Secrets of a Charmed Life, page 33
I think back to when I had arrived a few hours ago and Isabel and I were talking about the value of recording the past. I had asked her what was the good in remembering an event if you didn’t remember how it made you feel. How it impacted others. How it made them feel. You would learn nothing.
“You want to pass on what you have learned, don’t you?” I say.
“Well, aside from the fact that it seems a good thing to do, I think Mum would want me to. I think she would be proud of me if I did.”
I let her answer settle over me for a moment. “This is just one article in one newspaper. I’m afraid you will be disappointed.”
“A great many movements have begun from one article in one newspaper. I am only responsible for my own choices. I am choosing to tell my story, Kendra. Who listens to it is not my burden. Telling it is.”
We hear a knock at the door and then Beryl pokes her head inside. “Everyone’s here. It’s time for the party, Auntie.”
“We’ll be right out, Beryl.” Isabel turns to me. “You will stay, won’t you? There are people you need to meet.”
“I would like that very much.”
She rises a bit unsteadily and I move quickly to help her. Isabel thanks me when she is firm on her feet, and then draws a manicured hand gently across her brow to brush away a stray strand of hair. “How do I look for a ninety-three-year-old?”
“I’d say you don’t look a day over ninety.”
Isabel tips her head back and laughs. “Julia would have liked you, Kendra. Oh my. Yes, she would have.”
“I would’ve liked her, too.”
Her laugh ebbs away but her grin remains. “I’ve been a coward most of my life, you know.”
At first I say nothing. Sages of the past would say we are—all of us—just imperfect people on a flawed planet who are trying to hold on to what is good and lovely and right.
“On the contrary,” I finally reply, “I think history will prove that Emmeline Downtree was actually very brave, considering all that she had to endure.”
Isabel regards me thoughtfully, then crinkles an eyebrow in contemplation before reaching for my arm. “Shall we?”
We make our way down the hall, into the kitchen, and through the laundry room, where the garden door is ajar and sounds of celebration are skipping on the breeze. On the threshold, the eyes of those who have been waiting for the guest of honor turn expectantly toward us. Among the many faces, I see Professor Briswell, standing a few feet away from a woman who looks very much like a younger version of Isabel, as well as more than a dozen happy children who’ve not a clue what war is like.
As we pass the open door’s window, a bit of lace curtain lifts on a ribbon of air, caresses the back of Isabel’s neck, and then falls away like a discarded bridal veil.
We step out onto the terrace and the people, young and old, begin to sing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NO work of historical fiction can be written without the assistance and expertise of others, and this has never been truer for me than with this book.
Thank you, Tim and Joyce Norris of Stow-on-the-Wold, for your friendship, for arranging all those interviews at the British Legion, for the many e-mails sent and received, and for answering my relentless questions. Next time the tapas are on me.
Thank you, Tom and Judy Hyde, for your sweet hospitality: for the fish and chips; for letting me meet your mates, share a pint with them, play a game of dice, and talk about what it was like to be a child in a time of war. And, Penny Culliford, thank you for the many helps with this and that, and for the lovely cabaret show at Battersea.
Many thanks to my amazingly gifted editor, Ellen Edwards, for your insights into what affirms life and satisfies the soul, and for knowing when I needed to dig deeper into the hearts of these characters.
Thank you, Professor Margaret Dyson of the University of California, San Diego, for helping me understand the basics of child psychology in the early 1940s, and to British author and historian Julie Summers, thank you for sharing with me your expertise on the evacuation of London’s children.
To my mother, friend, and proofreader extraordinaire, Judy Horning, thank you for accompanying me on an unforgettable research trip to Gloucestershire; for poring over the research materials at the Imperial War Museum in London; for trudging in the rain, cheerfully jumping onto countless trains, and, of course, reading the raw manuscript.
The following works opened to me the world of London at war and I am grateful: Amy Helen Bell’s London Was Ours, Ben Wicks’s No Time to Wave Goodbye, Julie Summers’s When the Children Came Home, Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London; Peter Stansky’s The First Day of the Blitz, Mark Bernstein and Alex Lubertozzi’s World War II on the Air, Philip Ziegler’s London at War, Jessica Mann’s Out of Harm’s Way; Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson’s The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism.
And to those Britons who shared your war stories with me, I know how timeless some of those memories are to you, even all these many years later. I saw it in your eyes. Grateful thanks are extended especially to Jean Ashton, Eddie Warren, Ron Bockhart, Maj. Gen. Clive Beckett, Dorothy Donald, Faith Jaggard, Colin Mayes, and Roy Holloway.
A CONVERSATION WITH
SUSAN MEISSNER
Q. This novel is quite different from your previous book, A Fall of Marigolds. What inspired you to write it?
A. I’ve long been intrigued by the evacuation of London’s children into the English countryside at the start of World War Two. Many of these kids were separated from their parents and lived with foster families for the entire five years of the war. As a mother of four, I found that cut me to the core. I can’t help but imagine how hard it must have been for those London mothers to relinquish their children even though to have them remain in the city was just as terrible an option. As I began to research the evacuation and then the Blitz that followed, and as I talked to people who were either evacuated or who had survived the bombings, I discovered how truly devastating the Blitz was, and yet how resilient Londoners were. This was a city of civilians, not of military troops, and the bombing of it was relentless. Every person that lived through this time had a story of survival. I wanted to imagine what one of those stories might have been like.
Q. This story of two sisters becoming separated during the war depends on a complex series of events—any one of which could have gone the other way, and brought the sisters back together again. In your mind, does fate or providence determine the outcome?
A. That is such a great question. If we say fate means a person can’t change what will happen by what he or she does, then I’d have to say fate doesn’t seem to be a player in this novel. Actually, I think any great story is peopled by characters who do have the power to effect change, and it’s what they do with that power—or don’t do—that keeps us turning the pages. I think that’s true for everyone’s life story. The way I see it, we play the cards we’ve been dealt—as Isabel in Secrets of a Charmed Life says—based on finite knowledge, and while being largely unaware that everyone around us is playing their own cards. Their cards mingle with ours, and the outcome of our played hand affects and is affected by their played hand. I believe we’ve been given free will to choose and that God in his providence sees all and knows all but doesn’t do all. When Emmy ponders so many years later the owl that hoots outside her window and wakes her sister the night they steal away back to London, she sees it as the providential hand of God giving her an opportunity not to make a choice that would prove disastrous. God doesn’t make the decision for her; she does. That is the terrifying beauty of free moral choice. Every choice Emmy, Julia, Annie, Gwen, and Isabel make is affected by all the other choices made around them.
Q. At only fifteen, Emmy is determined to become a designer of wedding dresses. She is so focused and talented, yet life takes her in a very different direction. So many of us share her experience in that the dreams we have for our lives during our formative years never come to fruition. Yet popular culture in this country tells us again and again that we can make all our dreams come true. Was it your intention to explore this contradiction in the novel?
A. I think one of the more overly simplistic and faulty mantras of our day and age is that if you just believe in your abilities, you can achieve anything you want. Emmy has a rather idealistic view of life when the novel opens, and those pristine images of the perfect dress for the perfect day for the beginning of the perfect life are emblematic of a dream that at face value is a bit self-centered, unrealistic, and nearsighted. That’s one of the subtleties of following dreams when the life goal is solely based on you and what you want out of life. There is wisdom in the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that “Life is a journey, not a destination.” It’s easy to miss all the amazing things that come your way if you are chasing only the dream, and that’s all you see or want. I think Emmy comes to realize this by the novel’s end.
Q. I found Emmy’s relationship with her mother particularly well-done, and heartbreaking. Can you tell us a little about how that relationship took shape?
A. When the novel was first evolving, and even in the completed first draft, Emmy’s mother, Annie, was a throwaway character that I felt I didn’t need to spend much time on; I didn’t think she would advance the plot beyond the few scenes she was in, and I wrongly assumed it was more compelling to have Emmy not need or want her mother’s approval than the other way around. But the more I probed into what Emmy really wants out of life, the more I saw that her relationship with her mum is the key to unlocking Emmy’s deepest desire. I also saw that this profound need for her mother’s affirmation is more universal than just the yearning to be a successful designer. I’m hoping it will resonate with many readers.
Q. On one level, the novel explores the very long-lasting trauma inflicted on two ordinary girls as a result of the war. In your research, did you get a sense of the many ways in which the war reverberated in the lives of ordinary Britons?
A. I interviewed more than a dozen Britons about their experiences during the war, and I was struck every time by how swiftly these survivors were transported back to those years, seven decades after they’d lived through them. I could see in their faces, in their eyes, in their voices, how impactful the war had been for them as young children. It was by no means an easy time, but they all seemed to recall the same spirit of resilience that I caught onto while reading the letters and memoirs of those who had been adults during the war, and who had already passed. The call to Keep Calm and Carry On was truly the rallying cry for these ordinary Britons. When I’d ask them how they’d managed to get through such a devastating time, more than one answered, “Well, you just had to. What was the alternative? When you are called upon to survive, that is what you do.”
Q. Your historical novels always include a section set in contemporary times that often frames the past story. Has that structure naturally evolved over your writing career, or was it an early deliberate choice? What does that structure in particular allow you to achieve?
A. This kind of structure as a brand for me came about by accident. In 2008, I wrote The Shape of Mercy, not my first novel but the first to be constructed as a historical story framed by a contemporary tale. That book went on to be named one of Publishers Weekly’s top one hundred novels for 2008. I found I enjoyed having a contemporary story and a historical one collide in an interesting way so that the characters in the current day are changed by something they learn from past events. I think this is largely the reason why we, as a society, archive our history. We don’t want to forget where we’ve been and what we’ve seen. The past informs us, and can easily transform us, if we choose to let it.
Q. Despite the many novels I’ve read and films I’ve seen about England during World War Two, this book made me more keenly aware of how widespread the bombing was. Was that a surprise to you, too?
A. In the early stages of plotting Secrets of a Charmed Life, I read Kate Atkinson’s wonderful novel Life After Life, the first of many eye-opening books I read about the bombing of London. Yes, I was astonished at how little I had been aware of the extent of the attack on Britain, especially because I had lived in England in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My United States Air Force husband was stationed at an RAF base in Oxfordshire for three years and I had been to London and the Cotswolds many times, and yet I left England without having thoroughly understood the toll that the war had taken on its citizens so many years before. I think this is the danger we face whenever time passes and those who have suffered recover from what flattened them. The generation coming up behind might underestimate or miss completely all that the older generation survived.
Q. What would you especially like readers to take away from Secrets of a Charmed Life?
A. The title, which I love, is meant to cause the reader to wonder if there really are secrets to living a life that has happily-ever-after written all over it. The title seems to suggest there are hidden truths to being able to have everything you’ve always wanted. But in actuality, and what I hope readers will take away, is that a happy life is not made up of what you have dreamed of, chased after, and achieved, but rather whom you poured your life into, who poured their life into yours, and the difference you’ve made in the lives of others. Most of the dreams we pursue don’t have intrinsic worth, but people always do. It’s not a perfect world, and we can only play our own hand of cards—if you will—but if we play the hand as best we can, with love for others as the motivation, I think we can rest content.
Q. Can you tell us about your next novel?
A. My next novel is set primarily in Hollywood’s golden age, specifically in 1939 when a treasure trove of timeless movies was released. Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights are just three of them. I want to explore the idea that “the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper,” a quote by W. B. Yeats that I love. Old Hollywood, with its beautifully contrived sets and back lots, excelled in catering to a sense of enchantment. No one knew that it was an era in its twilight years and that the advent of television would change everything. I envision two young women coming to Hollywood to seek purpose and notoriety—what they deem are the essentials of a fulfilling life. And both women gain what they seek, but in ways neither would have ever guessed. First, though, their senses must grow sharper. And when they do, the real transformation happens.
QUESTIONS FOR
DISCUSSION
1. What did you enjoy most about Secrets of a Charmed Life? What do you think will stay with you?
2. Would you describe the novel as a story about sisters or a story about mothers and daughters?
3. Discuss the secrets that the characters keep from one another. What facts does Annie hide from her daughters? What do Emmy and Julia not tell the men they eventually marry? What does Charlotte keep to herself, and when does she finally reveal the truth? Can you think of even more secrets in the novel?
4. How is this book different from other books you’ve read about World War Two?
5. Describing Emmy, Susan Meissner writes in the novel, “She stood at a crossroads, half-aware that her choice would send her down a path from which there could be no turning back. But instead of two choices, she saw only one—because it was all she really wanted to see. . . .” Has there ever been a time when you couldn’t see the other choices open to you?
6. Later in her life Julia writes in her journal: “Fear does not start to fade until you take the step that you think you can’t.” Do you agree? What is Julia afraid of when she writes this?
7. How similar or dissimilar are Emmy and her mother? Does Emmy have an accurate view of the kind of person her mother is?
8. Isabel tells Kendra that there are no secrets to a charmed life. There is only the task of forgiving ourselves for being able to make only our own choices, and no one else’s. What do you think she means by this?
9. What do the sketches of brides’ dresses represent to Emmy?
10. What are Emmy’s reasons for choosing to remain Isabel throughout her adult life? Would you have done the same?
11. Did you find the novel ultimately uplifting and inspiring? Why, or why not?
12. On one level, the novel is about losing something very precious. What’s the most precious thing you’ve ever lost? What were the consequences?
13. Have you ever lived through a time of war, or of social chaos? It might have been a major life-threatening event, or merely an unsettling situation. Would you like to share your experience? How does it compare to what Emmy and Julia go through?
Photo by Amber Dawn
A native of San Diego, Susan Meissner is a former managing editor of a weekly newspaper and an award-winning columnist. She has published fifteen novels with New American Library, Harvest House, and WaterBook, divisions of Penguin Random House. She lives in San Diego with her husband and has four grown children.
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