The Safest Place in London

by Maggie Joel

  Another brief winter’s day was drawing to its conclusion as the train drew into Wetherby’s Linton Road Station, but there was enough time. There was no reason to delay the thing until tomorrow. He left the station, paused, lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, realising that he was merely putting it off. He tossed the end of the cigarette into the gutter and set off on foot, armed with the station clerk’s directions, and after a mile or so located the police station. It was almost dark as he walked up the steps and presented himself to the desk sergeant.

  ‘I wish to report a crime,’ he said, the words sounding odd and unnatural.

  ‘Oh aye?’ said the sergeant, an ageing and complacent man with a cynical tone who made a show of placing his mug of tea down on his desk and sliding over a form and a pen with a bored sigh. ‘What kind of crime is it, then, sir?’

  ‘A child has been unlawfully taken.’

  The police station had an interview room and this was where the sergeant took him and then he left, closing the door behind him. Whether the man was gone in search of a senior officer or merely to return to his half-finished mug of tea he did not say.

  Gerald pulled out a chair and sat down. Now he wished he had retained the sandwiches and the paper. Anything to take his mind off the next few minutes, the next few hours. The next few days. He closed his eyes. He had said the part of his speech that was rehearsed. From now on everything he said would be impromptu, unprepared.

  He wondered if he ought to have warned Diana. She would be terrified—a police car driving up to the cottage, a constable rapping loudly on the door. He pictured her shocked, frightened face, her fumbled gathering together of one or two belongings, scooping up the child—or would the constable take command of the child? Diana would be terrified. But he had not even considered going to her to warn her of his intention.

  Was this another way to punish her then? No, it was worse than that. If he had gone to her and told her his plan she would have talked him out of it. He lifted his face to the ceiling but saw nothing. She would have condemned him—condemned them both—to a lifetime of deception and lies. A life lived in perpetual fear of discovery, of public exposure, of shame and criminal charges.

  And what of the damage to the little girl?

  No, this way was better. Even Diana would see that eventually. He wondered if he would be there to help her see it.

  The walls of the interview room were brick covered by a cheap enamel paint, half cream, half green. There was no window, no other furniture save this table and the two chairs. The table was bolted to the floor. Not just an interview room, then. He wondered where they would put Diana. They wouldn’t charge her; he was certain of that. Any doctor could see how the death of her own child had affected her. Grief, the trauma of the air raid, the sudden loss of a child, any part of it could turn a normal person temporarily mad, could make them do things they would not normally do. They would see that.

  He began to count the rows of bricks.

  The door opened abruptly on a youngish man in a dark blue double-breasted prewar suit that looked like it had never been fashionable even when it was new. The man who wore the suit looked like he didn’t really care. He was powerfully built, with prematurely grey hair cut military-short and fierce blue eyes that seemed to do a recce of the room and the man seated at the table before he would deign to come in. Why isn’t the fellow in uniform? was the first thing Gerald thought, but as the man, who was grasping the door handle in a vice-like grip in one hand and the frame of the door in the other now launched himself in an unwieldy and lopsided gait across the floor and towards the table, his reason for being in civvies was clear enough. Wounded in action or a condition that predated the war? Impossible to tell. It didn’t really matter, in the circumstances.

  ‘Brighouse,’ stated the man, sitting down heavily and slapping a file on the table, and it sounded like this must be the name of some top-secret mission or an enemy combatant he was intent on tracking down. It was a full second before Gerald realised the fellow was introducing himself.

  ‘Meadows. Captain, Gerald. Royal Tank Regiment.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ Brighouse eyed him thoughtfully, as though he suspected some trickery, or perhaps to make it clear that he wasn’t impressed. He waited, seeming in no hurry to proceed. At last he spoke: ‘A child unlawfully tekken, y’say, Captain Meadows? Your child, is it?’

  ‘No. That is . . .’ Gerald paused. ‘My child is dead. She died during a raid in London on the twenty-first or the twenty-second of last month. My wife was with her but my wife survived. A woman was also killed in the raid. A Mrs Nancy Levin of Odessa Street, Bethnal Green, but her child, whom I believe was called Emily, survived.’ He took a deep breath. ‘After the raid was over, with our child dead and the surviving child’s mother also dead, my wife . . .’ He searched for the right word, couldn’t find it, and decided to be blunt. ‘My wife switched our dead child for Mrs Levin’s living child.’ He stopped. ‘Is it alright if I smoke?’

  Brighouse shrugged. ‘Be my guest.’ He shifted then, from one buttock to the other, a pained expression on his face as though his injury was bothering him. Or Gerald’s story was bothering him. Or perhaps he merely had wind. ‘Now then, let me get this straight. Your wife’s tekken some other woman’s child home with her?’

  ‘Yes. That’s about the sum of it. Or no, not home. That wouldn’t work you see, because the neighbours would see her and realise it’s not the same child. She brought the child up here where no one knows us. She’s renting a cottage from a farmer named Inghamthorpe at Kirk Deighton.’

  ‘What you’re saying is she’s trying to pass this other woman’s child off as her own?’

  ‘Yes. That is precisely what I am saying.’ Gerald felt something release inside him. It was out now and it could not be taken back. The secret was no longer his alone. Some part of him was relieved.

  The policeman regarded him and a minute, two minutes passed.

  ‘And why, Captain Meadows, would she do such a thing?’

  For a moment, Gerald didn’t know how to reply. He shook his head, spread both hands. ‘Because she lost her child. She’s not . . . thinking straight.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me a mother simply hands over her own child and teks another in its place, like—like, I don’t know, choosing a new pair o’ shoes when t’old ones have worn out?’

  ‘Yes! Or rather, no, not like shoes, of course. But essentially, yes, that is what she has done.’

  Brighouse sat back in his chair, put his head on one side and considered his response. ‘Alright then, why not tek it back? This child your wife took, why have y’not just tekken it back?’

  ‘Because until yesterday I didn’t know who the child was; indeed, I cannot say for certain that I am right now. I simply didn’t know where to take the child back to.’

  ‘But now you do know?’

  ‘I think so. But I haven’t been able to trace any relatives. I hit a dead end.’ Gerald leaned forward too, now. He still hadn’t made up his mind about this man, and he could see Brighouse still hadn’t made his mind up about him. ‘Look, Inspector, Sergeant, Chief Inspector—I don’t know what you are . . .’

  ‘Inspector’ll do.’

  ‘Look, Inspector, my wife needs help. All I want is for the child to be safely returned to its family and for my wife and me to—to grieve for our little girl.’

  ‘Do you now?’ Brighouse’s expression gave absolutely nothing away. Then he got up, picked up the file into which he had not written a thing and from which he had taken nothing, and made his awkward way over to the door and went out without saying another word.

  Gerald sank back into his chair and found he had broken out in a sweat. Had the man noticed? It was chilly enough in here to freeze water. Brighouse would have noticed a man sweating.

  Christ! And now it begins. How long would it take them to drive out to the cottage? He had walked there in twenty-five minutes in the blackout not knowing the way. In a police car it would
take all of ten minutes. To conduct their business, another five or ten. And then the journey back. All up, say half an hour. Call it forty minutes, allowing for delays.

  He stood up and went to the door, wondered whether to open it but thought better of it and instead paced up and down the room. The scene where two policemen—it would be two, they always did things in pairs—came to the door of the cottage kept playing itself out in his head. Sometimes he saw Diana submitting meekly to their instructions, understanding that the game was up; sometimes he saw her run from them in terror, clutching the child. And other times he saw her invite them in and offer them a cup of tea as though she were still keeping house in pleasant suburban Buckinghamshire, so wrapped up in her illusion as to be utterly oblivious to the implications of their visit.

  He sat down and began again from the bottom, counting the rows of bricks in the wall.

  The half-hour that they would require to go to the cottage and bring her back came and went, so too did the forty minutes. After an hour and with the tension too much to bear he got up and went to the door and opened it and was presented with a deserted and anonymous corridor that told him nothing. He went back inside and resumed his seat. Was it conceivable Diana was no longer at the cottage? That she had somehow got wind of his intention and fled? But where? Where could she go? He saw his wife fleeing across snow-flecked hills in the dead of night, dragging the wretched child with her, the entire Yorkshire constabulary after her with whistles and dogs and torches.

  The door flew open and Brighouse thrust himself inside, crashing down onto the chair, slapping the same file onto the desk before him and leaning forward as far as it was possible to lean, an intent expression on his large, fleshy face.

  ‘Y’see, Captain Meadows, there’s summat I’m struggling with,’ he began, as though their previous conversation had never ended. ‘If this child has indeed been tekken then why is no one looking for it? Why is there not a bloody great hue and cry at this child’s disappearance?’

  ‘I have already explained that, Inspector! There is no one to raise a “hue and cry”, as you call it. No family member claimed the bodies. I could locate no living relative.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said the inspector, nodding, pleased with himself, as though Gerald had just walked into a trap he had carefully set. ‘The identification of the bodies. A couple of telephone calls to our colleagues in the Met . . .’ He paused, clearly pleased with himself again. ‘Oh yes, Captain, we’ve not been sitting on our hands, we’re not the simple country folk you might tek us for op here. A couple of telephone calls is all it took to ascertain that the bodies you mention were identified by the local warden.’

  Gerald gaped at the man, speechless. ‘Yes—I told you that!’

  ‘And that furthermore—furthermore—no foul play was suspected. Now, what do you have to say to that, Captain?’

  ‘I’d say you’re a fool.’

  ‘There’s no call for that,’ replied Brighouse mildly, and no doubt he had been called worse things in his time. He studied Gerald for a moment, seemed to reach a conclusion. ‘You were in the desert, I tek it? No, don’t answer—careless lives and all that. But still, you had it rough, you tank fellows. Don’t think I don’t know that because I do know it. Three years of it and now you’re back. Teks a bit o’ getting used to, don’t it? Picking up yer old life? Being a husband and father after so long away?’

  ‘What are you driving at, Inspector?’

  ‘What I’m driving at is that we have Mrs Meadows outside with the little ’un and she tells a different story. The way she tells it, you come back a week or so ago and it were difficult for the two of you, and with the little child who’d only been a wee bairn when you’d left. The baby had grown up, you and yer wife hadn’t seen each other in all that time. Bound to be tricky. We see it up here all the time. No shame in it. And she says the three of you come up here for a change, to get away, like. Some fresh air. And then, she says, you got into yer head that the child was not the right child, that she had swapped it for some other child. She said it became a sort of mania with you and, try as she might, she couldn’t dissuade you of it.’ He paused, seeing the expression on Gerald’s face. ‘Is that it, Captain? Is that what’s really happened here?’

  ‘Look at this! Here! Right here!’ And Gerald thrust his hand into his inside coat pocket and pulled out the three photographs of his child. He slammed them down on the table and pointed a shaking finger, not trusting himself to speak.

  The inspector did not so much as glance at the three photographs and he did not pick them up. Instead, he carefully placed his hands on the table before him, interlocking his fingers, and his thumbs began to beat an impatient tattoo.

  ‘Aye, Mrs Meadows said you’d got hold of some photographs of a little girl and that you’d got it into yer head that they were photographs of your own little girl.’

  Gerald sat back in his chair. That Diana could be so cool-headed in her deceit stunned him.

  ‘This is wrong, Inspector. What my wife has told you is a lie.’

  The inspector made no reply. It was clear he believed Diana completely.

  ‘Why? Why do you believe her story rather than mine?’

  Brighouse sighed. ‘Ask yourself, Captain: how likely is it that a woman would swap her own child for another woman’s child? Women—mothers—they form an attachment to their child, you see. A bond. They’re not like us. What you’re describing, well, it don’t sound right. It in’t natural. And I’ve met your lady wife and I can tell you now she in’t capable of such a thing. And that’s about the long and the short of it.’

  Gerald laughed. Then he stopped, mid-laugh.

  ‘And the child? Have you seen the child? Have you met it? Do you truly believe that child is ours? That she isn’t a poor, lost, very frightened little girl who has been forcibly taken from her mother by a complete stranger?’

  But even this did not shake the man’s complacency, his utter belief in this version of the truth. ‘I have met the child, yes,’ he said. ‘And what you’re describing, well, it’s not what I saw. Not a bit of it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Brighouse stood up.

  Uncertain if he was calling the man’s bluff, or if he or the inspector or both of them were part of some elaborate hoax, Gerald stood up and together they left the interview room, went along the corridor to the front reception desk, where the desk sergeant watched him expressionlessly, then down another corridor, at the end of which a door stood half open. Gerald could hear the murmur of voices, a woman’s voice. He felt the muscles of his stomach tighten. This is intolerable, he thought.

  Brighouse went first, pushing the door open and standing aside. He did not look at the occupants of the room, he looked at Gerald. Gerald stood in the doorway.

  It was an office, Brighouse’s own office according to the name plate on the door, with a desk and a low table with chairs ranged around it. Diana was seated on one of the low chairs in her winter coat, her handbag at her feet, her hat and gloves on her lap as though she was having tea with the vicar. She was smiling and offering encouragement to the child, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor absorbed with crayons and paper. The little girl’s hair was brushed and swept back off her head by a pale blue hairband that suited her fair hair. She was bundled up in a winter coat that was a miniature of her mother’s but with the addition of a hood. Knitted red mittens hung from a cord at each cuff and her feet were encased in sturdy brown lace-up shoes and little white socks.

  ‘How lovely!’ Diana said. ‘What a lovely picture, Abigail.’

  It was quite clear to Gerald that his wife knew they were standing there, the inspector and himself, that this little charade was entirely for their benefit, and it made a pulse begin to throb in his head, it made the little scene shimmer nauseatingly before his eyes.

  But the child! How had she done that?

  Diana feigned noticing them, looking up, and surprise and concern showe
d in her face. ‘Gerald,’ she said gently, and, yes, she reached out a tremulous hand to touch his arm.

  All men had a snapping point. You didn’t fight in a war for three years and not know that, not see it, over and over again. A man, calm and rational and laughing one minute, a crazed madman the next, screaming to be let out of a moving tank, running across a minefield, picking up a machine gun and firing indiscriminately, walking into an enemy emplacement and shooting at men who had surrendered. Gerald had seen all of those things. He had wondered what went on in a man’s head the split second before and during the long seconds afterwards.

  Now he knew: nothing.

  One minute he was standing in the inspector’s office observing his wife, seeing her fingers reach out to touch his arm, seeing the child playing and absorbed like any other child with its mother. The next moment he found himself pushing open the swing door of the police station—though he had no recollection of leaving the inspector’s office—running down the steps.

  And the child was in his arms.

  It was hard to run with a three-year-old in your arms but his pace did not slow. He was outside now and he saw that it had snowed during the time that he had been sequestered inside the police station, was still snowing. He was running on snow, his footsteps crunching, the snowflakes swirling in flurries in his face, settling on his nose. He felt the wonder of it, even in his madness, after three years in the desert.

  The darkness had come, too, and with it the blackout. He was making for the railway station, he was going to take the child back to her home, but already he was uncertain of his way. He slipped, pulled himself up and stumbled on, uncertain if he was on the lane at all or if he had lost his way completely. A bicycle reared out of the darkness, silent and with no lights, seeing him and swerving violently at the last moment so that Gerald felt it brush against his shoulder and a man cried out angrily, his cry lost in the flurry of snow.

  He was going to take the child back to her home. He closed his mind to all else. It was easy to lose your way in war, to lose a sense of right and wrong, of morality. He had lost his way, he realised, as all the men had in the desert, or they would have gone mad, but now his belief in what was right was unquestioned and losing one’s sanity seemed a small price to pay.