The Girl With No Name (57 page)

‘Bessie!’ she cried. ‘Oh Bessie, I have missed you.’

Billy, standing watching, thought sadly that Charlotte had given her dog a more enthusiastic welcome than she’d given him. His own fault, he knew, but things were different now and he was determined that, while she was in Wynsdown, even for a short time, he would woo her back to him.

She turned glowing eyes up to him now and said, ‘Oh, Billy, thank you for bringing her. I have missed her so.’ And the glow in her eyes made his heart turn over.

They put the excited dog back into the car and once he’d settled Charlotte into the passenger seat Billy went round to the front and swung the starting handle. The engine spluttered into life and he jumped into the driving seat and they set off up the familiar lanes towards the village. An awkward silence enclosed them for some time and neither of them seemed to know how to break it.

‘How have you been?’ Billy asked eventually.

‘All right,’ Charlotte replied. ‘You?’

‘Oh I’m fine,’ Billy assured her. ‘Busy on the farm, you know. How was London?’

‘Big. Noisy.’

‘Bombs?’

‘No, children!’

They both laughed before the silence lapsed round them again.

‘Thank you for looking after Bessie,’ Charlotte said. ‘I hope she’s behaved herself.’

‘She’s fine. Training her up with Jet. She’s an intelligent dog.’

‘I wish I could take her back to London with me. The children in the home would love her.’ She sighed. ‘But I know she’s better off down here in the country.’

‘How long are you staying?’ asked Billy.

‘Not sure yet,’ Charlotte answered. ‘It depends on lots of things.’

‘Mum’s hoping you’ll have time to come over to the farm one day and have your dinner with us.’ He glanced across at her. ‘You will, won’t you, Char? We want to hear all about what you’re doing in London.’

‘Of course I will. I’d love to.’ She turned to look him as she spoke, saw the shadow of his face in the dusky light, saw his hands strong and firm on the steering wheel and for the first time since she’d arrived she felt a rush of remembered affection for him.

‘Thank you for coming to fetch me, Billy,’ she said softly.

‘No problem. I wanted you to myself, even if only for a little while. Everyone’s waiting to welcome you at the vicarage.’

He was quite right. When he pulled up outside the vicarage gate, the door was flung open and Avril and David came out to greet them with cries of delight.

‘Charlotte, my dear. You’re looking well. Did you have a good journey?’

‘What a long day you’ve had. Come on in and have something to eat. Only shepherd’s pie, but I know it’s one of your favourites.’

The Dawson children, dressed in pyjamas and ready for bed, were waiting indoors. Charlotte gave them each a hug. Billy had come into the house too and was invited to stay for the shepherd’s pie, but he declined.

‘Better get back,’ he said. ‘I’ll come over tomorrow afternoon to see you, Charlotte. Perhaps we can walk the dogs together?’

Charlotte smiled at him and said, ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

The following morning Mr Thompson came up from Cheddar. He, the vicar and Charlotte spent much of the morning in David’s office, going over the terms of Miss Edie’s will.

There was a bequest to the church but apart from that everything else was to come to Charlotte. Miss Edie had added an explanation of her bequest.

I have left everything to Liselotte Becker, also known as Charlotte Smith, so that after this dreadful war she will be able to live her life to the full. It is too precious to waste on regrets of what might have been. Look forward, Charlotte, not back. I wasted too much of my life doing that. Please don’t do the same.

‘I shall open a bank account for you, Charlotte,’ said Mr Thompson, ‘and each month we’ll pay in an allowance, so that you have enough money for all you need.’

‘But I don’t need money,’ Charlotte protested. ‘I earn money at the home.’

‘Yes, we know that,’ said Mr Thompson. ‘It won’t be a large sum, ten pounds a month...’

Charlotte’s eyes widened at the amount. It didn’t sound like a small sum to her.

‘...but,’ he continued with a smile, ‘it will give you a little extra if you need it. You can always save it up, if you don’t use it.’

He explained that Blackdown House was hers and that the costs of its upkeep would be met by the trust.

‘You don’t have to worry about anything, my dear,’ the vicar told her. ‘It’ll all be looked after until you’re twenty-one. After that it’ll be up to you, but Mr Thompson and I will always be here to advise you.’

That afternoon Charlotte went back to Blackdown House.

‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Avril had asked, but Charlotte shook her head.

‘No, I think I’d rather go alone.’

‘Of course,’ Avril had agreed with a smile. But she had been a little worried. Charlotte was still only sixteen and though she had at once noticed the new maturity that Caroline had mentioned on the phone, Avril felt that recent events had given Charlotte much to bear.

Mr Thompson had given her the bunch of keys Miss Edie had always kept in her handbag and Charlotte let herself into the house. She wandered through the rooms, so still and quiet, each with its own memory. She sat on the window seat in her own bedroom and looked out across the fields at the view that had become so familiar to her. It was just as she’d remembered it, dressed in autumn colours, the bracken brown, the grass yellowing, the trees golden, red and orange and the hills sharp-edged against the pale blue October sky. So different, she thought, from the roof-scape that she saw from her attic window in Livingston Road, so peaceful compared with the continuous noise of the London streets.

She looked round the room, but there was nothing of hers left. She had taken everything with her in her flight to London. For flight it had been, she knew that now, as she sat in the haven of what had been her home. She had run from her misery.

Too late to come back, she thought. My life is in London now, working at Livingston Road. She thought about Harry and wondered yet again where he was. Since she had found Aunt Naomi and Uncle Dan again Harry had retreated to the back of her mind. But he was still there, reappearing occasionally when she least expected him, dropping in and out of her thoughts as he’d dropped in and out of her life. Charlotte swung from being angry with him to worrying about him and then back to anger again. He could at least have said he wasn’t coming, rung the home or sent a message or something, so that she didn’t look a fool in front of Miss Morrison and the others; all dressed up and nowhere to go. Maybe he’d put in another appearance when she got back to London. If he did, she wondered, how would she feel about it? Would she be pleased to see him? She didn’t know. She would only know for sure if and when it happened.

With a sigh she pushed him to the back of her mind, got to her feet and crossed the landing into Miss Edie’s room. It, too, had been left untouched, as if Miss Edie might return at any moment. Charlotte went over to the bedside table and picked up the photograph of Herbert. She looked down at his smiling face and found herself smiling back at him.

‘I’ll take you with me,’ she said aloud. ‘I won’t leave you here to be thrown away.’ She opened the bedside drawer and saw, beside a bottle of aspirin, lying on top of the hankies, the dog-eared telegram and a letter with an army postmark, addressed to Miss Edie. She picked them both up and put them and the photograph into her pocket. She would never read the letter or the telegram, she would burn those as soon as she had the opportunity, but the photo she would keep.

At last she came to the spare room, the room with the doorway into the attic.

‘You may want to have a look at everything that’s been stored in the loft,’ Mr Thompson had said, ‘before we have it cleared away. There may be things there that you’d like kept, but much of what’s there will probably be Everard family possessions which’ll mean nothing to you. I’ll go through any papers in case they’re important.’

The door had always been kept locked. Charlotte found the key on the bunch she’d been given, unlocked the door and went in. It was as it had always been. Neat bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe, and in the corner, the triangular door into the attic. Charlotte looked across at the wardrobe, which Miss Edie’d kept locked. She’d never mentioned why it was locked or what it contained, but Charlotte decided that she should be the one to open it now Miss Edie had gone. She looked at the various keys in her hand and selected one that looked hopeful. It fitted and, though stiff, she was able to turn it and open the wardrobe door. Inside hung a single garment. A white lace wedding dress. Charlotte stared at it, tears springing to her eyes. Miss Edie had already made her wedding dress before she heard that Herbert had been killed. She had kept it safe, locked away with her hopes and dreams, just in case the telegram had been wrong. Just in case Herbert came home.

Hearing a sound downstairs, Charlotte quickly closed and locked the wardrobe door.

‘Who’s there?’ she called as she went to the top of the stairs.

‘It’s me,’ called Billy. ‘Mrs Swanson said you were here.’

Charlotte came back down the stairs. ‘I was just looking round the house again,’ she said. ‘I’ve finished now.’

It had been suggested to her that it would be better to tell no one about Miss Edie’s will. ‘It’s nobody’s business but yours,’ the vicar had said. ‘Better if you’re not to be the topic of village gossip.’

‘It’ll get out eventually,’ he said to Avril later, ‘but there’s no need to subject the child to more comment.’

Charlotte had agreed to say nothing. She would be going back to London in a couple of days, anyway. Caroline already knew; there was no need to tell anyone else.

‘I’ve brought the dogs with me,’ Billy said as they went back into the garden and Charlotte locked up.

‘Miss Edie’d be pleased with the garden,’ she said, looking round at the tidy vegetable patch. ‘Who’s been looking after it, I wonder?’

Billy didn’t answer and she looked across at him sharply. ‘Was it you, Billy?’

‘I helped,’ he said casually. ‘Thought we might go across towards the gorge, what do you think?’

It was a bright October day; the sun struck flashes of brilliance on the autumn trees. They walked along the track that led out of the village and up through the copse on to the open hillside beyond. As they walked past the observation post from where Billy and his father had watched the German plane crash, Charlotte said, ‘Do you still come out here to watch for enemy planes?’

‘Only if there’s a warning,’ Billy replied. ‘We still get them even though the threat of invasion seems to have lessened now that Hitler’s bogged down with the Russians. He’ll have his work cut out there, but at least it means his attention’s elsewhere.’

Billy was right. The threat of a German invasion had indeed decreased. Billy was still part of the auxiliaries; they still had everything in place in case the threat returned, but they all thought that the danger, once so imminent, had now diminished. For Billy the relief was more than the general lessening of tension felt by everyone else. It was an intense, personal relief. The Germans weren’t coming and, if they weren’t, the danger he’d feared for Charlotte, both as a refugee German and as the girlfriend of an auxiliary, was no longer a threat. He knew that he still couldn’t explain his sudden coolness towards her after the midsummer dance, but he was determined to try and repair the damage it had caused between them. Getting their friendship back on its old, easy footing was the first step.

They let the dogs run as they came out on to the hilltop. The freshening breeze brought colour to Charlotte’s cheeks and her spirits lifted as they walked the familiar pathway.

‘I have missed all this,’ she said, waving her arm to encompass the view. ‘London is very shut in. The buildings all crowd round you and you can only see in straight lines.’

‘Tell me about London,’ Billy said. ‘What was it like going back there after living here in the country for so long?’

‘Difficult at first,’ admitted Charlotte, ‘but you get used to it. The noise, the bustle, the crowds of people. But it’s a sad place with all the bomb damage. Empty spaces where houses once stood, ruined buildings waiting to be cleared.’

As they walked Charlotte told Billy about her visit to Kemble Street and the ruins she found there. She told him, with tears in her eyes, about Hilda. ‘She and her family were so kind to me when I first came to London, and now she’s dead. She was killed in the raid that injured me.’ She told him about finding Aunt Naomi and Uncle Dan at last. ‘They’d searched everywhere for me, but they thought I’d been with Hilda and that I was dead, too. They moved away from London when the house was destroyed.’ As she talked it was as if a great burden was slipping from her shoulders. She’d had no one in whom she could confide her thoughts and fears since Miss Edie’s death. Everyone had been very kind, but she had held on to her innermost feelings and shared them with no one. Somehow with Billy it was different and, almost without realising, she slipped back into their earlier, easy amity, and told him all about her life in London and her work in the children’s home. The only person she didn’t mention was Harry. Billy was not the person with whom to discuss Harry.

They sat down on a fallen tree trunk and Billy listened as she poured out what had happened to her since she’d left Wynsdown. ‘When are you going back?’ he asked. ‘I assume you are.’

‘In a couple of days,’ Charlotte replied, ‘three at the most. Miss Morrison has given me time off for a few days, but she needs me back up there. You have to remember it’s my job now. I’m not just helping her, I’m earning my living.’

‘You could come back here and earn your living,’ suggested Billy. He took her hand. ‘I miss you, you know.’

Charlotte let her hand rest in his, but smiling at him, shook her head. ‘I miss you, too, Billy. But my place is in London now. The children in the home where I work need looking after. They’ve all lost their homes and lots of them their families too. That’s all happened to me, so I know what that’s like. Sometimes I can help them get through it.’