Secrets of a Charmed Life (8 page)

The words startled Emmy, but a second later she was glad Mrs. Crofton had suspected she was to be sent away.

“My mother is making me leave. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Crofton. I had no idea this would happen when I took this job.”

The woman nodded once and cast her gaze to the sketches in Emmy's hand. “I really thought I could pretend there was nothing to worry about as long as I just went about my business and sold wedding dresses to happy young women.”

Emmy hadn't rehearsed a response from Mrs. Crofton that had nothing to do with her, so she had no words at the ready.

“Do you still want me to send these to my cousin?” Mrs. Crofton's voice was void of emotion and strength,
as though it really didn't matter anymore that she had met Emmy and liked her sketches and wanted to help Emmy embark on a future as a wedding dress designer.

“I most certainly do. The evacuation doesn't change anything.”

Mrs. Crofton looked up at Emmy. “Except that you won't be in London.”

“But I am going to return as soon as I can. I very much want you to send the sketches to Mr. Dabney and I want to know when he will be returning to the city.”

The woman laughed, a short little chortle shrouded in lassitude. “Oh, the confidence of the young! You would have us all drinking victory champagne by Christmas. My neighbor's son is in the British navy and she told me he has no idea how long this will last. I'm not getting any more dresses from my suppliers in Paris. It will be hard to sell wedding gowns when I haven't any to sell. And if all the London designers head to the hills, where will that leave me?”

“You could sell mine.”

Her laugh this time was full and loud. “Made from what, hospital sheets? And who's going to spend money on a wedding dress if food gets really scarce like they're saying it will? Or if bombs are dropping every night? Don't they teach you current events in school?”

“School's not in session. And war makes brides as easily as it makes widows. You told me that yourself.”

“But not as plentifully. I've had no customers yesterday or today, except for the young woman who bought that veil.”

“Give your cousin the sketches, Mrs. Crofton. Please? I promise I will come back as soon as I can. War or no war.”

She exhaled heavily. “All right.”

“And you'll let me know when he returns to London.”

Mrs. Crofton nodded. “Send me your address when you're situated.”

They stood there for a moment looking at each other.

“I don't have any work for you today, Emmeline,” Mrs. Crofton finally said.

“You can teach me how to line a bodice.”

She lifted up the corners of her mouth in a half smile. “I almost envy you. Getting out of here like you are. Away from all this. You don't know how good you have it.”

“I'll trade places with you.”

Mrs. Crofton laughed gently. “If you were my daughter, Emmeline, I would do the same as your mum. I'd send you away to safety, too. I had a daughter once, you know.”

Emmy didn't.

Mrs. Crofton stared at the wall behind her as if it were a window to the past. “She died of a fever when she was six.”

“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Crofton.”

Her employer hovered there, on the edge between the present and past, and then she turned toward the wall and plugged in the electric teakettle that sat on a little table by the door to the loo.

Emmy waited to hear more about the daughter who had died, but Mrs. Crofton only said she was terribly sorry that she'd run out of sugar and there wasn't any more at the grocery.

THE
day Emmy and Julia left London, the June sun spilled cheerfully out of the sky, dousing everyone with extravagant and unnecessary warmth. A somber fog would have suited Emmy better, or a pelting downpour. She didn't want the heavens affirming this plan as she and her sister trudged to Julia's school, suitcases in hand, nor as they waited in a sunny sea of emotional mothers, wide-eyed tots, and uniformed officials pretending that what they were doing was perfectly normal. From the school, the sisters would continue by bus, then by train, and lastly by motor car or delivery truck or gypsy cart—who really knew?—to wherever it was they were to call home.

Emmy's solitary consolation as she packed her satchel was that she had discovered the key to Primrose's back door, which she had forgotten to return to Mrs. Crofton when they said their good-byes. It was like an omen that
she would have to come back to London to return it to Mrs. Crofton. She slipped the key into her skirt pocket, letting her fingers linger over its shape before she withdrew her hand.

They arrived at the school fifteen minutes after the time Mum was told to have them there but their tardiness didn't seem to matter. The queues of parents waiting to register their children were long and curlicued, and the general feeling, despite the happy sun, was one of quiet desperation. The animated chatter of nervous adolescents was only slightly louder than the agitated voices of parents who wanted more information than anyone in charge was prepared to give them. The billeting officials to whom they appealed sat behind long tables and scarcely looked up from their piles of paper, so intent were they on making sure they didn't lose someone's child into the abyss of this second evacuation scheme. The youngest children clung to their mothers' hands. Some of them knew from the first evacuation what trauma was about to befall them, and they buried their heads in their mothers' skirts. The oldest evacuees—teenagers like Emmy—gazed about in disbelief, looking for all the world like they wanted to disappear into a separate dimension while the adults played war with one another. Emmy didn't see anyone she knew, probably because they were meeting at Julia's school, not hers.

Mum returned from waiting in one of those snaking queues with stringed, cardboard tags for Emmy and Julia, and luggage labels that bore their names, ages, Mum's name, and their London address. Julia's tag went promptly around her neck.

“I'm not wearing this,” Emmy said, handing the name tag back to Mum.

“You have to,” Mum said, ignoring her daughter's outstretched hand. She bent down to attach the luggage labels to the suitcases at their feet.

Emmy looped the name tag around the handle of the gas mask box that all the children were made to carry. Mum stood up, saw that Emmy didn't have the string around her neck, and huffed.

“Emmy, please. Just do it.”

“I'm not five, Mum.”

“Then don't act like you are.”

Mum yanked the tag off the handle of Emmy's gas mask box and slipped it over her head.

“What does this say?” Julia peered at the small typewritten words below her name and Mum's on the tag.

“Moreton-in-Marsh,” Mum said, straightening Julia's barrette. “That's where your train is headed.”

“What's a marsh again?” Julia furrowed her brow.

“It's an oozing swamp,” Emmy said under her breath.

“Moreton-in-Marsh is a nice town in Gloucestershire,” Mum said to Julia, after a quick frown Emmy's way. “It's a sweet little place, the registrar told me. In the Cotswolds. There are others from your school going to the same place, Julia, so you'll already know people.”

“And my school? Are there others from my school?” Emmy asked, her voice terse with cynicism.

Mum faced her. “There are plenty of people your age being evacuated, Emmy. Plenty. Look around. Stop making this so difficult.”

Emmy wasn't making anything difficult. Everyone else was making things difficult. This was not her war. Nothing about what was happening was her doing or had anything to do with her.

A uniformed official speaking through a public address system called for those headed west to Gloucestershire and
Oxfordshire. It was time to board the bus that would take them to the train station.

Emmy lifted her suitcase and Mum laid hold of her arm. “Don't let them separate you,” she said, softly but urgently. “If anyone tries, you give them hell. Promise?”

Emmy's suitcase, the gas mask, and the brides box in her arms suddenly seemed weightless compared to the burden of being forced to release all the good fortune that so recently had come her way. It was as if her dreams were spiraling out of reach, past the barrage balloons that hovered in the sky like enormous dead and bloated fish. Emmy was letting go of so much and yet her heart felt so heavy.

Mum squeezed Emmy's arm when she did not answer. “Promise me, Emmy.”

“She's
your
daughter,” Emmy whispered, and tears sprang to her eyes. She loved Julia, but she would not have agreed to leave London if she did not have to consider Julia. Mum should be evacuating with Julia, not her.

“And you're her sister.”

The man called again for their bus.

The little tag around Emmy's neck fluttered in between her and Mum, lifting off her chest for a second as a breeze ruffled it.

Emmy looked into Mum's tawny brown eyes. “You ruin everything.” The words fell off her tongue as easy as a song, but the minute she said them, she wanted to pull the words back and shove them to the dark place where they'd been hiding since Mum got the evacuation notice.

Mum arched one eyebrow, just the one, and only slightly so. “I didn't ask for any of this.” She let go of Emmy's arm. “None of it. Be careful what you hate, Em.”

Mum now bent forward toward Julia, whose face was awash in uncertainty. “You stay with Emmy, now, and don't give her trouble, pet. All right?” Mum drew Julia
into her arms. When she let go of her younger daughter and stood, Mum's eyes were glistening. “Mind the people who will be looking after you. I'll come and visit you as soon as I can. I'll write you. And you can write me.”

Julia nodded, pleased, it seemed, to think of writing Mum a letter—something she had never done—and getting letters from someone in the post, also a new and exciting concept. But then in an instant her eyes widened in alarm. “Wait. What about Neville? What if he comes back? He won't know where I am!”

“Yes, Mum. What about Neville?” Emmy echoed, with none of Julia's distress but plenty of cheek. Just how long was she supposed to pretend Julia's father wasn't dead?

Mum ignored Emmy. “I'll take care of that, pet.”

“So you'll tell him?” Julia asked, less alarmed but still worried, and perhaps a little upset with herself for not having thought of this before.

“Yes, I'll take care of everything.”

Mum answered Julia's question without answering it at all and then turned to Emmy. She did not hold out her arms to embrace her. Instead, she cupped one hand under Emmy's chin. “Don't forget what I said, Emmy.”

Emmy didn't have to be told to watch out for her little sister. She was more of a mother to Julia than their mum was. She always had been, even those rare times when she resented the responsibility. “Do you really think I would let anything happen to her?” Emmy said, pulling her chin out of her mother's slight grasp.

Mum let her arm drop. “I'm talking about what I said about what you choose to hate. You don't know everything. I know you think you do, but you don't.”

“And you think
you
know everything. You don't know what Mrs. Crofton said about my drawings because you don't want to know. You haven't even asked.
They mean nothing to you. Well, they're everything to me, Mum. Just so you know.”

Mum shook her head. “For the love of God, Emmeline. You're so young—”

“Just because I'm young doesn't mean I can't make my own decisions about my future. You of all people should know that.”

An official walking by saw Emmy's and Julia's name tags and where they were bound. “Come along, then, lasses. Right here, now. You'll see your mum soon enough. Off you go, then.”

With the official's hand gently on her back, Emmy reached for the book of fairy tales that Julia had in one hand, and then looped the handle of her gas mask box over her wrist. Emmy added the book to what she already carried in the crook of her arm.

“Carry your suitcase in one hand and grab hold of my skirt with the other. Don't let go,” Emmy told her. They walked away from Mum, carrying luggage that had appeared in the flat the previous day—out of nowhere—and which smelled slightly of men's aftershave. In her other arm Emmy carried Julia's book, the brides box, and a sack lunch that Mum said Mrs. Billingsley had bought for her and Julia from her favorite sandwich shop.

Julia turned back to wave to Mum as she stepped up to board the bus, a red double-decker that had been pulled from its usual task of ferrying tourists around London. Emmy turned as well. Mum stood unmoving, her arms folded across her chest as people scurried about, her expression unreadable. She unhooked one arm to return Julia's wave and to blow her a kiss. When her eyes met Emmy's, she lifted her chin slightly as if to communicate she was pleased that Emmy had realized they weren't so very different from each other after all.