The War That Saved My Life: Chapters 35–46

“I’ll be glad to come to the party. Home’s dreadful, you can’t imagine. I’ve never liked school, but now home’s worse. Mum’s in a funk all the time.”

Every time I saw Lady Thorton she seemed in constant motion, making lists, chivvying volunteers, commanding the WVS. When I said so, Maggie grimaced.

“Mum can’t get past it,” she said. “Her brothers died in World War I. All three of them. Pilots.”
I shuddered. “Maybe Jonathan should have gone into infantry.”

“If he dies, Mum will die too,” Maggie said. “She had two other boys after Jonathan, before me. All of them, all three, were named after my dead uncles, and then the other two died of typhoid when they were very small. Then came me, a girl, therefore useless. Mum’s been afraid of this war since the day Jonathan was born.”

While Susan flung on her WVS uniform, I clambered down the stairs.

“A ship just docked in the village,” Lady Thorton said. “Full of soldiers. From Dunkirk. And they were strafed on their way across the channel.”

Jamie looked at me piteously. “We can’t just stay here,” he said.

Under their tin hats their faces were dirty, but their eyes shone bright. They grinned and waved and gave thumbs-ups to the camera. Stalwart British fighters, heroic and grateful to be home.

He died, right there on the floor of the pub. He didn’t even look wounded—he wasn’t bleeding. One of the other soldiers undid his tunic, searching for a heartbeat, and there wasn’t any blood at all.

Reluctantly, Susan allowed me to stay in the village. Daisy’s mother said I could sleep at the pub, with them; the WVS was sleeping in shifts in their headquarters down the street.

Lady Thorton shook her head. “War is no time for sentiment.”

I struggled to fall asleep in the long, bright summer nights. Jamie and Bovril snored in unison, loudly.

Once the all-clear sounded, the crews worked through the night, shoveling debris into the blast holes.

I put Jamie up behind me on Butter and we searched the fields for shrapnel or bullets or bombs.

I heard Susan’s voice in my head. “Improbable,” it said. That mean not likely.

I stopped Butter in a copse of trees just as the beach came into view.

It was low tide, and the sand stretched out wide and flat for a mile along the shoreline. Right in the center of the sand, the man stepped from his rowboat. He carried a suitcase and had a rucksack on his back.

“I think I found a spy!” I said to the first person I saw, a portly man seated behind a large wooden desk. “A spy on the beach!”

The portly man turned toward me. “Get ahold of yourself, miss!” he said. “I can’t understand you the way you’re gabbling.”

The next thing I knew the man from the beach was handcuffed and bundled into the back of the car. He protested vehemently in his perfect English voice.

The planes looked like swarms of insects buzzing in circles in the sky, until one plummeted, leaving a trail of smoke.

Fred cackled in delight. “We’ll show ’em now.”

“I don’t want it,” Jamie echoed. His hopeful expression had vanished; he looked petrified. “I don’t!”

Mam’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know who gave you the idea it was all right to go out where people could see you,” she said, in a low, furious voice. “Flaunting your crippled self. You can use them things ’til we get home, and not a minute longer.”

“Sure she is now. Bet she pockets what she gets to take you in. Except, of course, for what she spent on those clothes. What’s that you’re wearing, anyhow, Ada? Pants?”
“Riding jodhpurs,” I said, then immediately wished I hadn’t.

The flat was two small rooms. We walked into a room with a table, a sink, a gas ring, and some chairs. A thin rug on a linoleum floor.

I went to the window, sat down on the chair, looked out. Nothing to see. No children playing in the streets. Sandbags up to the windows of the few shops. Women walking briskly, not sitting down on the stoops to gossip.

By the time Mam swung the door open I had the papers back where they belonged and was sitting placidly in my chair.

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.

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.”