The War that Saved My Life (18 page)

“I think you should make an effort,” Lady Thorton said. “You might be surprised. And—it’s good to be seen helping the war effort, don’t you agree? This isn’t the time to be isolationist.”

I had been listening closely. I asked, “What’s that mean?”

Lady Thorton said, “An isolationist is someone who doesn’t support the war. Someone who wants us to stand apart; someone who doesn’t care about things.”

I said, “But she
doesn’t
care about things.”

Susan looked like I’d slapped her. “How can you say that? Of course I do!”

I shrugged.

“Is feeding you three meals a day not caring for you?” she demanded. “No, don’t you look away. You look at me, Ada. When I confronted Jamie’s teacher—wasn’t that caring for him?”

Who knew she’d get so wound up? I tried to look away, but she put her hand under my chin and turned my face back toward her. “Wasn’t it?” she insisted.

I didn’t want to answer, but I knew she wouldn’t let go of me until I did. “Maybe,” I said at last.

She released me and turned back to Lady Thorton, who was looking amused. “I’ll join,” she said.

As soon as Lady Thorton left, Susan told me off. “What did you mean by complaining that I haven’t got a proper job? What sort of job do you expect me to have?”

I shrugged. It surprised me, how she could go on buying food without working, even though she did get paid for taking us. “Mam works in the pub,” I said.

“Well, I’m not doing that,” she said. “I did try to get a job, when I first moved here with Becky. No one would have me. Oxford degree or not. Any position I was qualified for was reserved for men. Can’t have a woman stealing a man’s job, now, can we?”

I didn’t understand why we were having this conversation.

“Oh!” she continued. “Me, in the WVS! All those wretched do-gooders! What nonsense.”

“Why do soldiers need bed jackets?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what a bed jacket was.

“Who knows,” Susan said. “They’re for hurt soldiers, I’d say. Ones that have to go to hospital.”

I hadn’t heard of any hurt soldiers. “The ones that get blown up in the ocean fall into the water and die,” I said.

“I suppose so,” Susan said, shuddering. “But there are different kinds of battles. Some hurt soldiers survive.”

A few days later Susan got her WVS uniform. She put it on to go to her first meeting. She looked nice in it. She wore stockings, and leather shoes with heels. “Quit staring,” she said as she pulled on her gloves. “You could come with me. A junior member. Or perhaps a token evacuee.”

I shook my head. While she was gone I thought I might try out the sewing machine. Or cook something. The weather was wretched; I didn’t want to ride. “Why are you scared?” I asked her.

She made a face. “All those proper housewives! I don’t fit in. I never have.”

“You’ve got the uniform,” I said.

She made another face. “True. But it’s not the outside that counts, not with that group. Oh, well.” She went away to her meeting.

I stayed home and broke her sewing machine.

I didn’t mean to. I’d watched Susan using it, and it looked easy, and all I was trying to do was sew two scraps of fabric together, for a start. But the scraps sucked into the bottom part of the machine, and the needle ran up and down through it anyway. A bunch of thread came out of nowhere, snarling itself into a knot, and then the machine made an awful noise and then the needle snapped in two.

I took my foot off the pedal. I stared at the tangle of thread and cloth, at the broken stump of the needle. I was going to get in awful trouble. Susan had been sewing every day since she finished our dressing gowns. She’d made herself a dress and made new shorts for Jamie. She loved the sewing machine.

I couldn’t think what to do. My stomach roiled. I fled upstairs and hid in the spare room, the room still full of Becky’s things. I slid under the bed, deep into the corner. My mind went numb. I started to shake.

Much later I heard Susan come in the front door. Heard her calling my name, heard Jamie climbing the stairs. He opened the door to our bedroom and shouted, “She’s not up here!”

“She has to be.” That was Susan’s voice. “Her crutches are right by the stairs.”

They called my name, over and over. Jamie ran outside. Ran back in. It grew darker. Finally Susan’s face poked under the edge of the bed. “You idiot girl! Why are you hiding?”

I cringed against the far wall. Susan grabbed my arm and dragged me out. “What’s wrong? Who frightened you?”

I threw my hands over my head. “I’m not going to hit you!” Susan shouted. “Stop that!”

Jamie came into the room. “Was it the Germans?” he asked.

“Of course it wasn’t the Germans,” Susan said. “Ada. Ada!” She had an iron grip on my wrists, pulling my arms down.
“What happened?”

“You’ll send me back,” I said. “You’ll send me back.” All that time under the bed my panic had grown worse and worse. I’d lose Butter. Freedom.
Jamie
.

“I won’t send you back,” Susan said. “But you’ll tell me this instant what’s wrong.” She put a finger under my chin. “Look at me. Now, tell me.”

I looked at her, but only for a second. I squirmed away from her grasp. Finally I gasped, “I broke your sewing machine.”

Susan sighed. “Look at me,” she said. She tipped my chin up again. “You tried to use my sewing machine?”

I nodded. Squirmed away. Looked at the ground.

She tipped my chin up. “And you broke it?”

I nodded. Looking her in the eye was nearly impossible. “It’s okay,” she said. “No matter what, it’s okay.”

I couldn’t believe her. It wasn’t going to be okay.

“You did do something wrong,” she said. “You should have asked me first. But you don’t need to be so afraid. I’m not going to hurt you because you made a mistake. Let’s go see how badly it’s broken.”

She made me go down the stairs to the living room. The fire was lit and the room was growing warm. It turned out that I’d only broken the needle, not the entire machine. Needles wore out sometimes, Susan said, and you had to replace them anyhow. She had an extra needle, so she took the broken one out and replaced it. Then she removed the snarled mess of cloth and thread. “It really is all right,” she said. “Do you want to see what you did wrong?”

I shook my head. My stomach hurt so bad. Susan pulled me over anyhow, and showed me how the machine worked, and how I’d needed to lever the needle into place before I started the machine running. “Tomorrow you can practice,” Susan said.

“No thank you,” I said.

She pulled me close to her, in a sort of one-armed embrace. “Why did you hide? Why were you under the bed?”

Jamie had been hovering the entire time. “Mam puts her in the cabinet,” he said, “whenever she’s really bad.”

“But why put
yourself
there, Ada? You didn’t have to.”

So I can stay. SoIcanstaysoIcanstaysoIcanstay.

“I’m not going to shut you up anywhere, no matter what, okay?”

“Okay.” My stomach felt awful. My voice sounded very small. I could barely make my mind stay in the room with Susan and Jamie. I said, “I know I have to leave. Please, can Jamie come too?”

“Ada!”

Oh no. Ohnoohnoohnoohno.
Without Jamie I would die.

“I’m not going to send you away. Why would I send you away? You made a mistake. A little, small mistake.” Now both Susan’s arms were around me. I tried to squirm free. She held me tighter. “Did you really think I’d send you away?”

I nodded.

“Let me tell you something. When I was coming back from my meeting, I was thinking, ‘Maybe Ada will have made some tea.’ I was imagining how you’d have the lights on inside, and the blackout up, and I was thinking how lovely it was to have someone to come home to again. I used to dread going back to an empty house.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t make tea,” I said.

“That’s not what I’m trying to tell you,” she said. “I’m trying to say that I’m glad you’re here.”

I couldn’t come down from my panic. It took me most of the night before I could really breathe. Susan made tea, and when I couldn’t swallow any, she didn’t insist. “I half wonder if I ought to give you a slug of brandy,” she said. “You’ll never sleep in the state you’re in.” She made me take a hot bath and she tucked the blankets tight around me. She was right: I lay awake half the night. But eventually I slept, and when I woke up, Jamie and I were still there. I could see Butter out the back window. Susan was frying sausages for breakfast and I could breathe again.

Not long after that Jamie came home from school carrying the ugliest cat Susan and I had ever seen. Its filthy, matted hair might have been any color at all beneath the dirt. One eye was swollen shut. It glared at Susan and me out of its other.

“I’m keeping him,” Jamie announced, dumping the cat into the middle of the kitchen. It swished its tail and hissed at us. “His name’s Bovril. He’s hungry.”

Bovril was a hot drink Susan made for us most nights. It was nasty, but I’d gotten used to it. It had nothing whatsoever to do with cats.

“You’re not keeping it,” Susan said. “Pick it up at once and put it out. It’s crawling with fleas.”

“I am keeping it,” Jamie said. He picked the cat up—the cat went limp in his arms. “It’s my onager. My own onager. His name’s Bovril.” He began to go up the stairs.

An onager was an animal from the
Swiss Family Robinson
book. Susan said onagers were like donkeys. You could ride them. They were nothing like cats.

“Don’t you dare take that animal into your bedroom,” Susan yelled after him.

“I’m not,” Jamie said, “I’m giving him a bath.”

“Good Lord,” Susan said, to me. “We’ll have to call an ambulance. It’ll scratch him to death.”

It didn’t. Jamie bathed the mangy cat and drowned its fleas. He brought it back downstairs wrapped in one of Susan’s best towels. He fed it part of his meat from dinner.

“It’ll hunt for itself after this,” Susan said. “I’m not cooking for a cat.”

“He’s a good hunter,” Jamie said, rubbing the cat’s head. “Aren’t you, Bovril?”

Every night after that, Jamie fell asleep with Bovril curled in his arms. He never wet the bed again. By the end of the second week Susan was offering Bovril saucers of watered milk. “It’s worth it,” she told me. “Saves me washing all those sheets.”