Secrets of a Charmed Life (16 page)

Surely Mum would be able to see Emmy had the opportunity to become more than the illegitimate child who had stolen Mum’s life away from her. Emmy could become a creator of beautiful things. She could be someone Mum was proud of, instead of what Emmy currently
was: a constant reminder that whatever plans she’d had for her life had ended when Emmy was born.

Emmy really did want Mum to be proud of her.

She had to find a way to persuade Mum to help her.

“I’ll show you to the door, Emmeline,” Mrs. Crofton said.

After retrieving her jacket, they walked to the front door without saying a word. When Mrs. Crofton opened it, she reached for Emmy’s arm. “Make sure you have your sketches when you return, Emmeline,” she said softly. “I can’t stress it enough. Graham is very good at what he does, but he is also very demanding. And your mother must give her permission. Whatever differences you and your mother have, you must lay them aside. She has to come with you.”

“I understand,” Emmy whispered back. “Thank you. Thank you for making this happen.”

Mrs. Crofton squeezed Emmy’s arm. “I don’t have any other family besides Graham. I want you to go as far as you can, Emmeline. I really do. You will always have a place at Primrose.”

Emmy hugged her, grateful beyond words.

When she pulled away, Mrs. Crofton’s eyes were shimmering. “See you Monday.”

The door closed behind her and Emmy took off down the street.

EMMY
rushed as quickly as her legs could take her back to Knightsbridge station and then sailed down the stairs to the train tracks. It was just a few minutes before four thirty. If a train came quickly, she could be at Oxford Circus station within ten minutes. She would have to run to Mrs. Billingsley’s home a few blocks away to catch Mum before she left at five o’clock. But she had to try.

Emmy knew if she caught Mum as she was getting off work, she could prepare her for coming home to Julia on her sofa. She could also use the time they would be together in public transit to appeal to her. Mum’s main reason for Emmy’s accompanying Julia to Gloucestershire in the evacuation was to make sure Julia didn’t end up in a terrible placement with ogres for caregivers. Mum had nothing to worry about now. Charlotte was every inch the ideal foster mother.

There was no reason for Mum to decline the Dabneys’
kind offer except for spite. Mum had her flaws, but malice was not one of them.

If Emmy could get her to agree, then perhaps a few years down the road, when the war was long over, Emmy’s gowns would be hanging in a lovely boutique. She would have the money to get Mum out of whatever degrading situation she was trapped in. Emmy could get them all a nice flat on a quiet street and Mum wouldn’t have to be a kitchen maid anymore. She could work in the boutique with Emmy. Julia could, too. The three of them would be surrounded by lace and loveliness and happy young women shopping for the day when they would look like and feel like princesses.

These thoughts propelled Emmy as she switched trains for the Oxford Circus station and then sprinted for Mrs. Billingsley’s home off Regent Street. She had been to the home only once before. The previous Christmas, Mrs. Billingsley had invited her staff for a tea party on Boxing Day. Instead of serving, Mum got to sit in the parlor while hired hands poured tea and passed around platters of sweets and sandwiches. Emmy wasn’t entirely sure she could find the house again, but she would ring the bell on every doorstep on the block before she’d give up.

When she turned the corner onto Regent Street, Emmy scanned the homes, at once certain that the glistening gray mansion with ironwork on every window halfway down the block was Mrs. Billingsley’s. Relief flooded her; it was twenty minutes to five. Plenty of time.

Emmy rang the bell and waited, using the seconds to catch her breath. The door was opened by a woman Emmy had met on Boxing Day nearly nine months before. She remembered the woman’s name was Gladys. She seemed quite surprised to see Emmy.

“Hello. I’m Emmeline Downtree,” Emmy said. “I
am wondering if I might wait for my mother, Annie Downtree, to get off work?”

“Oh, my gracious. Is everything all right? I thought you and your little sister had been sent to the countryside.”

Emmy’s breath still came in ragged swells. “No. Yes. I mean, yes, everything is all right. We just . . . We just had to make a trip into London today to take care of a few errands. May I wait for her, please?”

“I’m afraid she went home early today. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“She’s left already?” Emmy’s rapidly beating heart did a somersault. Of all the days Mum had to leave early, it had to be today?

“Yes. I’m afraid so. She left at four. Maybe even before. I think she—”

But Gladys didn’t finish her sentence. Sirens suddenly pierced the air. The sirens never sounded during the day and so the two stood there dumbfounded for a moment, as if they had no idea what the strange keening meant. The Luftwaffe didn’t fly during the day when antiaircraft guns could pick the planes off. The Luftwaffe flew at night, using darkness as a cover. Yet the sirens wailed.

“What the devil—” But Gladys’s words were cut short by a series of loud booms that punched the air somewhere in the distance. Both women turned toward the sound. And then there were more thundering wallops. Smoke began to rise from the direction of the Thames, south and east of where they stood.

Several seconds passed before Emmy realized the sounds she was hearing were bombs. Dropped in daylight.

As she processed this knowledge, more bombs fell. Gladys reached for her. “Come inside, dear! We’ve a cellar!”

Emmy instinctively stepped back from her grasp. “I
have to get home.” Emmy turned from her even as Gladys yelled for her to come back.

“You can’t leave now!” the woman shouted.

But Emmy was already off the doorstep, out the gate, and then running back the way she had come. And all the while the sirens kept wailing, the horizon ahead kept filling with smoke, and a cacophony of explosions kept rocking the air in the distance.

She could no longer hear Gladys bellowing for her to return. She was only barely aware of the other people on the sidewalk who, like her, were rushing to be somewhere. Emmy’s sole focus was getting on a train headed southeast toward home.

Emmy rounded a corner and nearly ran into a man coming from the opposite direction. They skipped the courtesies due each other and kept charging ahead. Emmy could see the steps to the Underground.

As she closed the distance, she heard herself saying aloud, “Thank God, thank God, thank God.”

Thank God Mum had left early. A few moments earlier, Emmy had been perturbed that Mum wasn’t at Mrs. Billingsley’s, and now she was nearly crying with relief that she had gone home at four.

That meant Julia wasn’t alone.

Thank God Julia wasn’t alone.

People were cramming themselves onto the steps of the station to get belowground. Emmy pushed her way forward down the stairs to get on a train. Surely one or two were still running. The sirens had been wailing for only ten minutes. She pressed her way to the tracks, surrounded on all sides by women with shopping bags, men with briefcases, grocers and bus drivers, wardens and waitresses, bankers and beggars.

She could feel the incoming rush of air as a train
approached and the people moved forward as one, crushing her to the wall so that she could not take a step toward it. As soon as the train slowed to a stop, the people inside the station were at its doors. When they slid open, a few of the people on the train attempted to disembark.

“What’s happened?” one of them yelled.

“There’s an air raid!” someone in the crowd shouted back. “The Luftwaffe is attacking the East End. The whole bloody sky is filling with smoke!”

Some got off the train; some stayed on; others boarded until there was no more room. Emmy could not make her way forward to be among those who got on. It didn’t matter, though, because the train didn’t move after that.

She turned around and pressed through the crowd to get back to the stairs, but there was no way to ease or push her way through. The station was full of people, elbow to elbow, and outside she could still hear the wail of the sirens, the thunder of explosives, the crackling of antiaircraft guns, and even the buzzing hum of planes.

“What’s your name?” a woman said. She was clutching a little dog to her chest. Her hair had worked itself free of its pins and spilled about her shoulders in a wacky, unkempt tumble.

“Emmeline.”

“I’m Mrs. Grote. Do you live around here?”

“Whitechapel.”

A muted boom punctured the sheltered air inside and Mrs. Grote jumped, knocking herself into Emmy. “So sorry,” she said as she righted herself. “I am not good with loud noises. Percy doesn’t like them, either. Do you, Percy? Oh, I’m so glad I was walking my dog when the sirens started,” she said, now sniffling into the scruff of the dog’s neck. “I’m so glad. He’d be home alone if I had gone to the market instead. Can you imagine?”

Emmy wanted to get away from Mrs. Grote and her dog and her chatty demeanor, but there was nowhere to go.

There was nowhere for any of them to go. The people in the station could only lean against one another and wait for the thrashing outside to stop and the sirens to fall silent.

For more than an hour Emmy hunkered in the station, listening to the muffled sounds of a battle raging above. Finally, a few minutes after six, the world outside grew quiet compared to what it had been before. The crowd of people waited expectantly for the all-clear signal but did not hear it. After several minutes, a few people began to venture out anyway, despite a warning by a civil defense official who had dashed inside with them that no one should leave until the all-clear signal. Following those who pushed past, Emmy emerged back onto the street. The sky to the east was a bright blaze of gold and gray. The barrage balloons that hovered in the distance looked pink in the strange light of smoke and fire.

Emmy didn’t want anyone asking her any more questions about who she was or where she lived. She didn’t care if the all-clear hadn’t sounded and the Germans were merely circling to come back and have at them again. All she knew was the flat was in the direction of the fires and smoke. She had to get home to Mum and Julia.

She took off on foot as at last the all-clear sounded. She wasn’t sure where she was until she saw a landmark sign for Saint Paul’s two miles away. If she could find Saint Paul’s, she could find her way home.

Others who had been sheltered and wished to be home or at least somewhere else were also on the streets. Emmy could hear snippets of their conversations. Someone had been listening to a radio. Fires at the docks were raging. Warehouses were engulfed in flames. Stores,
houses, churches, and schools all across the East End were demolished, damaged, or burning.

Emmy turned to a man who said it was most severe by Tower Bridge. “Which neighborhoods? Which streets?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, love. All over. Look at the sky.” He nodded toward the direction they were headed. The rosy orange hue seemed to suggest the earth had swung off its orbit and now the sun was preparing to set in the east.

The long walk to the Moreton train station that morning seemed like a lifetime ago as Emmy dodged her way closer and closer to home in the sickly hued twilight. She knew from Mum that it was three miles from the flat to Mrs. Billingsley’s in Mayfair. She tried to hail a taxi but none of them stopped for her. Everyone and everything moved at a frenzied pace as emergency vehicles raced to the East End and survivors made their way west. When Emmy could see the dome of Saint Paul’s, she knew she was two-thirds of the way home. Just a mile to go.

And then the sirens came again.

Louder this time.

Or maybe it was just that she so desperately did not want to hear them.

Antiaircraft guns began peppering the sky over the river. She felt the drone of the approaching planes in her chest.

The scattering of people searching for cover erupted all around her but she did not join them. Emmy doubled her pace for home, despite her weariness.

“Run, run!” someone shouted. Emmy heard a whistle, almost like a flute, and then the sound became an orchestra of angry flutes. Then there was a shattering
whack
. Her feet were off the ground and Emmy marveled for a split second at the weightless sensation of flying. And then her head slammed against bricks and the world went silent and dark.

I’M
so thirsty.

This was Emmy’s first thought when the darkness lifted.

She heard a woman singing softly, a lullaby. Emmy was not alone.

A trio of booms echoed from somewhere far above her. She smelled ash and dirt and sulfur.

Something cool and wet touched her forehead and she opened her eyes.

“There, now,” a woman said as she held the compress to Emmy’s head. “You’re all right. You’re safe.”

Emmy looked about her and saw nothing but shadows and the dim outlines of men and women crouched like stowaways in the hold of a ship. She was lying on a cot. Her head pounded and her ankle throbbed.

A whistling sound, faint but recognizable from the
last moment she remembered, split the quiet, and Emmy half rose with a start before the woman gently pressed her back down on the cot. “Not to worry. You’re safe here.”

“Where am I?” Emmy croaked. “What happened?”

“You’re in a shelter, love. You’re safe. You were knocked out cold but a fireman brought you here. You’re safe now.”

For several seconds Emmy could not make sense of this information. All she could remember was that she had been on the street. And then there were sirens. And the angry flutes.

“What—what day is it?”

“It’s still Saturday, love. What’s your name?”

“Emmeline. Where am I?”

“You’re in the basement at Saint Paul’s. What’s your last name, Emmeline?”

Emmy ignored her question. She had to think for a moment. She had been on her way home. Home. She was walking home. She had the satchel in her hand. She was walking home. Home.

Julia. And Mum.

Emmy bolted upright and her head spun.

“Hold on there, Emmeline. You’ve a nasty bump on your head. Let’s take it easy, now.”

“I have to go.” A wave of dizziness swept over Emmy and her upper body fell against the woman. She lowered Emmy back down.

“You can’t go back out, Emmeline. It’s dangerous. There are bombs falling everywhere.”

As if to prove her point, several booms pounded outside and the room shook.

“They’re going to kill us all!” a man shouted.

“Hush, now!” the woman yelled back to him.

“But my mother and sister—,” Emmy pleaded.

The woman’s eyes narrowed in concern. “Were they on the street with you?”

“No. They’re at home. I was on my way to them.”

She patted my arm. “They are surely in a shelter, too, Emmeline. Just like you. They’d want you to stay safe. You can’t go out there now.”

“It’s bloody Armageddon,” another man said, sounding terrified.

The woman who was singing softly nearby stopped for a second and told the man to shut up. A child whimpered and she started singing again.

The satchel.

Julia’s book.

“Where is it? Where’s my bag?”

The woman held up the satchel. “Right here. It’s right here. See? You’ve nothing to worry about. You’re safe here.”

“Nobody’s safe,” a voice grunted.

The angry flutes whistled outside, followed by a thunderous roar, and again the room shook.

From somewhere behind Emmy an old man began to recite the twenty-third psalm. The woman who held the compress to her head joined him. A few others did, too.

“I’m thirsty,” Emmy whispered.

The woman reached behind her for a glass jar and poured water into a tin cup, which she held to Emmy’s lips. The water tasted like metal. Emmy lay back down.

The woman unwound the shawl she had over her shoulders and folded it into a tight rectangle. Then she placed it under Emmy’s head.

“Rest now,” she said.

Emmy slept.

When she awoke, the room was in semidarkness and cloaked in an odd silence after so much noise hours before. People were walking about slowly, gingerly. Those who hadn’t had a cot on which to sleep moved stiffly after having spent the night on the hard floor.

Emmy rose to a sitting position, her head protesting. She reached up to touch her forehead and felt a band of gauze, sticky with dried blood. The woman who had ministered to her the night before was asleep on the floor.

“Is it over?” someone asked.

“Who knows?” someone answered. “Who knows anything?”

Emmy reached for her satchel at the woman’s feet and got up carefully, holding her head as she stood. A wave of dizziness nearly sent her toppling back to the cot. A man walking past steadied her and Emmy whispered her gratitude.

She wanted to thank the woman who had cared for her, but she had to get home to Mum and Julia. Perhaps she would see the woman again someday.

Perhaps.

Emmy slid the strap of the satchel over her shoulder and tested her footing. Her left ankle ached ferociously. She tried out a few small steps as she followed those also wanting to exit the shelter. They went down a hallway, through a set of double doors, and to a stairway that led upward. Emmy took the steps one at a time with a hand firmly on the rail. With each step, the smell of ash and fire and dust became more pervasive. The light at the top of the stairs was a sickly yellow, not from the morning sun but from a thousand fires still burning.

Saint Paul’s appeared undamaged, but as Emmy gingerly made her way east toward home, the destruction
from the day before began to reveal itself: crushed buildings, broken windows, blackened brick, roofs missing or caved in. Fire and rescue crews were rushing about with a hundred tasks to attend to; they had no time to bother with a fifteen-year-old girl who hobbled resolutely down debris-choked streets. The closer Emmy got to the flat, the more her heart began to pound. She passed the intersection that would take her to Primrose. She didn’t know whether Mrs. Crofton’s shop still stood but she could not take the time now to see. Her only aim was to make sure Julia and Mum were all right.

Emmy passed a rescue crew digging in wreckage. A dead man lay at their feet, his eyes open and vacant, his nose and mouth covered with dried blood. Another man was being tended to. His shoes had been blown off and his shattered legs hung from his pant legs like laundry on the line. “Where’s my Lucy?” he was saying.

Two more rescue workers were pushing away rubble to get to an outstretched hand. “Hold on. We’re coming for you,” one of the workers said. He reached for the hand to assure the trapped person that help was on the way. The hand and half of its severed arm tumbled toward him at his touch.

Emmy turned away to vomit into the gutter. The paltry contents of her stomach landed on a baby’s crib toy.

She wheeled away from the scene, holding a hand over her mouth and willing herself to look at nothing but her feet. Finally, she turned down her street. The first few buildings were fine. But then she could see that the row of flats across the street from where she lived had been flattened, squashed as if they’d been made of cardboard. With relief she saw that the flats on her side of the street still stood. But the explosions from across
the street had taken out every front window. Whole sections of roof were missing and Thea’s front door hung by one hinge.

Emmy hobbled up to her front door and felt for the key under the mat. She wrenched open the door, calling Mum and Julia’s names.

Glass and ash covered the sitting room floor. She limped into the kitchen. More broken glass. She turned to hobble up the stairs.

“Mum! Julia!”

Emmy threw open Mum’s bedroom door. Debris littered her bed. The blackout curtains from her window overlooking the street hung in tattered threads.

She limped into Julia’s room, where she met the same scene.

They weren’t there.

Emmy’s head throbbed. She made her way back downstairs and pulled out a kitchen chair. She sank into it to wait for them to return from the shelter. She had eaten nothing in nearly twenty-four hours and she marveled that her stomach could growl for food after what she had seen that morning. But she was too tired to see whether there was anything edible left. There was no electricity. Whatever was still in the fridge was probably spoiled. She leaned forward to rest her head on the table.

Emmy startled awake when she heard a voice outside on the front step.

“Bloody mess this is.”

Mum.

Thank God.

Emmy shot up out of the chair and had to steady herself when her injuries protested.

“Mum!” she called out.

Emmy stumbled into the front room as Mum stepped inside the flat.

She staggered toward her mother and wrapped her arms around Mum’s neck. Tears that she’d kept at bay since the sirens first sounded yesterday fell freely.

“Good Lord, Emmy!” Mum’s hand stroked Emmy’s hair. She couldn’t remember the last time Mum had done that.

“Oh, Mum. I was so worried.”

“What in the world? What happened to you? Why are you here?”

Mum did not sound angry. She sounded surprised. Completely surprised. Emmy pulled back from her to study her mother’s face.

“Didn’t—didn’t you see my note? Didn’t Julia tell you?”

“What note? Didn’t Julia tell me what? What are you talking about? Why are you here?”

“Mum. Didn’t you come home yesterday? You got off at four o’clock.”

“How did you . . . Why aren’t you in Gloucestershire? Why are you here?” Mum’s voice rose in pitch as she slowly realized that something was terribly wrong.

“Tell me you came home when you got off work. Tell me you have Julia,” Emmy murmured, new tears already falling.

Mum went white. “Julia is with you. In Gloucestershire.”

Nausea rose up inside Emmy. “Where did you go?” she whispered.

“Em. Where is your sister?” Mum’s voice trembled. “Where is she?”

“Why didn’t you come home?” Emmy cried. “You were supposed to come home!”

Mum placed her hands on Emmy’s shoulders. Her nails dug into Emmy’s skin. “Where is your sister?”

Thea.

Emmy freed herself from Mum’s grasp and limped past her. She staggered across the rubble in between the two flats and swung open Thea’s damaged front door. The destruction to Thea’s flat was worse than theirs. In addition to broken glass and missing roof sections, the far wall was cracked and bulging inward. But the most disturbing detail was that her furniture was covered in white sheeting; the look of a place that had been sealed up and emptied of its people.

“Julia!” Emmy called. “Julia!”

Mum was now standing at Thea’s doorstep. “What is going on? What did you do?”

Emmy wheeled around to face her mother. “Where’s Thea?”

“What did you do?” Mum yelled.

“You were supposed to come home!” Emmy yelled back.

“What have you done with my baby?” Mum screamed.

“Are you two all right?”

The two women turned to the voice. A man stood on the sidewalk. Emmy recognized him as the pensioner who lived three doors down. He was staring at them, wide-eyed.

Emmy shuffled over to him. “Did you see Julia? My sister. Did you see her here last night?”

The man stared at her. “I thought all the children on this street had been evacuated.”

“Did you see her?” Emmy shouted.

“No. No, I didn’t.”

Mum was at Emmy’s side. “Emmy. I need to know what happened!”

Emmy ignored her. “Did you see Thea? The lady who lives here? Did you see her?”

The man blinked. “She and her mum left for Wales. A few days ago, I think.”

“Did you go to the shelter last night? Did you see a little girl? She’s only seven.” Sobs garbled Emmy’s words.

The man shook his head. “There were no children in the shelter last night other than a new mother with an infant who came in off the street.”

Emmy pushed past him, calling Julia’s name.

“Should I get a policeman?” the man yelled.

But Emmy could not answer him. She could only shout one word.

“Julia!”

Mum trailed after her, repeating a four-word phrase; four words that fell at Emmy’s back like a mallet.

What have you done?