Romeo Blue (9780545520706)

by Stone, Phoebe

  Derek grabbed the letter. He held it against his body so I couldn’t check to make sure that I hadn’t mixed up the whole thing. And I have been known to mix things up, to think I’m dreadfully right when I’m dreadfully wrong. “Oh, Derek,” I said, jumping up and down. “Do let me see what you’ve got.” But he held the letter high. It was very silly of me to leap and grab, but I kept on trying. And then Derek turned round and drummed down the hall and pounded up the stairs and went in his room and slammed the door.

  I sat alone at the blue metal kitchen table listening to the music, which seemed to get in under the wallpaper, to get in behind the wooden cabinets, even to get in under the soft linoleum. I felt for one moment a pang of regret about boxing up my old, stuffed, British bear, Wink. I had wrapped him in soft tissue paper and I had put him in a box under my bed. I hadn’t mailed him away to my friend in England yet because Uncle Gideon suggested I save it till things quieted down on the sea. “You don’t want Wink to end up at the bottom of the ocean, do you? Mail vessels are prime targets these days, Fliss.” So Wink was still waiting patiently under my bed in his box for the seas to quiet down, for the world to quiet down. I thought about getting him out but then I reminded myself that I was twelve years old now and girls of that age never get out their old bears and start hauling them about again. And so I let Wink rest and I let Derek stew and I hoped soon enough he would come to a full boil and let me see that letter.

  I stayed there at that kitchen table for a long time for me, because normally, even though I was twelve, I still liked to hop about and leap from chairs to sofas just for the lark of it. I liked to see if I could jump from rug to rug without ever touching the wood floor. I did once make it from one end of the house to the other, but Derek said it didn’t count because I pushed a rag rug all the way down the hall to the kitchen.

  I had a lot on my mind recently. And I knew what Derek was going through. So much had happened in the last year concerning my father. After being here in Maine for nine months, I found out that, even though I had only met him recently, Uncle Gideon was my real father. My mum Winnie had been married to him thirteen years ago and that’s when I was conceived. Everyone was mad at my mum now because she had broken Gideon’s heart by leaving him then and marrying his brother, Danny, instead. After I was born, Winnie and Danny had raised me in England until the war came. Then they brought me here and left me, without explaining much of anything.

  I hadn’t quite become accustomed to the whole thing yet. Gideon wasn’t exactly my uncle anymore but he didn’t exactly feel like my father either. I still called him Uncle Gideon. I needed to find a new name for him that seemed right. What should I call him? Papa? That sounded very old-fashioned or French. Isn’t that what Sara Crewe called her father in A Little Princess? Pa sounded very American but more like what a cowboy child would call his cowboy father. Like, “Pa, should I saddle up your horse so you can race those other ranchers to the canyon?” Perhaps a different name every day would do, until suddenly one would just feel right and would stick like spaghetti when you threw it against the wall to see if it was done.

  So far I felt very awkward about calling my new father anything at all. And I tried to avoid it. Gideon said I could call him “Thing-a-ma-bobby,” if I wanted to, or even “What-cha-ma-call-it.” He said he didn’t mind at all. Any name would do. But my mum Winnie would not have liked me calling my sort-of dad “What-cha-ma-call-it.”

  But then, I wasn’t sure at all when I might see Winnie and Danny again. I missed them terribly and sometimes I would sit at the window and simply wait for them. I had been sitting at that window for almost a year and a half.

  That was something I was always trying not to think about and so I took a nice bite of a very lovely strawberry jam sandwich. And just as I did, Gideon poked his head through the kitchen doorway. “Hello and good afternoon, Fliss,” he said. “It’s your what-cha-ma-call-it here. Haven’t forgotten me, have you? Haven’t come up with a name for me yet, have you? You know it doesn’t really matter. Even Thing-a-ma-jig would be just fine.”

  “Oh, hello,” I said, leaving off his name all together. “It’s you!”

  “I put a letter for Derek on the table here a while ago. It arrived this morning while you were out putting up posters. Fliss, the letter appeared to be from a relative of Derek’s, oddly enough. Derek doesn’t exactly have any relatives and, um … well, do you know who the letter is from? Has he read it?”

  “Oh,” I said, and the posters we hadn’t hung yet swirled in front of my eyes for a moment. CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES. DON’T SAY WHAT YOU KNOW. YOU NEVER KNOW WHO … WHO … WHO … That poster showed an owl in a tree and a battlefield in the background. It floated up in my mind now.

  “These posters,” the air-raid warden had said to Derek and me, “are to inform people not to talk too much about the things they know, things like where a husband or brother or father might be stationed, or what his squadron is doing, or even what boats you might have seen passing along the horizon. There are people sending information back to the Nazis. They sell the information you know. This is war and every family has their secrets that must be kept.” He had then handed me a pile of rolled-up posters.

  Gideon was looking at me rather sadly just now, watching my face as if I were a book with very small type he was trying to read.

  “Well, yes, um, the letter did appear to be from his, um, father, I think. But I am not sure. Perhaps Derek won’t answer it,” I said.

  Gideon looked startled and then his eyebrows seemed to slip down to his chin. He sort of stumbled to a chair and sagged into it.

  We sat there together as if we were on the shore in an early morning fog, a fog so thick, we were unable to see anything, not even each other. Finally, I said, “But it’s quite nice for Derek, really. He didn’t seem to have a father before and now he might. I imagine his papa will only pop in and say hello and then leave.”

  “Oh yes. No. Of course,” said Gideon. “But this is very serious. His father could take Derek away from us if he …” And then he didn’t finish his sentence, and Gideon always finished his sentences. After all, he was a sixth-grade teacher called Mr. Bathtub at the John E. Babbington Elementary School. It was usually his students who stopped in midsentence, saying things like um and uh and er.

  It was the same way with Aunt Miami. She was ironing in the laundry room. I was in there knocking about while she sprinkled water over linen napkins. Then she bundled them up and piled them all wet at the end of the ironing board. Soon enough she unbundled them and began ironing each lace-trimmed napkin. I loved the smell of the steam and the hissing sound of the iron as it went over the damp cloth.

  “Mr. Henley will be here in a little while,” she said and her lilac-colored eyes looked a bit dreamy. Aunt Miami always called our postman Mr. Henley when she talked about him, but she called him Bob when she saw him in person. He’d recently been taking her “out to the movies,” as they say here in Bottlebay, Maine.

  “Ah, Henley,” said Gideon, suddenly appearing again in the doorway, swinging his arms about. “Has he popped the question yet?”

  Gideon was always asking that and I sort of guessed what question he hoped Mr. Henley would pop.

  “Derek’s gotten a letter, you know,” said Gideon, looking at the floor. “It’s from his father.”

  “What?” said Aunt Miami. I could tell she was quite shaken because she left the iron on the damp cloth a bit too long, leaving a brown, burned shape of an iron on it. It looked like a dark ship crossing the surface of the napkin.

  I thought for a moment about all the ships crossing back and forth over the dangerous ocean, the British ships and the American ships and the Nazi ships, and all of the submarines and the U-boats moving deep in the darkness, unseen, unheard. Why oh why had Mr. Fitzwilliam been nosing about? Why did he ask all those questions? Why hadn’t he left well enough alone?

  One summer when I was nine, before the war, Winnie and Danny and I left London to go on h
oliday for the summer. We moved to a cottage near the sea in Selsey, West Sussex. It was the only house we ever had. There, I used to walk down the block to the sea. But the seawall bothered me. It had recently been rebuilt. A little girl named Dimples told me the seawall had been washed away a few years ago by huge waves. She said lots of people were carried off into the swell and were washed up dead on the shingles later.

  Dimples would have made a lovely, sad-looking stone statue. She had such big eyes and she was very interested in tragedy. I didn’t know what a swell was, even though I was older than Dimples by quite a few years. Swell was what Danny said when he thought something was lovely. “Now, that would be swell,” he’d say, my Danny. It sounded very American, very posh to me and to Dimples.

  In thinking back now, our cottage in Selsey had a visitor one day, a woman with a knitting bag. She came to chat with my Winnie. I was sent out to the garden to follow our gardener about. Before I left the room, though, I glanced back and saw that the woman was knitting already. Her needles were working on a muffler and she had just begun to add a butterfly to it. It looked like a swallowtail butterfly, made of black-and-yellow wool. “There are swallowtails and clouded yellows in your garden today, Winnie,” said the woman. “What do you think?”

  “Hmm, perhaps that would do very well as a name for our circuit. I’ll ask the others,” said Winnie.

  The war hadn’t started in England yet but on the wireless they said that Czechoslovakia had gone under and drowned in a sea of Nazi soldiers and tanks and bombers. The word drowned made me think of our seawall. In Selsey, Winnie and Danny were already starting their secret work.

  At dinner that night, Derek was still unwilling to say a word about the letter from his father. His mouth was sewn shut, just like my old bear Wink’s mouth. Derek was making an interesting arrangement with his fork, knife, spoon, and napkin on the table, not answering anyone.

  “Derek? Would you tell us about your letter?” said my father, Gideon.

  It was still raining outside in a long-stretching autumn kind of way, pulling at everything, leaves and the last of the flowers. The blackout curtains were drawn, so I could only hear the rain needling the windows.

  We were having boiled potatoes and The Gram’s home-canned green beans. Both of them came from our garden. The potatoes had just been dug up. Soon enough, the government had announced, all sorts of things besides sugar might have to be rationed, things like meat and cheese and butter and oil and even bicycles and typewriters and shoes! I had been through all that in England. We got these little ration books full of ration stamps. The stamps allowed you to buy a little bit of meat once a week, mostly just enough to make a soup. I used to wait in a ration line at the butcher’s shop in London with Winnie, hoping to get some meat. But usually by the time our turn came round, the meat was sold out and the butcher would look at us in a sad sort of way and say, “Carry on, then.”

  Tonight, Uncle Gideon looked very worried about Derek’s dad and this unexpected letter that seemed to have fallen out of the sky. “Derek, can I see the letter?” he said again, pinching the bridge of his nose and frowning.

  “Well,” said Aunt Miami, glancing quickly at Mr. Henley, who was having dinner with us, “instead of pouting and looking glum, I think we should dance.”

  “Not while we’re eating, dear,” said The Gram.

  “Well, we don’t have to dance, but we can certainly put a record on the Victrola,” Auntie said, getting up and going to the brown wooden record player. “I don’t want Bob to think we’re the gloomy set around here.”

  She put on the 78 called “I Think of You.” It was everybody’s favorite in the Bathburn house. It was known to wedge Derek out of all sorts of dark moods because he loved the tune.

  When the clouds roll by

  and the moon drifts through

  When the haze is high

  I think of you.

  I think of you.

  When the mist is sheer

  and the shadows too

  When the moon is spare

  I think of you.

  I think of you.

  Gideon looked even more anxious now. That song made him remember my mum, Winnie. Even though his brother, Danny, stole Winnie away thirteen years ago — Gideon still loved her.

  When the night birds cry

  and the swallows too

  When west winds sigh

  I think of you.

  I think of you.

  “This is a grave matter, Derek. We would like to know what’s going on,” Gideon said, nodding at Derek with a bit of melancholy.

  But Derek didn’t look up. Then the 78 came to the end of the song and the needle of the Victrola was scratching softly against the center of the record in a rhythmical way, reminding me of a nagging thought that I wished would just go away.

  “Derek, dear,” said The Gram, looking straight at him. “We’ve all been at sixes and sevens here, especially Gideon. Are you ready to tell us what the letter said?”

  Derek continued to stare at his plate. There was one last green bean lying there. It was turned down, like a frowning mouth.

  “Sometimes when I read my poetry aloud, I know what I want to change or add to the poem. Sometimes reading aloud helps find an answer,” said Mr. Henley.

  “Oh, Bob, what a lovely thing to say,” said Auntie. And she and Mr. Henley began staring into each other’s eyes.

  Derek slowly reached in his shirt pocket. He laid a folded piece of paper on the table. He lifted his one useless arm and dropped it on a corner of the paper to hold it down. With his good hand he then unfolded the letter and read in a low, quiet voice:

  “Dear Derek,

  I just landed in Portland. I am a merchant seaman on the USS Washington anchored out in the bay. I’m on shore leave for a while. I’ve been walking around the streets thinking about you and finally after all these time hoping to see you. May I come over just for an afternoon? We have so much to talk about.

  With love,

  Your father, Edmund Blakely.”

  “Hmm, after all these time?” said Gideon. “Your dad seems to be a bit, um, sloppy.”

  “It’s just a letter, a slipup. Who cares,” said Derek.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” said Gideon. “I was just noticing that …”

  “Gideon, hush,” said The Gram. “Must you always be a teacher?”

  “Oh, Derek,” I said. “Will you see your father? Will he be coming here?”

  “What are his intentions?” said Aunt Miami. She was holding Mr. Henley’s hand under the table. I saw it only because I happened to be under the table myself for one minute, fetching two wandering green beans that had rolled off my plate by mistake.

  “I don’t know what his intentions are,” said Derek. “But I think I am grown up enough now to make this decision for myself.”

  “Well,” said Aunt Miami. “You could write him and tell him you are indisposed and far too busy. He’s waited twelve years to see you. Tell him you need some time now and lots of it. Then toss away his letter and let him get back on his ship, the USS Thanks a Lot for Nothing, Pal.”

  The Gram and Mr. Henley began clapping and cheering. Aunt Miami stood up and took a bow.

  “Okay. Perhaps. Yeah, you’re right,” said Derek, folding the letter back into his pocket. “I’ll write and say no. Sorry. Too late.”

  “There you go, good boy.” said The Gram, putting her arm round Derek. “And now let’s hope he leaves us alone!”

  Uncle Gideon put a piece of driftwood into the woodstove. He left the door open and stared at the fire that seemed then to sizzle and spark and leap about, like a caged tiger. Outside, curtains of rain swept against the windows. I could hear the anxious ocean breaking on the rocks below. And I stared at the large oil painting, above the sideboard, of the old sea captain who once lived in this house, who once built this house. Captain A. E. Bathburn, 1854.

  Unfortunately, at school in Bottlebay, Maine, there was to be an autumn dance for te
ens at the end of October. I was only twelve and would not be admitted. Derek had been practicing waltz steps and swing steps in the parlor. Before the letter came, I had been helping him get his steps right. “How am I doing?” I had said to him a few weeks ago as we made a last twirl to a song called “When I’m Not with You.”

  Derek had looked down at me. He smiled and he said, “You’re the cat’s pajamas, Fliss.” Ever since he had entered eighth grade, Derek loved slang. And I did too. I was awfully curious about the cat’s pajamas. I pictured a cat wearing flannels covered with cowgirl hats and stars. I hoped it was a good thing to be the cat’s pajamas.

  I was thinking about that when the phone rang, which was a rarity at the Bathburn house. I knew Gideon used to ring up Washington when we were out. The whole family knew all about Gideon’s work — not his work at school as a teacher but his secret work with Mr. Donovan in Washington. It was the same kind of work Winnie and Danny did. Every time the phone rang I thought of them, because they were missing and lost and we hadn’t heard from them in months. How I longed for Winnie and Danny still. How my longing followed me about the way the wind seemed to follow me sometimes.

  Usually I had to race with Miami to answer the phone on the landing but she was in the gymnasium upstairs arguing with Uncle Gideon while he stood on his head. “Well,” Uncle Gideon was saying, “Henley should pop the question now so we can have the wedding before Christmas, when I have to go overseas.”

  I would have rushed to the phone but now I stood frozen in the hall, frozen hearing those words, when I have to go overseas. I was frozen, suddenly thinking of Captain Bathburn’s ship in 1855, which finally came home, finally sailed over the horizon and into port. It was pure white, they said, frozen solid. The masts and sails all covered in ice. It was like a ghost ship, arriving eight weeks late in the middle of winter. But it had made it, with Captain A. E. Bathburn and half of his crew still alive and on board.