Romeo Blue (9780545520706)

by Stone, Phoebe

  Then The Gram came out into the snow and stood near us. She kept staring at us, as if she were a boat and we were the faraway shore. And I remembered yesterday was February 1 and that was the day Gideon was to arrive at the prison in Limoges. The Gram just stood there as the snow fell all round her.

  Derek got up quickly and brushed himself off. He had been covered in snow and wood chips. He straightened his shoulders, cleared his throat, and stood back away from Dimples, as if to say he hadn’t just been playing war with an eight-year-old child. Not at all. Not at all. I too came back to life quickly and stood up.

  Dimples looked joyful to see me again. She rushed towards me, throwing her arms round me. “Oh, Felicity, I was worried and sad. You looked like that poor lass who washed up on the broken seawall in Selsey. She was dead, she was. She wasn’t faking. But you were faking, weren’t you?”

  Now The Gram pulled a letter from her pocket and handed it to me. The stamps had rows of palm trees on them and looked a bit like North Africa. The wet snow blurred the ink on the envelope but I could see it was from Mr. Henley. I nearly jumped into the sky. I raced to the house and threw myself down on the sofa in the parlor. The letter said:

  Dear gang,

  Thanks a ton for your letters. They cheer a soldier up. I sure do miss Miami. Well, let me know if Doubleday ever answers my letter about my submission. I sent them one hundred poems, return address in care of you, Flissy B. You’ll have to be my secretary. I wrote the poems at night. They are my best to date. Love to all, you busy Bathburns.

  Bobby Henley

  P.S. Has Gideon been drafted? Do you know how he’s doing?

  Well, we could not answer that last question. We did not know what had happened on February 1 in France. And yet everything in the world seemed to hang on that day. Winnie and Danny and Gideon were perched on the edge of the unknown. As if on the rim of a dark hole, as big as the universe in my mind. And all we could do was wait.

  Later in the evening, Dimples came into the parlor and lay on the rug in front of the radio. She had her knitting with her. The socks she knitted had a strange look about them, but she was fast, faster than The Gram or me. “Felicity,” she said, lying on her stomach with her face and cheek resting on the floor, “I should really like to see Wink again. I’ve always had a fondness for that bear. Where is the key to that room anyway? I must have a look at Wink.”

  But I didn’t answer her. I was worrying and wondering about my father wearing that Nazi officer uniform. What if he made a mistake in his German accent? What if Winnie and Danny weren’t in the prison after all?

  Dear Bobby Henley,

  Here is some news from Bottlebay. America no longer has hot dogs. We have victory sausages. It was announced on the radio recently. And January 17, 1943, was declared official Tin Can Drive Day. All day people collected as many tin cans as they could for the war effort. Derek found eight tins and I helped him but we had to rummage about in an old dump not far from the house. You’d better hotfoot it home; they say shoe rationing could start. You’d better not loaf about! So, Bobby Henley, be good and don’t forget Miami is yours 4 ever!

  Love,

  Flissy B. Bathburn

  We had a little government brochure that told how to write to our GIs overseas. You were expected to be cheerful and jovial and not to mention anything gloomy. Don’t talk about sacrifices and shortages, the brochure said. Make jokes.

  Dimples had written a letter too, even though she didn’t know Bobby Henley. But hers was very hard to read because her handwriting was messy and she only talked about ghosts. I told her that it didn’t fit with the government brochure and she became grumpy with me and tore it up.

  The Gram told me that Dimples had settled into the third grade at school quite well. The Gram had sent off a telegram to her mum all about it. And Miss Elkin adored Dimples. I could always see Dimples nipping along after Miss Elkin in the halls or sitting with her at lunch. And right off I knew Dimples went mad keen on a little boy named Stucky in her class. She found a small piece of driftwood that was shaped like an elephant and she painted it with gray poster paint. Then she wrapped it up and gave it to Stucky at school. The next day the elephant was sitting on her desk with a note under it that said, No thanks.

  So Dimples was a bit cross that afternoon and wouldn’t go to school the following morning and The Gram had to climb a ladder and pull her out of a cupboard in the gymnasium. But she wasn’t the type to mope about for too long and before you knew it, she was racing round the house again.

  But she kept after me about Wink. She really wanted to see him again. On Saturday morning Derek and I were gathering up laundry. We were dragging baskets of sheets into the laundry room. Most of the time we couldn’t get Dimples to help.

  When we were piling cotton pillowcases on the ironing board, I remembered the invisible-ink letter that Derek and I had ironed in here. I wondered if the person we saw on the porch in the darkness recently was another agent. Derek was standing so close to me, I could hear him breathing. I loved the sound of it. Perhaps it was dreadfully strange but I loved even the gruffness about him. I wanted to tell him that I still cared for him. I wanted to say so many things. “Derek,” I began, “I …”

  Just then Dimples pushed into the laundry room. She was dancing and laughing and singing her “Wink song,” which I’d heard before in Selsey. But she hadn’t sung that song at all since she had been in Bottlebay.

  “Wink is woolly brown with spice.

  His bearlike heart is awfully nice.

  Wink loves winter sun and snow.

  He has a happy, fuzzy glow.”

  I looked up, rather startled. “Dimples,” I said. “Is that Wink you are holding in your arms? It is, isn’t it? You’ve got Wink! Now, how did you get him out of the tower room?”

  Dimples looked quite cheerful and she gave Wink a great kiss on his smashed-up nose. He was wearing his old overcoat and his wool sweater. “Oh, he’s lovely, Felicity. He’s every bit as friendly as I remembered him,” she said.

  “Dimples, how did you get him?” I said. “The tower door was locked.”

  “I know,” she said. “Well, I just had to get the key and I did and I opened the door and got Wink out. He smells lovely, doesn’t he?”

  “Where did you get that key, Dimples? It wasn’t on the hook in the library anymore.”

  “Oh, well, I found it quite easily, didn’t I?” she said, pushing up the sleeves of her raggedy dress. “The key was taped into the back of a book, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It’s a jolly good book and I know you’ve read it eight times, Flissy Bee Bee, but I’m reading it for the first time.”

  “Well, I won’t be reading it again,” I said but in my heart I felt a little tug, because I rather missed reading that book.

  Later I became a bit blue as I watched Derek, tall and gruff, bringing in a load of wood for the stove. I wished I’d had a chance to talk to him alone. And seeing Dimples with The Secret Garden made me remember all the times my daddy-uncle read aloud to me from that book, before I got too old for all that sort of thing. I so hoped he was safe, wherever he was.

  But as the weeks stretched on and on and we had not heard from my father at all, I worried more and more about everyone. And The Gram was stewing too. I could tell by the way she did things, even little things, like knitting. One moment her needles would be clicking along like lightning and then those needles would freeze, stop cold for no reason and The Gram would stare at the empty air, looking still and distant, like a stark tree in winter.

  Today as we were knitting away on our wool socks for the soldiers, Dimples said, “My mum’s working now. You want to know what she does?”

  “Oh,” I said, “Dimples, are you supposed to say what she does?”

  “I don’t give a toss. She’s working at a factory, making parts for bombers. Halifax bombers!”

  “You’re not to say that, Dimples,” I said.

  “She sent me off with the others ’ca
use she had to work at night and because they bombed Coventry in West Midlands, the Jerries did. It was all rubbish afterwards and heaps of brick from the cottages,” said Dimples.

  “You shouldn’t say Jerries,” I said. “It isn’t polite.”

  “Well, Dimples, I’ve gotten to know your mother through all this and I think she is very caring and loyal and responsible. A wonderful mother!” said The Gram. She then smoothed my hair and leaned her head against mine and looked out towards the ocean.

  I suddenly wanted to shout out, “Is my mum caring and loyal and responsible? Do I have a wonderful mum too?” Why had she left me for so long? Why hadn’t she explained things to me? What would happen when Gideon came to rescue her? And then I closed my eyes and everything nagged at me, like a dark bird caught in a room, trying to get out by flying at the walls, bumping at them over and over again.

  Later that afternoon I was having a little tea party for Dimples in the dining room to cheer her up because she had a nightmare last night. She woke up screaming and was all red and sweaty. The Gram had come in to comfort her. In the morning Dimples said, “I didn’t have a bad dream, Felicity. I was faking.” Well, she got herself a tea party out of the deal anyway.

  Just as I was pouring out tea from a little child’s teapot that we found in a glass cupboard, The Gram walked into the room. She handed me another letter. Dimples was a bit of a crosspatch then because I was getting all the mail these days.

  The envelope said the letter came from New York City. I opened it quickly. Was it from my father? The inside said:

  Derek and Fliss,

  I think Captain Bathburn has something to say to you! Have a look, won’t you?

  I studied the card carefully. Yes, it was Gideon’s handwriting.

  The way The Gram watched me reading it, I could tell she knew my father had written the card before he left and that a secretary at Mr. Stephenson’s office in New York had mailed it. The card was dated properly, as if planned ahead. On the front was a picture of Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny on a sailing ship.

  Even though I knew my father had written it before he left and I didn’t understand what he meant by the words he wrote, I still felt joyous to have the note from him in my hands and to remember when he had taken me and Derek to see Bambi at the movie theater last year. Bugs Bunny cartoons were played at the intermission. But at the same time I was suddenly filled with anxiousness, as if the gates had been opened up farther and all the worry in the world had flooded in like rushing water.

  When Derek saw the card, he said, “That’s Gideon for you. Perhaps we should have a peek at the painting of Captain Bathburn.”

  So we went into the dining room and looked up close at the captain staring out at us with his green, finely painted eyes. Derek checked behind the painting and there was a little tag hanging from the wire. It said:

  Derek and Fliss,

  I shall miss you both terribly. But please know you can depend on me. No matter where I am, I will always love you.

  All of January and February the snow whirled and whined and washed and whittled at our windows. We huddled near the fireplace in the parlor or by the stove in the dining room because coal was hard to get for the old furnace and we ran the furnace only on the worst days to keep our pipes from freezing.

  Derek and I tried all winter to keep track of the war. After The Shadow was on the wireless, there was usually a news broadcast. There had been victories in North Africa before Christmas and then some setbacks after that. Mr. Henley had been stationed, we thought, in Morocco. In his last letter he had included a photograph of himself wearing a kind of turban and a long, flowing cloak on his day off. But now we decided he had been transferred somewhere else because we had not heard from him in a while.

  On Valentine’s Day I got fourteen crumpled valentines from Dimples. She’d made them all herself. They were mostly all of ghosts walking among heart-shaped flowers.

  I had hoped and hoped and waited, but I did not receive a valentine from Derek. I had made one for him that said, Derek, I still love you. Do you still love me? But of course, I had torn it up at the last minute and I had thrown the scraps in the cold woodstove.

  Though later when I opened the stove to light it, Dimples said, “Is that a sad, torn-up valentine in there? Oh, it looks so lonely. I should like to paste it back together.” Well, I threw a match quickly into the stove and that was the end of it.

  Just before supper on Valentine’s Day, the phone rang. I made a great dash and beat Dimples to it by a long margin.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is the Bathburn residence. To whom am I speaking?”

  “Sweetest!” Aunt Miami said over the telephone. “Happy Valentine’s Day. How are things going at the old homestead? Oh, I do miss it so, in a way.”

  “Will you be coming home soon?” I said.

  “Well, they say things are turning around for the war. Perhaps if we win and the war ends. In North Africa, where Bobby is, they are winning some of the time against the Germans. There was a big battle that Bobby was a part of. He sent me a terrific poem. Have you heard from him? I haven’t had a letter in weeks and he usually sends me one a day. And there was no valentine.”

  “No,” I said, “we haven’t had a letter in a fortnight.”

  “I am worried about that. Are you worried, Flissy McBee?” said Auntie.

  “Oh, not at all. But guess what? Derek gets to order a pair of Sky Rider shoes. They give you a free model airplane with them,” I said. And then later, after we hung up, I felt a bit dreadful because I had stretched the truth about not being worried.

  Russia was the front Derek was most interested in. There was a miserable fight that lasted months over the great Russian city Stalingrad and the surrounding area, and finally on February 2, the German general Paulus and his troops were cut off, cornered, and had to surrender. Over ninety thousand German troops were taken prisoner. It was a great victory for the Allies and in the next few weeks the newspapers were full of stories about it.

  The Gram and I stood out on the porch for a moment on a cold windy day at the end of February. A Coast Guard boat was cruising the shoreline, always keeping watch. A coastie even waved at us and called out, “Helen, did you hear about that German general who surrendered in Russia?”

  I think The Gram smiled for a moment before she wrapped her coat closely round her. Then she tilted her head against her woolen scarf, as if looking for comfort in the soft weave.

  The next day the sky was dark with more falling snow. But it was snow that wasn’t sticking. It just blew about in wisps and worries. I was out for a walk when I saw Dimples running along the shore towards me. Her hair was all wild and windy and she almost looked like she was flying through the cold air. “Felicity,” she shouted, “someone has written Mr. Henley a letter and they’ve put your name on the envelope as well.”

  I ran towards her as she zigzagged and skipped over the ground, reminding me of a little top spinning along. When I got to her, I saw she had a long white envelope from Doubleday, Doran Publishers in New York City. It was addressed to Mr. Henley and was in care of me! Felicity Budwig Bathburn. Perhaps the reason we hadn’t heard from Mr. Henley was because his squadron had been moved somewhere and he couldn’t say where. Censors read all the soldiers’ letters before they were mailed and if they found something that a soldier shouldn’t be saying, the letter was not sent.

  When we got back to the house, I left the envelope on the dining room table as we usually did. Was I to open it? Or should we wait for the return of Mr. Henley? He hadn’t given me any true instructions. I must say, I felt a bit stuck about it. In fact I felt dreadfully stuck all afternoon.

  “Open it now!” Dimples shouted later as she marched round the dining room table, wearing a paper sailor hat that Derek had folded for her out of the New York Times front page. She was carrying a stick and she played the part of a soldier with great tragedy.

  “Halt,” called Derek. “About face!” Dimples froze and turned l
ike a perfect soldier.

  “Open it,” said Derek. “I command you. Now! Dimples, march! Hup, two, three, four. Halt.”

  Derek looked back at me, with all kinds of new freckles scattered over his nose. Extra freckles were always popping up on his face, even on dark winter days! Soon he gave me a coaxing Derek smile and I felt like I had just taken a sip of Hershey’s Syrup, straight from the tin with no milk added.

  I looked at Mr. Henley’s letter. I wanted to ask Aunt Miami if it was proper for me to open Mr. Henley’s mail. But she had been gone already three months. All we had was a photograph of her wearing a very smart USO uniform with a pin on her lapel with a tiny metal bell hanging from it. She had won the part and by now had been Juliet almost twenty times across the country.

  Along the way she had learned all sorts of things that soldiers at boot camp do, like how to make a bed so the sheets were so tight, you could drop a penny on them and the penny would bounce. If Auntie had been here, she would have known whether I should open the letter or not.

  Dimples kept marching and Derek played along with her for the lark of it, even though he was fourteen now. “Open it!” they both kept chanting. “Open it!”

  And finally in a great moment, like a rush of wind, I dove for the letter. I tore it open and I read it out loud.

  “Dear Private Robert Henley,

  We received your package of poetry sent to us from the northern African front. These poems are full of the flavor of Morocco and Tunisia and the desert. Each one seems to capture the feeling of longing and of the wish to go home and the sorrow and pity of battle. They remind us of the poems of Rupert Brooke, who wrote during World War I (though not at all in style). We would like very much to publish this collection of poetry you have titled Oh Morocco! Thank you for giving us this opportunity. We look forward to hearing from you. As soon as we do, we will begin the process of publishing this special book.