The Wardrobe Read Online Free PDF Page B

newspapers. They have started to bomb London. The air raid sirens are no longer false alarms. Whole areas are reduced to rubble and it is fearful to see.
    But, oh Emily, the bravery which rises above the fear is inspirational and I am so proud of my countrymen. Not only do people rally to help one another in moments of crisis but everyday life goes on. Services continue. Workmen brave the blackout to perform menial tasks. A plumber arrived only the other day to tend to our kitchen sink and, when the siren sounded, he said, ‘Blast Hitler’, and continued his work. And several weeks ago we attended the West End theatre. (A performance of Noel Coward’s Cavalcade, which was most enjoyable.) When a siren sounded halfway through the second act, an interval was called for those who wished to go to the bomb shelters and then the actors simply went on with the play. The people of London are thumbing their noses at Hitler, and I know that such spirit will win out and that good will triumph. It is remarkable. Prime Minister Churchill is quite right. This is our ‘finest hour’.
    Your loving friend,
Margaret
    And that was it. The last letter. No more. Had Margaret been killed in the bombing of London? I could only suppose so. There was nothing else in the Arnott’s biscuit tin and I felt empty. Bereft. Margaret was gone. Geoffrey was gone. There was no more news of Harry and Emily and the children. What had happened since 1940?
    I resolved to find out. But where to start? Geoffrey’s law firm! Of course! I sifted back through the letters. There it was. Brigstock, Gracy and Tomlinson. I dialled directory assistance and, in no time at all, the helpful woman on the end of the line found me the number.
    I looked at my watch. Nearly half past eight – that would make it around ten-thirty am London time, I thought. Good.
    ‘I’m enquiring about a Mr. Geoffrey Brigstock,’ I said to the very cultivated voice on the end of the line. ‘I wondered whether –’
    ‘Mr. Brigstock is in Singapore and he shan’t be back for a week.’ There remained, beneath the woman’s carefully rounded vowels, the faintest tinge of her cockney origins. ‘Might he contact you?’
    ‘Oh. No. Thank you.’ I was so delighted to discover Geoffrey was alive that I wasn’t sure what my next step should be. ‘I’ll write to him,’ I said finally, and I took down the address the woman gave me.
    Yes, a letter would certainly be easier, the words must be chosen with care. How exactly did one say, ‘I have just finished reading the letters your wife wrote to her best friend for twenty years and I want to know what happened to the two of them’?
    It was surprising to discover that Geoffrey was still working. I’d presumed he was around the same age as Emily and Margaret – that would put him well into his seventies, but perhaps he’d been younger.
    It took me a good two hours to compose the letter and, even then, when I awoke in the morning and re-read it I spent a further hour on rewrites.
    After I’d been to the post office, I wandered about the streets of Surry Hills making enquiries. Emily had lived in Alexander Street for over fifty years; the locals must have known her.
    It was disappointing. The locals certainly knew of old Mrs. Roper from 21A, but apparently nobody had known the woman herself.
    She appeared to be a creature of habit. She went to the butcher’s and the greengrocer’s on Saturday mornings, and every Friday late afternoon she settled her weekly account with the newsagent.
    I thought I might be getting somewhere when I chatted to the exuberant little Italian woman who ran the corner store. ‘Thirty years I been live here,’ Mrs. Panozzi boasted in her thick Neapolitan accent. ‘Me and my husband the first Italians live in Surry Hills. All the rest, Greek.’ Thirty years. Perfect, I thought, she would have known the younger Emily. But, again, it was a brick wall.
    ‘Oh, very nice, very nice lady,’ Mrs. Panozzi assured