The War I Finally Won

  “You’ve got lamb chops?” Lord Thorton asked.

  “No, we do not,” said Lady Thorton. “These children need to eat meat more often than that.” She took the can of Spam and opened it, sliced the meat and fried the slices for our supper. It was delicious.

  “We’ve been learning more about Hitler,” Lord Thorton said while we ate. “About what he’s doing in this war.”

  We all looked at him.

  “You mean besides fighting the entire world?” asked Susan, her eyebrows raised.

  Lord Thorton nodded. “It’s not exactly open knowledge,” he said. “Not top secret, of course, but nothing you’ll see on the newsreels for a while.” He paused. “I don’t think I’d better share the details. But I can say that we’re learning things about Hitler, and what he’s doing in Europe, to captured civilians and even to his own countrymen, that make this war seem extremely necessary. More than necessary. Right.”

  “Do you mean like to Ruth’s family?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Lord Thorton said. He paused again. “I’ll never say Jonathan’s death was worth it—I can’t say that—but I can say that I know for sure that Jonathan died fighting for the side of right. I can say that no one on our side will have died in vain.” He patted Maggie’s hand. “That comforts me,” he said.

  Lady Thorton took a deep breath. “Perhaps.”

  “Not me,” said Maggie.

  “Not yet,” said Lord Thorton. “It may someday.”

  • • •

  That night Maggie asked me to tell her about my mother. Everything, every little thing, details I’d never told anyone, not even Susan. I told her my few faded memories of my father. I told her about Jamie growing up and the threat of him going to school. I told her how I’d taught myself to walk on my twisted, ruined ankle, smearing blood across the floor of our single, cramped room, then wiping it up with a rag.

  “I’m going to be like you,” Maggie said. “I’m going to let you teach me to be brave.”

  I snorted. “Oh, who’s brave? Remember the day you fell off Oban, and he jumped into Susan’s field? You were brave enough to ride him alone down the road, even though you hated him.”

  We both laughed, remembering. “You swore like a sailor,” I said.

  I could almost hear her grinning in the dark. “Sometimes I still do.” Then, very quietly, she reeled off a string of swear words. She knew an awful lot of them.

  I said, “You’d survive on a London lane.”

  “We’d both survive,” Maggie said. “We’re surviving now.”

  After a long pause, I laughed again. “We’re doing better than that,” I said. “I think we won.”

  Chapter 63

  May 22, 1943

  Over a year later

  Jamie stuck his head into the kitchen. “Ready?” he asked.

  I tucked the last of our sandwiches into a basket. I added the thermos of tea. “Ready,” I said.

  In the big room, Susan was putting on her hat. “I’m not sure about this,” she said. “Is this trip truly necessary?”

  I laughed. For Jamie’s ninth birthday we’d gone to London Zoo, all of us, including Lady Thorton and Maggie. That trip had probably not been Truly Necessary, but it had been fantastic. Jamie loved the animals every bit as much as I thought he would.

  Now it was six months later. I’d turned fourteen the week before, and while Jamie and Maggie had decorated the table with flowers like usual, and I breakfasted on a piece of bacon and an egg, I hadn’t gotten any presents, because I had told Susan I knew exactly what I wanted. It was this day, and I was in charge of it.

  “Yes, Mum,” I said, “this trip is necessary.”

  • • •

  We had waited for a Saturday so we wouldn’t miss school. The village children had started returning the year before. The village school reopened in the fall, and Susan taught there part-time. She also tutored a new boy for his college entrance exams, but he boarded with the vicar, which was good because it meant we still had a spare room for when Ruth came home on leave.

  We were still at war with Germany. We all still took shifts fire-watching in the steeple. Rationing was tighter than ever. A camp of American soldiers lived down the road, near our old bombed house. Jamie and his schoolmates liked to visit them, and Jamie could imitate their accent to perfection.

  I’d finally gotten two letters from Stephen. They were short, but at least I knew he and his father were still alive.

  • • •

  At the train station, Jamie made Susan stand to one side while I bought the tickets. We didn’t want her to know where we were going.

  “I hope this isn’t an overnight excursion,” she said.

  We just grinned at her. Outside the train windows, the hills rolled by, green with spring grass. I wondered whether Susan knew the route well enough to guess where we were going, but I don’t think she did, because when the conductor announced the stop for Becky’s hometown, Susan’s face went white. Her smile faded. “I’m not sure—”

  I tugged her arm. “Come on.”

  Jamie said, “We want to see her too.”

  Becky’s village’s church was bigger than the one in our village, but it was made of the same brown stone, with the same sort of wall around the cemetery. The headstones looked like the ones in our graveyard, marching down the grass in solemn, perfect rows.

  “I don’t know even where she is,” Susan said. We walked slowly, reading the names, until we found her.

  Rebecca Daphne Montgomery

  April 11, 1909–September 5, 1936

  Beloved Daughter. Beloved Friend.

  Becky’s stone looked like every other stone. There wasn’t anything special about it. But underneath the dirt was Becky, or at least her earthly remains. Her soul, of course, was in heaven.

  I’d decided to believe in heaven. I liked to think of Mam there, calm and happy at last. Fully and eternally capacitated, along with Jonathan, and Ruth’s grandmother, and Stephen’s family.

  Now I opened the basket that held our sandwiches and took out the flowers I’d cut from the hedgerows that morning. They were bedraggled and limp, the sort of flowers you had to make do with, in war. I laid them at the base of Becky’s stone. Jamie dug into his pocket, pulled out one of his tin soldiers, and stood it beside the flowers.

  Susan dabbed her eyes.

  “Do you want to say a prayer or something?” I asked. She nodded. We moved a little way away to give her privacy.

  “Look,” Jamie said, pointing to the stone beside Becky’s. “It’s got the same name.”

  Robert Nathaniel Montgomery

  June 24, 1881–January 13, 1940

  “Oh,” said Susan, stepping back to our side, “that’s Becky’s father. I didn’t know.”

  “He died in the war,” I said.

  “I doubt it had to do with the war,” Susan said. “He was a choleric sort of man.”

  I was about to ask what that meant when a disbelieving voice behind us said, “Susan? Susan Smith? Is that really you?”

  We turned to see a small, gray-haired woman holding a bouquet of roses. She stared at Susan.

  Susan blushed. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Forgive me. Mrs. Montgomery. I—”

  “I’d given up hope of seeing you,” the woman said. “I thought you’d never come.” She turned her bright eyes to Jamie, then me. “And who’s this?”

  “This is Ada, and Jamie, my”—I’d never seen Susan so ill at ease—“my children. From the war.” She gestured toward the Robert Montgomery tombstone. “I’m very sorry—I didn’t know. I would have sent a note.”

  The woman nodded. “I should have written you. After all, I did know your address.”

  Susan blushed harder. “Becky’s house. Yes. We don’t live there anymore—it was hit, I’m afraid. A total ruin.”
br />   Mrs. Montgomery made an exasperated noise. “This wretched war. I know I should have written. I suppose I was waiting for you to take the first step. When you never came to visit I assumed you’d moved on.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted me to visit,” Susan said. “I didn’t think I would be welcome.”

  Mrs. Montgomery drew in her breath. “Perhaps not b