The War that Saved My Life (8 page)

Sheets were the thin white blankets on the bed. Supper was something called soup, that came in bowls. You were supposed to drink it from spoons, not from the bowls themselves, which seemed like too much work. But I was hungry, and the soup was salty and had bits of meat in it, so I did as I was told.

Jamie refused to eat at all.

“If you want to go to bed hungry, you certainly may,” Miss Smith said. “Soup is all I’ve made and soup is all there is to eat.”

This was a lie and we all knew it. Her cupboard held all sorts of food. But Jamie’d gone to bed hungry before. It wouldn’t kill him.

At night he cried into his pillow and in the morning he’d wet the bed again. “I want to go home,” he said. “I want to see Billy White. I want to be like always. I want to go home.”

I didn’t. Not ever. I had run away once and I’d run away again.

The next week three things happened. First, Miss Smith spent most of each day either sleeping or staring dully into space. On Monday she made meals for us but did nothing else. On Tuesday she didn’t even get out of bed. I’d watched her cooking on her range enough to understand how it worked, so I fed Jamie and me. Midafternoon I made Miss Smith some tea. Jamie carried it up the stairs for me and we took it into her room.

She lay on her side, awake but staring at nothing. Her eyes were red and swollen. She seemed surprised to see us. “I’ve abandoned you,” she said, without moving. “I told Lady Thorton I’m not fit to care for children. I said so.”

I set the tea on the table by her bed. “Here, miss.”

She sat up. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me,” she said. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you.” She took a sip, and fresh tears sprang to her eyes. “You’ve sugared it,” she said.

That was how she took it. One sugar, no milk. I’d watched. “Yes, miss,” I said, ducking a little in case she tried to smack me. “Not much, though. There’s plenty of sugar left. I didn’t take any.” Though I’d let Jamie have some.

“I’m not going to hit you,” she said. “I wish you’d understand that. I’m neglecting you, certainly, but I won’t hit you, and I don’t care what you eat. It was
thoughtful
of you to sugar my tea. It was thoughtful of you to bring me tea in the first place.”

“Yes, miss,” I said. Thoughtful: good or bad?

She sighed. “And we haven’t heard back from your mother. Your name is Smith, though. Your last name. Until Lady Thorton told me, I was sure you were lying.”

“Yes, miss.”

“After that business about Hitler.”

I turned to go. I’d had an eventful morning, and I was hungry myself, and could do with some tea.

“It’s a common enough name, Smith,” Miss Smith said. “But still, I thought you were lying.”

She stayed in bed even after she finished the tea. I let Jamie rummage through the cupboard and eat anything he liked, and I did too, though I was pretty sure I’d get in trouble for it later on. I let Jamie skip his bath, but I took an extra-long one, with hot water so deep my legs floated. I pulled the sheets off the bed so it wouldn’t matter that Jamie had wet them the night before, and we slept fine.

In the morning Miss Smith got up, her frizzy hair a yellow cloud around her head. “I’ll try to do better,” she told us. “Yesterday was—about Becky. I’ll do better today.”

I shrugged. “I can take care of Jamie.”

“Probably,” Miss Smith said, “but somebody ought to take care of you.”

That was the first thing. The second was that the Royal Air Force built an airfield across the road from Butter’s pasture. It went up completely in three days, landing strip, huts, everything. Jamie, fascinated, kept sneaking over to watch, until an officer marched him back to Miss Smith with his hand around Jamie’s neck. “Keep him home, ma’am,” he said. “No civilians on the airfield.”

The third thing is that Billy White went back to London.

Jamie’d fussed about missing Billy and his friends, but I didn’t know how to find them, and I wasn’t going to walk the countryside in a blind search. I’d gotten the hang of crutches quick, so walking was easy, but I enjoyed having Jamie to myself. We were spending our days outside. There was a building in the garden called a stable, that Becky’s horses used to live in, and sometimes we played there, but mostly we were in Butter’s field, which I loved.

On Thursday all three of us walked into town, because we’d finally eaten up most of the food. The first thing we saw was Billy White with his mother and his sisters waiting at the station for the train.

“Billy!” Jamie shouted. He ran up to Billy’s family and grinned at them. “Where’re you staying? I’m not far, it’s just—”

Billy said, “Mum’s come to take us. We’re going home.”

Jamie stared. “But what about Hitler?” he asked. “What about the bombs?”

“Haven’t been any bombs so far,” Billy’s mother said. She had her arm around her youngest girl. When I smiled at the girl, Billy’s mother pulled her a little bit away from me, as though my bad foot might be catching. “And I can’t stand it, being away from them,” she went on. “It feels wrong. I reckon we’ll stick the war out together.” She gave me a sideways glance. “’S that you, Ada? Your mum said as how you’d gone too, but I didn’t believe it. Only you weren’t at your window.” She looked me up and down, particularly down, at my carefully bandaged foot. Miss Smith washed the bandages and gave me a clean one every day.

“I’m not simple,” I said. “I’ve got a bad foot, that’s all.”

“I dunno,” Billy’s mother said, still shielding her daughter. “Your mam—”

“I’ve written to her,” Miss Smith said, coming up behind us. “But perhaps you could take a message to her too. The doctor says—”

Billy interrupted. “I hate it here,” he said. “The people that took us, they’re mean as a bunch of starved cats.”

“I hate it here too,” Jamie said. He turned to Miss Smith. “Can I go home? Will you take us home?”

Miss Smith shook her head, smiling, as though Jamie were making a joke. “I’ve never even been to London,” she said. “I wouldn’t know where to go.”

“Home,” Jamie insisted.

“Where’s Stephen?” I asked.

Billy’s mom scowled. “He won’t come,” she said. “Thinks he’s important, he does.” She gave me another odd look. “I’m that surprised to see you out with ordinary people. I thought they’d put you in an asylum.”

From the tone of her voice it was clear she thought I should be locked away. The disgust in it stunned me. For years I’d waved to Billy’s mother out my window, and she always waved back. I’d thought she was a nice person. I’d thought she liked me. Clearly she did not. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know where to look. Susan’s hand touched my shoulder and I turned a little so that I could see the edge of her skirt. I couldn’t stand looking at Billy’s mother anymore.

The train came up and Billy’s mother herded her children toward it. Jamie began to howl. “Take me with you!”

Miss Smith held him back. “Your mother wants you here,” she said. “She wants you safe.”

“She misses me,” Jamie said. “An’ Ada’ll take care of me. Mam misses us. Right, Ada? Right? She wants us home!”

I swallowed. Maybe. After all, with me gone she didn’t have anybody to fix her tea. Maybe she’d be happy to see me, now that I could walk, especially with the crutches. Maybe she’d wonder why she never thought of crutches herself.

Maybe she’d see I wasn’t simple.

Or maybe I was. Maybe there was a reason they kept me shut up in one room.

A wave of dizziness swept me.
Think of Butter,
I told myself desperately.
Think of riding Butter.

Meanwhile Jamie’s screams increased. He kicked Miss Smith, hard, and tried to yank himself out of her grasp. “Billy!” he shouted. “Take me with you! I want to go! I WANT TO GO HOME!”

Miss Smith held on to him until the train had gone.

“I hate you!” Jamie sobbed, flailing his arms and legs. “I hate you, I hate you! I want to go home!”

Miss Smith grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him down the street in stony-faced silence. “Come along, Ada,” she snapped, without looking back.

Jamie continued to sob. Snot ran down his chin. “I hate you!” he howled. “I hate you!”

“Trouble?” asked a calm voice. I looked up. It was the iron woman, the one who put us into her automobile, and by her side herself in miniature, an iron-faced girl. One of the bright girls in ribbons, who had served us tea.

To my surprise, Miss Smith rolled her eyes and shook her head, as though all Jamie’s yelling hadn’t bothered her a bit. “It’s only a tantrum,” she said. “He saw his friend leave.”

The iron woman turned on Jamie. “Stop screaming,” she said crisply. “Stop it this instant. You’ll frighten the horses.”

Jamie stopped. He looked around. “What horses?”

The iron woman said, “It’s a figure of speech.” To Miss Smith she said, “At least a dozen of them have gone back already. I’ve told their parents over and over that it isn’t safe. London
will
be bombed. But it’s no use. Those simple-minded women prefer their present comfort to the long-term safety of their children.”

Simple-minded women. Simple like me. Maybe everyone was simple on my lane.

The iron woman eyed Jamie and me. “Yours are certainly looking better. A credit to you.”

“Hardly,” Miss Smith said. “All I did was put them in clean clothes and feed them.” She rubbed stinky lotion on our impetigo too, but I noticed she didn’t tell the iron woman that. Instead she said, hesitatingly, “Perhaps, if you have hand-me-downs—or if you know someone who does—I can’t afford all they’ll need for winter.”

The iron lady pulled a clipboard out of her large handbag. She probably held a clipboard in her sleep. “Of course,” she said, writing something down. “I’m organizing a used clothing collection in town. We don’t expect you to be able to cover clothing out of the allowance. They were supposed to bring their own—well, never mind. They should have come with more than they did. Obviously.”

Her iron-faced daughter was staring at my bandaged foot. I leaned close and whispered, “It just happened yesterday. I got stepped on by our pony.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. She whispered back, “That’s an awful lie.”

I said, “We have too got a pony.”

She said, “It doesn’t hurt that much when a pony steps on you. I’ve been stepped on dozens of times.”