Missing Joseph

“Here you are,” she said, as if she’d been searching them out by the river. “Bit late, aren’t you? Didn’t the register say you’d be here by four?”

“I don’t think I gave any time at all,” Deborah replied, in some confusion. “Our plane didn’t land until—”

“No matter,” the girl said. “You’re here now, aren’t you? And there’s plenty of time before dinner.” She glanced at the misty lower windows of the inn, behind which an amorphous shape was moving under the distinctive bright lights of a kitchen. “A word to the wise is in order. Skip the beef bourguignon. It’s the cook’s name for stew. Come on. This way.”

She began lugging the suitcase towards a rear door. With it in one hand and St. James’ crutches under her arm, she walked with a peculiar, hobbling gait, her Wellingtons alternately squishing and slapping against the cobbles. There seemed to be nothing to do but follow, and St. James and Deborah did so, trailing the girl across the car park, up a set of back stairs, and through the rear door of the inn. This gave way to a corridor off of which opened a room whose door was marked with a hand-lettered sign saying Residents’ Lounge.

The girl thumped the suitcase onto the carpet and leaned the crutches against it with their tips pressing onto a faded Axminster rose. “There,” she announced and brushed her hands together in an I’ve-done-my-part gesture. “Will you tell Mum that Josie was waiting for you outside? Josie. That’s me.” This last she said stabbing a thumb to her chest. “It’d be a favour, actually. I’ll pay you back.”

St. James wondered how. The girl watched them earnestly.

“Okay,” she said. “I can see what you’re thinking. To be honest, she’s ‘had it with me,’ if you know what I mean. It’s nothing that I did. I mean, it’s lots of stupid stuff. But mostly it’s my hair. I mean, it doesn’t generally look like this. Except it will for a while. I s’pose.”

St. James couldn’t decide if she was talking about the style or the colour, both of which were dreadful. The former was an ostensible attempt at a wedge which seemed to have been rendered by someone’s nail scissors and someone else’s electric razor. It made her look remarkably like Henry V as depicted in the National Portrait Gallery. The latter was an unfortunate shade of salmon that did battle with the neon jacket she wore. It suggested a dye job applied with more enthusiasm than expertise.

“Mousse,” she said apropos of nothing.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mousse. You know. The stuff for your hair. It was s’posed to just give me red highlights, but it didn’t actually work.” She drove her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I got just about everything going against me, see. Try finding a fourth form bloke my height sometime. So I thought if I made my hair look better, I’d get some notice from a fifth or lower sixth bloke. Stupid. I know. You don’t have to tell me. Mum’s been doing that for the last three days. ‘What am I go’n’ to do with you, Josie?’ Josie. That’s me. Mum and Mr. Wragg own the inn. Your hair’s awful pretty, by the way.” This last was addressed to Deborah whom Josie was inspecting with no little interest. “And you’re tall as well. But I expect you’ve stopped growing.”

“I think I have. Yes.”

“I haven’t. The doctor says I’ll be over six feet. A throwback to the Vikings, he says and he laughs and pats me on the shoulder like I ought to get the joke. Well, what the H were the Vikings doing in Lancashire, that’s what I want to know.”

“And your mother, no doubt, wants to know what you were doing by the river,” St. James noted.

Josie looked fl ustered and waved her hands. “It’s not the river, exactly. And it’s nothing bad. Really. And it’s only a favour. Just a mention of my name. ‘Young girl met us in the car park, Mrs. Wragg. Tall. Bit gawky. Said her name was Josie. Quite pleasant she was.’ If you’d drop it like that, Mum might unknot her knickers for a bit.”

“Jo-se-phine!” A woman’s voice shouted somewhere in the inn. “Jo-se-phine Eugenia Wragg!”

Josie winced. “I hate it when she does that. It reminds me of school. ‘Josephine Eugene. She looks like a bean.’”

She didn’t, actually. But she was tall, and she moved with the clumsiness of a young teenager who has suddenly become aware of her body before she’s got used to it. St. James thought of his own sister at this very same age, cursed by height, by the aquiline features into which she hadn’t yet grown, and by a wretchedly androgynous name. Sidney, she would introduce herself sardonically, the last of the St. James boys. She’d borne the brunt of her schoolmates’ teasing for years.

Gravely, he said, “Thank you for waiting in the car park, Josie. It’s always nice to be met when one gets where one’s going.”

The girl’s face lit. “Ta. Oh, ta,” she said and headed for the door through which they’d come. “I’ll pay you back. You’ll see.”

“I’ve no doubt of that.”

“Just go on through the pub. Someone’ll meet you there.” She waved them in the general direction of another door across the room. “I’ve got to get out of these Wellies quick.” And with another querying look at them, “You won’t mention the Wellies, will you? They’re Mr. Wragg’s.”

Which went a long way to explain why she’d been flopping about like a swimmer wearing flippers. “My lips are sealed,” St. James said. “Deborah?”

“The very same.”

Josie grinned in response and slipped through the door.

Deborah picked up St. James’ crutches and looked about at the L-shaped room that served as the lounge. Its collection of overstuffed furniture was tatty, and several lampshades were askew. But a breakfront sideboard held an array of magazines for guests to peruse, and a bookcase was crammed with a good fi fty volumes. Above pine wainscotting the wallpaper appeared recently hung — poppies and roses twining together — and the air bore the decided fragrance of potpourri. She turned to St. James. He was smiling at her.

“What?” she said.

“Just like home,” he replied.

“Someone’s, at least.” She led the way into the pub.

They had arrived, apparently, during off-hours, for no one was present behind the mahogany bar or at any of the matching pub-issue tables which beer mats dotted in small round splodges of orange and beige. They dodged their way past these and their accompanying stools and chairs, under a ceiling that was low, its heavy timbers blackened by generations of smoke and decorated with a display of intricate horse brasses. In the fi replace, the remains of an afternoon’s blaze was still glowing, giving an occasional snap as fi nal pockets of resin burst.

“Where’d she get off to, that blasted girl?” a woman was demanding. She spoke from what was apparently an office. Its door stood open to the left of the bar. Immediately next to it, a stairway rose, with steps oddly slanted as if strained from bearing weight. The woman came out, yelled “Jo-se-phine!” up the stairs, and then caught sight of St. James and his wife. Like Josie, she started. Like Josie, she was tall and thin, and her elbows were pointed like arrow heads. She raised one self-conscious hand to her hair and removed a plastic barrette of pink rosebuds which held it haphazardly off her cheeks. She lowered the other to the front of her skirt and brushed aimlessly at a snowfall of lint. “Towels,” she said in apparent explanation of the latter activity. “She was supposed to fold them. She didn’t. I had to. That sums up life with a fourteen-year-old girl.”

“I think we just met her,” St. James said. “In the car park.”

“She was waiting for us,” Deborah added cooperatively. “She helped us in with our things.”

“Did she?” The woman’s eyes went from them to their suitcase. “You must be Mr. and Mrs. St. James. Welcome. We’ve given you Skylight.”

“Skylight?”

“The room. It’s our best. A bit cold, I’m afraid, at this time of year, but we’ve put in an extra heater for you.”

Cold didn’t really do justice to the condition of the room to which she led them, two fl ights up, at the very top of the hotel. Although the free-standing electric heater was ticking away, sending out palpable streams of warmth, the room’s three windows and two additional skylights acted like transmitters for the cold outside. Two feet in any direction from them, one walked into a shield of ice.

Mrs. Wragg drew the curtains. “Dinner’s from half past seven till nine. Will you be wanting anything prior to that? Have you had your tea? Josie can pop up with a pot, if you like.”