Page 12 of The Stranger in Room Six

Mabel

Mabel can still smell her mother, though she hasn’t seen her for eighty-four years.

‘How lovely, darling,’ her mother had said to Papa. ‘Thank you.’

‘May I have some?’ Mabel had asked wonderingly.

‘When you’re older,’ her mother had replied, but her father had given a quick wink.

‘I think she can have just a tiny bit, don’t you?’

So her mother had dabbed some onto her little finger and placed it gently behind Mabel’s ear. She felt as if she might swoon with happiness.

‘Thank you,’ she’d said.

That was years ago: before the war. They’d lived in Chelsea back then.

She’d always loved water and her favourite weekend pastime was to walk along the River Thames, holding Papa’s hand and discussing landmarks like the Tower.

‘I’m so glad that you share my interest in history, Mabel,’ he’d often say.

Sometimes Mama came too but recently she’d been staying at home because she was expecting a present. ‘Mummy says she’s going to give me something that I’m going to love,’ Mabel told Lizzie, her maid. ‘I hope it’s a pony.’

For some time now, Mabel had been begging for riding lessons. ‘Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret have been riding for years! I’ve been reading about it in The Lady.’

Mabel had always been an avid reader. She would fall on the magazine as soon as it was delivered.

‘That girl won’t take no for an answer,’ her mother would say to Papa.

‘She’s got character,’ he would reply. ‘Just like you, my darling.’

Then Papa would hold out his arms and pull them both into a warm embrace. Everything was safe and easy back then, until the night in 1939 when they’d sat in front of the radio to hear Mr Churchill speak.

‘Why are you crying?’ she’d asked her mother.

‘Just a cold, darling,’ Mama had replied, dabbing her nose with a white lace handkerchief Aunt Clarissa had given her. Her mother’s sister, who lived in Devon, gave everyone lace handkerchiefs for Christmas, which Mabel considered extremely dull.

Then, that evening, the doctor came. Mabel was told to stay in her room with Lizzie, but she could hear Mama crying and calling out. Her cold must have got worse.

‘It won’t be long now, miss.’

Then all of a sudden, Mabel heard a high-pitched wail. ‘It’s here!’ Lizzie cried.

‘What’s here?’

‘The miracle your parents have been waiting for, love. It’s taken long enough. You’re going to have a baby brother or sister! Isn’t that exciting?’

Yes! This was much better than a pony. How she’d longed to have a brother or sister like all the other girls she knew. But when Mabel was shepherded into Mama’s boudoir, she was met with a tiny red face that instantly burst into tears.

‘It’s all right,’ said her mother. ‘I know you’re thirteen years older, but soon you and your sister Annabel will be great friends.’

If only they’d had more time to get to know each other.

1941

Before Mabel knew it, the war had begun and Papa had left to ‘do his bit’ for King and Country. They all cried a lot then, including Annabel. Even the doll that Mama had bought her didn’t help.

Then came the planes. Night after night, they would roar over the rooftops, while sirens wailed into the evening air, sending Mabel, Annabel, Mama and Lizzie running to the bottom of the garden to hide in the shelter that Papa had built a few weeks ago.

Then one night, there were no sirens. ‘Thank goodness for that,’ her mother said.

‘But what if the planes come and we don’t hear the warning?’ cried Mabel.

‘Don’t be silly, darling. That’s the whole point of sirens. We will hear them.’

‘We need to go to the shelter; I just know it!’

‘Honestly, Lizzie. That girl is so dramatic. Take her there, will you, to keep her quiet. I need to carry on nursing.’

‘Please come too, Mama.’

‘There’s no need, darling, I promise.’

Mabel and Lizzie sat in the shelter ‘twiddling their thumbs’, as her maid called it. ‘I’m meant to be meeting my young man,’ she complained. ‘I’ll be late at this rate and …’

Then it came. The sound of planes.

The maid’s voice was shaky. ‘For the love of God. Where are the sirens?’

‘Mama! I need to get her.’

Lizzie clung to her. ‘You can’t go out, miss. You’ll get killed.’

Her voice was interrupted by crashing noises, screams. The din outside made Mabel’s ears ring.

When it finally ended, the two of them crept out, hand in hand, too shocked to speak. Houses had been reduced to rubble. Bonfires lit the night sky, while children yelled and adults wept. Their neighbour was clawing through bricks, screaming out her husband’s name.

‘Where’s our home?’ Mabel whispered.

‘Gone,’ said Lizzie in a voice that didn’t sound like hers.

‘Where are Mama and Annabel?’

But the maid didn’t answer.

‘WHERE ARE MAMA AND ANNABEL?’

‘God in heaven,’ whispered Lizzie. ‘They must be buried under all this.’

Frantically, Mabel tried to lift some rooftiles. ‘Help me,’ she called out. ‘They’re underneath. I know it.’

Side by side they worked, moving slabs, or trying to because most were too big and heavy. Around them, others were doing the same. Shouting. Screaming. Quietly sobbing. Names were being called. Joan. Tom. Harry …

‘Mama!’ screamed Mabel. ‘Annabel!’

Men wearing uniforms arrived. A grey-faced man was being hauled out, limp and floppy.

‘Don’t look, miss,’ pleaded Lizzie.

But she’d already done so. It was their neighbour.

‘Ronald,’ sobbed his wife. ‘Ronald!’

Someone put a white sheet over him.

‘But he won’t be able to breathe if they do that,’ implored Mabel.

‘Too late for that, love, I’m afraid,’ said a man in a tin hat.

Still, they dug. Mabel’s fingers were bleeding. Her throat was hoarse with shouting. ‘It’s no good,’ said Lizzie tearfully. ‘We can’t do anything.’

‘But we’ve got to.’

Then she gasped as a little arm poked up between some bricks. ‘Look!’ she said, pulling it out. ‘It’s Polly, Annabel’s doll! My sister must be near here.’

‘It doesn’t mean she’s alive, dear,’ whispered Lizzie.

‘She is! She has to be!’

Suddenly, there was another roar from the sky, followed by the screech of sirens.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Lizzie whispered, looking up at what seemed like a flock of birds in the distance. ‘They’re coming again.’

‘Everyone to the shelters,’ yelled the air-raid warden.

‘We can’t leave,’ Mabel screamed. ‘I’m looking for my mama and Annabel!’

‘You’ve got to,’ urged the man in the tin hat.

Then he picked her up and carried her, one arm flailing furiously on his back, the other clutching her sister’s doll tightly.

‘I’ll come back,’ she screamed at the rubble. ‘I promise you; I’ll come back!’