“Welcome,” I echoed. I bobbed my head at him, afraid to touch his outstretched hand.
Lord Thorton blinked. I hoped I hadn’t done something wrong.
“Happy Christmas,” Susan said. She shifted the cake to one hand and shook Lord Thorton’s hand with the other.
Jamie bounced past me into the enormous front hall. “Cor!” he said. “You could fly an airplane in here! A real one! A Spitfire!”
Maybe not a Spitfire, but a kite, for sure.
“Jamie,” Susan said, “get back here and wish Lord Thorton happy Christmas.”
“Whee!” yelled Jamie, running the length of the hall.
“Hey there, sport!” A tall, thin man—very like Lord Thorton but much younger and not nearly as intimidating—grabbed Jamie around the waist. He tossed Jamie over his shoulder and brought him back to Lord Thorton. “Shake hands like a gentleman,” he said. Jamie, upside down and giggling, shook Lord Thorton’s hand with his left hand, the one that wasn’t in plaster.
The man shifted Jamie higher onto his shoulder and smiled at me. “I’m Jonathan Thorton,” he said. “You must be my sister’s friend.”
I shook his hand. “Ada Smith,” I said. My manners came back to me. “Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant Thorton.” Susan had told me to say that.
He bent forward. “Call me Jonathan,” he said. “In the RAF we’re not much for rank. And I’ll call you Ada, shall I? Happy Christmas.”
Maggie ran in just as Lord Thorton was offering Susan something called an aperitif. “Happy Christmas!” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here!” She whispered in my ear, “Dinner’s going to be inedible. I just came from the kitchen. Mum’s having kittens.”
I whispered back, “We brought cake.”
Lord Thorton led us into an impossibly grand room with glossy furniture, carpet woven in flowered patterns, and bookcases that reached from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Thorton House was miles fancier than Susan’s old house, which had been the nicest place I’d ever seen.
I grabbed Maggie’s arm. “I’m glad I already know you,” I said. “Otherwise I’d be afraid of all this.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Pish,” she said. “As if you’re ever afraid.”
• • •
Maggie’s house had an entire room just for eating in. The table was so big that twenty chairs could fit around it, and they had twenty chairs in the room. I counted. The extras stood against the walls.
Lady Thorton came from wherever the kitchen was, looking harassed, and we all sat down. Each place at the table had a plate surrounded by three glasses, two knives, three spoons, and two forks. I froze. What were we supposed to do with all that?
“Hey,” Jamie called out, “why’ve I got so many forks and things?”
Lord Thorton grimaced, as though he’d spilled his aperitif down his trousers. Susan leaned forward, but Jonathan spoke first. “They’re extras,” he said, “in case you fling some onto the floor.” His smile lit the table. “Isn’t that right, Mater?”
Mater must have meant Lady Thorton, because she smiled back. “We’re having three courses,” she told Jamie.
I didn’t know what courses were, and I didn’t think Jamie did either.
“Three courses!” said Jonathan. “It must be Christmas. We don’t get three courses in the air force.”
Jamie leaned over. “It is Christmas,” he whispered.
“Right,” Jonathan whispered back. “You having a good one? Presents and all that?”
“Candy,” Jamie said. “And a cat. And Bovril got a mouse.”
“Excellent.”
“Bovril’s our cat,” I explained. “A real one, not a toy.”
“So the boy got a toy cat, and the cat got a toy mouse? Or a real one?”
“A toy mouse,” Jamie said, wide-eyed. “Bovril would crunch a real one.”
“Ah, good,” Jonathan said.
• • •
I knew that the Thortons’ housekeeper, the only servant remaining out of bunches they’d had before the war, was cooking the dinner. Maggie said she was a terrible cook, but I didn’t believe it until the food started coming out. I can cook. Susan teaches me. It isn’t hard.
Christmas dinner started with bowls of greasy, salty soup, slices of crumbly gray war bread, and celery sticks. Apparently that was the first course.
I ate everything. I’d had plenty worse. It made me feel calmer that the food was so bad.
Jamie nibbled his bread, ignored his soup, crossed two pieces of celery in his left hand and flew them in circles over his plate.
“Knock it off,” Jonathan said quietly. “They’ll banish you to the nursery even if it is Christmas.”
Jamie blinked and put his celery airplane in his lap.
Meanwhile, Susan and Lady Thorton were discussing fire-watching. It was something they were going to be doing with the WVS. The phrase itself—fire-watching—seemed unsettling. “Whose fires will you watch?” I asked. And why do they need watching?
“No one’s, I hope,” Lady Thorton said. “We’ll be keeping a lookout for bombs or incendiaries. From the church steeple.”
Incendiaries were small bombs designed to start fires. I said, “From the steeple? You’ll need a really long ladder to get up there.”
Maggie grinned at me. “There’s stairs.”
I grinned back. When Maggie knew things I didn’t, I didn’t mind.
The joint—a big piece of roasted beef—came in, along with a platter of vegetables and a massive Yorkshire pudding. It smelled fantastic, but it tasted awful, dry as sawdust, as though it had finished cooking sometime the day before and then sat shriveling in the hot oven overnight.
Jamie murmured something under his breath. I thought it was probably a quote from Swiss Family Robinson, and hoped he wouldn’t repeat it. Susan took a bite, and chewed, and chewed, and chewed.
“Mmmph,” said Lord Thorton. “I thought you said she could cook.” He lifted an eyebrow at Lady Thorton.
Lady Thorton shook her head. “I didn’t think anyone could butcher roast beef.”
It was funny. Butcher roast beef. Without thinking, I laughed.
Maggie jumped, startled. Jonathan grinned. I looked at Susan, anxious, but then Lord Thorton let out a rough sort of guffaw. “Quite,” he said. “Butcher roast beef. Quite.” He put his napkin up to his eyes and started to chuckle. Then he laughed. Lady Thorton laughed. Susan and Jonathan and Maggie laughed. After a moment I felt safe enough to laugh again too.
“Why aren’t there Christmas crackers?” Lord Thorton asked. “None in the shops, I suppose.”
Lady Thorton shook her head.
“Pity. I think this whole day would go more smoothly if we all had silly hats on our heads.” He passed the gravy boat to Susan. “Drown your meat, my dear, it can only help.”
• • •
Halfway through the dried beef course, Susan turned to Lord Thorton and said, “I wonder if you might be able to help me find a job.”
I looked up, surprised. Lord Thorton raised his eyebrows. “A job?” he said. “What sort of job?”
“Something I could do from here so I could stay with the children,” Susan said. “Lady Thorton thought you might know of a project I could help with. Analytics, say—”
“Analytics?” said Lord Thorton.
“Well, yes,” said Susan. “Or some other type of computational work. There must be war projects or industrial things that aren’t classified.” Susan’s face was turning pink. She persisted. “I’m sure I’m rusty, but with a bit of time to bone up—”
“Come,” Lady Thorton cut in, “don’t look so astonished. Don’t you know her credentials?”
“Credentials?” Lord Thorton wiped his mustache. He said to Susan, “I know you as the spinster who was Becky Montgomery’s friend. The quiet one.”
“She’s got a first from Oxford in maths,” Lady Thorton said.
“A first from Oxford?” It was becoming amusing, how Lord Thorton kept repeating things people said to him.
Susan’s face was bright pink now, but when she spoke her voice was firm. “My concentration was numerical analysis.”
“You’re joking,” Lord Thorton said.
Susan’s eyes flashed. She lifted her chin. She wasn’t joking.
“I can find you work immediately,” Lord Thorton said. “I know just the department. You’ll have to put the children into schools—”
“No,” said Susan.
“It’d be easy enough. Ada could go with Margaret, and we’d find a good place for the boy.”
“Away from Jamie?” Let alone me at Maggie’s posh school. I could never.
“No,” Susan said firmly. “The children and I stay here.”
A wash of relief squelched my panic at its start.
“But I do need work,” Susan said, “and I’d be better off using my education than clerking in a shop in the village, which is the only obvious local opportunity.”
“I’m stunned,” Lord Thorton said. “Flabbergasted. I had no idea.”
“Yes, we can all see you’ve thoroughly underestimated her,” Lady Thorton said. She rolled her eyes at Susan, who responded with a slight smile.
“Well, I apologize for doing so.” Lord Thorton poured a bit more gravy over his shards of meat. “And yes, I probably can find you something. Don’t know what, but I’ll have a poke around. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you,” Susan said.
• • •
After the third course, Susan’s cake, we went into the room next door. The Thortons gave us all Christmas presents. Jamie got a set of toy soldiers that had once been Jonathan’s. Susan got a sewing machine. “It’s too much,” she protested, running her finger over the shiny metal wheel.
Lady Thorton waved her hand. “It was in the housekeeper’s room,” she said. “No one’s used it in years. I hope it works, and if not, I hope you can repair it.”
I got a book, a thick, heavy one. “Margaret told me you liked words,” Lady Thorton said. “She thought you’d find this useful.”
I did like words, but I didn’t understand what Lady Thorton meant until I opened the book. It was full of words. All the words in the world, and what they meant.
“It’s a dictionary,” Lord Thorton said. “Susan can show you how to use it.”
I looked at the first page. A. Aardvark. What a funny word. A-ard-vark. “A nocturnal burrowing mammal with long ears, a tubular snout, and a long extensible tongue.” I laughed. A tubular snout and long extensible tongue? Even if I didn’t know what the words tubular and extensible meant, that sounded fabulous. I looked up at Lord and Lady Thorton. “Thank you!”
Maggie poked her mother. “Told you she’d love it,” she said.
Lady Thorton smiled. “I see that now.”
I waited until we were putting our coats on to go home to give my gift to Maggie. I’d knitted her a little neck wrap, in a fancy pattern Susan found for me. I showed Maggie how to button it. “For riding,” I said. “It’ll keep you warm, but it can’t get caught in the reins like a scarf might.”
“I love it,” Maggie said.
• • •
“Well done,” Susan murmured on the walk home. She held Jamie’s hand but didn’t try to take mine. “Both of you. Your manners were very nice. I was proud of you.”
At home Susan and I put up the blackouts and Jamie swept out the fire. Susan made tea and fresh scones—she’d saved some sugar back for them—and while we ate by the fire, she read us a long funny Christmas story about ghosts and a man who started out mean but turned nice at the end. It was the sort of story you hoped might be true.
“Why did you ask Lord Thorton about a job?” I said when we were gathering up our cups and saucers and banking the fire for bed.
“He’s got a mathematical background himself,” Susan said. “Whatever he’s doing for the war, I suspect he’s using it. Plus, he’s the sort of man that has connections. Lady Thorton suggested I ask him.”
Whatever Lord Thorton’s war work was, it was secret. He wouldn’t tell anyone a thing about it.
“If you get a job, will you earn enough to keep us?” I asked.
“Stop,” Susan said. “Lady Thorton’s in charge of the paperwork for evacuees. She said she’ll continue your and Jamie’s stipend for the duration of the war. I am merely preparing for the future. That, and I should like to feel useful again.”
I thought of all the hundreds of ways Susan was useful. I said, “I should like to feel useful too.”
“You’re eleven years old,” Susan said. “You get to be the child now, Ada, for once in your life. I will be the adult.” She paused. “You really don’t want that doll, do you?”
I didn’t say anything right away. Coals crackled in the grate. Jamie rubbed Bovril’s belly, and the cat stretched long, hooking his claws into the rug.
“It’s all right if you don’t,” Susan said.
“I needed a doll a long time ago,” I said. “It’s too late for me to have one now.”
Susan studied me. “I wish that wasn’t true,” she said. But it was true, and she didn’t try to talk me out of thinking it. Susan was good that way. “I’ll give you a different present.”
“You don’t need to.” I leaned against Susan’s shoulder. I’d survived Christmas. That was gift enough.
Chapter 12
The next morning I woke early, nervous and excited about the paper chase. I dressed and made the fire and started oatmeal and tea.
Jamie woke up cranky. He said his head hurt and so did his arm.
“You must have overdone it,” Susan told him. “Too much Christmas. Pop back into bed. I’ll read to you after I come home from walking Ada to the stables.”
I said, “I can stay home. I’ll take care of him.” A paper chase was like a fox hunt, without a fox or hounds. Did I want to go on a fox hunt, really?
“Don’t be silly,” Susan said. “Jamie just needs sleep.”
I looked at her.
“Fill the coal hod while I fry you an egg. You’ll need it, for staying power. You’ll probably be in the saddle for hours.” She smiled. “Becky was a great believer in eggs before a hunt.”
Eggs weren’t rationed yet, but they were scarce. Jamie wanted hens.
I brought in more coal. I straightened the sitting room. I ate my egg with toasted war bread, drank my tea, and started to do the breakfast dishes.
Susan came into the kitchen, pulling on her coat. “Leave that, it’s time to go. I’ll walk over with you.”
“You don’t need to,” I said. As if I couldn’t walk to the Thortons’ stables without help.
“I’d like to,” Susan said. “I’ll probably know everyone there. These were Becky’s friends.”
“Shouldn’t you stay with Jamie?”
“Ada.” Susan raised her eyebrows. “He’s asleep. Also he’s perfectly capable of being left alone for a short time.”
He might break his other arm. He might—
“I don’t need you,” I said.
“I know that,” Susan said. “Neither does Jamie just now. Let’s go.”
• • •
The Thortons’ stables were crowded with unfamiliar adults wearing posh riding habits and gleaming horses with braided manes. Maggie had lent me a tweed coat, and I had jodhpurs and proper boots, Maggie’s hand-me-downs, so I knew I looked all right—I looked just like Maggie—but I felt wildly out of place. I hadn’t braided Butter’s mane. Couldn’t; I didn’t know how.
Susan surveyed the people with a slight smile. “Same old crowd.” She spoke to a few of them, then followed me into Butter’s stall and stood by Butter’s head
while I brushed him.
“You never rode,” I said. She’d sold Becky’s hunters after Becky died.
“I gave it a good try,” Susan said. “Becky wanted me to. It just wasn’t quite my thing. Too frightening, being on top of a thousand-pound animal with a tiny little mind of its own.”
I looked up. Susan, afraid?
“But I went to the parties,” she continued. “The hunt breakfasts and the teas and once even the hunt ball.” She buckled Butter’s girth on his off side and passed it under his belly to me.
“Did you like the parties?”
“I did,” Susan said.
This surprised me. When we’d first come, Susan had been so sad about Becky’s death that she didn’t enjoy anything. She never went anywhere.
Susan said, “I have fond memories.”
“What’s fond?” I wrestled the bit into Butter’s mouth.
“Happy. Content.”
“You’re going home now, right?” I slid the reins over Butter’s head and led him out of the stall. I looked around for Maggie.
“Butter!” A woman I didn’t know clapped her hands in delight. “Look, everyone, Butter’s back! And Miss Smith!” She extended her hand to Susan, who shook it firmly. “Are you riding again?” the woman asked.
“No,” said Susan. She patted my shoulder. “This is my ward Ada. She’s taken over Butter.”
The woman shook my hand too. “How lucky for you,” she said. “Becky Montgomery trained that pony well.”
Susan and the woman kept talking. I saw Maggie across the yard with her pony, Ivy. I walked Butter over to them, tightened my girth, and climbed into the saddle. Someone blew a horn—there was a lot of laughing at that, though I didn’t know why. Susan smiled and waved at me through the crowd. I nodded to her and gathered up my reins.
“You’re not scared, are you?” Maggie said. “You look scared. I didn’t think you were ever scared.”
Mam was worse when she knew I was afraid. I had learned never to admit it. “There’s so many people,” I said instead.
“Before the war it was always like this,” Maggie said. “In season the hounds went out thrice a week.”
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