Secrets of a Charmed Life (8 page)

The woman nodded once and cast her gaze to the sketches in Emmy’s hand. “I really thought I could pretend there was nothing to worry about as long as I just went about my business and sold wedding dresses to happy young women.”

Emmy hadn’t rehearsed a response from Mrs. Crofton that had nothing to do with her, so she had no words at the ready.

“Do you still want me to send these to my cousin?” Mrs. Crofton’s voice was void of emotion and strength,
as though it really didn’t matter anymore that she had met Emmy and liked her sketches and wanted to help Emmy embark on a future as a wedding dress designer.

“I most certainly do. The evacuation doesn’t change anything.”

Mrs. Crofton looked up at Emmy. “Except that you won’t be in London.”

“But I am going to return as soon as I can. I very much want you to send the sketches to Mr. Dabney and I want to know when he will be returning to the city.”

The woman laughed, a short little chortle shrouded in lassitude. “Oh, the confidence of the young! You would have us all drinking victory champagne by Christmas. My neighbor’s son is in the British navy and she told me he has no idea how long this will last. I’m not getting any more dresses from my suppliers in Paris. It will be hard to sell wedding gowns when I haven’t any to sell. And if all the London designers head to the hills, where will that leave me?”

“You could sell mine.”

Her laugh this time was full and loud. “Made from what, hospital sheets? And who’s going to spend money on a wedding dress if food gets really scarce like they’re saying it will? Or if bombs are dropping every night? Don’t they teach you current events in school?”

“School’s not in session. And war makes brides as easily as it makes widows. You told me that yourself.”

“But not as plentifully. I’ve had no customers yesterday or today, except for the young woman who bought that veil.”

“Give your cousin the sketches, Mrs. Crofton. Please? I promise I will come back as soon as I can. War or no war.”

She exhaled heavily. “All right.”

“And you’ll let me know when he returns to London.”

Mrs. Crofton nodded. “Send me your address when you’re situated.”

They stood there for a moment looking at each other.

“I don’t have any work for you today, Emmeline,” Mrs. Crofton finally said.

“You can teach me how to line a bodice.”

She lifted up the corners of her mouth in a half smile. “I almost envy you. Getting out of here like you are. Away from all this. You don’t know how good you have it.”

“I’ll trade places with you.”

Mrs. Crofton laughed gently. “If you were my daughter, Emmeline, I would do the same as your mum. I’d send you away to safety, too. I had a daughter once, you know.”

Emmy didn’t.

Mrs. Crofton stared at the wall behind her as if it were a window to the past. “She died of a fever when she was six.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Crofton.”

Her employer hovered there, on the edge between the present and past, and then she turned toward the wall and plugged in the electric teakettle that sat on a little table by the door to the loo.

Emmy waited to hear more about the daughter who had died, but Mrs. Crofton only said she was terribly sorry that she’d run out of sugar and there wasn’t any more at the grocery.

THE
day Emmy and Julia left London, the June sun spilled cheerfully out of the sky, dousing everyone with extravagant and unnecessary warmth. A somber fog would have suited Emmy better, or a pelting downpour. She didn’t want the heavens affirming this plan as she and her sister trudged to Julia’s school, suitcases in hand, nor as they waited in a sunny sea of emotional mothers, wide-eyed tots, and uniformed officials pretending that what they were doing was perfectly normal. From the school, the sisters would continue by bus, then by train, and lastly by motor car or delivery truck or gypsy cart—who really knew?—to wherever it was they were to call home.

Emmy’s solitary consolation as she packed her satchel was that she had discovered the key to Primrose’s back door, which she had forgotten to return to Mrs. Crofton when they said their good-byes. It was like an omen that
she would have to come back to London to return it to Mrs. Crofton. She slipped the key into her skirt pocket, letting her fingers linger over its shape before she withdrew her hand.

They arrived at the school fifteen minutes after the time Mum was told to have them there but their tardiness didn’t seem to matter. The queues of parents waiting to register their children were long and curlicued, and the general feeling, despite the happy sun, was one of quiet desperation. The animated chatter of nervous adolescents was only slightly louder than the agitated voices of parents who wanted more information than anyone in charge was prepared to give them. The billeting officials to whom they appealed sat behind long tables and scarcely looked up from their piles of paper, so intent were they on making sure they didn’t lose someone’s child into the abyss of this second evacuation scheme. The youngest children clung to their mothers’ hands. Some of them knew from the first evacuation what trauma was about to befall them, and they buried their heads in their mothers’ skirts. The oldest evacuees—teenagers like Emmy—gazed about in disbelief, looking for all the world like they wanted to disappear into a separate dimension while the adults played war with one another. Emmy didn’t see anyone she knew, probably because they were meeting at Julia’s school, not hers.

Mum returned from waiting in one of those snaking queues with stringed, cardboard tags for Emmy and Julia, and luggage labels that bore their names, ages, Mum’s name, and their London address. Julia’s tag went promptly around her neck.

“I’m not wearing this,” Emmy said, handing the name tag back to Mum.

“You have to,” Mum said, ignoring her daughter’s outstretched hand. She bent down to attach the luggage labels to the suitcases at their feet.

Emmy looped the name tag around the handle of the gas mask box that all the children were made to carry. Mum stood up, saw that Emmy didn’t have the string around her neck, and huffed.

“Emmy, please. Just do it.”

“I’m not five, Mum.”

“Then don’t act like you are.”

Mum yanked the tag off the handle of Emmy’s gas mask box and slipped it over her head.

“What does this say?” Julia peered at the small typewritten words below her name and Mum’s on the tag.

“Moreton-in-Marsh,” Mum said, straightening Julia’s barrette. “That’s where your train is headed.”

“What’s a marsh again?” Julia furrowed her brow.

“It’s an oozing swamp,” Emmy said under her breath.

“Moreton-in-Marsh is a nice town in Gloucestershire,” Mum said to Julia, after a quick frown Emmy’s way. “It’s a sweet little place, the registrar told me. In the Cotswolds. There are others from your school going to the same place, Julia, so you’ll already know people.”

“And my school? Are there others from my school?” Emmy asked, her voice terse with cynicism.

Mum faced her. “There are plenty of people your age being evacuated, Emmy. Plenty. Look around. Stop making this so difficult.”

Emmy wasn’t making anything difficult. Everyone else was making things difficult. This was not her war. Nothing about what was happening was her doing or had anything to do with her.

A uniformed official speaking through a public address system called for those headed west to Gloucestershire and
Oxfordshire. It was time to board the bus that would take them to the train station.

Emmy lifted her suitcase and Mum laid hold of her arm. “Don’t let them separate you,” she said, softly but urgently. “If anyone tries, you give them hell. Promise?”

Emmy’s suitcase, the gas mask, and the brides box in her arms suddenly seemed weightless compared to the burden of being forced to release all the good fortune that so recently had come her way. It was as if her dreams were spiraling out of reach, past the barrage balloons that hovered in the sky like enormous dead and bloated fish. Emmy was letting go of so much and yet her heart felt so heavy.

Mum squeezed Emmy’s arm when she did not answer. “Promise me, Emmy.”

“She’s
your
daughter,” Emmy whispered, and tears sprang to her eyes. She loved Julia, but she would not have agreed to leave London if she did not have to consider Julia. Mum should be evacuating with Julia, not her.

“And you’re her sister.”

The man called again for their bus.

The little tag around Emmy’s neck fluttered in between her and Mum, lifting off her chest for a second as a breeze ruffled it.

Emmy looked into Mum’s tawny brown eyes. “You ruin everything.” The words fell off her tongue as easy as a song, but the minute she said them, she wanted to pull the words back and shove them to the dark place where they’d been hiding since Mum got the evacuation notice.

Mum arched one eyebrow, just the one, and only slightly so. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” She let go of Emmy’s arm. “None of it. Be careful what you hate, Em.”

Mum now bent forward toward Julia, whose face was awash in uncertainty. “You stay with Emmy, now, and don’t give her trouble, pet. All right?” Mum drew Julia
into her arms. When she let go of her younger daughter and stood, Mum’s eyes were glistening. “Mind the people who will be looking after you. I’ll come and visit you as soon as I can. I’ll write you. And you can write me.”

Julia nodded, pleased, it seemed, to think of writing Mum a letter—something she had never done—and getting letters from someone in the post, also a new and exciting concept. But then in an instant her eyes widened in alarm. “Wait. What about Neville? What if he comes back? He won’t know where I am!”

“Yes, Mum. What about Neville?” Emmy echoed, with none of Julia’s distress but plenty of cheek. Just how long was she supposed to pretend Julia’s father wasn’t dead?

Mum ignored Emmy. “I’ll take care of that, pet.”

“So you’ll tell him?” Julia asked, less alarmed but still worried, and perhaps a little upset with herself for not having thought of this before.

“Yes, I’ll take care of everything.”

Mum answered Julia’s question without answering it at all and then turned to Emmy. She did not hold out her arms to embrace her. Instead, she cupped one hand under Emmy’s chin. “Don’t forget what I said, Emmy.”

Emmy didn’t have to be told to watch out for her little sister. She was more of a mother to Julia than their mum was. She always had been, even those rare times when she resented the responsibility. “Do you really think I would let anything happen to her?” Emmy said, pulling her chin out of her mother’s slight grasp.

Mum let her arm drop. “I’m talking about what I said about what you choose to hate. You don’t know everything. I know you think you do, but you don’t.”

“And you think
you
know everything. You don’t know what Mrs. Crofton said about my drawings because you don’t want to know. You haven’t even asked.
They mean nothing to you. Well, they’re everything to me, Mum. Just so you know.”

Mum shook her head. “For the love of God, Emmeline. You’re so young—”

“Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I can’t make my own decisions about my future. You of all people should know that.”

An official walking by saw Emmy’s and Julia’s name tags and where they were bound. “Come along, then, lasses. Right here, now. You’ll see your mum soon enough. Off you go, then.”

With the official’s hand gently on her back, Emmy reached for the book of fairy tales that Julia had in one hand, and then looped the handle of her gas mask box over her wrist. Emmy added the book to what she already carried in the crook of her arm.

“Carry your suitcase in one hand and grab hold of my skirt with the other. Don’t let go,” Emmy told her. They walked away from Mum, carrying luggage that had appeared in the flat the previous day—out of nowhere—and which smelled slightly of men’s aftershave. In her other arm Emmy carried Julia’s book, the brides box, and a sack lunch that Mum said Mrs. Billingsley had bought for her and Julia from her favorite sandwich shop.

Julia turned back to wave to Mum as she stepped up to board the bus, a red double-decker that had been pulled from its usual task of ferrying tourists around London. Emmy turned as well. Mum stood unmoving, her arms folded across her chest as people scurried about, her expression unreadable. She unhooked one arm to return Julia’s wave and to blow her a kiss. When her eyes met Emmy’s, she lifted her chin slightly as if to communicate she was pleased that Emmy had realized they weren’t so very different from each other after all.

EMMY
had traveled on a train outside the heart of London only once before. During one of Neville’s stretches of living with Mum, he took them all to Brighton Beach for a weekend at the sea. He wanted to take only Mum; Emmy remembered that had been obvious. But they hadn’t lived in Whitechapel then, so they hadn’t had Thea for a neighbor. There was no one who could take the sisters for the weekend. Mum didn’t like any of their neighbors at the time and they didn’t like her, according to Mum. Emmy believed what they didn’t like was Neville floating in and out of the flat, sometimes with an actor friend or two, and that they often loudly rehearsed lines at three o’clock in the morning from the bawdy shows they were in. The only other friends Mum had were fellow laundry maids at the hotel where she was working, but none of them had wanted to babysit a three- and an eleven-year-old for an entire weekend.

Emmy had liked the train ride.

She’d loved the sea.

The rest of the weekend was forgettable.

As she and Julia now sat side by side on the train, she wanted to stay angry at Mum, at the Germans, at the British War Office, at God Almighty himself for whisking her out of London when she was on the very edge of having everything.

But as the city sights fell away, and the landscape relaxed to rolling hills and fields of yellow, she found herself unable to stay angry. The rumbling of the train, the scenery outside her window, and even the lunch Julia and she shared—the nicest they had ever had—calmed Emmy to a state of ordinary melancholy. When they changed trains in Oxford for the last leg of the trip by rail, Emmy’s anger had mellowed to something more like grief.

There were seventy evacuees on the train to Moreton-in-Marsh, accompanied not by one of the schoolteachers, as the larger groups had been, but by a uniformed matron who reminded Emmy somewhat of Nana. Her build was the same, as was her silver-brown hair. She allowed Emmy, the oldest in their group, to call her Alice instead of Mrs. Braughton. As they were about to pull into the station at Moreton-in-Marsh, Alice asked if Emmy would keep an eye on the trio of young boys—all classmates of Julia’s—who were seated behind the girls and who had spent the forty-minute journey from Oxford laughing, poking one another, and kicking the back of the girls’ seats.

“Just see that they don’t get separated from the group,” Alice said as the whistle blew and the train began to approach the station. “We’re being met at the station and from there we’ll walk to the town hall. Just a short stroll. I’ll bring up the rear. If you wouldn’t mind staying in the middle, that would be grand.”

Emmy nodded in soundless compliance.

“There’s a brave girl,” Alice said, mistaking Emmy’s quietness for timidity. She squeezed Emmy’s shoulder before making her way back to the front of the train car.

Once they were off the train, it took some doing to corral the boys and convince them to stay where Emmy could see them. Then the lot of children formed a queue and a billeting official counted heads, comparing names with a list she had in her hand. Their suitcases had been loaded onto a truck so that they would not need to carry them the three blocks to the hall where they were to be sorted out. And then the young Londoners were off, like soldiers marching to the battlefield, or prisoners to their cells, Emmy thought.

“I have to go to the loo,” Julia murmured, her hand tight in Emmy’s.

“You just went at Oxford.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Think about something else. As soon as we get to the next place, I’ll find one for you.”

“I can’t think of something else!”

“Yes, you can.”

The three boys ahead of them stopped to look at a dead bird on the sidewalk. “Come on, boys,” Emmy said.

“I dare you to touch it, Julia,” one of the boys said.

“I dare you to eat it!” Julia challenged, her hand tighter now in her sister’s.

Emmy kicked the tiny carcass with her shoe. It landed in the gutter. “You can compose dares later. Off you go.”

They continued on their way, past shops and cafés and businesses. The town was like Brighton in some ways. The buildings were close to one another, and there were few taxis and no red double-decker buses. But there
was no fragrance of the sea, no one selling pasties or ice-cream cones on the sidewalk. And in Brighton, no one seemed to even notice when they had arrived or cared when they left. Here, everyone stopped whatever they were doing to look at the line of children, from the barber sweeping his front step, to the grocer standing by wooden crates full of turnips, to women in unremarkable dresses going about their afternoon errands.

Two young mothers pushing prams on the sidewalk moved aside so that the group could stay together. Emmy heard one whisper to the other, “Oh! These are the London children. The poor dears!”

And the other one replied, “Can you imagine sending your child away like that?”

“Or taking one in? Good heavens, you wouldn’t know anything about them.”

“Nor do we know anything about you,” Emmy whispered as she and Julia walked by them.

She heard nothing else from the two pram pushers and did not look back at them.

After another block they were at the town hall on High Street. The curbs were crowded with parked cars on either side. A few adults, mostly women, were standing outside on the steps, watching as the children made their way past them.

“Welcome to Moreton-in-Marsh,” one of them said, but her tone suggested she was nervous about the children being there. The young evacuees were the evidence that everything was different now. The war was no longer phony, as some had called it. It was real. And here were London’s children to prove it.

They were ushered into a large reception room filled with tables, folding chairs, and people talking in small
groups. The luggage had arrived, and two men were now unloading it from a cart and lining the suitcases like dominoes against the back wall. At one table officials sat with their papers and clipboards. At another were cups of water, tea biscuits, and meringues. The boys in Emmy’s care rushed to the food table and she let them go. She had done what had been asked of her—she got them there without losing them.

Emmy looked around for a sign indicating a privy, found one, and started to head in that direction, Julia’s hand in hers.

“You need to stay with your group,” a woman wearing an armband said to her.

“My sister needs to use the loo,” Emmy said, and kept walking.

“What are those people doing back there?” Julia asked as Emmy led her down a narrow hall to one of two doors marked
WC
.

“They’re here for all of us.” Emmy opened the door for her.

“But why are they looking at us like that?”

“They’ve never seen children from London before, so you and I are like two princesses to them. That’s why.”

This satisfied her. She let go of Emmy’s hand.

When they returned to the big room, Julia said she was hungry. They made their way to the refreshments, and Emmy could not help but notice how the people in the room watched as she and Julia approached the table, studying how the girls respected their hospitality. For one crazed second Emmy wanted to lean over and lick all the meringues.

“Just take one,” she murmured to Julia. “Until you know everyone’s had something.”

“I know how to share, Emmy,” Julia murmured back, her brow crinkled in annoyance.

A woman stepped up to a microphone and tapped it. A loud clunking and a short squawk followed. “All right, then,” she said. “If all the children could stand behind me here, we can get started. If you are here to collect an evacuee or two, if you could please make your way to my left so that we can keep everything in order. Splendid.”

Everyone did as they were told.

As the crowd of adults moved to stand where they could face the children, Emmy noted that the expressions on the faces were no different from those she had seen hours ago in the school yard. These country people wore the same look of apprehension mixed with hope. They wanted to believe, just as the parents in the school yard did, that this was without a doubt the course of action to take; the evacuation was how their nation would do battle and yet protect the blameless. Some would have to release a child into the care of a stranger, and some would have to take in the beloved child of someone they had never met. The war demanded that strangers could no longer exist in England.

It wasn’t until the villagers began to pick whom they would take home that Emmy saw how the two groups were different. The parents in the school yard had not been able to choose anything; not which bus their child would board, not which town they would go to, not which family would take them in. These people, on the other hand, looked the evacuees over as though they were shopping for their Christmas goose.

The foster parents, as the woman at the microphone called them, were invited to come speak with the children so that they could “all get to know one another.”

As the people began to move toward them, Julia grabbed Emmy’s hand. Her little sister’s fingers were sticky from the meringue.

A couple approached the girls. They were older than Mum, younger than Nana would have been. The woman smelled like furniture polish and the man had a giant mole on his cheek that looked like it was made of roast beef.

They told the girls their names, Mr. and Mrs. Trimble, and said how nice it was to meet them. Then they asked the sisters for their names.

“I’m Emmeline Downtree and this is my sister, Julia,” Emmy said. Julia, wide-eyed, said nothing.

The woman bent down and touched Julia’s corn silk hair. “My, aren’t you a pretty little cherub.”

Julia looked up at Emmy. She could see her question in the little girl’s eyes.
What’s a cherub?

“Say thank you,” Emmy whispered.

Julia obeyed.

The woman peered at Julia’s tag and then crinkled her brow in pity. “Oh. So, you’ve only a mum, then? What happened to your dad, little one?”

“He’s in India,” Julia said. “He’s making a movie about the treasure of the seven lost princes.”

“What’s that?” said the man.

Julia proudly repeated the answer to the question.

Mr. and Mrs. Trimble swiveled their surprised faces to look at Emmy.

“What is it exactly that your father is doing in India?” the woman said to her.

After a morning of not knowing what anything was about, to be asked something about which she had ample knowledge loosened Julia’s tongue. “Neville’s not her dad,” Julia said without a hint of embarrassment. “He’s
only mine. But I just call him Neville. We don’t know where Emmy’s father is.”

The couple stared at Emmy, thoroughly scandalized. Emmy didn’t care. Maybe if no one wanted her, she and Julia would be put back on a train to London. Several long seconds passed before Mr. and Mrs. Trimble recovered.

“Aren’t you a little old to be sent off to the countryside?” Mr. Trimble finally said to Emmy.

Emmy laughed; she couldn’t help it. For the last five days she had tried to convince everyone of this exact thing and no one would listen to her. Now here she was in a strange little village, standing in front of a couple obviously appalled by the details of her existence, and the man had pronounced—with no urging from Emmy—what she had so desperately wanted everyone else to say.

“Oh my!” the woman murmured. Emmy’s ill-timed chuckle only added to Mrs. Trimble’s growing impression of Emmy as an undesirable foster child.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Emmy said, reining in her amusement. “Believe me, I’d much rather be home than standing here talking to you.”

Seconds of silence.

“Well, we’ll just take little Julia here, then. Can’t we, Howard?”

“No,” Emmy said before Mr. Trimble could respond.

“I beg your pardon?” the woman said.

“I said no.”

Alice, hovering nearby, sidled up to the girls, her expression anxious. “We try to keep siblings together if we can,” she said, looking from Emmy to the couple.

“We can only take the little one,” the man said.

“Then you’ll need to keep shopping,” Emmy said. “Julia stays with me.”

Alice admonished Emmy with her eyes. She could read what the woman was communicating to her. It was something along the lines of
Can you please try to be nice?

“Come along, Margaret.” The man put his hand on his wife’s back to guide her away from the sisters.

“But, Howard, I want the little one,” the woman protested.

Howard Trimble ignored his wife but turned his gaze on Emmy. “A word of advice,” he said with feigned courtesy. “You’ll get nowhere with that attitude. You should be thinking about your little sister.”

“That’s exactly what I am doing,” Emmy replied, matching his tone. “She stays with me.”

Their conversation had attracted some attention. As Howard and Margaret Trimble moved away, Emmy noticed other conversations had stilled. People were staring at her.

Alice leaned in close. “I can see that you’re not happy about being here, Emmeline, but please try to be polite or I’m afraid no one will want to take you.”

“I don’t care if no one wants to take me. And who are these people to look down on all of us and decide which of us they want. We should be choosing them.”