parlour?’
‘If you think that’s necessary.’ Miss Gilbert bristled with indignation, casting a baleful glance at Ellie. ‘Though goodness knows what you hope to gain from it.’
Ellie controlled her desire to smirk in triumph. Mrs Dunwoody was the woman she’d started to speak to outside the church, almost a week ago. She had called two days later but Miss Gilbert wouldn’t leave them to talk alone. Clearly Mrs Dunwoody was determined not to be put off this time.
‘I just wish to get to know Ellie better,’ Mrs Dunwoody said diplomatically. ‘I’d be derelict in my duties as billeting officer if I didn’t try to smooth out any little problems and worries and it’s easier on a one-to-one basis.’
‘Take Mrs Dunwoody to the parlour then.’ Miss Gilbert gave Ellie a scathing look. ‘I have work to do anyway.’
Once inside the parlour, Mrs Dunwoody sat down on the settee and patted the seat next to her for Ellie to join her. ‘Now my dear, how are things?’
‘Please move me,’ Ellie whispered. She was intimidated by the parlour, which seemed to reflect Miss Gilbert’s character more than any other room in the house. A fussy, over-furnished room, with scarcely space to walk around. Uncomfortable, over-stuffed chairs, highly polished walnut cabinets full of china and glass and dozens of old china figurines, vases and cut-glass bowls, each one sitting on a lace doily. The many pictures were all of biblical scenes. A large aspidistra sitting in an ugly green bowl in the lace-curtained window blocked out most of the natural light.
Ellie blurted out everything, trying hard not to cry and make herself look pathetic.
Since the incident of her letter home, Miss Gilbert had been marginally nicer. She’d slightly increased the size of the meals, she’d suggested Ellie should join the library, and even allowed her out alone for a couple of hours in the afternoons.
The town was fascinating. Just a short walk from High Baxter Street, where she was living, was the old abbey with its beautiful gardens. She’d found an ancient charnel house in the graveyard behind the Norman tower and been spooked by an inscription about a nine-year-old girl struck by lightning. There was a museum called Moyse’s Hall full of strange exhibits, including a death mask from 1827 of a murderer called William Corder and his scalp and ear. Along with these thrillingly gruesome remains there were instruments of torture dating back to the time when the place had been the town gaol.
But loneliness was getting Ellie down most. The local children jeered at evacuees, and she hadn’t run into any of her old classmates yet. She missed not only her mother but the people at the Empire and those from Alder Street. At home she had only to step out into the street and there was someone to talk to. She had always felt secure and cared for, but here she felt as if she was just waiting for time to pass, ignored and unwanted.
‘There isn’t anywhere to move you to,’ Mrs Dunwoody said with a sigh. Her fingers moved up to fiddle with some beads at her neck. She knew Miss Gilbert was strange: rumours about her were always flying around the town. But she couldn’t believe it was as bad as the child was saying. ‘We had over seven hundred boys and girls sent to us here, not to mention all the mothers with small children, and I’ve got problems with some of them which are a great deal more serious than yours. Just give it a little longer, my dear. School will be starting again on Monday. You and the other evacuees will be attending in the afternoons, the local children in the mornings. Perhaps that will ease things a little for you. But Miss Gilbert hasn’t any complaints about you, Ellie, and Mr Gilbert stated how helpful you’ve been to him.’
‘I don’t mind Mr Gilbert,’ Ellie said quietly, afraid Miss Gilbert was listening outside the door. ‘I’ve been ’elping ’im line coffins with scrim and I quite like it. It’s ’er!’ She jerked her head towards the door.
She couldn’
t adequately explain how unpleasant it was to feel she was being watched constantly, or how she felt something nasty was about to happen.
‘Have you heard from your mother?’ Mrs Dunwoody was aware that almost all of the evacuees’ problems were just plain homesickness.
‘Yes.’ Ellie frowned. ‘The theatre she was working in ’as closed down and until it opens again she ain’t got a job.’ Her mother had made light of this, saying she was going to work as a waitress in Lyons Corner House, but Ellie had sensed she was very anxious about money, because she’d said she couldn’t manage to enclose any pocket money just yet.
Mrs Dunwoody was the wife of a banker and lived in an elegant detached Georgian house by the Abbey. Until these evacuee children landed in the town her only real contact with the working classes had been her servants. Her eyes had been opened in the last week, though, when she met the children from Stepney. A great many of them didn’t even have a change of underwear; they had holes in their shoes; almost all of them were undernourished and they spoke so badly.
Ellie, however, was as fat as butter, had decent clothes and it was obvious from the girl’s demeanour that she was not only well loved and cared for, but also sensible enough to appreciate that in an emergency such as this, sacrifices had to be made.
‘Well, you mustn’t add to her problems,’ Mrs Dunwoody said gently. ‘I’m sure all the theatres will open again soon, especially as they haven’t had any air raids yet in London. Let’s see how you feel once you’re back at school, eh? Write Mummy a nice cheerful letter and keep your pecker up. If you still want to move in a few weeks’ time, I’ll see what I can arrange.’
Ellie gave a glum smile. Mrs Dunwoody was kindly enough, but she hadn’t really grasped anything she’d been told. She was just another of those rich do-gooders, like the ones who swanned down to the East End and made sympathetic noises about slum conditions. She didn’t understand why Ellie resented Miss Gilbert reading both the letters she wrote and received. Or what it felt like to be hungry all the time and treated worse than a Victorian scullery maid. Neither could she understand Ellie’s dilemma that even if she could tell her mother the truth about what it was like in this house, she was reluctant to do so because sending Ellie the fare home would strain her mother’s finances still more.