The War That Saved My Life

  That they didn’t think many of us were good value was clear from the expressions on their faces and the things they said.

  “Good Lord,” one woman said, reeling away from sniffing a little girl’s hair. “They’re filthy!”

  “They’ll wash,” the iron-faced woman said. She directed operations from the center of the room, clipboard still in hand. “We need to be generous. We didn’t expect so many. We’ve got to do our bit.”

  “My bit don’t extend to a pack of dirty street rats,” an old man retorted. “This lot looks like they’ll murder us in our beds.”

  “They’re children,” the iron-faced woman replied. “It’s not their fault what they look like.”

  I looked around. The village girls handing round cups of tea were sort of shiny bright, with ribbons in their hair. They looked like they would smell nice.

  “Maybe not,” another woman said. “But they’re not much like our children, are they?”

  The iron-faced woman opened her mouth to argue, then shut it without saying a word. Whatever we were, we weren’t like their children, that much was clear.

  “Ada,” Jamie whispered, “nobody wants you and me.”

  It was true. The crowd was thinning out. Fewer and fewer children remained. The teachers pushed us together and said nice things about us. The iron-faced woman cajoled the remaining villagers.

  A blue-haired old woman put her hand on Jamie’s arm. “I won’t take the girl,” she said, “but I suppose I could manage the little boy.”

  “You don’t want him,” I said. “He steals. And bites. And without me to manage him he might go back to having fits.”

  The woman’s mouth dropped into a soundless O. She scuttled away, and went off with somebody else’s brother.

  And then the hall was empty, save the teachers, the iron woman, Jamie, and me. Mam had been right. No one would have us. We were the only ones not chosen.

  “You’re not to worry,” the iron-faced woman said, which was perhaps the most ridiculous lie I’d ever heard. She thumped her clipboard. “I’ve got the perfect place for you.”

  “Are they nice?” Jamie asked.

  “It’s a single lady,” the woman replied. “She’s very nice.”

  Jamie shook his head. “Mam says nice people won’t have us.”

  The corner of the iron-faced woman’s mouth twitched. “She isn’t that nice,” she said. “Plus, I’m the billeting officer. It’s not for her to decide.”

  That meant the lady could be forced to take us. Good. I shifted my weight off my bad foot and gasped. I could get used to the pain while I was standing still, but moving made everything so much worse.

  “Can you walk?” the iron-faced woman asked. “What did you do to your foot?”

  “A brewer’s cart ran over it,” I said, “but it’s fine.”

  “Why don’t you have crutches?” she asked.

  Since I didn’t know what crutches were, I could only shrug. I started to walk across the room, but to my horror my foot gave way. I fell onto the wooden floor. I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the iron-faced woman said. She knelt down. I expected her to yell, or haul me to my feet, but instead—this was even worse than falling in the first place—she put her arms around me and lifted me off the floor. Carried me. “Hurry up,” she said to Jamie.

  Outside, she deposited me into the backseat of an automobile. An actual automobile. Jamie climbed in beside me, wide-eyed. The woman slammed the passenger door, and then she got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “It’ll only be a minute,” she said, looking back at us. “It really isn’t far.”

  Jamie touched the shiny wood beneath the window beside him. “’S okay,” he said, grinning. “Take your time. We don’t mind.”

  The house looked asleep.

  It sat at the very end of a quiet dirt lane. Trees grew along both sides of the lane, and their tops met over it so that the lane was shadowed in green. The house sat pushed back from the trees, in a small pool of sunlight, but vines snaked up the red brick chimney and bushes ran rampant around the windows. A small roof sheltered a door painted red, like the chimney, but the house itself was a flat gray, dull behind the bushes. Curtains were drawn over the windows and the door was shut tight.

  The iron-faced woman made a clicking sound as though annoyed. She pulled the car to a stop and cut the engine. “Wait here,” she commanded. She pounded a fist against the red door. When nothing happened, she barked, “Miss Smith!” and after a few more moments of nothing, she turned the knob and stepped inside.

  I nudged Jamie. “Go listen.”

  He stood by the open door for a few minutes, then came back. “They’re fighting,” he said. “The lady doesn’t want us. She says she didn’t know the war was on.”

  I was not surprised that Miss Smith didn’t want us, but I had a hard time believing anyone didn’t know about the war. Miss Smith was either lying, or dumb as a brick.

  I shrugged. “We can go somewhere else.”

  The instant I said that, everything changed. To the right side of the sleeping house a bright yellow pony put its head through the bushes and stared at me.

  I could see that it was standing behind a low stone wall. It had a white stripe down its nose and dark brown eyes. It pricked its ears forward and made a low whickery sound.

  I poked Jamie, and pointed. It was like something I’d imagined come true. I felt again in my gut the feeling I’d had on the train when I’d seen the galloping pony and the girl.

  Jamie whispered, “Does he live here?”

  I was already climbing out of the car. If the pony didn’t live with Miss Smith, it at least lived next door, and wherever it was, I was staying too. I tried to take a step, but my foot wouldn’t allow it. I pulled Jamie over. “Help me,” I said.

  “To the pony?”

  “No. To the house.” We stumbled up the stone step and through the red door. Inside, the house felt dark and close. The air smelled tingly. The room we entered was full of odd thick furniture, all covered with dark purple cloth. The walls were dark colors, in patterns, and so was the floor. A pale, thin woman wearing a black dress sat on one of the purple chairs, very upright and rigid, and the iron-faced woman, equally rigid, sat across from her. The pale woman—Miss Smith—had bright red spots on her cheeks. Her hair billowed around her thin face like a frizzy yellow cloud. “. . . don’t know a thing about them,” she was saying.

  “Here they are!” the iron-faced woman said. “The girl’s hurt her foot. Children, this is Miss Susan Smith. Miss Smith, this is . . .” She paused, and looked down at us, puzzled. The other children on the train had had name tags, but not us. “What’re your names?”

  I paused. I could have a new name, here. I could call myself Elizabeth, like the princess. Heck, I could call myself Hitler. They’d never know.

  “Ada an’ Jamie,” Jamie said.

  “Ada and Jamie what?” the iron woman said. “What’s your last name?”

  “Hitler,” I said.

  Jamie shot a look at me and said nothing.

  “Don’t be impudent,” the iron woman scolded.

  “Can’t,” I said. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means your name’s not Hitler,” the woman said. “Tell Miss Smith your last name.”

  “Smith,” I said. “Ada and Jamie Smith.”

  The iron woman, exasperated, hissed between her teeth. “Oh, really! Well, it doesn’t matter.” She turned to Miss Smith. “The teachers will have them on their records. I’ll inquire. Meanwhile, I’ve got to go. It’s been a very long day.” She stood up. I sat down firmly on the chair closest to the door. Jamie darted into another.

  “Good-bye,” I said to the iron woman.

  “I like your automobile,” Jamie told her.

  “Now
, really,” Miss Smith said. She got to her feet and followed the iron-faced woman out of the house. They argued for several more minutes, but I already knew who would win. The iron-faced woman wasn’t going to let herself be beaten twice in one day.

  Sure enough, the automobile roared away. Miss Smith marched back into the room, looking fiercely angry. “I don’t know a thing about taking care of children,” she said.

  I shrugged. I had never needed taking care of, but I decided not to say so.

  Miss Smith saw a louse in my hair that had not been there before the crowded train ride, not that when I got it mattered to her. In a shrill voice she insisted we take baths, immediately, that minute. She said, staring at my foot, “Can you get up the stairs? What happened to you?”

  “Got run over by a brewer’s cart,” I said. Miss Smith flinched. I went up the stairs on my bottom, one at a time. Miss Smith took us into a white room with a big bath, poured hot water straight from a tap, which was fascinating, and gave us our privacy, whatever that meant. There was soap and thick towels. I took a little cloth and rubbed soap into it, and rubbed my face and neck. The cloth came away gray. I rubbed soap into Jamie’s hair, and my own, then turned the tap back on to rinse it out. It was wonderful, the bath. Afterward the dirty water ran out a hole in the bottom of the tub instead of having to be scooped out like at home. Jamie, clean, grinned from inside a white towel. I wrapped a towel around myself and let my hair drip onto my shoulders. “Posh, this place,” Jamie said.

  I nodded. It was a fine place. I didn’t care if Miss Smith was awful. We were used to that with Mam.

  Miss Smith knocked on the door and asked us where our things were. I didn’t know what she meant. We’d finished the food I’d brought, and I’d left the empty paper bag on the train.

  “Your other clothes,” she said. “You can’t possibly put what you were wearing back on.”

  The other kids on the train had had parcels. Not us. I said, “We’re going to have to, that’s all we’ve got.”

  She opened the door and looked me up and down. I stuck my right foot behind my left, but it was too late. “Brewer’s cart nothing,” she said crossly, opening the door wider. “You’ve got a clubfoot. And you’re bleeding all over the floor.” She swung her hand toward me.

  I ducked.

  She froze. “I wasn’t going to hit you,” she said. “I was going to help you.”

  Sure. Because she was so happy to have me bleeding on her floor.

  She knelt and grabbed my bad foot. I tried to pull it away, but she held tight. “Interesting,” she said. “King Richard the Third had a clubfoot. I’ve never seen one before.”

  I made myself think of the ponies. The pony beside the house, the pony running next to the train. Me, riding the yellow pony. I went away into my head and gave myself ponies and that way I could bear Miss Smith touching me.

  “Right,” she said. “We’ll go to the doctor tomorrow, find out what we should do for you.”

  “He won’t want her,” Jamie said. “Nice people hate that ugly foot.”

  Miss Smith let out a short, harsh laugh. “You’re in luck, then,” she said, “because I am not a nice person at all.”

  She was not a nice person, but she cleaned up the floor. She was not a nice person, but she bandaged my foot in a white piece of cloth, and gave us two of her own clean shirts to wear. They hung past our knees. She combed or cut the tangles out of our hair, which took ages, and then she made a big pan of scrambled eggs. “It’s all the food I have,” she said. “I haven’t been shopping this week. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  All the food she had, she said, except there was butter on the slightly stale bread, and sugar in the tea. The eggs looked slimy, but I was hungry enough to eat anything, and they tasted fine. When I wiped my plate with my bread she gave me another spoonful of eggs. “What am I supposed to do with you?” she asked.

  It was such an odd question. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Ada stays inside,” Jamie offered.

  “I take care of him,” I said. “You won’t have to.”

  Miss Smith frowned. “How old are you?”

  This question made me squirm. “Jamie’s six,” I said. “Mam said. He’s got to go to school.”

  “He’s awfully small for six,” Miss Smith said.

  “Mam said.”

  “And surely you’re older than he is?” she continued. “Don’t you go to school?”

  Jamie said, “Not with that ugly foot.”

  Miss Smith snorted. “That foot’s a long way from her brain.” She tapped her knife against the edge of her plate. “Birthdays. When? Names? Real names, not this Smith nonsense.”

  “Ada and Jamie,” I said. “Smith. That’s all I know.”

  She glared at me. I glared back. After a few moments her gaze softened. “You really don’t know?”

  I looked at the eggs on my plate. “I asked once,” I said. “Mam said it didn’t matter.”

  Miss Smith drew in her breath. “Okay,” she said, “Jamie’s six. You’re older. Shall we say nine?”

  I couldn’t tell by her voice how angry she was. I shrugged. Nine was fine. I knew my numbers, eight, nine, ten.

  “I’ll write your parents,” Miss Smith said. “Lady Thorton will get me their address, and I’ll write them. They’ll tell me.” She looked us up and down. “What does your father do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “He’s dead.” Dead for years, either that or gone. I didn’t know which. If I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated, I thought I could remember him, but only as a sort of blurry shadow. A tall man. Quiet, not like Mam.

  “Oh,” said Miss Smith. “I’ll write your mother, then.”

  Miss Smith was not a nice person, but the bed she put us in was soft and clean, with smooth thin blankets and warm thicker ones. She pulled the curtain across the window to shut out the light. I was so, so tired.

  “Miss,” I asked, “whose is the pony?” I had to know, before I went to sleep.

  Miss Smith paused, her hand on the curtain. She looked out the window. “His name is Butter,” she said. “Becky gave him to me.”

  “Who’s Becky?” Jamie asked, but she didn’t reply.

  In the morning we slept until the sun was halfway up the sky. Miss Smith slept late too. I could hear her snoring in the room across the hall.

  I took Jamie downstairs and fed him bread. I crawled again the way I did at home. I meant to keep walking, but crawling was so much easier.

  The main room had a back door. Outside was a little space fenced by a stone wall, and then another much bigger space, also fenced. The pony named Butter stood in the bigger space, facing the house, eyes and ears alert.

  I smiled. He looked like he was waiting for me.

  Jamie said, grabbing my arm, “You’re not supposed to go outside.”

  I shook him off. “That’s over,” I said. “Here I can go where I like.”

  He wavered. “How do you know?”

  It was my reward, I thought. For being brave. For walking so long, for walking away. I got to keep walking forever. I hauled myself to my feet. I would walk to the pony.

  I toddled and stumbled. Everything hurt. The pony watched me. When I reached the stone wall I sat on it and swung my legs over to the other side. The pony stepped toward me, lowered his head, sniffed my hands, and pressed his neck against me. I put my arms around him. I understood how he got his name. He smelled like butter in the hot sun.

  I wanted to ride him but wasn’t sure how. His back was a long way from the ground. Plus, the girl I’d seen had had straps or something to hold on to. I stood, holding on to the pony’s neck, and took a few cautious steps along his side.

  The grass in the field prickled my bare foot. The dampness felt cool on it, and seeped through the bandage on my other foot too. The ground was soft; it moved when I stepped on it.
Squishy, like new bread. Trees bordered the field, and their tops waved in the sun. Birds twittered. I knew about birds, we had them in the lane, but I’d never heard so many at once.

  There were flowers.

  Jamie ran around the field, singing to himself, whacking things with a stick he found. Butter lowered his head again, sniffing my hands. Did he think I’d brought him something? Should I have brought him something? What did ponies like?

  The end of his nose felt soft and warm. I traced my hands up his head to his ears, and the clump of long hair between them. I rubbed his neck, and he sighed and leaned into me again. Then he took a step away and went back to eating grass.

  I sat down in the field and watched him. He ate as though eating was his job in life, as though he was saying, “I’m not all that hungry, mate, but I’ve got to keep on with it, see.” He flicked his tail back and forth, then took a step, dragging himself to fresher grass.

  I sat and watched him, and then I lay down—I was so stiff, and the warm sun felt so nice—and watched him, and then I fell asleep. When I woke, Miss Smith was standing over me.

  “You’re sunburned,” she said. “You’ve stayed out too long.”

  I sat up, stretching. Everything ached. The skin on my bare legs had turned pink. It hurt, but I was used to things hurting.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked. She sounded cross.

  I blinked. I was hungry. Crashingly, achingly hungry. I was used to that too. What was I supposed to say? Did Miss Smith want me to be hungry, or not?

  “Why didn’t you wake me this morning?” she said.

  I’d never wake her. I wasn’t stupid.

  “Come.” She reached an arm toward me. “It’s gone late. I’ve got to get you to the doctor, and we need to do some shopping.”

  “I don’t need help,” I said.