Page 40 of Strangers in Time

A G ATHERING OF P ARTICULARS

Y ES ?”

Mrs. Pride stared at Charlie, who looked back at her with an oilskin bag slung over each slender shoulder. The rain had begun to pour again halfway here and he was soaked through. He put down one bag, doffed his cap, and said, “Please, ma’am, I was wonderin’ if Miss Molly Wakefield was here.”

“Supposing she is, what would your business be with her?”

Before he could answer, the door opened wider and Molly appeared.

“Charlie?” she exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”

“You… you know this… boy ?” said Mrs. Pride.

“Yes. He’s my friend. Come in, Charlie, quickly, it’s starting to rain harder.”

She reached past Mrs. Pride, gripped Charlie’s arm, and pulled him, wet as he was, into the front room.

Mrs. Pride closed the door and looked askance at what she no doubt considered a nearly drowned street urchin in her mistress’s fine home dripping all over the Wakefields’ handwoven carpet.

“I’ll take things from here, Mrs. Pride, thank you. Wait a moment, though, Charlie, have you eaten?”

He simply shook his head. He had given the bread and cheese the woman had handed him to a pavement man he had passed on the way here. It was the only time Charlie could ever remember giving food away. Now his hunger was painful.

“Mrs. Pride, can you prepare some breakfast for Charlie, please? And put the kettle on?”

“Yes, Molly. If you’re quite sure,” she added, glancing questioningly at her.

“I’m absolutely sure.”

As a thoroughly flustered Mrs. Pride hurried off, Molly turned to Charlie. “How did you get here?”

“Run,” he answered.

She looked astonished. “All that way? In the rain?”

He nodded.

She studied his stricken features. “What’s happened?”

Charlie pointed his face down like the weight of the world was tugging on his chin. “My gran. She… she died this mornin’.”

Molly put a hand to her mouth. “Your… your grandmother died ?”

Charlie slowly nodded, even as he shivered. Not from the cold but from saying, out loud for the first time, that his gran was no longer with him.

“Oh, I’m so very sorry, Charlie. Please come and sit down over here. And let me bring you a blanket.”

She did so and wrapped it securely around his shoulders before sitting beside him. “What happened to her? Was she ill?”

Charlie rubbed his wet nose. “Dunno. I found her on the floor of the loo. Her eyes were open and she weren’t breathin’. The doctor said somethin’ ’bout her heart. They… the men took her away in the motorcar.”

“You mean the undertakers?”

“S’pose, yeah,” sniffled Charlie.

“Do you know where they took her?”

In answer Charlie handed her the card from his pocket.

She read off it. “Yes, of course.”

“They says to come round tomorrow.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s right,” Molly said. “They would need some time to… to organize things properly.” She looked at him and asked tentatively, “Did you live with your grandmother?”

Charlie nodded.

“And did you… live with anyone else as well?” she asked in a delicate tone.

Charlie shook his head. “No. My mum’s dead. And Dad died at Dunkirk. I’m… sorry I didn’t tell you before but… I don’t like to… talk ’bout not havin’ ’em.”

Molly sat back, her guilt increasing tenfold over keeping her own secret about her father from him. “I’m so sorry. But it will be fine, Charlie.”

He lifted an angry gaze from the floor to her. “It ain’t fine. Gran’s dead!”

“I meant that things will be taken care of. She will be taken care of. I will help you to do so. Losing… someone you love is hard enough without having to worry about such… details.”

Everything you said to him could just as easily apply to you.

Charlie rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the half crown she’d paid him, and his shillings from the night before. “Got this to bury her proper.”

Molly looked at the coins and said, “I’m sure that will be enough.”

“You really think so?” Charlie said dubiously.

“Yes, absolutely. Now, what are in the bags?”

He had set them on the floor beside him.

“This one’s Gran’s things, to be… to be buried in. And this one is, well, all what I got ’cause we… see, I can’t live there no more… the rent… Gran’s wages got cut, so’s we couldn’t… pay it.” He stopped abruptly and looked deeply ashamed.

“We’ll worry about that later. For now, while you eat, I’m going to go through these things and see what’s what.”

Charlie looked embarrassed. “I took her underthin’s and such because…”

“And that was perfectly sensible for you to do.”

Charlie’s expression suddenly turned frantic. “My book, I forgot my book!”

“That’s all right. We can go back and get it later.”

“It might not be there later!” exclaimed Charlie.

“I’m sure it will. Now, let me just nip in and check on your breakfast.” She hurried off.

Charlie sat there, forlorn, because he knew that things at Dapleton Terrace tended to go missing when left behind by folks who died or couldn’t pay their rent. But he couldn’t hurry all the way back there now because he was so very tired, not so much from running, but from losing the only family he had left.

He stood and looked around the room. He had never been in a home such as this, full of furniture and paintings on the walls and thick carpet underfoot. And over there was a towering fireplace with a proper mantel and a fine brass-and-wood clock perched on top of it. He knew that some lived like this, but he’d had no firsthand knowledge of it.

Then the realization that he was all alone in the world hit him so incredibly hard that he sank back onto the couch, all of his strength withered away. He had always tried to overcome adversity with a proper spirit, somehow consistently seeing the good in the bad. But now he could glimpse nothing save misery ahead.

Molly returned and said, “Your breakfast will be ready presently and the kettle is nearly hot. Why don’t you come and settle at the kitchen table while I take the bags to my room and go through them?”

She led him into the kitchen, where Mrs. Pride was preparing his plate. There was one fried egg, a slice of toast with actual butter and a wedge of cheddar, a bit of ham, a small bowl of porridge, a stewed prune, and a cup of what looked to be real milk. Molly would have once looked askance at such a shabby meal, but Charlie, his grief dissipating for a few moments, looked astonished. “Goodness, Miss, do you eat like this every meal?”

She could neither meet his eye nor answer his query. She simply fled the room.

While Charlie took up his cutlery, Molly carried the bags to her bedroom and looked through the first one. She carefully folded Gran’s clothes and hung in the wardrobe what needed hanging, after first smoothing out some wrinkles. Mrs. Pride could iron them properly later. Her inventory showed that Charlie had missed a few essentials, which Molly was sure she could provide from their own stock of clothing. When she opened Charlie’s bag she had to gasp. The smells emanating from within were quite overwhelming. All she could glimpse was a hodgepodge of rough, blackened garments.

She took nothing out, but hastily carried the bag at arm’s length down the back stairs, found Mrs. Pride, and instructed her to have it all thoroughly laundered.

Mrs. Pride looked in the bag and said, “My Lord, I don’t see much worth saving in there, Molly. It’s for the dustbin, I’d say.”

“When we go to get his book I can stop and purchase a few essentials for him. At least that’ll do for now. Where do you keep the household funds?”

“I used to keep them in the cabinet in the small sitting room at the back of the house. But now I just keep them in a box in a cupboard under the stairs.”

She showed Molly the box. When Molly saw what was there she said, “This really is all we have?”

“I should have told you this earlier, but I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Tell me what?” asked Molly, looking curiously at her nanny.

“I went to the bank last week to get some more pounds. Hadn’t had to do that since your father left. But with you back and all. Anyway, the accounts he set up, well…”

“Well what?”

“The bank manager himself came out, took me to his office, and told me that the funds were no longer available.”

Molly looked perplexed. “Did he say why?”

“No, but he was quite rude about it. Why, he looked at me quite suspiciously.”

“What in the world?” said a bewildered Molly.

“And then he called in another man who asked me, bold as brass, where was Mr. Wakefield? And why didn’t he come in to inquire as to his account?”

“This is all so confusing,” said Molly.

Mrs. Pride gave her a side-eye look. “It… well, it was almost like he was suggesting that your father had committed some act of, I don’t know, theft, or larceny, or whatever they call it.”

“Father would never,” replied Molly fiercely.

“Oh, I know that. I’m just telling you what I think that bank person thought. War does funny things to folks, Molly,” she added.

Molly didn’t know if she was referring to the bank people or her father.

“Mrs. Pride, you said you had also seen a man watching the house?”

“Yes. And I told the bobby on the beat about it. He wrote it down and promised to keep an eye out for him.” Mrs. Pride stiffened. “Wait, do you think it could be connected to this bank business?”

“I don’t know. It’s just very puzzling. I mean, why would the bank manager have met with you over a single account?”

“That did seem quite odd to me.” She suddenly looked even more worried.

“What?” asked Molly quickly.

“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing, but… but a few weeks ago I sent a letter to a friend of mine, she lives up in Norfolk. Hadn’t written a letter for the longest time. Had to go to the post office for a stamp.”

“What of it?” said Molly impatiently.

“Well, my friend wrote me back. And she said that it looked like my letter to her had been steamed open and then resealed.”

“Opened and then resealed?”

“Yes. It was quite odd.”

“Mrs. Pride?”

“Yes?”

“Was my father also going mad? Leaving without explanation to you or a letter or a call to me? And it might be connected somehow to the men watching us, the odd behavior by the bank, and perhaps the reading of your letter. In his despair he… he might have done something… careless .”

Mrs. Pride drew herself up and said firmly, “Your father was, is , the sanest man I have ever met. If he was going mad, then the whole world has, too.”

Molly pocketed sufficient money, tidied herself up to go out, and rejoined Charlie, who was just finishing up his meal.

“How was the food?” she asked.

“I… I never tasted nothin’ so good. And there’s so much of it.”

This praise almost made Molly weep. But then I may not be far behind. “Oh, Charlie, I didn’t see your gas mask in the bags.”

He looked up at her ruefully. “Me and Gran, we sold our masks a few days ago.”

“Sold them?” she said, looking startled.

“There was bills comin’ due and a bloke give us money for ’em.”

“I see. All right. Well, my father, I mean, we have a spare here for you.”

“Thanks.” He finished his porridge and put on his cap.

“Charlie, where are you going? Your clothes are still wet!”

“It’s all right, Miss. The book is more ’portant. It’s five quid.”