Secrets of a Charmed Life (9 page)

EMMY
had traveled on a train outside the heart of London only once before. During one of Neville's stretches of living with Mum, he took them all to Brighton Beach for a weekend at the sea. He wanted to take only Mum; Emmy remembered that had been obvious. But they hadn't lived in Whitechapel then, so they hadn't had Thea for a neighbor. There was no one who could take the sisters for the weekend. Mum didn't like any of their neighbors at the time and they didn't like her, according to Mum. Emmy believed what they didn't like was Neville floating in and out of the flat, sometimes with an actor friend or two, and that they often loudly rehearsed lines at three o'clock in the morning from the bawdy shows they were in. The only other friends Mum had were fellow laundry maids at the hotel where she was working, but none of them had wanted to babysit a three- and an eleven-year-old for an entire weekend.

Emmy had liked the train ride.

She'd loved the sea.

The rest of the weekend was forgettable.

As she and Julia now sat side by side on the train, she wanted to stay angry at Mum, at the Germans, at the British War Office, at God Almighty himself for whisking her out of London when she was on the very edge of having everything.

But as the city sights fell away, and the landscape relaxed to rolling hills and fields of yellow, she found herself unable to stay angry. The rumbling of the train, the scenery outside her window, and even the lunch Julia and she shared—the nicest they had ever had—calmed Emmy to a state of ordinary melancholy. When they changed trains in Oxford for the last leg of the trip by rail, Emmy's anger had mellowed to something more like grief.

There were seventy evacuees on the train to Moreton-in-Marsh, accompanied not by one of the schoolteachers, as the larger groups had been, but by a uniformed matron who reminded Emmy somewhat of Nana. Her build was the same, as was her silver-brown hair. She allowed Emmy, the oldest in their group, to call her Alice instead of Mrs. Braughton. As they were about to pull into the station at Moreton-in-Marsh, Alice asked if Emmy would keep an eye on the trio of young boys—all classmates of Julia's—who were seated behind the girls and who had spent the forty-minute journey from Oxford laughing, poking one another, and kicking the back of the girls' seats.

“Just see that they don't get separated from the group,” Alice said as the whistle blew and the train began to approach the station. “We're being met at the station and from there we'll walk to the town hall. Just a short stroll. I'll bring up the rear. If you wouldn't mind staying in the middle, that would be grand.”

Emmy nodded in soundless compliance.

“There's a brave girl,” Alice said, mistaking Emmy's quietness for timidity. She squeezed Emmy's shoulder before making her way back to the front of the train car.

Once they were off the train, it took some doing to corral the boys and convince them to stay where Emmy could see them. Then the lot of children formed a queue and a billeting official counted heads, comparing names with a list she had in her hand. Their suitcases had been loaded onto a truck so that they would not need to carry them the three blocks to the hall where they were to be sorted out. And then the young Londoners were off, like soldiers marching to the battlefield, or prisoners to their cells, Emmy thought.

“I have to go to the loo,” Julia murmured, her hand tight in Emmy's.

“You just went at Oxford.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Think about something else. As soon as we get to the next place, I'll find one for you.”

“I can't think of something else!”

“Yes, you can.”

The three boys ahead of them stopped to look at a dead bird on the sidewalk. “Come on, boys,” Emmy said.

“I dare you to touch it, Julia,” one of the boys said.

“I dare you to eat it!” Julia challenged, her hand tighter now in her sister's.

Emmy kicked the tiny carcass with her shoe. It landed in the gutter. “You can compose dares later. Off you go.”

They continued on their way, past shops and cafés and businesses. The town was like Brighton in some ways. The buildings were close to one another, and there were few taxis and no red double-decker buses. But there
was no fragrance of the sea, no one selling pasties or ice-cream cones on the sidewalk. And in Brighton, no one seemed to even notice when they had arrived or cared when they left. Here, everyone stopped whatever they were doing to look at the line of children, from the barber sweeping his front step, to the grocer standing by wooden crates full of turnips, to women in unremarkable dresses going about their afternoon errands.

Two young mothers pushing prams on the sidewalk moved aside so that the group could stay together. Emmy heard one whisper to the other, “Oh! These are the London children. The poor dears!”

And the other one replied, “Can you imagine sending your child away like that?”

“Or taking one in? Good heavens, you wouldn't know anything about them.”

“Nor do we know anything about you,” Emmy whispered as she and Julia walked by them.

She heard nothing else from the two pram pushers and did not look back at them.

After another block they were at the town hall on High Street. The curbs were crowded with parked cars on either side. A few adults, mostly women, were standing outside on the steps, watching as the children made their way past them.

“Welcome to Moreton-in-Marsh,” one of them said, but her tone suggested she was nervous about the children being there. The young evacuees were the evidence that everything was different now. The war was no longer phony, as some had called it. It was real. And here were London's children to prove it.

They were ushered into a large reception room filled with tables, folding chairs, and people talking in small
groups. The luggage had arrived, and two men were now unloading it from a cart and lining the suitcases like dominoes against the back wall. At one table officials sat with their papers and clipboards. At another were cups of water, tea biscuits, and meringues. The boys in Emmy's care rushed to the food table and she let them go. She had done what had been asked of her—she got them there without losing them.

Emmy looked around for a sign indicating a privy, found one, and started to head in that direction, Julia's hand in hers.

“You need to stay with your group,” a woman wearing an armband said to her.

“My sister needs to use the loo,” Emmy said, and kept walking.

“What are those people doing back there?” Julia asked as Emmy led her down a narrow hall to one of two doors marked
WC
.

“They're here for all of us.” Emmy opened the door for her.

“But why are they looking at us like that?”

“They've never seen children from London before, so you and I are like two princesses to them. That's why.”

This satisfied her. She let go of Emmy's hand.

When they returned to the big room, Julia said she was hungry. They made their way to the refreshments, and Emmy could not help but notice how the people in the room watched as she and Julia approached the table, studying how the girls respected their hospitality. For one crazed second Emmy wanted to lean over and lick all the meringues.

“Just take one,” she murmured to Julia. “Until you know everyone's had something.”

“I know how to share, Emmy,” Julia murmured back, her brow crinkled in annoyance.

A woman stepped up to a microphone and tapped it. A loud clunking and a short squawk followed. “All right, then,” she said. “If all the children could stand behind me here, we can get started. If you are here to collect an evacuee or two, if you could please make your way to my left so that we can keep everything in order. Splendid.”

Everyone did as they were told.

As the crowd of adults moved to stand where they could face the children, Emmy noted that the expressions on the faces were no different from those she had seen hours ago in the school yard. These country people wore the same look of apprehension mixed with hope. They wanted to believe, just as the parents in the school yard did, that this was without a doubt the course of action to take; the evacuation was how their nation would do battle and yet protect the blameless. Some would have to release a child into the care of a stranger, and some would have to take in the beloved child of someone they had never met. The war demanded that strangers could no longer exist in England.

It wasn't until the villagers began to pick whom they would take home that Emmy saw how the two groups were different. The parents in the school yard had not been able to choose anything; not which bus their child would board, not which town they would go to, not which family would take them in. These people, on the other hand, looked the evacuees over as though they were shopping for their Christmas goose.

The foster parents, as the woman at the microphone called them, were invited to come speak with the children so that they could “all get to know one another.”

As the people began to move toward them, Julia grabbed Emmy's hand. Her little sister's fingers were sticky from the meringue.

A couple approached the girls. They were older than Mum, younger than Nana would have been. The woman smelled like furniture polish and the man had a giant mole on his cheek that looked like it was made of roast beef.

They told the girls their names, Mr. and Mrs. Trimble, and said how nice it was to meet them. Then they asked the sisters for their names.

“I'm Emmeline Downtree and this is my sister, Julia,” Emmy said. Julia, wide-eyed, said nothing.

The woman bent down and touched Julia's corn silk hair. “My, aren't you a pretty little cherub.”

Julia looked up at Emmy. She could see her question in the little girl's eyes.
What's a cherub?

“Say thank you,” Emmy whispered.

Julia obeyed.

The woman peered at Julia's tag and then crinkled her brow in pity. “Oh. So, you've only a mum, then? What happened to your dad, little one?”

“He's in India,” Julia said. “He's making a movie about the treasure of the seven lost princes.”

“What's that?” said the man.

Julia proudly repeated the answer to the question.

Mr. and Mrs. Trimble swiveled their surprised faces to look at Emmy.

“What is it exactly that your father is doing in India?” the woman said to her.

After a morning of not knowing what anything was about, to be asked something about which she had ample knowledge loosened Julia's tongue. “Neville's not her dad,” Julia said without a hint of embarrassment. “He's
only mine. But I just call him Neville. We don't know where Emmy's father is.”

The couple stared at Emmy, thoroughly scandalized. Emmy didn't care. Maybe if no one wanted her, she and Julia would be put back on a train to London. Several long seconds passed before Mr. and Mrs. Trimble recovered.

“Aren't you a little old to be sent off to the countryside?” Mr. Trimble finally said to Emmy.

Emmy laughed; she couldn't help it. For the last five days she had tried to convince everyone of this exact thing and no one would listen to her. Now here she was in a strange little village, standing in front of a couple obviously appalled by the details of her existence, and the man had pronounced—with no urging from Emmy—what she had so desperately wanted everyone else to say.

“Oh my!” the woman murmured. Emmy's ill-timed chuckle only added to Mrs. Trimble's growing impression of Emmy as an undesirable foster child.

“I couldn't agree with you more,” Emmy said, reining in her amusement. “Believe me, I'd much rather be home than standing here talking to you.”

Seconds of silence.

“Well, we'll just take little Julia here, then. Can't we, Howard?”

“No,” Emmy said before Mr. Trimble could respond.

“I beg your pardon?” the woman said.

“I said no.”

Alice, hovering nearby, sidled up to the girls, her expression anxious. “We try to keep siblings together if we can,” she said, looking from Emmy to the couple.

“We can only take the little one,” the man said.

“Then you'll need to keep shopping,” Emmy said. “Julia stays with me.”

Alice admonished Emmy with her eyes. She could read what the woman was communicating to her. It was something along the lines of
Can you please try to be nice?

“Come along, Margaret.” The man put his hand on his wife's back to guide her away from the sisters.

“But, Howard, I want the little one,” the woman protested.

Howard Trimble ignored his wife but turned his gaze on Emmy. “A word of advice,” he said with feigned courtesy. “You'll get nowhere with that attitude. You should be thinking about your little sister.”

“That's exactly what I am doing,” Emmy replied, matching his tone. “She stays with me.”