Lilian pointed out it would cost a fortune to keep a taxi ticking while we went from house to house. She said that as it was a hot day, we could leave our coats and umbrellas in the Club cloak-room. ‘And we can put our handbags in our suitcases – that’ll mean we’ve only one thing each to carry. We’ll just keep out enough money for bus fares. Mouse can put it in one of her Miss Muffets.’ She referred to the smocked pockets on the full skirt of my chintz dress. This dress was considered very funny – possibly with justification, as it was patterned with elves sitting on toadstools.
The scheme worked well on the short way to the bus stop; but once we were trailing up the long drab street even the suitcases alone became burdensome. And Lilian’s dozens of ‘Apartments’ cards dwindled to four. The first three landladies would not take us for one night. The fourth would have, but had just let her last room; she apologised for not having taken her card down. As she was pleasant, we asked her advice and she told us of a cheap hotel only ten minutes walk away. She suggested we should leave our cases with her. If we got in, the hotel could send for them. And if we didn’t, we were to come back and she’d try to think of somewhere else to send us.
So we thanked her and dumped our cases in her hall. It was bliss being without them. I swung my arms and said how free I felt. A few minutes later it dawned on me that I felt too free; our handbags were shut up in our suitcases. We thought of going back at once as there was quite a bit of money in our bags. But none of us distrusted the kind woman and we were already in the street where the hotel was said to be, so we just hurried on.
Again we were disappointed: the hotel was full. We went back towards our cases as fast as we could walk – indeed, I had to run to keep up with the girls. The sky had clouded over but it was very sultry, and we were all extremely hot by the time we got to the long drab street. And we then realised that we did not know which of the drab houses we had left our cases in. Why, oh why, had none of us noticed its number?
We went to what seemed the right part of the street. There was no ‘Apartments’ card to be seen but by now, no doubt, the landlady would have taken it down. We asked at three houses and had no luck. Then Lilian said we must do the job systematically and try every house. This led to our trying the same three houses again and we got rude receptions.
After we’d tried a lot more houses I said: ‘We’re in the wrong street. The houses in the street we want had balconies.’
Molly and Lilian then remembered the balconies.
Lilian said, ‘We must go to the main road and try to get our bearings. Oh, God, now it’s starting to rain.’
We felt sure the street we wanted must run parallel to the one we were in; but when we reached the main road, we didn’t know whether to go right or left. And it was now raining hard.
‘We’ll have to get a taxi,’ said Molly.
‘But we’ve no money with us,’ said Lilian. ‘And anyway, we wouldn’t know where to drive to.’
‘Let’s find a café and have tea,’ said Molly.
‘Can’t you take it in that we’ve no money?’ said Lilian. ‘And there are no cafés near here that are open on Sundays – if there was one, we might at least ask for shelter. I can’t think, with this rain beating down on me.’
I pointed out that we were close to The Heathen and we might get Lilian’s friend to take us in until the storm was over. ‘Then we can comb these streets until we find our cases. And while we’re at The Heathen we can use the telephone. I’ll see if Miss Lester knows anywhere we can stay.’
‘Or you could ring up Rex Crossway,’ said Lilian, brightening. ‘He won’t want his Mouse to sleep on the Embankment.’
I said I thought he would be at his country house for Sunday. ‘Anyway, the great thing is to get out of the rain and to a telephone. Let’s run for it.’
We ran – through rain which now seemed a cloud-burst. As we dashed into the mews a taxi went by us, spattering us with mud. We saw it pull up in front of The Heathen.
‘Quick!’ cried Lilian. ‘They must be going out.’
Even as she spoke, the blue front door opened and a man and a woman hurried into the taxi. We yelled, and ran faster; but it was no use. The taxi drove out of the other end of the mews.
We stood in the doorway of one of the big houses that backed onto the mews. There wasn’t much shelter as the rain was driving in. Our dresses were wet through and my elves had run into my toadstools.
‘Never did I think I’d long to be back at The Heathen,’ said Molly, staring at the closed blue door.
We couldn’t even get in with the horse, as its owner always locked it up at weekends.
Molly then had a temporary return of grandeur. She said she was going to ring the bell at the doorway in which we were standing. ‘And when someone comes I shall explain and ask to use the telephone. We are not going to stand here and drown.’
She rang the bell, keeping her finger on it a long time. Nobody came. She rang again and again, with no result.
‘Oh, God, why is everything so hellish!’ She turned in despair and leaned back on the door. It opened so suddenly that she nearly lost her footing.
‘In we go,’ said Lilian. ‘And thank you, God, for a roof.’
It was a glass one, over a long flagged passage. Molly closed the door she had so nearly fallen through – the catch on the Yale lock had been left up – and said we would go boldly in and find a telephone. At the far end of the passage was a glass-panelled door through which we could see a kitchen.
‘And it won’t take much boldness,’ said Lilian, ‘as there’s obviously no one in.’
All the same, I did not much like going into the kitchen. Suppose the servants came back? But we were barely through the glass-panelled door before I guessed that the kitchen was not at present being used. It was too scrupulously tidy and there were a lot of dead flies on the window ledges. And when I looked in the larder, to make sure I had guessed right, it was empty. I said: ‘The servants must be away.’
‘Then everyone in the house will be,’ said Lilian. ‘It’s the kind of house where people don’t stay without servants.’
She made for the stairs we could see through an open door.
‘Oh, Lilian, don’t!’ I cried. ‘It’s bad enough, trespassing in the kitchen.’
A few seconds later she called down: ‘It’s just as I expected. There are masses of unopened circulars on the hall floor. And there’s a telephone.’
So we followed her up, though I still felt scared. I considered myself reasonably brave but I had been brought up to have a horror of doing anything illegal. I longed to get the telephoning over and hurry out of the house.
I tried Miss Lester’s number but got no answer. I tried the office in case she was working, but with no result. To Lilian’s annoyance, I didn’t know Mr Crossway’s number, it wasn’t in the telephone book and Enquiries refused to give it. The girls then tried to get their three men friends, but without success.
‘Oh, come on,’ I said at last. ‘We shall soon find our cases if we search methodically.’
‘But it’s still pouring,’ said Molly.
‘And I’m going to look round,’ said Lilian. ‘I’ve always longed to see over a great London house.’
I remembered her interest in Regent’s Park houses, and how she had sat at The Heathen’s windows gazing up at the big houses backing onto the mews. ‘Well, get it over quickly,” I told her.
‘You’re both coming with me. I dare you.’
As a child, I had often accepted dares to trespass in the grounds of large, empty houses – and quite enjoyed it. This present occasion was very different. Still, a dare was a dare.
‘I think it’s pretty safe, really,’ said Molly. ‘And we might find an electric fire and dry ourselves a bit.’
‘But that would be stealing electricity,’ I said, horrified.
‘It doesn’t show when you steal electricity,’ said Molly. ‘But if you like, you can soothe your conscience by sending an anonymo
us postal order. Personally, I can’t believe anyone would grudge a little warmth to three shivering girls.’
Lilian led the way into the dining-room. I was glad to notice that the blinds – cream, with deep lace edging – were down; at least we should not be seen from outside.
‘Fancy having blinds,’ said Lilian. ‘They’re terribly out of date. And what a dull room! It’s like a dentist’s waiting-room. Still, this heavy furniture must have been expensive.’
There was a study at the back of the dining-room, with glass-fronted bookcases filled with uniform sets of books, and a colossal desk.
‘Deadly!’ said Lilian. ‘Let’s hope the drawing-room’s better.’ She raced upstairs.
It was a double drawing-room and the only nice thing about it was the parquet floor. Much of the furniture was dust-sheeted; and what with the dust-sheets and the blinds being down, the whole effect was funereal.
‘Hideous curtains,’ said Lilian. ‘I should think the people who live here are elderly.’
‘That’s probably them,’ said Molly, looking at an oil painting over the fireplace.
It was of a middle-aged couple, very stiffly posed, the man standing behind the seated woman. She was plain, with elaborately arranged fair hair. He was heavily dark, with a streak of white in his hair.
‘She’s dreary,’ said Lilian. ‘He’s rather striking.’ She lifted a dust-sheet. ‘Goodness, what bad taste they have.’
‘And no electric fires,’ said Molly.
‘They won’t need them, with those huge, ugly radiators,’ said Lilian. ‘Well, let’s look at the bedrooms.’
The front room had a massive white and gold bedroom suite.
‘Ah, this will please Madam Lily de Luxe,’ said Molly.
‘Not really; it’s old-fashioned. Still, it is luxurious.’ Lilian sat down in front of the triple mirror.
I followed Molly through the large, tiled bathroom which led to the back bedroom – a man’s room, furnished in mahogany.
‘Need we go any further?’ I asked.
But Lilian was determined to. On the next floor were two more bedrooms. The front one obviously belonged to two boys; there were school photographs and adventure books. Even Lilian doubted if the attics were worth exploring; she thought they would be servants’ rooms. But we went up. And as it turned out, the servants’ rooms must have been in the basement for the whole of the top floor was given up to a day nursery, a night nursery and a bathroom. And at last we found an electric fire. It was in the front room, the day nursery, behind a tall fireguard.
‘Marvellous,’ said Molly. ‘We can drape our dresses over, the fireguard. Now if only the electricity is on!’
It was, and the girls instantly took off their wet dresses and stockings, and practically forced me to take mine off too.
‘You’ll get a chill if you don’t,’ said Molly. ‘And even if anyone should come in downstairs, no one will come up here. This nursery hasn’t been used for years.’
She was obviously right about the nursery. The pink wall paper was faded and there was general slight dilapidation, whereas the rest of the house was in glossy repair. Presumably the children were now schoolboys. I relaxed a little. Perhaps we were fairly safe; and I was glad to get out of my wet dress.
Still, I wasn’t happy. And I found it strange that the girls, who had told me they would never have had the courage to force their way into that audition at the Crossway, could now be so bravely unconcerned. I had needed no courage at the Crossway; I had just done what came naturally to me – and it hadn’t been illegal. Perhaps my terror of the law was provincial? But I think the real truth was that I had a vivid imagination and, from the moment we entered the house, I had been creating mental pictures of our discovery and arrest. The girls simply did not visualise getting caught.
The nursery blinds were pink, and all the furniture was pink. With the electric fire on, the room was cosy. We wandered round looking at old toys and pictures. The girls, having found their crêpe de chine cami-knickers as wet as their dresses, had taken them off and were wearing only the tight silk brassieres that coerced their busts into fashionable flatness, and pink girdles from which suspenders dangled and jangled. My underwear was still childish and there was a good deal of it. Had I been as scantily clad as Molly and Lilian were I could not have behaved with the complete unself-consciousness they had probably learned in theatre dressing-rooms. (Once, when I had undressed while they were in my cubicle, I had convulsed them with laughter because I put on my nightgown before removing my last layer of underwear. They called this ‘The Modest Mouse’s Tent Technique’.)
After a while, when Molly had settled in the Nanny’s wicker chair and Lilian and I had managed to wedge ourselves into two tiny painted armchairs, we went back to talking about how we were to find our suitcases and where we were to sleep. Lilian suggested we should stay where we were. Molly said we should get hungry.
‘Well, we might slip out for a meal,’ said Lilian – and then remembered we hadn’t a penny between us. We kept on forgetting about our handbags.
It was about then that I heard the telephone ringing below. All my terror rushed back.
‘Now calm down,’ said Molly. ‘The fact that someone’s ringing up doesn’t mean a thing.’
I said it might mean someone was expected back.
‘Anyway, it’s stopped now,’ said Lilian. ‘So it must have been a mistake. It would have gone on ringing if someone was expected to be here.’
All the same, both the girls had been startled. ‘Perhaps we should be moving on,’ said Molly. She got up and peered round the blind to see if the rain had stopped, and said it hadn’t. So we went on talking, getting nowhere. And after a few minutes I froze with horror because I thought I heard footsteps. The others froze too, when I told them, but not for long, because when we listened we couldn’t hear a thing. Still, I now felt I simply must get out of the house so I said that, rain or no rain, we must find our suitcases.
‘But when we do, we don’t know where to go,’ said Lilian.
Molly then suggested we should go to a police station.
‘What, and sleep in the cells?’ said Lilian. ‘I don’t think they’ll let you if you want to.’
I said, ‘We’ll sleep in them without wanting to if someone finds us here. I’m going, anyway.’
I sprang up – and the child’s little wooden armchair came with me. The girls exploded with laughter. Then Lilian tried to get out of her little armchair and found she, too, was stuck. She and I stood there with the chairs clinging to our behinds and we all laughed quite painfully.
And then the nursery door opened. I turned in horror and saw a figure in a hooded white raincoat pointing what I took to be a revolver.
‘Hands up or I fire!’ said a falsely gruff voice.
That was Zelle’s dramatic entrance into our lives.
7
We shot up our hands and Lilian cried, ‘Don’t, don’t! We’ve only come in out of the rain.’
Zelle (I can think of her only by that name) said, ‘It’s all right – really!’ and held out the ‘revolver’ to show us. It was a jewelled case to take powder and lipstick, made in the shape of a miniature pistol. As we leaned forward to look at it Lilian and I shed our armchairs. Zelle began to laugh. But she told us later that it wasn’t the armchairs she found so funny; it was Molly’s lorgnette dangling against her bare midriff.
We laughed, too; and through the laughter tried to explain. But we barely needed to, because Zelle had been sitting on the stairs listening to our conversation, which she had found fascinating. She had finally come in because she longed to know what we were laughing at. From the outset she made it plain that she was enchanted to know us.
She told us she had come to the house to meet its owner, her cousin, Bill, who was also her guardian; she said he was some kind of removed cousin, much older than she was. ‘He’d like me to live here but his wife and I can’t get on. They’re away in the country but Bill comes up fo
r a few days every week and stays at his club. I meet him here on Sundays and we go out to dinner. But he’s rung to say he won’t be coming up this week.’
She had reached the house just in time to answer the telephone; after which, feeling at a loose end, she had come up to the boys’ bedroom to find something to read. ‘Some of their books are quite exciting. And then I heard voices.’
I asked if she hadn’t been frightened.
‘Well, for a minute or two. But I soon thought you all sounded fun.’
By now she had taken her raincoat off and we were sitting around on the floor, each of us on one of the nursery rugs which lay like pink islands on the sea of blue linoleum. She had seemed tall in the long white coat but was really only a few inches taller than I was, and very slight. She was fair and pretty but not with the pink and white prettiness one associates with fair hair and skin. Her hair was a very dim gold and her skin nearer beige than pink and white. She wore scarcely any make-up. I doubt if ‘under-stated’ was then used to describe appearance but it would certainly have described both her prettiness and her always expensive clothes. She was now wearing a printed silk dress, pale fawn dappled with brown.
After she had told us a very little more about herself – we gathered she didn’t do anything, just lived in a service flat and found life boring – she started to question us and at last got the complete hang of our difficulties. She then said we mustn’t worry any more. She would ring up for a taxi and we would drive round until we found our cases, and then she would take us to dinner at a hotel where we could stay the night. We pointed out that we could not afford an expensive hotel. She waved this aside and said we must be her guests – ‘I’ve masses of money with me – I went to the bank yesterday. And I’ll stay at the hotel, too. It’ll be fun. Put your clothes on while I go down and telephone the taxi rank.’
We dressed, switched the fire off, and trooped down to the hall; then Zelle took us down to the back door to wait for the taxi. She said she always came in and out the back way so that the front door could be left bolted. She had put the catch of the Yale lock up the previous Sunday, when going out into the mews to feed a cat.