The War I Finally Won: Chapters 11–21

It had long brown hair tied back in plaits, like mine, and little green ribbons like the one Susan had given me.

For both Susan and Jamie, I’d made mittens out of bright red yarn. I was proud of them—they didn’t have any holes, and you could tell the right mittens from the left ones—but when we got ready to go to Thorton House, I could see how their garish color clashed with Susan’s dark green winter coat and navy wool hat.

“Welcome,” he said in a deep, solemn voice.

“We’ll be keeping a lookout for bombs or incendiaries. From the church steeple.”
Incendiaries were small bombs designed to start fires.

Jonathan grinned. I looked at Susan, anxious, but then Lord Thorton let out a rough sort of guffaw.

“Analytics?” said Lord Thorton.
“Well, yes,” said Susan. “Or some other type of computational work. There must be war projects or industrial things that aren’t classified.”

He said to Susan, “I know you as the spinster who was Becky Montgomery’s friend. The quiet one.”

She said she’ll continue your and Jamie’s stipend for the duration of the war.

Maggie had lent me a tweed coat, and I had jodhpurs and proper boots, Maggie’s hand-me-downs, so I knew I looked all right—I looked just like Maggie—but I felt wildly out of place.

There weren’t any hounds now. Instead we chased a trail of scraps of paper, strewn by Fred from horseback a couple of hours beforehand.

The other riders had left us far behind. We started after them at an easy canter.

Angel: A spiritual being believed to act as an attendant, agent, or messenger of God, conventionally represented in human form with wings and a long robe.

Ward. That word was complicated. It meant the rooms of a hospital, like where I’d stayed after my surgery. It meant a division of a city or a town. It meant a minor under care of a guardian—that was me—but then it said, “archaic: to guard.”
Archaic: belonging to the past.

The WVS was pleased to let me help fire-watch, but they said it would take a few weeks to get me onto the rota.

Right inside the church was a small door near the vestibule that I’d never noticed before.

“If they’re pulled in a certain order they make music. It’s called change-ringing. I was a change-ringer in my father’s parish, when I was a girl.”

Susan furrowed her brow.

“Yes,” Susan said, with asperity. “She has me.”

She stared back, indignant—whether at me or at being called a “project,” I didn’t know.

Since the Battle of Britain, her parents have been held in an internment camp. We’re doing our best to get her father released.

“I’ll put up with Ruth.”
“You will not ‘put up’ with her,” Susan retorted. “You’ll be kind to her. You’ll try to be her friend.”

“Many Jewish people follow strict dietary rules that include not eating pork. Ruth, you’ll have to let me know how to accommodate you. I probably don’t have enough kitchenware for full kosher but I’ll do my best.”

“Many Jewish people follow strict dietary rules that include not eating pork. Ruth, you’ll have to let me know how to accommodate you. I probably don’t have enough kitchenware for full kosher but I’ll do my best.”

“Until recently their educations have been sporadic.”

Ruth nodded, a touch defiantly.

They wore composed faces and were carefully polite.

It reminded me of how Mam sometimes smiled just before she started walloping me.

We sidled into the bell-ringers’ room. I made myself breathe deep, as quietly as I could.

She walked around the far side of the steeple and aimed the binoculars at the leaden sky.

I bit my lip hard and stifled a scream.