The War I Finally Won

  A back room full of potatoes! In Mam’s flat we never had anything extra stored away.

  Each of us also earned twenty-four shillings.

  Twenty-four shillings. More than a pound. I never in my life expected to have so much money all at one time. For certain Mam never did. I counted the shillings out on the table. Four piles of six. Eight piles of three. Six piles of four. Shillings, shillings, shillings.

  Money could be a kind of ward.

  “Ada.” Susan sat down beside me, sighing.

  “You could die,” I said.

  “I won’t.”

  “You could,” I said. “Jonathan—”

  “Was a pilot—”

  “Stephen’s mother—”

  “That was the Blitz,” she said. “It’s over.”

  “Becky,” I said.

  Becky’s name lay between us. Becky, who Susan loved. Becky, who I’d never met. Never would. Becky, who was dead like Mam.

  Susan reached for my hand. I let her take it. “You know so many hard things,” she said. “I forget sometimes how much you’ve endured. Save your money, if it helps you feel better.”

  • • •

  “Please let me stay home,” Maggie begged. “I’m not learning anything. I can go back after Christmas.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lady Thorton said. “You’re safer at school.”

  “The village hasn’t been bombed in ages! You’re just trying to be rid of me. Susan doesn’t make Ada leave.”

  “Susan knows my position,” Lady Thorton said. “As do you. The matter is not open for debate.”

  “Don’t speak to me like I’m one of your WVS women,” Maggie said. “I’m your daughter. Pretend you have some compassion.”

  That was low, but I didn’t blame Maggie.

  “I’ll watch her,” I said to Maggie when she left. “I’ll let you know how she does.”

  “Thanks,” Maggie said, hugging me.

  “Who’s watching Maggie?” I asked Susan.

  “She has friends at school,” Susan said. “She has teachers.”

  I shook my head. “She needs her mother.”

  Chapter 43

  A week or so later, all of us except Lady Thorton, who had gone early to bed, were sitting by the fire at night, listening to the nine o’clock radio news. Suddenly someone hammered on the door. Susan leaped up. I leaped up too. A telegram, at this hour?

  It was Fred. He gagged, groaned, and vomited in a wide arc across the floor.

  “Oh!” Susan jumped sideways, but still got spattered by sick. “Oh, Fred, do you need a doctor?” Which didn’t make sense, since Fred could have phoned for a doctor from the stables. Our cottage didn’t have a telephone.

  “Sorry,” Fred said. He clutched the doorjamb. “We’re all sick—bad fish—and the horse is down. I can’t walk him. I need help. Ada.”

  I stood with Ruth and Jamie, staring at Fred and the puddle of vomit. “Butter?” My voice rose high and quick. “Something’s wrong with Butter?”

  “No. It’s Oban.”

  I ran for my coat and shoes. Fred grabbed his gut and vomited again.

  “Kolik?” asked Ruth. It was a word I’d never heard. “Is it kolik?”

  “Yes,” said Fred. “Colic. Yes.” He wavered and sank to the ground.

  Ruth shoved her feet into her shoes. She said, “I know what to do.”

  Susan was leaning over Fred with a towel. “Are you sure, Ruth?”

  Ruth nodded. “Ada will help me.”

  We ran along the path through the moonlit woods to the stable yard. Oban lay on his side in the stall, his dark coat slick with sweat. From the looks of his bedding, he’d been thrashing.

  Ruth threw open the door. She kicked Oban, hard. “Up! Up!” she shouted. “Get up!”

  I flew at her. “Stop that! Don’t hurt him!”

  Ruth knelt to buckle Oban’s halter around his head. “You must do what I say.” She clipped a lead rope to the halter and pulled hard. Her dark eyes glinted in the dim light. “Kick him,” she said. “Get him up. We must make him walk, or he dies.”

  It made my stomach hurt, but I hauled back and kicked Oban, hard. He gasped and moaned, then lurched to his feet. “Good,” said Ruth. “Find another lead rope. Help me walk him.” She pulled him out of the stall, into the stable yard. Oban staggered and nearly went down. “No!” Ruth said, kicking him again. He pulled away from her, nearly yanking the lead from her hands. I came at him from the other side, smacking my lead rope against his hip.

  “Good,” Ruth said. “Keep him walking.”

  We made Oban stagger the length of the yard between us. His sides dripped sweat. “He’s bad,” Ruth said. “Very bad.”

  “Should we cover him?” It was a cold night for the horse to be so sweaty. Horses chilled easily, and Oban’s thick coat was soaked through.

  “A blanket, yes.”

  I found a horse blanket in the tack room. I threw it over Oban while Ruth kept him walking. “Good,” she said. She walked him to the end of the yard, turned him, and walked him back. When he staggered, she yelled at him and smacked him with the end of the lead. It looked awful, but she seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

  “Water?” I asked her.

  “No. No water, no food. Only walking.” Ruth turned Oban, started him forward again. “Colic, this means he has a stomachache. In a horse it’s very serious. Horses die from colic.”

  Oban tried to pull away from Ruth. His knees began to buckle. I went to his far side and shoved. “Oban!” I shouted, and smacked him.

  “Good,” Ruth said. “We keep him moving, he has a chance. If he lies down in his stall and rolls, he can twist—twist his insides, his stomach. Then he dies for sure.

  “Oban?” she said. “The horse is named Oban?”

  I nodded. “He was Jonathan’s horse.”

  Ruth said, “The one you galloped. I remember.”

  • • •

  Ten minutes later, Ruth said, “If he gets much worse we’ll need a gun. Do you know where we can get one?”

  “A gun! You mean to—” I couldn’t make myself say it.

  Ruth nodded. “We will not let him suffer if there is no hope.”

  It was horrible how the hardest things could be the truth. “Is there hope?” I said.

  She shrugged. “A little.”

  “Fred has a gun,” I said. “I don’t know where it is. I don’t know how to use it.”

  Ruth said, “I do.”

  A half an hour later, Susan came to check on us. She said that all the Land Girls and the Ellistons were puking too. They’d all eaten dinner together—an enormous piece of what must have been rotten fish.

  Oban was sweating a tiny bit less. “We’re managing,” I told Susan. “Ruth knows what to do.”

  When Susan left, Ruth said to me, “Maybe the horse also ate the fish.”

  I realized she was making a joke, and I smiled. Then I asked, “Could you really shoot him?”

  She nodded. “I think so. I know how. My father shot one of his horses, once, when it broke a leg. It was mercy, not cruelty. You understand?”

  “Mercy means not punishing someone when you should,” I said.

  “It also means putting an end to suffering,” said Ruth.

  We took another lap of the yard, one on each side of Oban. “I understand,” I said, “but I couldn’t do it.”

  Ruth regarded me for a long minute. “You could,” she said. “You are strong and honest, and you love them.”

  After the next lap she said, “You make an X between their eyes and the bottom of their ears.” She crisscrossed her finger over Oban’s face. “Then shoot the center of the X. That way they die instantly, no pain. Don’t shoot between the eyes. It hurts them but they don’t die right away.”

&nb
sp; I stored this information in my head in the bulging file titled “Things I Wished I Didn’t Know.” It included what it felt like to walk on a clubfoot for ten years, and what it sounded like to have your mother say she never wanted to see you again.

  “Horses don’t fear death,” Ruth said softly. “No animal does.”

  Horses were lucky that way.

  • • •

  We walked miles that night, back and forth across the stable yard. “Do you believe in heaven?” I asked Ruth.

  “Yes,” she said. “Do you?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  Clop, clop. Oban’s feet struck the cobblestones. I wasn’t having to smack him as often. “My mam died,” I said. “She was not a good person. But Susan says maybe God has mercy.”

  “I think that too,” said Ruth. “Perhaps your mother’s soul will suffer for a while. Perhaps she will repent. Then she can be with God forever.”

  Perhaps. I liked that word. Perhaps.

  • • •

  After a few hours, Oban began to walk more easily. His sweaty coat dried. Ruth pressed her fingers under his jaw, then showed me how to feel a small pulsing sensation there. “That’s his heartbeat,” Ruth said. “Count the beats out loud when I say so.”

  I counted. Ruth checked them against her wristwatch. She nodded. “Fast, but not terrible. When horses are in pain, their hearts speed up.” She let Oban drink a tiny sip of water. Then I walked him alone to give her a chance to rest. Back and forth, back and forth. When I grew tired she took over again. We wrapped horse blankets around ourselves and kept walking, back and forth across the dark, cold yard.

  We talked through the night. I’d never heard Ruth talk so much before. She told me about her own horse back in Germany. “He looks like this one,” she said, stroking Oban’s face. “What is the English word for this coloring?”

  “Bay,” I said. “He’s a Thoroughbred.”

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “Mine is built heavier.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Her face clouded. “We didn’t tell anyone we were leaving. We had to be able to get away. The horses were at a livery stable, with their board paid for the month. Someone will have taken them. They were good horses.”

  I told Ruth about the day I jumped Oban out of Butter’s field. That made her laugh. “Sounds like something I would have done,” she said. “We are like each other, you and I.”

  Oban stopped walking. I tugged on the lead. He tugged back, lifted his tail, and deposited a steaming pile of manure onto the cobblestones. “Wunderbar!” Ruth shouted, leaping up. She threw her arms around me, then rubbed her hand hard on Oban’s forehead. “Beautiful! Good! Good boy!” She said to me, “That’s a good sign. He’s better. Maybe he won’t die!”

  “He won’t?”

  “Not tonight,” Ruth said, hugging me. “Not tonight. We saved him.”

  Chapter 44

  In the morning, when she heard about Oban, Lady Thorton’s face went red with anger. “Why on earth didn’t you wake me?” she said. “I know how to deal with horses and colic. Of course I do. Honestly—why on earth?”

  It had never once occurred to me. When I’d started riding, Lady Thorton had steered me toward Fred for help, not offered to help me herself.

  I said, “Ruth knew what to do.”

  Lady Thorton drew herself taller. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she said, more loudly. “Susan!”

  Susan opened her mouth, then shut it again.

  “You didn’t think I would be useful?” Lady Thorton demanded. “You didn’t think I should be told?”

  Susan looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t think at all,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “What if he’d had to be put down?”

  Susan’s mouth fell open. “I didn’t think—”

  “We would have done it,” I said. “Ruth said so. She knows how.”

  Lady Thorton shouted, “You would have left these children to make that decision on their own? You would have let them bear such a terrible thing?”

  “I didn’t know,” Susan said. “They said they knew what to do. I didn’t know it could be that bad.”

  “I did!” Lady Thorton said. “I am not incompetent! I do not need to be treated with kid gloves! Extend to me the honesty and forthrightness you extend to everyone else, and for God’s sake, the next time something goes wrong, get me out of bed!” She looked back at me and Ruth.

  “It was Ruth, really,” I said. “I didn’t know anything about colic. Ruth saved him.”

  “Thank you,” Lady Thorton said to her. “Thank you very much.” She held out her hand. Ruth shook it. “That horse means a great deal to me. I’m angry that I wasn’t called, but it wasn’t your responsibility to do so and I’m not in any way angry with you. I’m very grateful. Please know that.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” Ruth said. “He reminds me of the horse I left behind.”

  • • •

  I went with Lady Thorton to do the shopping. She and Susan took it in shifts now, and I often went along. “You were wrong about Ruth,” I said.

  “Thank you, Ada,” she said. She marched down the road, her heels clomping the pavement. “I will draw my own conclusions.”

  “Oban would have died without her,” I said. I had to run a bit to catch up. “I never heard of colic. I wouldn’t have known what to do.”

  “I would have,” Lady Thorton said. “In future you will remember that.”

  “But Ruth did it,” I said. “She did everything right.”

  “And I am grateful,” she said. She looked at me sideways. “I know you’re still letting her ride your pony. I asked Fred Grimes.”

  “She doesn’t come to the stables,” I said. “I meet her on the road.”

  “Except of course for last night,” Lady Thorton said drily. She said, “None of you think me competent. That’s clear.”

  “Ruth needs horses the way I needed horses,” I said. “The way Maggie needs them. You aren’t using them. It’d be like letting the cottage sit empty and not letting Susan and us live there.”

  Lady Thorton made a face. “It’s not the same. She’s Ger—”

  I interrupted. “It’s not her fault where she was born.”

  • • •

  A week later, Ruth received a letter from her mother. She opened it at the dinner table, and we all watched as her face fell. Tears filled her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks. “She’s dead,” Ruth whispered.

  I grabbed her hand. “Not your mother?”

  Ruth shook her head. “My grandmother. She died in that camp.” She threw the letter onto the table. “‘Died peacefully,’ the Nazis said.”

  Lady Thorton cleared her throat. “For the elderly, a peaceful death can be a blessing,” she said.

  Ruth glared at her. “If you think my oma died peacefully,” she said, “you still don’t understand Hitler at all.” Ruth stood and marched up the stairs. She locked herself in her bedroom until morning. At breakfast she stared at her oatmeal, hollow-eyed. “It’s the start of bad news,” she said. “If they can kill my grandmother, none of my family in Germany will survive this war.”

  Lady Thorton wiped her lips on her napkin and excused herself from the table. She went upstairs, and when she came back down, she dropped a pair of her own jodhpurs into Ruth’s lap. “Oban seems fully recovered,” she said. “I hope you would be willing to exercise him for me. He does best when ridden every day.”

  Ruth opened her mouth. She closed it. Opened it again. “Yes,” she said at last. “Thank you.”

  • • •

  Ruth and I rode out together on Oban and Butter in the brisk October wind. “Only walking, for now, until we really know he is well,” Ruth said. Walking was cold, but I agreed. We went up the hill and stared at the white-capped sea. I wished Maggie were wit
h us.

  “Let’s ride through the village,” I said. “You can now.”

  Ruth smiled. She rubbed Oban’s neck. “Let’s not push our luck that far.”

  I studied her. Calm as always. “I’m so sorry about your gran,” I said.

  Ruth nodded. “You would have liked her.”

  Chapter 45

  It was nearly time for Ruth’s examinations. Nights, now, she worked maths problems in front of the fire. She and Susan discussed maths using words I’d never heard of. Algorithm. Interpolation. Optimization. When I asked Susan to explain them, she couldn’t do it in a way I could understand. I said, “There is just no end to the things I don’t know.”

  “The whole world’s like that.” Lady Thorton spoke from the depths of her wing chair. “Full of things we don’t understand.”

  I hadn’t expected her to be listening. I said, “Ladies like you understand everything.”

  Lady Thorton said, “You of all people should know better—when it’s you who’s been teaching me how to cook. And here’s Susan with her Oxford degree, and me half taught by an undereducated governess. My own ignorance shames me.”

  I had been showing Jamie how to knit a washcloth. I set down the needles to stare at Lady Thorton. I said, “Susan says ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “At your age, perhaps,” Lady Thorton said. “Not so much at mine.”

  I never thought of Lady Thorton as being ashamed of anything. I never thought of anyone besides myself feeling ashamed. “Susan can’t ride like you can,” I said. “And you’re better at the WVS.”

  “Thank you,” said Susan.

  “We all have our strengths,” Lady Thorton said. “Most of us also have our weaknesses.”

  “You’ve traveled,” I continued. “Susan hasn’t. You said you’d been to Dresden.” Across the room, Ruth raised her head.

  “Yes,” Lady Thorton said. “It’s a beautiful city.”

  “It was,” Ruth said. “I don’t think it’s beautiful anymore.”

  “I knew about the part of the world I grew up in,” Lady Thorton said, looking directly at me. “You knew about the part you grew up in. Now we both know more.”