Read Online A Presumption of Death by Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh - Free Book Online

Glancing through them Harriet saw to her amazement the letters VD against some of the children’s names, and one VD against the address of Mr Maggs.
    ‘Good lord, Mrs Goodacre!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve heard of bed-wetting and head-lice among the children, but VD?’
    ‘Well, a lot of them were, when they arrived, and as for that Mrs Maggs, you should have seen her kitchen, Harriet . . .’
    ‘A lot of them were what?’ asked Harriet faintly. ‘And what was in the kitchen?’
    ‘Very dirty,’ said Mrs Goodacre. ‘It’s my shorthand for very dirty. And what was in the kitchen was cockroaches.’
    ‘Well, thank heavens for that!’ said Harriet.
    ‘Thank heavens?’ said Mrs Goodacre in surprise.
    ‘That it was nothing worse,’ said Harriet solemnly.
    ‘I suppose things could have been worse,’ said Mrs Goodacre doubtfully. ‘But I do rather feel that the government have been a little unimaginative about some things: dislocation of commerce, and evacuation and that kind of thing. They seem, the government, I mean, to have thought out the beginning of everything very well, and then to have rather stopped thinking! Like the schoolchildren for example: I expect it was necessary to get them out without any books or pencils or anything to the nearest available place; but I do think the government might have helped the subsequent arrangements rather more, and got the schools together and organised the distribution of equipment and things.’
    ‘Well, if they thought we could be relied on to just get on and manage, they might not be so wrong, Mrs Goodacre,’ said Harriet, smiling at her friend.
    ‘But it’s a dreadful pity that so many of the children are being taken home again; it’s so good for them to get a bit of air and exercise, and find out how country people live. Someone told me the other day that her little London boy had piped up suddenly and asked if sheep laid eggs! Did you ever!’
    ‘I suppose it’s natural for parents to want their children with them,’ said Harriet. ‘When large-scale bombing begins—’
    ‘Paggleham at least will have an up-to-date register of billets,’ said Mrs Goodacre.
    Harriet’s tour of duty revealed nothing that surprised her. Mrs Marbleham, billeted above the greengrocer’s shop in pleasant sunny rooms, was very far from grateful. She complained to Harriet that she was woken every morning by the greengrocer setting up shop at an unearthly hour, clattering his boxes as he spread out across the pavement, and whistling to himself as he worked. Harriet wondered if she could ask him not to whistle, and decided against it.
    ‘It must be nice to have his shop just down the stairs, though,’ she offered.
    ‘Not really. We don’t eat vegetables. Not being pigs. Not like some,’ the woman replied.
    ‘Vegetables are good for you,’ suggested Harriet, rather dismayed on behalf of the Marbleham boys.
    ‘Well, we don’t eat them. Only chips,’ was the reply. ‘What I wouldn’t give to be back right near a good fish and chip shop . . .’
    Harriet couldn’t help that. She was more useful at Mrs Maggs’s cottage. The Maggses had a rambling set of bedrooms up a second stair that had once housed the blacksmith’s apprentices. They had taken in six boys, aged from ten to fourteen, from two different families. One family had sent enough warm clothes, and the other had sent nothing. One family paid up their ten and six for the first child, and eight and sixpence a week for the others very regularly; the second family had sent nothing. At least the clothes could be sorted out; Harriet wrote out a ticket to the clothes exchange organised by the WVS.
    The third family she visited was very crowded, with the daughter sharing her bedroom with a little London girl who cried for her mother at night. And billets in Paggleham were not plentiful.
    Passing the end of Church Lane on her way back to the Vicarage, it occurred to Harriet that Susan Hodge’s cottage, rented