Mrs Ruddock pulled a face. ‘Mustard gas?’
Moira nodded. ‘He was in a sanatorium for most of the first three years of our marriage.’
Mrs Ruddock looked away. ‘Poor devil.’
‘See? What did I tell you? You should have got rid of those tarot cards,’ Mrs Toms said staring at the mantelpiece again. ‘Witchcraft and divination are the sins of Jezebel.’
The door suddenly burst open. ‘Good God,’ a man’s voice boomed. ‘Haven’t you hens finished clucking yet?’
Frankie jumped out of her skin and at that point the party broke up. Nobody bothered to ask who the man was. They all knew young Mr Knight and they knew he was Moira’s landlord. If Mrs Toms and Mrs Ruddock wondered why he’d walked in uninvited and in such an over-familiar manner, they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Mrs Ruddock rose to her feet. Young Mr Knight belched loudly and sat in her chair, making himself very much at home as he helped himself to a piece of cake and pulled an empty cup towards him.
Mrs Toms looked down her nose. ‘You disgusting man. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
Mr Knight’s lip curled as he put up two fingers. Mrs Toms rose to her feet with a horrified look on her face. ‘Doreen, get your coat. We’re leaving right this minute.’
Frankie didn’t like young Mr Knight. He was loud, and brash, and sometimes he frightened her. He didn’t seem to have a proper job so he’d taken to turning up whenever he liked. Frankie had seen him walking around the street with a little red book. When he stood near a wall with one foot up behind him, people would sidle up to him shiftily and give him money. Then he’d write something in the little red book. One time when she’d been watching him, a policeman came around the corner. Young Mr Knight stood up straight and began hurrying away but not before he’d snarled at Frankie, ‘And you can keep your big fat trap shut.’
By now Frankie’s friends had put on their coats or cardigans and her mother, tight-lipped and pink with embarrassment, had said her goodbyes. When everyone was gone young Mr Knight poured himself a cup of tea from the pot. ‘This is cold,’ he complained.
Moira glanced at Frankie. ‘I think it’s bedtime, darling,’ she said softly.
Frankie began a half-hearted protest but in truth she was very tired and she didn’t want to stay up if young Mr Knight was there. She kissed her mother goodnight and took her dolly with her. Later, as she lay in bed with the princess doll on the chair beside her, Frankie could hear raised voices downstairs.
‘You had no right to burst in like that.’
‘I’ll go where I please.’
‘This is my home and you should treat me with respect.’
‘Ah, ah,’ said Mr Knight in a scolding tone. ‘This is my house. My house,’ he continued, his voice becoming more strident. ‘You only pay the rent.’ There was a short silence, then he said in a softer tone, ‘Come on, Moira. I don’t want to quarrel with you. Be nice to me.’
Frankie heard the chair legs scrape on the kitchen floorboards.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ her mother exclaimed. ‘What me and my Ernie had was something special. I’m not interested in anyone else, least of all you.’
Alarmed, Frankie sat up in bed.
‘Come on, woman. What’s the matter with you?’ Mr Knight said. ‘He’s been dead for years. You must be gagging for it by now.’
‘How dare you!’ her mother snapped. ‘And I shan’t tell you again; keep your filthy hands to yourself.’
There was the sound of a scuffle but it was the sound of a slap which brought Frankie to the rail at the top of the landing. Her heart was pounding and dolly trembled in her arms.
‘Get out,’ her mother gasped. ‘Get out before I take the poker to you.’
‘There’s no need to get on your high horse,’ Mr Knight was saying. ‘We could come to some sort of arrangement, you know. How about you say yes and I reduce the rent?’
‘Clear off, I tell you,’ her mother spat. ‘Go on. Take the rent money and get out of here.’
Frankie heard the sound of coins being spilled on the kitchen table.
‘Perhaps I could come back sometime and look for that Russian egg of yours.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ her mother snapped.
‘All right, Moira,’ said Mr Knight. ‘Keep your hair on, but I’m telling you, if you say no next week, you and that kid of yours better start looking for somewhere else to live.’
Frankie heard a squeak as the kitchen door opened. ‘Just one little yes,’ Mr Knight said. ‘That’s all it will take.’
The door banged shut and Frankie heard her mother say, ‘And hell will freeze over first.’
*
The new school term began on September 5th. While she was getting ready, Frankie couldn’t help noticing how pale her mother still looked. Of course, she was also still her usual efficient self. While Frankie washed herself in the scullery, Moira made the beds and tidied the room. While Frankie got dressed, her mother made herself some sandwiches for lunch (Frankie had school dinners) and as Frankie ate her breakfast, she sat beside her at the table with a cup of strong tea. The princess doll sat opposite them.
‘So,’ her mother asked, ‘do you still like your dolly?’
Frankie nodded happily. ‘She’s the bestest dolly in the world.’
‘Best,’ her mother corrected. ‘Not bestest, just best. What are you going to call her?’
Frankie shrugged. ‘Princess something.’
Moira ran her fingers through her daughter’s pretty blond curls. ‘And why not,’ she said. ‘After all, I made that bodice from the bits my Russian princess left behind. That blue suede was from the leftovers of a skirt and the buttons came off a blouse she asked me to alter. Someone had given it to her but it was far too long and she was so tiny.’
Frankie’s jaw dropped. So she had been right. Some of the material had belonged to the Russian princess. When she got down from the table, Frankie touched the doll’s clothes lovingly.
‘Right,’ said Moira, clapping her hands, ‘off to school and don’t dawdle on the way home.’
Taking one last look at the doll sitting on the cosy chair by the range, Frankie and her mother hugged each other at the door and Moira kissed her cheek. Frankie ran up the path but stopped by the gate and ran back. Wrapping her arms around her mother’s waist she said, ‘This was my best birthday ever.’ As she hurried towards the gate, she turned and saw her mother standing in the doorway waving. Frankie waved back and called over her shoulder, ‘And thanks again for my dolly.’
Moira had plenty to be getting on with. She had taken the day off on Saturday to celebrate Frankie’s birthday, and been glad to do it, but now she had some serious catching up to do. Moira hadn’t said anything to her daughter but over the past few days she hadn’t been feeling too well. Nothing she could put her finger on, but she kept coming over all weak and she just couldn’t seem to shake this wretched indigestion.
The doctor’s wife was coming this afternoon for the last fitting of her cocktail dress. She was a good customer – happy to spend a small fortune on both material and Moira’s skill in order to maintain her reputation for being the best dressed woman in Worthing – but before that, Moira made a start on some alterations on new garments which had been bought by customers in Bentall’s. She had been thrilled to land the job as their resident seamstress. The alterations were simple enough: a couple of inches off a hem, a sleeve which needed shortening and a waist band on a skirt which had to be let out a little. These had become her bread and butter jobs. Today she had three things to alter – a nightdress which was too long, a curtain to shorten, and some buttons to move on a coat because the wearer had put on weight. She worked quickly but every now and then her left arm ached and she had to stop to give it a rub.
She worked steadily until lunchtime, when she stopped to stretch her legs with a walk around the garden and to eat her sandwiches. She lifted her arms about her head a few times to ease the dull ache in her chest after sitting hunched over her work for so long. After she’d had a cup of tea, she put the doctor’s wife’s dress on the tailor’s dummy and settled down again with her sewing but she was soon interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. She glanced up at the clock. Was that her customer? No, it was too early for her. She said she’d come by after she’d finished a game of golf.
When Moira opened the door, she let out a gasp of surprise. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ Her visitor hovered on the step until she said, ‘I never expected you to come so soon.’ And stepping aside, she let her visitor in.
*
It was hard to concentrate on her lessons. More than once, Frankie’s mind drifted back to Hillbarn and the picnic she’d enjoyed on her birthday. In her imagination she could feel the sun on her back while the bees were humming around the blackberries. They’d eaten the ones they’d picked on Saturday for lunch on Sunday and they’d gone back for some more in the evening. Those blackberries were in a large bowl on the draining board and her mother had said she would make a blackberry and apple pie for their tea. Frankie was looking forward to it.
In the morning, Frankie and her class had to practise their best writing. Miss Smith had written ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ at the top of the page in her writing book and she had to copy the beautiful copperplate hand. It was quite hard work even if she did have three horizontal lines on the page to aid her. As she concentrated with her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth, Frankie was thinking of her dolly. What should she call her? What did mummy say the princess was called? She’d heard the name umpteen times but she still couldn’t quite get her tongue around it. ‘Alexy Vena’ or something like that. She’d have to ask mummy to say it again when she got home.
They had PE after break and Frankie did ten star jumps. She sat with Jenny at the dinner table but Doreen was monitor so she sat at the other end of the form. It was mutton stew. Frankie didn’t much care for mutton stew. You often had big lumps of slimy mutton fat and of course you had to eat everything on your plate or you got into trouble. Getting it down was slow going and not very enjoyable but they had semolina and strawberry jam for pudding. She didn’t mind that, especially the jam.
In the playground, Doreen seemed a bit stand-offish. Frankie didn’t understand why but then someone told her it was because Doreen’s mum didn’t like Mrs Sherwood’s fancy man. Frankie didn’t understand what that meant but she could tell that Doreen and her mum weren’t being very nice and it upset her that her friend had stopped talking to her.
They did sums in the afternoon and then Mr Bawden read a book to the class. He began with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, an exciting story about a boy and his adventures in America. Frankie held her breath as Mr Bawden read the bit where Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Finn, see Injun Joe murder Dr Robinson in the graveyard. Then, terrified that Injun Joe might do them harm, Tom and Huck swear a blood oath not to tell. The class had heard it all before but it didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for a ‘ripping yarn’, as Mr Bawden called it.
Remembering her promise, Frankie didn’t dawdle on the way home, but as she turned into her road there was a St John Ambulance outside her gate. She broke into a run just as Mrs Dickenson, their next-door neighbour, came out of Frankie’s house. Frankie tried to dodge past her but Mrs Dickenson stopped her from going indoors.
‘It’s no good going in there, dear,’ she said. ‘You come along with me.’
‘Why?’ Frankie gasped. ‘What’s happened? Where’s my mummy?’
Two men in blue uniforms came out of the front door. One of them glanced at Mrs Dickenson. ‘Is this her?’
Mrs Dickenson nodded.
‘You get the stretcher, Charlie,’ he went on. ‘I’ll deal with this.’ He came towards Frankie and bent down. ‘Now then, little girl,’ he said with a fixed smile which was a little scary, ‘you mustn’t cry. Your mummy wouldn’t like that, see? You have to be brave. So do what the nice lady says and go over to her house.’
‘But I live here!’ Frankie cried. ‘This is where I live with my mummy.’
‘That’s as may be,’ the man said a little more firmly, ‘but you have to stay away until the police come.’
Frankie stared at him in horror. Police? What on earth was he talking about? Pushing against the man’s leg, she struggled to get past him. ‘Mummy, Mummy!’
‘No good shouting like that,’ said the man curtly. ‘She can’t hear you no more.’
Frankie looked up at him helplessly.
‘Your mother is dead,’ he said quietly.
Two
North Farm, Sussex, 1933
The hours since she’d left school and come home became a blur. Frankie had watched the ambulance take her mother away but she couldn’t actually see her. Moira was covered right over with a red blanket. As soon as she had gone, Mrs Dickenson made Frankie come away from the window. Neighbours came and went, all speaking in hushed tones. They’d say something to Mrs Dickenson then turn their heads to look at Frankie. Invariably they would give her a wide smile and say something like ‘You’ll be all right, dear,’ or ‘Keep your pecker up.’
Frankie said nothing, not even when she heard them whispering. ‘Does she know? Does she understand?’ Frankie frowned to herself. Of course she knew. She understood perfectly. Mummy was dead, or gone to be with Jesus, or in heaven with the angels, depending on who was talking to her. She understood but it was hard to take in. Just this morning, when she and her mother had waved goodbye, she’d never said she was going to see Jesus.
Nobody actually told her why her mother had died but she heard their whispers.
‘They say it was her heart.’
‘Mrs Ruddock said she kept rubbing her arm all the time when they were up on Hillbarn for the kiddie’s birthday on Saturday.’
‘I heard she complained of indigestion.’
Then they would all shake their heads and smile at Frankie again. ‘Poor little mite.’
Shortly after, a policeman arrived. ‘Who found Mrs Sherwood?’ he said getting out his notebook and licking the end of his pencil.
‘Me,’ said Mrs Dickenson. ‘I could hear somebody banging about,’ she went on, closing the kitchen door slightly but not enough to stop Frankie hearing what she was saying. ‘Scared me out of me wits. Then somebody slammed the back door and I went round. Poor Mrs Sherwood was sitting in the chair with a tea towel over her head and someone had gone through her things.’
‘Who?’
‘I’ve no idea but whoever it was must have been looking for something,’ Mrs Dickenson went on. ‘I heard her having a row with somebody earlier on.’
The door whined open and the policeman looked at Frankie, giving her a kindly smile.
*
Eventually a woman from the Welfare turned up and began trying to find Frankie a place to stay. Apparently Mrs Dickenson couldn’t take her in. ‘I’ve got three strapping lads and my old mum in the place already,’ she said stoutly. Miss Paine, Frankie’s next-door neighbour on the other side, didn’t want her either. ‘I’m an unmarried woman,’ she’d protested. ‘I can’t have a child living in my house. What would the neighbours think?’ The fact that the neighbours already knew who Frankie was and what had happened seemed to be lost on her. And all the while, Frankie sat quietly in Mrs Dickenson’s little sitting room, swallowing the huge lump in her throat and trying not to burst into tears.
In the end, they sent a message to Frankie’s Aunt Bet, her mother’s sister, who lived only a couple of miles away, and a little later her case was packed. The woman from the Welfare walked her up to North Farm and her uncle opened the door and invited them in. When Aunt Bet came in, the two women exchanged a few words at the door and Aunt Bet ushered Frankie upstairs.
The room itself had been hastily prepared and although she’d been to Aunt Bet’s farm loads of times, this was the first time she’d ever been upstairs.
‘Come on, lovey,’ her aunt said. ‘I’ve made up the bed for you and you can put your dolly on the chair right beside you.’
She was a plain woman with a round face and mousey-coloured hair, cut short and permed. She was a little on the plump side (her wrap-over apron was straining over her middle) and she had strong-looking arms.
Gently taking Frankie’s coat from her shoulders, she lifted the child’s small suitcase onto the bed. Frankie could see by her face that Aunt Bet had been crying. Her eyes were red-rimmed. When the Welfare woman knocked at the farm door, even Uncle Lawrence, or, Lorry, as everyone called him, had red eyes. Frankie still hadn’t shed a tear but her chest felt as if she had a brick inside it and her head pounded. You mustn’t cry, the man had said. Your mum wouldn’t like it.
Frankie put her princess doll on the chair just as Aunt Bet suggested, but she didn’t look the same as before and she couldn’t sit up properly. Aunt Bet lifted her skirts and let out a strangled cry. ‘Oh dear, dear, how on earth did that happen?’ The doll had a large gash across her middle. A large amount of stuffing had been removed and not all of it had been put back. Fortunately the clothes were intact. As she tried to re-arrange her, Frankie let a little gulp of anguish slip from between her lips. Her hands were trembling. ‘Somebody cut my dolly,’ she said, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.
‘There, there, lovey,’ said Aunt Bet, coming over to give her a hug. ‘While you’re in bed I’ll have a go at mending her. She’ll be as right as ninepence in the morning.’
‘My mummy made her for my birthday,’ Frankie said.
Aunt Bet squeezed her shoulder. ‘I know she did, lovey. She showed her to me last week.’
They shared a wobbly smile. ‘She was a very clever lady, your mum,’ said Aunt Bet, dabbing her eyes again.
They unpacked Frankie’s case and put her things in the drawers. Until now, the bedroom had belonged to Frankie’s cousin, Alan. He was motorbike mad so the walls were covered in pictures of motorbikes and their riders. A pair of grubby boots hung by their laces from the mirror on the dressing table. As Aunt Bet took them down she said, ‘We’ll soon get rid of all this stuff and then you can make the room your own.’
‘Am I going to stay here forever?’
Aunt Bet turned her back, quite forgetting that Frankie could see her anguished reflection in the mirror. ‘Yes, dear.’
Her face was a picture of misery. It was obvious that she was struggling not to cry again. Frankie’s heart flipped. Judging by her aunt’s expression, Aunt Bet didn’t really want her here. ‘I’m sorry,’ Frankie blurted out. ‘They told me I had to come.’
Her aunt turned around suddenly. ‘Oh, lovey,’ she blurted out as she pulled Frankie into her arms. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. Of course I want you here. We all want you. Uncle Lorry, Alan and Ronald, we’re so glad you’ve come. It’s just that I feel so sad about your mum, that’s all.’
Later, as Frankie lay between the crisp white sheets, she stared at the empty chair beside the bed and wondered what her life would be like now. Aunt Bet said she didn’t have to go to school the next day but, in truth, Frankie would have liked to go. She’d miss her friend Jenny. She hoped Doreen might talk to her again. She turned over in bed but she couldn’t sleep. If only mummy was here to kiss her goodnight.
Downstairs everyone had gathered around the kitchen table. They had eaten their supper, although Frankie had only picked at hers, and now they were relaxing over a cup of tea. Lorry had laced Bet’s tea with a little brandy. He was a man of few words but he was thoughtful and kind. There was a box of papers belonging to his sister-in-law in the middle of the table. Ever since they’d had the news, they’d been living an absolute nightmare. When the police turned up on the doorstep, they’d said Moira was dead and Frankie couldn’t be left on her own. They’d asked the neighbours to take her in but nobody could. Thank God somebody remembered Bet and Lorry. Of course there was no hesitation. It was only right that Frankie should come and live with them and Bet had settled the girl in Alan’s room. At sixteen, he wasn’t too happy about bunking in with his younger brother, Ronald, but it couldn’t be helped and he’d accepted the situation with good grace. As for Ronald, he was the sort to get on with whatever happened in life. As soon as he got home from school he’d moved his things to one side of the small bedroom to make room for his older brother and now it looked as if it had always been that way.
The policeman had explained that someone had obviously been in the property looking for something, and there was every possibility that whoever it was might come back. Lorry was advised that as next of kin, he and Bet should get over there and retrieve anything of value. Of course, Bet couldn’t go – she had to stay with Frankie – so he and Alan had gone over to grab a few things, planning to collect the rest of Moira’s stuff later on. They found that some of the drawers had been disturbed and the cupboards had been left open. The only real damage was to Frankie’s new doll. Whoever had been in the property had ripped it open with a knife. It was the only thing the little girl had asked for when she was told she had to come to North Farm.
Having cleared the supper table, Bet reached for her sewing box.
‘Do you know how Auntie Moira died, Mum?’ asked Ronald.
‘The Welfare lady said it was a heart attack,’ said his mother.
‘I don’t understand it,’ said Lorry. He was a small man, stockily built. He still wore his moustache in the style of Lord Kitchener; something which he’d grown as a young man, although it was now flecked with grey and tobacco stained. ‘She seemed well enough, didn’t she?’
‘Obviously not,’ Bet said tartly.
‘If someone was with her when it happened,’ said Alan, ‘why didn’t they get help?’
‘Nobody said she was still alive when whoever it was was in there,’ said his father, ‘did they?’
His mother looked alarmed. ‘I hope not. Moira was the salt of the earth.’
Alan shook his head. ‘What could they have been looking for?’ He was a tall lad, much taller than his father. Legs right up to his armpits, as his mother would say, and good-looking to boot. A keen motorbike rider, he had been working with his father since he’d left school at fourteen.
His mother blew her nose and stuffed her already damp handkerchief back up her sleeve. ‘No idea. It’s not as if Moira had any money. She may have worked all the hours God gave but she lived hand to mouth.’ She pushed the stuffing back inside the doll angrily and began adding some torn up pieces of rag before sewing the two halves together.
‘People were always saying daft things about your sister,’ Lorry observed. ‘All that stuff about the Russians.’
‘That was just a stupid yarn she made up to amuse Frankie,’ said Bet. ‘You know Moira. She was great one for story-telling.’
‘People said she had a secret stash of jewellery,’ said Alan.
‘A Fabergé egg, I heard,’ said Ronald. He leaned over and pulled up his school socks with an exaggerated sigh. He was a disappointed boy. He had asked his mother – no, begged her – to be allowed to wear long trousers now that he was thirteen, but still she said no.
Bet frowned disapprovingly. ‘Utterly ridiculous!’ she retorted. ‘Do you really think Auntie Moira would be living in two rooms in Broadwater if she had something as expensive as a Fabergé egg?’
‘Load of tommyrot, if you ask me,’ his father interjected.
Ronald put his hands up in mock surrender. ‘All right, all right, I’m only saying.’
His mother was immediately repentant. ‘Sorry, son. I’m on edge, that’s all.’
‘So is Frankie going to live here for good?’ asked Ronald, rubbing his ear.
‘Of course she is,’ said Bet. ‘Where else could she go? We’re the only family she’s got.’ She glanced up at her son. ‘You got ear ache again?’
