The Romeo and Juliet Code

by Phoebe Stone

  There was a Glenn Miller big band song playing on the radio downstairs. Derek had turned up the music loud again. “I must dance to this one,” Aunt Miami said, and she dropped the scissors on the bed and circled out of the room.

  I went to the top of the stairs to watch her and she’d already found a willing partner. My father. They were swirling through the hall and into the parlor and then back through the hall and into the dining room. “We have to live for the moment, Flissy,” called Miami. “After all, America is in the war now. And who knows what will happen.” The saxophones and horns played through the house. I was the blessing in disguise. All along it was me.

  “Do you have any tape?” said Derek, coming out of his room with a piece of wrapping paper and a small box in his hands.

  “There is some in here in Auntie’s room,” I said. He followed me into the room.

  “So Miami and Gideon are downstairs cutting a rug,” said Derek. “It’s nice.”

  The music stopped for a moment and then we could hear an announcement urging civilians to report for volunteer duty. After that, there was an ad for Carter’s Little Liver Pills. Derek sat with me on Miami’s bed and cut off a piece of wrapping paper and started to wrap up the small box with his one hand, which wasn’t terribly easy. “About me not being able to enlist someday, I’ve decided on something. I’ve thought of something interesting, Flissy. Something that’s changed everything.”

  “What is it, Derek?” I said.

  He didn’t answer me for a minute. “I realized it when I read the letters from your Winnie and Danny. I realized it when I read about the agent with the wooden leg. That’s when I realized it, Fliss. You can have a handicap and still work for the war and the government. If that person with a handicap should want to become an intelligence agent, it would be possible, acceptable, even welcome. I have talked with Gideon about it, and when I am a little older, that is what I am going to do, Flissy. That is what my work will be.”

  I smiled at him, all the while thinking that he was ever so brave and ever so sweet and ever so lovely. Then he said, “It’s nice to see Miami dancing. It’s nice for Gideon too. You know, Fliss, like I said before, you stirred up the soup around here. In a good way.”

  “I did?” I said.

  “Yes, you did,” he said. “You know, Flissy …” He paused. “Um. I have a secret too. I didn’t write to the president about it yet, but I might.”

  “Oh, you have a secret?” I said, looking up at him. “Is it a nice secret or a mean secret?”

  “It’s a nice secret,” he said.

  “Oh, then tell me,” I said, squeezing my eyes tightly and listening closely.

  “If you tell me your secret first, I’ll tell you mine,” Derek said.

  “When?” I said. “Now?”

  “Well, not today and not tomorrow,” he said, “but maybe the next day.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Possibly,” he said. “Or the day after the day after tomorrow.”

  “Truly?” I said.

  “Maybe. Perhaps,” he said, smiling down at me.

  Then he handed me the package he had wrapped. “This is for you, Flissy,” he said. “I didn’t want to give it to you on Christmas. I didn’t want the others to see.”

  I reached out and took the present. I unwrapped it slowly. I took the lid off carefully. Inside, staring up at me, was the beautiful little tin soldier with the missing arm.

  The next morning, the sky was bright and cloudless. We had hot cocoa for breakfast, and the early light that fell through the windows in every room was clear. The air smelled of chocolate and maple syrup and oatmeal. I was standing in the kitchen, I think, when I heard the most beautiful melodic piano music. It rolled out of the library like the ocean rolling up on the shore. It thundered through the house, speaking, singing, calling, sobbing, laughing. Miami and Derek and The Gram and I stood in the hallway listening. My grandmother was crying. She was crouched over, trying not to, but there was nothing she could do about it. She seemed finally to relax, to uncurl, to unwind in tears. Miami shook her head at me and said, “You see, Gideon’s good. He’s good.” Slowly, we opened the library door and went in and listened to the music streaming from my father’s fingers on the piano, and he was looking at each of us, and all of him seemed somehow to be entwined in the music and all of him was pouring from the notes. I felt as if I was seeing him really for the first time. The music grew louder and then softer. It rolled and then it thundered, touching every wall and window, every corner of the Bathburn house. He nodded at me as he played and I knew then that he was going to accompany me on the piano when I sang tomorrow night. He didn’t have to say one word. It was there quite clearly in my father’s smile.

  Two days before Christmas was the night of our performance. For dinner, The Gram made winter vegetable soup. Miami chopped the onions. Derek measured out the rice. And yes, I stirred the soup. Then after dinner, we got into the Packard, which almost didn’t start, and we drove just after dark to the town hall. It was a bumpy, slippery ride, and the windscreen was icy and the back window couldn’t be rolled up, so the wind was blowing in all over the place, but the cold didn’t seem to bother me. I was holding a nice, fat hot water bottle that The Gram had filled for me before we left.

  When we got to the town hall, there was a light snow falling. The sky was dark, and looking up through the snowflakes, I could see the little lights of stars shining so far away. Gideon said it was an unusual combination of snow and the Big and Little Dipper.

  “Maybe it’s a sign,” said Gideon, putting his arm over The Gram’s shoulder and squeezing Aunt Miami’s hand for a minute. “Maybe we’re going to win this war after all.”

  When we got to the town hall, there was an enormous Christmas wreath on the front door, covered with hundreds of tiny burning candles, and I felt suddenly nervous and scared to get up and sing the last song of the evening.

  Already, there were many people sitting in the folding chairs, waiting for the show to begin. Derek and I and Gideon and The Gram sat in the front row while Auntie Miami went backstage. She had put her hair in bobby pin curlers the night before and now her hair fell in dark ringlets specially created for the part. As she waved to me, I thought she looked ever so full of grace and ease.

  Soon the curtains parted and the scene from Romeo and Juliet began. Miami said those lines yet one more time, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” And the code came into my mind again and the journey my Winnie and Danny had gone on in France. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.” Those words yet again carrying with them all that sadness and loveliness. Gideon had said, “It doesn’t have to mean the worst. It could be many things.”

  And then, like a mirage, Mr. Henley appeared onstage and he looked at Juliet with such tenderness and love, it was hard to believe it was a play. It was so real. Mr. Henley almost seemed to tremble when he swore his love to Juliet. And my aunt Miami bloomed that night like a flower, like a rose, like a beautiful wild rose on a scrubby bush along the ocean.

  At the end of the scene, Romeo and Juliet kissed and the crowd cheered and clapped and they stomped on the old wooden floor with their feet and asked for an encore. Then Aunt Miami and Mr. Henley seemed to be flying, lifting off the stage and sailing above us, rinsed in a dazzling moment, holding hands.

  After that, Mrs. Paula Martin got onstage and played the ukulele, followed by the acrobatic Balancing Bottlebay Boys. Mrs. Fudge and her parrot sang, and then the Four Voices did “Say Au Revoir But Not Goodbye.” And soon enough, the variety show was almost over and my turn was coming up. Derek touched my hand and said, “Break a leg, Flissy.”

  Then I went round to the backstage with my father and waited in the wings. I knew I was going to sing “I Think of You” for Winnie and Danny. I had been planning that. I also knew that I would be singing it for Derek. The makeup crew came by
and put real lipstick on my lips and added rouge to my cheeks and the whole time they were working on me, I was making up my mind about something again.

  I decided that night that I was going to send my Wink to Lily’s little brother, Albert, in England. I knew he loved Wink dearly and needed him more than I did now, and besides, Wink had been neglected recently. How easy it was to get so busy with important things and neglect someone. But it didn’t mean that you didn’t love them. And after all, I was going to be twelve years old this January, and girls of twelve in the United States never carry bears around.

  Thinking about all that made my being nervous go away and it made something else happen. Suddenly, as I was about to go onstage, suddenly like a wind washing over the ocean, suddenly I felt like a real part of Bottlebay, Maine. I felt like I was in a circle with everybody in the room near me, with Derek, Auntie Miami, The Gram, and my father, Gideon, AKA Mr. Bathtub, who would now need another new name altogether. Another new name. As The Gram had said, “A person can call their father by any name they like. It’s your choice, Flissy.”

  Suddenly as I stood there, I sensed all the Bathburns close around me and I felt like I might be becoming a real true American and it felt super and warm and good. Then I remembered Danny saying to Winnie as she cried, “The Bathburns of Bottlebay will be a great gift for her, Winnie. The best gift you could give a child. The very best.” And he was ever so right.

  Then I went out and stood under the lights and sang “I Think of You,” and my father played the piano. I sang,

  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.

  And all I could do was wait and hope and hope and hope that one day when the skies were clear of fighter planes and bombers, and the sea was free of U-boats and aircraft carriers and warships, that one day, I would see my Winnie and my Danny running towards me on the beach, stopped in midair, the sky hot and blue and quiet and the sea barely moving, like a beautiful still photograph.

  Flissy Bathburn’s story is fictional, but the historical incidents surrounding World War II in this book are true, with a few exceptions. In my story Flissy and Winnie and Danny crossed the ocean on the Cunard ocean liner the Queen Anne in 1941. This boat is fictional although based upon the great Cunard ocean liner the Queen Elizabeth and her secret maiden voyage in 1940 from England to the United States for safekeeping. The Queen Elizabeth was indeed painted entirely gray, including the portholes, so that no light would escape. And she did indeed zigzag silently across the ocean evading Nazi submarines.

  Flissy’s beloved Winnie and Danny, as well as Gideon Bathburn, were all intelligence agents working with the English office of espionage in London called the SOE (Special Operations Executive) and also with the newly developed American intelligence gathering agency called the COI (Coordinator of Information) under the direction of Gen. William J. Donovan, the man who visited the Bathburns in my book. In reality quite a few British agents were women and some of them had children they left behind at home. There were a few husband and wife teams and sometimes romantic involvements among the agents. Many of these agents were beautiful and loved danger and intrigue. They were very brave and heroic and often died helping others.

  In my story the agent with the wooden leg called Delphine as a code name was based on a real agent named Virginia Hall. She was an American who posed as a New York Post reporter in the Lyons region in France starting in 1941. At some point she did need word sent to America to get parts for her wooden leg which she couldn’t obtain in Lyons, although Winnie and Danny’s role in that story is fictional. Virginia Hall helped countless downed British RAF pilots and many other people get false papers and find escape routes. She also arranged for funds, obtained authentic-looking French clothing and shoes for their disguise, and provided other agents and downed pilots with safe houses. She even helped break some Resistance members out of prison.

  There were unfortunately German sympathizers among the French who posed as part of the Resistance and who really worked for the Nazis. They turned in many Allied agents and blew the cover of many Resistance groups working all over France. One such agent was named Henri Déricourt. He worked in a very important position receiving Allied agents on the ground as they parachuted into central France. Many British agents and wireless operators were captured days later possibly because of this double agent. Although unproven, it appears he was responsible for destroying a major Resistance circuit called “Prosperous” and damaging other circuits.

  The wireless operators were called “piano players” and it was a very dangerous job as the Nazis had direction finding devices that were often able to detect where the transmitters were. Once a wireless operator was caught, the Nazis used the same wireless machines and secret codes to send false messages back to the SOE in London. The messages often asked Britain for money, artillery, and other supplies. Sadly the SOE responded to these false messages by dropping in supplies and money that immediately fell into the hands of the Nazis.

  I imagined while writing my story that Winnie and Danny had become aware of an important double agent posing as their circuit’s wireless operator and so they planned to use an alternative route and method to get information to the COI and the SOE. They decided to send letters via courier through neutral Portugal as a safer alternative. The trip over the Pyrenees Mountains to neutral Spain and Portugal was the preferred route for smuggling British pilots back to England and many agents went back to London this way, including agent Virginia Hall when she escaped France finally by walking over the snowy Pyrenees, in spite of her wooden leg. Most airmail letters and packages going from Europe to the USA went from Lisbon, Portugal. These letters were all checked by a censor looking for letters containing sensitive information. I imagined that Danny, Gideon, and Winnie had an ally in the postal system in Portugal who stamped the letters with a “passed censor” stamp allowing the letters to go through unchecked.

  I know that Britain and America worked together as a unit in their spy efforts starting in 1942, but in my story I imagined that officials in Washington like General Donovan at the COI began organizing and running spy operations in Europe in the spring of 1941 before the US joined the war. Actually, General Donovan did not begin planning such covert operations until a year later when he started the OSS. Therefore this part of my story is purely fictional. However President Roosevelt was very independent and interested in espionage and had sent Donovan to England in 1940 to learn all he could about organizing spy circuits, so this part of my story is actually quite possible.

  I was a ten-year-old girl when I lived in England and went to school there in the late 1950s. The first time I was in London I was struck by the numerous piles of brick ruble still on many street corners where buildings had been bombed. Much of the detail of Flissy Bathburn’s life in England comes directly from my firsthand 1950s experiences while living the life of a British girl.

  Very special thanks to Rachel Griffiths, my editor, who is always sure and confident when I waver, and who has steered this project with great intelligence and enthusiasm, offering creative and inspiring suggestions that helped this book to become exactly what it is. Thank you!! A special thank-you also to Arthur Levine for his behind-the-scenes support and encouragement and kindness. In fact, thank you to all the people at Scholastic and Arthur A. Levine Books. I could not be happier! Thank you, Nikki Mutch!!! Thank you also to my friends who read this book for me early on: Susan Cole, child advocate lawyer and lecturer at Harvard Law School; Anne Corrigan, former British citizen now teaching at Mary Hogan Elementary School; my scientist friends Yvette Feig and Bob Murray; Kristy Carlson, avid reader; and my sister Marcia Croll, who always reads my books for me when I call up and say, “Quick! Re
ad it overnight. I need to know what you think.” And she does. And thank you to my ever encouraging mom, the poet Ruth Stone, who says the only books she reads are children’s books, mine among them. Wow! And thank you to my husband and best friend David Carlson, who is always a part of all my books and as I am writing this now, I know he will read it over in a few minutes and tell me where I have misspelled or misplaced a stray or wandering word. We are all a team. I am forever grateful.

  And a note of gratitude to these nonfiction books and authors who helped me understand Winnie and Danny’s complicated world.

  The Women Who Lived for Danger: Behind Enemy Lines During World War II by Marcus Binney. Harper Paperbacks, 2004.

  The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy by Judith L. Pearson. The Lyons Press, 2005.

  Sisterhood of Spies: Women of the OSS by Elizabeth P. McIntosh. Naval Institute Press, 1998.

  A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of World War II by Sarah Helm. Anchor Books, 2007.

  Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of World War II’s OSS by Patrick O’Donnell. Citadel Press Book, 2004.

  My name used to be Louise but it’s not anymore. I had a T-shirt made that says across the front NO LONGER LOUISE. I changed my name because Louise rhymes with cheese and fleas and sneeze. So now I’m Thumbelina. I know. I know. It’s over the top. It’s unrealistic. It’s childish and stupid. Nobody has that name. But the thing is, I’m little. I’m only four feet seven and I’m in seventh grade. This means I have a seventh-grade soul that’s stuck in a fourth-grade body. This is major annoying. I’m planning on growing taller soon.

  I came up with the idea of Thumbelina when I was walking along the river with my friend Henderson. He was looking at the sky. Henderson always looks at the sky when he’s thinking and he’s always thinking. He was saying, “Actually everybody has a story, a fairy tale in their heart that they adhere to. That’s why Hans Christian Andersen is so awesome.”