‘You’ll be having dinner at school with the other children, Chris, and I’ll call for you when school is over, at three o’clock.’
‘Yes, mummy.’ She held my hand tightly. Other nervous little children were arriving with equally nervous parents. A pleasant young teacher with fair hair and a white linen dress appeared at the gate. She gathered the new children towards her and led them away. She gave me a sympathetic smile as she passed and said: ‘We’ll take good care of her.’
I felt quite light-hearted as I walked away, knowing that Chris was safe and I didn’t have to worry.
Now I started on my secret mission. I took a bus to town and went to the big, gaunt building I hadn’t visited for over five years. Then, Jim and I had gone together. The top floor of the building belonged to the Greythorne Adoption Society. I climbed the four flights and knocked on the familiar door with its scratched paint. A secretary whose face I didn’t know let me in.
‘May I see Miss Cleaver? My name is Mrs James.’
‘Have you an appointment?’
‘No, but it’s very important.’
‘I’ll see.’ The girl went out and returned a second later. ‘Miss Cleaver will see you, Mrs James.’
Miss Cleaver, a tall, thin, grey haired woman with a charming smile, a plain, kindly face and a very wrinkled brow, rose to meet me. ‘Mrs James. How nice to see you again. How’s Christine?’
‘She’s very well, Miss Cleaver. I’d better get straight to the point. I know you don’t normally divulge the origin of a child to its adopters and vice versa, but I must know who Christine is.’
‘Sorry, Mrs James,’ she began, ‘our rules …’
‘Please let me tell you the whole story, then you’ll see I’m not just suffering from vulgar curiosity.’
I told her about Harry.
When I’d finished, she said: ‘It’s very queer. Very queer indeed. Mrs James, I’m going to break my rule for once. I’m going to tell you in strict confidence where Christine came from.
‘She was born in a very poor part of London. There were four in the family, father, mother, son and Christine herself.’
‘Son?’
‘Yes. He was fourteen when – when it happened.’
‘When what happened?’
‘Let me start at the beginning. The parents hadn’t really wanted Christine. The family lived in one room at the top of an old house which should have been condemned by the Sanitary Inspector in my opinion. It was difficult enough when there were only three of them, but with a baby as well life became a nightmare. The mother was a neurotic creature, slatternly, unhappy, too fat. After she’d had the baby she took no interest in it. The brother, however, adored the little girl from the start. He got into trouble for cutting school so he could look after her.
‘The father had a steady job in a warehouse, not much money, but enough to keep them alive. Then he was sick for several weeks and lost his job. He was laid up in that messy room, ill, worrying, nagged by his wife, irked by the baby’s crying and his son’s eternal fussing over the child – I got all these details from neighbours afterwards, by the way. I was also told that he’d had a particularly bad time in the war and had been in a nerve hospital for several months before he was fit to come home at all after his demob. Suddenly it all proved too much for him.
‘One morning, in the small hours, a woman in the ground floor room saw something fall past her window and heard a thud on the ground. She went out to look. The son of the family was there on the ground. Christine was in his arms. The boy’s neck was broken. He was dead. Christine was blue in the face but still breathing faintly.
‘The woman woke the household, sent for the police and the doctor, then they went to the top room. They had to break down the door, which was locked and sealed inside. An overpowering smell of gas greeted them, in spite of the open window.
‘They found husband and wife dead in bed and a note from the husband saying:
I can’t go on. I am going to kill them all.
It’s the only way.
‘The police concluded that he’d sealed up door and windows and turned on the gas when his family were asleep, then lain beside his wife until he drifted into unconsciousness, and death. But the son must have wakened. Perhaps he struggled with the door but couldn’t open it. He’d be too weak to shout. All he could do was pluck away the seals from the window, open it, and fling himself out, holding his adored little sister tightly in his arms.
‘Why Christine herself wasn’t gassed is rather a mystery. Perhaps her head was right under the bedclothes, pressed against her brother’s chest – they always slept together. Anyway, the child was taken to hospital, then to the home where you and Mr James first saw her … and a lucky day that was for little Christine!’
‘So her brother saved her life and died himself?’ I said.
‘Yes. He was a very brave young man.’
‘Perhaps he thought not so much of saving her as of keeping her with him. Oh dear! That sounds ungenerous. I didn’t mean to be. Miss Cleaver, what was his name?’
‘I’ll have to look that up for you.’ She referred to one of her many files and said at last: ‘The family’s name was Jones and the fourteen-year-old brother was called “Harold”.’
‘And did he have red hair?’ I murmured.
‘That I don’t know, Mrs James.’
‘But it’s Harry. The boy was Harry.
