The War I Finally Won

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

It hadn’t been my fault.

  Jamie drummed his bare feet against the counterpane. He asked Susan, “Were you angry when Becky died?”

  “Yes,” said Susan. “I felt all sorts of things. Anger was certainly one of them.”

  “Would you be angry if I died?”

  “Yes,” said Susan. “Very angry indeed.”

  I could hear Susan say that, but I didn’t have to believe her. Grieving for me the way she grieved for Becky? I didn’t want to matter so much. “I’m not that important,” I said.

  “Fortunately, you are not in charge of how I feel,” Susan said. “Come back here, and we’ll have our story.” She patted the bed beside her. “We all loved Jonathan.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Of course I didn’t.” That was preposterous. I barely knew him.

  Susan shook her head at me. She said, “Love isn’t as rare as you think it is, Ada. You can love all sorts of people, in all sorts of ways. Nor is love in any way dangerous.”

  Sure it was. Jonathan Thorton was dead.

  • • •

  Dear Ada, Maggie wrote from school, How is my mother? I’m counting on you to tell me the truth.

  What could I possibly say?

  Dear Maggie, I miss you. Your mother never sleeps. She never seems awake either. It’s like she’s stuck halfway.

  I wrote Maggie every week. I wrote all the truth I could, but I could never tell her everything.

  Dear Maggie, We try to make your mother eat, but she never does. Hard to blame her when the food’s so bad. On Wednesday Susan made her do the shopping because she thought the walk would do her good. She came back with a piece of whale meat. Really, actual whale meat. She said it was all the fishmonger had by the time she got to the front of the queue. Susan was angry, but when she went shopping herself the next day she found out it was true.

  The whale meat was dire. In the end, we fed most of it to Mrs. Rochester. It gave her gas. The whole village laughed about how awful it was.

  Dear Maggie, I miss you. Last night your mother actually fell asleep. She had a nightmare and started screaming. It woke us all. Jamie was so scared he ended up sleeping the rest of the night in Susan’s bed. Susan says if your mother could let herself cry in the daytime it might be easier.

  Of course I could never write that.

  Dear Maggie, What about you? How are you?

  Dear Ada, I don’t mean to sound horrible. I am sad, very sad. It turns out I liked Jonathan quite a lot and of course I loved him too. But I’m used to him not being around, especially when I’m at school. I mostly didn’t live with him. So I don’t actually miss him even though I’m sorry that he’s dead. Sometimes I realize that for a few hours I’ve forgotten all about him. I think I miss the idea of him more than miss his real self. Does that make me a bad person? I’m afraid it does.

  You’re the only person I can say this to. I don’t trust the girls here, not the way I trust you. I figure you already know how bad people can be, so I’m not as likely to shock you.

  Dear Maggie, Of course you don’t shock me. Nothing about you could shock me. I hate this awful war.

  Chapter 41

  Ruth returned looking more solemn than ever. She told us that her mother had finally gotten a letter from Germany. Ruth’s grandmother had been taken to a German internment camp called Ravensbruck.

  “That sounds all right,” I said. “Your mother’s in an internment camp, and she’s fine.”

  Ruth’s eyes blazed. “Hitler’s camps are very different from the ones in England,” she said. She pushed past Susan and me. “Excuse me.”

  I followed her up the stairs and sat down on her bed. “Take Butter up the hill,” I said. “You’ll feel better.”

  “She won’t let me.”

  “She only said you can’t go onto her farm. I’ll tack up Butter and Ivy and meet you on the road.”

  Ruth looked at me warily. “Why would you do that?”

  “Horses help,” I said.

  “I know. Why do you care?”

  “Why wouldn’t I care?” Ruth lived here.

  “I’m German. I’m Jewish. I’m everyone’s enemy.”

  “I grew up in one room. You’re not my enemy.” I took a breath. “I never had a sister.”

  Ruth stared at me for a long moment. She said, “Me either. I always wanted one.”

  • • •

  We rode to the top of the hill and stood in the wind, looking out to the sea. “I can never go back to a country that imprisons old women,” Ruth said. “I no longer have a home.”

  “You have a home,” I said.

  “In Lady Thorton’s house? Not likely.”

  • • •

  Lady Thorton continued to grieve. As the days grew shorter Susan fell into one of her bleak periods too. She made herself get up every morning to teach us, but she was sad and disinterested.

  “Honestly, Ruth,” she said one morning. “Linear interpolation is not that difficult of a concept.”

  I looked up. It sounded difficult to me.

  “Sorry,” Ruth mumbled.

  “Don’t apologize,” Susan snapped. “Concentrate.”

  When Susan got up to get some tea, Ruth looked at me. “Did I do something wrong?” she said. “Other than the maths, I mean.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “She gets like this.”

  Ruth nodded. “I’m glad it’s not about me.”

  • • •

  At breakfast one morning, Lady Thorton said, “Margaret’s coming home tonight for the potatoes.”

  “What potatoes?” I said.

  Lady Thorton frowned. “What do you mean, ‘what potatoes’? Blasted things are everywhere. They’ve even planted up my lawn.”

  “But why—”

  “She has to pick them,” Lady Thorton said. “I suppose you and Jamie will too.”

  We’d missed the previous potato harvest because of my surgery. It turned out that England’s potato crop was so important to the war effort that all the schools still running—even posh ones like Maggie’s—let out for two weeks so that children all over England could help with the harvest.

  “And me,” said Ruth. “I will work.”

  Lady Thorton looked up. “I think not. Just because I never punished you for your exploits doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten them. I’ve made it clear that you do not have permission to be on my farm.”

  Ruth set her mouth in a stubborn line. “I won’t go to your stables. I will pick your potatoes.” When Lady Thorton didn’t reply, Ruth persisted. “It’s something I can do. I want to be useful too. Hitler took my grandmother, and I couldn’t stop it.”

  Lady Thorton finished her piece of toast. “Very well,” she said, at last. “I suppose I will allow it.”

  • • •

  Maggie came home that evening. She looked taller and thinner, the skin of her face pulled tight the way Jonathan’s had been when we last saw him. Her uniform skirt hung loose around her hips. I wanted to hug her but I was afraid she might break. Lady Thorton, who had walked with me to meet Maggie’s train, gave her a stiff kiss.

  “How are your studies?” she asked Maggie.

  Maggie hadn’t brought her trunk, just a satchel. I offered to carry it, then staggered under its weight. “Books,” Maggie explained. “All I brought home are books, socks, and underpants.” To her mother she said, “I can’t study. I haven’t learned a thing.”

  “How are your friends?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked them.”

  “How are your marks?”

  “Hideous.”

  Even I knew that marks meant grades, and that hideous grades were a bad thing. But Lady Thorton was trying hard. I shook my head at Maggie. Maggie rolled her eyes and stayed silent in return.

  • • •

 
In the living room Susan had stoked the fire high. Dancing flames brightened the gloomy blacked-out walls. Lady Thorton sank onto the sofa as though exhausted. Susan handed her a cup of tea. Maggie took her bag from me and went up the stairs. I followed. Ruth’s bedroom door was shut tight.

  Maggie stood in the middle of our room. She said, “Mum’s not as bad as I thought she’d be.”

  “We’re watching her,” I said. “Susan and me.”

  “I thought about running away from school,” she said. “Running away to come home. But I don’t know if it would do any good. Heaps of girls have had someone die now—so many different places have been bombed. It’s not like I’m somebody special.”

  • • •

  In the middle of the night, I heard Maggie crying. I didn’t say anything. After a bit she sniffed and said, “I know you’re awake. I can hear you breathing.”

  “I’m trying to be quiet,” I said.

  “I’m not,” she said. “It’s such a relief not to be in that dorm. Did you tell Mum or Susan about our ride with Jonathan?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Good,” said Maggie. I heard her roll over. “Potato picking’s awful,” she said. “I did it last year. You’re going to hate it.”

  Chapter 42

  Potato picking was tedious, dirty, exhausting, and cold. I rather liked it.

  Mr. Elliston pulled a plow down the rows of potato plants, halfway digging them up and loosening the soil around them. The rest of us followed on foot, scrabbling through the heavy, wet dirt to unearth the potatoes. We filled buckets with potatoes, then emptied the buckets into a wagon on the edge of the field. We worked from dawn to dusk, with only short breaks, and we were filthy and half-frozen by the end of each day.

  We were useful. Potato picking was real work, important war work, and I had become a strong girl who could work hard for hours. I had become a tough girl who could ignore the aches in my shoulders and the blisters that sprang up on my palms.

  Besides the three Land Girls, it was only Jamie, Ruth, Maggie, and me for all of the Thortons’ vast fields. The first morning, Maggie lagged behind. When I finished my row I went to the top of hers to help. “Go away,” she said. “I’ll catch up. I don’t need you.”

  “Give over, Maggie—”

  She glared at me. “I’m doing my best. My fingers are frozen. I hate this.”

  Which had nothing to do with anything, did it? No one asked us did we want to pick potatoes. It was war work, and we were expected to get on with it. I said, “My fingers are frozen too.”

  Maggie looked as though she was about to cry. She said, “I wish my father were here. I wish this was still my front lawn. I wish Jonathan—”

  I looked up at Thorton House, majestic on the edge of the potato field, with strangers’ cars parked in front of it and unknown men in uniform walking in and out. Maggie’d lived there all her life. Now she shared a bedroom with a slum-born orphan in her family’s former gamekeeper’s cottage. Maggie’d started out in life with more good things than anyone I ever knew. She’d lost and lost in the war.

  I’d been a crippled, ignorant prisoner looking out the window of a dingy London flat. Now I walked on two feet and rode and read and shared a bedroom and bookshelves with the daughter of a baron. Except for losing Mam, I’d done nothing but gain. Did Mam dying count as loss or gain?

  Maggie bent over her row. My fingers found another potato. “Incoming!” I shouted, and lobbed it at Maggie’s head. She jumped, startled, and whirled to glare at me. “Please laugh,” I said. “That was funny.”

  She did laugh. “You’re an idiot,” she said.

  “So are you.” We grinned at each other. Then we both threw potatoes at Ruth.

  Ruth fired back. Jamie and one of the Land Girls joined in. We smacked each other with filthy, squishy, mud-covered potatoes. One of Ruth’s hit me square in the mouth.

  “Stop that!” shouted Rose. She was the oldest Land Girl, and the most in charge. She flew at us, waving her empty bucket. “Stop it! Stop! You pick those up right now! Stop throwing potatoes! We are not wasting food. We’re in the middle of a war!”

  Jamie chucked a potato at Rose. She snatched it out of the air.

  “Don’t try me,” she warned. “I’ve five brothers, and better aim than you.”

  Maggie picked faster after that. It was easier to pick once you’d been laughing.

  • • •

  At lunch we sat together on the long table in the Ellistons’ kitchen. Mrs. Elliston’s food was hot and good. Ruth had hardly spoken all morning, and I didn’t blame her. “You’re the German girl?” Mrs. Elliston asked her.

  Ruth nodded. I said, “Her father lost his job and her family lost everything and now her gran’s imprisoned in a place called Ravensbruck. Also she’s Jewish.”

  The Land Girls exchanged glances. Mrs. Elliston said, “My two boys are fighting in the army.” She looked at Ruth appraisingly. “I can’t say I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’m being honest. I can see you’re only a bit of a girl, and I’m sorry for your family’s trouble, but it’s hard to trust you, no mistake.”

  “I know,” Ruth said. “I don’t blame you.”

  “My mother didn’t want to let her pick potatoes,” Maggie said.

  “I’d not go that far,” Mrs. Elliston said. “We haven’t got nearly enough help as it is.”

  • • •

  “When my mam locked me up,” I said to Ruth as we walked back to the field, “she told all our neighbors it was because I was simple. So they wouldn’t try to help me.”

  Ruth looked at me. “It’s not really the same. I am German, and we are at war. I understand why they’re afraid.”

  “I’m sure your gran will be fine,” I said.

  Ruth said, “I’m sure she will not.”

  • • •

  Ruth picked more potatoes than any of us, including the Land Girls, who were used to hard work. At the end of the day, Rose made a point of shaking Ruth’s hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

  “You will,” Ruth said, with a hint of a smile.

  I dumped my last bucket of potatoes into the wagon. Rose gave me a perplexed look. “Why’d you do that?” she asked. “You know you’re allowed to take potatoes home.”

  I didn’t know it. “Really? How many?”

  Rose grinned. “As many as you can carry. Did you think you were working this hard for free?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s war work. I thought we had to.”

  Rose shook her head. “You’ll be paid too.”

  “Really? Actual money?”

  Maggie had come up behind me. “Two shillings a day. That’s what it was last year.”

  Two shillings a day! And she’d been unhappy about it? I’d do just about anything for two shillings a day. Finally, a chance to earn. “Ruth!” I said. “We’re getting two shillings a day!”

  Ruth grinned. Jamie came running up. “Me too?”

  “You too,” Rose said. “You worked hard.”

  Jamie smiled. He was mud from head to toe. Only his teeth were still clean.

  I filled our picking buckets to the brims. Maggie stared. She said, “I am not carrying that many potatoes all the way home.”

  “Maggie,” I said, “they’re food. For winter. We earned them.”

  “We earned them,” echoed Jamie.

  “I have blisters,” Maggie said.

  I spread my oozing palms faceup in front of her. Ruth came over and held out her own hands. One of them was actually bleeding.

  Maggie sighed and reached for her buckets. “Sometimes, Ada,” she said, “I get very tired of you setting the example for us all.”

  • • •

  “If I’d known you all wanted pocket money,” Susan said at dinner, “I would have found a way to give you s
ome.”

  “That wouldn’t be right,” Ruth said. “I can’t take money from you. You’re being paid to teach me.”

  “I don’t want money from you either,” I said. “I want to earn.”

  “Ada,” said Susan, “I’ve told you and told you. You don’t have to worry about money.”

  Of course I did. If something bad happened, we were all better off with money put by.

  She glared at me. “Can’t you learn to trust?”

  I took a bite of bread. Shrugged my shoulders. Looked away.

  “Mum,” Jamie said, with profound satisfaction. My fingers itched to smack him.

  • • •

  That night I heard a sound on the other side of my bedroom wall, the wall I shared with Ruth’s room. “Maggie,” I said, sitting up. “Ruth’s crying.”

  Maggie sat up too. “She won’t want us bothering her,” she said, after a moment.

  “She never cries,” I said. I got up and went out to the hall. Knocked on Ruth’s door. “Come be with Maggie and me,” I said.

  Ruth didn’t unlock the door. “Please go away,” she said. The crying stopped. At least, I couldn’t hear it anymore.

  • • •

  The second morning of potato picking, I woke up stiff and aching everywhere. It was worse than the days when I first taught myself to walk. The second day of potato picking, my hands hurt so badly by lunchtime that I could barely hold a fork. We all hurt. It was hard work. At night we took baths and went to bed early. Lady Thorton sniffed over the blisters on Maggie’s hands. “You ought to wear gloves,” she said.

  “My hands are no worse than everyone else’s,” Maggie said. “Have you looked at Ruth’s?”

  Of course she hadn’t. Since Jonathan’s death, Lady Thorton barely acknowledged Ruth. But at dinner she divided the meat on her plate and shared it out between us—Maggie, Jamie, Ruth, and me. Lady Thorton helped herself to more potatoes. We had plenty of those.

  • • •

  We picked potatoes for twelve days. We each carried home ten pounds of potatoes every day, which meant by the end, we had earned nearly five hundred pounds of potatoes. They filled the little back room. We could eat them all winter. We wouldn’t have to queue for them or carry them home from the village.