Secrets of a Charmed Life (28 page)

June 18, 1958

Dear Emmy,

I had to take a few days off from the journal. Spilling everything about the bombing like that sort of took the breath right out of my lungs. I’ve been in a bit of a mental wasteland for the last few days—trouble concentrating at work, not sleeping well, things like that. Dr. Diamant told me this might happen and not to worry. It’s perfectly normal to need some time to sort out these memories that I’m dredging up. That hasn’t stopped Simon from worrying, unfortunately. He called Dr. Diamant and said that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I don’t know what Dr. Diamant told him but Simon said all right. All right. All right. Three times. Somehow she convinced him this was still a good idea. And so I am back.

It’s two a.m.

I can’t sleep, so I may as well write to you.

It’s hard to fully recall those first few days with Gramps and Granny. It’s almost as if there are rooms in my mind where all these memories are kept and some of those rooms have no doors. I know the memories are there but I’ve no way of getting to them. When Granny called Mrs. Billingsley on Monday, two days after the bombing, she was told Mum hadn’t shown up for work that day. Mrs. Billingsley had sent her butler to our flat to make sure Mum was all right, but he’d found our street bombed and our flat empty. All of the flats on our side were empty. He found no one to even ask if they’d seen her. The butler had taken it upon himself to check with the hospital, but there was no record of an Annie Downtree having been admitted.

Gramps and Granny were worried about me because I wouldn’t speak; the only time they heard my voice was when I screamed in my sleep. Granny told Gramps she wanted to take me to America to get me away from the war. Other family members of Oxford instructors had been evacuated to Connecticut under a private scheme, to the homes of Yale professors and staff members. Granny begged Gramps to see if she and I could go, even though everyone else had already left many weeks before. Gramps didn’t like the idea because of the U-boats patrolling the Atlantic. One ship full of evacuees, mostly children, had already been torpedoed.

But Granny insisted. She had to get me away from the war or she’d lose me like she lost Neville, just in a different way. I heard her say this.

We were at the docks at Liverpool just two days later, boarding a ship that would take me away from England for nearly five years. I don’t think Granny had any idea that’s how long we would be away. I don’t think anyone knew the war would last that long. On the passenger manifest I was listed as Julia Waverly. Granny said my father would want me to have his
last name since he had been taken from me so early in my life. I didn’t want a new last name but I was unable to argue that point. By the time I was able to speak my mind, I had been a Waverly for almost as long as I had been a Downtree and it didn’t seem to matter as much. Being a Downtree would not bring you back. I have been Julia Waverly ever since.

What I remember of the crossing is the swaying of the ship like a cradle being rocked, but I also remember there being alarms, and donning our life vests as U-boats were in the area and at any moment they might close in on us and blow our ship to bits. I remember Granny having to cram my arms through the vest as I fought and kicked. I also remember her pacing the floor by my cot in our stateroom. I can still see her shoes going back and forth; just her shoes, because I am under the cot. I remember dreaming that it’s not dead cats I see on Thea’s back steps; it is you and Mum and Neville.

The first few weeks after we arrived are a blur. Less than a blur. Those memories are in one of the rooms with no door. I think it’s odd that I can remember the smell of acrid smoke, the feel of broken glass under my shoes, and the open-eyed stares of those cats, but I can’t remember the first weeks of my life in tranquil America.

There was no war there, no sandbags or barrage balloons or running for cover. We lived on the third floor of a brick colonial situated on a peaceful tree-lined street with a Yale professor of history, Dr. Bower, and his wife, Florence. Their twin sons, Charlie and Randall, were in the United States Army Air Corps, training to be pilots. Granny had the bigger of the two rooms, furnished with a lovely canopied bed, but she often slept in the armchair in my room. At least for a while she did.

My room reminded me of the room you and I shared at Aunt Charlotte’s. It was nestled in the corner with a slanted roof that I could touch where it met the wall. After I had settled
in, I would lie in my bed, close my eyes, and imagine that I was back at Aunt Charlotte’s and you were just a few feet away. This was how I fell asleep every night for many, many nights—imagining you were in a bed next to me and that we were safe at Charlotte’s, the brides box on the nightstand between us along with my book of fairy tales.

While the rest of that September and then October and November are lost to me, I do remember my first Christmas in America. Snow covered the ground, lights shone in every window, and there were presents under a lovely tree. Florence made gingerbread men and decorated them with frosting faces and buttons. We drank hot chocolate while Professor Bower read from the Bible by a snapping, happy fire. The professor and his wife didn’t listen to the radio, as least not when I was in the vicinity, so there were no reports of doom telling us how terrible it was in Europe. School had been let out—I don’t recall much of my first months of school, I’m afraid—and Granny bought me a plaid wool coat and a matching tam with a pom-pom on top so that we could go for twilight walks under violet skies. I remember feeling a sense of tranquility for the first time in weeks and weeks. But when I heard carolers outside my window, I was back under my bed again while Granny paced the floor of that pretty little room, begging me to come out.

She didn’t find out for a long while why I couldn’t handle hearing Christmas carols. In some ways I still can’t. When I hear them now at Christmastime, I want to think only happy thoughts. But a niggling tug won’t let me forget Thea singing carols in her bomb shelter as she held me tight and hell fell down all around us.

There was a terrible night of bombing in London that same Christmas. Worse than the day you were taken from me, but I didn’t hear about it until later. Newspapers never made it home to the Bower house. The professor read them at the college and left them there.

I think I started to see that first troll of a doctor right after Christmas. I had begun to say a few words here and there. Mostly “no” and “I don’t want to.” Florence had a cute little spaniel named Pixie that I liked to play with and I would talk to her. But never more than a few sentences, and I always stopped when the adults froze like statues to listen to me. I knew if I started talking in full sentences to them, they’d start asking me questions.

So to Dr. Nielsen I went. I suppose he tried all the tricks he knew with me. But I didn’t trust him, Emmy. I didn’t believe that by telling him anything he could reverse time, and you and I could go back to that day at Aunt Charlotte’s when I found those notes you wrote. If I could have lived that moment over again, I would have told Charlotte what you were planning to do. I would have run down the stairs and shown her those notes. And yes, you would have been hopping mad at me. Maybe for quite a while. But then you would have softened as you always did. You would have forgiven me for tattling on you. And then you and I would have spent those five years of the war together at Aunt Charlotte’s. You would have continued to draw your lovely dresses. We would have celebrated our birthdays and Christmases without me under the bed. Mum would have come to visit us now and then. And when the war was over, we would have gone back to London. We’d be together and I would not have needed to count things to keep from going mad. You would have gotten your job back at that bridal shop you loved. (I’ve looked for that shop, too, but have not been able to find it.) And you would have made your wedding gowns and they’d be in the window just like all those other dresses had been, except yours would be more beautiful and I would have said,
I told you so
.

Could Dr. Nielsen have made that happen?

No, he could not.

He wanted me to talk about the horrible things that had taken place and which he could not change. What was the point of that?

I suppose Granny kept dragging me to him because he kept saying it might take time. By the end of May, she figured out he wasn’t going to be the one to help me. School was about to be dismissed and she wanted me to enjoy a happy summer, even if it meant a silent one.

I was actually sad to see the school term end. Even though my teacher could barely get a word out of me, I did well in school. Learning was my place of escape. Not school itself, but the activity of learning. It gave my brain something to do that was unrelated to the war and my losses. When Dr. Troll suggested perhaps Granny needed to consider institutionalizing me, she showed him my report card and said—so she told me—that what I needed was a break from doctors like him.

We spent the summer at a cabin the Bowers owned somewhere on a lake. I don’t remember what the lake was called. It was very beautiful there, Emmy. There was a girl in the cabin next to ours named Frannie who was a year younger than I was, and in Granny’s words, a relentless chatterbox. Frannie probably loved that I said practically nothing when we played together, because that allowed her to fill every silent moment with her ceaseless prattle. I felt very much at ease with Frannie. She did all the talking and never hungered for me to say anything in return. Some days I very nearly forgot why I was there.

Amazingly enough, whole days passed when I didn’t think of you and ache for a time machine.

Every summer we’d go back to the cabin on the lake and every year Frannie would be waiting for me.

The last time we went was the summer of 1944. I was eleven. Frannie wasn’t there when we arrived. She came a few weeks into July and she was different. Quieter. More like me. One morning just after she and her parents arrived, we went out on the lake in her little rowboat. She had never asked me
much about my life to that point. I figured Granny and Frannie’s mother had talked and Frannie had been apprised that I was a British girl who had fled the war in Europe. But that day she asked me if I knew what the war was like.

I nodded.

Is it terrible?
she asked.

Again, I nodded.

Then she told me her parents had been sent a telegram. Her brother was missing in action, somewhere in France. His plane had been shot down.

Do you think he’s afraid?
Frannie asked.

I thought about it for a moment and slowly nodded my head. Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. I’d seen fear in Granny’s eyes.

Do you think he’s okay?

She wanted what I wanted. To know that her brother was alive somewhere and would come back to her.

I spoke to her. Just one word.

Maybe.

She was no doubt surprised to hear my voice, but that I had offered a ray of hope was the bigger surprise.

The girl who knew what war was like was telling her not to give up hope.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s what the journal is supposed to show me, Emmy. Perhaps it is so I can know if it is possible to hold on to hope and still move on.

Is that possible?

I don’t know.

I am tired now.

Good night, Emmy.

Julia

June 22, 1958

Dear Emmy,

Simon and I are going to the ballet this afternoon.
Swan Lake
. He has a cousin who is dancing in it. After the performance there will be a party at his aunt and uncle’s house in Chelsea. I have met only his mother and father. Tonight I will meet everyone else. His brother, Dennis, and his wife, Trudie. His grandparents, both sets. Four sets of aunts and uncles and a dozen or more cousins.

I am a little nervous about it.

I never know what to say when people ask about my family. Maybe they won’t ask tonight. Maybe Simon has told them everything already and I can avoid having to explain it ten times over. Except that if they all know, then I will be subject to the pathetic stares. When you’re known as the young woman orphaned by
the war and tragically separated from your only sister, you can’t help but be rewarded with pathetic stares. No one really knows what to say to you, but they think hard to come up with something, and as they are blistering their brains to find the right words, they stare. They don’t mean to, but they do.

Simon will watch over me, thank goodness. I doubt he will leave my side for a second. He’s afraid I will get scared off and he’ll have to go back to the beginning and woo me all over again. Did I tell you what he does for a living? He’s an accountant for the company I work for. Our company makes maps and globes and atlases. I love working there. I love the idea that it’s important to know there are many places other than the one where you are. I am an assistant to the art director. It’s not like I am good at art, not like you. But I am good at maintaining the research files, and working with the surveyors and artists. I keep everyone in line, my boss likes to say. He told me he’s never met anyone who can keep track of all the details like I can.

I think it’s because during the war when I was forced to reinvent myself as Julia Waverly, I was highly aware of the details of my new life. I knew how many steps it was to the third floor of the Bowers’ house. I knew how many tiles there were on the bathroom floor. I knew how many knobs were on the kitchen cabinets. And how many books Professor Bower had in his study. I had counted all these things. Counting things was how I kept hold of my new life since it was all I had that I could control.

When I would think of you and Mum and the flat and the kittens and home, I would have to start counting something to keep myself from going crazy. Sometimes Granny would hear me whispering the numbers and she’d pretend that she hadn’t. One of the doctors she took me to told her it was my way of coping with what had happened and not to pester me about it. I think it worried her, though. Counting the rosebuds on the rug in the living room or slats in the blinds surely seemed pointless to her.

I no longer count to keep myself calm, but when I do have to count something, like presentation folders at work, it reminds me of how scared I was to come back to London when the war was over. Granny and I returned to England in June 1945. I was twelve but it was another four years before I saw London again.

Just as in America, school here in England wasn’t hard for me, but socially I was an outcast. Those of us evacuees who spent the war years in America were treated differently from those who had spent the war years in the English countryside, mostly because of our Yank accents, but also because it was believed we had not suffered like those who’d stayed had. My teen years weren’t the greatest. I am ashamed to tell you there were times when I wondered how much rope I would need and if it would hurt very much. . . .

I didn’t see a psychologist for the first couple of years we were back, but Granny sensed I was having a rough go of it. So she found one for me. Dr. Bristol was thirty-something and handsome. I remember looking forward to Tuesday afternoons when I would see him. He coaxed out of me a lot of what I have shared with you here. He’s the one who said I needed to visit London again, even if just for a few hours, so that I wouldn’t be afraid of it anymore. He even offered to come with Granny and me, which I was all for, but Granny said she could handle it.

Granny decided we’d go for tea at Harrods. Just for tea. Harrods wasn’t near Whitechapel or Saint Paul’s, so I wouldn’t have to see anything I didn’t want to see unless we started strolling east.

Did you know, Emmy, that fear can feel like heaviness? I am sure you probably do.

The whole time we were on the train, I seemed to be carrying the weight of those nine years I had been away from London. It was as if time itself were a tangible thing that one could put on a scale and then watch the needle swing right.

When we closed in on Paddington station, I looked for something in our car to count. I could find nothing, so I closed my eyes and counted seconds.

The train stopped and everyone stood up to be on their way. Granny waited until I stood before she rose as well. She silently took my hand and we got off. I counted hats on heads as we walked through the station and out to the queue of taxis waiting at the curb. Inside the cab, with Granny still holding my hand, I counted buses and bicycles and black cars as we made our way to Knightsbridge, a couple miles away.

By the time we stepped out of the cab a few minutes later, I had slowed to counting just my own breaths, slow and even. Fear is worse than pain, I think. Pain is centralized, identifiable, and wanes as you wait. Fear is a heaviness you can’t wriggle out from under. You must simply find the will to stand with it and start walking. Fear does not start to fade until you take the step that you think you can’t.

I got out of the cab onto the street and I stood there balancing the weight of nearly a decade of regret. Granny somehow knew just to stand still next to me after she’d paid the driver.

After a moment I knew I could walk and carry it because you would have wanted me to.

We had tea and Granny found things to talk about that had nothing to do with anything important. We were just like any other young woman and her grandmother out for an afternoon of shopping. I sat in my chair and drank from my cup as one in a near-dream state. Fear is not only a leaden foe, but a liar as well. It was not as bad as I thought it would be, sitting there in a London department store on an ordinary Saturday.

We walked to the underground to take a train back to Paddington. There was a terrible moment when we walked past a bridal shop and I was reminded of what I had stolen from you.

I’m sure you know I hid the brides box in the crawl space of our bedroom at Aunt Charlotte’s. When you went to get me a
drink of water, I stuck it on a ledge that is over the frame of the little door. You can only see it from the inside.

I am so sorry, Emmy.

I wish you could know how sorry I am.

Dr. Bristol was immensely proud of me when I saw him the following week and told him about the trip. He said I had crossed a bridge, a big one. And now that I had crossed it, I could take more trips to London, which Granny and I did over the next couple years. We even went to a church service at Saint Paul’s so that I could stand just a stone’s throw from where you and I lived and not be undone by it.

I stopped seeing Dr. Bristol just before I turned eighteen, at his advice, since he was a child psychologist and I was certainly no longer a child. I also came to realize he was married and a new father, so the attraction I’d had for him had started to diminish. He was very happy with my progress. I was talking, counting only when something truly needed to be counted, and I was able to stand on the streets of a London being rebuilt. Not only that; I would be starting college and handling my adult life just like those of my peers.

Everyone has good days and bad days,
Dr. Bristol told me.

I came to learn, though, that there are days that are neither good nor bad. There is a kind of day that is something else entirely.

On those days, you are restless for something. And that fidgety feeling doesn’t make your good days bad or your bad days good.

It just makes you hungry.

That was when I knew I had to move back to London to live, not just visit.

It’s time to get ready for the ballet.

Love,

Julia

June 24, 1958

Dear Emmy,

The ballet was wonderful. Beautiful, actually. And I had a surprisingly nice time meeting Simon’s family. No one asked me about my own family except to say things like
So Simon tells me your grandfather is a professor of literature at Oxford?
I cornered Simon and asked him what he had told everyone about me. He just said he told them I was lovely and smart and that I lost my family in the war. You can say that and it answers a thousand other questions. The war is still spoken of here as if it happened yesterday even though it’s been thirteen years since VE Day.

So instead of answering awkward questions about where was home for me and did I have any brothers and sisters, I answered questions about what it’s like to be the granddaughter of an Oxford don.

Granny and Gramps had wanted me to go to college just like they wanted Neville to. I did try, Emmy. I tried to be the person they wanted me to be. But I found myself hungering for London. It was as if London were calling me to come back and become reacquainted with it again. There was unfinished business between London and me, and I needed to attend to it.

My grandparents, especially Gramps, weren’t happy about my wanting to leave college before I graduated but they handled my decision better than they had handled my father’s. They didn’t cut me off, financially or personally, which is what they did to Neville. Sometimes you get a second chance in life. The thing was, as soon as I decided I needed to come back, I felt ready to come back. It was the strangest thing. It was 1953 and I had just turned twenty, the same age you were when the war ended.

I think that’s why I had to come back then.

I looked for you in the faces of the people I saw on the streets.

I steeled my resolve, made a list of all the bridal shops, and I went to each one, looking for your name on the dresses or your face behind the counter.

The first job I had was with the telephone company, which made it easy for me to look for your name in all the telephone exchanges in England, but I did not find you.

Gramps helped me get the job at Masters & Sons Cartographers. He went to school with Reginald Masters, the owner. I’ve been there for three years, and Simon for two. We became friends and then he asked me to dinner. He’s never had a steady girlfriend before. He’s the studious type. I have dated, but I can’t say I’ve had a boyfriend. I’ve had boys date me and boys dance with me, but I’ve never had a boy care for me like Simon does.

As I got to know him better, I learned that he’d spent the war far from his parents, in a Suffolk farmhouse, cared for by foster parents who hadn’t a tenth of the affection for him and his brother that they had for their own children. If that were not hard enough, he was teased by the local children for the way he spoke, his city ways, and his bookish looks and behavior. When he returned to London after five years as an evacuee, he felt as displaced as I did when I came back to England. He isn’t afraid to show his sensitive side, because it’s really the only side he has. It took him forever to work up the courage to kiss me.

I like that about him, Emmy. I like that the very thought of kissing me makes him tremble.

He would marry me tomorrow if I said yes.

He has told me a hundred times he loves me.

But I struggle to say this back to him, even though I think what I feel in my heart for him is love. And that’s what scares
me. I know what it is to have loved. To have a life that is uniquely yours and to have people in it who are your sun and moon and stars. I know that feeling.

And I dread how weak it makes us.

Simon says love doesn’t weaken us; it opens us. To love is not to be fragile; it is to be unlocked and open. And when something is open, other things can come in.

And things can be taken out,
I said to him. When you’re standing there doing nothing remarkable, all you love can be yanked out of your open arms.

What can be given in one moment can be taken in the next.