Romeo Blue (21 page)

Derek had come back on his own from Bottlebay before us. He was awfully secretive these days and I was dreadfully curious about his trip.

Dimples was now sitting on the bottom step in the hall. “Come along, then,” I said to her. She picked up her typewriter suitcase and we walked into the parlor. Derek was stretched out on the sofa, sipping something through a paper straw. He sat up and looked at Dimples. He seemed a bit perplexed, like a dog with his ears perked up, looking down at a very feisty new puppy.

“Hmm,” he said. “Figures, Fliss. Your friend
would
be another Brit. Isn’t she kind of small, though?”

“Size really has nothing to do with friendship,” I said.

“I’m quite good at figures anyway,” Dimples said. “It doesn’t matter about my being small. Ask me anything with figures and I’ll have an answer.”

“What is the largest number in the world?” said Derek, eyeing Dimples with his dark Derek frown.

“Infinity,” said Dimples with her hands on her hips. “So where are my sleeping quarters, Felicity?”

I took Dimples upstairs and offered her my little cot in Auntie’s room and she sat on it, testing the softness, looking quite messy and pleased the way you do when
you’ve just been on a long journey and haven’t had a chance to peek in a mirror to see that your hair has all gone wild and that there are crumbs on your coat.

“Felicity, shall I read your palm?” Dimples said. “I know it will say that you love that boy downstairs.”

“Oh, hush, Dimples! You mustn’t say that. You see he doesn’t love me back anymore.”

“Very well, then, I shan’t sing the little song I had planned. Perhaps later,” she said. “And can we trade beds, possibly? I can offer you two boiled sweets and a special rock brought all the way from England. I think we can make a nice little trade.”

“I’d rather not. It’s my Auntie’s bed, really. She promised it to me for the duration,” I said. “The canopy with birds flying all round on it makes me hopeful about my mum and my dad and Daddy. I’m always waiting for them, you know.” And then I had to explain everything.

“You have two papas, then, haven’t you?” said Dimples after we’d unscrambled the whole story.

“Yes,” I said, “I do, actually.”

“And I don’t even have a one,” said Dimples. “Mine packed off and hasn’t come back since I was a baby. And here you have two. Aren’t you the lucky one?”

“Well, not really, actually,” I said. “Oh, all right, then, Dimples, you can have the canopy bed. I’m used to my little cot. Go on, then, take it.”

In return, I got two boiled sweets and a small rock,
which I set on a shelf next to my old cot. The rock was quite plain looking really.

Then Derek appeared at the door, leaning on the jamb, with his jacket back on and his paralyzed hand tucked in one of the pockets. “Grab your coats. As a treat, The Gram is taking us all out for supper,” he said.

“
Supper
is our
tea
, Dimples,” I said.

“I’ll be back in a tick, then,” said Dimples. And she ran off and we couldn’t find her for the longest time. When we did find her, she was in the linen closet, writing a letter to her mum.

The Gram had won a prize for one of her quilts at the winter church bazaar, when we were helping with Bundles for Britain last week. The prize was a free meal at Hank’s Hamburger House. And so that evening we drove the Packard into town just before dark, with wind and a light snow blowing all round our car.

Hank’s hamburgers were smashingly delicious. Dimples called them hangabers. When Hank came out to congratulate The Gram on her winning quilt, Dimples looked up at him and said, “You don’t have a seawall in Bottlebay. We had one in Selsey, but the sea knocked it down and flooded the town. They found fourteen sofas floating in the water the next day.”

“Hush now, little nipper,” said The Gram.

It was a jolly nice evening with Dimples singing. She had a “hungry song” that she made up and then she sang
a “full song” and finally she sang a “tired song” for Derek. He was quite pleased, I thought.

But later when we pulled up to the house, everything changed again. It was a pitch-black night since the moon had gone away to shine somewhere else. And we quickly saw that the wind had taken out our electricity because the house was terribly dark and the tiny red lightbulb The Gram left on for us in the kitchen was off. We got out of the car and we didn’t have a match or a candle or flashlight. That’s when the sea seemed almost spooky. Because you couldn’t see it, you could only hear it and it seemed to be calling for you in a strange, lonely way.

We were just at the gate when we saw someone or a shadow of someone rush from the back door to the front of the house. We heard footsteps on the wraparound porch and then more footsteps on the stairs down to the sea. The snow blew across the garden in gales, making drifts and tunnels, yet leaving some patches of ground barren and exposed. The Gram reached out towards us, her arms waving about. She grabbed me in a fearsome clutch. And Dimples let out an odd little screech.

When we got into the house, we had to stomp the snow off our frozen shoes. Then we had to light candles and close the blackout curtains. Dimples offered to do the job. She said she loved the dark and she rushed through the house, saying there were ghosts in the hall and ghosts in the kitchen.

When the candles were lit, The Gram went to the window in the dining room and parted the curtains and looked out into the night.

“Perhaps we should call the police,” I said.

“Oh no,” said The Gram, “that wouldn’t do at all, Flissy. Too much attention. No. No. We must handle this ourselves.”

We both stood there in the dining room, listening to the moan of the wind and the snow. The ocean too was singing and calling in its lonely voice, whispering words that seemed to slip away before we could truly hear them.

The next night, The Gram rang up Mr. Stephenson in New York. I could only hear The Gram’s part of the conversation and her voice echoed from the landing. “Bill,” she said, “I must know how Gideon is. Did he arrive safely? I can wait no longer. You must inquire. You must tell us. And we must have some kind of protection. I worry for the children. Someone was here last night. But I don’t think they got in the house.”

The sleet hammered against the windows and Dimples jumped rope and sang in the next room.

“The old moon came down for a cup of milk

But he got tangled up in a pile of silk.

The sun couldn’t set and the night couldn’t fall

And the moon rolled away like a big silk ball.”

The Bathburns always kept their Christmas trees up until February 2, Groundhog Day. And so today Derek and I and Dimples took down all the old decorations and dragged the long, dry tree out into the garden and started to chop it up into little pieces so we could chuck them into the stove when the temperature dropped at night.

Dimples was jumping on one of the branches. “Oh, I wish I had been here on Christmas Day. Did you have Christmas pudding? Was it lovely and yummy?” she said. Then suddenly she rolled on the ground in the snow and shot at Derek with an invisible gun and he pretended to shoot back at her. I daresay Dimples was a very warlike little girl. She threw a fake hand grenade at Derek and he rolled to the ground and pretended to be dead. I was left to chop at the poor Christmas tree.

Soon Derek shot at me and I fell to the ground, rolling under the tree and dying as well. I stared up through the brittle branches at the sky. I lay there for a long time. It started snowing harder and millions of snowflakes came falling at me. “Come on, Fliss, we should get back to hacking up this tree,” said Derek, poking at me with his foot, but I just stayed there, staring at the sky, thinking about everything.

“Perhaps she really is dead,” said Dimples, peering down at me sadly. I didn’t move one bone or one eyelash. I was quite still, like an ice statue. I hated chopping up our lovely Christmas tree and I hated the loneliness and worry about Winnie and Danny and Gideon. And I was lying there thinking about Derek too. Where had his love for me gone? I decided perhaps it all had disappeared, as if it had been chopped to pieces, like an old Christmas tree when you are done and finished with it.

Then The Gram came out into the snow and stood near us. She kept staring at us, as if she were a boat and we were the faraway shore. And I remembered yesterday was February 1 and that was the day Gideon was to arrive at the prison in Limoges. The Gram just stood there as the snow fell all round her.

Derek got up quickly and brushed himself off. He had been covered in snow and wood chips. He straightened his shoulders, cleared his throat, and stood back away from Dimples, as if to say he hadn’t just been playing war with an eight-year-old child. Not at all. Not at all. I too came back to life quickly and stood up.

Dimples looked joyful to see me again. She rushed towards me, throwing her arms round me. “Oh, Felicity, I was worried and sad. You looked like that poor lass who washed up on the broken seawall in Selsey. She was dead, she was. She wasn’t faking. But you were faking, weren’t you?”

Now The Gram pulled a letter from her pocket and handed it to me. The stamps had rows of palm trees on them and looked a bit like North Africa. The wet snow blurred the ink on the envelope but I could see it was from Mr. Henley. I nearly jumped into the sky. I raced to the house and threw myself down on the sofa in the parlor. The letter said:

Dear gang,

Thanks a ton for your letters. They cheer a soldier up. I sure do miss Miami. Well, let me know if Doubleday ever answers my letter about my submission. I sent them one hundred poems, return address in care of you, Flissy B. You’ll have to be my secretary. I wrote the poems at night. They are my best to date. Love to all, you busy Bathburns.

Bobby Henley

P.S. Has Gideon been drafted? Do you know how he’s doing?

Well, we could not answer that last question. We did not know what had happened on February 1 in France. And yet everything in the world seemed to hang on that day. Winnie and Danny and Gideon were perched on the edge of the unknown. As if on the rim of a dark hole, as
big as the universe in my mind. And all we could do was wait.

Later in the evening, Dimples came into the parlor and lay on the rug in front of the radio. She had her knitting with her. The socks she knitted had a strange look about them, but she was fast, faster than The Gram or me. “Felicity,” she said, lying on her stomach with her face and cheek resting on the floor, “I should really like to see Wink again. I’ve always had a fondness for that bear. Where is the key to that room anyway? I must have a look at Wink.”

But I didn’t answer her. I was worrying and wondering about my father wearing that Nazi officer uniform. What if he made a mistake in his German accent? What if Winnie and Danny weren’t in the prison after all?

Dear Bobby Henley,

Here is some news from Bottlebay. America no longer has hot dogs. We have victory sausages. It was announced on the radio recently. And January 17, 1943, was declared official Tin Can Drive Day. All day people collected as many tin cans as they could for the war effort. Derek found eight tins and I helped him but we had to rummage about in an old dump not far from the house. You’d better hotfoot it home; they say shoe rationing could start. You’d better not loaf about! So, Bobby Henley, be good and don’t forget Miami is yours 4 ever!