The War I Finally Won

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  “You’ll have to trot for hours to work him down,” Maggie said. Her pony Ivy puffed white clouds of breath, struggling to keep up. We rode along the field where the grouse exploded. I would never see that field without remembering Jonathan.

  “Invincible Ada,” Maggie said, so I knew she was thinking of him too.

  “That wasn’t really about me,” I said. “Jonathan wanted something to fight for. He was seeing what he wanted me to be.”

  • • •

  When the time came for Maggie to go back to school, she put up a battle that if it had been against Hitler might have won us the war. Unfortunately, it was against Lady Thorton.

  Maggie railed and shouted and wept. Lady Thorton never flinched. Finally, Maggie stood up at the dinner table. “If you make me go back,” she said, low and hard, “I will never forgive you. I will hate you for as long as I live.”

  Cor. That was worse than calling her a terrible mother. I wondered what Ruth would say.

  Lady Thorton picked up a forkful of food, chewed it slowly, and swallowed before she replied. “To ensure your safety and happiness,” she said, “that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  • • •

  “I will not apologize,” Maggie said at night in our bedroom. “I am not sorry.”

  Chapter 52

  The house felt sad and empty with Ruth and Maggie gone. Susan swore the days were getting longer again already, but it was hard to believe her when we had to put the blackout up midafternoon. Susan fell again into one of her bleak periods, listless and dull. Then one morning she didn’t get out of bed. She coughed repeatedly. Her cheeks were flushed and she could barely speak.

  “I’m afraid she’s caught my cold,” Lady Thorton said. “I’ve got WVS business all day. Ada, will you be all right? Should I ask Mrs. Elliston to check in on you and Jamie?”

  I would take care of Susan. I would be her ward. “We’ll be fine,” I said.

  I took Susan tea and toast. Jamie tended his chickens and Mrs. Rochester. He built up the living room fire and we snuggled close to it, Jamie playing with his tin airplanes and me reading one of Maggie’s books.

  Susan didn’t want lunch. After Jamie and I ate, I took her another cup of tea. She had fallen asleep. Her bedroom was frightfully cold, and frost etched lines across the windowpanes, but when I touched Susan’s cheek it was blazing hot. Her breath whistled. I pulled her covers down a bit to cool her off, and left the tea by her bedside. At least she’d stopped coughing.

  We’d done the chores and I was teaching Jamie to peel potatoes when Lady Thorton came home. “How’s Susan?” she asked.

  “I checked on her”—I glanced at the clock—“half an hour ago. She was sleeping. She’s been asleep all afternoon.”

  “Good,” Lady Thorton said. “Sleep is the best thing for her.”

  I sent Jamie up just before dinner. Susan was still asleep. “I hate to wake her,” Lady Thorton said. “How did she seem?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Asleep.”

  After dinner we washed up and started the pig slop and swept the floor. Lady Thorton went up to check on Susan herself.

  “Ada!” she called a moment later. The sharp urgency in her voice startled me. “Was she like this earlier?”

  I went to the stairs. Lady Thorton looked down at me, her forehead creased with concern. “With such a high fever, and breathing this hard?”

  I ran up the steps. Susan’s eyes were half-open, glazed and unfocused. Her mouth was open, and I could hear her breath whistling, much louder than before. “She was warm, but I took some of her covers off,” I said.

  “She has a fever,” Lady Thorton said.

  Susan groaned. Lady Thorton leaned close. “What is it?” Lady Thorton asked.

  Susan whispered, “Hurts.”

  “How badly does it hurt?” Lady Thorton’s voice sounded angry and gentle at the same time.

  “Yes.” Susan’s eyes slid closed.

  I stood rooted to the floor. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “We’ll call Dr. Graham,” Lady Thorton said. “Oh. No—where’s the nearest—Jamie!” She hurried down the stairs. “Jamie, I need you to run a message over to the stables. Have Grimes telephone Dr. Graham. I’ll find a pencil.”

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  “Jamie’s faster.” At the kitchen table Lady Thorton scribbled a note while Jamie got into his coat and boots. “Take your bicycle,” Lady Thorton said, pressing the note into his hand. “Hurry.”

  “What did I do?” I asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No.” Lady Thorton paused to touch my arm. “Either she’s gotten worse quickly or you didn’t realize how bad her symptoms were. We’ll get Dr. Graham here. She’ll be fine.”

  Lady Thorton went into the kitchen, filled the teakettle, and set it to boiling. She rummaged in the scullery until she found a bottle of something. “Here.” She gave me the bottle, a big empty bowl, and a clean towel. “Take these and go sit with her.”

  Susan was sweating all over, the way Oban had when he’d colicked. The room was freezing cold. Susan looked mostly asleep, and when I said her name, softly, she didn’t respond. Cautiously I stuck my fingers against her throat. She jumped and pulled away. Her eyes fluttered open. “What are you doing?” The words low but clear.

  “Checking for your heartbeat,” I said.

  “It’s . . . still beating,” she said, with the ghost of a grin.

  “Do you feel very bad?”

  She nodded. “Can’t . . . breathe.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea at all what to do. I’d never felt so helpless in my life.

  Lady Thorton came in with the steaming teapot in her hands. She set it down on the floor. “Get me another pillow,” she said. When I did she set it behind Susan’s head, then reached under Susan’s armpits and hauled her half upright. “Now give me the bowl.”

  She put the bowl against Susan’s chest. She dumped something sharp-smelling and astringent from the bottle into the bowl, then added hot water from the kettle. She draped the towel over Susan’s head and the bowl.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The steam and menthol will help her breathe,” Lady Thorton said.

  “I didn’t know,” I said.

  “I know you didn’t,” she said. “It’s all right. I didn’t expect you to.”

  “I thought she was hot because of too many blankets,” I said. “Like me at the hospital.”

  “She has a fever,” Lady Thorton said. “That’s her body raising its own temperature. Internal heat. It’s a sign she’s fighting some kind of infection.”

  “Oh.” I should have known. Somehow, I should have known.

  “Don’t worry,” Lady Thorton said.

  • • •

  Dr. Graham listened to Susan’s chest with his stethoscope. He felt her heartbeat and measured her temperature and thumped her chest with his fingers. All the while he looked more and more concerned. “Where’s the nearest telephone?” he asked, looking up at Lady Thorton.

  “Stables,” she answered.

  I cut in quick. “I can take a message. Fred will make the call.”

  Dr. Graham shook his head. “We’ll stop by on our way, to let them know we’re coming,” he said. “I’m taking her to a hospital. There’s a good one in London for chest and lungs.”

  “London?”

  He looked at me. “It’s not far by car.” Doctors could still drive cars. “Closest place for what we need. Lady Thorton, you’ll come with me?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Ada, while I’m changing, get Susan’s identity and ration cards. Fetch her whole pocketbook. And put together a bag for her—nightgown, toothbrush, that sort of thing.”

  Dr. Graham carried Susan down the stairs, wrapped in blankets. She couldn’t walk. I�
�d never seen her so helpless and small. She groaned once, and gave a labored cough, but otherwise hardly seemed to care what was happening. My heart beat fast, as though I’d run a mile.

  I tucked her bag into the backseat of Dr. Graham’s car. Icy cold pricked through the pebbled drive into my stocking feet. Wind whipped my hair. I leaned against the passenger window. Susan’s breath fogged the glass.

  Lady Thorton came out, shrugging herself into her coat.

  “Let me come,” I said, the words raw in my throat.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. A hospital’s no place for children. I’ll be back in a day or two. I’ll send Grimes down to stay with you.” She got into the backseat. Dr. Graham passed me going around the front of the car.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

  He looked up briefly before shutting the door. “Pneumonia,” he said.

  Chapter 53

  Pneumonia.

  Pneumonia.

  I’d heard that word before.

  Over two years ago, when I’d first come to Susan’s house, when I’d learned about Becky, her best friend. “What killed her?” I’d asked, and Susan had said, “Pneumonia. That’s a sickness in the lungs.”

  I was falling, falling. I had no one to catch me. Susan was dying. I had no safe place to be.

  The car drove away in a swirl of dead leaves. The wind howled in the trees. I took a step toward the house, and another. Two good feet. I opened the door.

  Jamie stood at the base of the stairs, Bovril in his arms. I had to take care of Jamie.

  Who was going to take care of me?

  • • •

  I couldn’t go to bed. The upstairs was so cold. I couldn’t bear to be alone in my room, without Maggie, without Ruth, without Susan in the room between Jamie and me, without even Lady Thorton. I hauled blankets down the stairs and told Jamie to bring in more coal for the fire.

  He did it one-armed, clutching Bovril in the other. I didn’t blame him.

  “If you wrap yourself up tight,” Jamie said, pulling the blanket around me, “you won’t feel as scared.”

  It was good advice. We both wrapped up tight. We turned off all the lamps. I moved a low table out of the way and pulled the sofa so that it faced the fireplace head-on. When Fred came in, a bit later, he looked at Jamie and me and the cat huddled right up by the fire. “That’s thinking,” he said. He pulled off his boots and went to sleep in Lady Thorton’s wing chair.

  • • •

  In the morning, as soon as we woke, we tromped over to the stables and used the telephone to phone the number Dr. Graham had left. Fred made the call since I wasn’t used to telephones. “Admitted and stable,” he said when he’d hung up.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “Not dead,” Jamie whispered.

  “No.” Fred patted Jamie’s back. “She’s in hospital and they’re taking care of her. She isn’t going to die.”

  “Becky died,” Jamie said, so I knew that he remembered too.

  • • •

  I was Susan’s ward. I was supposed to guard her. She was supposed to guard me. All that day and the next I felt like I had a band of steel wrapped tight around my middle. I didn’t have pneumonia, but I could barely breathe. I could barely function. I did my work—I did all the work I could find to do, every last small thing—but whenever I tried to eat, my throat closed and I couldn’t swallow. At night I couldn’t sleep. I wrapped up tight on the sofa and cuddled Jamie and his cat and listened to Fred snore from the wing chair.

  When Lady Thorton walked in, midday on the second day, I burst into sobs. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop. I started to ask how Susan was and the words turned into nonsense syllables and those turned into horrible jagged crying sounds and tears.

  Lady Thorton stared at me. I stood in the kitchen, sobbing. I didn’t want her to touch me. I didn’t know how to calm down.

  Jamie ran in with one of our blankets. “Here,” he said. I draped the blanket around myself. Jamie pulled it tight and hugged me.

  “Susan’s all right,” Lady Thorton said.

  We looked at her.

  “Not entirely,” she amended. “She’s very sick. But they have a new type of medicine they’re giving her and they hope it will start to show results soon. I’m just back to collect more clothes and things. I’m going to stay in London near the hospital. She needs someone with her.”

  “I can do it,” I said. “I ought to do it. Please let me go.” I needed Susan. Oh, how I needed Susan.

  “They only allow visitors in to see her once a day,” Lady Thorton said. “That’s not much. And you have to be at least twelve years old. They won’t let Jamie in.”

  “They did at my hospital,” I said.

  “Children’s orthopedics might bend the rules,” Lady Thorton said. “Women’s pulmonary never will.” She studied me. “Ada, you look awful. You need to take care of yourself.”

  I had needed all the care I could give myself just to keep from falling completely apart. I said, “Becky died of pneumonia.”

  Lady Thorton’s face clouded. “That’s right. I’d forgotten.” She thought for a moment. “Jamie, I’ll ask Mrs. Elliston if she can keep you. Ada, you can come with me. Pack your things.”

  “I want to go too,” Jamie said. Lady Thorton didn’t reply.

  I’d always taken care of Jamie before anything else.

  He would manage with the Ellistons. I wouldn’t.

  Chapter 54

  Dr. Graham said London was a short trip by car. It was a long one by train. I’d traveled the route three times before in my life—two good, one bad. Now this, the worst of all.

  I had to force myself to breathe.

  Lady Thorton patted my knee. She said, “No matter what happens, you’ll be all right.”

  I stared at her.

  She said, “You and Jamie won’t be left alone in the world. If it comes to the worst, I would be willing to take custody of you.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Lord Thorton and I,” she said.

  Still couldn’t speak.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lady Thorton said. She opened her purse and rummaged inside it. “It won’t come to that. She’ll be fine.”

  It could come to that. Otherwise Lady Thorton wouldn’t have said so.

  I knew I should be grateful. I was certain I should feel grateful, that Lady Thorton was willing to guard Jamie and me.

  Someday I would be grateful. Right now I had no room.

  • • •

  By the time we reached London, it was black dark. I was surprised to see taxis outside the station. Lady Thorton hailed one. “Claridge’s,” she said to the driver. To me she said, “We’ve missed visiting hours. I’ll call the hospital from the hotel.”

  I fidgeted with the belt on my coat. “I need to see her.”

  “Yes,” Lady Thorton said. “We’ll go tomorrow, first thing, and see if we can speak to a doctor. Visiting hours are in the afternoon.”

  “I need to see her today.”

  “I understand,” Lady Thorton said. “You can’t, however. I can’t fix that.”

  At least Lady Thorton heard me.

  I don’t know how the taxi driver navigated the blacked-out streets. We rushed through complete darkness and when we stopped, there was still no light to see where we were. On the sidewalk, a uniformed man held a small, dim flashlight. “Welcome, madam,” he said, opening a blacked-out door.

  Immediately beyond the first door was a pitch-dark space and a second blacked-out door. Immediately beyond the second door was an enormous, astonishingly bright room, with a smooth, shiny, black-and-white floor and a huge electric light hung with hundreds of pieces of sparkling glass.

  Lady Thorton twitched my hand. “Don’t ogle,” she said.

  I
dropped my eyes and moved to stand beside her. She spoke to a man behind a counter, and then another man picked up Lady Thorton’s suitcase—it held my things too—and led us into a small room like a closet. Lady Thorton and the man turned around, so they were facing the door we’d come in. The little room shook for a moment. Then the door opened, on its own, onto a different place. As though the entire building had shifted while we stood in the closet.

  “It’s a lift,” Lady Thorton said, pushing me forward. “Haven’t you been in a lift before?”

  The closet had moved, not the building. The closet had moved up.

  The man opened one of a long series of doors with a key. He showed us into a room with flowered carpet and colored walls, and two beds made up fancy. It reminded me of Thorton House.

  The man left. “Put on your church dress and wash your face,” Lady Thorton said. “We’ll go down and eat.”

  I said, “I thought we’d stay in rooms over a pub.”

  “I’ve always preferred Claridge’s,” Lady Thorton replied.

  • • •

  Dinner was served in an impossibly grand room, but the food itself was quite normal, probably because of the war. “Can’t you eat more than that?” Lady Thorton asked.

  I shook my head.

  “No, I suppose not,” she said. “Never mind.” She glanced at the newspaper she’d asked the waiter to bring her. “What else shall we do tomorrow?”

  “Susan,” I whispered.

  “Yes, my dear, but besides that?”

  • • •

  The hospital was a red brick building, tall and thin. Inside, it smelled exactly like the hospital where I’d had my surgery. We checked in at a desk by the front door, and a nurse came downstairs to tell us that Susan had had a difficult night. Her fever was still high. They were continuing to treat her with sulfa drugs. They hoped to see improvement soon.

  Visiting began at three p.m.

  I studied the walls and the stairs. If I could escape Lady Thorton, just for a moment, I could run up those stairs and find Susan.

  “It’s difficult,” Lady Thorton said. She took hold of my hand and led me back outside. She wouldn’t let go, not even when I tried to pull away.