The War I Finally Won

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  • • •

  The London near the hotel and the hospital was not a London I had ever seen before. Even in war, even with sandbags lining the sidewalks and storefronts, and glass missing from windows and whole chunks of buildings bombed, even in drab winter, this London was prettier and greener than I ever imagined. Stores still had goods in the windows. There were evergreen bushes, and sometimes trees. There was grass.

  “The first thing we should do,” Lady Thorton said, “is buy you a new coat.”

  “I don’t need a new coat.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. When I glared at her she added, “What do you think Susan would say? Would she want you to have a new coat?”

  It wasn’t fair play. I was still wearing the coat Susan had bought me over a year ago when I was in hospital. It had been small for me then, and even though Susan had altered it repeatedly it was hopelessly tight on me now. We’d not been able to find a coat my size for sale in the village, used or new, and we’d not been able to go elsewhere.

  Susan would love me to have a new coat.

  We went to a place called a department store. It was huge, a city of shops under one roof. In the children’s section, a woman measured me and brought out four different coats for me to choose from, all well-made of good new wool. One by one I tried them on.

  “Very suitable,” Lady Thorton said, nodding. “Which do you prefer?”

  Red, navy, gray, and a sort of brownish green. “I don’t know,” I said.

  Lady Thorton said, “I’m not choosing for you. It’s your coat, I want you to like it.”

  Susan said I looked washed-out in red. I reached toward the gray coat. “Good,” Lady Thorton said. “We’ll take it.”

  • • •

  Lady Thorton told the store clerk I would wear the new coat now. She gave her my old one, and asked that it be delivered to Claridge’s. The woman said, “Very good, ma’am,” with a sort of mushed-up voice.

  I looked away when Lady Thorton paid for the coat. I didn’t want to know how much it cost.

  Less than my surgery, but still.

  • • •

  Next we took a bus to a huge building Lady Thorton called a museum. She did not explain what a museum was. “They’ve taken the paintings away, for safekeeping,” she said, “but now they have concerts here every weekday at lunch.” We joined a long, slow-moving queue. Inside, we found seats among rows of little chairs. Lady Thorton bought us each a sandwich from a table at one side.

  Eventually a woman came out to play the piano at the front of the room. Lady Thorton told me it was called a piano. I’d not seen one before, though it looked similar to the organ at church. Its music wasn’t quavery like church music. It wasn’t like any music I knew. It was all sounds, running together without words, and somehow, if I shut my eyes, it reminded me of good things, of summer and happiness and grass. It was the sort of music I could disappear into, so I let myself disappear. I could breathe. I almost fell asleep.

  Afterward Lady Thorton seemed more relaxed too. “I do love concerts,” she said.

  Concert, piano, hotel, lift. Department store. Museum. I wished I had my dictionary.

  “Has Maggie ever come here, and done all this?” I asked.

  “Well, not these particular concerts,” Lady Thorton said. “These are special, because of the war.”

  “I mean—stores and Claridge’s and all the bright buildings.”

  Lady Thorton laughed. “Of course! It was a completely different world, before the war. Margaret and I used to come up for weekends. I took her to pantomimes, the zoo, all sorts of things. We had grand adventures.” Lady Thorton’s whole face smiled, remembering. Even her eyes looked happy.

  • • •

  We walked back to the hospital through streets damaged by bombs. Some buildings had been partially repaired; others lay in broken, twisted heaps. We both stopped to stare at a pile of rubble sandwiched between two stores open for business as usual. “I suppose there’s been no time to clear things,” Lady Thorton said.

  • • •

  At the hospital. Inside the door. Up the steps and down a long hall. White walls bisected by a dark wooden rail. A wooden door. A room full of beds. Unfamiliar faces until we reached the very end, the last bed on the left, and there was Susan.

  I ran the last two steps but stopped before I touched her. Was I allowed to touch her? She was sleeping, her head and shoulders lifted high on a pile of white-cased pillows.

  Lady Thorton said, “Susan. Ada’s here.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. They slowly opened.

  Susan smiled.

  A noise came out of me that was half a laugh and half a cry.

  “You can sit down,” Lady Thorton said. “You won’t hurt her.”

  Very carefully, I sat on the edge of Susan’s bed. I moved myself a tiny bit closer, then let my head and shoulders lean forward until I was just touching her side. I would have hugged her, the way Jamie did, but I didn’t want to make it harder for her to breathe.

  “I had to bring her,” Lady Thorton said. “She was fretting herself sick.”

  Susan lightly touched my hair. “Of course,” she whispered.

  I needed to take care of Susan. She was sick. I was strong. I was her ward. But Lady Thorton was already unpacking the things of Susan’s that she’d brought. Lady Thorton combed Susan’s hair for her, and filled her water pitcher, while I just lay beside Susan, letting her stroke my hair.

  “I’m not going to die,” Susan said.

  Lady Thorton and I both froze.

  “Don’t worry,” Susan said. “They say I haven’t turned the corner yet, but I think I have. I’m not going to die on you, Ada.”

  “Becky,” I said.

  “Yes. I know.” She spoke slowly, with pauses in between each word while she breathed. “But now they have a new kind of medicine. Sulfa. Didn’t have it when Becky was sick.”

  “It’s a wonderful drug,” Lady Thorton said, in the hearty voice she used to encourage the WVS.

  “It’s working,” Susan whispered. “Ada. I won’t die.”

  I didn’t entirely believe her, but I believed her a little bit.

  Chapter 55

  When it was time to leave I kissed Susan’s cheek. It was still too hot, from fever. When we walked away I felt like I was abandoning her. I felt like I was being abandoned.

  “She’s getting good care,” Lady Thorton said. She grabbed my hand to make me walk faster.

  “I should be taking care of her,” I said.

  “Don’t be ridic—” Lady Thorton started. Then, to my surprise, her voice softened. “We would both do all we could,” she said, “but we are not trained doctors or nurses. She needed to be in hospital.”

  We walked several blocks in silence. “After all,” Lady Thorton said, “Susan herself couldn’t repair your foot. You needed a surgeon for that.”

  • • •

  The next morning Lady Thorton took me to the zoo. It was huge, spread out like a farm with lots of buildings, and every building housed different kinds of animals. There were sandbag huts and bomb damage and a Red Cross building, but most of the zoo was like London, carrying on despite the war.

  “Here’s the monkey house,” Lady Thorton said.

  Monkeys had faces almost like people. They swung on ropes and screeched. Some were little, but others called chimpanzees were bigger than I was. I stared and stared. Jamie would have loved them.

  Zebras looked like striped ponies. Lions looked like huge versions of Bovril. Ostriches looked like nothing I’d ever seen. It was hard to believe they were actually birds.

  Penguins. They were birds too. Elephants. Camels. Giraffes. A hippopotamus. I’d never imagined animals could look like this. “I wish Jamie were here,” I said. He would be ecstatic.

  “We’ll find a time to b
ring him,” Lady Thorton said. “I hadn’t realized the zoo was open during the war until I inquired at the hotel.”

  The Reptile House was closed. “Had to put the poisonous snakes down,” one of the keepers told us. “In case there was a bombing and they escaped. Moved the rest of them to the country.”

  “Pity,” Lady Thorton said, “I particularly wanted to show Ada the dragon.”

  Dragon? “You said dragons were imaginary!”

  “Certainly,” Lady Thorton said. “The ones in stories are. But there’s a largish type of lizard called a Komodo dragon. Margaret always found him fascinating.”

  You simply could not trust anything anyone ever said.

  “He doesn’t fly,” Lady Thorton said. “Nor breathe fire. He’s not that interesting.”

  “What about angels?” I said.

  Lady Thorton raised her eyebrows. “What about them?”

  “Are they here too?” If the zoo could have dragons, why not?

  Lady Thorton said, “Not that I’ve noticed.” I would have questioned her further, but suddenly she smiled. “Oh, the duck pond,” she said. “We should have brought bread for the ducks. When Margaret was small it was her favorite thing.” She pointed to the edge of a small pond surrounding a few tiny islands. “I remember her standing just there, in her little russet coat, surrounded by ducks, and laughing.” Lady Thorton’s voice was softer than usual. “She had curly hair when she was small. Curly hair and the most adorable little hat.”

  Adorable? I’d never heard Lady Thorton use such a word.

  “We loved the zoo,” Lady Thorton said.

  • • •

  Susan didn’t get better, but she didn’t get worse. Every day Lady Thorton and I woke, went to the hospital for news about Susan, walked around the middle of London, then went back to the hospital for visiting hours. Lady Thorton walked me past Buckingham Palace, where the king lived. It had been bombed, but not badly. She showed me the Tower of London, and the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey, which was like a church but with all the tombstones inside. She showed me a whole heap of buildings that were important to her but not to me. I didn’t find any of them as interesting as the zoo. Plus, Susan wasn’t better yet. It was so hard to pay attention to anything besides Susan.

  One day, Lady Thorton and I struggled through heaps of rubble and half-closed battered streets to get to an enormous church called St. Paul’s. It stood mostly unharmed amid blocks of destruction. Lady Thorton let out a long breath when she saw it. “A miracle,” she said. “What would London do, without St. Paul’s?”

  I didn’t mind looking at buildings—we had to do something before visiting hours—but they didn’t hold my attention. I found myself mostly noticing small things, like the holes in concrete curbs where iron park railings had been torn out to be made into bullets and guns. Or a silver barrage balloon with one cable loose that bobbed and dipped in the wind. Or a wren on a street sign. When I wrote to Jamie on the fancy hotel stationery I told him about little things, not big ones.

  • • •

  On our fifth day in London Lady Thorton walked me down a curved street with grand white buildings lining both sides. “This is where I grew up,” she said, pointing to a doorway. “Third floor, fourth window from the end, watched over by a nanny and then a governess.”

  I looked up at the window. The house was all fancy, but the window—“You were locked up?” I said. “You only had the one window?”

  “Oh.” Lady Thorton shook her head. “I got taken out on proper walks, twice a day. I usually saw my parents for an hour after tea.”

  Not entirely locked up, then. Not quite the same. Still—

  “Sometimes I went to parties and children’s teas, but I didn’t have any real friends, not until I was nearly grown,” Lady Thorton said. “It’s partly why I insisted Margaret go to boarding school. I never wanted her to be lonely like I was.”

  I stared at the window. Third floor, like mine.

  Lady Thorton and I had things in common after all.

  • • •

  Susan’s fever broke. When we came into her room that afternoon she could lift her head from her pillows. She leaned forward, and she smiled with her whole face, and she put her arms around me. I put my arms around her, and I clung to her, and I cried.

  I cried like I might never stop. All the tears I hadn’t cried for a whole week came out in one long flood. Tears and snot drenched Susan’s nightgown. I didn’t care. Neither did Susan.

  “I love you,” I whispered. I buried my head against Susan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” she whispered back. “I know you love me. You know I love you too.”

  • • •

  On our way out of the hospital, Lady Thorton took my hand and pulled me to a stop. “Now that she’s better, we’ll be leaving London soon,” she said. “It’ll take her a few more weeks to recover completely, but you and I have work at home.”

  I nodded. I missed Jamie and Butter and Fred.

  “So I have a favor to ask you. I’ve shown you my London. Will you show me yours?”

  I looked up at her, puzzled.

  “Will you show me where you grew up?” Lady Thorton asked. “Will you show me where you lived?”

  I didn’t want to. I never wanted to go back there myself, let alone with Lady Thorton. But she’d brought me to Susan; I couldn’t say no.

  Chapter 56

  Lady Thorton had the name written on a piece of paper. My first address, from the records kept with the WVS. A place called Elsa Street. I’d never known the name.

  “Elsa Street?” said one of the elegantly dressed men behind the hotel counter. “Never heard of it. Is that in Mayfair?”

  “I highly doubt it.” Lady Thorton drew herself up and looked at him down the side of her nose. “I believe it’s in the East End.”

  The man harrumphed and sighed and finally got out a large book of maps and searched until he had his finger on a small piece of London. Elsa Street.

  “Very good,” Lady Thorton said. “What’s the best way to get there? It looks far for walking.”

  The man gulped. “Madam, you can’t walk there,” he said.

  “Do we take the train? That would be an enjoyable adventure.”

  “Trains don’t run there, madam,” the man said.

  Lady Thorton grew even more imperious. “What do you mean, ‘trains don’t run there’? We are talking about the city of London, not the back of beyond.”

  “Madam.” The man pushed the map toward her. “The central line was expanding to Bethnal Green, but they stopped, on account of the war. There’s no trains near there.”

  “Then we’ll take a taxi,” Lady Thorton said.

  The doorman found her a cab. The cabdriver looked horrified. “Elsa Street?” he said. “You don’t really—”

  “I am quite tired,” Lady Thorton said pleasantly, “of being told what I do and do not want.” She turned to me as the cab pulled away. “You lived there, Ada. Did you feel it was unsafe?”

  She had no understanding, still.

  “Were you ever unsafe?” Lady Thorton persisted.

  “I was never safe,” I said. After a long moment, during which she stared at me, I said, “I think that was mostly Mam, not Elsa Street.”

  “Was Jamie unsafe?” she asked. “Poor, yes, underfed, yes—but unsafe? As a child?”

  I didn’t know. How could I know?

  “In daylight,” Lady Thorton added, as though that made a difference.

  We drove past the burned shell of a department store that had caught fire in the Blitz. Later, past the wrecked buildings surrounding St. Paul’s. Then into new neighborhoods, not nearly as heavily damaged, but beginning to resemble the old view out my window: narrow streets, buildings jammed toge
ther in tight rows. No grass, no bushes, no trees.

  “We’re back on Oxford Street,” the cabdriver said.

  “My goodness,” said Lady Thorton.

  The driver pulled up beside a gray stone church with a square tower. “St. Mary’s?” I asked. Jamie used to speak of St. Mary’s. I’d never actually seen it.

  “St. Dunstan and All Saints,” he said. “Back of the yard, that’s White Horse Street. Left to the corner was Elsa. I’ll wait here.”

  As soon as we got out of the cab I understood why he hadn’t driven us all the way there. Bombs had fallen everywhere around St. Dunstan’s. What had been houses and shops facing the church was now nothing but broken bricks and boards. We walked slowly past the church. On the far side some houses still stood, partially damaged, but when we looked left—

  —Elsa Street was gone.

  There was no longer even a street, no longer a clear path between the piles of rubble that cascaded from both sides.

  No noises. No dust. The wreckage had been scoured clean by rain and wind. It was empty of people or any other living things.

  A makeshift flag flew from the top of one pile. Nothing else moved.

  “Ada,” Lady Thorton said, choking a little.

  “There was a pub below our flat, where Mam worked nights,” I said. “Out my window I could see a fishmonger’s shop, and a pawn shop, and a bit of what was a grocery. We had a butcher shop too—once Jamie nicked a chop for me. He used to run down to the docks and watch the ships come in. And the school—the school we evacuated from, it wasn’t far away.” I searched, but couldn’t begin to make sense of the destruction. Somewhere, there’d been a room where I was held prisoner. Somewhere, a lane filled with people I recognized, who sometimes stopped to wave at me. Maybe it had been here. It didn’t exist anymore.

  Lady Thorton had tears in her eyes.

  Mam was dead. Elsa Street was gone. I really was never, ever going back.

  I slid my hand into Lady Thorton’s. “Thank you,” I said.