The War I Finally Won Read online

  Susan swallowed. She said, “Orphans.”

  Orphans. Jamie and I were orphans now, not evacuees. We wouldn’t stay under Lady Thorton’s protection. Susan wouldn’t be able to keep us. Something different happened to orphans.

  Pain gripped my gut. It hurt worse than my foot ever had. I tightened my arms around Jamie. I would hang on to him no matter what. I would never let us be separated.

  “I’ll be walking soon,” I said. “I’ll be very useful then.”

  Susan blinked. “Your recovery will take a few months,” she said. “You know that.”

  I said, “I’m very hardworking.”

  “Yes, you are,” Susan said. “But you won’t heal faster because of it. I don’t know if you’ll be allowed to leave the hospital, whatever else happens.”

  “Do I have to leave right away?” This day grew worse and worse.

  “No, no, of course not.” Susan sounded distracted. “I only mean for the funeral. If we have one. Whatever we do.”

  Funeral. Another word I didn’t understand. Even after a year of living with Susan there were so many things I didn’t understand. Mam hadn’t been much for words, and there was a limit to how much I could teach myself, looking out the one window of our flat.

  Arrangements. “Line up against that wall,” Lady Thorton had said last September, in her crisp head-of-the-WVS voice. “We’re going to make arrangements.”

  We’d just come off the train that had evacuated us to the village from London. A whole herd of dirty, shabby children, and Jamie and me the most wretched-looking of all. I was nearly done in from the effort of getting away, my clubfoot oozing blood and hurting so badly my knees shook. The villagers filed past us, looking us up and down.

  No one wanted Jamie and me.

  I was back to that place now, only cleaner and with my right foot in plaster.

  “You’d better go,” I said, turning my back on Susan. “You’ll need to start making arrangements.”

  Chapter 3

  At least when Mam locked me up I’d been able to move around the room. Now I was trapped in a hospital bed, helpless, immobile, away from Jamie and Butter.

  I wouldn’t have Butter if I had to leave Susan.

  Susan didn’t love Butter, not the way I did. He was left over from Becky. Maybe Susan would let me borrow Butter, if I ended up somewhere I could keep a pony. I was the one who took care of him.

  I put my hands over my face. Tears soaked my pillow. I tried not to make any noise.

  Probably Jamie could keep his cat. Bovril was a good mouser. Even Mam might have let Jamie have a cat.

  “I’m that sorry about your mother,” one of the younger nurses whispered. She pulled my blankets over my shoulders.

  I didn’t reply. Susan had tried to teach me manners, but I didn’t know the manners for when people said they were sorry your horrible mother died.

  “Is your father in the army?” the nurse asked.

  I shook my head. “He’s dead,” I whispered. “A long time ago. Nothing to do with the war.” I said, “We’re orphans now.”

  The nurse looked stricken. “You poor dear!”

  I rolled over to face the wall. “What happens to orphans?” I asked her. “Where do orphans live?”

  “In orphanages, I suppose,” the nurse said. “But surely your aunt—”

  “She isn’t our aunt,” I said.

  When Susan returned that afternoon, I pretended to be asleep. When she came back after teatime, she brought Jamie. She brought our book too, The Swiss Family Robinson, the only book we had left. It had been inside our Anderson shelter when the bomb fell on our house. Nice to know the shelter saved something.

  Susan opened to the beginning. “‘For many days,’” she read, “‘we had been tempest-tossed—’”

  “No!” I covered my ears with my hands. “Please—I don’t want—”

  The Swiss Family Robinson got shipwrecked onto a beautiful island where everything turned out splendid for them. Jamie loved the story. I had always disliked it. I hated it now.

  Jamie and I were shipwrecked, but we hadn’t been rescued after all. We hadn’t reached an island. We were still struggling not to drown in the storm-tossed sea.

  Susan closed the book. I held on to Jamie and wept.

  • • •

  Days passed without arrangements. I asked the young nurse about orphanages. “Oh,” she said, her face clouding, “I’m sure some of them are nice places nowadays. Nothing like how they used to be. I mean, you get enough to eat and all. Nobody starves.”

  “Could I keep a pony?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” she said, which meant no.

  • • •

  Every day doctors poked and prodded my leg. They changed my cast for another cast that looked exactly the same as the first one. They wouldn’t let me have crutches. They refused to let me out of bed.

  Susan visited every morning, her face gentle and sympathetic. She brought Jamie to see me every afternoon, as soon as he got out of school.

  • • •

  When we came to live with Susan, she gave me crutches. When Mam came back for us, she threw them away. That’s how Jamie and I got caught outside in the London air raid. I couldn’t move fast enough to find a shelter before the bombs came. We’d been on the street, cowering under the hail of bricks and glass.

  A night nurse shook me awake. “You’re screaming,” she said. “Stop.”

  I was shaking and drenched in sweat. “Bombs,” I said. “A wall fell on my leg. I couldn’t move.”

  “It was a nightmare,” she said. “Pull yourself together. You’re frightening the younger ones.”

  The nurse walked away. I stared at the ceiling. My heart raced. I had to pee, which meant calling a nurse and using a bedpan, which reminded me of Mam making me use the bucket in our old flat. I knew where a toilet was—I’d used it before my surgery. The ward was dark, but some light shone from the nurses’ station in the hall.

  I sat up. I pulled the blankets and sheets away. I tapped the hard plaster of my cast. My foot scarcely hurt at all. I swung my legs to the ground.

  It would have been easier with crutches, but there were beds every few feet along the room. I steadied myself on the bedrails and dragged my cast along the floor. It was hard work but I was so glad to be moving. I slid into the bathroom, used the toilet, and came out. I was halfway back down the darkened ward when a voice behind me barked, “What on earth are you doing?”

  I jumped, startled. I lost my balance. I waved my arms in the air, fell against the nearest bed, and whacked its sleeping occupant, a small girl with a broken leg in traction. She screamed. I pushed myself sideways and fell. My right knee twisted. Pain shot through my ankle. I screamed too.

  The whole ward woke. Someone flung on the lights. A pair of nurses hoisted me back into my own bed. Others calmed and comforted the little girl.

  “As if you weren’t old enough to know better!” the head nurse hissed. “Waking everyone up with your ruckus, and taking such ridiculous risks! You’ll be lucky if you haven’t hurt your recovery. Wait until your mother hears!”

  “She’s not my mother!”

  The head nurse didn’t care.

  • • •

  In the morning the doctor said I didn’t seem to have done myself harm. The nurse told Susan anyway. Susan wasn’t happy. “I don’t know what got into her,” the nurse said.

  “I do,” Susan replied. To me she said more softly, “I know it’s difficult, but you must rest until you heal. If you get up again, they’ll tie you to the bed.”

  I shuddered. Then I saw what Susan was carrying. “You’ve another letter. From Lady Thorton.” My stomach lurched. Here came the arrangements.

  Susan waited until the nurse walked away. Then she sat down on my bed. She looked unhappy. “I�
�m afraid it’s hard news,” she said. “I’ve been trying to think of a way to say this gently, but I haven’t found one.” She reached for my hand. I pulled it back.

  I thought I might stop breathing.

  I had to stay with Jamie.

  Had to.

  “Your mother was cremated,” Susan said. “It was because of the war, because there were so many victims at the factory and because we didn’t hear about her death in time to claim her body. Her ashes were put into a mass grave. We won’t be able to have a funeral. We won’t be able to bury her, in London or in our village. I am so sorry.”

  I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

  “Ada?” Susan asked. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t know where to begin. The word funeral. Cremated. Her ashes—someone was cleaning out Mam’s grate? What did any of it mean?

  “But I do have a bit of good news,” Susan continued. “Lady Thorton’s offered us the use of a cottage on her estate. To live in. She says it’s quite small, but mostly furnished.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “I didn’t know what we were going to do,” Susan said. “The government will pay me damages for Becky’s house, but they say it might take years. I haven’t been able to find anything for rent in the village.” She looked at me. “You’re so quiet. I know it’s a shock. What are you thinking?”

  When things were very bad I could go away in my head, to a place where no one could touch me. I went away to Butter’s pasture, to galloping through the green fields on Butter—

  “Ada,” Susan said. She tapped my arm to bring me back.

  I took a deep breath. “When do we go to the orphanage?”

  “What?”

  “When do Jamie and I”—Oh God, please. Please let me stay with Jamie—“when do we go to the orphanage?”

  “Orphanage?” Susan looked as shocked as if I’d slapped her. “Ada! Why on earth would you go to an orphanage?”

  I glared at her. “Where are we going, then?”

  “Nowhere!” Susan said. “Nothing’s changed. How could you possibly think—it’s your mother that’s dead. I’m still here!”

  “You said you had to make arrangements!”

  “Funeral arrangements!”

  “I don’t know what that means!”

  Susan went perfectly still. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. You poor dear. You must have been in agony. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You never wanted children,” I said. “You said so.” She had, over and over, when we first came. “And we aren’t evacuees anymore. We’re orphans. Lady Thorton’s not in charge of us and neither are you and the orphanage won’t let me keep Butter.”

  “Oh, Ada.” Susan leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me. I tried to push her away but she held tight. She was stronger than she looked. “You misunderstood,” she said gently. “You are orphans, technically at least, but of course you’re staying with me. In some ways it’s simpler now that your mother’s dead. I shouldn’t have any trouble becoming your legal guardian. When I said arrangements, I meant for your mother. For her remains.”

  I didn’t know what remains meant. I could guess, but I was afraid to.

  “For her body,” Susan said. “Only that. You and Jamie stay with me.”

  I tried to speak but no words came. I choked and then I was sobbing, and Susan rocked me back and forth, back and forth as if I was a little baby, as if she loved me, as if she always had.

  Chapter 4

  The next fine Saturday, Susan convinced the nurses to let her take me out in a wheelchair. It was October now, the air brisk and chill, the sky a bright, bright blue. There was a hint of wood smoke in the air. No airplanes in sight. No bombers. No invasion, at least not yet.

  I wore a cardigan and a dress Susan found for me at a jumble sale. I had a blanket tucked over my cast and bare left leg. Susan pushed the wheelchair. Jamie skipped alongside. “We’ll go up the high street and have tea,” Susan said, “but first I want to show you something.” She stopped the chair outside a church. It was larger than our village church, but otherwise much the same, brown and rectangular, with a tall steeple and a graveyard filled with upright stones.

  “Keep your voices down,” Susan whispered. “And don’t point, but look over there. See the people, and the empty grave—that’s the hole in the ground—and the wooden box? The box is called a coffin. This is the final part of a funeral. The first part happens inside the church. Now they’re going to bury the deceased.”

  “Deceased?” asked Jamie.

  “The dead person,” said Susan.

  “In the ground?” His voice squeaked.

  “Well, yes,” Susan said. “Where would you want to put them?”

  I’d noticed that the stones in our village church’s graveyard had names on them, but I hadn’t known it meant people’s bodies were buried there. I said, “I never thought about it before.”

  “I had hoped we could bury your mother in our village,” said Susan.

  “Why?” asked Jamie.

  “So you would have a memorial. A place to go and think about her. To think about the good memories.”

  I would have to think hard to find any good memories.

  “But she was cremated,” I said. I could remember words. I just didn’t always understand them.

  “Yes,” Susan said. “That means her body was burned to ashes.”

  I turned to her. “You’re joking.”

  She looked slightly uncomfortable. “No,” she said. “It’s actually a perfectly respectful way to treat the dead. And useful in wartime.”

  I said, “If we don’t have her body, how do we know she’s really dead?”

  “You’ll get a death certificate,” Susan said. “In the mail. Like your birth certificate, only the opposite.”

  “Oh,” I said. I kept my birth certificate in a special box.

  “When it comes I’ll give it to you,” Susan said. “You can keep it safe for us.”

  I nodded. That would be good.

  Jamie said, “Can we have tea now?”

  She squeezed his hand. “Of course.”

  • • •

  In the tea shop I scowled at the prices on the menu. “If we aren’t evacuees anymore,” I said, “the government isn’t going to keep paying you to take care of us. You won’t be able to afford it.” Susan’s bombed house had been fancy, but she always said she didn’t have much money, and she didn’t have a job.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Susan said. “I told you, I’ve started the paperwork. I’m going to become your legal guardian.”

  I liked the sound of that. Guardian was a strong word. “As soon as I’m out of the hospital, I’ll find work,” I said.

  Susan smiled. “Oh, Ada,” she said. “Please relax. You don’t need to worry about money.”

  “Who paid for my surgery?” I asked. “And the hospital and the boardinghouse and all our new things?”

  Susan shook her head. “I’m not sure you need to know.”

  “I do,” I said.

  She sighed. “I bought your clothes,” she said. “The WVS took up a collection to help with our living expenses.” She took a deep breath. “Lord and Lady Thorton paid for your surgery.”

  “Lady Thorton?” I said.

  Jamie took a sip of tea. “They’ve got gobs of money.”

  They did, but it didn’t mean I wanted them spending it on me. “So now I have to be grateful,” I said. “To Lady Thorton.” I’d never met Lord Thorton. He was away working for the war.

  “I hope you’re already grateful to her,” Susan said. “All the things she’s done for you—getting you help with Butter, giving you Maggie’s old clothes—not to mention the cottage we’re going to be living in.”

  Jamie looked up at Susan. “She gave
us you.”

  That was true. In the end, Lady Thorton’s arrangements for Jamie and me had been to sling us into her automobile and dump us at Susan’s house. It had been the best possible thing, though it didn’t seem so at the time.

  “I don’t want to have to feel grateful,” I said.

  Susan smiled. “I understand,” she said. “Do it anyhow.”

  • • •

  Grateful to the iron-faced woman. Grateful for each new cast on my leg. Grateful to be tied into the bed when I got caught trying to use the bathroom again. Grateful that nurses woke me when my nightmares had me screaming.

  “Keep going,” Susan said. “The only way out of this is straight through.” She brought me books from the library, wool from the shops and new knitting needles, pencils and paper to pass the time. Letters from Maggie, away at boarding school. A game of draughts I could play with Jamie in the afternoons. “Courage,” she said.

  “Is that the same as being grateful?” I said. I felt rebellious.

  Susan nodded. “Sometimes.”

  • • •

  November twenty-ninth was Jamie’s seventh birthday. Susan and I gave him a tiny cake and a tin toy airplane—a Spitfire, the kind of fighter plane Maggie’s brother Jonathan flew.

  • • •

  Three days later the doctor cut off my latest cast. Then, instead of getting my leg ready for a new cast, the way he usually did, he said, “Right. Let’s have a bit of gravity.” He put his hands on my waist and lifted me off the table.

  Onto my feet.

  So that I was standing.

  Susan was smiling. The doctor said, “Go on, put a bit of weight on it.”

  I held the edge of the table and pushed my right leg down. I felt my right ankle move the smallest bit. It hurt, but I expected that. I shifted more weight to my right leg. My legs trembled. I hadn’t used them in so long.

  I was standing. Standing. On both feet. I pulled my nightgown aside to look down. Two feet. Ten toes, all pointed forward; ten toenails, all facing up. My right foot was smaller, and scarred, and the skin on it still had a callus from how the top used to be the bottom, but it looked like a foot, not a monstrosity.