A month wasn’t very long to be away. I was sure I could manage just fine, though as soon as Derek left, I missed him terribly. Everything would be different, he said, when he got back. I thought about it and I decided I didn’t want to know what he meant. But that knowing seemed to linger anyway at the edge of my mind, like the ragpicker far off on the other side of the park.
Miami had gone back to her theater too. I had said good-bye to so many people. And we were a gold-star family now. We had lost Mr. Henley and Gideon and Danny. Nothing could mend the torn feeling inside me. I walked round the Bathburn house like one of the injured. Walking carefully because I felt weakened by the losses. There was a quiet, unspoken wall around all the remaining Bathburns. And things seemed as if they would never be the same.
I spent every afternoon playing “I Think of You” on my father’s piano. It was comforting to know that my fingers were touching the same keys that his once did. At first I was hesitant and slow and clumsy but soon my fingers knew the way and the song rolled out of me like water.
When the mist is sheer
and the shadows too
When the moon is spare
I think of you.
I think of you.
One day The Gram and Winnie went into Gideon’s room and opened every drawer and laid out every piece of his clothing. I walked by and saw The Gram holding one of Gideon’s shirts in her arms. She was rocking back and forth, cradling it. Winnie took the shirt and laid it down on the bed, folded it carefully, and then she hugged The Gram. “He saved his heart for you, Winnie,” said The Gram sadly. It was the first time I heard The Gram call my mum Winnie and not Winifred.
I was thinking of Derek. I had certainly saved my heart for him. But I began to feel and know that things for him were changing and that something that had barely begun was coming to an end.
Dimples came round skipping and singing:
“She loves him so
but he didn’t stay.
The wind can’t blow
this storm away.”
And so the war went on and on. We could often hear the army base, not far away, testing guns over the water. There were always Coast Guard members patrolling the shores with their rifles on their shoulders.
“Do you think we will be bombed soon? Stucky thinks so. His sister is very afraid,” said Dimples. We were in the gymnasium. She was riding the little unicycle round the edges of the room. The unicycle belonged to Gideon. He used to stand on his head sometimes. And then he would ride that little unicycle round and round. He used to say, “Fliss, we can always join the circus, if we ever get in a pinch. You can go as a jumping bean and I’ll be a clown on this contraption. What do you say?” It seemed as if I could hear his voice almost echoing in my head now.
“Don’t worry, Dimples. If any bombs fall, we can run into the cellar here,” I said.
Dimples dropped the little bike and tossed herself down on the large, open floor. “I do wish I were a pilot. Don’t you, Felicity? I should be pleased to fly over England and nab off with every bomb in the sky. Then I would drop each one in the ocean. I wish my old mum were here, I do. I really do.”
“Go on,” I said, reaching in my pocket for a Life Saver from the package I had been saving since Easter. Most candy was sent overseas to the soldiers and so it was a rare Life Saver. “The war will be over soon. Would you like a sweet?”
“Oh, not half!” said Dimples, taking it. She put it in her pocket and then she rolled across the floor like a rolling pin.
Winnie came to the door of the gymnasium and smiled at us. It was a faraway, lost sort of smile and she seemed so little in the large gymnasium doorway. I got up and ran towards her. “Oh, Winnie,” I said, “are you all right?” She moved into the gymnasium, limping in her slight, graceful way. She stood in the middle of the room and looked at everything as if she were noticing Gideon for the first time, even though he was gone. She stood there and her head went up and all round the room in wonder.
The next day she wanted to go to school with me to see the Mr. Bathtub Says READ! poster. And when she stood in front of it, with Mr. Bathtub in his bowler hat and suit sitting in the bathtub, she shook her head back and forth and then she put her arm round me and she closed her eyes.
Then it was the first of May, May Day. I always admired an old framed photograph on the wall in the library showing Victorian children in straw bonnets and boaters carrying flowers while dancing round a maypole. Dimples and I tried to construct a maypole in the garden but it kept falling over in the wind.
And every afternoon we continued to listen to the shortwave radio station that Winnie knew about. That wireless always whistled and screamed and roared with static as we rolled the dial until we hit the right spot. Even though we were sure it was for nothing, we kept on listening and hoping, except for Dimples. She never sat with us. She was always off trying to teach Wink to fly, making him jump off the backs of chairs. A hopeless task, I could have told her. Wink had always been a land-loving, two-feet-on-the-ground kind of bear.
The station carried all sorts of entertainment and news. The Gram and Winnie and I sat very close to the shortwave at four o’clock every evening. Sometimes a British film star would come on the air, like Laurence Olivier. The more we listened and heard nothing that meant anything to us, the quieter and more anxious Winnie became.
When it happened, it was an early May evening. I had just fed Sir William Percy and her children, who were grown now and were quite demanding about their food. Dimples had just given poor Wink a full bath upstairs in the long porcelain tub, scrubbing him with Lifebuoy soap. Now she was carrying him down the hall up there, dripping wet. The Gram was just finishing the quilt she had been working on since the beginning of the war. She was sewing in the last perfect star and square. Winnie was still working on the scrapbook of photographs of children she had helped escape to England.
It was four o’clock and the sun was beginning to lengthen its long arms of light across the water. The ocean too had a faraway-afternoon stretch about it. A group of seals was seen paddling through the waves towards some rocks. And then it happened.
The announcer on the British wireless program began to speak. Winnie and The Gram and I were all in the dining room at that moment. We all sat up and listened.
“We have a rare opportunity on this late night in London to air a tape recording sent to us earlier this month, a reel-to-reel tape sent to us from deep in occupied France. In a hidden-away château, a group of resistance fighters and freedom fighters have joined together to send a message of hope to the free world. Tonight we are going to play this tape for our listeners to hear. Picture yourself in an old, partly bombed château. The drawing room is still intact. All round you, there are murals of angels playing violins and some gold, stuffed chairs and sofas, rough and worn and battered, but still intact, like France herself. And lo and behold! There is still a piano and it may have a few gunshot holes in it but it’s mostly in tune. May I now present to you ‘An Evening in Occupied France.’ Yes, the tape is scratchy and missing in places, but the message rings out clearly.”
The announcer then began to play on the air the reel-to-reel tape that had been recorded secretly in France and smuggled out to England to be played for the whole world.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the free world,” said a man with a French accent. “We are here tonight in secret and by the time you hear this we will have all moved on. But tonight we have found some old bottles of wine in the cellar and we have found some hope in our hearts.” The tape was scratchy and the shortwave wireless whistled and crackled. “First of all we would like to give a round of applause to all the American and British troops, the army and the navy and the air force and the RAF! They are doing such a fine job. We are waiting here with confidence. We have no doubts.” The room then exploded with cheers and clapping and the stomping of feet.
“We have a number of musicians and poets here tonight. Each one will entertain you for a mom
ent. Ah, is that not what we all need, a moment of entertainment? Now I should like to introduce to you our first performer, Mr. Mazarine Blue on the piano.”
As soon as I heard the word Mazarine, I knew. As soon as Winnie heard the word, her scrapbook slipped from her lap and pages of children spiraled to the floor. The Gram too heard it and jolted forward, and spools of thread and cloth stars spilled from her sewing basket. I rushed towards the shortwave radio, as if to hug it or to jump with it or to pull it into my arms or to run with it. The Gram shrieked and threw her hands over her face and started sobbing. “Tell me. Tell me it’s true. Please say it. Please,” she cried.
“Wait,” called Winnie. “Stop. Wait. Wait. Listen, hush. Listen!”
We held our breath while Mr. Blue sat down at the piano. Then we were sure. We could tell by the way his fingers hit the keys. We could tell by the rolls and the turns and runs we knew so well. I could play that song myself now. I knew all the chords and all the changes and all the notes. Mr. Mazarine Blue began to sing:
“When the clouds roll by
and the moon drifts through
When the haze is high
I think of you.
I wink at you.
When the mist is sheer
and the shadows too
When the moon is spare
I think of you.
I wink at you.”
“It’s my daddy. It’s Gideon. It’s my daddy. He didn’t die,” I screamed.
“Wait a minute, just a minute. Is that how the song goes?” called Winnie. Her voice was trembling. “No, let’s not speak. Wait till he’s done. Hush.”
“When the night birds cry
and the swallows too
When the west winds sigh
We think of you.
We wink at you.”
Then the piano solo rolled in and then it rolled back out. In and out it rolled, like the sea, until the song was done and the crowd was clapping and the announcer was introducing someone else. “Wait a minute,” called Winnie again. “Hush. Is that how the song goes? It sounds different, poppet. How does it go?”
“‘We think of you. We wink at you’ is not part of the song,” I said, crying and stuttering and shaking my head.
“It’s not?” said Winnie. “‘We think of you’ has been added? We?”
“Yes,” I cried.
“Danny’s alive too. Danny too! Oh, thank goodness,” Winnie cried out. She stumbled to the floor.
“Do with me what you will. I shall be forever grateful. Forever and forever,” The Gram said. She was crying and she fell too to her knees next to Winnie and there on the floor Winnie and The Gram threw their arms round each other and cried.
“Dimples, where is Wink?” I called out. Dimples was at the top of the stairs. She stood there with her eyes very wide and very large in her small, pale face. She looked like a tiny disappearing spirit standing there, wavering. She seemed to be trembling as she stood on the top step with Wink dripping wet in her little arms. “Wink is all starkers so he can’t be seen. And I’m sorry,” she shouted. She began to cry in a loud way. It echoed in the hallway. “Is everything all right?”
“Bring Wink to me. Let me have him,” I called out. “He has a message for me.”
“No!” shouted Dimples. “Wink doesn’t have anything.”
“Yes, he does, Dimples. Let me borrow him.” I climbed the stairs and I took her hand. She was still crying and I held Wink by one of his ears. He was that wet. We went into The Gram’s room and I squeezed him until water dripped from his feet. “Help me slit open his seam. Get me the scissors from The Gram’s sewing table.”
“No. Don’t hurt him,” shouted Dimples. “Don’t touch him.”
“Wink won’t mind. It won’t hurt,” I said, running for the scissors myself and snipping carefully the stitching on a small part of his front seam. When the seam was opened just a little bit, I could see there was a very small strip of paper tucked inside Wink’s stuffing. I pulled it out. It was a bit damp and wrinkled. It said:
Fliss and Derek,
My love for you both is unchanging and forever. Nothing can take it away. You asked me to promise you something, Fliss, and if you’ve found this, I think I can do that now. Yes, I promise you, I will be coming home.
Love,
Your father Gideon
P.S. I knew you’d read The Secret Garden one more time, Fliss. A book like that should always be read once a year, no matter how old you are! And I knew Wink would be let out of his box finally too. A bear like that should always be kept around even when you’re all grown up.
Later as the sun began to fade, we sat on the floor, letting the pink, glowing rim of the sky burn through our windows. The ocean sang a simple repeating song outside that sounded to me now like a kind of lullaby. My daddy-uncle, Gideon, was alive and my uncle-daddy, Danny, must be too because Gideon sang, “We think of you. We wink at you.” I still had two fathers and even though it was more than most people had and a bit confusing, I was very, very glad of it. And Winnie said the war would be over soon. She said as we sat there that the world was damaged but not destroyed and that it would repair and renew itself and that light was winning over darkness. We held hands that evening on the floor, watching the last of the pink sky turn orange and red and finally a dark Mazarine blue as the sky seemed to slip away behind the sea.
I wondered how it would have been to be Ella Bathburn that spring in 1866. Did she know that soon, during the summer, much of Portland would burn because of a firecracker thrown into an old warehouse on the Fourth of July? Did she see the flames of Portland on the horizon? Was she wearing then the little gold ring that I now had round my neck on a chain? Did Captain Bathburn’s family offer to shelter some of the people who had lost their homes? The Bathburn house seemed to have so many layers and still so many secrets. And yet that seemed to be the way it would always be. We were all to live with so many unanswered questions in our lives. Questions like, where does the sky end and how many stars are in our universe and most of all, what do all the stars mean? And why are we here on this beautiful, round ball called planet Earth? And here in such a lush and green world, why do people hurt and kill one another and why is there such a thing as war?
And so it was that things changed again at the Bathburn house. It was a sunny, bright day and when I went out to feed Sir William Percy, something came to me. It happened just as she landed on the porch railing, dropping down out of the sky with such cheer. And after the idea came to me, I wrote a letter to my father.
Dear Daddy,
Thank you for your beautiful promise. I can promise you something in return. I have decided that friends may borrow and love Wink but he will always live on Bathtub Point in Bottlebay, Maine.
And in your honor I have renamed your pet seagull, who turned out to be a girl. No longer will she be called Sir William. I have finally given her a proper girl’s name. We will call her Vicky for victory.
And about The Secret Garden, you are absolutely right and I’ve broken down and I’m reading it again. Yes, it is the most wonderful book in the whole world and I promise to read it until I am a hundred years old!
Love,
Your daughter, Fliss
Later that day, after I had tucked the letter to my father in the box under my bed, I was in the parlor playing tick-tack-toe with Dimples. She called that game noughts and crosses. Dimples was losing because she wouldn’t settle down and play correctly. She just kept dancing off with Wink and I must say, because she didn’t concentrate, it cost her several games and many losses. But she said she didn’t give a pig’s ear about that game.
It was then that I saw the solicitor Mr. Buttons at the door. I could see his black hat through the etched-glass window. There was a shadow over his eyes and the dining room darkened suddenly in spite of the sunlight falling in patterns through the lace curtains. I went to the door. “Oh,” I said, “hello. Are you here to see Derek? I am afraid he is not here.”
Bu
t soon enough The Gram came out of the kitchen. “Oh no, it’s fine, Flissy McBee. Let Mr. Buttons in.”
I backed up and sat on the first step of the staircase. “Mr. Babbit has sent you today?” said The Gram. “Give him my regards. And do come in.”
Mr. Buttons had a very large briefcase. It bulged and bothered me. There were all sorts of messy, bothersome papers sticking out of the top. The Gram asked me to bring in the coffee and toast, which I did. I didn’t care for the bitter smell of the herbal coffee we now served because of coffee shortages and I set the whole thing down quickly on a small table in the parlor.
Mr. Buttons was just handing The Gram some papers. The Gram looked down at them and said, “So, we now know Derek’s actual birthday. He was born May 15, 1929, in Portland.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Buttons, “Derek and I have been working on this for quite a while. Finding his father was the hard part. The whole case broke open when we located his aunt in northern Maine. Derek visited her for a week this spring, as you know. That’s when we found out that his father had died last year. His aunt has recently signed some papers and he can now be officially adopted. It’s all legal.”
“And so I have changed my plans,” said The Gram. “I have news too. My son Gideon is alive and did not die in the war, as we had feared. I myself do not wish to adopt Derek. Gideon has wanted to do that for a long time. Derek has expressed a great need for a father and Gideon, who already loves him dearly, will make a superb one. My son is a very special and kind man,” The Gram said and when she said those words, her face radiated with a great inner light. Her whole being became a candle of brightness. “My son will be so pleased. It will be a blessing to have this official, finally, the way it should be.”
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