The little boy stood there, quite alone. He looked around the bedroom. A big double bed, neatly made. Pale wallpaper with a flowered design, pink, yellow and green. A large eastern rug covered most of the floor. The sunbeam coming through the window showed up dust particles. Through the window, he could see the downtown traffic but could barely hear its hum.

Their voices receded as they went down the stairs. They had closed the door behind them leaving him in the empty room. They told him he could unpack if he wanted and to put his clothes into the chest of drawers. They would be back later to help.

He sighed and moved towards his suitcase lying on the bed. He stood; he didn't want to do anything. He felt that feeling around his eyes as though tears were going to come. No! He mustn't cry!

"Hello, little boy."

His heart gave a great big jump as he looked around. No one there!

"Here I am, over here."

Oh, there she is — one of the little girls in the picture on the wall was speaking to him. The other two girls were smiling at him in a friendly way. They looked nice — it pleased him to see them.

"Come over here." So he went over. "What's your name?"

"My name's Willy."

The girls were all bigger than Willy, but not by too much. They seemed to be sisters. The tallest was doing the talking. They were pretty, something like the girls at the school in Brighton where he had just come from. He was overawed by them and waited wide-eyed, watching them, his heart beating rapidly.

"What're you doing here, Willy?"

"My aunt brought me here."

"What for?"

"To live, I think. I can't stay with her because my granny's very ill and everyone has to look after her."

"Where's your father and mother?"

"They're in Egypt, I think."

"Goodness me! That's a long way away. What're they doing there?"

"My father's in the Air Force."

"When were you with your parents last?"

"I dunno — a long time ago."

He stopped. The tears felt as though they were going to have to come. He missed Zagul and Grimmo back in Egypt. He loved Zagul. Zagul was always there looking after him, protecting him from the dogs, comforting him when the grown- ups got angry with him.

Zagul was tall, taller than anyone else around. He wore a long white gown, stretching all the way down to his bony bare feet. And, he wore nothing else except, of course, the fez. The fez that the boy admired so. It was perched like an inverted red plant pot, wide side down, on the very top of Zagul's head, with a black tassel coming from the middle of the narrower top. It made him seem taller than ever and you could always see where he was. What a sight Zagul was, striding around, arms whirling in the air chasing the other servants about their jobs. Then he would turn his scowling black face to the boy and a great smile would break out just like the sun coming from behind a dark cloud. He would take the boy's hand in his. The boy felt safe and happy.

Grimmo came later, from Australia. She was the boy's nanny. She had a funny way of talking, but she would hug and kiss the boy. He liked that. She would play with him, take him swimming and be with him at the hotel when all the men in uniform and the ladies in pretty dresses would sit drinking. They would be talking and laughing very loudly and didn't have much time for the boy.

Grimmo was a great favourite with the owner of a "fig factory" (it was really a place for packing figs and dates for sale in the shops). He was a middle-aged greying dignified Egyptian with a neat mustache. He used to give her Turkish coffee and, true to custom, sprinkle her with rosewater while she drank it. He placated the boy with dates, figs and his favourite halvah. Before the boy left Egypt, he gave him a fez, just like Zagul's, only smaller.

* * *

Meanwhile, downstairs, Mrs. Birkin joined her husband at the kitchen table after seeing the aunt to the front door. She sat down with him. "You'd think the mother would come with the boy," she said. "The aunt didn't say anything about paying either."

"Well, we must watch out for that. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. For all their fur coats and their hoity-toity manners, they ain't good at paying when they should."

"I know, I know. I should've got some money out of her. But, he looks such a nice little boy. It'd help me to have him. I'm always near crying and I'm so down. Looking after him'll take my mind off the girls."

Her husband got up and put his hand on her shoulder. "There, there, mother. Don't you worry about that right now. You'd better go and see what the boy's up to."

* * *

A few days later they were sitting at the kitchen table going over the days' happenings, when he said, "Well, old girl, how's the boy doing? He seems very nice, but he ain't very lively and he don't seem all that cheerful. Can't get a smile out of him nohow."

"Oh, he's fine, Bert. I think he'll take a while to settle in. He's a nice boy."

"Well, that's good. It'll help take your mind off the girls, won't it?"

At that the wife burst into tears. "Oh, Bert, I don't know! I don't know..." She couldn't speak for sobbing. He got up, stood beside her and squeezed her to him.

"There, there, old girl, what's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing that won't go away. It's just you talking about the girls."

"Come on, what is it? There's something bothering you, I know. Let's have it. Better out than in, eh?"

"Well," she said, "you know that picture we had done of the girls a month before God took them? Oh, why did He do it? Why did that have to happen to us? We've never done anything bad!"

"Well, old girl, we been over this before. You know this is the way it is. It's no good. We've got to accept it. Anyway, what about the picture?"

"I know it's silly," she said, "but Willy says he's been talking to the girls and I can't stand it when he does that."

"Ah! that's just his imagination. He doesn't really mean it. He's pretending he's back at the girls' school."

"He sounds really serious about it. He says he goes round the corner when he undresses so they won't see him naked." "Hah! he's just pulling your leg."

"I really don't think so. But I don't care what he's doing," she said," I just can't stand the idea of him talking to our girls when they've gone from us forever. I don't care whether it's real or not."

"Come on, now, old girl, you can't let this get you down like this."

"Well, I can't help it. It has got me down. I even went up there when he was out and stood by the picture. I kind of hoped that God might make a miracle after all we've suffered. Even if I'd have imagined it, it would have been some comfort. But there was nothing. Nothing happened."

She sat in silence for a while. He stood beside her, an arm around her shoulder. He gently tightened his hold but said nothing. Then she said, "But, while I was standing there, I got the strangest feeling. It made me think something was going to happen. I started thinking about that teacher that was so fond of the girls. What is her name?"

"Miss Becket," he replied.'

A little later, she said, "Bert, do you remember how lonely she was? Living in that house with just her brother to look after? He's always out, anyway."

"Ye-e-s," he said. "No wonder she never got a man. Typical schoolmistress: know-it-all. Scrawny, with those glasses that pinch on the nose with a frenchified name. 'Pince knees' or something like that they call them."

Several days later the formidable Miss Becket came for tea for the first time. A few visits later the boy left with her with all his worldly goods.

Many years later, when the boy was an old man, he used to think of Becky, for that is what he called her. Becky was a severe task mistress, making sure the boy knew all his tables, his French irregular verbs and his Latin gender rhymes (which he still remembered). Although she was hard on the boy, she was the only one in his whole life who believed that he had talked to the girls in the picture. She was convinced that they were some kind of divine intervention delivering him up to her for her special care. She also went to a great deal of trouble to purchase a fez of the right size to replace the one that the boy lost at a girls' school in Brighton.

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