Secrets of a Charmed Life, page 17
“Mum—”
“Stay here. Watch for your sister. Don’t go outside after dark. It’s not safe.”
Before Emmy could say another word, her mother stepped outside into the chaos of their broken street and she watched her walk away, a beautiful woman in a heather gray dress with whispers of floral scent trailing after her.
Twenty-one
AFTER Mum left, Emmy busied herself with looking for something to cover the windows in the front of the flat. Geraldine saw her poking about the ruins across the street for larger pieces of wood and brought over her last piece of plywood. She helped Emmy cover the front window downstairs, the biggest of the three that had shattered. And she let Emmy borrow her hammer and nails so that Emmy could cover the empty window frame in Mum’s upstairs room, and the little one upstairs in the privy.
Emmy attempted to return the hammer but Geraldine asked her if she and Mum were staying that night at the flat. When Emmy nodded, she said, “You know there’s no electricity, no gas, no running water?”
“Julia might come home.”
“Does your mother keep a gun?”
Emmy shook her head, unable to reason why her neighbor was asking that.
“Hang on to the hammer, then.”
She watched Geraldine trudge off with one suitcase to who knew where, the rest of her worldly belongings as secure as she could make them.
Back inside the flat, Emmy swept up the shards of glass, shook out all the sofa pillows, and waited for Mum.
At dusk she was still not back.
Emmy found half a package of biscuits and another of sardines and ate them.
Still Mum was not back.
She went upstairs to the room she shared with Julia, grabbed the coverlet and pillow from her bed, and took them downstairs. She arranged herself on the sofa so that she would hear if anyone came to the front door. The room quickly became inky black as the sun set and whatever residual light that crept in through the boards over the windows disappeared. She pulled the blanket up under her chin and clutched Geraldine’s hammer. Minutes later, the air raid sirens began to wail, and the drone of planes overhead rumbled outside. Emmy grabbed the blanket and hammer, and headed for Thea’s, pulling open the broken front door and running through the kitchen. When she flung open the back door, Emmy saw that Thea’s cats lay dead on the back step, stretched out as if they had been arranged there by Death itself. Emmy grimaced as she stepped over the bodies and crawled inside the Anderson shelter. Emmy yanked the door closed and scooted as far back as she could in the pitch black of the damp shelter, knocking over a box of metal items that skittered across the dirt floor. The ground beneath her knees rocked as somewhere nearby a bomb connected with its target, and a spray of dirt fell on her.
“Stop! Stop it!” Emmy yelled, pressing her hand to her ears, while fear coursed through her veins.
She was now the girl home alone while bombs rained down all around.
Julia!
Emmy called for her sister. She called for Mum.
She could do nothing but cover herself with the blanket and clutch the hammer as the bombs fell. Emmy would learn that this second night was worse than the first. Four hundred people would be killed, and more than seven hundred injured.
Warehouses along the Thames were again easy targets, and buildings that had been afire on Saturday night were burning again. Hundreds of fires would join together to become one.
And all the while, Emmy huddled in Thea’s bomb shelter, alone and afraid.
She didn’t know when she fell asleep. She only knew that when she awoke, she heard the far-off sounds of emergency vehicles. She emerged from the shelter to a fog of smoke and ash and mist. Her row of flats was still standing but the unit on the end was now minus a roof and a second story. Emmy picked her way back to the flat, calling for Mum, calling for Julia. But the street, the flat, all that she knew, were empty of people and silent. Inside, she used the toilet, its water soured and stinking since it had been used but not flushed in two days. The food in the fridge, the little there was, stank as well. She found a swallow of brandy in the cupboard above the fridge, which she drank because there was nothing else. Then she opened a tin of beans and ate them cold with a spoon.
Sometime later Emmy saw through a slit in the plywood a man approaching the flat. The warden perhaps? Emmy could not let him see her. He would insist she leave and that was something Emmy could not do. She had not locked the front door. Before she could turn the latch, she heard him knock. Emmy sprang to the kitchen and let herself out the back door into the debris-littered garden where she concealed herself as best she could along the wall. She still held the hammer.
Emmy heard the man inside the house.
“Anyone here? Annie? Are you here?”
Emmy stood still against the wall. The voice didn’t belong to Mr. Findley. She didn’t recognize the voice at all. Still, he would only be able to see her if he came into the garden. And surely there was no reason for him to do that.
He called for Mum again. And again.
And then he left.
Emmy waited until she could see him over the garden wall, walking away. He wore a nice hat and a wool coat.
Should she have revealed herself? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t know him. What did he want with her mother?
Emmy watched the man until he was no longer in sight.
Then she went back inside and waited.
Mum did not come back.
Emmy read Julia’s book of fairy tales. She slept. She ate another can of cold beans. She watched the fires burning across town from the back garden.
When darkness began to fall, Emmy realized it was Monday. Mr. Dabney had expected her at his town house at four o’clock that afternoon with her mother and the brides box in tow.
He and his sweet wife were leaving for Edinburgh tomorrow. And she was to go with them, she and her brides box, because she was going to be Graham Dabney’s apprentice.
It was now after seven.
And the sirens began to wail.
Once again, Emmy grabbed the hammer and her blanket and ran to Thea’s Anderson shelter.
In that hellish cocoon Emmy did not know that fires were burning all around Saint Paul’s and buildings were ablaze on both sides of Ludgate Hill. A women’s hospital was hit as was a school being used to shelter homeless families. More than four hundred people were killed and more than a thousand injured on the second night that she huddled in Thea’s shelter, the third night of the Blitz. There were a few tins of canned milk inside the shelter, which she drank, and a package of digestive biscuits, which she ate.
She fell asleep when exhaustion overcame her, to the rumblings of explosions that filled her dreams with terror.
In the morning, as the East End continued to burn, Emmy let herself back inside Thea’s flat, hardly noticing the dead cats as she stepped over them.
She needed food and water.
Thea had emptied her kitchen of food in preparation for evacuating with her mother to Wales, but Emmy found a few jars of preserves, canned meat, and other items that would not spoil in their absence. She grabbed a market basket from Thea’s kitchen and filled it with all the food she had left, even the cats’ food.
She took the basket and her hammer back to the flat to wait for Mum.
But she did not come.
And Julia did not return home.
Rain began to fall in the late afternoon, a weeping, mournful downpour. Extending into the early-evening hours, it should have kept the Luftwaffe from continuing its assault. But no. The Luftwaffe made full use of the cloud cover. Bombers pounded the city once again and Emmy spent another night in Thea’s shelter.
On Wednesday with no sign of Mum or Julia, Emmy hid the basket of food in her wardrobe upstairs and ventured out to look for them.
She went back to the places Mum and she had been before. She also went to the shelters where the homeless were gathering. No one at the hospital had seen Julia and there was no record of either Julia or Mum having been admitted. Emmy returned to the police station, which was as chaotically busy as it had been three days before. A different policeman was on duty and she had to explain all over again how Julia came to be missing.
“And where is your mother right now?” this new policeman said, looking past Emmy. Emmy was a child and he didn’t have time for children.
“She’s out looking for my sister.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
It was obvious he was perturbed that Emmy was at the station alone without Mum. “Look, I’ve heard nothing of a young girl turning up. Have your Mum check with all the neighbors, and the child’s friends, and—”
Emmy cut him off. “We don’t have any more neighbors! Our street has been bombed. Everyone has left. That is what I have been telling you. She went missing the first night of the bombing.”
He frowned at the interruption. “You bring your mum here and I will make out an official report.”
“We already did that!” Emmy yelled. “On Sunday. This is Wednesday. She’s been missing for four days!”
The policeman wagged a finger at Emmy. “Do you think you’re the only soul in London with a tale of woe today? Do you know how many people are dead or missing? You tell your mum to come next time. I’m done with you.”
He turned from Emmy to help someone else.
She stood there stunned, unable to believe no one could help her. An older woman sitting on a bench and looking as though she had been waiting a long time crooked a finger, beckoning Emmy to approach her.
“I heard what you told the policeman, and I’m very sorry your little sister is missing,” she said. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you and your mum should check the casualty listings at one of the Incident Inquiry Points.”
Emmy had no idea what she was talking about. “The what?”
She reached for Emmy’s arm and squeezed it gently. “They have listings, my dear. The names of those who’ve been killed. They have a list.”
Emmy felt the blood drain from her face. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” But she did. She did know what she was saying.
The woman released her hold and patted Emmy’s arm. “Tell your mum to check at the nearest Incident Inquiry Point, love. There’s an IIP just around the corner from the police station here. Tell your mum to check with them.”
The woman withdrew her hand and her attention. She turned from Emmy to stare at the queue of people waiting their turn for help, allowing Emmy a sliver of privacy to take in the idea that Julia’s body might be lying in a morgue somewhere, waiting for a family member to claim her remains.
Emmy left the station, numb with fear and dread.
Somehow she put one foot in front of the other and walked to the IIP office, as the woman had called it. Emmy stepped inside and fell in with the crowds of people seeking information. Her mind seemed to drift into that state between sleep and wakefulness as she waited her turn. Others ahead of her also wanted to see the lists. New copies of the latest reports of the dead were laid out on the counter by a green-uniformed matron of the Women’s Volunteer Service. Those on an errand like no other moved forward to peer at them. The man ahead of Emmy looked and turned away, relief evident in his face. Emmy bent over to look, her gaze traveling over the letters of the alphabet. Past the As, the Bs, the Cs and then the Ds.
And then she saw it.
Downtree.
Emmy’s heart slammed against her chest.
Downtree.
And then she saw the name following it, separated from Downtree with a tiny, gentle comma.
Anne Louise.
It wasn’t Julia’s name listed on the roll call of the dead.
It was Mum’s.
Twenty-two
EMMY had never been to a morgue before, makeshift or otherwise.
The sheet-covered bodies lay on the school cafeteria floor, where only six months earlier children had eaten sausages and peas at sturdy wooden tables. The fallen were arranged in even rows, each one with a cardboard label affixed to the chest, identifying them by name—if it was known—and where they had been killed. Several officials moved about the rows, escorting next of kin to the draped body of the family member they’d been looking for, lifting a corner of the covering, and revealing just half the face; all that a mother or brother or son or grandparent needed to see to identify and claim their beloved.
Emmy would not be able to recall every step to the school-turned-morgue or how she managed to remember the directions after she was told how far she needed to walk to claim her mother’s body.
She did remember being asked how old she was when at last her voice returned and she whispered to the volunteer at the IIP that Mum’s name was among those on the list of the dead.
The first lie came off her lips as easy as air out of a burst balloon.
To have said she was fifteen and orphaned was to have sentenced herself to a children’s home or worse. A social services worker would have been summoned. Emmy would have been escorted away. She wouldn’t have been able to return to the flat. She wouldn’t have been able to keep looking for Julia, whose name was not on the list.
Not on the list!
Emmy was all Julia had. She had to stay on her own. She had to.
“Eighteen,” Emmy had said.
And where was her father?
The second lie came just as effortlessly.
“Recovering in hospital. We got separated Sunday night.”
Kind condolences were offered to Emmy but she did not want the woman’s sympathy. She wanted nothing from her that would give weight and substance to yet another grief.
Emmy was tired of weight and substance. Tired of fear, of anguish, of hunger, of thirst, of despair.
She wanted to feel nothing.
It had taken supreme effort not to press her hand to the woman’s mouth and tell her to shut up about the terrible loss of her mother.
“Where is she?” Emmy had said, and the woman told her how to find the temporary morgue that had been set up near Holborn station for unclaimed dead.
Every step had seemed like the ticking off of the days and weeks and months the war was taking from her. With one word, she allowed her sixteenth and seventeenth years to be swallowed whole by the enemy—taken as swiftly and surely as the war had stolen everything else that was hers. This was all she had been aware of as she strode forward.
She could be a child no longer. Emmy had to be done with immature worries and juvenile hopes.
Orphan was a word to describe a child without parents. Emmy was not a child.
She was Julia’s only living hope, and as such, her little sister’s guardian.
Julia was Emmy’s sole concern.
She would tell whatever lies she must to find her sister. Mum would want only one thing from Emmy now. To find Julia.
When Emmy arrived at the temporary morgue, she was eighteen. She felt eighteen. There would be no looking back.
She approached a haggard-looking city official with a clipboard who seemed to be in charge of receiving callers to the morgue. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days.
“I’ve come about my mother,” Emmy said, surprising herself with how grown-up she sounded. “Her name is Annie Downtree. Anne Louise Downtree. I was told I would find her body here.”
The man looked at his clipboard. “Are you the next of kin?” His voice sounded as tired as his body looked.
“I’m her only kin.”
He looked up to study Emmy’s face, wondering perhaps how old she was. But Emmy knew she no longer looked like a child.
“My father passed away when I was young.” Again, the lie flew off Emmy’s tongue with hardly a moment’s thought.
“I’m so sorry for ye, lass. Truly I am.”
Emmy did not want his sympathy. “Where is she?”
Again he consulted his clipboard, and then he checked a ledger on a nearby desk. When he looked up, he shook his head. “We aren’t able to keep the unclaimed bodies more than a few days. We always make what inquiries we can. I am so sorry.”
An odd sensation rippled through Emmy. Fear? Emptiness? Dread? “What did you do with her?” she said, restrained emotion thickening her words.
He consulted his clipboard yet again. When he looked up, he rubbed his chin with his hand, the gesture of one about to say something he was afraid to say. “She was buried proper; I can tell you that. In Tower Hamlets. Just this morning.”
Emmy needed a moment to understand what the man was telling her. Mum had been buried already. She was buried. Buried. “What is Tower Hamlets?”
“It’s the public cemetery, miss. Not far from Charing Cross. They were all given proper burials.”
She swallowed a lingering sensation of loss and fear. “‘They’?”
“There were others what no one came for and who had no kin near as we could tell. They were buried proper. A vicar and everything.”
“A vicar,” Emmy echoed.
“Yes.”
Emmy started to teeter and she steadied herself against the wall.
“Miss?” he said.
“Where—where was she found?”
The man checked the ledger; a different page this time. “In the basement of the Sharington Crescent Hotel. The place took a direct hit, I’m afraid. The upper floors collapsed into the basement, I hear. No one sheltering in the basement survived. I’m sorry.”
A hotel. She was at a hotel.
“Where is this place?” Emmy said evenly.
“I’m sure it was quick, miss. I’m sure she didn’t suffer.”
He could be sure of nothing and he and Emmy both knew it. “Where is it?”
“Near Covent Garden, I think.”
