The War I Finally Won

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  He lifted his gaze briefly to meet mine. “I’m glad I came today,” he said. “I’ll tell the boys at the airfield about you. You’ll give them courage, you will.”

  I doubted that, but it didn’t matter.

  • • •

  We got the horses back without anyone waking or hearing. Jonathan and his friend drove away. Maggie and Ruth and I rinsed the horses down, and wiped the tack and dried it. By the time Fred woke, we had a story ready about the horses getting loose and coming down to our cottage, and the time we’d had rounding them up and getting them back in. If he didn’t believe us, Fred never let on. Susan and Lady Thorton believed us.

  Jonathan wanted our ride kept secret, and I understood why. He meant for it to be a gift, a tiny piece of his time that belonged only to me, Maggie, and Ruth. It didn’t belong to Lady Thorton or anyone else.

  It was a gift. It was the best single hour of my life.

  Chapter 37

  September came. Despite Maggie’s careful behavior all summer, Lady Thorton insisted she return to school. “You’re safer there,” she said.

  “I’m just as safe here,” Maggie said. “We haven’t had a bombing for ages.”

  “Bombs aren’t the only danger,” her mother said. Later I overheard her say to Susan, “At school she’s surrounded by good girls. It’s the kind of environment I want for her.”

  “What am I?” I asked Susan. “The wrong environment?”

  “I don’t actually think she meant it that way,” Susan said. “Lady Thorton never went to boarding school. She seems to imagine it as a sort of jolly holiday.”

  Susan had gone to boarding school. “Was it?”

  “No,” Susan said. “Mind you, I didn’t hate it. But sometimes being in a group of girls is just as lonely as being alone.”

  • • •

  Three days later, Ruth and I rode out together. We were trotting along the road that led to the lookout hill when I saw something red coming toward us. It was Lady Thorton’s automobile.

  I couldn’t believe it. Lady Thorton almost never drove anywhere. Plus, I thought she’d walked into town.

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed. She glanced sideways at me. “Is that her?”

  “That’s her.” There were hardly any cars on the roads these days. It was easy to recognize Lady Thorton’s.

  The car slowed to a stop. Lady Thorton stared at us through the windscreen.

  My first impulse was to gallop away, but I knew it was no use. I drew rein and halted on the edge of the road. So did Ruth. “Maybe she won’t be angry,” I said.

  Ruth looked perfectly composed. “She’ll be furious.”

  Lady Thorton was furious. She got out and stood with her arms crossed, her upper lip twitching. She glared at Ruth and me for a very long, silent minute.

  “I promised Maggie I’d exercise Ivy,” I said.

  “How long have you two been doing this, without my permission?”

  I stared at the ground. Ivy mouthed the reins against my stiffened hands.

  “Ada?” prompted Lady Thorton.

  “I’ve been riding all summer,” Ruth said.

  “Only Butter,” I said. “He’s my pony. I can let anyone I want ride my pony.”

  “You’ve allowed a young German woman to come onto my property, against my explicitly stated orders, despite the fact that the house is being used by a government agency during a war against Germany?” Lady Thorton’s voice had an edge that could have sliced steel.

  “Jonathan said—”

  “I never stepped foot into your house,” Ruth said quietly. “I never spoke to anyone there. I’m not a spy. I hate Hitler.”

  Lady Thorton said, “That is entirely beside the point. I’m quite sure I made myself perfectly clear. I am disappointed in you both.” She shook her head bitterly. “I hope my daughter wasn’t involved.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, thankful it was mostly true.

  “Go along home,” Lady Thorton said. “Put those ponies up and come straight back to the cottage. Susan and I will deal with you there.”

  We walked back silently, our ponies’ hooves clopping against the road. Swallows dove and swirled around us. I felt awash with indignation. “Butter is too my own pony,” I said at last.

  “We knew it wasn’t allowed,” Ruth said. “We took a chance and we got caught.”

  “But it’s silly! You’re not a spy!”

  “I’m not,” Ruth said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Lord Thorton trusts you. So does Jonathan.”

  “Lady Thorton doesn’t. She never has.”

  I looked at her helplessly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

  Her face looked serious, even worried, but suddenly she laughed. “I’m not sorry,” she said. “I got to ride for a few months, at least. Lady Thorton’s angry, but she isn’t Hitler. She won’t kill us or throw us into jail.”

  “Susan’ll be angry.” My stomach twisted. I’d never done anything to make Susan really angry before. Horses are good, I thought. Ruth needed horses.

  • • •

  We put the ponies up, avoiding Fred. We walked slowly back to the cottage. We’d just rounded the last turn when Ruth sucked in her breath. “Oh, no,” she said. I looked.

  The telegraph boy was cycling up the drive.

  Chapter 38

  Ruth and I stopped walking. Her fingers reached out and grabbed mine. “Maybe it’s not about Jonathan,” I said.

  The messenger got off his bicycle. He knocked on the door.

  Ruth said, “He could be captured. He could be injured. He could be missing in action.”

  Lady Thorton came to the door. She saw the messenger. Color drained from her face.

  I said, “Maybe he had to bail out over enemy lines.”

  Lady Thorton plucked the telegraph from the boy’s hand. She opened it with trembling fingers. Her eyes closed, and she sank to the ground.

  “He was just here,” I whispered. “He was just fine.”

  Ruth squeezed my fingers. Tears trickled down her face.

  • • •

  Susan took Lady Thorton upstairs to Lady Thorton’s bedroom. Ruth and I sat downstairs. I didn’t know where Jamie was. I dreaded having to tell him.

  “A telegraph boy will come for Maggie too,” I said. He would cycle up the drive to her school’s front door while Maggie looked out the classroom window, her heart filled with dread.

  “We can’t fix it,” Ruth said.

  From upstairs we heard a long, drawn-out wail. I buried my head in the sofa cushions and choked back tears.

  “I hardly knew him,” Ruth said, “but I think I would have liked him.”

  “I liked him,” I said. “I liked him very much.”

  • • •

  Jamie came in with a basket of vegetables he’d picked from the garden. “Where’s the slop?” he asked. “It’s time to feed Mrs. Rochester.”

  The slop was still on the stove, boiling. It was burned on the bottom, but Mrs. Rochester wouldn’t care. I poured it into Jamie’s bucket. “Let it cool before you give it to her,” I said.

  Jamie studied my face. “What happened?”

  I couldn’t say the words. Ruth said them for me. “Jonathan Thorton died.”

  “No,” Jamie said. “No! No, no, no!”

  “Yes,” I said, grabbing him, holding him tight while he shook and sobbed.

  • • •

  Ruth and I cooked supper, but only Jamie ate it. We made a pot of tea. When Susan came back downstairs, I handed her a mug.

  She took a sip, and tears came to her eyes. “You sugared it,” she said. “You always do.” She rubbed her face with her hands. “What a terrible, terrible day.”

  “What will they do with his body?” I asked. It was dreadful to think of
Jonathan Thorton in a box.

  “His plane blew up over the English Channel,” Susan said. “They won’t recover his body.”

  Jamie wailed. Susan pulled him onto her lap. “It’s fitting,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “It has always been a custom for warriors to be buried at sea.”

  • • •

  We went to bed. I put the blackout up and lay in the empty darkness of my room. I thought of Maggie. When would the telegram reach her? What would she do?

  Jamie opened the bedroom door. He stood in the doorway in his pajamas, hair tousled, clutching his cat. He said, “Bovril’s too sad to sleep.”

  “Oh, Jamie.” I held my arms out to him, and he cuddled against me, breathing hard. Bovril lay between us, utterly limp. I supposed he knew Jamie needed him.

  Ruth came in a few minutes later. “I can hear her through my bedroom wall,” she said. “Lady Thorton. Susan said she was sleeping, but she keeps making noise.” Ruth climbed into Maggie’s empty bed.

  A few minutes after that, Susan put her head into the room. “All right, you’re being sensible,” she said. “Stick together. I’m going to sit with Lady Thorton.”

  In the morning we woke and it was all still true.

  Maggie had gotten her telegram. She was on her way home.

  Chapter 39

  It was a terrible, unending week. It was unendurable, but we endured it. We didn’t have a choice.

  • • •

  Lord Thorton got a telegram too. He picked Maggie up at her school and they came home. They sat on our sofa. Lord Thorton wept.

  I’d never seen a man cry before. It was horrible.

  WVS women and Mrs. Elliston and the vicar’s wife and other people who knew the Thortons brought food to our house and sat with us. Ruth locked herself in her bedroom whenever we had company. Otherwise she took long walks through the countryside. Neither of us rode. I did the chores every day as usual. I brushed Oban’s sleek back and remembered every heartbeat of our gallop across the fields.

  • • •

  Instead of a funeral, the Thortons held a memorial service in the church. All the village came. Lord and Lady Thorton and Maggie sat in the very first pew, looking like they might shatter at the slightest touch. We sat toward the back, Susan wearing all black on my one side, Ruth silent and downcast on the other. Jamie held tight to Susan’s hand. I felt as fragile as Maggie looked. I wondered if I had any right to feel that way.

  Mr. Collins, the vicar, stood by the church door shaking hands as people filed out. I looked past him to the graveyard. I asked, “Can’t we at least put Jonathan’s name on a stone?” Jonathan had been part of the village; he had gone to the church. He should be remembered there.

  Mr. Collins said, “I’m sure we will in time.” He took my hand and led me down the steps, along the path to the center of the graveyard, to a tall stone column engraved with a long list of names. “These are the village boys who perished in the First World War,” he said. “None of their bodies were sent home. The soldiers from the first war were all buried where they died.”

  Twenty-three names. I counted. And two toward the top: Corydon Collins Jr. and Charles Collins. I touched the names, then looked at Mr. Collins.

  “Yes,” the vicar said. “Those were my sons. Lovely boys, both of them.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Lovely, lovely boys.”

  I hated war.

  • • •

  Lord Thorton returned to his work, wherever that was. Maggie went back to school, though she begged and pleaded to stay home. Lady Thorton became like a wild animal trapped inside our cottage.

  She never slept. Far into the night, we could hear her moving about inside her bedroom. She paced from side to side. She opened her window. She closed it again. Sometimes she went down the stairs, the fifth and sixth steps creaking violently, and then she might stay awake on the sofa, staring into the darkness, or she might pace back and forth in the sitting room. In the daytime she sat at the table, cradling cups of tea in her hands until they grew cold. I never saw her eat, only sip at the tea. She was running through our tea ration, but Susan brewed fresh pots and said she didn’t care.

  • • •

  “What does she think when she looks at me?” Ruth asked Susan.

  I didn’t think Lady Thorton thought about Ruth at all. I didn’t think she thought of anyone but Jonathan.

  • • •

  Ruth and I confessed to Susan about our riding. “Lady Thorton was angry,” I said. “I know you’ll be angry too.”

  Susan blew out her breath. “Not really,” she said. “I don’t think you should have done it when you knew you didn’t have Lady Thorton’s permission. Butter may be your pony, but he lives on the Thortons’ property. However, it all seems terribly irrelevant now.”

  I said, “You mean no one cares very much about who rides which pony now that Jonathan’s dead.”

  “That’s right,” Susan said.

  I would rather have gotten in trouble.

  • • •

  Whenever I felt overwhelmed I could go away inside my head. The problem was that sadness kept taking me by surprise. I’d be doing the breakfast dishes, not thinking about anything, and suddenly my stomach would clench and I’d want to sob, and it would be all I could do to get my mind to shut down. I wasn’t sure I had any right to feel so sad. Compared to the Thortons, I hadn’t lost anything.

  “This isn’t a contest,” Susan said when I said so. “You’re allowed to grieve too.”

  • • •

  Ruth left for two weeks at the internment camp to celebrate Jewish holidays I’d never heard of with her mother. I wished I could go with her. I wanted to escape.

  “Bear it,” Susan said. “That’s all we can do.”

  “You mean just feel it?”

  Susan pulled Jamie onto her lap. “Jonathan’s in heaven,” she said, holding Jamie tight.

  I said, “Is believing that supposed to make this better?”

  Susan looked up. “Yes,” she said. “Most people are in fact comforted by the idea of eternal life.”

  “Now Jonathan’s like Mam,” Jamie said.

  I said crossly, “He’s not anything like Mam.”

  “They’re both dead,” Jamie said. “They’re in heaven. With Billy White.”

  I hoped heaven was a big place. I hoped Jonathan would be smart enough to stay far away from Mam.

  “One of the Land Girls said people who go to heaven turn into angels,” I said. “She said everyone in heaven wears a white dress and plays the harp.” Susan had shown me a picture of a harp in the Bible. It looked ridiculous. If I was supposed to be happy in heaven, I wanted horses there.

  “No one knows what heaven’s like,” Susan said. “No one’s ever come back to say. But I don’t think people turn into angels. I think angels are different.”

  “Why?” asked Jamie.

  Susan said, “I just do.”

  It was a crummy answer. All the questions were impossible and all the answers insufficient. “I don’t even know why we’re fighting this war,” I said. “Why couldn’t Hitler just stay where he belonged?”

  Jamie said, “We’re fighting so Ruth can have her grandmother back.”

  “That’s right,” Susan said. “We’re fighting for Ruth’s grandmother, and for all the people like her. For all the people Hitler wants to hurt.”

  If I could see heaven on a map I would feel better. On the very edge of a map, maybe, far away from Germany or even England. Out beyond where the dragons were. Maybe Jonathan could fly there. Or get there on a very fast horse. Galloping into heaven. I liked the sound of that.

  Chapter 40

  Susan still read to us in the evenings. We were partway through The Jungle Book. The second week after Jonathan died, Lady Thorton sniffed when Susan began. “Must we do this every evening?�
� she said, from the depths of her wing chair. “Can we not have one solitary night of peace?”

  We stared at her. We never read all night. We quit and turned on the radio for the nine o’clock news. “Just one chapter,” I said.

  Susan had already closed the book and gotten to her feet. “I’ll take Ada and Jamie upstairs.”

  It wasn’t as nice upstairs, away from the fire, though it was warm enough we didn’t need the heat. Jamie kicked the banister on his way up. Susan gripped his shoulder hard. He said nothing, but made a face.

  “We’ll be fine up here,” Susan said.

  “We were fine down there,” I said.

  Jamie said, “She’s being horrible.”

  “She’s grieving,” Susan said. “It’s very early days, and you’re to let it go.”

  Lady Thorton’s grief had begun to look like rage. I knew how that felt. “She’s angry at everything now,” I said. Angry at nothing, or everything. Sometimes I had felt so out of control. I didn’t get like that anymore, not even when I thought about Mam. I could clamp a lid on my feelings and keep them under control.

  Susan squeezed my hand. “Yes,” she said.

  Jamie walked up the rest of the steps in silence. When we’d settled ourselves on the bed in Jamie’s room, he said quietly, “Mam was angry at everything too.”

  My head snapped up. “Because of me,” I said. “Because of my foot.” She’d said so, over and over.

  Jamie shook his head. “No. She was angry at everything.”

  I stared at him. His words soaked into my brain.

  A knot I hadn’t known I was carrying untied itself inside my belly.

  Mam had always been angry.

  About everything. All the time.

  Mam had never been anything but angry. Even when she smiled, she always stayed angry inside. No sadness, no joy. Just anger.

  It had never been about me.

  I couldn’t breathe. I went to the window and looked out, seeing nothing, gripping the windowsill hard.