Without a Trace

by Lesley Pearse

  On her fourth working day, the bruise on her cheek now faded, Molly was sent to work in Haberdashery. Dilys commiserated, saying all the girls hated that department because it was all little sales of buttons, reels of cotton, zips and ribbons, and the customers expected the sales girls to be very attentive and knowledgeable, but Molly liked it. She had always made her own clothes, and she enjoyed being kept busy. When she wasn’t serving anyone she opened up the drawers and cupboards to find out more about the stock.

  Miss Bruce, the department manager, was something of a fusspot, and convinced that no one could ever know as much about haberdashery as she did. But after working for a tyrant like her father, Molly found the woman easy enough to get along with.

  Another advantage of working in Haberdashery was that the other girls didn’t feel that she was a favoured one. Apparently, Miss Maloney, who was the Fashion manageress, did have favourites and gave them plum jobs. Those girls were viewed with suspicion by everyone else.

  The part of the day Molly liked best was the evening, not necessarily going out with the other girls but sitting around the table having their evening meal, all chatting away about their day. Then they’d go back to their rooms, and quite often some of the girls would come in to Molly and Dilys for more chat, usually about make-up, clothes and boys. Molly had been a bit too young when Emily had left home to talk about such things, but she had loved having her older sister in the bed next to her, the little chats in the dark, the cosiness of it. Sharing with Dilys brought that back.

  On her second night in the hostel she and Dilys had got into their nightdresses and were having a cup of cocoa when Molly told her new friend about Cassie and Petal.

  ‘Jeepers!’ Dilys exclaimed, putting her hands over her face. ‘Fancy finding someone who’s been murdered! You think that only happens in films. Did you scream the place down?’

  ‘I think I must have, but there wasn’t much point, considering where the cottage was. No one would’ve heard me. But I was sick in the bushes!’

  She went on to explain that Petal was still missing, and that she was on something of a mission to find her. Molly got out the only two photographs she had. One was of Cassie taken at the church fete last year, and the other was of Petal, a school photograph. Cassie had given it to Molly at Easter.

  Dilys looked hard at the pictures. ‘Petal is really sweet,’ she said. ‘I hope whoever’s got her won’t hurt her. Cassie was lovely – she reminds me of Ava Gardner.’

  Molly smiled. ‘She did look a bit like her, especially when she wore a tight sweater and a pencil skirt, but most of the time she was in a loose smock-type dress with wellingtons on her feet. She looks dark-haired there, but her hair was red. She used to dye it. I don’t know what colour it was before. The truth is, I know next to nothing about her, really. Not where she came from or anything. But I’ve got a journal of hers and I hope to find some clues there.’

  Dilys kept asking questions about Cassie and even when they’d eventually turned out the light her voice came through in the dark: ‘Aren’t you afraid that if you dig too deep the person who killed Cassie might kill you?’

  Molly’s first month passed so quickly she could hardly believe it. It was nice to be able to write home to her mother and tell her truthfully that she loved her job, had made lots of friends in the hostel and was happier than she’d ever been before. She wrote to George, too, telling him much the same, though she told him what she’d seen at the cinema rather than about the Saturday-night dancing at the Empire in Leicester Square.

  The Empire was wonderful – the big band, the soft lights, the glittery balls turning on the ceiling, and very smartly turned-out young men to dance with, so different to the clod-hopping boys back home. A few were a bit too fresh, thinking one dance and a drink meant they could take liberties, but all the girls from work looked out for one another and, unless one of them said she wanted to go outside or walk home alone with someone, they stuck together.

  Molly had danced with a man called Harry on her first night. A week later she saw him there again and he asked her out for a drink. She’d met him at Oxford Circus tube station as arranged, on the following Monday, full of excitement and wearing a new pink dress that had been marked down in the sale. But, to her consternation, he was a little drunk even when they met, slurring his words and propping himself up by leaning on her shoulder, and breathing beer fumes all over her. In the time she’d drunk one glass of Babycham he’d downed two pints of beer and a whisky chaser. Realizing that the evening could only get worse, when he left her to go to the men’s room, she walked out of the bar and scuttled back to the hostel.

  Dilys was sitting up in bed reading when she got in. ‘Gosh! What went wrong? Didn’t he turn up?’ she asked.

  When Molly told her what had happened, Dilys laughed.

  ‘I went out with a man like that once. He was drunk, too, when we met, and got even drunker during the evening. As he was walking me home – or should I say “lurching me home”? – he threw up, and it splattered all over my coat.’

  Molly grimaced. ‘Yuk. I hope you pushed him into the gutter?’

  ‘No, I was stupid enough to feel sorry for him,’ Dilys admitted. ‘But then he tried to kiss me, and that was so disgusting I came to my senses and ran off.’

  Molly undressed and got into bed while Dilys told her about other disappointing dates she’d had. Molly loved listening to her; her sing-song Welsh accent was lovely. ‘Another bloke didn’t have a penny to his name, so we had to walk around in the rain. Another one turned up in his work overalls, and I was all done up to go dancing. I’ve had men asking me to lend them money for the evening; ones who didn’t want to take me anywhere except a park to grope me. I tell you, it’s enough to make you want to give up on finding someone special.’

  ‘I know this is a bit personal,’ Molly said hesitantly, ‘but have you ever gone the whole way?’

  ‘Ooh, there’s cheeky you are!’ Dilys replied indignantly. ‘I’ll wait till I’m married, thank you very much. Me dad would go potty if I got up the spout before I was wed. How about you?’

  ‘I haven’t either,’ Molly said. ‘But then I haven’t met that many men I feel that way about. There was a chap once, but he turned out to be a right sod. I met a writer called Simon, too, I thought he was perfect – handsome, from a good family – and I used to day-dream about him quite a bit. Turned out he was married, though, so just as well he didn’t try it on with me.

  ‘There is George, a nice policeman back home, though. I went to school with him. But now I’m here in London, everything and everyone from home seems to be fading away.’

  Dilys nodded in agreement. It was the same for her. ‘I was homesick at first, but not any more. I went back home for a week’s holiday just after the Coronation, but after a couple of days I was dying to get back here. All my old friends seem so set in their ways, and Cardiff seemed very small.’

  Long after Dilys had gone to sleep, Molly lay awake, thinking how odd it was that after only a month she couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere but London. She loved the bustle and noise, the beautiful parks, lovely old buildings, even the element of danger in some of the backstreets of Soho. She had the feeling she could become anything she wanted to be here.

  Back home in the shop, she’d only ever heard about people’s ailments, about their children and what they were cooking for dinner. Gossip was usually about such trivial things, like someone jumping the queue at the doctor’s, a neighbour failing to give back something they’d borrowed, or the dog a few houses away that never stopped barking.

  Customers in Bourne & Hollingsworth were often just as chatty, but they told her fun things, like they were meeting an old friend for lunch or they had come to London to buy something for a special occasion. Maybe they were just as dull as all her old neighbours when they were back home, but being in London was like living in a bubble that excluded dullness and mediocrity, and it made people dress up in their best clothes, smile because th
ey were out to enjoy themselves and enjoy spending their money instead of begrudging it.

  George had written to her every week so far. It was in his first letter that he told her that Simon had gone back to his wife and left the village. Molly felt that George had enjoyed telling her that – another reminder that people back in Somerset were small-minded.

  But she had to concede that, small-minded or not, George was keeping a close eye on her mother. He reported back that Mrs Swainswick, the part-time help in the shop, had told him that Molly’s father had been less grumpy since she had left, and her mother was less nervy.

  ‘Perhaps,’ George suggested, ‘he’s happier now he has your mum’s entire attention.’

  Molly didn’t care what it was that had made her father more amenable; it was a load off her mind to hear he wasn’t being violent or abusive to her mother.

  On her second day off Molly went back to Whitechapel and spent the morning talking to Constance and finding out about the places Cassie used to go to: the library, Victoria Park in Bethnal Green, the market and the public baths. It was a bit of a shock to Molly to discover that people who didn’t have bathrooms – and that was nearly everyone – had to go to the public baths. So, mainly out of curiosity, she made her way there first that afternoon.

  There was a big woman with a large, shiny, red face behind the desk. Molly got out the photograph of Cassie and showed it to the woman. ‘Have you seen this woman before?’ she asked.

  The older woman just glanced at the picture. ‘Yep. Dozens of times. Why d’you wanna know?’

  Molly explained what had happened to Cassie and Petal as briefly as she could. ‘The police aren’t doing much to find her killer or Petal, so I’m trying to discover more about her past which might help.’

  The woman was horrified to hear that Cassie had been killed and immediately became much warmer. ‘She were nice,’ she said. ‘And her little girl as cute as could be, and well behaved. But I don’t know anything else about her, other than she lived in Myrdle Street. I’m so sorry she’s been killed. Why would anyone kill a nice woman like her?’

  It was disappointing that the bath attendant knew nothing, but they chatted for a little while and Molly asked if she could see the baths, just so she’d understand how it worked.

  ‘You pay your money, I gives you a towel and some soap, and I tell you which bath is free,’ she said, leading Molly down a long corridor lined with small cubicles, a bath in each one. ‘I turn the hot water on from outside. It’s a set amount; you put the cold in yerself. I warn ’em not to drop their drawers on the floor or they’ll ’ave to go ’ome with wet ’uns.’

  Molly sniggered. It all looked so austere: white tiles, too-bright lights, bare concrete floor, a slatted wooden board to stand on when you got out of the bath. And just a couple of hooks to hang your towel and clothes on. But she supposed if you had no bathroom of your own it was all right.

  ‘It ain’t so bad,’ the attendant said, clearly picking up on Molly’s distaste. ‘They can shout to their mates, ’ave a laugh with the other women. It’s nice and warm in the winter, too. They can do their washing and ironing here if they want, through the doors at the end. You must be one of the bleedin’ lucky ones that’s got yer own bathroom and inside lav at ’ome?’

  ‘Yes,’ Molly admitted, feeling ashamed she’d been so transparent. ‘Was Cassie all right about it? Or do you think she was like me, used to one at home?’

  The attendant leaned back on a bathroom door and pulled some cigarettes out of her apron pocket. She took her time lighting one, looking at Molly all the while.

  ‘I’d say she had no real idea how folk like us live round here, ’cos the first time she come ’ere she looked scared to death,’ she said eventually, puffing smoke into the air. ‘She had Petal in a pushchair and I don’t think she could work out whether it was best to bath her or herself first. She learned fast, though. By the time she’d been three or four times she was like everyone else, ’aving a laugh and a joke, making the best of it.’

  ‘Did she ever tell you why she came to Whitechapel?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Why does anyone like her come ’ere?’ She shrugged. ‘’Cos it’s cheap. To disappear. You don’t come ’ere ’cos you like to slum it.’

  At the library they also remembered Cassie and, here, the head librarian had read in the paper about her being murdered. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ the woman said. ‘She was such a clever, well-spoken young woman. But then I was surprised when I first met her that she had a mixed race baby – not what you’d expect from someone who likes to read Jane Austen. Obviously, she’d got in with bad people.’

  Molly had a real desire to say she was surprised that a librarian could be such a bigoted snob, but that wasn’t advisable if she was hoping to find out more about Cassie. Sadly, no one at the library knew anything more about her than that she took out at least four books a week and came in almost daily to read the papers.

  Molly promised herself that she would go back to Whitechapel the following week and start asking about Cassie in shops and cafés, but when she mentioned to a couple of girls back at the hostel that she’d spent the day in the area, they both looked appalled. It seemed that everyone at Bourne & Hollingsworth thought of the East End as being dangerous and full of disease. It put Molly off a bit about going back, and it was another three weeks before she visited there again.

  Yet Dilys thought Molly’s quest to find Petal was a wonderful one, and often, when they’d got into bed, Molly would read bits of Cassie’s journal to her, and they would discuss what she might have meant.

  Molly had found references to Hastings and a place called Rye in some of Cassie’s writing.

  ‘Listen to this, Dilys,’ she said one night. ‘“The wind whistles across the marsh, forcing the trees to bow down to it. The sheep huddle together for warmth, and the few flowers that grow there are tiny and stunted, as are many of the folk that live there. Only the prickly gorse defies the wind, its yellow, sweet-smelling splendour spreads in defiance.”

  ‘What do you think of that?’ she asked her friend.

  ‘If I’d written like that at school I might not have got “Make more effort” written across my work.’ Dilys giggled.

  ‘Don’t you think Cassie was using the bleakness of the marsh to convey the sadness of her own life? That the wind is like someone laying waste to all her dreams and aspirations, and she is the gorse defying them?’

  ‘You sound like my English teacher, who used to tell me what Shakespeare meant. I never got it, and I don’t get Cassie’s stuff either.’ Dilys giggled again. ‘But I like you reading it and hearing your ideas. Who do you think the “someone’” is that’s laying waste her dreams?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe her mother or some other relative?’

  Molly wondered if Cassie’s mother had been mad. She remembered once confiding in Cassie about her father, and seeing her friend wince as if she’d experienced the same kind of abuse. Of course, her father could’ve been the brute, before he went off to war. And if her mother hadn’t defended her, then that could be why she didn’t talk about either of them.

  ‘It’s a kind of mental illness,’ Cassie had said, about violence. ‘A rage inside your father that he can’t put out, maybe because something bad happened to him years ago, and when it boils up and spills over, he attacks you.’

  She told Cassie about how her father had been robbed of the week’s takings from the furniture shop he’d worked at in Bristol and then blamed for the crime.

  ‘My advice is, don’t waste your sympathy on him,’ Cassie had responded, shaking her head. ‘Each one of us is given some sort of cross to bear; that is his, and he’s allowed it to destroy his life. He was fortunate that it was later proved he was innocent and he got compensation. Not many people get that.

  ‘I think he is the cross you have to bear, Molly. You can drag the misery he’s created around with you or toss it aside and choose your own path to happiness. Your mother has c
hosen her path, what she believes is the right thing to do, and you must accept it and leave her to it.’

  One of Cassie’s poems was about crucifixion, and as Molly read it Cassie’s remark about the crosses they had to bear came back sharply into focus. She thought it was about Cassie being forced to give up the comfortable life she’d had to keep Petal. But Petal was no crown of thorns; she was Cassie’s delight, her reason for everything.

  Molly was glad for Simon that he’d gone back to his wife, and hoped they’d find happiness again, yet she was disappointed he wasn’t in Sawbridge any longer and she wouldn’t be able to show him Cassie’s journal. He was a literary man, and he might have seen meanings in it that eluded Molly.

  But he was gone, just another closed door, and however kindly George was in inviting her to stay at his house so she could see her mum, if her father got to hear she was there, it might just inflame her father’s temper.

  George was another puzzle. He’d kissed her again before she left for London, and it had been a passionate kiss, not one from a mere friend. In the letters she’d had from him since, amongst the village news and amusing incidents concerning people she knew he had referred somewhat obliquely to not knowing how she felt about him. But he hadn’t revealed what he felt for her, so how could she respond?

  Molly had discussed this with Rose, a girl she’d got friendly with who worked in Hosiery. She had a similar situation with Robert, her young man back in Birmingham.

  ‘I think we have to make up our minds what we want,’ Rose said. ‘Robert is a good man, all my family like him, and when I was living at home and working at the Co-op, I thought he was the one. But now I’m here and have seen how some people live, I don’t want to live in a couple of poky rooms with a bricklayer, however nice he is. I want style, nice clothes, to eat out in restaurants, and a house in a smart suburb.’