The elegant woman put her hand to her toque. ‘And we just got off the bus, leaving her there.’ She turned to me. ‘I’m so sorry. We was bombed, dear. I can’t find any other excuse.’
Now they were both crying. I heard Selwyn calling. ‘Ladies – ladies, please come and join this group.’
‘You both need to leave,’ I said. ‘I’ll find you if I have to.’
Just then Pamela vomited onto the floor. The height of the radiator she was standing on increased the radius greatly, and we sprang back. Pamela clutched at her head. ‘My forehead hurts, I banged it against the bus stop.’ She burst into a wail.
I lifted her down. ‘Where is the doctor?’ I called. ‘Dr Bell? You’re needed here!’ The women, I noticed, were obeying Selwyn and making for the door. Through the ebbing crowd, the doctor hastened towards us. His fur-collared overcoat gave him an oddly cosseted air. Neither Selwyn nor I had taken the time to dress warmly before hurrying out to the village hall.
‘Doctor, please could you look at this little girl? I must get a bucket.’
When I got back from the kitchen Pamela was lying on the floor while the doctor shone a small, narrow light into each of her eyes. ‘A mild concussion,’ he announced, as I started cleaning the mess. ‘There’s a bump under her hairline. She may be very sleepy. But I’m not uneasy.’
I took the bucket outside. Selwyn was seeing off a group bound for the village houses. ‘We’ll be sheltering seven souls,’ he told me. ‘And I’ve washed up the cups.’
I couldn’t help smiling at the expectation of praise latent in this last statement. ‘Well done.’ I emptied the bucket into the drain. ‘But it’s eight, not seven. The little girl. Her mother wasn’t on the bus.’
‘How on earth—?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
In a knot in the corner, our group waited, set-faced, to be led to our house. With the exception of a couple of tall, tear-stained girls of about seventeen, they were all women on the elderly side. Mrs Berrow, I saw, was among them. Her injured eye looked viciously dark now, and she was hanging her head in fatigue. I lifted Pamela up, and Selwyn took off his jacket and folded it around her.
‘Shall I take her?’ he asked.
‘No. She doesn’t seem so heavy now. I don’t know why.’ I followed Selwyn out of the hall, and behind me our people fell into step. Pamela leaned her head against my shoulder. I could hear the tiny chirp as she sucked her thumb.
Then she took her thumb out. ‘The ladies said they’d find Mummy. They said. So I think they will.’ She put the thumb back in and shut her eyes.
I CARRIED PAMELA down the lane. The sun was sinking into the bare hedgerows and the air was sharper. Our people moved as a single clumsy mass behind us.
‘She got on the bus by accident,’ I told Selwyn. ‘Two women took her on board, thinking her mother was on the previous bus. But it now seems the mother wasn’t on any bus at all. She must be still in Southampton. Distraught.’
‘Where were these women?’
‘In the village hall, of course.’
‘No, I mean, where in Southampton?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
He glanced back at our followers. ‘They’re not with us, are they?’
‘No. They left with that last big group.’ I wasn’t even sure of that, now. ‘How silly of me.’
His hand brushed my arm. ‘It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do about it today.’
We heard a soft clopping on the road behind us, a rumble and a rattle. Colonel Daventry was coming up with a cart full of slumped figures: women and some small children. The Colonel walked beside the head of his horse Beeston, a peaceful bay with feathered fetlocks, and the cart was followed by a handful of silent men. ‘Mr and Mrs Parr, we’re on our way to The Place.’ He named his large house in the middle of Upton. ‘We can take a few up to your turning.’
‘Go on, Ellen,’ Selwyn said. I scrambled up and he passed me Pamela. Mrs Berrow and our other ladies climbed aboard. The occupants shuffled to make room for us – all, that is, save one woman who sat motionless, shawled in a length of sacking, her face half-covered in brick dust, while the baby on her lap kicked its bare foot in the frosty air. We were about to move on when an old man standing by the tailgate of the cart took off his tweed cap in preparation, it transpired, to speak.
‘My father worked here, at the big house. Upton Hall. For Sir Michael Brock’s father,’ he told us. ‘Put the locks into the front and back doors, and the coach house and all the outhouses. This was before the Great War.’ His eyes began to spill tears which caught the low sun as they fell, but he spoke on in a steady voice. ‘We made ourselves busy in the stable block, me and some boys from the farm. Filling hay nets. Scampering back and forth.’
Then he put his cap back on, wiped his eyes, and turned to take up his journey again. The Colonel clucked at Beeston who leaned into his harness, and the cart moved off. We swayed in our seats. The woman pied by brick dust clutched her baby’s foot in her filthy hand.
Colonel Daventry let us down at our turning. We began to walk along the embanked track that ran between two low fields to our mill. It was dusk and the people couldn’t see the mill – they hesitated, wondering if they were heading on a long trek out into the countryside. I encouraged them onward, and soon the mill was in sight.
Elizabeth opened the door. ‘Oh, Mrs Parr. What a thing. Oh, look at that little mite.’ She glanced behind me at the crowd with an anxious housekeeper’s eye. ‘I’ve got all the rugs and cushions out. I hope they’ll be all right.’
‘Well done, Elizabeth.’ I stepped inside and set Pamela down on the hall chair. ‘Mr Parr’s following.’ Pamela drooped sideways against the wooden arm, eyes tightly shut. ‘This little one’s mislaid her mother,’ I told Elizabeth in a low voice. ‘We’ll put her upstairs, with us.’
The women filed past us in a draught of icy air with gasps of relief. When they reached the sitting room the pair of girls lay down immediately, straight onto the floor, refusing offers of tea. One slipped off a single shoe, covered her face with her hands, and lay still. Now they were in an enclosed space I could smell the charred stink again, coming off their coats. I still couldn’t identify it. Perhaps it was something that wasn’t usually burned.
Elizabeth and I brought tea, and cut a loaf of bread thickly to make dry toast. Those women still awake devoured it. ‘There’s a bit of dripping, but not enough for all of them,’ Elizabeth whispered.
‘Keep the dripping for the little girl. We’ve got bread, that’s the main thing.’
When they’d finished their tea and toast we helped our guests arrange the sitting room to their liking. The young women drowsily accepted a blanket. Then I went upstairs to see the boys.
We had three evacuees from Southampton: two young brothers and their older cousin. They’d been with us a year and a quarter, since the beginning of the war. Very obedient at first, more unsettled since the September raid which had destroyed the Spitfire factory a few hundred yards away from their homes.
‘It was a big’un last night, wasn’t it, Mrs Parr,’ said Donald, the youngest boy.
They’d all slept through the bombing, but playground gossip had done its work, and his pudgy little face was pale. I wished, for the dozenth time, that his father hadn’t promised to telephone after each raid. I opened my arms and he shuffled over and sat close at my side – too grown-up, at seven, to clamber onto my lap.
‘Yes,