The War I Finally Won

  Ruth picked up her fork, took a bite, and spat the mouthful out. “Is the sausage made from pork?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” said Susan. “I didn’t think. Probably. I mean, who knows, these days, but one assumes pork, yes. Next time I’ll ask.”

  Ruth nodded. She picked the sausage pieces out of her serving and lined them up on the edge of her plate.

  “It’s good sausage,” Jamie said.

  “Jamie,” said Susan. “Hush.”

  Jamie said, “We’re not supposed to waste sausage. There’s a war on.”

  “You want it?” Ruth asked. She transferred her sausage to Jamie’s plate. We watched her. “I don’t eat pork,” she said, looking up at us. “I keep kosher. At least, I try to.” She stirred her fork through the rest of her serving. “My father would tell me not to eat anything cooked in the same dish as pork sausage. My mother would say it was more important that I be a good guest, and that I needed to eat to keep up my strength.”

  I couldn’t make sense of any of that.

  “I told you,” Ruth said. “I’m Jewish.”

  I said, “So?”

  “Judaism is a very old religion,” Susan said. “Far older than Christianity. Many Jewish people follow strict dietary rules that include not eating pork. Ruth, you’ll have to let me know how to accommodate you. I probably don’t have enough kitchenware for full kosher but I’ll do my best.”

  “What’s Christianity?” I asked.

  Ruth gaped at me. I ignored her. Susan took a deep breath. “Christianity means any of the religions that believe Jesus Christ was the son of God. You’re a Christian, Ada.”

  I said, “How do you know?”

  Ruth snorted.

  “What?” I said.

  Ruth said, “How can you not know?”

  I glared at her.

  “Our village church is Church of England,” Susan said. “That’s a Christian church.”

  “What about the churches in London?” I used to hear their bells from Mam’s room.

  “Mostly Christian,” Susan said. “But there are Jewish people in London. I’m sure there are synagogues there.” She took a breath. “Judaism is the religion of the Old Testament, Ada. Of Abraham and Moses. Jewish people don’t follow the New Testament. They don’t believe that Jesus was the son of God.”

  “How can they not believe that?” I said. “It’s true.”

  Ruth sniffed. “That’s not what our rabbi says.”

  Jamie said, “What’s a rabbi?”

  Ruth said, “I do not believe this. I did not think English children could be so ignorant.”

  “Not all of them,” I said. “Just us.”

  Susan turned to Ruth. “Ada and Jamie were evacuated from the East End of London at the start of the war,” she explained. “Until recently their educations have been sporadic.”

  “I see.” Ruth looked slightly less horrified. “They don’t belong to you.”

  “They do,” said Susan. “I adopted them.”

  “Our first mother is in heaven,” Jamie said. “Susan’s our second.”

  I glared at him. “That’s not true. You know it!” Mam wasn’t in heaven and Susan was not our mother. I turned back to Ruth. “How can you not believe Jesus is God?”

  Ruth said, “How can you believe he is?”

  “You can’t choose what you believe,” I said. “You can’t just say, ‘I don’t believe that’s a chair,’ and have it turn into a hedgehog. Plus, our vicar wouldn’t lie.”

  “Ada,” Susan said, “people choose their own beliefs all the time. Mr. Collins isn’t lying. He preaches what he sincerely believes. Ruth sincerely believes something else. That’s all right.”

  “It can’t be,” I said. All these things I’d worked to learn, and now they were optional? If this was a joke, it wasn’t a funny one.

  Susan didn’t look like she was joking. “Religion is a matter of faith. You always have to choose what you believe.”

  Ruth nodded, a touch defiantly. “I choose to be Jewish,” she said.

  “Are there other people like her in the village?” I asked Susan. “People who don’t believe in Jesus?”

  “Yes,” said Susan. “I’m not one of them, but there are probably people in our village who don’t even believe God exists. Not in any form.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “How do they get to heaven?”

  Susan said, “They probably don’t believe in heaven either.”

  “Do you have to believe in heaven to go there?”

  Susan said, “I have no idea.”

  I felt enormously irritated. “Why didn’t you tell me all this? Why’d you make me believe all that stuff about heaven if it wasn’t true?”

  “I didn’t make you believe anything,” Susan said. “I can’t even get you to trust that I’ll feed you. Why on earth would I tackle God?”

  I said, angry, “I didn’t know I had a choice.”

  Susan said, “Get over it, Ada. Whether you realize it or not, you’re choosing your own beliefs all the time.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Let us not monopolize the conversation. Ruth, what can I get you? More potatoes? Or some bread?”

  Ruth uncovered another piece of sausage. Jamie looked at it hopefully. Ruth gave it to him. “What do you do with your bacon ration?” Jamie asked, chewing.

  “Jews don’t get a bacon ration,” Ruth said. “We get extra cheese.”

  Jamie swallowed. He said, “That’s too bad.”

  Chapter 20

  As soon as she finished eating, Ruth went upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom again.

  “She doesn’t like us,” I said.

  “I don’t blame her,” said Susan. “Poor girl.”

  Jamie said, “She looked pretty rich to me.”

  • • •

  Lord and Lady Thorton returned an hour later. They wore composed faces and were carefully polite. They were both still angry. I could feel it. It reminded me of how Mam sometimes smiled just before she started walloping me. My stomach hurt. I edged closer to Susan.

  “If you want to, Ada,” she said, “you can read in bed for a while. I’m not going to read to you and Jamie tonight.”

  “Mum!” Jamie protested.

  “Not tonight,” Susan said. “You may read in bed or you may stay down here for the news broadcast. Your choice.” We always went to sleep after the nine o’clock radio news.

  I went upstairs. My bedroom was cold but I had blankets enough. I snuggled with my dictionary.

  Christianity: the religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or its beliefs and practices.

  Jew: a member of the people and cultural community whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins through the ancient Hebrew people of Israel to Abraham.

  Judaism: the monotheistic religion of the Jews.

  Monotheistic: relating to or characterized by the belief that there is only one God.

  None of this helped. Our vicar said there was only one God. God came in God-the-Father, God-the-Son, who was Jesus, and God-the-Holy-Spirit, but it was all supposed to be only one God. I’d asked him about that once when his sermon hadn’t made sense. His answer hadn’t make sense either, except that he promised me it was really all one God.

  So if I believed in one God, and Ruth believed in one God, which one of us believed in the wrong God?

  • • •

  I didn’t quite dare ask Ruth.

  Lord Thorton left the next morning. Susan taught Ruth at the kitchen table alongside Jamie and me. The moment Susan finished, Ruth gathered her books, disappeared into her bedroom, and locked the door. At meals she and Lady Thorton sat silently at opposite ends of the table.

  On the third day Ruth noticed my jodhpurs at lunc
h. “You ride?” she asked.

  I said, “I have my own pony. I work at Lady Thorton’s stables in exchange for his keep.”

  Ruth said, “I like horses. I like to ride.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Ruth said, “Could I come to the stables with you?”

  “No.” Lady Thorton swiped her hands as though brushing dirt off them. “A German at Thorton House! When there’s war work being done there!”

  “Just the stables,” Ruth said. “I wouldn’t go near the house.”

  Lady Thorton sniffed. “Absolutely not.”

  • • •

  People in the village distrusted Ruth too. Susan and I got dark looks when we queued for food. Susan explained why Ruth was living with us, but only once. “They’ll get used to her or not, without me,” she said. “I’ll save my breath.”

  • • •

  In the first week, at least, Ruth didn’t kill us in our sleep. Jamie rummaged through her suitcase and dresser drawers one day while she was taking a walk, and reported that they contained nothing but clothes, her schoolbooks, a hairbrush, and a toothbrush. Susan was mad as fire that Jamie’d snooped, but I was glad he’d done it. I said so. Susan said she was disappointed in us both. Lady Thorton looked pleased.

  • • •

  “Why does Hitler hate Jews?” I asked Susan. “Do Jews believe in the wrong God?”

  If Ruth believed in a different God from Hitler, did Hitler and I believe in the same God? The thought made me queasy. Hitler’d killed Mam, and very nearly me.

  “No,” Susan said. “Jews don’t believe in the wrong God. No one knows why Hitler hates anything. Hitler defies explanation.”

  • • •

  Jamie got his cast cut off. His arm muscles were skinny from not being used, but his bones really had healed good as new. His entire arm would be good as new in just a little while. Dr. Graham promised. Bones healed, when doctors took care of them. Jamie wouldn’t even have a scar.

  “If your clubfoot had been treated when you were born,” Susan said, “it would be like it had never happened either. You wouldn’t even remember being different.”

  I would always remember it.

  Ruth overheard. “Is that why you limp?” she asked. “You had a bad foot? What is a clubfoot?”

  I gave her a look I’d learned from Lady Thorton. “I don’t limp. I don’t have any idea what you mean.”

  Chapter 21

  The new fire-watching rota finally came out. Susan handed me a copy of it when she came back from working at the WVS, and I scanned the paper for my name. “Lady Thorton!” I said. I pushed it back at Susan. “They’ve got me going up with Lady Thorton!”

  “So?” said Susan. “You knew fire-watchers worked in pairs.”

  I didn’t want to fire-watch with Lady Thorton. The idea of fire-watching with anyone made me anxious enough, let alone her. “You know,” I said.

  Susan shook her head at me. “I don’t.”

  She did, she just wouldn’t admit it.

  We were assigned an early shift, eight o’clock at night until ten. On the proper night we bundled up and set out together into the darkness. Gasoline was rationed now, and even Lady Thorton no longer drove anywhere she could reach on foot.

  Heavy clouds blanketed the black sky. Wind whistled through bare branches and dead leaves in the hedge. A faraway bird made a soft, low noise. “That’s an owl,” Lady Thorton said.

  I looked up at her. “What’s an owl?”

  She raised her eyebrows, but after a moment answered, “A nocturnal bird. You almost never see them in daytime.”

  I nodded. Yet another thing I didn’t know.

  At the doors of the church, Lady Thorton paused. “On a night like tonight, the way up will be very dark,” she said. “Follow me closely. We’ll go slow.”

  The inside of the church smelled of smoke and candle wax. It was so quiet I could hear Lady Thorton breathe, but once we began climbing the staircase, I couldn’t see anything at all. The stairwell was utterly dark. I clutched the handrail with one hand and the back of Lady Thorton’s coat with the other. I tried to feel my way up, but I wasn’t used to trusting how things felt beneath my feet. Any moment I could miss a step and fall.

  Lady Thorton missed a step, and stumbled. I pitched forward into her. “Careful!” she said.

  We sidled into the bell-ringers’ room. I made myself breathe deep, as quietly as I could. Now the ladder. Up. Up. At the top, the sideways jump to the other stair. Lady Thorton swung the little door open. I followed too close; the edge of the door hit my forehead. I gasped, startled, and nearly slipped.

  “Sorry.” Out on the steeple’s ledge, Lady Thorton ran her thumbs over my face. They felt cold and hard; I didn’t flinch. “You’re not bleeding, that’s good.” She pulled the door shut behind us. “So we don’t go tumbling into the night.”

  She sounded perfectly calm, as though the idea of falling down that dark hole was nothing to worry about. As though we weren’t standing out in the high, open sky waiting for Germans to come and bomb us. Watching for their bombs and fires.

  Lady Thorton had something called binoculars to look through. “They make faraway things seem closer,” Lady Thorton said. “Would you like to try them?”

  I shook my head. I’d need both hands to hold the binoculars, and then I wouldn’t be able to steady myself against the stone wall.

  “Walk around and watch for light or movement,” Lady Thorton said. “We’re almost guaranteed not to have any bombers tonight. Too dark.” She smiled thinly. “It’s very dull up here most of the time. Good of you to want to take a turn.”

  “I like to be useful,” I said.

  “Yes, I know,” Lady Thorton replied. “Susan’s turning you into a regular little housewife, isn’t she? With all the cooking and sewing she’s taught you.”

  She almost sounded scornful of Susan, which I didn’t appreciate at all. Since she’d come to live with us, Lady Thorton had not cooked any part of a single meal, though she’d done her full share of the eating. “I like to cook,” I said. “I like having good food.”

  Lady Thorton put down her binoculars. My eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that I could see her face, unruffled as always. “Of course,” she said. “I understand. I suppose your mother was a good cook too.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Lady Thorton said, “I shouldn’t have mentioned her. I know you must miss her terribly.”

  “No,” I said. “Why would you think that?”

  She had stopped listening. She walked around the far side of the steeple and aimed the binoculars at the leaden sky. The wind blew hard. I thought I could feel the steeple sway. Surely not. Surely the steeple was safe. It had been atop the church a long time—

  A sound like a gunshot below us. I bit my lip hard and stifled a scream.

  “Just a tree branch,” Lady Thorton called, from the opposite side of the steeple. “Those old trees round the graveyard. Sometimes they lose a limb when the wind gets heavy.”

  My speeded-up heart rate refused to slow down. Minutes crawled like hours. My toes and fingers went numb. Lady Thorton opened a thing called a thermos flask and gave me a drink of wonderful still-warm tea.

  “I’ve realized that I like to feel useful too,” Lady Thorton said. She smiled. “Before the war, I had a lot more fun, but I wasn’t anywhere near as useful.”

  I supposed that was true. All Lady Thorton’s WVS work was voluntary—she didn’t have to do any of it. She could have gone off somewhere posh and waited out the war.

  “I remember you on evacuation day,” I said. She’d been so commanding that I nearly mistook her for an army officer. Her WVS uniform looked like something an officer would wear.

  “Yes,” Lady Thorton said. “I was never taught to cook or sew, and unlike Su
san, I can’t do maths past arithmetic. But I’m a good organizer. I don’t mind standing out here in the cold either. I’ll help with the war however I can.” After a pause she added, “I’d do anything to bring Jonathan safely home.”

  Chapter 22

  On the day Lady Thorton moved in with us, she had handed Susan her ration book and said, “Don’t worry. I intend to do my bit.”

  She might be willing to do war work, but her housekeeping bit was not large. Jamie mopped and dusted more than she did, and Susan and I did nearly all the shopping and cooking. Lady Thorton never even helped with washing up. She said, “You all understand that sort of thing so much better than me.” Of course she could only start to understand the shopping by sometimes actually doing the shopping, and I suppose she did know it. The day after our fire-watch she took everyone’s ration books, including Ruth’s, and spent two weeks’ worth of meat coupons on one pound of lamb. Five tiny elegant pieces of lamb.

  “Lovely chops,” Lady Thorton said. “With a bit of rosemary—”

  “Ten shillings!” Susan shouted. It was the first time in months I’d seen her so angry.

  Meat was rationed by price, not amount. Each person in Britain, no matter whether they were rich or poor, was only allowed to spend one shilling per week on meat. If you wanted lots of meat, you stuck to the cheap stuff. If you wanted higher quality, you got hardly any at all.

  “Susan, dear, you’re a marvelous cook, but the cuts you’ve been choosing are dreadful.” Lady Thorton held up a chop. “Only look. The butcher said it was the best he’d had in weeks.”

  “We can’t afford the best,” Susan said. “These children need to eat meat more than once a fortnight. What am I supposed to feed them tomorrow?”

  Lady Thorton set the chop down. “Well, perhaps—eggs.”

  The new egg ration was one egg per person per week.

  “Or something,” said Lady Thorton.

  Susan sighed. “We can’t give them back,” she said. “I suppose we might as well enjoy them.”

  Lady Thorton smiled. “I’ll select a bottle of wine.” She’d brought crates of wine over from Thorton House.