How I Live Now (5 page)

13

S
omething in the air shifted after the visit from the doctor.

Not exactly because of anything you could put your finger on but if I had to guess I'd say that the magic we were trusting to keep us safe from the outside world suddenly seemed too fragile to protect us forever.

Everyone was quieter than usual that night. Piper and I wedged ourselves into one of the big chairs and were reading Flashman together and it was late but still light enough outside to read with the help of a candle or two and all the windows and doors were open to let the warm air in along with the smell of honeysuckle, and the dogs were dozing near us and Piper suddenly stopped reading and looked at me in her solemn way and said Are you in love with Edmond?

And I thought for a minute about the best way to answer and then I just said Yes.

She stared at me with the Family Stare, the one that normal people don't ever do because it might be considered impolite to crash around in another person's innermost thoughts without their permission, and then she said Well I'm glad you love him because I do too.

My eyes filled with tears then, I couldn't help it. I put my arms around her and we just sat like that with my tears running down into her hair and the night coming down darker and darker and the soft feel of it all around us.

She asked if she could sleep in my bed that night and I said yes and we went upstairs and lay close together in the narrow bed and I wondered if maybe she missed her mother, and then around halfway through the night Edmond came in saying he was lonely and he lay down too only facing in the other direction since it was the only way he could fit, and then around sunrise Isaac wandered in too wondering where everyone had gone and when he saw us he just smiled a little and went down to the kitchen and brought up the big brown teapot and some mugs on a tray and we all piled together on the bed on top of each other like puppies and drank our tea while the sun streamed in thick and yellow through the window.

And it was Edmond, with his oddball sense of what hasn't happened yet, who knew we had to mark that day out as special and he said It's going to be hot, let's go down to the river for a swim.

So we collected our towels and blankets and Piper packed some food in a basket and we put on shoes and changed out of the clothes we'd been living in every day for weeks and into nice clean ones, and Isaac called the dogs and Piper got Ding from the barn, and then with a feeling of getting a day off from school which may have been totally weird but was how we felt, we set off.

If you climbed up the footpath and walked and walked, up past the lambing barn, along the edges of about six more fields eventually, after an hour, with the little Ding Ding Ding of the bell around Ding's neck for company, you came to a river. Edmond said it wasn't as good for fishing as the part we drove to that first day but was better for swimming because it was deeper. And it ran along the edge of the most beautiful meadow you've ever seen, so full of poppies and buttercups and daisies and wild roses and hundreds of other flowers I didn't recognize that if you squinted at it from low down it looked like a blizzard of color.

Next to the river was an ancient apple tree just starting to lose its blossom and Piper and I laid out blankets half under it and half in the sun and then we sat down in the shade to try to cool off while the boys threw off their clothes and leaped shouting into the freezing water and then tried to splash us and called us to Come In Or Else! and finally we got tired of them teasing so we just thought Why not? and Piper took off all her clothes and I took my jeans off and we tiptoed in holding hands, screaming a little and jumping up and down because it was so cold.

Like everyone always says, It's beautiful once you're in.

The feeling of the cold water and the hot sun and having the river just flow over your skin like a dolphin wasn't something I had enough words to describe but was the kind of feeling you never forget.

I got cold quicker than any of the others, who were having races and sitting on rocks by the edge like turtles to soak up the sun before jumping in again, so I got out and flopped down on a blanket in the warm sun and waited patiently while the heat stopped the shivering in my skin and gradually warmed my blood all the way through and then I just closed my eyes and watched the petals fall and listened to the heavy low buzz of fat pollen-drunk bees and tried to imagine melting into the earth so I could spend eternity under this tree.

Then Edmond and Piper came out of the water, Edmond put his jeans on and they both took turns making cold handprints on my stomach which I pretended not to notice, while Osbert and Isaac floated around in the river with the dogs, Isaac humming a melody and Osbert humming the harmony not quite in tune and it was nice for a while to have Osbert be part of our gang instead of the one who always had more important things to do.

Edmond lay down a few inches away from me on the blanket and lit a cigarette and closed his eyes and after a minute or two I could feel the heat from his body flowing into mine, and when Piper came over with both hands full of petals and threw them up in the air so they drifted down over us both, Edmond laughed and asked What was that for? And Piper smiled her solemn smile and said For Love.

Eventually everyone came out of the water and for hours and hours and hours we lay under the tree and talked and read and occasionally someone got up to throw a stick for the dogs and Piper played with Ding and made tiny woven wreaths of poppies and daisies to decorate his baby horns and Isaac whistled back and forth to a robin and Edmond just lay there smoking and telling me he loved me without saying anything out loud and if there ever was a more perfect day in the history of time it isn't one I've heard about.

The sun waited to go down longer than usual that day so we kept putting off the moment we had to leave and the boys and dogs swam in the river again and eventually we all headed back practically in the dark, dog-tired and too happy to talk much.

I guess there was a war going on somewhere in the world that night but it wasn't one that could touch us.

14

A
few days later we had another visitor only this time he wore a British Army uniform and brought a lackey with him to take notes and check things off on a list. He didn't seem particularly interested in us living without adults, though I noticed him giving Edmond's burning cigarette a look and I thought Boy oh boy if you're going to spend any time nosing around here you'd better be a little more particular about what shocks you and what doesn't, and then Edmond gave me a look like Watch What You Say only it should be Watch What You Think when he's around.

The guy poked around and asked a lot of questions like how many rooms we had and did the roof leak and how many outbuildings were there and who if anyone had been here to see us and I noticed Edmond answered the question of the outbuildings without mentioning the lambing barn. Then Mr. Regular Army and his Man Friday tramped off to look at the lay of the land and came back a while later and said It will be perfect and boy did I ever NOT like the sound of that.

It turned out that we were being Sequestered which had to be explained to me since I'm not exactly in the habit of having people take over a perfectly private house to send the inhabitants off to live god knows where for The Duration, and all I could think was this would not happen in America but of course for all I knew the Green Berets were already holed up in Bloomingdale's.

Osbert was so anxious to look helpful he was practically standing at attention but for once I felt sorry for him because it seemed pretty obvious that we were all going to have to do what they said no matter what, and maybe Osbert was only hoping that somehow he could protect us all by being Respectful. I stuck with what I was good at, i.e. Blank bordering on Sullen and when I looked over at Edmond he had the saddest expression on his face but when he saw I was looking he smiled.

Osbert was the only one with the courage to say what we were all thinking, which was What about us? And the army guy looked up in an absent kind of way that told us everything we needed to know about how concerned they were for our happiness and we kind of drifted off together like a huddled mass yearning to breathe free, no one wanting to lose track of any of the others.

Of course at this point it hadn't occurred to me that we might be separated, but do you know anyone, even in the middle of a war, who's going to take on a group of five kids especially ones like us who don't exactly remind you of Little Women even on our best day?

The army guy went away and said he'd be back tomorrow and afterwards we all stood there shell-shocked if you'll excuse the expression and silent, just in case anything we said out loud turned out to be true.

I started out in bed with Piper that night and as I lay awake with my arms around her waiting for her to fall asleep I wondered if Dr. Jameson had anything to do with this, after all it seemed pretty coincidental to have two visitors in less than a week when no one had noticed us for ages. After an hour or so when I was sure Piper was calm and safe I slipped off to be with Edmond and we said even less than usual only climbed inside each other for comfort and oblivion and fell asleep that way wrapped in black sheep blankets and together dreamt a single dream that there was no one left in the world but us.

15

E
very war has turning points, and every person too.

First Osbert went off in the truck with the army guy and came back all beaming with a job, so I guess all those hours learning Morse code and playing spies turned out not to be in vain. I would have been happy for him if it wasn't so obvious that the rest of us had been simultaneously demoted to Expendable Civilian Status and thus were a whole lot less interesting to him. I think he did feel responsible for us in his fashion, but we were way down his list of Things to Worry About what with having the responsibility for saving the world on his shoulders.

By noon the house was starting to fill up with army types and at first we were outraged to see them putting all their stuff into OUR rooms and setting up radio equipment in the barn and moving the animals out without even asking and then we decided the better part of valor was discretion and if we made ourselves scarce they might not get the feeling that we were the sort of kids who needed to be Taken Care Of elsewhere.

We even went so far as to offer them lunch which I'm sure is what the collaborators in France did to the Nazis to keep them happy and I felt pretty much like a pathetic groveling turncoat even though we were supposedly on the same side. But they said No Thank You we've brought Our Mess with us and I wondered why anyone would think it was a good idea to call food Mess. Piper said their food was better than ours, which hardly surprised me given that we'd reached the limit of the number of edible meals you can make with rice and they were eating chicken and dumplings.

So there were Piper and Isaac and Edmond and me Making Ourselves Scarce and just considering whether we should move up to the lambing barn and make ourselves even scarcer when Osbert came out looking guilty and told Piper and me to pack a bag with our things because we were going to be rehoused and I just looked at him and shouted there is NO WAY I'm going to be sent off to some REFUGEE HOME in the BACK OF BEYOND especially BY YOU and Osbert looked pretty miserable and stared at the ground and said Orders Are Orders and I thought It's lucky they didn't tell him to shoot us.

Piper looked from me to her brother like a rat in a trap and then Edmond put his hand on my arm just when I was thinking that maybe if I slugged Osbert it would help him understand I was serious and very very softly Edmond said Don't worry and I said I AM NOT WORRIED because THERE IS NO WAY I AM GOING. And looking at all those miserable faces I wondered whether this was a cultural thing or what, that no one in this country says You've got to be kidding when told to vacate their home and abandon their newly discovered loved ones by a bunch of jumped-up reject army guys playing war games for a lark.

Osbert slid off like a sorry snake and I figured that was the end of it until about five minutes later when some guy who said he was Left Tennant something or other came out and was Awfully Apologetic in an awfully unapologetic way and the gist of it was we were out of here whether we liked it or not. He made it extremely clear that the army was not in any mood to hang around watching some Female American National have a tantrum at this Vital Juncture in History so I took Piper and we went upstairs and packed all the stuff we could think of for a week including some books in case we got stuck with a bunch of local hillbillies, and all I could do was stare at Edmond and Isaac and even Osbert and try to keep from crying and then Edmond kissed me and said Take Jet in a way that no one else except maybe Isaac could hear and I said back I'll find you and he nodded as if to say Likewise.

Our chauffeur wasn't exactly thrilled at me dragging a dog along but I wasn't budging on this question and he rolled his eyes and said Get In and then with almost everyone I had left in the world standing nearby looking sad and young and helpless, we were off. Given how things turned out you might wonder why we didn't make more of a scene about staying together but at the time we figured we could survive a week or two apart.

That's how totally in the dark we were about our situation.

Anyway, we bundled into this open van and as we started off I thought about Ding but I didn't say anything in case Piper got more worried than she looked right now and I tried to pull myself together because I was Piper's guardian now and I thought I'd better act like it and make it clear to her that she was safe with me no matter what. And the thought made me fierce and strong like a mother wildebeest and all of a sudden I knew where people got the strength to pick up cars with babies lying under them which I always thought was made up.

I took her by the hand and smiled the bravest smile I ever smiled and it was real, even though it might not have been one hundred percent sane, and it worked a little because she smiled back at me and hugged Jet and started to sing her angel song quietly under her breath.

We drove and drove and I tried to look at the road signs and follow where we were going but it was pretty confusing and the best I could do was notice the names of villages we went through and hope somehow I would remember.

I started making up a mnemonic the way I used to do in school but it was hard to keep it straight since I had to keep adding words on as we went along, and whoever named these places wasn't doing it with any particular pattern in mind.

We went through Upper Ellaston and Deddon and Wincaster and New Northfield, and Broom Hill and Norton Walton and then I gave up trying to remember and just noticed each one and hoped if I needed them to come back into my head someday they would.

I felt a little pissed off at all those spy shows where the guy gets blindfolded and thrown onto the floor of the backseat and finds his way home by the noise of a chicken here and two bumps in the road there and a dog barking in the key of D which I can tell you now from experience is a load of crap, well who'd have guessed it.

Some of the things that made the biggest impression were the things that were almost normal but not quite.

Like the fact that no one seemed to be outside even though it was a beautiful sunny day, and there were no kids in the playgrounds or riding their bikes along the streets or anything. Also there were no other cars driving and lots abandoned by the side of the road where they ran out of gas, which took me a while to figure out like What's Wrong With This Picture.

Other things, I recognized from our village, like most of the shops either had broken windows or were all boarded up and lots of houses had boarded-up windows too, presumably for when the marauding hordes swept through the Back of Beyond and wanted to rape all the housewives and pillage their dining room sets.

And then sometimes there were tanks. Mostly just sitting by the side of the road with someone's head and arms sticking out the top, smoking, and holding on to a gun. In some villages there were lots of them and then for a while you'd see none at all.

About every two or three miles we passed through checkpoints where our driver had to stop and show papers to a bunch of guys with machine guns who didn't speak fabulous English and I thought Oh my god, so there is an enemy after all. They all seemed bored rather than scary and Our Army Guy was very polite to Their Army Guy and I thought it's just as well I don't waste a lot of my spare time trying to figure out this war stuff because if you ask me they're not in the spirit of the thing at all.

We drove for nearly an hour along tiny winding country roads and though judging distances isn't exactly my forte unless we're talking Manhattan city blocks, I figured we'd gone about fifteen or twenty miles by the time we got where we were going, what with speed divided by time equaling four birds in a tree singing Melancholy Baby.

The place we arrived at was a little better than my worst fears which is the sort of thing you have to be thankful for under these conditions and after piling out of the van we were introduced to Mrs. McEvoy who lived with her army husband in a newish brick house just outside a village called Reston Bridge and first impressions, while not always right, suggested she wasn't the type to carve us into tiny pieces and feed us to her dogs when the going got tough. But I've been wrong before.

Speaking of dogs you could tell she hadn't quite reckoned on us showing up with one of our own but she took it pretty well considering Jet marched straight over to her pretty little blond cocker spaniel and started to hump it on the spot.

There was also a four-year-old boy named Albert who they called Alby, and from the room she put us in it was obvious there was an older boy somewhere but not here since we were getting his room. We unpacked our stuff and Mrs. McEvoy came up and said we should call her Jane and her husband was On Duty and they'd heard about Our Plight and thought it was a Sin to let a Perfectly Good Room Go to Waste when there were Poor Children like us without anyone to take care of us and I had to squint and think of Piper to keep my fake smile from turning into something more like Jason in Friday the 13th.

But when I opened my eyes and looked at her again I saw that under all the cheery stuff she looked desperately sad and her face was kind of blotchy like she'd done a lot of crying lately and I thought Well everyone in this weirdo war has a story and hers is probably as bad as any and maybe a whole lot worse.

The sympathy angle got a little strained when she went on about how adorable Piper was and how much she always loved to hear an American accent but after a while I got used to her and thought at least she was trying to be nice which even I had to admit is something.

After having a cup of tea we asked if she'd mind if we just went up to our room and read a book for a while because of being tired from the trip not to mention the war, and off we went to our twin beds under pictures of racing cars and about twenty half-naked posters of some teenybop star with cellulite and I thought this room's seen a fair amount of action à la Lyle Hershberg and his pet Smurf.

Piper asked if this was where we were going to have to live now and I said I guessed it was for the time being but that once we were settled we'd come up with a plan for getting back together with Edmond and Isaac and she looked more cheerful at that thought and you could tell she was making an effort to make me feel OK about our situation and she said Isn't this a funny place you've ended up in Cousin Daisy, and I said You mean here in Reston Bridge and she said No Here in England with Me.

And then I looked so far into her eyes that I could practically see out the back of her head so don't ever say I'm not related by blood to the whole telepathic gang of them and I said PIPER: I would have to be buried alive in a ditch and stamped on by elephants before I would ever think that being anywhere with you wasn't a good thing SO THERE. Then Jane McEvoy called up that there was some food ready and we found ourselves tramping down the stairs like somebody else's well-behaved children and Piper and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing because we'd gotten so used to being in a world without any sign of adults.

Secretly I was wondering whether these people were going to take care of us or whether we were still all on our own, only now in a slightly different form.