The War that Saved My Life (13 page)

Jamie leaned into Miss Smith’s arms. She held him tight, rocking him softly back and forth. I stood still, absorbing what I was seeing: Jamie turning for comfort to someone other than me.

We ran into Lady Thorton in the village when we were shopping later that week, and she told us that Maggie—she called her Margaret, of course—had gone off to her school, and wouldn’t be home until Christmas. I was sorry not to see her again. I wanted to talk to her when she hadn’t just been hit on the head. I wanted to know if she’d still like me when she wasn’t woozy.

Jamie kept hating school. He skipped twice, and after that the teacher wrote Miss Smith a note, and Miss Smith started to walk him to school every afternoon. Once he was inside the building, he was trapped.

I knew how it felt to be trapped. I’d been trapped all summer in our flat. I’ll been trapped all my life in our flat. But I couldn’t understand why Jamie hated school. Most of the kids from our neighborhood back home were there, including all of Jamie’s friends except Billy White. They had breaks where they got to run and play in the school yard. Plus, pretty soon he’d be able to write and read, and then Miss Smith wouldn’t have to read us
Swiss Family Robinson
at night anymore. Jamie could read it to himself.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, when we asked him. “I’m sorry,” he said, when he wet the bed, which he did every night now. “I want to go home,” he told me.

“You’d miss Miss Smith,” I said nastily.

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “I’d have Mam.”

I could imagine Mam might have softened toward us, or at least toward Jamie. She probably missed us at least a little.

“They have school at home too,” I said.

He shrugged. “Mam won’t make me go.” I knew this was probably true.

Meanwhile Miss Smith was in a fit because Mam hadn’t responded to any of her letters. She asked me, “Does your mother know how to read?”

I shrugged. How would I know?

“Surely there’s a social worker—a priest—someone who could read it to her, and write out her reply?”

Probably there was, but Mam would never ask them. “Why’s it matter?” I asked. So long as Mam knew where we were, and could come get us when she decided to. “Do you want her to come take us home?”

Miss Smith gave me a strange look. “I do not. You know why it matters.”

I didn’t.

Sometimes I was so angry about everything I didn’t know.

Miss Smith bought acres of black material for the blackout. We’d been under blackout regulations since the first day of evacuation, before the war even began. It meant that nobody, no houses, buildings, shops, or even things like buses or cars, was supposed to show any sort of light outside after the sun went down. That way if the Germans came to bomb at night, they wouldn’t be able to see where any of the cities or villages were. It was harder to hit a dark place than a lit one.

For the first month Miss Smith hadn’t bothered covering the windows—she just didn’t put any lights on at night. Jamie and I went to bed before the sun went down, so we didn’t care, and Miss Smith could sit and brood in a dark room as easily as in a bright one. But now the sun was setting earlier, so Miss Smith made blackout curtains for the upstairs windows, and fabric stretched over frames for the windows downstairs.

We stayed up late one Saturday, putting all the blackout up, then turning on all the lights inside. Jamie and I walked around the house outside, looking for any chinks of light, and yelling to Miss Smith when we saw one. She adjusted the curtains until the chinks were gone.

Afterward she made us hot cocoa. “Very good,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll get used to having the house this dark.” She looked almost happy, almost cheerful for a change.

I wondered what it would be like if Jamie and I really were stuck here all winter. I hated winter in the flat, so cold. Miss Smith had a fireplace in the main room. She could burn coal.

“I haven’t had my sewing machine out since Becky died,” she continued. “It felt good to be making something, even if it was only those awful curtains. I suppose I might run up a few things for the two of you.”

Miss Smith had made us try on all the clothes Lady Thorton brought, and give back whatever didn’t fit. She’d also thrown away the clothes we’d come from London in. Still, I had three blouses, two skirts, two sweaters, a dress, a coat, and a pair of riding pants: more clothes than I’d owned in my lifetime. I couldn’t imagine needing anything else. “Dressing gowns,” Miss Smith said, as though reading my mind. “For winter. Something warm you can ride in. Perhaps something pretty? The red dress is very nice, but it’s not the best color for you.” She looked at me in a way that gave me the feeling of being a fish on a slab. “Blue, perhaps. Or a nice bottle green. Green’s a good color with your complexion. Velvet? I loved the velvet dress I had as a girl.”

“I hate velvet,” I said.

She laughed. “You wouldn’t know velvet if your underwear was made from it,” she said. “Ada, that’s a fib. Why?”

I said, “I don’t want you making me things.”

Her smile faded. “Why not?”

I shrugged. I had more than I needed. More than I felt comfortable with, really. I was still the girl I’d seen in the train station mirror, still the feeble-minded girl stuck behind a window. The simple one. I was okay with wearing Maggie’s castoffs, but I knew my limits.

Jamie leaned forward. “Will you make me a velvet?” he asked.

Miss Smith’s smile returned. “I will not,” she said. “I’ll make you something stout and manly.”

Jamie nodded. “Like in the book,” he said.

In the book, that stupid Swiss Family Robinson was all the time making and finding things. It was like magic, it was, how the father would think it was a shame they didn’t have any wheat for bread, and next thing they’d stumble onto a whole wheatfield, or a wild pig would run out of the forest just when they got a hankering for bacon. They’d build a mill to grind the wheat to flour, and a smokehouse for the pork, out of nails and wood they just happened to have on hand. Jamie loved it; he begged for more of the story every night. I was tired of those idiots living on an island with everything they could ever want. I didn’t care if I never heard another word.

“You won’t have time to make us anything,” I said. “We won’t be here that long.”

Miss Smith paused. “The war doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly,” she said.

“Right.” More and more of the evacuated children had gone back to London, but not us. Not yet. “You’ll be glad to get rid of us,” I said. “You didn’t want us in the first place.”

Miss Smith sighed. “Ada, can’t we have a happy night? Can’t we drink cocoa and be happy together? I know I said I didn’t want evacuees, but I’ve explained, it wasn’t anything to do with you. I didn’t
not
choose you.”

Everyone else did. I put my mug down. “I hate cocoa,” I said, and went to bed.

It was Miss Smith, not me, who saw the welt on Jamie’s wrist.

We were having dinner. Jamie reached across the table for another piece of bread and Miss Smith grabbed his arm. “What’s that?” she asked.

When she pushed his sleeve back I saw the deep red mark on Jamie’s wrist. It reminded me of when I’d tied him up in our flat, only worse: His skin had been rubbed away until it bled. It looked awful.

Jamie snatched his arm back. “Nothin’,” he said, pushing his cuff back down.

“That’s not nothing,” Miss Smith said. “What happened?”

He wouldn’t say.

“Did somebody hurt you?” I asked. “Somebody tie you up? Some boy at school?”

Jamie looked at his plate. He shrugged.

“Oh, honestly,” Miss Smith said. “Speak up! You can’t let people bully you. Tell us what’s wrong so we can help you.”

He wouldn’t talk, not then nor later to me in the bed. “You’ve got to tell me,” I coaxed. “I take care of you, remember?”

He wouldn’t tell.

At lunch the next day Miss Smith surprised me by saying, “Ada, would you like to come with me to take Jamie to school? We might do a bit of shopping on the way home.” I was worried enough about Jamie that I nodded, even though I suspected her of plans involving velvet.

Miss Smith marched Jamie into the school building the way I supposed she always did. I stayed outside. “We’ll go get a cup of tea,” she said, when she returned, “and come back in half an hour.”

We went to a tea shop, which was a place full of tables where you could buy things to eat and drink. Like a pub, only without beer, and cleaner.

“Miss,” I whispered, taking my seat, “why are there blankets on the tables?”

“They’re called tablecloths,” Miss Smith whispered back. “They’re to make the tables look nice.”

Huh, I thought. Imagine dressing up tables. Imagine wasting cloth to dress up tables.

A lady came over and Miss Smith asked for scones and a pot of tea. I remembered to put my napkin on my lap and to say thank you to the lady when she brought the tea, and the lady smiled and said, “What nice manners! She’s an evacuee?”

I didn’t know how the lady could tell, and I didn’t like it that she could. Miss Smith said, “It’s your accent, you talk different from us country people.”

I talked different from posh people is what she meant. I knew I did, and I didn’t like it, either. I was trying the best I could to sound like I fit in.