The War I Finally Won

  It made sense to be wary of Germans. On the other hand, if Ruth really planned to kill us in our sleep, I thought she would have done it by now.

  • • •

  A week later Ruth and I were studying at the table when someone knocked at the door. Ruth got up.

  “Hello!” said a voice I recognized.

  I jumped out of my chair. “Jonathan!”

  “Ada!” It was Jonathan, tall and thin, in his RAF uniform and leather flying jacket. He grinned. “Is my mother home?”

  Lady Thorton came halfway down the stairs. She saw Jonathan, screamed, and ran the rest of the way. A happy scream: I’d never heard one before.

  Jonathan swung Lady Thorton around in a hug. He said, “Sorry I couldn’t warn you. I only got leave at the last minute.”

  “Oh!” Lady Thorton stood back from him, beaming. “It’s so good to see you! I’m so glad!”

  “This is Ruth,” I said.

  Jonathan held out his hand. “I’ve heard about you,” he said. Ruth grimaced and darted a glance at Lady Thorton, but Jonathan continued, “My father says you’re brilliant at maths.”

  Ruth smiled. She almost never smiled. Brilliant? I hadn’t thought she was brilliant.

  “You must be starving,” Lady Thorton said to Jonathan. “Let’s get you something to eat.” She led him into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She started rummaging through the cupboard. “Where is Susan hiding those eggs?”

  Jamie had finally gotten two hens named Penelope and Persnickety. They each laid an egg every single day. It was glorious, having that many eggs again.

  Lady Thorton poked her head out the back door. “Jamie! Come here!” Susan was in the village doing WVS work. She wouldn’t be home until time for tea.

  Jamie ran in covered in mud. He saw Jonathan, drew himself up, and saluted.

  Jonathan saluted back. “At ease,” he said.

  “Yes, sir!”

  Lady Thorton said, “We need a treat, Jamie.”

  “I told you already,” Jamie said, “we are not eating my hens.”

  “Of course not,” said Lady Thorton. “I was thinking omelet. What happened to the extra eggs?”

  Jamie shrugged.

  “Susan’s saving them,” I said. She’d tucked them out of Lady Thorton’s sight. She was going to preserve them in isinglass, she’d told me, so we had a reserve, in case a fox got the hens or Lady Thorton bought lamb chops again.

  Lady Thorton laughed. “She won’t mind if we splurge for Jonathan.”

  I wasn’t sure, but I fetched the eggs from their hiding place. There were eight of them. Lady Thorton threw the entire week’s butter ration into a frying pan and cooked a vast omelet using all eight eggs.

  Every. Single. One.

  Susan was going to be livid.

  On the other hand, the omelet smelled delicious. “Sit down,” Lady Thorton said. “Everyone, sit down.”

  “I’ll take my work to my room,” said Ruth.

  “Sit and eat,” said Jonathan. “Don’t you like omelet?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t want to eat your food.”

  He grinned. “I’m pretty sure I’m eating yours.”

  Ruth let Lady Thorton serve her a tiny portion of the omelet. Jamie and I had small portions too. Lady Thorton didn’t take any, which left nearly half the omelet for Jonathan. He ate it all in six quick bites. We watched him. He was thinner than he had been at Christmas, his face sharp angles and lines.

  Lady Thorton said, “Perhaps we can manage a cake for tea.”

  Ruth and I exchanged glances. There went the sugar ration. We’d be eating our oatmeal salted for a month.

  Jonathan wiped his lips on his napkin. “I brought us a treat.” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled something out, and placed it on the table. It was thin and long and smooth, yellow speckled with small brown spots.

  “Jonathan!” his mother said.

  “Where did you get that?” Ruth asked, sounding thrilled.

  “What is it?” asked Jamie. He picked it up, carefully, and handed it to me. I didn’t know what it was, either. It felt leathery and a little bit squishy. I put it back on the table.

  “I don’t want to know where you got it,” Lady Thorton said. “Black market, I’m sure. I don’t need to hear about that.”

  “No,” Jonathan said. “There’s no ration on fruit.”

  I said, “That’s a fruit?”

  It was called a banana. Lady Thorton had had no problem using up every egg in the house, but she wasn’t greedy about the banana. “We’ll have it for tea, when we’re all here,” she said. “I won’t cut it before Susan comes home.”

  We all went into the sitting room. I poked up the fire. Lady Thorton fussed over Jonathan, smoothing his hair and wondering if he needed more tea. “Stop,” he said, “I’m fine.”

  He didn’t look fine. He looked tired down to his bones. Whenever he was still, his face fell into tense and anxious lines. Even when he smiled at Jamie the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  Jonathan tugged off the green-and-brown scarf wrapped around his neck. “Take a look at that,” he said, tossing it to Jamie. “It’s made out of a piece of a camouflage parachute.”

  “Cor!” Jamie grabbed the scarf by its corners and pulled it, fluttering, around the room. He got one of his tin airplanes and tied it to the edges of the scarf.

  “He’ll wreck it,” I said.

  Jonathan shook his head. “He won’t.” He turned to Ruth. “Tell me what it was like in Germany,” he said.

  Ruth shrugged. “We left almost two years ago.”

  “Right,” he said. “What made you leave?”

  He leaned forward. He looked like he was really interested, not just trying to be polite.

  “We’re Jewish,” she said.

  “Yes. My father told me.”

  “My father was a university professor in Dresden. In statistics. He lost his job because Hitler decided that Jews could not teach at universities anymore.”

  Jonathan nodded, as though this was the answer he expected. “How bad had it gotten?”

  Ruth’s voice stayed flat and emotionless. “Jews could not vote. We no longer counted as German citizens. We weren’t allowed to go to parks, or restaurants, or public swimming pools. We weren’t allowed to ride bicycles, go to the movies, attend concerts, visit the beach. A mob burned down our synagogue. I was expelled from school.”

  “You did something wrong?” I asked.

  Ruth said, “I’m Jewish. Jewish children were no longer allowed to go to school.”

  “Just because you don’t believe Jesus is God?”

  “It didn’t have anything to do with my religion,” Ruth said. “It didn’t have anything to do with what I personally believe, with whether or not I practice Judaism. According to Hitler, if my grandparents were born Jewish, I’m a Jew. If my grandparents converted to Christianity on the days of their births, and my parents and I had always been raised to believe Jesus was God, I would still be Jewish according to Hitler. It’s not about religion. It’s about race. Hitler sees the Jews as a separate race.”

  Lady Thorton was staring at her hands. Had she known any of this? I said, “So it really isn’t anything about your God.”

  “It’s the same God,” Ruth said. “Christians read the Old Testament too.”

  Jonathan said, “Christ himself was raised a Jew.”

  “Jonathan!” Lady Thorton said.

  “What? It’s a fact.” After a pause he said, “One of my best flying mates is Jewish. Grew up in Liverpool. He’s got family in Poland he’s worried about.” He said to Ruth, “I’m glad your family escaped.”

  “We searched for months to find a country that would take us,” Ruth said. “America wouldn’t. France wouldn’t. Finally, England did. Then we weren’t all
owed to sell our home. We had to leave all our money and everything we owned behind.” She swallowed. Her voice trembled. “We had to leave my grandmother behind.”

  Chapter 29

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Lady Thorton said. “Even the Nazis wouldn’t harm an elderly woman.”

  “We haven’t heard from her,” Ruth said. “Not one letter in almost two years. My mother is sick from worry.”

  Lady Thorton said, “I’m sure she’s all right.”

  Ruth’s eyes glittered. “You don’t really understand anything, do you? That, or you choose not to.” She stood. “Excuse me. I will take my work upstairs.”

  I watched her go. Across the room, Jamie made airplane noises. Jonathan raised his eyebrows at his mother.

  “How can she say that?” Lady Thorton demanded. “When you—my son, my only son—are risking your life every single day? When the government’s taken my home, when our village has been bombed, when we deal with queues and shortages every day?”

  Jonathan pressed his fingertips together so hard the pads of his fingers turned white. “Because we haven’t faced anything like what she has,” he said. “You’ve lent our house, you haven’t lost it. None of us know how she feels.”

  Jamie looked up. “Can you rescue Ruth’s grandmother?” he asked Jonathan. “Can you go get her with your plane?”

  “Not with a Spitfire,” Jonathan said. “I’m afraid we’ll need infantry for that.”

  “Will you do it?” Jamie asked.

  Jonathan said, “We’ll certainly try.”

  • • •

  Susan was not cross about the eggs. She wasn’t even cross about the butter. “Of course you had to celebrate!” she said. She threw her arms around Jonathan, as though she were thrilled to see him, as though he were someone really important to her.

  Maybe he was.

  “I thought perhaps a cake?” Lady Thorton suggested.

  “Mmm, yes, we could manage a small one,” Susan said. “Jamie, quit pestering Jonathan. Run over to Fred’s or the Ellistons’ and see if you can’t borrow one more egg. Tell them I’ll pay it back. And invite them all to tea. Tell them we have a banana.”

  • • •

  The thick skin of the banana peeled away. Inside was a long, slim, cream-colored fruit. It was soft like pudding and didn’t have seeds or stones—you could cut it the way you would a block of warm butter. Susan divided Jonathan’s banana into slices and handed them around on a plate. Jamie’s eyes widened when he tasted his. “I like banana!” he said.

  I wasn’t sure. Susan laughed when she saw my face. “Ada’s thinking, ‘This is very different,’” she said, and she was right, I was.

  “What’s flying like?” Jamie asked Jonathan. He scooted his chair over until he was nearly touching Jonathan’s side. He was wearing Jonathan’s scarf; Jonathan had shown him how to knot it the way a pilot would.

  “Extraordinary,” Jonathan said. “Free. You can go up, down, sideways—any direction at all. Everything’s beautiful from above. The ocean is like an endless sparkling blanket of blue.”

  I turned toward him. “That’s how it looks from the church steeple.”

  Jonathan nodded. I said, “When you’re flying, are you afraid?”

  Maybe it wasn’t a question I should ask. Jonathan’s face went very still. “I’m not afraid because I’m flying,” he said at last. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  Jamie leaned into him. “Everyone’s shooting at you,” he said.

  “Yes,” Jonathan said. “We’re all shooting at each other.”

  • • •

  After our baths we came downstairs to listen to the radio news. Jonathan was slumped half-asleep in his mother’s wing chair. He started when he saw me. “Ahh!” he said. “Ada, I promised to take you riding!”

  “Me and Maggie both,” I said, “and she’s not here.”

  “Still,” he said, “I did promise, and I don’t like to waste the chance. Maybe really early tomorrow morning? Only I’ve got to catch the train before nine.”

  With wartime daylight savings, it didn’t even start to get light until seven. I said, “We’ll do it next time. Maybe Maggie will be home then.”

  He looked relieved. “You aren’t disappointed?”

  I was disappointed not to have the ride, but happy he remembered his promise. Plus, he looked so tired. I said, “I’m fine.”

  • • •

  Next morning it rained. Penelope and Persnickety laid two more eggs, and Susan fried them in the still-buttery omelet pan for Jonathan’s breakfast. All the rest of us ate toast with tiny scrapings of jam.

  Jonathan seemed even more tired than he had the day before. I thought of what it meant to be a pilot, to go out and try to kill Germans.

  To kill people like Ruth.

  Except that Ruth had been kicked out of Germany. Hitler had kicked her out.

  If our pilots hadn’t won the Battle of Britain, Hitler and the German Army would have invaded England for sure. That’s what everyone said, even Winston Churchill. I was pretty sure Winston Churchill wouldn’t lie.

  War was as complicated as religion, when you started to think about it.

  Jonathan shook my hand good-bye. “Next time,” he said, “we’ll have our ride. I won’t forget.”

  I nodded. “Be careful,” I said.

  He grinned ruefully. “I can’t afford that. Remember? There’s a war on.”

  Chapter 30

  The fire-watching rota had us each going up once every two or three weeks—too often to forget how frightening it was, but not often enough to get used to it.

  The next time I was scheduled after Jonathan’s visit, I got the midnight shift—midnight to two a.m.—and the WVS woman paired with me was Susan. I preferred Susan to Lady Thorton or to someone I didn’t know, of course, but at the same time I dreaded going with her.

  Susan woke me after a few hours’ sleep. We bundled up and walked to the village through deep darkness in air so cold it was like breathing knives. “Nothing’s going to happen tonight,” said one of the men we replaced. “It’s a new moon. Too dark to fly.”

  Nothing except standing exposed in the middle of the sky. The climb to the steeple was the worst yet. Inside the staircase, I couldn’t see anything, not even Susan right in front of me. The cold air made my insides shiver, and that felt like fear. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to make myself stay present inside my head. By the time we’d reached the outdoors again, I felt numb inside and out.

  I clutched the stone wall and stared down at my feet, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

  Beside me, Susan tilted her face to the sky. “Oh!” she said.

  I looked up. I gasped too. Thousands of stars pricked the sky—more than that, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Thousands of thousands. More stars than I’d ever seen, so many that they made a broad streak of light across the middle of the sky. I stared and stared. I’d seen stars lots of times since living with Susan. They’d never before looked like this.

  “It’s such a clear night,” Susan said. “No clouds, no moon, and of course the blackout.”

  My face felt warmer under the starlight even as my breath blew out in a frozen cloud. “I wish I had paper,” I said. “I’d draw a map of the stars.”

  “People have done that,” Susan replied. “They’ve named patterns in the sky. Constellations. Look for the brightest stars. See that one—and there—and there—and those—how they make a square and then a crooked line? That’s the Plow.”

  I looked, but I couldn’t see what she meant. There were too many stars to concentrate on only a few. “What’s a plow?”

  Susan looked down at me. She smiled. “A tool for tilling the earth.”

  She tried to show me other shapes: an archer, twin brothers. “And Draco, the dragon,” she said.

  A
dragon on the edge of the map of the sky.

  “A real dragon or a story-dragon?” I asked.

  Susan put her arm around me. She said, “All the dragons are story-dragons.”

  I forgot to be afraid until I stumbled on a rough piece of slate and fell against the parapet wall. Then fear came rushing back so quickly I nearly vomited.

  Susan pulled me back from the wall. “You’re shaking,” she said.

  I was. I couldn’t stop.

  “What about this frightens you so much?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I looked up again. Susan wasn’t afraid. “The stars are fantastic.” I never saw stars looking out the window of Mam’s flat. You couldn’t look up out of Mam’s window, not really, or at least I never did.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Susan said quietly. “We can find you other useful war work.”

  This is why I had dreaded going with her.

  I shook my head. It felt like a bargain I’d made: my fear in exchange for Jamie’s safety. For mine and Jamie’s and Susan’s safety.

  “Are you sure?” Susan asked.

  “Don’t stop me.”

  “I won’t,” she said, “because I don’t believe you’re in danger up here, not any more than anywhere else. Think about it. You don’t have to feel safe to actually be safe.”

  I supposed. I’d never felt safe, so how would I know?

  • • •

  A few days later, midafternoon, I banged on Ruth’s door.

  “I’m busy!” she yelled.

  She’d become even more of a hermit since telling us about her grandmother.

  Then she stuck her head out her door. “Did I get a letter?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  She went to shut the door again, but I stuck my foot in the way. “Tell me about your grandmother,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I want to know about grandmothers,” I said. “They sound nice. I don’t have one.”

  “You did.”

  “Not to know them.”

  Ruth sighed. She opened the door a tiny bit farther. I pushed myself forward. “It’s cold in your room,” I said.