The War That Saved My Life

Miss Smith sighed. She took her handkerchief and wiped the tears and snot off Jamie’s face. “No one’s asking us what we want,” she said. “Come. Let’s have something to eat.”

  After we ate, Miss Smith sat beside the radio, looking distant and unhappy. “Miss?” I said. “Have they started bombing yet?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. The sirens went off in London, but it was just a drill.”

  I perched on the edge of the chair beside her. The voice on the radio droned on. “Miss?” I said. “What’re hunters?”

  She looked up as though half asleep. “What?”

  I repeated the question. “You said you were living off the sale of Becky’s hunters,” I said. I knew about selling things. There was a pawn shop down our lane, and when work at the docks was slow, women took things there.

  “Hunters are an expensive type of horse,” she said. “Becky had two of them.”

  “We could eat less,” I said. “Jamie and me. We’re used to it.”

  Miss Smith’s gaze sharpened. “Of course not,” she said. Her voice took on an edge that made me swallow. “You aren’t to worry about that. I’ll handle it, or Lady Thorton will. You’ll be looked after.”

  “It’s just—”

  “You’re not to worry,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day. Wouldn’t you like to play outside?”

  Jamie was already out there. I nodded, took my crutches, and went. Butter grazed far across the field. “Butter!” I called, sliding over the pasture wall. He raised his head, but didn’t come to me.

  I lay down. The field was fascinating. Grass, dirt, flowers. Little flying bugs. I rolled onto my stomach and stroked the grass, sniffed it, pulled it out of the dirt. Scooted forward to examine a white flower.

  Eventually I felt a whoosh of breath against my neck. I rolled over, laughing, expecting Jamie, but it was Butter. He sniffed my head, then stepped aside, grazing. I watched his feet and how he moved them, and how his long yellow tail swished flies away.

  The sun was high and then it was lower, and the air grew chilly. “Supper!” Miss Smith shouted from the house. When we came in she gave me an eye and said, “Have you been rolling in mud?”

  I didn’t know what she meant.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Don’t look so stricken. You’ll wash.”

  Jamie shouted, “Another BATH?”

  “Sit and eat,” Miss Smith said. “Yes, a bath. You can plan on having a bath every night while you’re here.”

  “Every night?” Mud or not, I felt cleaner than I’d ever been.

  “I don’t mind you getting dirty,” Miss Smith said, “but I won’t have mud on my sheets.”

  Jamie and I looked around. There were lots of things whose names we didn’t know. And clearly she did mind our getting dirty, at least a little. Finally I said, “Miss? What’re sheets?”

  Sheets were the thin white blankets on the bed. Supper was something called soup, that came in bowls. You were supposed to drink it from spoons, not from the bowls themselves, which seemed like too much work. But I was hungry, and the soup was salty and had bits of meat in it, so I did as I was told.

  Jamie refused to eat at all.

  “If you want to go to bed hungry, you certainly may,” Miss Smith said. “Soup is all I’ve made and soup is all there is to eat.”

  This was a lie and we all knew it. Her cupboard held all sorts of food. But Jamie’d gone to bed hungry before. It wouldn’t kill him.

  At night he cried into his pillow and in the morning he’d wet the bed again. “I want to go home,” he said. “I want to see Billy White. I want to be like always. I want to go home.”

  I didn’t. Not ever. I had run away once and I’d run away again.

  The next week three things happened. First, Miss Smith spent most of each day either sleeping or staring dully into space. On Monday she made meals for us but did nothing else. On Tuesday she didn’t even get out of bed. I’d watched her cooking on her range enough to understand how it worked, so I fed Jamie and me. Midafternoon I made Miss Smith some tea. Jamie carried it up the stairs for me and we took it into her room.

  She lay on her side, awake but staring at nothing. Her eyes were red and swollen. She seemed surprised to see us. “I’ve abandoned you,” she said, without moving. “I told Lady Thorton I’m not fit to care for children. I said so.”

  I set the tea on the table by her bed. “Here, miss.”

  She sat up. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me,” she said. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you.” She took a sip, and fresh tears sprang to her eyes. “You’ve sugared it,” she said.

  That was how she took it. One sugar, no milk. I’d watched. “Yes, miss,” I said, ducking a little in case she tried to smack me. “Not much, though. There’s plenty of sugar left. I didn’t take any.” Though I’d let Jamie have some.

  “I’m not going to hit you,” she said. “I wish you’d understand that. I’m neglecting you, certainly, but I won’t hit you, and I don’t care what you eat. It was thoughtful of you to sugar my tea. It was thoughtful of you to bring me tea in the first place.”

  “Yes, miss,” I said. Thoughtful: good or bad?

  She sighed. “And we haven’t heard back from your mother. Your name is Smith, though. Your last name. Until Lady Thorton told me, I was sure you were lying.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “After that business about Hitler.”

  I turned to go. I’d had an eventful morning, and I was hungry myself, and could do with some tea.

  “It’s a common enough name, Smith,” Miss Smith said. “But still, I thought you were lying.”

  She stayed in bed even after she finished the tea. I let Jamie rummage through the cupboard and eat anything he liked, and I did too, though I was pretty sure I’d get in trouble for it later on. I let Jamie skip his bath, but I took an extra-long one, with hot water so deep my legs floated. I pulled the sheets off the bed so it wouldn’t matter that Jamie had wet them the night before, and we slept fine.

  In the morning Miss Smith got up, her frizzy hair a yellow cloud around her head. “I’ll try to do better,” she told us. “Yesterday was—about Becky. I’ll do better today.”

  I shrugged. “I can take care of Jamie.”

  “Probably,” Miss Smith said, “but somebody ought to take care of you.”

  That was the first thing. The second was that the Royal Air Force built an airfield across the road from Butter’s pasture. It went up completely in three days, landing strip, huts, everything. Jamie, fascinated, kept sneaking over to watch, until an officer marched him back to Miss Smith with his hand around Jamie’s neck. “Keep him home, ma’am,” he said. “No civilians on the airfield.”

  The third thing is that Billy White went back to London.

  Jamie’d fussed about missing Billy and his friends, but I didn’t know how to find them, and I wasn’t going to walk the countryside in a blind search. I’d gotten the hang of crutches quick, so walking was easy, but I enjoyed having Jamie to myself. We were spending our days outside. There was a building in the garden called a stable, that Becky’s horses used to live in, and sometimes we played there, but mostly we were in Butter’s field, which I loved.

  On Thursday all three of us walked into town, because we’d finally eaten up most of the food. The first thing we saw was Billy White with his mother and his sisters waiting at the station for the train.

  “Billy!” Jamie shouted. He ran up to Billy’s family and grinned at them. “Where’re you staying? I’m not far, it’s just—”

  Billy said, “Mum’s come to take us. We’re going home.”

  Jamie stared. “But what about Hitler?” he asked. “What about the bombs?”

  “Haven’t been any bombs so far,” Billy’s mother said. She had her arm around her youngest girl. When I smiled at the girl, Billy’s mother pulled h
er a little bit away from me, as though my bad foot might be catching. “And I can’t stand it, being away from them,” she went on. “It feels wrong. I reckon we’ll stick the war out together.” She gave me a sideways glance. “’S that you, Ada? Your mum said as how you’d gone too, but I didn’t believe it. Only you weren’t at your window.” She looked me up and down, particularly down, at my carefully bandaged foot. Miss Smith washed the bandages and gave me a clean one every day.

  “I’m not simple,” I said. “I’ve got a bad foot, that’s all.”

  “I dunno,” Billy’s mother said, still shielding her daughter. “Your mam—”

  “I’ve written to her,” Miss Smith said, coming up behind us. “But perhaps you could take a message to her too. The doctor says—”

  Billy interrupted. “I hate it here,” he said. “The people that took us, they’re mean as a bunch of starved cats.”

  “I hate it here too,” Jamie said. He turned to Miss Smith. “Can I go home? Will you take us home?”

  Miss Smith shook her head, smiling, as though Jamie were making a joke. “I’ve never even been to London,” she said. “I wouldn’t know where to go.”

  “Home,” Jamie insisted.

  “Where’s Stephen?” I asked.

  Billy’s mom scowled. “He won’t come,” she said. “Thinks he’s important, he does.” She gave me another odd look. “I’m that surprised to see you out with ordinary people. I thought they’d put you in an asylum.”

  From the tone of her voice it was clear she thought I should be locked away. The disgust in it stunned me. For years I’d waved to Billy’s mother out my window, and she always waved back. I’d thought she was a nice person. I’d thought she liked me. Clearly she did not. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know where to look. Susan’s hand touched my shoulder and I turned a little so that I could see the edge of her skirt. I couldn’t stand looking at Billy’s mother anymore.

  The train came up and Billy’s mother herded her children toward it. Jamie began to howl. “Take me with you!”

  Miss Smith held him back. “Your mother wants you here,” she said. “She wants you safe.”

  “She misses me,” Jamie said. “An’ Ada’ll take care of me. Mam misses us. Right, Ada? Right? She wants us home!”

  I swallowed. Maybe. After all, with me gone she didn’t have anybody to fix her tea. Maybe she’d be happy to see me, now that I could walk, especially with the crutches. Maybe she’d wonder why she never thought of crutches herself.

  Maybe she’d see I wasn’t simple.

  Or maybe I was. Maybe there was a reason they kept me shut up in one room.

  A wave of dizziness swept me. Think of Butter, I told myself desperately. Think of riding Butter.

  Meanwhile Jamie’s screams increased. He kicked Miss Smith, hard, and tried to yank himself out of her grasp. “Billy!” he shouted. “Take me with you! I want to go! I WANT TO GO HOME!”

  Miss Smith held on to him until the train had gone.

  “I hate you!” Jamie sobbed, flailing his arms and legs. “I hate you, I hate you! I want to go home!”

  Miss Smith grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him down the street in stony-faced silence. “Come along, Ada,” she snapped, without looking back.

  Jamie continued to sob. Snot ran down his chin. “I hate you!” he howled. “I hate you!”

  “Trouble?” asked a calm voice. I looked up. It was the iron woman, the one who put us into her automobile, and by her side herself in miniature, an iron-faced girl. One of the bright girls in ribbons, who had served us tea.

  To my surprise, Miss Smith rolled her eyes and shook her head, as though all Jamie’s yelling hadn’t bothered her a bit. “It’s only a tantrum,” she said. “He saw his friend leave.”

  The iron woman turned on Jamie. “Stop screaming,” she said crisply. “Stop it this instant. You’ll frighten the horses.”

  Jamie stopped. He looked around. “What horses?”

  The iron woman said, “It’s a figure of speech.” To Miss Smith she said, “At least a dozen of them have gone back already. I’ve told their parents over and over that it isn’t safe. London will be bombed. But it’s no use. Those simple-minded women prefer their present comfort to the long-term safety of their children.”

  Simple-minded women. Simple like me. Maybe everyone was simple on my lane.

  The iron woman eyed Jamie and me. “Yours are certainly looking better. A credit to you.”

  “Hardly,” Miss Smith said. “All I did was put them in clean clothes and feed them.” She rubbed stinky lotion on our impetigo too, but I noticed she didn’t tell the iron woman that. Instead she said, hesitatingly, “Perhaps, if you have hand-me-downs—or if you know someone who does—I can’t afford all they’ll need for winter.”

  The iron lady pulled a clipboard out of her large handbag. She probably held a clipboard in her sleep. “Of course,” she said, writing something down. “I’m organizing a used clothing collection in town. We don’t expect you to be able to cover clothing out of the allowance. They were supposed to bring their own—well, never mind. They should have come with more than they did. Obviously.”

  Her iron-faced daughter was staring at my bandaged foot. I leaned close and whispered, “It just happened yesterday. I got stepped on by our pony.”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. She whispered back, “That’s an awful lie.”

  I said, “We have too got a pony.”

  She said, “It doesn’t hurt that much when a pony steps on you. I’ve been stepped on dozens of times.”

  Well, she had me there. I didn’t know what to say, so I stuck my tongue out at her. She bared her teeth in response, like a tiger. Cor.

  Meanwhile Miss Smith was saying, “What allowance?”

  It turned out she was getting paid for taking us in. Nineteen shillings a week! Nearly a whole pound! If she hadn’t been rich before, she was now. I let out a deep breath. I could quit worrying over what my shoe had cost, and how much food we ate. Mam didn’t earn anything like nineteen shillings a week. Jamie and I could eat all we wanted on nineteen shillings a week.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t know that,” the iron woman said. “Surely I explained—”

  “Oh,” Miss Smith said, with a little laugh, “I wasn’t listening to a word you said.”

  As we continued down the street, Jamie subdued but still whimpering, I said, “That’s three pounds sixteen shillings a month, miss. You could take in more of us and get rich.”

  Miss Smith scowled. “Thank God I’m not reduced to that.”

  All this time, in secret, I’d been messing with Butter. What Miss Smith didn’t know I was doing, she couldn’t forbid.

  The Tuesday that she stayed in bed I sat on him for the first time. I coaxed him to stand beside the stone wall, then climbed the wall—wobbling, without my crutches—and threw my bad leg across his back. I grabbed his mane and scrambled, and there I was, astride him. The smell of him rose up around me, and his coat felt warm and prickly against my legs.

  He walked forward, his swinging steps moving my hips along with him. I held on to his mane for balance. I tried to steer him, but it didn’t work, and before long he dropped his head to graze. I didn’t mind. I sat on him most of that morning, until I grew hungry myself. Then I slid off him and went in to eat.

  The next day my legs felt wobbly. All stretched out in a new way. I didn’t mind that either. It was nothing like as bad as walking.

  The stables had a storeroom attached. It had been locked, but Jamie’d found the key under a rock near the door. Inside was all sorts of stuff I guessed had to do with Becky and her horses. I went looking for straps like I’d seen on the pony who raced our train, and found boxes full of leather pieces, some of them buckled together. I pulled them out and examined them.

  If you pick up a bridle, which is the
leather stuff that goes around the horse’s head, by the wrong piece—by the noseband or the cheek piece, say, instead of the headstall—it doesn’t look like anything that could go onto a horse. It just looks like a mess of leather. So at first I couldn’t make sense of anything. Finally I found a sort of square thing on a shelf. It had pieces of paper covered in writing I couldn’t read, and partway through had a drawing of a horse’s head with the leather pieces fastened round. I studied it and the leather bits until I understood.

  That afternoon, when I tried to bridle Butter, I must have been using tack that fit one of Becky’s bigger horses. I got the headpiece over his ears, but the metal bit hung below his chin, and the part that should have wrapped around his head wrapped around his nostrils instead. He snorted and ran off, trailing the reins. It took me half the afternoon to catch him, and that was with Jamie’s help.

  On Thursday afternoon, when we got home from shopping, I tried a smaller bridle, and everything worked a treat. Butter came to me when I called. I fed him a piece of dried porridge from my pocket. I put the bridle on him, and it fit. (I didn’t know the words then: bridle, bit, reins, cheek piece or headstall. But I know them now. And the thing with the pieces of paper and the picture of a bridled horse was a book. My first.)

  Anyway, there stood Butter, bridled, and me, ready. When I climbed onto him he sighed, and went to put his head down to graze. I yanked on the reins, and he threw his head up, startled. That was better. I kicked him a bit, because I’d discovered this would make him move. He walked forward. I pulled on one side of the reins, and he turned. I pulled on both, and he stopped. It was all easy, I thought. I thumped him hard with my legs, to try to make him run. He threw his head down, bucked, and tossed me over his ears. I landed on my back in the grass.

  Jamie ran to me. “Ada! Are you dead?”

  I scrambled to my feet. “Not a bit.”

  I got back on and Butter tried it again. This time I kept his head up, and he couldn’t buck, not exactly, so he jumped sideways and got me off that way instead. I thunked my head on the ground and went dizzy for a moment.