Theatre Shoes Read Free Page B

always did sensible things without any fuss, but then she might not. She pushed her sweet into her cheek and turned to Mark.
    â€œWhen we get to grandmother’s, if you and Holly don’t like things awfully, you will tell me, won’t you?”
    Mark had been thinking of catapults; he came back to the train with a jump. Sorrel had to repeat what she had said. He fixed puzzled eyes on her.
    â€œWhat sort of things?”
    Sorrel wished she had not said anything, it was so difficult to explain.
    â€œJust things. I mean, I want you to know I’m there.”
    Mark thought she was being idiotic.
    â€œOf course you’ll be there; where else would you be?” He went back to thinking about catapults.

CHAPTER III
    NUMBER 14
    They drove to grandmother’s in a taxi. The children stared out of the windows. After Martins London seemed a busy place. Buses dashing everywhere and crowds of people on the pavements. They asked Hannah every sort of question because she had once been to London for the day and so they thought she ought to know all about it. Where was Madame Tussaud’s? Where was The Tower? Where was Westminster Abbey? Where was the Zoo? Hannah had no idea where any of these places were, but neither had she any intention of admitting it. She looked out of the window with a thoughtful, pulling-things-out-of-her-memory expression, and said: “We’re not so far now.” As the station they had arrived at was Paddington and they were making for a square near Sloane Street they never went anywhere near any of the places, but by the time the taxi stopped they were all too full of interest in what they were seeing to remember what they had not seen.
    No. 14, Ponsonby Square, London, S.W.I, was the address. Ponsonby Square was not a square really, only three sides of one. Tall grey houses all attached to each other, all alike, all built in the reign of Queen Victoria, when houses were long and thin and people expected their servants to live underground in basements, and not to mind carrying water and coals and other heavy things up five flights of stairs. Number 14 looked as if it was the only house in its bit of the square that was being lived in. Number 11 had been blown away by a bomb and nothing was left of it but different-coloured walls and some mantelpieces, which were part of the wall of Number 10, and some more wallpapers and a piece of staircase and a door, which were part of the wall of Number 12. The other houses within sight looked rather battered, and some had lost bits of themselves and it was clear no one lived in them, for they had large E’s painted on the doors. Even if the children had not guessed that meant empty, the rusty petrol tins of emergency water on the doorsteps would have told them, for nobody surely would live in a house with a petrol tin standing just where you were bound to fall over it every time you came out.
    The children’s schools were in the country and they had only been in little towns and had not seen much bomb damage before, and never deserted houses which people had been forced to leave in a hurry. Hannah was busy with the taxi-driver and they had not for a moment her sensible, comforting way of looking at things to help them. They stood staring round with horror written all over their faces.
    â€œPeople can’t live here,” said Mark. “It’s much too nasty.”
    Sorrel had her eyes on the space which had been Number 11.
    â€œHow queer to think that once had a door and windows and people coming in and out.”
    Holly began to cry.
    â€œI don’t like it. I want to go back to Martins. It’s all so dirty here.”
    Hannah swung round from the pile of luggage she and the driver were counting.
    â€œWhat’s all this about?” She glanced at Number 14 and along the square. If, to her country eyes, it seemed as depressing as it did to the children not a sign of it showed on her face. She beamed as if the