Poor Little Rich Girl (43 page)

*

‘She’s run away,’ Hester said tearfully, facing Mrs Bailey across the kitchen table. ‘The police were there and they asked me if I knew where Lonnie might have gone. I thought of you at once, Mrs Bailey, but the awful thing is, the nuns weren’t at all sure when she had left. Apparently, it is their dreadful practice to lock wrongdoers in a cupboard, often for hours and hours at a time. It appears that Lonnie was shut into the cupboard for a few hours yesterday, released to go to her dormitory for a night’s sleep and was then to be re-imprisoned this morning. Apparently, two particular nuns are responsible for the punishment cupboard and both assumed that the other one had re-imprisoned Lonnie when in fact no one has seen her at all today. I was totally shocked at the nuns’ behaviour and so was the policeman. He spoke very severely to the Mother Superior and said he would be forced to report her actions to his senior officer. But that doesn’t help Lonnie, of course.’

‘I wonder she didn’t come here,’ Mrs Bailey said. ‘Philly, don’t sit there with your mouth open, catching flies! Go and fetch a cup off the dresser and Miss Elliott and meself will sit down and talk this thing over.’

‘Do call me Hester, please,’ Hester said, accepting the cup of tea gratefully. ‘I’m certain Lonnie will come here, Mrs Bailey, just as soon as she is able. Dick gave her some money for the tram fare but she may well have decided to walk so that she could spend the money on food. One of the nuns – a shy little thing, I didn’t catch her name – told me that Lonnie had not been fed the whole of yesterday, so hunger may have forced her to buy food. But she doesn’t know where I live and Dick told her to come to you, I know he did.’

When Dick arrived home, he congratulated Hester on her new job, making this an excuse to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but as soon as he heard of Lonnie’s escapade, he suggested that the child might have gone to Birkenhead and waited outside Laird’s for him to appear. ‘Or she might have gone to Mrs Beasdale, I suppose, if she’s not realised I’ve moved back home,’ he finished. ‘Where’s young Ben, by the way?’

‘Gone off to help Mr Madison, I expect. If there’s a deal of work to do, Mr M will give him some tea and they’ll work on until really late,’ Mrs Bailey said. ‘Funny thing, though. He and Philly were sitting at the kitchen table mucking around wi’ some toy or other when Hester was telling me about Lonnie, an’ all of a sudden he jumped up to his feet and shot out of the kitchen, not even stopping to pick up his jacket.’

‘He’ll have remembered he ought to ha’ been at Madisons’s,’ Dick said. He pulled out a chair and gestured to it. ‘Sit down, Hester, my dear, and we’ll talk this thing through, but I’d lay a pound to a penny that young Lonnie turns up here in the next couple of hours. Now, Mam, how about that tea you spoke of?’

Ben had listened to Hester’s story and, unlike the rest of his family, had immediately realised what must have happened. Girls shut up in convent schools were very unlikely to set eyes on a newspaper, so Lonnie would have no idea that Mr Bailey had died, far less that the family were back in Elmore Street. So what would she do? Why, she would make her way to the cottage in Bwlchgwyn … and find it empty. At the horrid suspicion, Ben had leapt from his seat and
rushed out of the room, hoping against hope that if he reached the Pier Head in time, he might catch her before she boarded the ferry.

He was unlucky. Though he hung around at the ferry terminal for some time, he saw neither hide nor hair of Lonnie and eventually decided that he must have missed her. He reasoned that if she had left the convent early that day, she would have had ample opportunity to catch the ferry before he had even heard of her escape. He was turning away, meaning to go back to Elmore Street, when he suddenly realised the plight in which his young friend might find herself. He had no doubt that she would make her way to the cottage and, upon finding it empty, would be panic-stricken. She would be totally alone and probably without money in a strange place, and having gone all that way she would be unlikely to try to retrace her steps that night. It had been a cool and rainy day and he guessed that a night up on the Llandegla moors would be an uncomfortable experience for anyone. Sighing, he dug his hands into his trouser pockets and fished out his loose change. He had been saving the coins his mam would not take from his wages, and there was sufficient money to take him up to Bwlchgwyn; sufficient to pay for the return fares for himself and Lonnie as well.

The ferry for Woodside was about to depart. Ben hesitated for a moment, worried that he could get no word back to Elmore Street. Then he decided he would pop in on Mrs Beasdale as soon as he crossed the water and ask her to get a message back to Dick. Considerably cheered by the thought that he could prevent his mother from worrying, he joined the jostling crowd headed for the ferry.

*

By the time Ben reached the cottage the stars were paling in the night sky and he guessed dawn was not far off. As he walked round to the back it occurred to him, for the first time, that he had no idea at all where Lonnie might have hidden herself. When the Baileys had moved out they had taken all their furniture, traipsing back and forth with a big old-fashioned van until the cottage was empty. Then Mrs Bailey and Millie had scrubbed the place from top to bottom, despite the fact that the landlord had told them he had no tenant waiting to move in.

When they had first arrived at the cottage, there had been curtains at the windows because the landlord had said this discouraged tramps from breaking in. There had also been, Ben remembered, a lantern in the
ty bach
at the end of the garden. The landlord had explained that this was provided for the convenience of those wishing to use the lavatory during the hours of darkness, so now Ben set off down the garden path, thinking that at least, if he had the lantern, he was less likely to tread on Lonnie and scare her out of her wits.

He opened the door of the
ty bach
, which gave a horribly ominous creak, and took down the lantern from its nail on the wall. Like most boys’, his pockets were stuffed with odds and ends – bits of string, a ball of chewed chewing gum, a couple of matches and a rusty old penknife. The only trouble was that his mother had neglected to fill the lamp before she left so he had lit his two matches in vain. Cursing his own stupidity, for if he had thought, he could have searched around for something else inflammable, Ben stumbled back to the cottage. He was beginning to suspect that Lonnie had never even got this far until
he investigated the foot-scraper beside the back door and found the key was missing.

Ben felt a grin spread across his face and tried the back door, which opened to his touch. As silently as he could, he slipped into the kitchen, and glanced at the window behind him. For a moment he wondered what was different about it, then realised that the curtains were missing. Strange! But before he had done more than take two steps into the room, he was frozen to the spot by the most blood-curdling shriek he had ever heard, and then he found himself staggering back beneath the onslaught of a small but furious person, who flew at him, fists and feet flailing. Trying to get out of the way, to explain, Ben somehow managed to fall backwards, clouting his head hard on the still open back door as he did so. This made him feel both dizzy and furious and he tried to restrain his attacker, who had fallen on top of him and was cursing him – he assumed it was curses – in a foreign tongue. For a moment he thought that some small, but mad, Welsh tramp must have gained entry to the cottage, but then a fold of dark material fell away from his attacker’s white face and he recognised Lonnie.

‘Lonnie! It’s me, Ben! Do stop … aargh!’

Lonnie, far from desisting, seemed to be actually fighting herself and Ben suddenly realised that she had wrapped herself in the kitchen curtains, presumably for warmth, and was now not so much struggling with him as endeavouring to get free from the enveloping material. Ben, sitting up, for they had both landed on the quarry tiles of the kitchen floor, tried to help her, only to be rudely repulsed.

‘Get away, you nasty, interfering boy!’ Lonnie squeaked. ‘How dare you come in, frightening the
life out of me! I thought you were a
thuggi
or a bandit! Oh, how you scared me, Ben Bailey.’

Ben scrambled to his feet, not sure whether to laugh or cry. His head was still ringing; one elbow had met the quarry tiles with enough force, he was sure, to shatter it to bits, and despite her wrappings Lonnie had landed a number of punches and kicks on his person. What was more, it appeared to have escaped her notice that he was her rescuer and that in fact it was she who had attacked him and not vice versa.

‘Stop wriggling, Lonnie, and let me get you out of that,’ he said, therefore. He grabbed the curtains and began to pull them from her shoulders, then dropped them in a heap at her feet. He noticed she was still clinging to some shabby and pungent garment but had no chance to ask her what on earth it was before she had bent and snatched up the curtains once more.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, Ben Bailey? These curtains are my bed. I was nearly freezing to death before I thought of the curtains and I’d just dropped off to sleep when I heard someone scratching around in that little shed thing at the end of the garden. I remembered then that I’d not locked the door – the key was too big and stiff – so I came and stood behind it, ready to frighten off anyone who tried to get in. And it was you! And – and I hate you and I’ll never forgive you for giving me such a terrible fright.’

Ben stood quite silent for a moment. He was fighting an urge to grab Lonnie and give her a good shake, tell her she was an ungrateful little beast, and then to turn round and walk out of the cottage – and her life – for ever. But his mother had brought him up to respect girls and his father had often told him that
women were illogical creatures but that mostly they meant well. So he swallowed his anger and said in as gentle a tone as he could manage: ‘Don’t be cross, Lonnie. You gave me just as much of a fright as I gave you. That shriek near stopped my heart, so I reckon we’re quits. I came to tell you that we’ve moved back to Elmore Street and I’ve brung some money wi’ me so’s we can both go home. What about that, eh?’

Lonnie sniffed. ‘Well, all right, I suppose you didn’t mean to scare me,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Is it nearly morning? Can we go home soon?’

‘I don’t know what the time is,’ Ben said, peering out at the starlit sky through the kitchen door and then closing it firmly. ‘Look, you kip down on them curtains and I’ll go and fetch the ones from the parlour. That way, we’ll be snug enough till morning.’

He suited action to his words and presently the two children curled up in their respective curtains on either side of the cold and empty fireplace. After a few moments, Ben said sleepily: ‘What’s a
thuggi
when it’s at home? I know what a bandit is, of course.’

Lonnie heaved a sigh and sat up on one elbow. ‘There are
thuggis
in India; my
ayah
told me all about them,’ she said. ‘They sneak up to travellers with a thin cord, one end held in either hand, and they whisk it round the traveller’s neck and then throttle him to death.’ She glared angrily across at Ben. ‘I wish you hadn’t made me tell you that. Now I’ll be too scared to sleep.’

Ben sighed; it seemed that no matter what he did, he would be wrong. So he shuffled across the intervening space and put an arm around Lonnie’s skinny shoulders. ‘We’ll be warmer if we share our curtains,’ he said gruffly. ‘An’ I’ll make sure no one
sneaks up on you while you’re asleep. Besides, it’ll soon be morning and then we can start on our journey home.’

To his secret surprise, Lonnie did not attempt to push him away but settled down once more, and presently he could tell by her even breathing that she slept.

Rosalind Hetherington-Smith would have enjoyed the voyage from India had it not been for her very real worries over the fate of her brand new stepdaughter. She was deeply in love with her husband and thought him the kindest and best of men, but she had soon realised that his business was tremendously important to him and in all conscience could not be easily cast aside, particularly after a six-month absence, even for the sake of his beloved daughter.

He had not wanted his bride to leave him, to go off to England by herself, but when he had been brought to realise that his little Lonnie was almost certainly suffering great unhappiness he had booked his new wife a first-class berth on the
Florealis
and waved her off, telling her to bring Lonnie back with her if she must, but otherwise to settle the child in some pleasant and friendly house with good, kind people and place her in a first-rate day school. After hearing about Rosalind’s own experiences at a poor quality English boarding school some years before, he had decided that this was not for his little girl. He knew that India could not provide the sort of education she needed, however, and feared for her health if she returned there, for children did not thrive in the tremendous heat of the plains.

As soon as the ship docked, Rosalind booked herself into the Adelphi Hotel and called a cab to take
her to Shaw Street. Her interview there was not a long one but she came out with her eyes flashing and her cheeks very bright pink. Miss Hetherington-Smith had been downright obstructive over her reasons for ignoring her brother’s wishes and putting Leonora into a boarding school. When Rosalind had queried the whereabouts of the governess, she had shrugged her shoulders and tried to change the subject, but when Rosalind persisted she had simply said, snappishly: ‘I have no idea what has happened to that dreadful young woman, neither am I at all interested. I dismissed her for insufferable behaviour and do not wish to discuss the matter further.’