“Oh, my dear,” she said, her fingers tightening around mine. “This could have been what happened to you.”
Chapter 57
I was alive. Susan was alive. Lady Thorton and I went home, leaving Susan in London to finish her recovery. I could picture her in my mind, sitting in her bed in hospital, reading the letters Jamie and I sent her. So it was okay. Hard, but okay.
• • •
I wrote to Ruth via her London address. The letter got to her somehow, wherever she was, and she wrote back. I’m so glad about Susan. Send her my love.
I told Ruth about Elsa Street. She wrote, Now you have no home, like me.
We have a home, I wrote back. Jamie says our cave is big enough for everyone.
• • •
At the Ellistons’ Jamie slept in an old-fashioned bed cupboard built into the wall of the farmhouse kitchen. It was exactly like a small, cozy cave. I almost felt envious when I saw it.
“The Ellistons liked me,” Jamie said. “They liked having a boy on the farm again.”
• • •
A few weeks later Susan came home. Dr. Graham went to fetch her, to spare her the train ride. She was breathing fine but still very weak. Lady Thorton and I planned and cooked a gala celebration meal, with a roast chicken (Penelope), watercress salad, tinned fruit we’d been saving for a special occasion, and a boiled pudding using the remaining jar of last summer’s blackberry jam. We invited everyone: Dr. Graham, Fred, the Ellistons, the Land Girls—everyone except Maggie, who was still stuck at school. One chicken for ten people didn’t go far, but it tasted wonderful, and, anyhow, I roasted a mountain of potatoes to go with it.
I kept wanting to stare at Susan. Just stare at her. Put extra sugar in her tea, and watch her while she sipped it. Watch her while she breathed.
“Ada,” Susan said, halfway through the evening, “stop hovering. I’m well.”
“I’m not hovering.” As though I knew what that meant.
“Hovering. Hanging around me in the manner of a hummingbird, or a housefly. You most certainly are. You can be easy now.”
“I am easy.”
“It was never your job to take care of me.”
“It was,” I said. “It should be.”
“Archaic,” she said, as though reading my mind. “Your definition of the word ward is archaic. No longer valid. It is once again my job to take care of you.” She patted my hand. “When I couldn’t do it, Lady Thorton did it for me.”
My head snapped up. I looked at Lady Thorton, who gave me a quick smile on her way to the kitchen for more potatoes. “She did,” I said, swallowing hard. I had been so anxious over Susan that I hadn’t even realized it. I might have claimed I was taking care of myself.
I’d felt alone, but I hadn’t been. It seemed so strange. I’d trusted Lady Thorton. Almost the way I trusted Susan.
Maybe she wasn’t a terrible mother.
“I know,” Susan said. “I didn’t worry. I knew you and Jamie were in good hands.”
Good hands. Lady Thorton’s hands. Lady Thorton’s good hands. Who would have thought?
• • •
Dear Maggie, I wrote, Your mother looked happiest in London when she was talking about the things she used to do with you. She was glad to show me things, but only because they reminded her of being there with you. I think she loves you more than you think.
Dear Ada, Maggie wrote, I am miserable. Tell my mother I must come home.
Chapter 58
Susan and I were scheduled to fire-watch, but of course Susan wasn’t well enough to do it yet, so Lady Thorton volunteered in her place. We had a late shift, two a.m. until four. Lady Thorton set her alarm clock, and woke me.
It was a white, bright, moonlit night, the glare from the full moon reflecting on ground covered with snow. Since my summer watch with Maggie, I’d been fire-watching over and over again. Nothing ever happened. Each time I climbed the steeple, it grew just a little bit easier, but my fear never went entirely away. It helped me some to understand why I was afraid.
“Does being up here make you feel like you’re back in London?” Lady Thorton asked. She stood on the parapet, binoculars trained to the sky.
“What?”
“The look on your face. It’s the same look you had when we went to see your old street.”
I stared at her. “A little,” I said. “I don’t want to be trapped.”
Lady Thorton started to reply. Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear the words. They were drowned by a sudden, unexpected, high-pitched wail. The village air raid sirens.
Bombs. Real bombs, coming toward us. The first in months.
Lady Thorton whipped around, straining her eyes to the sky. I did too. Off to the left, over the hills, we could see tiny shapes in the moonlit sky. Airplanes.
“Bombers,” I shouted. Those were the big planes, the ones in the center. Smaller fighter planes surrounded them.
“Yes!” yelled Lady Thorton. “Pay attention!” We needed to know where the bombs hit. Where the fires might be.
The sirens kept going. I imagined Susan and Jamie running down the steps of the cottage, taking cover in our Anderson shelter. I imagined Fred and the Land Girls running to theirs.
Small dark shapes fell from the bombers’ bellies, exploding when they hit the ground. Flames flickered and vanished, extinguished by the snow.
Thank heaven for the snow.
Spitfires from our airfield rose up to engage the German planes. I heard the clatter of anti-aircraft guns, saw the bright streaks of their fire in the sky. And then, far above us and still quite far away, a Messerschmitt burst into flames.
It fell in a long burning arc. It roared straight past the steeple, missing us by feet, not miles, and crashed with a horrible squeal of twisted metal and a shattering of bricks and glass right onto the village main street.
We could feel the heat from the flames. We could smell the burning aviation fuel. Lady Thorton and I stood in the steeple, watching, until the sirens sounded all-clear, the rest of the German squadron was over the Channel, and we were certain nothing in the village except the Messerschmitt was on fire. Then we went down the stairs.
I wasn’t trapped. My heart hammered but my footsteps never faltered.
On the street, Local Defence Volunteers worked with hand pumps to put out the blaze. Through sheer luck no houses had been destroyed. The newsagents’ shop had taken a direct hit, but I knew the man who owned it didn’t live inside.
The heat was so intense we couldn’t get close. We stood with our backs pressed against the cemetery wall. Half the village watched, the only noise the crackle of the flames. As they began to subside, Lady Thorton stepped forward and ducked to look into the wreck. She straightened, her expression horror-struck. “I thought the pilot had bailed out,” she said.
“Didn’t he?”
“No.”
Halfway home Lady Thorton leaned over and was sick in the road. She wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. Her hands trembled. “He was burned up,” she said.
He’d been a German. A man, a pilot. The same as Jonathan once his uniform was gone.
Chapter 59
At home Lady Thorton sank onto her chair in the cold, blacked-out living room. “Aren’t you going to bed?” I asked her. It was still hours before dawn.
“Do you think he suffered?” she asked.
I didn’t know whether she meant Jonathan or the German pilot. I didn’t know what to say. I’d burned my arm once, cooking. It had hurt a lot.
I put coal on the banked fire and stirred it up. “Will I make tea?”
Lady Thorton didn’t answer. I repeated the question. She looked up. “No.”
Susan wasn’t in her bedroom. She and Jamie had fallen asleep in the Anderson shelter, cocooned in blankets together. When I opened the shelter door she untangled her
self and held me tight. “You smell like petrol,” she said. “How close were the airplanes? Was it dreadful?”
I said, “Lady Thorton has fallen to pieces.”
• • •
Susan put Jamie back to bed. She stayed awake with Lady Thorton and me. She made tea, which Lady Thorton ignored. She covered Lady Thorton with a blanket and sat beside her in the cold morning darkness. “Go on to sleep, Ada,” Susan said. “My turn.”
I went up to my solitary bedroom and burrowed beneath the blankets. After a long time, I fell asleep. Hours later Jamie shook me awake. “Mum’s sleeping on the couch,” he said. “Lady Thorton’s eyes are open but she won’t talk. No matter what I say to her. She won’t even look at me.”
I said, “She saw a dead pilot in the village. In the German plane that went down.”
Jamie’s forehead creased. “So she can’t talk because she’s too sad?”
“That’s right.” I pushed the covers away. “Come. I need your help.”
Lady Thorton was trapped. I knew what I had to do.
Chapter 60
Jamie had already fed Mrs. Rochester, Bovril, and the hens. I got dressed in my thickest socks and warmest sweater.
I took my special box from the bookshelf and dug out the shillings I’d saved. I stuffed them into my pocket. Downstairs, I made breakfast for Jamie and me. Susan was still asleep, and Lady Thorton was just as Jamie said: eyes open, immobile, suffering. I squeezed her hand hard and she jumped but looked away.
“She’s scary,” Jamie whispered.
I handed him a note I’d scrawled. I said, “When Susan wakes up, give her this. Only don’t you wake her, wait till she gets up on her own.”
Jamie read the note and looked up at me. “Why?” I was putting on my coat and hat. “Where are you going?”
“It’s a secret,” I said. “It’s for the war.” Jamie’s eyes widened. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Like Ruth’s job?”
“Yes,” I said. I kissed him. “Do the barn chores for me, and help Susan as much as you can. And don’t worry. I’ll be gone a few days, but I’ll come back.”
In the village the charred wreck of the Messerschmitt still blocked the high street. I gave it a wide berth. I wasn’t about to look inside.
I had the address, from Maggie’s letters. I had the fare. I wondered if the stationmaster, who knew me, would ask questions, but he didn’t.
I’d never ridden a train alone, let alone three trains with changes in between. It didn’t matter. The trains were packed with soldiers, as always, and the soldiers kept going out of their way to be kind to me. They always found me a seat. Some gave me cups of tea. One pressed a piece of chocolate into my hand.
Invincible Ada. Inspiration to a dead airman. I leaned my head against the cold window glass and felt nothing but sorrow. I had no courage left. Out the window, the fields slid by empty and gray.
• • •
It was evening by the time I reached Maggie’s school. The blackouts were already up, so no one could see me walk down the drive.
I knew there had to be rules and manners about boarding schools. I didn’t know any of them. I didn’t care. I told the girl who answered the door that I needed to see the head, and told the head I wanted Maggie.
• • •
When Maggie saw me, her face went milk-white. She stumbled and I thought for a moment she was going to faint. “She’s okay!” I said. I grabbed Maggie by the shoulders and held her to me. She gasped and started to sob.
“She’s not—my mother—you wouldn’t have come—she’s not—”
“She needs you. I’ve come to take you home.”
Chapter 61
It was against the rules for Maggie to leave without the right kind of permission. I didn’t care. I felt like Susan must have felt when she decided that, permission or not, I was going to have my surgery. “I’ve come to take Maggie home,” I said. “You have to let me.”
The head continued to protest. Maggie looked desolate. I should have written myself a letter that I could have pretended came from Lady Thorton. Too late for that now.
“If you speak to Maggie’s mother on the telephone?” I said. “There’s no phone at the cottage where we’re living, but there is one at the stables.”
Maggie’s eyes widened. The head considered. “If I speak to her myself,” she said.
“All right.” The head showed me to a telephone, and I rang the Thortons’ stables. I knew how, from when Susan was in hospital. “Grimes?” I said, when Fred answered. “This is Ada Smith. I need you to fetch Lady Susan. The head of Miss Margaret’s school is going to call you back in half an hour, and Lady Susan needs to be there to take the call.”
“Ada?” said Fred. Maggie called him Grimes—she’d grown up doing so—but I never had. From the first day I’d known him, he was always Fred.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I’m at Miss Margaret’s school. The headmistress is going to call back in half an hour, and she needs to speak to Lady Susan.”
Fred said, “You went to fetch Maggie?”
“Yes.”
I could hear him grinning down the phone line. “I’ll fetch Lady Susan, then. Half an hour.”
Lady Thorton’s first name was Eleanor, but she wasn’t ever called Lady Eleanor. Somehow that meant something different from Lady Thorton. I was counting on Maggie’s head not knowing Lady Thorton’s first name.
“Call them back in thirty minutes,” I said to the head, hanging up the telephone. “Margaret and I will be spending the night here. We’ll leave tomorrow morning. We’ll need a ride to the train station so we can take her trunk.” I reached for Maggie’s hand. “Come. We’ll start packing.”
Maggie didn’t say a word until we’d climbed three flights of stairs. Then she said, “Ada. That was marvelous.”
“I don’t know what we were thinking,” I said. “I should have done this long ago.”
While Maggie gathered her things, one of the other girls asked me, “Where do you go to school?”
“My mother teaches me at home.”
The girl sighed. “Lucky,” she said.
It was past suppertime, but a thickset woman came up to offer me something to eat. Maggie went down with me, back to the head’s office, where there was a plate of sandwiches and the head herself poured us cups of tea. “Your mother said she was sorry to make us go to the trouble of phoning,” she told Maggie. “She said she’s been terribly upset. That’s why she sent Ada.”
“Yes,” I said. I told them about the fire-watching, the steeple, the airplane, the pilot burned inside.
“You must have been terrified,” the head said.
“I was,” I said. “It didn’t matter.” Fear and what you did with it were two separate things.
• • •
On the last train, Maggie dozed. I watched the hills of Kent appear outside the train windows, rising up, then stretching down toward the sea, the way they’d been when I’d seen them for the first time. The way they’d always been, war or no war.
• • •
Susan was waiting at the station. She hugged me, hard and tight.
“Were you worried?” I asked her.
“No. Your note said to trust you, and I did.” She looked at me searchingly. “But why didn’t you explain?”
“I was afraid you’d try to stop me,” I said, “and I knew I was right. Maggie didn’t need to be safe as much as she needed her mother. Lady Thorton needed Maggie too.”
Susan looked thoughtful. “I wouldn’t have stopped you,” she said.
• • •
In the living room, Lady Thorton leaned against Maggie and wept. It made Jamie nervous, so I took him into the kitchen and taught him how to make Lord Woolton pie while Susan made us all some tea. I let Jamie decide how many tu
rnips to add. Jamie loved turnips. “Some things are very sad,” I said to him, “but you were right. Our cave is big enough for everyone.”
“Will Lady Thorton stop crying?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s always going to be sad about Jonathan.” I rubbed his head. “It’s okay to feel sad.”
• • •
My own emotions were such a jumble. I’d known the right thing to do, and I’d done it. I’d helped take care of Lady Thorton the way she’d helped take care of me. I’d stood in the steeple while bombs and even an airplane had fallen past me out of the sky. I’d felt afraid, but I hadn’t come undone.
My foot would never be all the way right, but I could walk and climb and run. My feelings might never be all the way right either, but they were healed enough. I lay in my bedroom that night, awake while Maggie snored from her bed, and I thought about everything I’d been fighting, everything I’d lost and won. Then I got up, put on my slippers, and went out the door.
Susan was still awake, in her bed, reading. When I came into the room she smiled. She held up the edge of her blankets, and I slid into the pocket of warmth beside her. I didn’t say anything. I just breathed, and so did she.
Chapter 62
Lady Thorton never once argued with me about bringing Maggie home. She must have been aching for Maggie all along.
• • •
Lord Thorton came home for the weekend a few weeks later. He brought a big square tin of a new type of American meat. “Spam,” Lord Thorton said. “Stands for ‘spiced ham.’ The grocer said it was like sausage.”
Lady Thorton raised an eyebrow. “And what did it cost?”
Lord Thorton grinned. “Sixteen points.”
Food that was rare or unusual was rationed on a point system now. Each person had sixteen points per month to spend on whatever they could find.
Lady Thorton shook her head at him and caught Susan’s eye. “It’s the lamb chops all over again.”