Now it was Miss Seeton’s turn to cough. For a moment she and the sergeant regarded each other in sympathetic silence. They broke simultaneously into smiles of relief; Sergeant Hammersley went so far as to chuckle.
Miss Seeton rose to her feet, trying not to wince as the movement revived the ache in her arm and shoulder. “If you can tell me where exactly I am,” she said, “and how I may find my way home—that is, to my lodgings—I will waste no more of your valuable time. Is there a suitable bus?”
“Bus?” Sergeant Hammersley looked worried. “Oh, but the inspector said as you were to have a car—except you’ll have to wait, with them all being at the factory, for one to come back, if you don’t mind. There’s a cup of tea while you’re waiting,” he offered as Miss Seeton shook her head.
“Thank you, but no,” she said firmly. “There is a war on, Mr. Hammersley, and the very idea of—of wasting petrol is as abhorrent to me as that of wasting people’s time. The bus will suit me very well, if you can show me the stop and tell me when I may expect the next to arrive.”
Miss Seeton regretted her firmness when the bus did not arrive until ninety minutes after the advertised hour. She had begun to suspect Sergeant Hammersley’s optimistic forecast when, after twenty-five minutes, she remained the only person waiting in the wooden shelter. After half an hour’s still-solitary wait she toyed briefly with the thought of walking home, but with every signpost in the country removed, the milestones defaced or buried, and everyone under government advice to give directions to nobody, it seemed safer to wait rather than risk losing herself and causing more trouble than she already had. If anyone stops to ask me the way, I have to tell them that I can’t say had been the couplet she herself had rehearsed with pupils of all ages. Before the previous day’s little misadventure she might have hoped her appearance would convince the most sceptical that she was no Nazi parachutist, but now she would take no chances. She would, instead, take the bus ...
She was nodding in a corner of the shelter when the bus pulled up, and as she stretched herself awake her shoulder twinged again. She almost dropped her handbag, clutched at her sketchbook, missed, dropped her gas mask, and dropped her bag as well. While she fumbled about on the ground to retrieve them she blushed, and apologised profusely to the driver when she finally climbed on board.
“You ought to have it in a sling,” said the young woman conductor as she took Miss Seeton’s money, punched her ticket, and heard her apologise again. “Might be a sprain, or anything—you don’t want to take any chances. There’s a good doctor in your village, I’ve heard. He’ll see you all right, ducks!”
With a pat on Miss Seeton’s other shoulder the bus conductress moved back to resume the conversation she and a plump woman with a wicker basket had been enjoying on the topic of hens and how to raise them.
Miss Seeton, bumped from side to side on the ill-sprung seat, took her mind off her aching shoulder by remembering dear Cousin Flora’s chickens in the garden of her cottage in Kent. Poor Cousin Flora: poor Kent. Poor England—whose south and eastern coasts had been evacuated for a distance of twenty miles inland, to make troop movements easier in case the worst should happen. Even the flocks of sheep on Romney Marsh had been sent far away, so that they would not provide food for the invaders ...
Miss Seeton shook herself and gazed out of the window as the bus rattled along. Over the tops of hedges she could see the fields of ripening grain ... fields across which the villagers had erected makeshift anti-invasion devices—huge blocks of concrete, rusting cars, farm carts, fallen trees. Tanks, she knew the theory went, would find it difficult to manoeuvre, aeroplanes to land ...
Miss Seeton shook herself again as the bus rattled into the village. She would have rung the bell, but the conductress had remembered: she grinned and waved at Miss Seeton’s smile of thanks, then returned to her fowl talk again.
Miss Seeton glanced up and down the winding street as the bus drove away, but there was nobody about. “Elevenses, of course,” she murmured with a sigh for the days of peace when there had been more than one type of biscuit on the plate and several varieties of cake. She shook her head, sighed again, pulled herself together, and headed briskly for home. A quick wash and brushup, perhaps a cup of tea, and she would be able to face the rest of the day undaunted.
She rapped the knocker using her left arm, but Tilly Beamish did not answer the front door. Miss Seeton wondered if she should go to the back, and then remembered the girls of the night shift. A lesser woman would have cursed her own stupidity: Miss Seeton, blushing, muttered a heartfelt “Drat!” and resolved that Tilly should be asked to pass on her apologies for having woken the sleepers, and her offer to—say—sew on a few buttons or sketch a quick likeness if ever their paths should cross. Once, that was to say, her arm and shoulder were easy once more ...
But for now, she could hardly camp on the step until Mrs. Beamish came home: for all she knew, her landlady had posted her lodger missing and was forming a search party. It was a pity that in all the confusion she had forgotten to ask Sergeant Hammersley whether anyone had thought to tell—
The door opened. A young woman with long, dark hair and a Rubenesque figure wrapped in a patterned robe materialised in front of Miss Seeton, stifling a yawn.
“I do beg your pardon,” Miss Seeton began, but the girl waved at her to come in; so she did.
“You must be Emily,” said La Rubens, taking a second look at Miss Seeton’s hat. The ribbon trim seemed a little sorry for itself. “Yes, I’ve all heard about you from Ma Beamish—aaaah ...”
As she yawned again Miss Seeton again tried to apologise, but La Rubens dismissed the attempt with another wave that this time involved her whole body. “I’m Maisie,” she introduced herself, smiling. “I’m an aero-detail fitter—and you’re some kind of artist, aren’t you?”
Miss Seeton agreed that she was, although as she did so she emphasised her current role as assistant welfare officer, even if secretly she doubted whether Mrs. Morris would allow her to continue in that role, given the embarrassment there was likely to be on both sides. The sketching (she explained aloud) was hardly a suitable full-time occupation, at a time of national emergency.
“Like me,” replied Maisie with a knowing giggle, while Miss Seeton felt a glow of modest pride at the success of her evasive conversational tactics. She wondered if Major Haynes would approve ...
“I used to be on the stage,” Maisie went on as with a blush Miss Seeton came to her senses and politely asked in what way her new friend found the likeness. “Not that you could call it acting, exactly.” Maisie eyed Miss Seeton up and down, then grinned. “More exotic dancing, if you know what I mean.” She winked and struck a sudden pose, her arms up-flung, her hips and torso curved, her majestic bosom displayed to full advantage as she teetered on high-heeled slippers. “Marguerite, Flower of the East, that was me, even if it’s East Grinstead we’re talking about, not the East Indies.”
“Oh,” said Miss Seeton, who suddenly remembered what Mrs. Beamish had said on her first evening. Country people were, of course, probably less accustomed to persons of a bohemian nature than one who lived and had attended art college in London, and who visited the theatre from time to time.
“I was glad to get out of it, I can tell you.” Maisie, formerly Marguerite, struck another pose, even more flamboyant and provocative than the last, and then relaxed. “Far too much like hard work. It wasn’t so bad when I was doing life classes around the colleges, because all I had to do was keep still, and none of them tried to get me into bed—well, not the students, anyway. A few of the tutors could be a problem, but ...”
She shrugged. “Well, the dancing paid better, but you can have enough of feathers and fans and wisps of chiffon, can’t you?” Miss Seeton supposed that you could. “So when they asked for girls to help the war effort, I thought why not? Here’s my chance to do something useful for once.”
Miss Seeton ventured to mention ENSA, but Maisie shrieked with laught
er. Then she clapped a hand to her mouth and pulled Miss Seeton through to the kitchen. “Betty—she’s still asleep,” she said, pointing upwards.
“Betty?” Miss Seeton blinked, then rallied. It was not so uncommon a Christian name. For a moment, though ...
“They say she’s still serious but comfortable,” Maisie said, guessing what had startled her. “As if anyone can be comfortable with a cracked skull and a broken arm, never mind her poor face! But at least she’s better off than that cleaner—what was his name? We had police all over the show last night, though if there’s as many today, I’ll be surprised—and what did you know about it for them to keep you talking for so long?”
The question startled Miss Seeton a second time, and once more she blinked before, rallying, murmuring some story of a mistake, and not wanting to disturb everyone by coming home late at night ...
“You should have heard Ma Beamish,” said Maisie with a chuckle for Miss Seeton’s cry of dismay. “We got the full performance when we came home this morning—how you’d been taken for a spy, and she couldn’t believe it, and if it was true it was disgraceful to impose on a poor widow woman in her own home—if I’d been a critic I’d have given her top marks, I really would—but don’t take on, duck.” All the amusement vanished as she saw Miss Seeton crumple down upon a kitchen chair with a look of horror on her face. “She was just letting off steam, that’s all. You aren’t a bit like any spy I’ve seen in the films, and if you really were, why would they let you out? You ought to be in the Tower of London, by rights.”
Miss Seeton’s look of horror turned to a rosy blush, but fortunately Maisie jumped to the wrong conclusion. “You’ll be all right,” she promised her flustered new acquaintance. “Tilly’s bark’s far worse than her bite, you’ll see.”
Miss Seeton winced; her blush faded. Maisie’s careless phrase, intended to reassure, had achieved the opposite end by reminding her of her first day at the factory, and Old George’s words about Mrs. Morris.
Mrs. Morris ...
“I must get on,” she said, and climbed shakily to her feet. She would be late for work, but to work she would go, walking every yard of the way, if she must. She would wait for no bus, ask nobody for a lift. She must be there as soon as humanly possible if she was not to betray the memory of her soldier father.
This was her war, and she had been given a job to do; and she would do it, no matter what people thought, or how they behaved towards her.
Major Haynes would expect no less of Emily Dorothea Seeton.
chapter
~ 23 ~
MAISIE, THOUGH YAWNING, offered to make Miss Seeton a cup of tea while the other slipped upstairs to powder her nose and tidy her hair. Miss Seeton thanked her, but refused on the grounds that as soon as she was comfortable again, she would be on her way, walking to the factory where she really ought to have been since eight o’clock that morning.
“I know, I know,” said Maisie with a grin. “There’s a war on, and you want to do your bit. Good for you—but if you’re sure, I’d better get back to bed ...”
Miss Seeton said she was sure, and Maisie followed her up the narrow stairs, her slippers slapping in rhythm as she climbed. Miss Seeton thought of castanets and found herself humming an air from Carmen as she hurried through her toilette.
“L’amour est tum tum de something ...”
Miss Seeton blushed. L’amour, indeed! At a time like this! But they said that all was fair in—
“I must hurry,” she told herself sternly; and she did.
It took less than ten minutes for Miss Seeton to refresh herself; within a quarter of an hour of her encounter with Maisie-formerly-Marguerite she was stepping out smartly along the village street, her hat at a businesslike angle, her handbag—sketchbook inside, gas mask attached—over her left arm. She estimated that a steady pace of four miles an hour should bring her to the factory gates well before the midday break that so few people wasted time in eating, and with the sun bright (but not yet high) in a cloudless sky, it was a beautiful day for a country walk. Had it not been for the war, she could have enjoyed the excursion unreservedly.
After twenty minutes she paused by a stile to watch one of the newly completed Spitfires undergoing a test flight almost overhead, soaring from the factory airfield, rolling, diving, looping, swooping, and climbing in the pilot’s allocated quadrant of the sky. It was, as ever, a breathtaking performance by a skilled expert, and Miss Seeton did indeed hold her breath as the usual burst of flame from the exhaust roared into the air and the plane returned to the ground. As another Spitfire rose to repeat the exercise, she sighed, shook her head, and walked on.
It was a busy morning for test flights. The sound of Merlin engines was all around, drowning out the song of summer birds and Miss Seeton’s renewed attempts at Carmen. “Qui n’a jamais, jamais tum tum something ...”
She awoke from her trance to hear the squawk of a motor horn behind her. Above the sound of the Spitfires and her own tuneless warbling she had not heard the car’s approach, and turned in some surprise to see who was hinting that she might be taking up too much of the road for safety.
“Dr. Huxter!” She recognised at once the plump-faced, smiling figure leaning from the window of a car, which, seen for the first time close up in daylight, she realised had rather more chipped, scratched, and damaged paint than perhaps a good driver should allow. One had (she reminded herself) to make allowances for the blackout, of course ...
“Hello, there!” Samuel Huxter inched the car a little nearer, and Miss Seeton, ever courteous, had to fight an instinctive urge to take several steps backwards. “I must say I’m delighted,” said the doctor, “to see that they didn’t cart you off to the Tower last night. But it was touch and go, I heard!”
“A simple misunderstanding,” Miss Seeton told him with a smile. “Entirely understandable, of course, but everything is now settled to the satisfaction of both the police and—and myself, and I am going back to work.”
“Hop in,” he invited, hopping out to open the passenger door, cursing as the car began a slow forward trundle, and hopping (with an effort) back in again to haul on the brake.
“I’m always doing that,” he told Miss Seeton cheerily as she tried to think of an excuse, and failed. “A pity they can’t invent a two-driver car, don’t you think? A copilot would be a blessing to a bloke like me, eh?”
As Miss Seeton climbed inside she consoled herself with the thought that a passenger seated next to the driver might in the short term be as good a blessing as any pilot—and, in any case, it wasn’t very far to the factory.
It would just feel like a long way ...
Dr. Huxter crunched up noisily through the gears and made bright conversation as he drove along, telling Miss Seeton that the news of broken-armed Betty and her concussion was more hopeful than the previous day’s reports, and the girl was expected to recover, apart from her face, though it had been a nasty accident and no mistake.
“Mind you,” he added, “there are those who say that it wasn’t a mistake—that there have been altogether too many mistakes in recent weeks—but that’s just scaremongering, if you ask me. Don’t you think?”
Miss Seeton, having shut her eyes as a length of hedge came unnervingly close to her face, gulped twice and said that as she hadn’t yet been in the village a week she was hardly competent to judge, but that anything smacking of alarm and despondency was to be deplored as unpatriotic.
“That’s all very well,” returned the doctor, “but we’ve got to face facts, Miss Seeton. For every one of us there are hundreds of them, what with the poor devils who’ve been overrun and are forced to put everything they’ve got towards the Nazi war effort as well as the blighters themselves. Don’t you, in your heart of hearts, think it’s hopeless?”
“I do not,” said Miss Seeton with resolution. She was so annoyed that she opened her eyes and grabbed hurriedly at the door handle as the hedge made another approach. “And if you will pardon my sa
ying so, Doctor, a man in your position should perhaps think twice about making such remarks where persons less ... capable than—than others of making up their own minds might hear you.”
Dr. Huxter whistled a few bars of “Rule, Britannia” and drove on without speaking. His whistle was as melodious as the song of Miss Seeton. It was a melancholy, silent pair that arrived at the factory gates.
Once more the doctor squeezed the rubber bulb, and the squawking hoot brought Day George leaping from his sentry box with a rifle in his hand.
“Halt!” he cried, bracing himself to pull the trigger. “Who goes there? Don’t you move an inch!”
Dr. Huxter poked his head out of the window. “You know very well who I am,” he told the military figure in front of him. “Miss Seeton, too. You also,” he added with an emphasis his passenger did not understand, “know very well why we’re here—so let us in, there’s a good chap.”
George’s eyes narrowed as he stumped up to the car and peered through the windscreen, before moving round to peer through the nearside window. He recognised Miss Seeton and jumped back.
“Let her in? Over my dead body!” he cried, waving the rifle in a way that even to Miss Seeton’s inexpert eye did not seem safe. “We don’t want her sort here—taken away by the police, she was, only yesterday afternoon!”
“Perhaps,” said Dr. Huxter, “you should ask the police what they think about her this morning. If they agree—if they confirm—that she isn’t a risk to security, will that change your mind?”
George brandished his rifle again. “Ah,” he said slowly. “Yes, the police ... But I can’t leave my post, Doctor, you know that, whether it’s to ask permission or no.”
“The police?” Miss Seeton had been so startled by the accusations of Day George that the doctor’s words had only just registered. “Are they here again? Oh, dear—what—what else has happened?”
Miss Seeton's Finest Hour (A Miss Seeton Mystery) Page 20
