Mr Cadmus. Peter Ackroyd

      Millicent Swallow hated the Hammersmith house ever since she could remember. She was now thirteen, but her anger and resentment had grown. It was of dark grey stone with a decoration of red brick of no discernible pattern. She hated the fact that when relatives came to stay she was sometimes obliged to share a bed with her mother or even, worst hell of all, with her grandmother. She watched them when they washed their breasts in the kitchen sink, to save the hot water of a bath, and stared at her grandmother when she climbed upstairs with a chamber pot. She hated the smells of the two women when they took off their corsets. When they called out to her in the morning, ‘Millikin!’, she blenched. There was no way out of this. She was trapped in the little house, with all its smells and its dustiness.

      She kept a budgerigar, Clementine, in a small cage in her bedroom. One afternoon her grandmother opened the the door to the cage, in order to clean it, and Clementine flew out. Pursued by the old woman the bird fluttered, and faltered, but eventually escaped out of the open bedroom window. Millicent had never forgiven the woman, and indulged in a hatred that was almost joyful in its intensity. She believed that her grandmother, out of malice towards her, had deliberately released the bird. But she took care not to show her anger. She remained outwardly polite and amiable. Her mother and grandmother had endless arguments and rows that led to screaming matches. In one of them an incautious reference gave her the impression that her real father had left home just after she was born. She was soon convinced that the two women had driven him away, so that now she was trapped with them. Her grandmother would hurl plates or saucers at her mother, whereupon her mother would walk out, shutting the door very loudly as the grandmother called after her ‘And what about the poor child?’ Millicent was always shaken by these episodes, which only increased her resentment and distaste for both women.

      At the bottom of the little garden was a wooden shed that contained a miniature toy dog, gardening tools, a rusting lawn-mower and several half-empty tins of paint. It was here that Millicent would come when she wished to avoid the others in the house. She felt that she had concealed herself, and could spend long periods in solitary meditation. She had not yet outgrown the shaggy toy dog. He was still her friend and adviser. He sat astride one of the tins of paint, his four legs akimbo. His name was Montmorency.

      ‘They have become wild beasts again,’ she told him. ‘Screaming and carrying on. As if the neighbours can’t hear. Of course they can. I know Mrs Wilson pities me. But I don’t want pity. I want them to be arrested.’

      ‘And what would happen then?’ Montmorency asked her.

      ‘They would be sent to prison. That’s what I would like.’

      ‘You are talking about your ma and grandma.’

      ‘Call them mother and grandmother.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

      ‘There is nothing you can do.’

      ‘But why should I be trapped? I have nothing to say to them. I want nothing to do with them.’

      ‘They are your family.’

      ‘I hate families. I hate mealtimes. I hate listening to the wireless. I hate them.’

      ‘But what would you do without them?’

      ‘I would survive. I’ll be old enough next year to leave school.’

      ‘And then what would you do?’

      ‘I don’t know. Become a nurse. Or a typist. Something like that.’

      ‘Or a nun?’

      ‘Why are you staring at me?’

      ‘I’m not staring, Millicent.’

      ‘Your eyes look like fire.’

      ‘It is the light of the sun setting. It shines through the window at this time of day.’

      A curious auditory illusion of this area was the apparent sound of waves breaking against the shore, accompanied by the crash of crumbling cliffs. Everyone recognised the noise and justifiably explained it as the roadworks for the new motorway. But Millicent knew better. She believed it to be another beach and shoreline just beneath the surface of the earth. They would find the stairway when they were older.

      Millicent often held such conversations with Montmorency in the privacy of the garden shed. Unfortunately they were both quarrelsome by nature, and there were occasions when she would snatch up the dog and hurl it to the other side of the hut before breaking down in tearful apologies. Sometimes she would sing to him, cradling him in her arms. Sometimes she would lay him down to sleep, a small cloth over him as a blanket.

      There was a call from the house. ‘Milly!’ It was her grandmother. ‘Supper’s ready. It’s your favourite!’

      ‘What is your favourite?’ Montmorency asked her.

      ‘Anything they don’t have to touch.’

      She had two more terms at school, and was intent on making her plans for the future with Montmorency. They whispered together.

      Weeks passed and Millicent’s frustration grew. On Thursday nights her grandmother would prepare a batch of chips in a frying pan greased with fat. The fat would then be allowed to cool overnight to make dripping. Millicent knew well enough when her mother and grandmother had fallen asleep; she was familiar with the rhythm of their breathing and snoring that could be heard through the paper-thin walls of the little house. She waited until she could wait no longer. Two months later, silently she opened the window of her bedroom and climbed down the stairs; she crossed the living room into the kitchen where the pan of fat lay beside the oven. She turned on one of the gas rings and lit it with a long match. As the fat seethed and bubbled she opened the door into the garden. She went back to the stove, and then threw another lit match into the pan. The fat burst into flames at once, and at that moment Millicent ran out into the garden and closed the door behind her. As soon as the flames took hold of the house, she began to call out ‘Fire! Fire!’ She knew that her mother and grandmother slept well, and kept her voice low. But the smoke was now creeping about her and she screamed in earnest. Some windows were opened. ‘Fire! Fire!’ In the confusion the fire brigade was called by a young neighbour, Peggy, from a telephone box at the corner of the street.

      By the time the firemen came, it was too late to save the lives of the two women trapped in the flames. It seemed to be little short of a miracle that the girl had survived and was quite unhurt. Of course she broke down in tears when told about her mother and grandmother, and she was for a while inconsolable. She spent the rest of the night sitting in the kitchen of a neighbour, drinking tea. She was questioned gently by a police detective on the following morning. Yes, she had smelled the smoke and heard the sound of fire; instinctively she had opened the window of her little bedroom and, driven by fear, she had jumped down to the garden. It was a distance of only a few feet, and she had not been injured. Still, she could not help but limp a little.

      When the fire took hold of the house, she never heard any sound from her mother and grandmother; they must have beeen smothered as they slept. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose.

      ‘You had a lucky escape, young lady,’ the policeman said to her.

      ‘Lucky?’ She blushed.

      Her aunt Helen came to collect her that afternoon; she was now Millicent’s most prominent living relative; and she was very tearful. She was wearing a large black hat, and Millicent noticed with disgust that she had a perpetually dripping nose. ‘You poor thing,’ she said, as she threw her arms about the girl. Millicent was carrying Montmorency, who was only slightly singed. She gently disengaged herself from her aunt’s embrace.

      Millicent had already decided that she did not want to attend a new school. She would be fourteen the following month, and had no need to do so. ‘You know,’ she told her aunt after living with her for a month or two, ‘I think I might be a good nurse.’ Aunt Helen was delighted. It would take this difficult girl off her hands; she had in fact two nieces who had looked on her for support and protection during the war. As well as