The War That Saved My Life

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  Miss Smith said, very softly, “I haven’t helped her. She’s done it on her own.”

  Lady Thorton looked me up and down. “Margaret needs to stay in bed a few days. She won’t be able to ride again before she leaves for school. But if you have questions about horses, you can always go to our stables and ask Grimes. I know he’ll help you.”

  I noticed she wasn’t offering to help me herself. I said, “Butter doesn’t want to go fast. I don’t know how to make him.”

  She gave a little laugh, and tapped my knee as she stood. “Persistence,” she said. “Ponies are stubborn until they know who’s boss. Enjoy the new things.”

  Miss Smith saw her out. When she came back in, she sat down in Lady Thorton’s place. “I’m sorry,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “I didn’t mean to call you a liar.”

  Sure she did. I shrugged. “I am one.”

  “I know.” She began to empty the rest of the box of clothes. Shorts for Jamie, sweaters, shirts. Then she straightened. “No,” she said. “That’s wrong, I don’t know that. We both know you sometimes tell lies, but I can’t say that it makes you a liar. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Blouses, sweaters, skirts for me. A red dress with lace on the cuffs. Coats for winter.

  I touched the girl’s coat. Maggie’s coat. “Will I still be here in winter?”

  “I don’t know,” Miss Smith said. “Do you understand what I just said? The difference between lying and being a liar?”

  I shrugged. Miss Smith persisted. “If you have to tell lies, or you think you have to, to keep yourself safe—I don’t think that makes you a liar. Liars tell lies when they don’t need to, to make themselves look special or important. That’s what I thought you were doing yesterday. I was wrong.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it. “Why is Maggie going away for school?” I asked instead. “Why doesn’t she go to school where Jamie does?”

  “Rich people educate their children at boarding schools,” Miss Smith replied. “Margaret won’t have to leave school at fourteen to work, like most children do. She’ll stay at school until she’s sixteen or seventeen. If the war’s over by then she’ll probably go to finishing school. She might even go to university.”

  “What kind of school did you go to?” I asked.

  “A boarding school,” she said. “Not because my family was rich—they weren’t. I was bright and my father is a clergyman, and some schools offer scholarships to the bright daughters of clergymen.”

  “What’s a clergyman?”

  “You know—a vicar. A man who runs a church.”

  The “you know” kept me from asking more. “Churches are where the bells are.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Smith. “Only they aren’t going to be allowed to ring the bells anymore. Only in case of invasion, to warn us.”

  I smoothed the pants with my hand. Tomorrow I’d wear them. The left boot too.

  “Ada?” Miss Smith said. “I wish I’d believed you.”

  I darted a quick glance at her and shrugged again.

  When Jamie came home it was obvious he’d been crying, but he wouldn’t say why. He wet the bed in the night and woke up miserable. Outside, gray clouds were spitting rain. “I can’t go to school in the rain,” Jamie said.

  “Of course you can,” Miss Smith replied. She looked awful, her hair every which way and great dark circles under her eyes. She held her mug of tea in both hands and stared into it.

  “I ain’t going,” Jamie said.

  “Don’t start with me,” Miss Smith replied.

  We sat down to breakfast and a plane blew up at the airfield.

  It crashed, I guess. It didn’t blow up in the air, it blew up because it slammed into the ground. The gas tank ruptured. We learned that later. It sounded like a bomb exploding—like a bomb in Butter’s pasture. We all jumped up, knocking over dishes and chairs. I ran toward the door, toward Butter, but Miss Smith grabbed me and Jamie and pushed us beneath the table. After a moment when nothing else happened she got up and looked out the window. “Oh,” she said, “it’s an airplane.”

  Under billows of black smoke across the road, we could see orange flames and twisted pieces of metal. Jamie cried out, and would have run to the airfield, but Miss Smith held him back. “No civilians,” she said. “No civilians, not now. See? They’re getting the fire out.” We could see servicemen and women, tiny in the distance, working frantically all around the burning plane.

  “Who was the pilot?” Jamie asked. “Who was the crew?”

  “We don’t know them,” Miss Smith said, stroking his hair.

  “I knew them,” Jamie said.

  I wasn’t sure how Jamie could know them—there was a big fence around the airfield now, and he knew he wasn’t allowed there, though of course that wouldn’t really stop him—but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to call him a liar, not over a dead airman.

  “I wonder what kind of plane it was,” Miss Smith said.

  “A Lysander,” Jamie said. “A transport plane. It could have had ten people on board.” We looked at him. He said, “That’s what it sounded like. Before the crash.”

  I was so used to the sound of planes, I never paid attention to them anymore. The different kinds of planes didn’t sound different to me.

  Jamie leaned into Miss Smith’s arms. She held him tight, rocking him softly back and forth. I stood still, absorbing what I was seeing: Jamie turning for comfort to someone other than me.

  We ran into Lady Thorton in the village when we were shopping later that week, and she told us that Maggie—she called her Margaret, of course—had gone off to her school, and wouldn’t be home until Christmas. I was sorry not to see her again. I wanted to talk to her when she hadn’t just been hit on the head. I wanted to know if she’d still like me when she wasn’t woozy.

  Jamie kept hating school. He skipped twice, and after that the teacher wrote Miss Smith a note, and Miss Smith started to walk him to school every afternoon. Once he was inside the building, he was trapped.

  I knew how it felt to be trapped. I’d been trapped all summer in our flat. I’ll been trapped all my life in our flat. But I couldn’t understand why Jamie hated school. Most of the kids from our neighborhood back home were there, including all of Jamie’s friends except Billy White. They had breaks where they got to run and play in the school yard. Plus, pretty soon he’d be able to write and read, and then Miss Smith wouldn’t have to read us Swiss Family Robinson at night anymore. Jamie could read it to himself.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, when we asked him. “I’m sorry,” he said, when he wet the bed, which he did every night now. “I want to go home,” he told me.

  “You’d miss Miss Smith,” I said nastily.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said. “I’d have Mam.”

  I could imagine Mam might have softened toward us, or at least toward Jamie. She probably missed us at least a little.

  “They have school at home too,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Mam won’t make me go.” I knew this was probably true.

  Meanwhile Miss Smith was in a fit because Mam hadn’t responded to any of her letters. She asked me, “Does your mother know how to read?”

  I shrugged. How would I know?

  “Surely there’s a social worker—a priest—someone who could read it to her, and write out her reply?”

  Probably there was, but Mam would never ask them. “Why’s it matter?” I asked. So long as Mam knew where we were, and could come get us when she decided to. “Do you want her to come take us home?”

  Miss Smith gave me a strange look. “I do not. You know why it matters.”

  I didn’t.

  Sometimes I was so angry about everything I didn’t know.

  Miss Smith bought acres of black material for the blackout. We’d been under blackou
t regulations since the first day of evacuation, before the war even began. It meant that nobody, no houses, buildings, shops, or even things like buses or cars, was supposed to show any sort of light outside after the sun went down. That way if the Germans came to bomb at night, they wouldn’t be able to see where any of the cities or villages were. It was harder to hit a dark place than a lit one.

  For the first month Miss Smith hadn’t bothered covering the windows—she just didn’t put any lights on at night. Jamie and I went to bed before the sun went down, so we didn’t care, and Miss Smith could sit and brood in a dark room as easily as in a bright one. But now the sun was setting earlier, so Miss Smith made blackout curtains for the upstairs windows, and fabric stretched over frames for the windows downstairs.

  We stayed up late one Saturday, putting all the blackout up, then turning on all the lights inside. Jamie and I walked around the house outside, looking for any chinks of light, and yelling to Miss Smith when we saw one. She adjusted the curtains until the chinks were gone.

  Afterward she made us hot cocoa. “Very good,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll get used to having the house this dark.” She looked almost happy, almost cheerful for a change.

  I wondered what it would be like if Jamie and I really were stuck here all winter. I hated winter in the flat, so cold. Miss Smith had a fireplace in the main room. She could burn coal.

  “I haven’t had my sewing machine out since Becky died,” she continued. “It felt good to be making something, even if it was only those awful curtains. I suppose I might run up a few things for the two of you.”

  Miss Smith had made us try on all the clothes Lady Thorton brought, and give back whatever didn’t fit. She’d also thrown away the clothes we’d come from London in. Still, I had three blouses, two skirts, two sweaters, a dress, a coat, and a pair of riding pants: more clothes than I’d owned in my lifetime. I couldn’t imagine needing anything else. “Dressing gowns,” Miss Smith said, as though reading my mind. “For winter. Something warm you can ride in. Perhaps something pretty? The red dress is very nice, but it’s not the best color for you.” She looked at me in a way that gave me the feeling of being a fish on a slab. “Blue, perhaps. Or a nice bottle green. Green’s a good color with your complexion. Velvet? I loved the velvet dress I had as a girl.”

  “I hate velvet,” I said.

  She laughed. “You wouldn’t know velvet if your underwear was made from it,” she said. “Ada, that’s a fib. Why?”

  I said, “I don’t want you making me things.”

  Her smile faded. “Why not?”

  I shrugged. I had more than I needed. More than I felt comfortable with, really. I was still the girl I’d seen in the train station mirror, still the feeble-minded girl stuck behind a window. The simple one. I was okay with wearing Maggie’s castoffs, but I knew my limits.

  Jamie leaned forward. “Will you make me a velvet?” he asked.

  Miss Smith’s smile returned. “I will not,” she said. “I’ll make you something stout and manly.”

  Jamie nodded. “Like in the book,” he said.

  In the book, that stupid Swiss Family Robinson was all the time making and finding things. It was like magic, it was, how the father would think it was a shame they didn’t have any wheat for bread, and next thing they’d stumble onto a whole wheatfield, or a wild pig would run out of the forest just when they got a hankering for bacon. They’d build a mill to grind the wheat to flour, and a smokehouse for the pork, out of nails and wood they just happened to have on hand. Jamie loved it; he begged for more of the story every night. I was tired of those idiots living on an island with everything they could ever want. I didn’t care if I never heard another word.

  “You won’t have time to make us anything,” I said. “We won’t be here that long.”

  Miss Smith paused. “The war doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly,” she said.

  “Right.” More and more of the evacuated children had gone back to London, but not us. Not yet. “You’ll be glad to get rid of us,” I said. “You didn’t want us in the first place.”

  Miss Smith sighed. “Ada, can’t we have a happy night? Can’t we drink cocoa and be happy together? I know I said I didn’t want evacuees, but I’ve explained, it wasn’t anything to do with you. I didn’t not choose you.”

  Everyone else did. I put my mug down. “I hate cocoa,” I said, and went to bed.

  It was Miss Smith, not me, who saw the welt on Jamie’s wrist.

  We were having dinner. Jamie reached across the table for another piece of bread and Miss Smith grabbed his arm. “What’s that?” she asked.

  When she pushed his sleeve back I saw the deep red mark on Jamie’s wrist. It reminded me of when I’d tied him up in our flat, only worse: His skin had been rubbed away until it bled. It looked awful.

  Jamie snatched his arm back. “Nothin’,” he said, pushing his cuff back down.

  “That’s not nothing,” Miss Smith said. “What happened?”

  He wouldn’t say.

  “Did somebody hurt you?” I asked. “Somebody tie you up? Some boy at school?”

  Jamie looked at his plate. He shrugged.

  “Oh, honestly,” Miss Smith said. “Speak up! You can’t let people bully you. Tell us what’s wrong so we can help you.”

  He wouldn’t talk, not then nor later to me in the bed. “You’ve got to tell me,” I coaxed. “I take care of you, remember?”

  He wouldn’t tell.

  At lunch the next day Miss Smith surprised me by saying, “Ada, would you like to come with me to take Jamie to school? We might do a bit of shopping on the way home.” I was worried enough about Jamie that I nodded, even though I suspected her of plans involving velvet.

  Miss Smith marched Jamie into the school building the way I supposed she always did. I stayed outside. “We’ll go get a cup of tea,” she said, when she returned, “and come back in half an hour.”

  We went to a tea shop, which was a place full of tables where you could buy things to eat and drink. Like a pub, only without beer, and cleaner.

  “Miss,” I whispered, taking my seat, “why are there blankets on the tables?”

  “They’re called tablecloths,” Miss Smith whispered back. “They’re to make the tables look nice.”

  Huh, I thought. Imagine dressing up tables. Imagine wasting cloth to dress up tables.

  A lady came over and Miss Smith asked for scones and a pot of tea. I remembered to put my napkin on my lap and to say thank you to the lady when she brought the tea, and the lady smiled and said, “What nice manners! She’s an evacuee?”

  I didn’t know how the lady could tell, and I didn’t like it that she could. Miss Smith said, “It’s your accent, you talk different from us country people.”

  I talked different from posh people is what she meant. I knew I did, and I didn’t like it, either. I was trying the best I could to sound like I fit in.

  When we finished our tea we went back to the school. Miss Smith walked right into the building without saying anything. She marched down the hall and threw open the first classroom door. She didn’t knock. I caught up to her just as she sucked in her breath. I looked inside and saw what she saw.

  The whole class, including Jamie, was working at their desks with pencils and paper. Jamie’s left hand was tied to his chair.

  It was tied tight even though he already had a bloody welt on his wrist.

  When I’d tied him up, at least I had let him go right away.

  Miss Smith said, “What is the meaning of this?” in a voice that made some of the little girls jump. Jamie saw us. His face flooded red.

  Miss Smith went to him and untied his arm. Jamie ducked. He ducked like he expected her to hit him, the way I ducked sometimes. Miss Smith said, “Jamie, I’m so sorry, I should have come sooner,” and put her arms around him. Jamie leaned against her. H
e started to sob.

  All this time I’d stood frozen in the doorway. Most of the students sat frozen at their desks. The only sounds were Jamie crying and Miss Smith murmuring words I couldn’t quite understand.

  The teacher unfroze herself with a jerk. She advanced on Miss Smith, eyes blazing. “I’ll thank you not to interfere!” she said. “Every time my back’s turned he’s using that hand of his. I won’t have it! I wouldn’t have to tie him if he’d obey me.”

  Miss Smith held her ground. Her eyes glittered. “Why shouldn’t he use that hand?”

  The teacher gasped. I didn’t recognize her, though I supposed she’d been on our train. She was an older woman with gray hair braided around her head, and round wire eyeglasses and a skirt that was too tight. When she gasped, her mouth went perfectly round, like her glasses. She looked like a fish. “It’s his left hand,” she said. “Everyone knows that’s the mark of the devil. He wants to write with his left hand, not his right. I’m training him up the way he’s supposed to be.”

  “I never heard such rubbish,” snapped Miss Smith. “He’s left-handed, that’s all.”

  “It’s the mark of the devil,” insisted the teacher.

  Miss Smith took a deep breath. “When I was at Oxford,” she said, “my professor of Divinity, Dr. Henry Leighton Goudge, was left-handed. It is not the mark of the devil. Dr. Goudge told me himself that fear of left-handedness was nothing more than silly superstition and unwarranted prejudice. There’s nothing in the Bible against people using their left hands. We can write and ask him, if you like. Meanwhile you will allow Jamie to use whichever hand he prefers or I shall take action for the wounds he’s received.”

  I hated when she spoke with such big words; I couldn’t follow it. Jamie’s teacher said, suspiciously, “When were you at Oxford?”

  “I graduated 1931,” Miss Smith replied.

  The teacher looked flustered, but she didn’t back down all the way. “You’re not to come into my classroom without knocking,” she said. “It isn’t allowed.”