Secrets of a Charmed Life (30 page)

The sense of the familiar was too strong, Emmy.

Julia

July 12, 1958

Dear Emmy,

We went out again today. This time we made our way to Chipping Camden, which didn’t look familiar at all when we first drove into town, and I had to remind myself that nearly twenty years have passed since the day you and I arrived in Gloucestershire. But as we neared the city center, I began to think perhaps we were to be lucky today. The railway station and the lay of the streets and the city hall—it addled my brain how familiar and yet not familiar they were. Again we asked about in the shops and the library and the bank if anyone knew of the sisters. We received mostly kind and compassionate responses. A few people looked askance at us or simply shook their heads with a wordless no when we asked. We had tea at a lovely café to refresh us and Simon noted on the map how many villages were within walking distance. And we went to them all, Emmy. Aston Subedge, Broad Marston, several others.

Every place looked like it could have been where you and I were. And yet no one knew of the sisters. We even strolled the cemeteries, looking for their names.

On the way home I was feeling tremendously discouraged. I wondered aloud if perhaps Thea had been wrong about where Mum told her we were. Maybe she assumed it was Gloucestershire. Or maybe Thea said we had been in Oxfordshire and Granny heard Gloucestershire, because there are Cotswold villages in Oxfordshire as well.

Simon just said, rather confidently,
Well, then we’ll look in every village in Oxfordshire, too.

The way he said this gave me pause. I couldn’t see his face clearly because night had fallen and the only light on his features was from the headlamps of a few passing cars. But in the shadows I saw a determined look that surprised me. It did not matter to him that the search may have now widened to include another county. It only mattered that we pressed on, like a wise accountant would do to find the error in the ledger and adjust it. It was as if he was determined to find the house to fix
me
, which is different than the reason I want to find it. He wanted to find the house so that I could at last climb out of my regrets and marry him. I am not interested in fixing me. I want to fix what I broke.

It’s completely different.

When I said nothing, he took my silence for anxiety that now we have even more towns to search and that he might lose interest in me because of it. He said not to worry, because I was the only thing that mattered to him. He reached for my hand.

I love him, Emmy, I do. And I know he loves me. But sitting there in the dark with the shimmer of London way off in the distance, I knew that I must continue on alone. If I don’t, I fear I am the one who may lose interest.

I don’t want to feel as if I am the broken thing that needs to be repaired even if that’s what I am. Your lover should see you as whole even if you are in pieces, because that’s what love does, doesn’t it? It sees past the flaws. It forgets there are flaws.

Simon said my name.

I traced his hand in mine, wondering how to tell him.
Simon,
I said,
would you mind very much if next Saturday I went alone?

What was that?
he said.

I proceeded to tell him that finding the brides box was something I needed to accomplish on my own. I figured the word “accomplish” would sound good to his ears. I didn’t think he needed to know that I was feeling he was showing less love for me rather than more by his ardent enthusiasm for the quest. That would only wound him. And there are already enough wounds in the world. I told him I appreciated with all my heart the help and support he had given me, but that I wanted to continue on my own.

But are you sure that’s a good idea?
he asked.
Going alone?

I think he was suggesting that in my fragile state, maybe I would collapse at the shock of finding the house and the box, or be devastated at not finding them.

But I have survived much, Emmy. Haven’t I? Haven’t I survived the war and the loss of my childhood, my parents, and my sister? Haven’t I come back to London? Haven’t I looked for you? Haven’t I agreed to write this journal? Haven’t I embarked on the mission to find your brides? And haven’t I done all that alone?

I squeezed Simon’s hand.
This is something only I can do for me, Simon,
I said
. I will be all right.

He attempted a couple more counterarguments but, in the end, because he loves me, he agreed.

I asked him if I could use his car, which he has loaned to me other times, and he said of course.

He seemed a little hurt when we said good night, but I don’t think he feels injured by me. It’s more that he’s disappointed he can’t be the one to rescue me.

I think I know how that feels.

Julia

July 19, 1958

Dear Emmy,

Emmy, I think I found the town where we got off the train and Charlotte met us! When I drove into Moreton-in-Marsh today, I felt as though I were being tugged through a tunnel. I was shaking when I parked Simon’s car and walked into the train station. The station itself didn’t seem familiar to me, but walking out of it and back onto the street nearly took my breath away. The scene in front of me was like a long-lost photograph that flitted down off a shelf in my mind. It was the same, but different. As I walked up the sidewalk toward the town center, I could see you and me, holding our cardboard boxes with our gas masks inside. I could feel the weight of my fairy tale book tucked under my arm. I could feel my hand in yours. There was a dead bird in the
street, and the boys ahead of us from my school wanted to stop and poke it. They were daring
me
to touch it. You kicked it with the tip of your shoe and it flopped over into the gutter.

Oh, Emmy, the pull of feeling you so near almost yanked me to the ground.

This was the place. I knew it.

The first few people I approached in the grocery store and the stationers seemed dubious when I told them whom I was looking for and why, and I realized I was talking too fast and too frantically. I must have seemed like a madwoman escaped from an institution, intent on hacking to death the two sisters I was searching for. I knew I needed to compose myself. And I needed to sit down with the map and see where you and I could have come from that long-ago morning when we walked to Moreton. Charlotte didn’t live here. She lived somewhere else. But I was close.

I went to a café, ordered a pot of Darjeeling, and used the warmth and floral notes of the tea to calm myself as I studied the map. I made a list of towns that you and I could have walked from to reach Moreton. Batsford, Draycott, Bourton-on-the-Hill, Blockley, Chastleton, Broadwell, Longborough, Stow-on-the-Wold, Oddington.

I drank my tea, got back in Simon’s car, and headed to the northwest corner of my search area to work my way down. So today, I only got to explore Batsford, Blockley, Bourton-on-the-Hill, and the smaller hamlets Paxton and Aston Magna.

I did not find the house.

And I did not see the sisters’ names in the local cemeteries.

I started home for London when the sun was setting and drove to Simon’s flat so that he could take me home and have his car. He seemed a little sad that I’d so quickly discovered Moreton on my own. Not sad for me, but for himself. It was obvious that he wished he had chosen Moreton the first day out.

Still want to go alone next Saturday?
he asked. Maybe I should have invited him to come; I could tell he wanted to. But I kissed him and declined.

I like it that it’s just me.

Next Saturday I will head for Chastleton, Broadwell, and Longborough.

July 26, 1958

Dear Emmy,

I am sick with some kind of flu.

It’s Saturday but instead of getting into Simon’s car and continuing my search, I am spending the day in bed with a fever. Granny insisted on coming out on the train to take care of me when I came home ill from work on Thursday, even though I was far from needing that much attention.

I haven’t been out to see Gramps and Granny much since I started dating Simon. I think she was looking for a reason to come see me and to see how Simon and I are getting on. I’m twenty-five and never really had a boyfriend before. She and Gramps have met Simon only once, when he and I drove out to have Sunday dinner with them a few months ago. That was before Simon proposed to me and tried to offer me a ring, and I told him I wasn’t ready.

No one really knows he did that. Well, maybe his parents do. I don’t have many close friends at work or here in my building. I haven’t wanted to trust many people with my friendship. I guess because of how awful my teenage years were. So I don’t have chummy girlfriends to confide in. Maybe if I had a best
friend, I would have told her Simon had proposed. But I don’t really have one of those. Simon is my best friend. You can see how terrible it will be for me if he loses interest in me.

He says he won’t, but I wonder how he knows he can wait for me. He’s never done this before.

Granny stayed for two days, made me loads of soup, did my laundry, and went to the pharmacy for cough syrup. She asked more than once what I’ve been up to in my free time. I think she is wondering why I’ve not been home on Saturdays when she has called.

I almost told her what I’ve been doing.

I’m not sure why I didn’t other than she’d worry that I’ll wish I hadn’t looked for the brides box when it’s all said and done, whether I find it or not.

She left this afternoon on the five o’clock train back to Oxford. Simon is coming over in a little while, to read to me and fuss over me, no doubt.

I just want to shake this bug and get back to what I was doing before I got sick.

I am close. I can feel it.

Julia

August 2, 1958

My dear Emmy,

I am not sure how to put into words what I am feeling. I am still a bit dazed. Numb, really. I don’t feel at all like I thought I would.

I found Aunt Charlotte’s house today.

But not the brides box.

I was inside the bedroom you and I shared. I found the crawl space. I opened the door that had been painted shut.

It wasn’t there.

I am back home now, sitting in my flat and watching the telly with Simon. He’s afraid to leave, thinking it will dawn on me after he goes that the brides box is lost to me forever and the last little bit of you with it.

But I am strangely numb.

I found the village to which Charlotte first took us to get library books. It’s Stow-on-the-Wold, and it’s four miles from Moreton-in-Marsh. I didn’t remember the name of this little town, but when I saw the church and the library and even the post office, I knew this was the village Charlotte had called her own, and you and I had been to it—many times.

I started out by going into the library, mainly because I remembered it. I asked the more mature of the two librarians if there was an older woman in the village named Charlotte. In her eighties perhaps?

You mean Charlotte Havelock?
the librarian replied.

I felt silly not knowing her last name, so I just asked if this Charlotte Havelock had a sister named Rose.

The librarian said yes, she did.

Oh, Emmy, how my heart thumped in my chest as I asked where I could find them.

She said she was sorry to tell me they were both deceased. She had attended Charlotte’s funeral just three months ago. Rose died several years before that.

Three months, Emmy. Charlotte was alive three months ago.

I had to sit down for a moment to let that sink in. I knew no good would come from pondering why I hadn’t begun the search sooner. But how could I not lament having just missed her?

The librarian felt bad for me and wanted to know if she could get me anything.

I told her I just needed to know if Charlotte’s house was still standing.

She answered with a nod and told me she’d heard an American woman and her daughter were living there—at least for the summer. The woman was distantly related to Charlotte. Or something like that.

She asked if I wanted directions to Thistle House.

Charlotte’s house has a name, Thistle House. You probably remember that. You probably remember everything.

It didn’t take long to drive the half mile to the house. The moment I was standing outside it, it was as if the years had rolled back like a curtain and you and I were arriving on that first day.

I knocked and the door was opened by a teenage girl. She asked if she could help me. Her American accent was strange to hear coming from that threshold.

I told her that I had lived in this house during the war when it belonged to Charlotte Havelock. And then I asked if her parents were home. She said her father was still in the States and her mother wasn’t due back until evening. I was so deeply disappointed. To have come that far—to have actually found the house—only to have to leave and come back another time was crushing.

I pulled a grocery receipt out of my handbag and scribbled my name and phone number on it. I asked the girl if she wouldn’t mind giving my name and number to her mother when she got home and asking her to give me a ring.

Does my mother know you?
she asked.

I told her she didn’t. And then who knows why I did what I did next. I just blurted it all out, Emmy. I told the girl about you and your bride sketches and what I had done with them on the night we ran away from Thistle House. I told her how you and I were separated on the first night of the Blitz and that I was whisked away to America by a grandmother I didn’t even know I had and that I never saw or heard from you again.

The girl’s eyes were rimmed with tears when I was done and I realized with a shock that so were mine.

I began to apologize profusely when she opened the door wide and told me to come and see if the brides box was still there.

I didn’t think I should with her mum not at home. But the girl said I looked harmless enough.

I’m not sure I should,
I said.

I am plenty old enough to take care of myself. Come in.

So I did.

She told me her name was Gwen.

Emmy, from what I can remember, the house looks the same. The same furniture. The same green sofa in the living room. The same oak kitchen table. The same red carpet on the stairs and the same creak as we ascended them.

So you’re related to the Havelock sisters? I asked, babbling as we climbed to calm myself.

Gwen shrugged and said she wasn’t really sure how they were related. She said her mother was born in England but she moved to America when she married her father. Gwen said she didn’t know very much about her mother’s side of the family because they were all deceased and her mother never wanted to talk about them.

We got to the top of the stairs and I saw bursts of yellow. The room we slept in is still lemon hued. The two twin beds are gone, and now there are a settee and two armchairs upholstered in checked canary yellow. My gaze was immediately drawn to the far wall where the lace-covered table had been. A bookcase is there now.

I told Gwen the crawl space was behind the bookcase and she didn’t hesitate. She walked right over to it and started to pull books off the shelves so that we could shimmy it away from the wall.

As we worked, I asked her if this was her first time to England and she said yes. Thistle House had been left to her mother when
Charlotte Havelock died and they were just staying the summer. Home and her father were in Minnesota. I asked if she liked it here. She said if she were allowed to go anywhere or do anything, she might like it. She said her mother worries too much about her and it drives her crazy. I felt sorry for her. She reminded me a little of you, Emmy. I’m not sure why. Maybe because she seemed so eager to be grown-up and to make her own decisions. I asked her how old she was and she said nearly thirteen.

When we had removed enough of the books, we pushed the bookcase out of the way and there it was: the crawl space door, painted shut. Gwen ran downstairs and quickly came back with a screwdriver. Before I could ask if her mum would want her to, she started to pry the painted seam open. The seal broke with a cracking pop. Gwen pulled the door open and then sat back.