Secrets of a Charmed Life, page 10
She looked up at Charlotte, and her face must have revealed that she had realized something she hadn’t considered.
“What is it, dear?” Charlotte said.
“Nothing.” Emmy drained her cup.
It all made sense. No one had held her father responsible because Mum hadn’t identified him. That was why there was such animosity between Mum and Nana. Any parent whose barely sixteen-year-old daughter ended up pregnant would want to know who the father was. If Mum had refused to say, which surely was the case, it could only have been for one of three reasons that Emmy could think of: She had been protecting the man, she was embarrassed to admit she didn’t know his name, or she had struck a deal with him.
Emmy set her cup down on the little table, angry that she had let herself be satisfied for fifteen years with such vague answers about who her father was.
“Emmeline?”
“Can we talk about something else?”
A slight pause. “Of course.”
At that moment Julia called for Emmy to come look at the baby turtles. She and Charlotte rose from their chairs, and Emmy was thankful that the conversation she had wanted to end fell away, but only partially so. She knew she would revisit it in her strange bed that night.
A few seconds later they were all at the water’s edge, and Julia was pointing to several young turtles swimming in the shallows, their little armored backs glistening. A few feet away, the wood ducks that Julia had followed paddled toward the pond’s center. A pair of dragonflies darted past them and skimmed across the water’s surface.
Surrounded by such pastoral splendor, Emmy found it hard to believe there was a war going on.
Her presence there at a pond in the middle of nowhere was the only proof that there was.
* * *
WHEN they came back inside the cottage, Emmy and Julia went upstairs to unpack and put their clothes away. Charlotte told them that for this first night they could relax in their room while she prepared supper downstairs, and that tomorrow the three of them would sit down and decide who would do what chores.
As Emmy hung up one of Julia’s dresses, her sister asked what Charlotte had meant by that.
“I imagine she expects we will do our fair share here. Setting the table, clearing it, taking out the rubbish. That sort of thing.”
“Do you think she will let me feed the chickens?”
Emmy slid the hanger onto the rung inside the wardrobe. “I am sure she will. Hand me your jumper.”
Julia handed the sweater to her and snapped her suitcase closed. “It’s not as bad here as I thought it would be. Aunt Charlotte’s nice. And her house smells pretty.”
“Pretty isn’t a smell, Jewels. Slide your suitcase under your bed like I did with mine so you won’t trip over it.”
“Why don’t you want to call her Aunt Charlotte?” Julia asked as she pushed the suitcase past the bed skirt.
“I’m too old to call someone ‘aunt’ who is not my aunt. But you’re young. It’s fine for you.”
Julia rose from her knees and sat heavily on her bed. “What are we supposed to do now?”
Emmy closed the wardrobe door. “What would you like to do?”
“Can I look at the brides?”
“Not now.”
“Why?”
Emmy didn’t have a good reason other than she was tired and it was near the end of a very trying day. “Maybe later. Why don’t you write a letter to Mum instead. You can tell her all about the ducks and turtles.”
“All right, but I’ll need help with the big words.”
Emmy told Julia she would help her with any word she didn’t know how to spell. She opened the desk drawer. Inside, Emmy found three different shades of writing paper, several sharpened pencils, and a fountain pen. It was exciting to think that she now had plenty of paper to continue sketching dresses. Emmy had planned to buy some drawing paper with her first month’s pay, but specialty paper was also being rationed and thus becoming harder to find. She decided she would make it a goal, starting the next day, to sketch a new gown every week so that she would have something to look forward to. For the moment, though, Emmy withdrew two pieces of paper—one for each of them—a pencil for Julia, and the fountain pen for herself, to write letters.
Emmy let Julia have the desk while she sat on her bed with Julia’s fairy tale book on her lap for a writing surface. While Julia wrote about the train ride, the dead bird in the street, the yellow bedroom, Charlotte’s and Rose’s long braids, and their lovely garden, Emmy penned a letter, too.
Dear Mrs. Crofton:
My sister and I are staying with an older woman named Charlotte Havelock in a tiny place not far from Stow-in-the-Wold in Gloucestershire. I would be very much in your debt if you could let me know when your cousin returns to London so that I might meet with him as we planned. I will continue to work on new sketches and I will ask Mrs. Havelock if she has a sewing machine that I can practice on while I am here. I hope to see you again very soon and I trust you will be safe.
Yours truly,
Emmeline Downtree
Thistle House
3 Maugersbury Road
Stow-on-the-Wold,
Gloucestershire
P.S. I still have the back door key you gave me.
They were called to supper just as Emmy was finishing addressing their letters. She brought the envelopes downstairs to be posted in the morning. Charlotte had set the table in the dining room for their first meal to mark the occasion. When Emmy asked about how to post the letters, Charlotte seemed pleased that the girls had been upstairs writing home.
“Your mum will be glad to hear from you girls,” she said as she placed a dish of parsleyed potatoes on the table and motioned for them to choose chairs. Rose, already seated, was unfolding and refolding her napkin.
“Emmy didn’t write Mum. Only me,” Julia announced as she plopped onto a chair.
Charlotte raised her head slightly to look at the two envelopes in Emmy’s hand, surely wondering to whom Emmy had written. “We can post your letters tomorrow. Perhaps we can walk to town and do that. It’s only half a mile. Be good to stretch your legs.”
“I need new wellies,” Rose announced, not looking up from her folding.
“Your wellies are in fine shape, Rose. But we’d love for you to come with us. Emmeline, dear, please do have a seat.”
Emmy took the chair next to Julia while Charlotte brought in a plate of sliced ham, something the sisters hadn’t seen since Christmas.
When Charlotte was seated as well, she held her hands out to her sister, and to Emmy on her other side.
“Shall we thank God for your safe arrival?”
It had been a long time since Emmy and Julia had been in the same room with someone who spoke to God out of reverence. She took her sister’s other hand and bowed her head, peering at Julia to see whether she was doing the same.
Charlotte’s prayer was brief and to the point. She thanked God for the girls, asked that they and everyone they loved would be kept safe during this uncertain time, and that they all would be always thankful for God’s gracious provision. While they ate, Julia chattered about what their flat was like in London, the long-ago trip to Brighton Beach, and how much she hated the air raid sirens. Emmy let her carry the conversation, which Charlotte and Rose seemed to enjoy very much, leading her to believe the two elderly sisters had little exposure to the animated prattle of a child.
After the girls helped with the dishes, the four of them settled in the parlor to look at Charlotte’s family photographs. Night fell. Charlotte switched on several lamps and pulled the blackout curtains down, shutting out a sky full of stars.
Twelve
DESPITE the lovely room, Emmy had trouble getting to sleep that first night at Thistle House. She had gone to bed when Julia did, though she could have stayed up later with Charlotte and Rose if she had wanted. Julia had grown pensive as they looked at Charlotte’s and Rose’s family pictures. For the first time since they had been notified of the evacuation, it seemed as if Julia understood more fully that she and Emmy had been sent away because London was not safe. That meant Mum was not safe. She did not want to go to bed alone in a strange house with such heavy thoughts.
Emmy pulled the curtains open when she turned out the light so that the bright moon, which had become London’s enemy in recent months, could bathe the room in lustrous half-light and keep away the deepest dark.
She had sat on the edge of Julia’s bed and stroked her back to lull her to sleep, but it was a long time before her sister stopped asking questions such as “Why didn’t Mum come with us on the train? Why isn’t she here with us? What if the Germans come to London?” and closed her eyes.
When Julia was at last asleep and Emmy was finally in bed, she had her own troubles to keep sleep elusive, primarily the loss of her job, the meeting with Mr. Dabney that she did not want to miss, and the notion that Mum had willingly chosen to bear all the responsibility of raising her.
The more Emmy thought about it, the more she understood what she had simply failed to notice before.
What kind of man would sixteen-year-old Mum have agreed to leave unnamed on a birth certificate? A man who didn’t want to be charged with statutory rape, that was who. And how else could this man have secured Mum’s silence unless money had been involved? Surely that was how she had financed those first few years of her life as a single mother. There had been a payoff. That was how she was able to stay in London with a new baby instead of moving with her mother to Devonshire. How long had the money lasted? Emmy wondered. Because at some point Mum had met Neville and she had let herself get pregnant again. But this time she was twenty-four. Since she would not be paid off, perhaps she was hoping she could at last be married off. The trouble was, Neville hadn’t had a keen sense of responsibility. A pregnant girlfriend wasn’t exactly a problem, and it certainly wasn’t his problem. Mum had been wrong about herself, too, because she fell in love with the man who fathered her second child but didn’t want to marry her. And when that happened, it didn’t matter that Neville had lots of money one day and nothing the next, or that he had no scruples. She was in love with him until the day he left her for good. Love had not worked out like Mum had hoped.
Love had failed her. But money had not.
Was that what she had returned to, then? Was that why they had moved to a nicer flat than a kitchen maid could afford after Neville left? Was that why they had warm beds, hot water, enough food to eat, and suitcases to pack their clothes in for the evacuation?
Because someone was giving her money on the side? And what else could it be for but for sex? Mum didn’t have anything else to offer but her lovely body.
Emmy sat up in bed, both repulsed and heartbroken by what her mother had become. For several long minutes she sat there, drawing breaths in and letting them out, as she sought to calm her thundering heart. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached underneath it for her brides box. Emmy opened the latch and withdrew the sketches, laying them across her rumpled blanket now awash in moonlight.
A translucent glow draped the gowns with the sweet white radiance due them, such that each one seemed touched by magic for just that moment.
It did not matter that there were no faces on the penciled-in heads: The gowns themselves exuded elation and perfection, exactly what you would expect a bride to radiate on the day of her dreams, on the day everything was right in her world.
No wonder Emmy loved these dresses so. Each one was an emblem of all that she wanted for her miserable life.
Emmy didn’t hear Julia rise from her bed, nor did she feel the tears on her own cheeks. Her sister was just suddenly at her side, crawling up next to her and laying her head on Emmy’s shoulder.
Julia’s small arm curled around her sister’s back and Emmy lowered her head to Julia’s.
“I miss Mum, too,” Julia whispered.
* * *
THE next day over breakfast Charlotte made a list of the girls’ chores so that they would feel Thistle House was their home. Guests didn’t do chores, Charlotte said. And she didn’t want the girls to feel like guests; nor did she want them to get bored. School would not be in session until September, which meant they had nearly three months to occupy themselves. Emmy couldn’t quite grasp the idea that she would still be with Charlotte come September, but she said nothing.
Julia got her wish to be able to feed the chickens, and to water them, change their straw, and gather eggs. Emmy would take care of their laundry, bedding, and towels, and she would do the sweeping and run the Hoover. Rose, sitting at the table while the chores were divvied up and wanting to be a part of the conversation, was placed in charge of using the feather duster, although Emmy did not think she would actually remember that she had asked for a chore to do. The sisters would take turns setting and clearing the table and drying the dishes.
The vegetable garden and fruit trees were best kept by all four of them, Charlotte said, since both required constant vigilance against weeds and pests and inclement weather, and because the gardens and fruit trees might be what kept them all fed if rationing continued to become more strict. Butter, bacon, and sugar had been rationed since the beginning of the year, and meat, cheese, and fruit had followed not long after, when fewer and fewer supply ships could get past the German U-boats patrolling the English Channel. No one in London had a garden the size of Charlotte’s. It was amazing to think that here in the country, a ration book didn’t determine what you ate or didn’t eat, but rather the state of your vegetable garden and henhouse.
Charlotte also decreed that Julia and Emmy should read a book every week to keep their minds fresh, and that they should write Mum twice a month, or as long as the stationery held out. Paper had also recently been rationed, Charlotte said, and Emmy could not help but frown at this. She could afford no reject gowns if the writing paper was to last. And while Charlotte had ample books in her sitting room, Emmy doubted she’d let her tear out the blank pages in back to sketch bridal gowns.
The four of them walked into town after lunch to post the letters, stop at the library so that the girls could check out books for the first week, and to buy meat, dried beans, and other staples Charlotte could not grow in her garden. The townspeople on the streets and in the stores regarded Emmy and her sister with friendly but wary smiles. It was obvious no one knew what to expect next. If the evacuation was complete and all the children were safely out of London, then what could possibly follow but the brutal attack everyone feared? Two of the women Charlotte introduced them to told the girls that their sons were far away fighting hard so that they could be reunited with their mum and dad. It was as if they needed the girls to know that although they couldn’t see the war there in the Cotswolds, they could still feel it.
There were other London evacuees in the village; not just from their train, but from others as well. Just as she was about to enter the library, Emmy saw two evacuees she recognized, a sister and brother from their train car. Their eyes met from across the street and an unspoken communication passed between them. Somehow in that wordless exchange they were able to ascertain that neither of them had been taken in by a lunatic or a tyrant. The woman they were with was younger than Charlotte and held the hand of a little boy who was clearly hers. Emmy was glad in that moment that she and Julia didn’t have to compete for attention from a foster mother’s own child.
At the post office, Charlotte introduced them to the postmistress, easily the tallest woman Emmy had ever met. She handed her the letters and the postmistress accepted them with a confident nod, saying it took only two days for mail to reach London. As the letter to Mrs. Crofton passed from Emmy’s hand, she unashamedly prayed for God’s favor. She knew how selfish it was to ask for something so self-serving as an appointment with a dressmaker in light of the war, but she also knew the war could not last forever. One day it would be over. And they would all be able to go back to doing what they had been doing before—dreaming what they had been dreaming, and planning what they had been planning.
Emmy was already plotting how she would be able to sneak away unnoticed back to London. That daunting process had to begin with receiving Mrs. Crofton’s letter of response and without Charlotte’s asking about it. And she could not begin the journey there in Stow where someone would recognize her. She would need to get herself to Moreton where she would attract far less attention.
After leaving the post office, Charlotte stopped for a copy of the Daily Mail, which she said she liked to pick up every other day or so. Emmy quickly offered to add to her list of duties walking to town to get it for her. A trip to town away from watchful eyes would allow Emmy to post as many letters to Mrs. Crofton as she needed to without drawing attention to it. Charlotte seemed to think that the London newspaper might seem like a small tether to Emmy’s real home. She also had no reason to mistrust Emmy’s motives.
“Of course,” she said.
The last stop before returning home was the variety store. While they waited outside with Rose and their armload of library books, Charlotte went inside for Epsom salts and a bottle of aspirin. She emerged a few minutes later with those items, plus several strange-looking pencils and ten sheets of card stock.
“So that you can keep drawing your bridal dresses.” Charlotte handed the paper and the pencils to Emmy. “The pencils are special for sketching. They’re what artists use and they’re supposed to be just what you need.”
