| |
Toby stood still and allowed the rain to pour down on him. Where should he go now? Who should he talk to? Obviously, Vera’s mother was going to be no help. He couldn’t face the idea of going up to the Hall and asking Lady Sylvia any more questions. She had told him pretty clearly not to come back until he had something to say.
Ignoring the path, he chose the shortest route across the green, thinking only of the warmth and comfort of his car. Perhaps he could just wait there and kill time until his date with Carol, if it was really a date. There was no time to go back to the office, and what could he do at his desk that he couldn’t do here? Mr. Harrigan had found the child and he was bringing her to England, so what was really left to do?
Well, said a nagging voice at the back of his mind, Mr. Harrigan found a child, but who’s to say it’s Lady Sylvia’s child? You only have her word for it.
And a file folder full of papers to prove it.
Really? Do they prove anything? Papers can be forged. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that everything’s been destroyed; the church where she was married, the clinic where the baby was born, the records office? Isn’t that strange?
No, it’s not. We had six years of war.
But where are Robert Alderton’s notes, and why is Alderton dead?
“Be careful, mister.”
Toby spun around to see who was calling out to him. A woman was hurrying toward him, dragging a small boy in a school cap and raincoat.
“That’s the bomb crater,” she called.
Toby looked down at his feet. He was standing at the edge of what looked like a small pond. Another couple of steps and he would have fallen in.
“You’ll get soaked,” the woman called. “It’s deep. They put up barriers but people take them away. They need the wood, you know.”
She was alongside him now. She was a young woman, probably younger than he was. Her slight figure was swamped by a man’s gabardine raincoat, and her hair was covered by a floral headscarf tied under her chin. Her face was dominated by a small mouth with protruding teeth, a feature she shared with the small rabbit-featured boy.
She looked Toby up and down. “So, you’re not from here.”
“No, I’m from Brighton. I came on legal business.” He extended his hand. “Toby Whitby.”
“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” The woman released her son’s hand and offered him a limp, damp handshake. “Beth Rollins, and this is my son, Ted.”
Mrs. Rollins was silent for a moment, staring down into the muddy depths of the bomb crater and then back at Toby.
“This happened on the day after I got the telegram; I remember sitting down there in the shelter. I didn’t care, not if they dropped a bomb right on top of us, not after I got the news that Frank, that’s my husband ... that was my husband ... killed in North Africa. What a world it was where a young man like my Frank could get himself shot in North Africa. He’d never left Rose Hill before, not in his whole life, and now he’s not even buried here. I don’t know where he’s buried.”
She took hold of her son’s hand again. “He never even saw our Teddy. Never set eyes on him.”
“I’m sorry,” Toby repeated helplessly.
Now she’s going to ask me about my war, he thought. He would offer his stammering explanation about his eyesight and his work in Whitehall, and she would give him that look, the one that said, “You don’t deserve to be here.”
“It must have been a big one,” he said, pointing to the bomb crater and hoping to head off any more questions about the war.
Mrs. Rollins shrugged her shoulders.
“Big enough. London was getting a real beating that night, not as bad as the Blitz, but bad.”
“Yes,” said Toby, involuntarily agreeing with her. “I was in London. Fire watch.”
“Oh.” She looked at him sideways. “Was you on leave?”
“War work.”
He’d given himself away.
Mrs. Rollins sniffed disapprovingly. “Something essential, I’m sure.”
“Mum.” The little boy was pulling on his mother’s arm. “I’m all wet.”
Mrs. Rollins looked down at her offspring. Water streamed from his school cap and down across his hunched shoulders. “I have to go,” she said. “It’s time for his tea.”
“Just a moment, Mrs. Rollins, I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “What about?”
“Did you know a girl named Vera Chapman?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
The little boy pulled on his mother’s arm again, whining softly under his breath. “Mum, I’m hungry.”
“Vera Chapman?” Toby asked again.
“One of the lucky ones,” said Mrs. Rollins. “She got herself pregnant, and off to America she went. She said he came from California, but they all said that, didn’t they? California or New York. I don’t think he did, but what does it matter? It has to be better than here.”
Teddy’s voice rose to a determined screech. “Mum, I’m hungry.” The screech was accompanied by a determined tugging of his mother’s arm. She turned away from Toby and allowed her son to bring their conversation to an abrupt end as he dragged her away.
“Take that path over there,” she called over her shoulder, “and you won’t get wet.”
Toby watched her until she had disappeared through the curtain of rain. So now he had confirmation from three different sources; Vera’s mother, Carol Elliot, and Mrs. Rollins. They all agreed that Vera had been pregnant, given birth, and gone to America. So why, he wondered, was Lady Sylvia laying claim to Vera’s child? Why was the wealthy Mr. Harrigan, even now, threatening to drag Vera’s child back across the Atlantic?
As he walked back to his car, all he could think of was Lady Sylvia’s question. “Are you more flexible than Mr. Champion?”