Mad Doll haunts Ulden through the war years. She comes up on the London train at weekends, and walks through the village, stopping passers-by, knocking at doors, always smiling, always wheedling.
‘Have you seen my boys, doll? Cyril and Ernest?’
She offers wild flowers to the women and kisses to the men, as if she thought she could bribe good news out of them.
‘Cyril’s jersey is green, dolly. I knitted it myself. Ernest’s is maroon and on the small side.’
When it grew dark she’d give up and go home, sitting in the train quite calm and collected, like anyone else.
Cyril and Ernest are buried in Ulden churchyard. They were drowned on their second day in the village, running back to home and London in the middle of the night, crossing the ice of the chalk pit in the dark. Their school had been evacuated to Ulden, without warning to the parents; and no information either, once they’d gone, in case German spies found out. Mad Doll, they say, has slept with the school-keeper to find out where her children have gone, and even then he couldn’t be precise. Essex, was all he’d say, and Essex is a large place.
Mad Doll arrives in Ulden the day after her children are buried. The vicar breaks the news of their deaths to her, but she seems unable to take it in. He leads her by the hand to the new grave, but she looks at it blankly and then says ‘I’ll give you a kiss if you tell me where they are. More than a kiss, if you insist.’
No wonder he suffers from blood-pressure.
She’s a pretty girl, still only in her mid-twenties, though soon she develops a crabbed and aged look. Her husband is on active service, somewhere secret, and he is never to come back. He is posted missing, presumed dead. The manner of his death is kept secret too. She’s become so used to secrets, poor soul, she’s simply ceased to trust information.