The War that Saved My Life (15 page)

“No!” I said. I added, “Stephen’s not my friend.”

Miss Smith sat down and looked at me. “You told me he carried you to the train station,” she said. “That sounds like something a friend would do.”

Maybe.

“The way you helped Margaret Thorton when she was hurt. You were a friend to her the way Stephen was a friend to you.”

I did want to count Maggie as a friend. I guessed I wouldn’t mind counting Stephen as one, only it was harder to be friends with someone who helped you than someone you’d helped.

“I know you know how to behave nicely,” Miss Smith continued. “You did when we went out for tea the other day. And I’d walk you to the colonel’s house, and pick you up again when you were through. You wouldn’t be there very long. Perhaps an hour. You’d have a treat and a cup of tea, and talk. That would be all.”

I scowled. “Why do you want me to go?”

She sighed, air coming out her nose so she soundedlike Butter. “I don’t. I don’t care what you do. Only I thought you’d like to be around someone your own age, for a change, and I was happy for you that you’d gotten the invitation.”

I swallowed. I didn’t feel happy. I felt something else. Scared? I didn’t know. “I don’t want to go,” I said. “You don’t have to write anything.”

“I have to write and decline the invitation,” Miss Smith said. “You’ve got to answer, either way.”

I hadn’t known that, of course. I kicked at the chair leg with my good foot while she got out paper and a pen. She wrote something down, then shoved it toward me. “That says: ‘Miss Smith regrets that she is unable to accept your kind invitation for October seventh.’ That’s how you say no politely. And quit kicking the chair.”

I kicked harder. I didn’t care if I was polite or not. “I don’t need the colonel staring at my foot,” I said.

“How could he?” Miss Smith asked. She grabbed my good foot and held it still. “I said, stop it. And the colonel wouldn’t be staring at you under any circumstances. He can’t see much of anything. He’s gone blind.”

On the actual day of the seventh it rained, cold and hard. I couldn’t ride. Miss Smith gave Jamie scissors and a magazine with pictures of planes in it, and he was happy cutting them out and then flying them around the rug. I didn’t have anything to do. “I couldn’t have gone to that stupid tea anyhow,” I said.

Miss Smith looked up from her sewing machine. She’d found some old towels and was turning them into dressing gowns for Jamie and me. Dressing gowns were like coats you put on over your pajamas in winter when you weren’t in bed. It wasn’t winter cold yet, but it was cold enough that Miss Smith had lit the coal fire in the living room. That and the kitchen range kept the house warm.

“We’d have used my big umbrella,” Miss Smith said. “You still could have gone.”

“Can I go now?” I asked.

Miss Smith shook her head. “Once you’ve given your answer you can’t change your mind,” she said. “It’s not polite.”

“I don’t care about polite!”

“Maybe not,” she said, crisply, “but the colonel does, and tea parties are about being polite.”

I stomped my crutch. It landed on one of Jamie’s paper planes, smashing it into the rug. Jamie howled. I didn’t care.

Miss Smith got up. “What’s wrong with you?”

“My stomach hurts!”

“You’re angry,” she said. “But you can’t take it out on Jamie. Say you’re sorry and see if you can fix that plane.”

“I’m not sorry,” I said.

Miss Smith pressed her eyes shut. “Say it anyhow,” she said.

“No!”

“Jamie, come here.” Miss Smith sat down on the sofa and opened her arms, and Jamie crawled into her lap. Ever since she’d hugged him in his classroom, he’d been cuddling up to her. I could hardly stand it. “Your sister’s having a hard time,” Miss Smith told him. “She didn’t mean to rip your plane.”

I wanted to say, I did too, only it was such a lie. I never meant to hurt Jamie. He just sometimes got in the way. But looking at him curled up on Miss Smith’s lap made me want to scream. Nobody did that for me.

Except that Miss Smith patted the space beside her. “Sit down,” she said. “No, really. Sit.”

And then she put her arm around me, and pulled me halfway over.

She did.

I was almost on her lap.

“You’re so stiff,” she said. “It’s like trying to comfort a piece of wood.”

It felt very odd to have her touch me. Of course it made me tense. But I didn’t go away inside my head. I sat on the sofa with Miss Smith’s arm around me, and Jamie breathing soft near my shoulder, and I watched the coal fire flicker, and I stayed right there, right there in that room, and none of us moved for half an hour. Jamie fell asleep, and Miss Smith and I just sat, neither of us saying a word, until it was time to put the blackout up, and make tea.

Butter refused to ever do anything but walk.

I was nice to him. I tried hard not to smack him, even when his laziness angered me. I brought him treats, and I brushed him every day, and sometimes when I rode him I dropped the reins on his neck and just let him wander around the pasture however he liked. When I stood at the corner gate and called his name, he came right to me, every time, and he stood without being tied while I brushed him and put his bridle on. I knew he liked me. He really did. But he wouldn’t go faster, no matter what. He wouldn’t run, and until he would run, I knew we’d never be able to jump.

I was afraid Lady Thorton hadn’t meant it when she said I could ask Mr. Grimes for help, but in the end I decided I had to take the chance.

“I’m going to visit Mr. Grimes,” I said at lunch one day. It was a cold day; I was glad to be wearing one of Maggie’s old sweaters.

Miss Smith gave me an eye. “How and why?”

“I’ll ride Butter,” I said.

Miss Smith stared.

“I do ride him quite a bit,” I said. “We get on well He’s a very nice pony. He wouldn’t mind taking me there.”

“Ada,” Miss Smith said, “I may be negligent, but I am not blind. I’m well aware how much you ride that pony.”

“Yes, miss,” I said.

“I’ve told you and told you to call me Susan,” she said. “Your refusal to do so is starting to feel like an affront. Why do you want to visit Mr. Grimes?”

“I just want to,” I said. “He was nice to me.
Susan,
” I added.

She rolled her eyes. “And?” she prompted.

“And I’m having trouble with Butter and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I can’t hardly get him to move. Miss—the iron-face—I mean, Maggie’s mum—”

“Lady Thorton,” prompted Miss Smith.

“Yeah. Her. She said if I had trouble I could ask Mr. Grimes for help.”

Miss Smith picked up a piece of carrot with her fork. She put it into her mouth and chewed slowly. “It hardly sounds like Butter,” she said. “When I rode him he was quite keen, and he’s not gotten that much older.” She picked up another piece of carrot. “All right,” she said, after she’d chewed it and swallowed. “You may go. Do you remember how to get there?”

I nodded. It was easy, just the two turns, plus there was a fancy fence and iron gates at the start of the drive. Couldn’t miss those.

Miss Smith said, “If you’re going to be riding out on the road, it might be better if you put a saddle on him. You could take the right stirrup off, so it wouldn’t bang against his side.” She knew I wouldn’t be able to use the right stirrup. It would hurt too much.

“Is his the little one?” I asked. There were three saddles in the storage room, hung on racks and covered with cloth. Two were the same size and one was smaller.

“Yes,” Miss Smith said. “I’ll show you.”

“’S all right,” I said. “I don’t need you.”

She looked at me for a long time. “I never know what to do for the two of you,” she said at last. “I should have gone to Jamie’s school earlier. I probably should supervise you more. But you’d hate it, wouldn’t you?”

I didn’t think this was the sort of question that needed an answer. I got up and scraped my plate into the trash, then filled the sink with soapy water to do the dishes.

“Will you at least tell me if you’re having trouble? Ask, if you need help?”

I didn’t look at her. “I won’t need help,” I said.

Behind me Miss Smith sighed. “Have it your way,” she said at last.

The saddle was awkward but I got it on him. I started to climb on, and the whole saddle shifted to one side. I got off, put it right, and tightened the girth again—it had gone loose, I didn’t know why. The second time I climbed aboard it stayed steady. We went through the gate and ambled down the road.

The airfield no longer showed any traces of the explosion or the burned plane. Jamie’d said three people died, but he didn’t know them. In the last week more huts had gone up at the airfield, and one big tower that no one knew what was for. Planes sat parked in rows at the far side of the runway, and one plane kept coming toward the runway, touching down for a moment, and then rising into the air again. Round and round in loops. Butter barely flicked an ear at it. To him, planes landing and taking off had become common as trees.

Partway down the road Butter balked, and wanted to turn and go back home. I made him continue. He went stubborn after that, mouthing the bit and flicking his ears at me, as though cursing me in some low horse language. He walked slower than ever, and I thought with longing of Jonathan’s horse. A month ago I’d been thrilled with Butter, and now I wanted something more.

Two months ago I’d not seen trees.

Eventually we made it to Maggie’s house, and around to the stable yard. Mr. Grimes was there in the yard, rinsing a big gray horse with water from a bucket. “Aye,” he said when he saw me.

“Aye,” I said back, suddenly feeling shy. He hadn’t said I could visit—only Maggie’s mum had said that, and maybe Mr. Grimes wouldn’t like it. I slid off Butter and put my right foot behind my left.

Mr. Grimes looked me up and down. “Wait there,” he said. He put the horse he was tending into a stall. “Now,” he said, coming toward me, “explain what you were doing riding this poor animal down the road.”

“I wanted help,” I said. “I can’t make him go.”

“I should think not.” He bent toward Butter’s forefeet. “Hasn’t had his feet trimmed in years, has he? Bet not since that other one died. That Miss Becky.” He stalked off, and came back with his hands full of metal tools. “You just hold him,” he said. He cradled Butter’s hoof upside down in his hand, and then with a sort of pincher thing he
cut Butter’s hoof right off.

I screamed. Butter startled. Mr. Grimes straightened, dropping Butter’s foot. Butter still had quite a bit of hoof left, I saw. But the cut-off part lay on the cobbled yard, curved and thick and horrible-looking. Mr. Grimes said, “Does it look like I’m hurting him?”

It didn’t. I couldn’t believe it. Butter stood perfectly calm.

“Ponies’ hooves are like our fingernails,” he said. He picked up another tool and rasped Butter’s short hoof smooth. “They grow and they have to be trimmed.”

Miss Smith was a bear for having our fingernails trimmed. She’d trimmed them the second day we were with her, and our toenails too, and she kept on us to trim them every week. With clippers, not just nibbling off the broken bits like I was used to. It was strange, but Mr. Grimes was right, it didn’t hurt.