Percy shook his head sadly at the memory. 'Cribben were up front, leadin' 'em, Magda fetchin' up the rear, watchin' out for any mischief the kids might get up to along the way. Maurice Stafford marched with her at the back, a tall boy, like I say, who looked older than he were. For some reason he was treated different from the others by the Cribbens. A tattle-tell, he were, I found out later. Told on the other kids if they did anythin' wrong. A big kid all right, but skinny, awkward-lookin'. I remember him grinnin' at me as he passed by, cocky with it, a great black gap in his grin where a tooth should've been. He weren't liked by the other kiddies an' there were a reason for that. Teacher's pet, he were. An' sly, very sly. A sneak. I found out about that when Nancy came to teach at Crickley Hall'
He came to a stop again and Eve wondered if he were picturing this Nancy in his mind. He seemed far away, lost to another time.
'Tell me about her,' Eve gently prompted and the old gardener collected himself, clearing his throat, stiffening his shoulders.
'Nancy—Linnet were her surname, Linnet like the little bird—Nancy were nineteen years of age. Pretty thing, she were, delicate like, but strong in herself, if yer knows my meanin'…'
Like the eleven evacuees at Crickley Hall, Nancy Linnet was also an orphan who had been raised in an institutional home in the suburbs of London. She had left the home at the age of sixteen to dedicate her life to teaching and aspiring to educate underprivileged children, especially those who were orphans like herself. She had jumped at the opportunity to teach the orphans at Hollow Bay.
'Nancy had ringlets that shone like bright copper down to her shoulders,' Percy told Eve, 'an' merry hazel eyes, an' she had freckles on her cheeks that made her look like a twelve-year-old. Well, we sort of took a shine to one another, me an' Nancy. Oh, I knew she were too good fer me an' I used to think the only reason I stood a chance with her were 'cause she had a withered arm. That didn't spoil her beauty fer me, not one little bit, but other lads in them days… Well, there were a different attitude towards disfigurement then, only by the time the war were over an' all them pilots an' sailors an' soldiers come back with burnt-off faces an' missin' limbs, people started to get used to such things. Not entirely, though—some people nowadays still can't abide other people's afflictions, but I s'pose there's no changin' that.'
He gave a mournful shake of his head. 'Anyway, we struck up a friendship—a courtship yer might say—an' through her I got to know more about what was goin' on in Crickley Hall, things I hadn't seen fer myself…'
The children's routine was stringent as it was inflexible. They rose at six every morning, weekends included, and made their own beds before washing and dressing; they had breakfast, then attended assembly in the hall where Cribben led them in prayer; by eight o'clock they began lessons in the large drawing room (it was also their dining room), which had been furnished with desks that had fold-up benches attached, a teacher's table with drawers, a coloured tin globe of the world that stood on a sideboard, and a blackboard and easel. Their lunch was at twelve o'clock and only lasted twenty minutes, after which they were each given chores to do around the house: sweeping, dusting and polishing (scrubbing floors on Saturdays), cleaning out the fire grate and re-laying the fire in the sitting room and for the Cribbens alone (despite the constant chill that hugged the house because of the underground river it was built over, the boiler was never used to heat the big iron radiators). Lessons resumed at two and finished at six. They were free to read books in the dormitory until seven (no games were allowed), when they had supper. Bathtime after supper, each of the children bathing on alternate evenings, more assembly prayers in their nightclothes, then bed, lights out by 8 p.m.
Nancy herself lodged in the harbour village, and she arrived at Crickley Hall promptly at 7.45 a.m. every day for lessons, leaving at six each evening.
'It were the punishment dealt out to the kiddies that upset Nancy so much, the beatin's Cribben gave 'em, sometimes with a leather belt but more often with a stick. Nancy was a quiet little thing, but it distressed her the way the orphans was treated. She remonstrated with Cribben more 'n once, but she were frightened to go too far in case she got sacked—couldn't bear to leave the children, she couldn't, in case they was treated worse when she were gone. One time she did go see the vicar, old Horace Rossbridger, to complain about the Cribbens, but he were too much an admirer of Augustus Cribben to listen to her. Told Nancy to go back to work an' mind her business. But I think Nancy resolved to do more about it, but I don't know what.'
Eve regarded Percy. 'What do you mean? Surely—'
He waved a hand at her as if in despair. 'I was conscripted into the army roun' that time. I'd turned eighteen an' the Forces needed every man and lad they could get.'
(Eve quickly did the maths. My God! Percy was eighty-one!)
'We kep' in touch by letter, Nancy an' me, but her letters stopped comin'. Las' one I got from her said she'd made up her mind an' were goin' to the authorities to tell 'em what were goin' on at Crickley Hall. I carried on writin' to her, but nothin' ever came back after that. So I got in touch with her landlady at the lodgings an' she wrote back tellin' me Nancy had quit her job and gone away. Magda Cribben turned up one day at the lodgings and informed the landlady that Nancy was returnin' to London that very afternoon an' needed the rest of her things. Magda didn't explain any more, jus' collected Nancy's few clothes and left with 'em. Nobody heard from Nancy agin'. She were hardly known down in the village anyway and it were wartime—people comin' an' goin' all the time. Nobody bothered to ask questions.'
'But didn't you find Nancy after the war?' asked Eve, touched by Percy and Nancy's romance.
'Oh, I tried, Missus Caleigh, believe me, I tried, but I weren't demobbed 'til late '46 an' by then… well, by then the trail'd gone cold. People went missin' durin' war an' more went missin' after. It was all the confusion, y'see, the country was a mess, gov'mint an' people tryin' to get back to normal. The authorities had no record of Nancy after '43 an' there were too much goin' on for them to care much. Said she probably returned to London and were mebbe killed in the bombing—it was them doodlebugs, them flying bombs that were doing the damage in '44. Bigger ones after that—V-2s they called 'em…'
Percy Judd had searched for but never found Nancy Linnet. After the flood in October 1943, Crickley Hall remained empty and almost derelict for several years. He was kept on as gardener and handyman by the managing agents who looked after the property for the owners, the direct descendants of Charles Crickley, who had moved to Canada at the beginning of the Second World War and had lost interest in the house (which was soon requisitioned by the government for official wartime use). Percy confessed to Eve that he stayed with the place in the foolish hope that Nancy might some day return, or at least make contact with him there. But it was not to be: it was as if his sweetheart had disappeared off the face of the earth itself.
Eventually the house was restored to its former condition—Percy could not force himself to say it was restored to its former glory, because he had never found anything remotely glorious about the place—by successive owners, the last of whom were the Templetons. But rumours about the Hall had spread among the villagers. Rumours that the children had been deliberately trapped in Crickley Hall's cellar on the night of the flood. Rumours that had never entirely gone away.