Derek and I had the same birthday on January 29 and that wasn’t very far off. I would soon be thirteen. But it wasn’t really Derek’s true birthday. It had been chosen for him because it was the day I was born. It had been done to make up for Gideon’s loss. Derek boiled and simmered about his birthday through all of early January.
Where did love go when it went away? It was as if Derek had opened a door and had thrown his feelings for me out into the wind. I wondered if perhaps his love would be restored if he would just let Buttons, Buttons and Babbit find his true parents.
One day I came in from a walk along the water, watching frozen convoys move across the icy horizon. The Gram was in the dining room, leaning over Derek. They were whispering. She had her arm across Derek’s back. And then she had her cheek resting on the top of his head.
“What is it?” I said when I came brushing into the dining room, where the morning mail was scattered across the table.
“Oh, nothing,” said The Gram. But she had the card with the gold writing on it in her hand. I could see part of it, half a word here and there. I could read uttons on one end and Bab on the other.
The Gram then quickly slipped the card in her apron pocket and said, “Well, Flissy, we’ve a job to do now. We have been asked to knit socks for soldiers overseas and that will include our Mr. Henley.”
“Good,” I said, “because he never seemed to have matching socks, did he? But that’s because he’s a poet. Poets are like that.”
“I know you are a crack knitter, Flissy McBee. We’ll get the wool from Miss Elkin because she keeps sheep now along with her chickens. She spins it herself, the way we have been churning our own butter here. It’s the best way to get butter these days.” As she was talking, she was putting stamps on a pile of letters. The Gram had elegant handwriting. I always liked to see the curls and the extra circles she added at the ends of words. I looked down as she went through the pile. Most of the letters seemed to be going to Washington, DC. I looked away.
Yes, my father and The Gram had asked me to stop noticing things and I was going to try. But things still went on in the house. Things I did not completely understand. In the middle of the next night I awoke in Aunt Miami’s huge canopy bed. I heard someone in the hallway slowly passing my room. I heard each measured step so clearly as that person moved along the hall. Then I heard keys rattling on a large, circular key holder. I heard a key being inserted into the lock. And then someone stepped into my father’s study and clicked the door shut behind them. I knew it was The Gram and I lay in my bed, chilled in spite of the piles of quilts and the soft pillow under my head.
We began our great sock-knitting project that next week. Well, I should say I began knitting. Derek made up a chart showing how many socks should be knitted each day and how long each sock should take and which sizes would be most useful. By evening Derek had a lovely graph showing all sorts of complicated information that I couldn’t follow and I had in my lap a pink-and-purple-striped wool sock on the large side. I was already knitting and purling the second sock, wondering all along if the soldier who would be wearing these socks would fancy the lovely, bright colors I had chosen.
The Gram wasn’t getting very far with her sock because she was on edge and flying up to the landing and lifting the receiver off the telephone and then dropping it back down. She changed her apron three times and paced through the house, like a small fox in a cage.
She checked the mailbox constantly and came back inside now, looking windblown and anxious. “You’ve gotten a letter, Flissy McBee,” she said and handed me an envelope. My heart started drumming inside me, as usual. Letters always made me leap and lunge, hoping still to hear from Winnie and Danny. If they wrote to me, I would have their address and then I could send them both a pair of warm socks. Did they let people write from prisons in France? By now my parents had grown thin as mist, vague as clouds, distant as faraway smoke. But I had the habit of loving them and waiting for them and once you acquire a habit, it stays with you. It stands by you. It won’t leave you, just like hope.
I rather ripped open the letter.
Dear Felicity Bathburn Budwig,
I have been in Canada, as my mum sent me on a boat with the others. I am staying in Montreal with Monsieur Laport and his sister-in-law. She only speaks French. Montreal is close to Maine, said my mum in a letter. She thought I should come for a visit by train. May I? I saw a ghost last night and Madame Laport chased it out of the larder with a ghost detector. It is my greatest wish to own one of those myself. Do write back soon.
Sincerely yours,
Dimples McFarland
When The Gram read the letter, her eyes became two blue stars spinning and twinkling at me. It was the first time I had seen her eyes lighten since Gideon left. “Well, if she is your little friend, of course Dimples can come to visit,” she said. “Perhaps it will take my mind off things.”
“Um, Dimples is five years younger than me and she does much more gallivanting and hopping about than I ever did, if you know what I mean. But she doesn’t break things, actually,” I said.
“That’s good. And can she knit?” said The Gram.
“She learned at three,” I said. “She makes odd things, like capes for invisible tiny people. But she’s quite good at it when she settles down.”
“Well, that’s it, then. Knitters are more than welcome. We’ll have all the soldiers in Europe wearing a nice pair of wool socks before the year is out,” said The Gram, sitting down to work on her first sock. Her needles began clicking and flashing and a brown-and-gray argyle sock slowly began appearing right before my eyes. “But I should ask the office about the correct colors to use before we really get started,” said The Gram. “Pink-and-purple stripes for the army might not be the best choice, Flissy B. Bathburn.”
Soon The Gram and Dimples’s mum were exchanging telegrams. The first one from England read:
Dimples needs happy place to stay STOP Can
she visit you STOP I shall be grateful STOP
After all that stopping in the telegrams, I was quite happy to be going one morning to pick up Dimples at the Grand Trunk Railway station, the one that serviced the north, including Montreal. In the Packard, The Gram and I dropped Derek off in Bottlebay. He planned to walk home, he said. He had something important to do, but of course he wouldn’t say what it was. When I asked about it, The Gram said, “Oh, tra la la, Flissy B. Bathburn. Must you stick your little nose in everything?”
Train stations always made me breathless, the ceilings stretching off into almost forever. The Grand Trunk Railway station was on India Street and today it was full of soldiers in khaki uniforms. And there were sailors milling about with long duffle bags slung over their shoulders. Everything echoed and murmured in that huge, vaulted area, as if it were a kind of cathedral.
Dimples, as she rushed towards me, looked tiny and jumpy and rosy. She was bobbing about like a fish on a line. “Felicity!” she called out, running into me. “I’ve got a suitcase that used to be Monsieur Laport’s typewriter case. Look,” she said, opening it. “It’s got clamps in here where the typewriter was attached. See that, do you?”
“Come along, you little nipper, close all that up now,” said The Gram.
But Dimples pulled out a nightdress and held it up. “This is brand-new. I didn’t pinch it. Madame Laport bought it off a lady in a frock shop only yesterday.”
“Come along now, close all that up,” said The Gram, pulling on Dimples’s little sleeve.
Then Dimples threw herself down on the station floor and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, but I did want Madame to buy me a new pair of galoshes because mine are full of holes, but she said no.”
“Little nipper, up on your feet,” said The Gram. “And pack away your things now.”
In the car riding home, Dimples suddenly grew quiet and wouldn’t answer anyone. She kept kicking her foot on the back of the seat and her curly hair was quite messy looking.
“She’s an odd
little thing,” whispered The Gram to me when we got out of the car. “She can stay here but, please, not a word about certain matters. You know what I mean, dear. Good girl.”
Dimples was very subdued when we walked in the house. She mostly seemed to look down at her shoes, which were a scruffy brown and worn-out. She had all sorts of cuts and bruises on her knees and her socks quite sagged about her ankles.
Finally, she said, “I should like to have a look at your Wink again. Do you still love him?”
I wasn’t sure at all how to answer a question like that. Of course I still loved my old brown bear. But it was different now that I was soon to be thirteen. I was above all that. The thought of his fuzzy ears and cheerful smile did not make my heart soar the way it used to. In fact, when the war was over, I was planning to mail him off to a friend in England. But it’s very hard for an almost thirteen-year-old to explain that to an eight-year-old. And so I said, “The problem with Wink is that he is up in my tower room in a box under the bed and that room is locked up for winter. There used to be a key to the room hanging in the library but it is gone now.”
Just as those words left my mouth, I suddenly felt a rush of sorrowful air blowing through me. I remembered Gideon, when he was still my uncle, cutting out and sawing the headboard for Wink’s bed, measuring Wink, making sure he had plenty of foot room. How I missed my father. Where was he now? When would he come home to us? Would he be able to rescue Winnie and Danny? He didn’t promise. He forgot to promise to me he would come home. His German uniform floated before me, the bright red armband and the swastika spinning and turning in the air.
Derek had come back on his own from Bottlebay before us. He was awfully secretive these days and I was dreadfully curious about his trip.
Dimples was now sitting on the bottom step in the hall. “Come along, then,” I said to her. She picked up her typewriter suitcase and we walked into the parlor. Derek was stretched out on the sofa, sipping something through a paper straw. He sat up and looked at Dimples. He seemed a bit perplexed, like a dog with his ears perked up, looking down at a very feisty new puppy.
“Hmm,” he said. “Figures, Fliss. Your friend would be another Brit. Isn’t she kind of small, though?”
“Size really has nothing to do with friendship,” I said.
“I’m quite good at figures anyway,” Dimples said. “It doesn’t matter about my being small. Ask me anything with figures and I’ll have an answer.”
“What is the largest number in the world?” said Derek, eyeing Dimples with his dark Derek frown.
“Infinity,” said Dimples with her hands on her hips. “So where are my sleeping quarters, Felicity?”
I took Dimples upstairs and offered her my little cot in Auntie’s room and she sat on it, testing the softness, looking quite messy and pleased the way you do when you’ve just been on a long journey and haven’t had a chance to peek in a mirror to see that your hair has all gone wild and that there are crumbs on your coat.
“Felicity, shall I read your palm?” Dimples said. “I know it will say that you love that boy downstairs.”
“Oh, hush, Dimples! You mustn’t say that. You see he doesn’t love me back anymore.”
“Very well, then, I shan’t sing the little song I had planned. Perhaps later,” she said. “And can we trade beds, possibly? I can offer you two boiled sweets and a special rock brought all the way from England. I think we can make a nice little trade.”
“I’d rather not. It’s my Auntie’s bed, really. She promised it to me for the duration,” I said. “The canopy with birds flying all round on it makes me hopeful about my mum and my dad and Daddy. I’m always waiting for them, you know.” And then I had to explain everything.
“You have two papas, then, haven’t you?” said Dimples after we’d unscrambled the whole story.
“Yes,” I said, “I do, actually.”
“And I don’t even have a one,” said Dimples. “Mine packed off and hasn’t come back since I was a baby. And here you have two. Aren’t you the lucky one?”
“Well, not really, actually,” I said. “Oh, all right, then, Dimples, you can have the canopy bed. I’m used to my little cot. Go on, then, take it.”
In return, I got two boiled sweets and a small rock, which I set on a shelf next to my old cot. The rock was quite plain looking really.
Then Derek appeared at the door, leaning on the jamb, with his jacket back on and his paralyzed hand tucked in one of the pockets. “Grab your coats. As a treat, The Gram is taking us all out for supper,” he said.
“Supper is our tea, Dimples,” I said.
“I’ll be back in a tick, then,” said Dimples. And she ran off and we couldn’t find her for the longest time. When we did find her, she was in the linen closet, writing a letter to her mum.
The Gram had won a prize for one of her quilts at the winter church bazaar, when we were helping with Bundles for Britain last week. The prize was a free meal at Hank’s Hamburger House. And so that evening we drove the Packard into town just before dark, with wind and a light snow blowing all round our car.
Hank’s hamburgers were smashingly delicious. Dimples called them hangabers. When Hank came out to congratulate The Gram on her winning quilt, Dimples looked up at him and said, “You don’t have a seawall in Bottlebay. We had one in Selsey, but the sea knocked it down and flooded the town. They found fourteen sofas floating in the water the next day.”
“Hush now, little nipper,” said The Gram.
It was a jolly nice evening with Dimples singing. She had a “hungry song” that she made up and then she sang a “full song” and finally she sang a “tired song” for Derek. He was quite pleased, I thought.
But later when we pulled up to the house, everything changed again. It was a pitch-black night since the moon had gone away to shine somewhere else. And we quickly saw that the wind had taken out our electricity because the house was terribly dark and the tiny red lightbulb The Gram left on for us in the kitchen was off. We got out of the car and we didn’t have a match or a candle or flashlight. That’s when the sea seemed almost spooky. Because you couldn’t see it, you could only hear it and it seemed to be calling for you in a strange, lonely way.
We were just at the gate when we saw someone or a shadow of someone rush from the back door to the front of the house. We heard footsteps on the wraparound porch and then more footsteps on the stairs down to the sea. The snow blew across the garden in gales, making drifts and tunnels, yet leaving some patches of ground barren and exposed. The Gram reached out towards us, her arms waving about. She grabbed me in a fearsome clutch. And Dimples let out an odd little screech.
When we got into the house, we had to stomp the snow off our frozen shoes. Then we had to light candles and close the blackout curtains. Dimples offered to do the job. She said she loved the dark and she rushed through the house, saying there were ghosts in the hall and ghosts in the kitchen.
When the candles were lit, The Gram went to the window in the dining room and parted the curtains and looked out into the night.
“Perhaps we should call the police,” I said.
“Oh no,” said The Gram, “that wouldn’t do at all, Flissy. Too much attention. No. No. We must handle this ourselves.”
We both stood there in the dining room, listening to the moan of the wind and the snow. The ocean too was singing and calling in its lonely voice, whispering words that seemed to slip away before we could truly hear them.
The next night, The Gram rang up Mr. Stephenson in New York. I could only hear The Gram’s part of the conversation and her voice echoed from the landing. “Bill,” she said, “I must know how Gideon is. Did he arrive safely? I can wait no longer. You must inquire. You must tell us. And we must have some kind of protection. I worry for the children. Someone was here last night. But I don’t think they got in the house.”
The sleet hammered against the windows and Dimples jumped rope and sang in the next room.
“The old moon came d
own for a cup of milk
But he got tangled up in a pile of silk.
The sun couldn’t set and the night couldn’t fall
And the moon rolled away like a big silk ball.”
The Bathburns always kept their Christmas trees up until February 2, Groundhog Day. And so today Derek and I and Dimples took down all the old decorations and dragged the long, dry tree out into the garden and started to chop it up into little pieces so we could chuck them into the stove when the temperature dropped at night.
Dimples was jumping on one of the branches. “Oh, I wish I had been here on Christmas Day. Did you have Christmas pudding? Was it lovely and yummy?” she said. Then suddenly she rolled on the ground in the snow and shot at Derek with an invisible gun and he pretended to shoot back at her. I daresay Dimples was a very warlike little girl. She threw a fake hand grenade at Derek and he rolled to the ground and pretended to be dead. I was left to chop at the poor Christmas tree.
Soon Derek shot at me and I fell to the ground, rolling under the tree and dying as well. I stared up through the brittle branches at the sky. I lay there for a long time. It started snowing harder and millions of snowflakes came falling at me. “Come on, Fliss, we should get back to hacking up this tree,” said Derek, poking at me with his foot, but I just stayed there, staring at the sky, thinking about everything.
“Perhaps she really is dead,” said Dimples, peering down at me sadly. I didn’t move one bone or one eyelash. I was quite still, like an ice statue. I hated chopping up our lovely Christmas tree and I hated the loneliness and worry about Winnie and Danny and Gideon. And I was lying there thinking about Derek too. Where had his love for me gone? I decided perhaps it all had disappeared, as if it had been chopped to pieces, like an old Christmas tree when you are done and finished with it.
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