Missing From Home

by Mary Burchell

  Neither of the girls discussed the situation much with Clare, though she supposed that they had discussed it a good deal between themselves. Pat said, with an air of determined sophistication and understanding, “It’s really just between you and Dad, isn’t it? Hardly really our business.” To which Marilyn added, “Ye-es, I suppose that’s right.”

  Clare had not been sure at the time that this was at all what Marilyn thought. But in the end it was Pat who made the first determined move to link up with their father again. By then it had become clear that Greg, who had ended his tour in Garmisch, intended to go on living there indefinitely.

  Pat had just left school, and she announced that, before starting any sort of job, she wanted to go and visit her father. Clare, of course, had put no obstacle in her path, and Pat’s letter announcing her intentions had drawn an enthusiastic reply from her father. Three weeks ago she had gone and, except for regular, if meagre, postcards reporting on a holiday she was obviously greatly enjoying, there had been no real news. It was tonight—tonight—that Clare had been waiting for, with far more eagerness than she had admitted to herself until now. Tonight she was to receive the first real news of Greg in nearly a year. And her maddening child lingered somewhere with some unimportant friend, milling over details of the trip which could not possibly matter.

  She deliberately tried to stoke the fires of her anger, because they provided the only warm protection against the chill of anxiety—rapidly becoming black fear—which was creeping over her. She walked about the pretty, elegant room, picking up and setting down things without looking at them, and occasionally twitching the curtains and glancing from the windows, although these gave no real view of the way Pat would come when she did come.

  But suppose she did not come? What then? Each time Clare reached that horrible impasse her heart missed a frightened beat.

  At eleven o’clock Marilyn came in. Though younger than Pat she often, in her cheerful, resourceful way, would take the lead. She glanced round now, ran her hands through her short, dark, curly hair and exclaimed, “Where’s Pat?”

  “She didn’t arrive. She wasn’t on the train.” Clare bit her lip and tried not to communicate to her younger child the dreadful anxiety which shook her as she voiced that inner conviction.

  “She must have been,” declared Marilyn airily. “She stopped off to tell the tale to Freda or Mrs. Little or—”

  “She wasn’t on the train,” repeated Clare and, in spite of all her efforts, she could not keep her voice from running up on to a much higher pitch than usual, partly from fear and partly from sudden wild irritation at Marilyn’s matter-of-fact air “I met it.”

  “Oh, did you?” Marilyn did look slightly taken aback at that. But she recovered almost immediately, helped herself to an apple from the sideboard and asserted, “You just missed her, I expect.”

  “I didn’t miss her! Everyone keeps on making that ridiculous assertion, and I know perfectly well—”

  “Who’s ‘everyone’?” enquired Marilyn, biting into her apple. “I mean, have you discussed it with someone?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Clare dismissed that wearily. “The point is that she wasn’t on the boat train and I—I’m worried, Marilyn. Something must have happened.”

  “What could have happened?” enquired Marilyn, with a stolidity that was both infuriating and reassuring. So like Greg, when one came to think of it. “She probably decided to stay a day or two longer. Why don’t you phone Dad and—”

  “There’s no possible reason to phone your father.” Clare stiffened at the very idea. “Anyway, she was on the boat. A young man at the station said as much.”

  “A young man—?” Marilyn paused in the act of taking another bite. “Do you mean he just came up to you and volunteered the information?”

  “No, of course not!” Rapidly, and with her mind on no more than half of what she was saying, Clare described the chance encounter.

  “Oh, I say, wasn’t that a bit suspicious?” Marilyn put down her apple as though she had suddenly lost her appetite.

  “Wasn’t what suspicious?” Clare felt a fresh stab of terror.

  “The fact that he picked you out. Of all the people who got off that train, he spoke to you about Pat. Singled you out and—”

  “It was simply because he saw me looking—”

  “It seems—sinister, somehow.”

  “It doesn’t seem anything of the sort! There was nothing in the least sinister about him,” retorted Clare firmly. And even to recall that very normal, cheerful young man gave her a slight glimmer of reassurance. “There’s no need to invent reasons for anxiety.”

  “Then where is Pat?”

  “I—don’t know.” Suddenly there was an obstruction in Clare’s throat, and she had to clear it fiercely before she could go on. “I can only think that perhaps the young man made a mistake when he thought he was describing my Pat. It was another girl. It’s not an uncommon name. So perhaps she was not on the boat. Perhaps she did stay a few days longer, as you suggested. Yes—that must be it!” For a blessed moment or two she clung to the reassurance of that thought. It was like reaching dry land after tossing in a stormy sea.

  “Well, you could check that quite easily,” Marilyn remarked.

  “I don’t need to!” Clare refused even to look at the telephone. “I’m certain that must be the explanation. Why didn’t I think of it before? I’ve based everything on what that completely unknown young man said! It just shows how silly it is to get so jittery.” She actually laughed in a moment of almost hysterical relief. “If he hadn’t been so positive about meeting her on board, I’d just have assumed she had prolonged her visit.”

  “Without letting us know?” Marilyn sounded dubious.

  “There’ll be a letter or a wire in the morning,” declared her mother.

  “You said,” recalled Marilyn slowly, “that the young man described Pat in some detail. The colour of her eyes, and the red beret and the off-white coat.”

  “Why—” Clare gulped—“so he did.” And suddenly she was not on dry land after all, but being dashed to and fro once more on the breakers of anxiety and fear.

  “You couldn’t trace him and question him, I suppose?” Marilyn suggested. “You didn’t notice the exact address where you dropped him off?”

  “I dropped him off at Baker Street Station,” said Clare heavily, and she rubbed her hands together as though they had gone very cold.

  “Oh. That’s not much help, is it? You didn’t notice any part of the label on his case, I suppose?”

  “It wasn’t a case,” murmured Clare, as though that really mattered. “He had a great big zipper bag and one of those duffle things. I don’t think there was any label.”

  “Well, you evidently didn’t see it if there was,” said Marilyn. Then, after quite a long pause, “You don’t want to—ring the police?”

  “N-no.” Clare spoke uncertainly. “Not yet. There must be a perfectly ordinary explanation. She’ll surely be here any minute now.”

  “Or in the morning,” suggested Marilyn.

  But, at the thought of a whole night of not knowing, Clare’s resolution suddenly collapsed. With her eyes glittering slightly, she reached for the telephone.

  “Mother!” Marilyn sounded frightened at last. “You—you’re not going to ring the police?”

  “No.” For Clare the decision was even harder than that. “I’m going to telephone your father.”

  She dialled determinedly and then said, “Operator, I want a personal call to Garmisch in Bavaria, please. Yes, that’s right—South Germany. Yes, a personal call. The number is—is—”

  In all these months she had never allowed herself to suppose she would use it, and suddenly she could not remember it. But the resourceful Marilyn scribbled it down and thrust it under her notice with surprising promptness.

  Clare read it out rather unsteadily. Then, more resolutely, “And I want to speak to Mr. Collamore, please. Yes—C for Charlie.
No, he’s not Charlie. Mr. Gregory Collamore, please. Yes, I’ll hold on.”

  She sat there holding the receiver, counting the moments by the thudding of her own heart. Once she wondered if Marilyn—gazing at her now with widened eyes—could hear the thudding too. Then that clear, attractive, well-known voice said almost in her ear, “Gregory Collamore speaking.”

  “Go ahead, please,” said the operator.

  “Greg, it’s Clare—” Her own voice was much fainter than she had intended and he said sharply, “Who is it? The line’s bad.”

  “It’s Clare.” Her voice strengthened and her self-control returned. “It’s Clare, speaking from home—from London, I mean. Have you got Pat still with you?”

  “Pat? No, of course not. I put her on the Hook of Holland boat train in Munich last night. I thought she wrote you that she would be taking the day crossing from Holland today. She ought to be with you now.”

  “Well, she isn’t!” Clare’s voice broke slightly. “She just didn’t arrive. Did she—did she say anything about breaking her journey anywhere?”

  “Not a thing.” Even at that distance, she could hear the disturbed note in his voice. “She wouldn’t have stopped off in Rotterdam to see that girl she used to correspond with, would she?”

  “Trudi? No. She saw her on the way out, you remember. And Trudi wasn’t going to be there when she returned. Anyway, someone saw her on the boat—I think. Greg, what was she wearing when you saw her off?”

  “Wearing?” She thought he was shocked by the melodramatic implications of that question, because he hesitated quite a long moment before he said, “A white coat, I think. Yes. A sort of off-white travel coat, and a red beret. She looked very pretty,” he added, in an irrelevant burst of paternal pride.

  “I’m sure she did.” It was suddenly hard to keep back the tears, and her voice was unsteady as she went on, “Greg, I don’t want to s-sound a fool. But I’m frightened about her.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” He was almost off-hand in his reassurance immediately. “What on earth do you suppose could happen to her? She’s a perfectly responsible young woman by now. I found that out in the last three weeks. You’re fussing unnecessarily—”

  “I’m not fussing at all,” she interrupted, coldly and bitterly. “I’m frightened. It’s nearly midnight. She was seen on the boat and I’m virtually certain she was not on the train. In any case, she should have been here hours and hours ago. You may not care what happens—”

  “I care very much,” he cut in shortly.

  On a frightened impulse she cried, “Oh, please don’t be angry!”

  “I’m not angry.” His voice immediately became gentler, and he sounded almost shocked at being accused of such a thing. “But you’re frightening yourself for nothing, Clare.”

  “It’s n-not nothing that a girl of seventeen is simply hours overdue, coming back from her first continental journey.”

  “But she really might make some enjoyable digression and just send a wire which simply hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Greg, do you really think that?” And then, as he made no answer, she went on as reasonably as possible, “You say you saw her off personally? Right on the train?”

  “Right on to the train in Munich station,” he confirmed.

  “And she didn’t say the slightest thing about varying her plans? Can you remember what she did say? Right at the end, I mean.”

  “She said—” Clare wondered if it were fancy or if she really heard him catch his breath—“she said, ‘This time tomorrow night I’ll be home and telling them all about it.’ ”

  “She said that?” cried Clare. And this time terror fastened its talons on her irresistibly. “Then there was no question of her not coming straight home. That young man was right. She was on the boat.”

  “What young man?”

  “Someone who spoke to me at the station. It doesn’t matter, except that what he said confirmed the fact that she was on the boat.”

  “But she wasn’t on the train? Then, Clare, she just must have missed her connection at Harwich.”

  “She couldn’t,” Clare insisted. “You just go from the boat to the Customs and from the Customs pretty well on to the platform. Everyone except the handful taking a local train goes automatically the same way. And if she felt unwell—sick after the journey or something—do you suppose she wouldn’t have phoned by now? If there wasn’t a later train—”

  “Have you enquired if there is a later train—a slow train, perhaps?”

  “No,” Clare admitted.

  “Well, that could be the explanation, couldn’t it? Say she did feel unwell and missed the train, she might even have to stay the night in Harwich, mightn’t she?”

  “She would have phoned,” Clare reiterated. But a chilly little ray of hope glimmered.

  “There might have been difficulties. Phone out of order or something. Look, Clare, whatever the explanation, it must involve an unlikely sequence of events. But these things do happen. Every parent remembers some ghastly occasion when, for a perfectly good reason, one or other of their children was missing. It’s hell at the time. But it’s explained away completely later.”

  “Not absolutely always,” said Clare. And in saying it, she capitulated completely to the fear which had walked with her ever since she came into the flat and found no Pat waiting there.

  “Don’t torment yourself with melodramatic explanations,” he said firmly. “The ordinary explanation is nearly always the right one. It will be this time, you’ll see. Phone and enquire about later trains, Clare. And if you draw a blank there, get hold of the Harwich Exchange and see if they can tell you anything about hotels where she might stay for the night if stranded. Try not to worry yourself sick. There’s bound to be an explanation by morning. I’ll phone about nine to see how you got on.”

  “And if there’s no news then?”

  There was quite a long silence. Then he said, “If there’s no news then I’ll take the midday plane home. To London, I mean.”

  “Oh, Greg! Will you?” For the first time in almost a year she experienced the wonderful feeling of being not entirely alone. But he added almost immediately, “I’m certain it won’t be necessary, though. Good night, Clare.” And the line went dead and he was hundreds of miles away again.

  “What did he say?” The urgency in Marilyn’s tone pierced through the fog of her own confused thoughts, and Clare became aware of her younger daughter again, wide-eyed and excited.

  “He said that if there’s no news by morning he’ll fly home.”

  “Oh, Mother, how wonderful!”

  “Wonderful?” Clare passed her hands over her aching forehead. “If he comes it will mean that almost certainly something dreadful has happened to Pat.”

  “Oh, I forgot that.” Marilyn looked startled and a good deal chastened. “I only thought—” there was an uncharacteristic quiver in her voice—“h-how wonderful if Dad came home.”

  Clare made a helpless little gesture.

  “Do you miss him so much, Marilyn dear?”

  “Sometimes, yes. The way I’d miss you if you weren’t there,” said Marilyn in a curt, hard little voice.

  And Clare thought, with a stab of fresh pain, “How Greg and I have failed them—somehow, somewhere!” Then, so that she should not linger too long on such bitter thoughts, she embarked on a round of frustrating and finally fruitless telephone calls.

  She fairly easily elicited the information that the last train from Harwich, slow or fast, must have arrived in London hours ago. With more difficulty she managed at last to make contact with a sleepy night porter at the hotel where any stranded traveller would be most likely to go. But the information there was that the only people off the boat train were a couple of businessmen who were catching early morning connections which had not necessitated their going to London.

  After that there was absolutely nothing else to do. Except wait—and wait—and wait.

  She sent Marilyn to bed, and was both su
rprised and relieved to find, when she looked in half an hour later, that the child was fast asleep. Perhaps it was natural at her age. Sleep made insistent claims which even the sharpest anxiety could not resist.

  For an hour longer Clare sat up, starting from her chair at the sound of every passing car or taxi which sounded like stopping. Then, because there was no sense in exhausting herself beyond a point of being useful on the morrow, she went reluctantly to bed, to fall into a series of fitful dozes, from which she awoke from time to time with a sense of infinite foreboding.

  Towards morning she slept heavily, and woke to find Marilyn at her bedside, with a cup of tea and an air of anxious compassion.

  “What is it?” Clare started up. “Is there any news?”

  “Not yet, Mother. But I’m absolutely sure there’s going to be good news soon,” Marilyn asserted. “I’ve got a—a sort of hunch about it. Drink your tea and keep up your spirits. Now it’s daytime and everything’s moving again we’re bound to get some news.” Her warm optimism was indefinably cheering and Clare smiled at her.

  “Thank you, darling. You’re a real comfort.” Marilyn looked pleased and, when the telephone rang, she dashed for it.

  “No, Dad, it’s me. Marilyn,” Clare heard her say. “No, not a word. No, there wasn’t any other train, and she isn’t at the most obvious hotel.—Well, yes, I think you should. It’s pretty tough on Mum, handling this business alone, isn’t it?”

  By then Clare was at her daughter’s elbow, and Marilyn handed over the telephone immediately.

  From Greg’s voice it sounded as though his night had been no more restful than hers. His tone was rough with anxiety and the effort of hiding it, and he asked very few questions before he said abruptly, “I’ll fly over today. If I can get a seat on the eleven-thirty plane I should be with you by the middle of the afternoon.”