The Romeo and Juliet Code (20 page)

Most of October went by and Uncle Gideon did not take his walk down the beach with the folder under his arm, headed for Peace Island. He didn’t go that Saturday or the next or the next. And so we didn’t call Mr. Henley. We just waited, and Derek got a book out of the library about codes and code breaking and he would read parts aloud to me once in a while. But the book was terribly complicated and wasn’t much help.

We were given homework at school, and Mr. Bathtub wanted everyone in our class to read the newspaper, so I went into the library in the late afternoon and I sat at the oak table in there and looked at the headlines again. I read that Nazi tanks called panzers had gone all the way to Moscow and it was looking as if Russia was losing to the Germans. I read that a Nazi officer named Fritz Holtz had been killed by the French Resistance in a town called Nantes in France and that the Nazis had then killed fifty hostages to pay the Resistance back. I read that Nazi submarines continued to torpedo boats crossing the Atlantic. I read that they even came in close to the shores in America and prowled about as I had suspected. And then I put the newspaper down and felt sad and shivery and I looked out the window at the choppy October ocean.

And then another week passed and it was almost Halloween, my first. Derek and I planned our costumes and worked on them. Derek decided to go as Sir Gawain. He made his entire suit of armor out of cardboard and glitter and glue. He even made a helmet with a movable face guard.

I wanted to go as Frances Hodgson Burnett. Aunt Miami said she would help me with my costume. She went up into the attic with me and we opened old trunks, looking for the perfect Victorian dress and hat. Auntie kept finding things for the play and Juliet, like a lovely red velvet cape with a fur-trimmed hood.

As I was trying on a long white cotton dress with lace all over it and a bustle at the back, Aunt Miami said, “You know, Flissy, you really are growing up. It seems as if it is happening right before our eyes.”

“Do you think anyone will know I am Frances Hodgson Burnett?” I asked.

“Well, you can carry
The Secret Garden
around,” said Aunt Miami. “And hold it up when they ask. Because they always do ask. They never figure out anything. You could be a ghost in a sheet with two holes for eyes and they’d still say, ‘And what are you dressed up as, dear?’”

And then I said, “May I ask you a question, Auntie?”

“You’d better not, Flissy. The Bathburns tend to prefer silence.”

“Auntie, why did The Gram decide to adopt Derek? What made her do it?”

“Oh, perhaps to cheer Gideon up,” she said, closing the trunk. “Remember I told you he was heartbroken when he came back home to Maine. He had lost everything. But anyway, you shouldn’t be asking all this, and I didn’t even know you knew about Derek. You’re going to get me in trouble, Flissy Miss. Let’s just not talk about it, shall we?”

“Oh, look,” I said, “there’s a parasol and it’s only a little bit ripped. May I use it for tomorrow? Pretty please?” Miami trailed away and our conversation broke off as usual, and it wasn’t finished until late Halloween night.

Derek and I were all set to go trick-or-treating that night, but as we walked out along the beach, Sir Gawain and Frances Hodgson Burnett, every house was shuttered up and dark. We kept hoping one might be lit. But they were all gloomy and hollow and casting windy shadows in the early moonlight. Now the Bathburns really were the only family on this point and we came back with our sacks empty.

We had to drive into town to the church basement where they were having a Halloween party. Uncle Gideon took us and when he got out of the car, he put on his yearly costume, a big papier-mâché bathtub that went round his waist. He was carrying a long-handled bath brush, and now and again he would scratch his back with it and sing, “Scrub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.”

And he was ever so pleased with my costume. “May I have your autograph?” he said when I got out of the car. “Oh my, now I see. It’s you, Flissy. Well, you fooled me completely. I thought Frances Hodgson Burnett had finally come to Bottlebay, Maine.”

“Remember she died in 1924,” I said, trying to shut the rusty Packard door.

“Just give it a swift kick,” said Derek.

“Excellent advice, Sir Gawain,” Uncle Gideon said tapping his long-handled bathtub brush against Derek’s sparkly sword.

I was thinking about Miami and how she came out in the darkness as we were leaving earlier. She had pulled Mr. Bathtub aside and whispered, “Gideon, they called from the Halloween committee and asked for someone to play the piano at the party tonight. Would you do it this once?”

“No,” he said quite loudly. His voice seemed to growl, and he stood up tall for a moment like a great bear in Yellowstone Park. I had seen photos of those grizzlies in the
National Geographic
magazine in the library.

At the party, we played a game called bobbing for apples. Derek bit five apples that were floating in a tub of water while his hands were tied behind his back and he had almost fifteen cents in his pocket when we went home. All I had was a great bib of water on the front of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s lovely white dress. But I also had two small waxed-paper bags full of candy corn, peanuts, and popcorn balls because we had stopped at a few houses in town to trick-or-treat. One of the houses belonged to Mrs. Boxman. “Oh tra la la!” she said when she opened the door and saw us. “It’s Romeo himself!”

Derek frowned and closed his face guard down and said through the cardboard, “I’m not Romeo, I’m Sir Gawain.”

When we got home, The Gram and Aunt Miami were playing hearts in the parlor. I went into the dining room, looking to see if any letters were on the table. There were none. In the library was a newspaper, a few days old, dated, October 28, 1941. I read, “Yesterday on Navy Day President Roosevelt gave an inspiring speech, trying to convince all Americans that the Nazis pose a dangerous threat to the entire world.”

I sat under a lamp in the library in my Frances Hodgson Burnett dress. The wind sighed like a ghost at the window, and I heard Miami scream out. It seemed to shatter the house. The Gram had just beaten her at hearts again. Soon she came rushing into the library.

“I hate that game, especially with just two people.” Miami said. “I’m never playing it again.” She sat down on the piano bench and put her elbows on the nailed-down lid.

“Auntie,” I said, “what are you doing? Uncle Gideon said not to touch the piano.”

“Oh, I never listen to
him
,” she said. “Anyway, he’s gone upstairs.”

“Tell me, Auntie,” I whispered, “tell me
now
why he has nailed the piano shut. Why?”

“You never give up, do you? You are like a little spotted sandpiper on the beach, those little birds that never stop running up and down. My poor brother. He is
so
talented. And handsome, really, in his own way. I have to tell you the music teacher at Babbington thinks he’s wonderful. You know what I mean.”

“I see,” I said. “And the piano?”

“Yes, well, okay, but you mustn’t say anything. In England, Gideon had a part-time job as the jazz pianist in a club at Oxford while he was finishing up school. Danny had been away writing his thesis in France and he came into the club that night and met Winnie for the first time. Gideon was at the piano supplying the lovely music. Danny talked with Winnie for a while and then he asked her to dance. You know the rest of the story.”

“Was it not very nice of my Danny?” I said.

“No, it wasn’t,” said Miami, “but it was romantic, wasn’t it? When Gideon came back home to Maine, he nailed the piano shut, and he has never played another note since then.”

I will be twelve years old in three months, which makes me eleven and three-fourths. I have been in Bottlebay now for six months, since May, and in those six months, I think I have grown five inches. Derek said I was a mere pipsqueak when he first saw me, and it feels like ages since I had a birthday.

We were still in London when I turned eleven. I thought, because of the war, I wouldn’t have a proper birthday, but Winnie had been saving a secret stash of sugar and flour and she made a little birthday cake for me. She woke me up singing “Happy Birthday” and brought me the cake with a candle burning on it while I was still half asleep.

When I got up, we made short work of that cake and it was a lovely one too. Winnie knew how to make little blue roses out of icing and she put them round the edge of the cake. “In another life,” she always said, “I will be a baker and I will have a shop full of beautiful rose-covered cakes.”

Danny was smiling at her with great admiration, but at the same time, he looked a bit sad. There is a photograph back in London in our flat that shows Winnie and Danny and me with the lovely birthday cake. Alice Wentley took the picture. She said it was the last time she would come in to London. And that’s when Danny said, “Oh, we’ll be leaving soon anyway.” And he put one arm round Winnie and the other round me and smiled. Alice Wentley took another photograph.

Then Winnie said, “Go get one of my hats and put it on and we’ll do a birthday photograph of you wearing a big birthday hat.” And so I did. I went into their bedroom and looked about and then I opened the cupboard door and started rummaging a bit, looking for a hat, which I found.

And while I was in the cupboard, I saw a man’s overcoat hanging there in the darkness. I hadn’t noticed it before. And when I opened the front of the coat, I saw it had a French label. For some reason, that made me look in the inner pocket. Then I pulled my hand back quickly because there was a gun in there. It was small but different from a toy gun in that it was very heavy, and when I let go of it, it dropped back down deep into the pocket.

I went on to sing another round of “Happy Birthday” with Winnie and Danny and Alice Wentley in the kitchen, and later when I thought about it, I tried to remember what I had really seen and I wondered if perhaps it had just been a dream.

That autumn in Maine, the USS
Denobola
arrived in Casco Bay. We read about it in the Portland papers. It was a great big tanker that was sent here to service the whole fleet of US destroyers that would leave from Portland harbor to escort the cargo ships crossing the ocean to bring supplies to England. President Roosevelt had decided finally to protect and accompany the cargo ships with American destroyers because the Nazis had been sinking hundreds of cargo vessels as they crossed the ocean. They were trying to cut off the food and fuel supply to England.

Sometimes we could see a fleet passing along the horizon, one cargo ship with a group of big US destroyers surrounding her. Derek and I loved to watch them through our binoculars. Uncle Gideon too would come out on the porch and stand there with us, waving to them. He said without those cargo ships, England would starve.

Derek said that he had seen the cruiser ship the USS
Augusta
going by with seven destroyers protecting her in August. That was the ship that was supposed to have been carrying President Roosevelt back from his secret meeting with Mr. Winston Churchill. Derek said the ship he saw was flying a blue flag with four stars, which meant there was an admiral on board. At the time, he didn’t know that President Roosevelt might also have been on board. A few days later, Roosevelt was spotted in Rockland, Maine, and that’s when everyone figured it out. Still, no one knew where the secret meeting had taken place. Oh, I wish I had seen the USS
Augusta
go by that day, but I was out in the salt marsh with Auntie Miami sketching.

For that whole autumn, Derek and I kept on waiting for Uncle Gideon to go back with his folder to Peace Island. But so far, he hadn’t gone at all. Both he and I continued to wait for a letter from Europe, but no letter came, and Uncle Gideon seemed quieter than usual and more than once he stopped me on the porch or in the kitchen to ask if I hadn’t seen a letter or misplaced a letter. I always had to say no.

One Saturday after breakfast, the mail was delivered by the weekend postman, an older gentleman who moved quite slowly and sometimes mixed up the mail and gave us letters belonging to the White Whale Inn down the beach. I fetched the mail that day and there was nothing much there, just a newspaper or two. I could see Uncle Gideon looking out through the lace curtains in the dining room, watching, waiting. After that, he seemed rather cross, which was not his usual way at all. Then, just about midmorning, all of a sudden he set off down the beach anyway, with his folder under his arm. He didn’t walk as briskly as he had earlier and he seemed to be looking for an answer in the sand beneath his feet.