by Kate Albus
William offered a characteristically diplomatic response. “Mrs. Griffith does the best she can, what with the rationing and all…”
A shadow of understanding clouded Mrs. Müller’s brow. She rose from her seat by the fire and disappeared without a word. She returned a moment later with a tin and pried up the lid with her fingertips. “I keep a tin of cookies in the cloakroom, for emergencies.” She set it on the hearth. “Tuck in…please.”
The smell of the cookies filled the children with a warmth that can only come from the magnificent alchemy of butter and sugar. They set to nibbling as Mrs. Müller rearranged herself in her chair and resumed her knitting, pausing periodically to steal glances at the children. At her insistence, they dug into the tin again and again, until it was empty. They swallowed thickly and thanked Mrs. Müller, bolstered by her offering in ways she never could have guessed. Or perhaps she could.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
December marked six months that the children had been living in the country. All three had grown, as children will do, and by now their clothes were snug. Edmund’s shoes pinched so awfully that he had taken to slipping out of them at the heels.
And so it was with some delight that the children met Miss Carr’s announcement one morning that the WVS would be holding a clothing swap. Wartime shortages had been felt by evacuees and villagers alike. News of the swap brought sighs of relief all around the classroom as children envisioned comfortable shoes and coats that covered their wrists. Mrs. Griffith, likewise, greeted the announcement with more joy than the children had yet seen from her. She arranged for a neighbor to mind the baby so she and the girls could attend.
The event was held in the village hall during the children’s noontime meal. Participants came with too-small items to be enjoyed by others, and eager to find new things of their own. William told Edmund he ought to make do with his hand-me-downs, but Edmund refused, preferring the thrill of the new—or at least new to him. All three children came away with new coats and shoes, plus shirts and trousers for the boys and skirts and blouses for Anna. She had been loath to give up her favorite sweater—it had such lovely roses stitched on the yoke—but it had begun to let in errant drafts across her middle when she raised her arms, so away it went.
Their grand shopping spree complete, Edmund, William, and Anna walked home with an ebullient Mrs. Griffith. She was so uncharacteristically joyful that she used some of the milk ration for a custard that night. It was rather lumpy, but the children relished its creamy weight. Anxious to prolong the goodwill, Anna read to the girls after supper while Edmund and William did the washing-up.
Anna was never sure whether Jane, Helen, and Penny were getting anything out of the stories she read, but the little ones certainly sat rapt as she read them The Story of Ferdinand that night. By the time Ferdinand had infuriated the banderilleros and the picadores and the matador with his sitting just quietly, Jane and Helen had both fallen asleep in Anna’s lap. Penny looked close to it.
William smiled wistfully. “Look at that, Anna. We’ve been sent here to try and find ourselves a mum, and here you are acting like one your own self.”
The children were glad of their new coats that night, as December’s chill made its way into the front bedroom. Sleeping in a coat was uncomfortable, but not nearly so uncomfortable as the wind that rattled the glass, making the house sound haunted—at least, Anna thought it sounded that way. The children pressed their straw pallets together for warmth but still slept fitfully. In the wee hours of the morning, a sleeting rain began to pelt the roof, and the children awakened to find that all three of their mattresses were damp. The puddle had even made its way to Edmund’s new things, piled helter-skelter on the floor rather than folded on top of the apple crate where William had advised him to store them. Grumbling and shivering, Edmund donned the least-damp shirt and trousers he could find and hurried downstairs to the relative warmth of the coal stove.
At school that morning, Miss Carr announced that the children were to perform a Nativity Play at the village’s Christmas Eve service. “Our gift to the townspeople who have offered us safe haven from the war,” she said. “I expect the whole village will turn out to see it, so we shall be certain to make it a Nativity Play to remember. Roles will be decided by lottery before we leave for lunch today.” Some children’s eyes lit up with excitement, others not.
Edmund was decidedly in the “not” camp. When it was his turn to reach into the pail and withdraw a folded slip of paper, he hoped for the role that involved the least possible stage time. He unfolded his slip and read the word STAR.
His eyes went wide. “The star of the show?”
Miss Carr gave a withering stare. “Wouldn’t you just like to think so?”
“Not at all,” Edmund replied.
“The Christmas star,” the teacher explained, exasperated. “The star that lit the way to the manger in Bethlehem?”
Edmund set to pondering what monstrosity of a costume would be required of him. He pictured an enormous star-shaped box, his head poking through a hole in its lurid egg-yellow center.
“What kind of part is a star, anyway?” he asked the others as they sat in the village hall eating lunch that afternoon. “It’s not even a living thing. It’s a…what do you call an unliving thing, Will?”
William swallowed the last of his milk. “A zombie?”
Edmund only scowled at him.
“Do you mean an inanimate object?” William found the whole affair rather funny, given his own assignment. For a brief and uncomfortable moment, he had endured the fluttering of Frances’s eyelashes as she confessed her hope that the two of them would play Joseph and Mary. “Then we’d have to hold hands,” she’d whispered. William’s relief was palpable when he had drawn SHEPHERD from the pail. Confident that a shepherd needn’t hold hands with anyone, he could now turn his attention to teasing his brother.
“I would have thought you’d be pleased, Ed, being the star of the show and all.”
“Well, what would you have thought that meant—STAR?” Edmund asked. “I mean, honestly, it’s an intimate object. Was that what you said?”
“Inanimate.”
Anna was delighted with her role as ANGEL. “It’ll be fun, I think. We’ve never been in a Nativity Play before. I wonder how they’ll do the halos?”
The icy rain continued, on and off, the whole of the week, making the library especially inviting when the children could visit after their midday meal. Edmund had started The Call of the Wild. William was making his way through a treasury of Greek mythology. Anna was starting her first Sherlock Holmes mystery. She lay on her stomach in front of the fire, The Hound of the Baskervilles before her. She was struggling with some of the longer words but enjoying it nonetheless.
She scratched absently at her neck. “What’s doli…dolichocephalic?”
“No idea,” Edmund grunted.
“Nor me, exactly,” William confessed. “I think cephalic has to do with brains.”
“Mmmm,” Anna murmured. “Holmes certainly has one of those, hasn’t he?”
“I s’pose he must,” William agreed.
Anna put the book down, scratching her neck again.
“Anna, quit scratching, will you? It’ll only make it worse,” William said.
Anna sat up. “Those pallets make my head terribly itchy. Can you look at it?” It was only as she said the words that an awful thought occurred to her. It couldn’t be nits, could it? “Ehm…never mind. I’m sure it’s just…my imagination.”
But William had already shifted his position for a closer inspection and was lifting strands of her hair.
“Is it…?” Anna couldn’t finish the sentence. Her cheeks burned pink with shame.
William met her gaze and gave the tiniest of nods.
Edmund inched backward on the hearthrug as tears spilled onto Anna’s cheeks.
“It must have been the new coat,” William whispered. He put his arm around his sister, glancing furtively at h
er head as he did so. “It’s all right, Anna,” he said. “Really, it’s going to be fine. We’ll go back to the house and I’ll get them out straightaway.” The fact that he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to do such a thing, he kept to himself.
Mrs. Müller appeared from the science section to find Anna weeping, Edmund wrinkling his nose, and William looking as if he were lost at sea.
“What is it, children?”
Please don’t tell her, Anna thought. Please don’t tell anyone.
William felt the heat of his sister’s shame. “Anna—ehm—Anna’s just gotten to an especially weepy bit in her book, is all. It’s fine. We’ve—ehm—got to be going now.”
The librarian reached into her sweater pocket and produced a clean handkerchief for Anna. “A weepy bit?” she asked gently. “In Sherlock Holmes?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. It was Edmund who spoke, at last.
“Anna’s got nits.”
William turned sharply to his brother as Anna dissolved into tears, burying her face in the handkerchief. Edmund shrugged. “There aren’t really any bits worth crying over in Sherlock Holmes, I don’t think.”
Mrs. Müller nodded. “Indeed.” She turned to William. “Will your foster mum know what to do to get rid of them?”
“I’m sure she will,” William answered. “And if not, I can do it.” He squeezed Anna’s hand. “Really. We’ll be fine.” He heard the lie in his own voice.
The librarian heard it as well. She looked from one to the other of them, then lowered her head. “Why don’t we just take care of them right here and now?”
Anna looked up from the sodden handkerchief with an odd combination of horror and gratitude.
“Thanks, Mrs. Müller,” William said. “But honestly—we’ll manage.” A part of him hoped she couldn’t see the tears burning his eyes. Another part rather hoped she could.
The librarian’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I’ve no doubt you would. But this seems to me rather unfair to expect a boy of twelve to manage.”
William held her gaze for a long while. He swallowed hard. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Müller gathered herself. “Right. So, you three stay here and man the lending desk. I’ll pop over to the chemist for some things. It’s just a few doors down, so it won’t take a moment. We’ll have you right as rain before supper. Yes?”
The children nodded. Mrs. Müller grabbed her coat and was off.
For a long while, the silence was punctuated only occasionally by a crack from the fireplace or a sniffle from Anna. Edmund and William both felt rather itchy themselves—this does tend to happen when one thinks about crawly things on one’s head—but they checked each other over and found nothing.
“Jack and Simon were right,” Anna whispered, “about us being filthy vackies.”
“Anna,” William said, taking her hands in his. “Don’t think that. It has to have been the coat from the swap.”
Anna said nothing, only stared into the fire and fought the urge to scratch.
It wasn’t long before the librarian returned with a small parcel. “Right, then,” she said. “We’ve everything we need.” She disappeared into the back hall, emerging with a dish of liquid that smelled of bleach. Retrieving a fine-toothed comb from her parcel, she knelt before Anna. “You know it isn’t your fault, don’t you?”
Anna only sniffled.
“I had nits more than once as a girl, you know,” Mrs. Müller confided.
Edmund wrinkled his nose. “You did?”
“I did. They would go round school, especially in the winter when our coats and hats were all crammed together in the coat closet. One year, my sister and I had them four times between the two of us,” she said. “My mum nearly shaved us both bald.”
Anna smiled in spite of herself.
Mrs. Müller set to it. She gathered Anna into her lap and parted her hair down the middle, then down one side, then down the other, bending her head this way and that, reaching every strand. Part and repart. Comb and recomb. Each time she found one of the dreadful creatures, she would pick it out and send it to its death in the bowl of caustic-smelling liquid.
It was an awful job, and Anna would have avoided it if she could, of course, but as she sat there by the fire, feeling Mrs. Müller’s fingers work through her curls, it occurred to Anna that she was entirely content. She puzzled over this. At first, she thought it was only relief that the unpleasant situation was being resolved. It was more than that, though. It was an indescribable tenderness, and it brought fresh tears.
These were not lost on Mrs. Müller, who stopped working for a moment and brushed Anna’s cheeks with her fingertips. “It’s going to be all right, Anna. I’ll get all of them out. I promise.”
“It’s not that,” Anna said with a hiccup. “It’s just…thank you.”
Mrs. Müller looked at Anna for a long moment, her own nose gone pink now. “It’s nothing. Really. I’m glad to. I wouldn’t want you to suffer with this a moment longer than you had to.”
Edmund raised himself to his elbows. “Do you have children, Mrs. Müller?”
“I don’t, Edmund.”
“Do you have a husband?” Anna asked.
“Of course she does,” Edmund said. “That’s why she’s a missus.”
The librarian gave a sad smile. “You’re right, Edmund. I do have a husband.”
“Is he away fighting?” William asked.
The librarian looked into the fire. “That’s rather a long story, I’m afraid.” She nudged Anna’s head forward, picking out another of the foul beasts. “Perhaps you children have noticed that not everyone around here is especially friendly toward me?”
Unsuitable, the children thought, but said nothing.
Mrs. Müller looked down at her hands. “My married name, you know, isn’t an English one,” she said. “It’s German.”
Edmund knitted his brow. “Your husband’s a Jerry?”
William elbowed him sharply.
“He is,” Mrs. Müller continued. She didn’t remark on Edmund’s use of the slur. “He came to England some years ago. Worked in a bookshop over in Northampton. That’s where we met. I went in for a copy of Anna Karenina.” The librarian smiled faintly, her eyes far away. “We married a year later and settled down here.” She paused as if gathering herself, then took a deep breath and continued. “When Hitler took over and the world started heating up, Martin—that’s his name—was worried for his family. He’d already lost a brother in the Great War, but he had a sister still in Germany, as well as his mum and dad. He wanted to go home to see them.” The librarian paused again. “That was almost three years ago.”
William leaned forward. “Where is he now?”
Mrs. Müller took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know.”
Edmund was thoroughly confused. He’d never heard of a husband going missing. “What do you mean?”
Mrs. Müller looked at them, almost sheepish. “Just that,” she said. “I don’t know.” She parted another section of Anna’s hair. “We wrote almost daily for a while. Then his letters came only weekly. And then, somehow, it was only me writing.”
“Why?” Edmund asked. “Why’d he stop?”
The librarian’s eyes were on the fire again. It seemed it was difficult for her to find her words. “At some point, I suppose he must have decided”—she paused—“that he didn’t want to come back to me.”
“But he never wrote to tell you that?” Edmund was outraged at the cowardice.
“He didn’t.” A tear fell from the end of the librarian’s nose. “Oh, look at me,” she said, drawing another handkerchief from her pocket. “Please forgive me, children.”
“No,” William said. “It’s just…we’re really sorry.”
“It’s awful,” Edmund said.
“It’s too awful for words,” Anna echoed. She twisted around to look at the librarian directly. “But why is it people are unfriendly to you? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Mrs. Müller blew her nose. “Thank you, Anna. That means the world to me. Really, it does. But I suppose the question on everyone’s minds is whether he’s—whether he’s working for the…for the wrong side.”
“You mean that he’s a Nazi?” Edmund asked.
William’s and Anna’s eyes widened.
The librarian gave a sad smile. “That is the question, isn’t it, Edmund?”
The children let this sink in.
“I can’t believe he is,” Mrs. Müller continued. “But then again, I thought he was just going home for a visit. I never doubted for a second that he’d come back to me, and…” She trailed off.
“And he didn’t,” Edmund said.
Mrs. Müller lowered her head. Her voice was almost inaudible. “And he didn’t.”
The children searched for the right thing to say, but the subject at hand was so very grown-up, none of them could find the words.
It was Anna who broke the silence at last. “I still don’t see why anybody would blame you. You’ve done nothing.”
Mrs. Müller gave a tiny shrug and started on another section of hair. “Guilt by association, I suppose. People are frightened.”
Edmund snorted. “Of you?”
“Dangerous librarian, eh?” Mrs. Müller dabbed at her eyes. “I suppose I should consider myself lucky. You read stories in the papers about Germans and their…associates…being rounded up. Interned, even. There’s a camp outside Liverpool.”
Again, the children looked at her in wordless sympathy.
“It’s like when everyone thought I painted on the school wall,” Edmund said at last. “I hadn’t done anything, but everyone thought I did—”
William interrupted him. “It’s not the same thing, Ed.”
Edmund’s shoulders sank. “Seems the same to me.”
Mrs. Müller mustered a wan smile. “I appreciate the show of solidarity, Edmund. Really, I do.” Blowing her nose one more time, then pocketing her handkerchief, she gave Anna’s hair another once-over. “Now—we’re nearly done. I’m just going to rub some rather unpleasant-smelling oil into your hair, Anna. Yours as well, boys, just to be safe. Let the stuff work its foul magic till tomorrow, then have a good wash. And your coats should be washed straightaway. Do you think you can manage that tonight?”