The War that Saved My Life (33 page)

“It’s nothing to you what happens to us,” I said. “You only brought us back because you thought it would cost more to keep us away.”

“And so it would have,” Mam said. “You saw that letter. Why should I pay for you to live better than me? When you’re nothing but a—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. I worked hard to keep my voice quiet and even. I was going to have the truth said plainly. I was done with lies.

“Nineteen shillings,” Mam said. “Nineteen shillings a week! When they first let you go away for free. You never cost me no nineteen shillings a week. It’s robbery, that’s what it is.”

“If you don’t have to pay, you won’t care if we leave,” I said. “I can arrange that. We’ll go away and you won’t have to pay for anything.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re up to, girl. I don’t know where you got all these words. Talk, talk.”

“I could get my foot fixed,” I said. “Even now. I don’t have to be a cripple. You don’t have to be ashamed of me.” A thought went through my head:
Susan isn’t ashamed.

Mam’s face turned red. “I’m never paying to fix your foot.”

“It would have been easy to fix, when I was a baby.”

“Oh, that’s lies! You can’t believe what people say! Lies! I told your father—”

My father. I’d read about him in the newspaper clipping in Mam’s drawer. I said, slowly, “He would have fixed me.” It was a guess.

“He wanted to,” Mam said. “He was the one that wanted babies. It was him always rocking you, singing to you.”

I felt tears dripping down my cheeks. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I said, “You never wanted us. You don’t want us now.”

Mam’s eyes blazed. She said, “You’re right, I don’t.”

“You never wanted us,” I said.

“And why would I?” Mam said. “It was all him, calling me unnatural, wanting babies all the time. Then I got stuck with a cripple. And then a baby. And then no husband.
I never wanted either of you.
”

Jamie made a little noise. I knew he was crying but I couldn’t look at him yet. I said, “So you don’t need to keep us now. You won’t have to pay. We’ll be gone in the morning. We’ll be gone for good.”

Mam got up. She took her purse and hat. She turned back to look at me. “I can get rid of you without paying anything?”

I nodded.

She grinned. It was her stuffing-Ada-into-the – cabinet grin. “Is that a promise?” she said.

All of my life I would remember those words.

I said, “Yes.”

I held Jamie and we cried and cried. His tears wet the front of my shirt and my snot got into his hair. We cried like I’d never cried before.

It hurt so badly. The ache in my heart was worse than my foot had ever been.

When we stopped crying I held him in my arms and rocked him back and forth. At last he looked up at me, his lashes still fringed with tears. He said, “I want to go home.”

“We are,” I promised him. “As soon as the sun’s up, we’re going.” I could read street signs now. I could find my way. I didn’t have any money for a train fare, but I was willing to bet there would be a WVS post somewhere. The WVS women would help us out.

I got out the birth certificates and showed Jamie his. “You were born on November 29, 1933,” I told him. “You are seven years old.” I showed him the marriage certificate too. “Our father’s name was James, just like yours.” And I took out the last piece of paper, a newspaper article.
Accident at Royal Albert Dock Kills Six.
“He died when you were a tiny baby. When I was just turned four.”

I put the marriage certificate and the newspaper clipping back in the drawer, but stuffed the birth certificates into my jodhpur pocket, ready for the morning.

Whoop-WHOOP. Whoop-WHOOP. Whoop-WHOOP.

The sound came from the open window. Louder and louder.

An air raid.

I didn’t know where the shelter was.

I didn’t have crutches. I hadn’t walked far on my bad foot for a long, long time.

Jamie grabbed my hand in panic. The siren’s wail grew louder. “Come on!” I said.

“Where?”

I pretended I knew. “Down the stairs!” People were hurrying out of the flats, rushing down with bedding in their arms. I couldn’t slide down the stairs, not in the crowd, so I clutched the rail with both hands and went as fast as I could while people pushed past me. Jamie held on to my shirt, trembling. The siren began to wind down, its noise replaced by far-off blasts.

Bombs.

Out in the dark street, I couldn’t see where to go. I could hear people, but they seemed to be moving in all directions. Shouts echoed between the buildings. I grabbed Jamie’s hand and turned at random, moving as fast as I could. An open doorway, a stair going down—anything—

A bomb exploded overhead. The streets rang with the sound of shattering glass. Far in front of us, toward the docks, the sky began to glow red. Fire. The docks were on fire.

A building behind us exploded. The shock wave threw us into the street. My ears felt like they’d exploded too. Bricks rained down, and pieces of glass and rubble. I put my arms over Jamie’s head.He looked like he was screaming, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything.

I scrambled to my feet, pulling him with me. There in front of us was an open door. Steps leading down. A shelter. Thank God.

Strangers hauled us inside. Down the stairs to a basement room full of people, hot and damp. Concerned faces, lips moving, saying things I couldn’t hear. Hands holding us up, cradling us, offering us tea. Wiping blood from Jamie’s face. Wiping my face as well.

People made room for us on the concrete floor. Someone wrapped a blanket around us. I hung on to Jamie. I would never let go of him, I thought. Never.

Eventually we slept. In the morning an air raid warden roused us all. “The fires are getting closer,” he said. “We’ve got to clear everyone out.”

I sat up. The docks had been on fire. But they were a long way off. Weren’t they?

It wasn’t until the man answered me, saying, “All sorts of stuff is on fire, miss. The water mains are broken and they’re having a time getting the blazes out,” that I realized I had spoken. Then I realized I could hear. My ears still rang, but they were working again.

I shook Jamie. He emerged from sleep like a rabbit from a burrow, a tiny bit at a time. “I want to go home,” he said.

I nodded. “Yes.”

He was gray with dust from head to toe. Smears of red from his bloody nose still ran across his neck. His shirt was torn and he was missing a shoe. I supposed I looked as bad, or worse. “Come on,” I said.

We emerged onto the ruined street, where gaps showed in the rows of buildings like missing teeth. A pall of dust and smoke choked the sunlight, but the street sparkled as though covered with stars. Glass. All the shattered glass.

And coming toward us, picking her way through the rubble and debris, a small figure with frizzy blond hair poking out the sides of her hat. She looked like a thin, very determined witch. I stared, disbelieving. My voice dried up in my mouth.

Not Jamie. “Susan!” he screamed.

Her head snapped up as if yanked by a string. Her mouth flew open, and then she was running toward us, and Jamie was running, knocking into her, burying his filthy face in her skirt, and then I caught up, and before I knew it her arms were around me too. Her wool cardigan felt scratchy against my face. I put my arms around her, over the top of Jamie’s head. I held on tight.

“Oh, my dears,” she said. “What a disaster. What a miracle. You’re all right. You’re both all right.”

A restaurant near the train station was open despite having had its windows blown out. Susan ordered tea, then took us to the loo and tried to clean us up. “Where are your crutches?” she asked me. “Oh, Ada, your poor feet.” Despite my stockings, my feet were covered with cuts. “What happened to your shoes?”

“Mam took them,” I said. “And then I couldn’t get to the shelter fast enough. Not before the first bombs fell.”

She pressed her lips together, but didn’t speak. Back in our seats she continued to sit silently. A waitress brought us sandwiches and we began to eat.

“How did you find us?” Jamie asked.

“Your mother left her letters behind. One of them had her address on it. But that building—” She paused. “Well, it took a hit, I’m afraid. But some of the people who lived there had come back, were standing by the rubble this morning, and one woman thought she remembered seeing you going down the stairs.”