“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t understand the flatness of his expression. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got something for Susan,” he repeated. “I’m staying at the vicar’s overnight. You’re in the Thortons’ old gamekeeper’s cottage, right? Can I come around after tea?”
I nodded. Butter nudged my arm. I reached up to pat him. Stephen mounted his bicycle and started away. “Wait—come back!” I called.
He said over his shoulder, “After tea.”
• • •
When I asked Fred about it he shook his head. “Ah, Stephen, that’s a bad business,” he said. “Reckon I’ll let him tell you. Seems that’s what he wants.”
“Why was the colonel’s house shut up?”
“The colonel died,” Fred said. “Back weeks ago, just after you went away. Died in his sleep. He were eighty-eight years old.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I’d quite liked the colonel.
Fred looked uncomfortable. “Ah, well—I didn’t think of it right off. It wasn’t a tragedy, an old man passing. Then the other came right on the heels.” Fred paused. “Stephen said he’s coming to see you tonight?” I nodded. “That’s good,” Fred said. “He’ll tell you himself.”
I couldn’t get any more out of him. I untacked Butter, rubbed him down, and put him back in his stall with fresh water and hay. Then I went down the row of stalls—Maggie’s pony, Ivy; Jonathan’s beautiful horse, Oban; Lord and Lady Thorton’s hunters—checking water buckets and giving out hay. I got out a wheelbarrow and pitchfork—I could use a wheelbarrow now I had two good feet—but Fred took them away from me. “That’s enough for your first day,” he said.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said, “unless you need me tonight. I’m ready to work hard.” If I learned everything Fred could teach me, perhaps I could get a paying job in a stable when I was a little older. It wasn’t impossible.
“You’ll not push yourself,” Fred said.
“Fred.” I grinned at him. “I have to.”
• • •
Susan thought we should have our tea with Stephen. She and Jamie had gone shopping. She made fish paste sandwiches and brewed a fresh pot of tea, and we set the little table for four. When Stephen came in he was carrying a paper bag. He looked at the table, not smiling. He sat down.
Jamie plopped into the chair beside him. “How’s Billy?” Billy, Stephen’s little brother, was Jamie’s best friend.
Stephen swallowed. He started to speak. He choked, swallowed, and tried again. He tried two or three times before his mouth would make words. Then he said, “Dead.”
Chapter 7
Susan caught her breath. Jamie made a sound halfway between a sob and a scream. I was sure I’d heard Stephen wrong. Billy White was the same age as Jamie. Billy White couldn’t be dead.
Stephen said, “The Nazis bombed London fifty-seven straight nights.”
I knew that. I’d been in London for the first night of it. Mam’s factory had been hit the next week.
Stephen said, “They’re all gone.”
Jamie said, “Not Billy—”
“Gone where?” I asked, stupidly, before I realized what he meant. “Oh. Oh, Stephen. Not—not all of them?”
Stephen’s little brother and three little sisters had all been evacuated, same as Jamie and Stephen and me. But when there weren’t any bombs at the start of the war, lots of parents, including Stephen’s, took their evacuated children home. Stephen only stayed because the colonel had become so frail he needed Stephen’s help.
“All except my dad,” Stephen said. “He was at work. If only I’d—”
“You don’t know that,” Susan said quickly. “War is terrible.”
Tears streaked down Jamie’s face, and Susan’s. I could feel them starting to roll down mine. Stephen didn’t cry. He looked like he might never cry again.
“Dad and me, we’re going to stick close now,” he said. “Pay the Germans back, we will.”
I couldn’t picture Stephen’s father. I knew he worked at the docks. Where we grew up, nearly all the men did.
“Anyhow,” Stephen said, “I brought you something. Found it in the wreckage of your house. I had a look around, after you left but before the bulldozers came.”
The airfield near our old house had used the rubble from our home to fill bomb blasts in their runways. I knew that. Now Stephen reached into his bag. “It isn’t much—”
I didn’t expect much. We’d rummaged through the wreckage ourselves the day after the bombing, and not found anything worth saving beyond a few pots and pans.
“It’s this.” Stephen set a battered metal frame in front of Susan.
Susan gasped. She grabbed the frame. Then she threw her arms around Stephen.
It was Susan’s photograph of her friend Becky, the one that had stood on her bedside table. The glass in the frame was broken, but the photograph was fine.
Stephen said, “I thought it might be important.”
Susan used her handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “I couldn’t replace it,” she said.
He nodded. “I know. I wish I had a photograph of my family.”
I didn’t have a photo of Mam. Or Jamie, or myself, or my father. Mam’s flat had been hit the night Jamie and I were in it; we’d barely escaped. We hadn’t had photographs anyhow. No one did, on our lane.
“Have some tea,” Susan said to Stephen, very gently.
“I can’t stay,” Stephen said. “The vicar’s expecting me. I only came back to the village in the first place to fetch the things I’d left here. I’m leaving tomorrow, early train.”
“Visit when you can,” Susan said. “You’re always welcome here. Send us your address. We’ll write.”
“I don’t think they get much mail on ships,” Stephen said.
“They do,” Susan said. “We’ll write you. We’re so sorry.”
Stephen stood. At the doorway he turned. “I’m glad your operation worked, Ada,” he said. “You’re walking grand.”
“Our mam died too,” I said.
A cloud passed over his face. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I suppose I’m sorry. I’ll say I’m sorry.”
I nodded. “I say I’m sorry too.”
“All right, then.” The door closed and he was gone.
Chapter 8
Thorton House stood in front of the stables, square and grand like a palace. I never went there. I never even walked around to the front side. Now I fidgeted in the stable yard, staring at the house’s empty windows. “Why isn’t Maggie home?”
“Another day or two,” Fred said. “She’ll be here before Christmas.”
You’d think I’d have learned patience in the hospital, but I hadn’t. I wanted Maggie and galloping and sunshine and summer and all I had was cold rain and miserable footing to ride in. I wore a pair of Maggie’s cast-off paddock boots to do the morning chores, and by the time I got back to the cottage they were soaked through. Susan fussed at me. She fussed about everything. The cottage was furnished, but it wasn’t well-equipped, and we needed scads of things we’d never be able to buy. The stores were mostly empty, because of the war.
Susan said, “I don’t know what we’ll eat for Christmas dinner. The butcher wasn’t expecting us back.” You had to register your ration cards with specific shops in order to buy rationed food, and of course that took some time. Meat was rationed. So was bacon, butter, cooking fat, tea. Jam, sweets, everything you’d actually want to eat. Fortunately, Jamie and I grew up hungry enough that we weren’t picky.
Jamie said, “No GOOSE?”
So maybe Jamie was picky. Living with Susan spoiled him. I wasn’t. We’d had roast goose last Christmas, my first goose and my first real Christmas. We’d invited three pilots from the airfield to share our dinner. They were all dead now.
Dead pilots. Dead Mam.
Dead colonel. Dead Stephen’s family.
I counted them off on my fingers. Ten people. They took up every finger I had.
I could hardly breathe.
“I’ll make lunch,” I said. “Jamie, get up. There’s still dishes left from breakfast. Go wash them.” Jamie was rolling with Bovril on the rug. “Get busy.”
“Jamie’s fine,” Susan said. “The dishes can wait.”
I poked Jamie. “Get to work—now!” I went to the kitchen. “What do we need from town? I’ll go get it.”
Susan raised her eyebrows. “Not in this rain. Not now. We can make do.”
“I want to be useful.”
“Sit and work some fractions for me. That’s useful.”
I’d never been to school. I’d hoped to go after my surgery, but the village school was closed because most of the village children got evacuated north during the Battle of Britain. Susan was teaching me at home, same as always.
Fractions made me feel stupid. When the bottom number got bigger, the real number got smaller, which was the opposite of how I thought it should be. Five was larger than three—but one-third was larger than one-fifth. Then Susan expected me to add them, + ⅓, even though five had nothing to do with three.
I looked out the window at the rain.
Susan set a weak cup of tea in front of me. Tea was rationed strictly enough that we never could brew it as strongly as I’d like. “Take your time,” Susan said. “Draw it out.” She’d taught me to draw pictures for fractions, half a pie, a third of a pie, a fifth of a pie. The drawings were like a different kind of map.
“Too many dragons,” I said. I stabbed my pencil against the paper. The point snapped.
“Yes,” said Susan. She handed me her penknife to resharpen the pencil. “Maths dragons are the worst.”
“I thought you loved maths.” She’d studied it at university, at a place called Oxford.
“I do. But its dragons are fierce.”
Suddenly the front door flung wide. Maggie swooped into the room. “Ada!” she yelled. “Happy Christmas! I’m finally home!”
“Maggie!” I jumped up and threw my arms around her. “Finally!”
She laughed. “Finally! Look at you! Look at you! No crutches!”
“Shoes!” I said.
“Does it hurt?”
“Hardly at all. Want to see?”
“Please!”
I stripped my foot bare and stood on it. My ankle could bend almost half an inch now. More than ever. Maggie ran her fingers over my scar. “That’s amazing,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
I laughed. “There’s so much.”
Susan brought in three more mugs of bad tea. “You’ll stay for lunch, Maggie?”
Maggie pulled a face. “Can’t,” she said. “I promised Mum I’d go shopping. The housekeeper has a cold, so Mum said we’d do it. But I’ve got excellent news. We want you all to come to Christmas dinner at our house. Father’s home for almost a week, and Jonathan’s got four days starting tomorrow—”
“Then it will be a family party,” Susan said, “and we shouldn’t interfere.”
“No, no, please interfere!” Maggie said. “The last thing we want is just family. We want to have fun. And Ada, guess what? On Boxing Day, we’re going to host a paper chase! Jonathan wrote and said so.”
Boxing Day was the day after Christmas. I didn’t know what a paper chase was. “Like a fox hunt,” Maggie explained, “only without foxes, or hunting, or hounds. It’ll be brilliant. You’ll see.”
Suddenly Maggie’s eyes went wide, as though I’d frightened her.
“What?” I asked.
She touched the black cloth on my sleeve. “Your armband.”
“Oh.” I touched it too, and for a moment our fingertips met. “Susan made it for me.” She’d made us all armbands, like the one Stephen wore, out of an extra piece of blackout material she’d found in the scullery. Jamie had asked her for one, and then I did too. “They’re a symbol of mourning,” I said. “Mourning spelled with a u, not morning like early in the day. You wear one when you’re sad because someone died.”
Maggie nodded. “I know. I’m so sorry about your mother. I should have said that first thing.”
“It’s not for Mam,” Jamie said. “It’s for Billy White.”
“It’s for Mam too,” I said quickly. It wasn’t really—I hadn’t even known about armbands when Mam died. But I didn’t want Maggie to think me uncaring. What sort of girl didn’t mourn her own mother?
Maggie said, “Who’s Billy White? I only know Stephen.”
We explained. “That’s awful,” Maggie said. “That’s worse than awful.”
“And the colonel,” I added. And the dead pilots, though I no longer remembered their names.
“My mother wrote me about the colonel,” Maggie said. “She didn’t say anything about Stephen’s family.” Maggie shook her head. “I think she thinks that if she doesn’t tell me about sad things, I won’t find out about them, and then I won’t be sad.” Maggie sighed. “In the middle of a war.”
It didn’t make sense. Perhaps Lady Thorton just forgot. She was the sort of person who might forget important things.
Bovril stalked into the room. Jamie scooped him up. “I made Bovril an armband,” Jamie said, scratching behind the cat’s ears. “He chewed it.”
“Cats don’t mourn,” I said.
Jamie cut his eyes at me. “They feel very sad,” he said. “They just don’t like armbands.”
• • •
Maggie stayed half an hour. At the end of her visit, she looked around the room and said, “This place is so gloomy. How do you stand it? Even without the blackouts up, it’s like living in a cave.”
“It is a cave,” Jamie said. “It’s our cave, we moved here because it’s drier than inside the tree.”
“Swiss Family Robinson,” I murmured.
“Yes, but didn’t the Swiss Family Robinson have carpets or curtains? Or pictures or anything?”
“Susan says she’ll make curtains as soon as she can,” I said.
Jamie added, “Her sewing machine died in the bombing.”
Maggie nodded. “That’s right. I suppose your rugs and curtains died too.”
Everything was dying, but I wasn’t going to say it. Maggie knew we were fighting a war.
• • •
I walked Maggie back to Thorton House. The rain had stopped, but the sky was dark and the wind blew hard. “I don’t know what to think about your mother,” Maggie said. “I know you were afraid of her. I know she was awful.”
I turned my collar up against the cold. Susan had found a winter coat for me at another jumble sale, but it was already a bit too small. Susan was going to try to let it out. “Don’t say you’re happy she died,” I said to Maggie. “I don’t want to hear that.”
“Of course not!” Maggie looked shocked. “But don’t you have any family left? Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“So I suppose Susan’s your mother now.”
I said, “No. She’s our legal guardian.” The papers had come. I had them in my box.
“Is that better than a mother?” Maggie asked.
“Of course.”
I hugged Maggie good-bye at the stables, gave Butter a pat, and headed home along the sodden path. I was nearly back to the cottage when I heard Jamie scream.
Chapter 9
One scream, cut short by a thud. Then silence. I ran.
The invasion. All spring and summer we’d been preparing for the German army to land in England. Our village was right on the sea, directly across the Channel from Occupied France.
I hadn’t heard gunshots. Would the Germans shoot Jamie? Would they kidnap him? My breath came in ragged bursts. My feet squelched through the
cold mud. I ran faster.
A final bend in the path, and there was the cottage. Jamie lay sprawled, alone, unmoving, beneath the tree in the front yard.
Dead. Oh, God. Jamie.
I ran to him. He lay with his hair flopped against his forehead, motionless on the cold, wet ground. One arm fell across his body, but the other bent unnaturally at his side. Bent where it should be straight. I knelt beside him, sobbing. I grabbed his shoulders.
“Don’t touch him!” Susan ran out of the house. I froze. “He might have hurt his neck,” she said. “Don’t move him.”
I couldn’t bear it. I would die without Jamie.
“He’s not dead,” Susan said. She put her hand on my shoulder. “He’s breathing, see? Watch his chest.” Beneath his coat I could see Jamie’s shirt moving very slightly, in and out. “He must have hit his head. He’s knocked himself out.” She looked at me. “Can you go to the stables? Ask Fred to phone for help?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t leave Jamie on the ground.
“All right,” Susan said. “I’ll go. But don’t move him, understand? If he wakes up, make him lie still.”
I nodded. I touched Jamie’s hand.
“Promise,” Susan said.
I nodded again. Tears poured down my face.
Susan ran. I couldn’t remember seeing her run before. The wind rattled through the tree branches and ruffled Jamie’s hair. He looked so cold. If I covered him with a blanket, would that count as touching him? But I’d have to go into the house for a blanket. I couldn’t leave him. But what if he got too cold?
Much sooner than I expected, I heard a car come up the drive. I looked. It wasn’t Susan or Fred or Dr. Graham. It was Lady Thorton, tall and thin in an elegant wool coat. She drew herself up and smiled and waved. “Is Margaret still here?” she asked. Then she saw Jamie and her smile froze. She hurried over.
“I think he was climbing the tree,” I said. “He fell. Susan’s gone to get help.”
“We can use my car,” Lady Thorton said.
The War I Finally Won Page 4