‘Oh, just a place I saw once.’

‘These are the best,’ said Bobs taking a postcard from the back of the album. Fairies and elves with tinted wings capered, holding Chinese lanterns among toadstools and glimmering glow-worms, and all the fairy folk had the cropped hair and hurt faces of orphans.

‘Elfin Revels,’ said Bobs.

‘I wonder what became of them all.’

‘Oh, some of them in churchyard lie, and some are lost at sea,’ said Bobs lightly, closing the album. Seeing my face, she added, ‘I expect they all got married and lived happily ever after. Actually, I believe old Miss Brindle in the almshouses was a Beulah girl. The last of the orphans were sent down under not so very long before we bought the place.’

‘Down under? Buried?’

‘Of course not, sent to Australia.’

‘Transported?’

‘No, don’t be silly. They went to kindly Antipodean folk who wanted children of their own. It was a wonderful opportunity for them, sailing away to a new life.’

‘Supposing their parents came back to look for them and they couldn’t find them because they’d gone to Australia?’

‘They were orphans, April. You are in a morbid mood.’

‘But if their parents were ghosts’

‘I’m sure that ghosts would know where to find them. Anyway, they wouldn’t be ghosts, they’d be angels watching over their children.’

Suddenly it seemed a sad house with the wind howling in the chimney. I thought of the orphans on the deck of a liner on the vast grey ocean, and I wanted to be at home, with my own family.

‘I don’t think Ruby got anything in her stocking. I don’t think she even hung it up,’ I told Bobs. ‘They’ve got all their decorations up in the pub, and the Christmas tree, and none at all in the house.’

‘Oh, dear. Well, at least she’s not an orphan.’

Thirteen

It was a mild, damp morning, green and gold like the Christmas decorations at the Drovers, where the sun struck drooping laurel leaves and prickly sparkling holly hedges. I was waiting outside Crosby’s with the pram while Betty was shopping. The sunshine had put us both in a good mood, but when she came out she looked flustered. Mrs Vinnegar drew up alongside us with her old pram.

‘Morning, Mrs H.’

‘Morning, Mrs Vinnegar.’

Mrs Vinnegar leaned over Peter and pinched his little chin in the ravelled thumb and finger of a grey glove.

‘I’ll eat you up, yes I will! Yes I will!’

It was already clear to me that Peter had done something extraordinarily clever by just having been born a boy, and all he had to do was lie there in a pale-blue knitted helmet and even old Ma Vinnegar worshipped him.

‘I’ve just been talking to Mrs Edenbridge-Dwyer. Have you ever heard of this “churching of women” lark she was on about?’

‘You don’t want to take no notice of her. She tried that one on me after I had little Juney. Churching, I said I should cocoa, I haven’t done nothing to be churched for, thank you very much.’

‘But she is the president of the Mother’s Union,’ said Betty.

‘So what?’

When Mrs V. had gone into the shop Betty said to me, ‘The point is, Mrs Edenbridge-Dwyer is the sort of person who ought to be coming into the Copper Kettle. It’s all very well for old Vinegar Bottle, I mean Mrs Vinnegar, to take that attitude. Some of us are trying to make some social headway in this village.’

‘Oh, no. There comes Miss Fay, quick let’s cross over.’

Too late. Miss Fay was dismounting from her tall bicycle and neatly kicking the pedl onto the kerb to make it stand up straight. She was wearing a blue peaked hat-and-scarf in one tied under her chin, headgear known to Ruby and me as a Fayhat.

‘So this is little Master Harlency, who disrupted our Christmas concert.’

Miss Fay stripped off one of her cycling gauntlets to poke Peter’s tummy through the blanket, telling him off before he’d even started school.

‘such a pity they have to grow up,’ she said, with a bitter look at me. ‘Mrs Harlency, I wonder if I might have a word?’

‘Oh, certainly, Miss Fay. April, you walk on ahead with the pram and I’ll catch you up.’

‘What did she say? Was it about me not being a mince pie? Did you tell her it wasn’t my fault?’

I was terrified by what tales Miss Fay might tell, or that I had done something dreadful which I had forgotten about. Betty took over the pram.

‘Nothing much. Nothing to do with you. Why, got a guilty conscience?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t want to worry about it, she’s got nothing better to do with her time than impose archaic ceremonials on the working classes. We can do without her sort,’ said Percy when Betty told him about Mrs Edenbridge-Dwyer.

‘But can we?’

Percy had been passing his time with a copy of the Daily Worker delivered by Mr Silver, while we were out. Joe Silver ran the local Communist Party; he had tried to save the Rosen-bergs too. They had two little boys, and they were sent to the Electric Chair. He was like a kind uncle to all the children and some people called him Uncle Joe after Joseph Stalin who had died the year before, and good riddance, said Percy. Joe and his wife Molly and their three sons lived in the old Paper Mill, a wooden building weathered like Dittany’s beehives, which stood on an island in the river overlooking the deep, wide pool made by a stone dam where water roared in a boiling white waterfall in the winter. Joe Silver was businessman who owned, among other establishments, a button factory in the East End, Harlequin Buttons, and the Silvers were known for many acts of kindness to people whatever their affiliation. Molly regularly drove old folks from the almshouses to the hospital and she had spoken up for the Vinnegar twins at the juvenile court more than once. Nevertheless there were those, such as Mr Oswald, and Mrs Edenbridge-Dwyer and Lex Richards, who despised the Silvers. Ruby and I had once watched, through a gap in the hedge, two beautiful Indian ladies in saris, like butterflies playing tennis, visitors in shimmering wings from another world, and as they fluttered in that glamorous moated garden which we would have liked so much to enter, bracelets of gold and silver and coloured glass rolled up and down their arms with each shot and return of the ball.

The three Silver boys travelled by train to a grammar school, wearing claret and navy blazers and caps. I was always pleased on the rare occasions when Leo, the youngest, accompanied his father on the Daily Worker round. Leo was dark and skinny and looked a bit like a monkey with his soft crew cut and straight legs. He wore glasses and was very brainy. Although he was older than I was, twelve or thirteen, he was friendly, unlike most boys of his age. Myrna Pratt had a crush on his brother Alexander and was always hanging about outside their gate. The eldest boy, as tall as a man in his school uniform, was Karl. I love all their names.

‘That’s the Mothers’ Union gone for a Burton then, ‘Betty said to me when we were unpacking the shopping and Peter from his pram.

‘She may be weary

Women do get weary

Wearing the same shabby dress…’

She sang softly as she unbuttoned Peter’s little blue coat and found that everything was soaked, even his vest and the sheet.

‘Wotcher cock,’ said Titchy, sitting there as if he owned the place. Which once he had, I remembered, and it did not improve my mood. His father, Tiny, had come to our back door one night in hisold army coat, trying to sell us two dead rabbits. There were also two men who had been climbing up the telegraph pole when I went out.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Percy grumbled. ‘Give us a hand with this fried bread.’ Cacon was squirming and spitting in the other frying pan.

Dittany kept an eye on her doves when Tiny was around, for fear that they would end up as someone’s pigeon pie, and worried more about Tiny than the fox getting into her ducks’ house at night.

At eleven o’clock Mr Greenidge came in for his morning coffee.

‘No Liesel today?’ Percy asked.

‘No, I’m all on my own-io. Deserted by both my good ladies. A bachelor gay am I.’

He winked at Percy. When we were alone, except for Peter who was perched heavily on my hip, as I had been amusing him while Betty was backing, Mr Greenidge sang softly,

‘And when he thinks he’s past love,

‘Tis then he finds his last love,

And he loves her like no other love before.’

‘Coochy-coo,’ he said to Peter. ‘Where’s that peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?’

Fourteen

Miss Fay was in an evil temper on the first day of term. ‘Did you have a nice holiday, Miss Fay?’ a goody-goody asked her.

‘That’s enough impertinence for one morning,’ Miss Fay replied.

Doreen, who had not had to have her ears off, had been sent to school with a bottle of surgical spirit, to dab on her swollen lobes, which Miss Fay confiscated.’

‘You can have it back at the end of term,’ she said.

With two of the girls in tears, Miss Fay turned on Ruby and me, and separated us. I had to sit next to a girl called Ceronica Taplady, which seemed a fancy name for someone who smelled of Marmite and had warts on her hands, which bled when she scratched them. Ruby was put next to Angela Thorn who lived on a remote farm and hardly ever spoke. Her clothes were always full of burrs.

In the afternoon Mr Reeves summoned the whole school into the dining-room. Constable Cox was with him. We quaked in fear wondering who was going to be arrested.

‘Good afternoon, boys and girls.’

‘Good afternoon, Mr Cox.’

‘Be seated,’ said Mr Reeves.

‘Now children,’ said Mr Cox. ‘I’ve got something very important to say to you, so pay attention. Now, I haven’t come here this afternoon to frighten you, or to take any of you off to prison. Not long ago, a little girl who lives in this village I won’t tell you her name because she doesn’t go to this school had a very nasty experience while she was playing in Tippetts wood. Fortunately, she’s all right, but if any of you have seen a strange man hanging around the village or in the rec or down the meadows or anywhere at all, I want you to tell me, or tell your teacher. This is very important, so think hard. Thinking caps on. Has any stranger approached you, or have you noticed anybody behaving oddly or offering sweets to anyone? Some-body with a bicycle perhaps. Don’t be afraid to speak up.’

Mr Cox waited. It was grey and solemn with sleet falling past the windows and a few whispers rustling like sweetpapers.

‘Take your time,’ said Constable Cox.

Then Doreen’s hand went up, uncurling slowly in the silence it created.

‘Please sir, a man offered me a sweet.’

‘When was this, Doreen?’

‘Yesterday,’ she whispered.

‘And did you recognize him, was it somebody you know?’ Constable Cox leaned forward taking off his helmet to hear better.

‘Yes sir. It was Mr Boddy.’

‘Mr Boddy? And where were you when this took place, Doreen?’

‘In the butcher’s sir. It was a fruit gum.’

Some of the top class burst out laughing and then everybody was laughing and even Miss Fay’s face twitched. Doreen was like a beetroot.

‘All right. That’s enough!’

Mr Reeves clapped his hands.

‘It was very brave and sensible of Doreen to come forward like that. Now, I want you to remember what Mr Cox said and if any of you can think of anything at all unusual or suspicious or see any strangers with bicycles hanging around, tell your parents, tell me or Miss Fay or Miss Elsey or Mr Cox. Don’t play in any lonely places by yourselves, don’t speak to any strangers. If anybody offers you sweets, except Mr Boddy, of course, you must tell the nearest grown-up at once, and never ever get in a car or go anywhere with somebody you don’t know.’

As we filed out I heard Constable Cox saying, ‘Mind you, there must be something odd about a butcher who reports finding a turkey on his doorstep at Christmas. They don’t come much stranger than that.’

By home time it was all round the school that the girl was Sorrel Marlowe. Quite a few of the mums had come to meet their children. Mr Greenidge had come to meet me. We were nearly at the Copper Kettle when we saw Betty hurrying along the road.

‘Thank goodness it’s you,’ said to Mr Greenidge. ‘I couldn’t be sure at a distance. Just thought I’d pop out to see if April was on her way. There are all sorts of rumours going around.’

‘I know. Mr Cox came up the school to talk to us,’ I said. ‘About a stranger on a bicycle.’

Then I went hot and cold and felt icy water draining from me. Rodney Pegg’s angry, spotted face, framed in a balaclava, loomed in my mind, leering.

‘April? What’s the matter/’

They were both looking at me.

‘Nothing. I just thought of something, that’s all. Nothing to do with what Mr Cox said.’

My voice seemed to come from far away. I imagined Sorrel Marlowe, in her Fair Isle beret, and matching mittens, her camel coat, in a dark wood and Rodney Pegg with a nylon stocking on his head.

to be continued...