The War I Finally Won

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  “We had to hurry to get back in time. We left the girls with the horses and whatever explanations they’d have to make.

  “I assumed the girl on Jon’s horse was another of the local gentry, but when we got back to the airfield Jon said no. He claimed she was from the East End of London, the bad part, evacuated at the start of the war. He said when she first came she hadn’t been able to walk. He said, ‘Did you see her face? Did you see how brave she was?’

  “I said I saw.

  “Later that day he said, ‘That’s what we’re fighting for. That kind of courage. We can’t get beat, not when we’re fighting for the spirit of England.’

  “I knew what he meant. It made a fellow feel better, somehow, to know that there were still green fields and bold children laughing in them, even in the middle of this war. Jon said he was going to name his plane Invincible Ada. He was going to have that painted on her tail.

  “He never got the chance, but he would have done it, and I wanted you to know. And if you could tell the girl named Ada about it, I think Jon would have wanted her to know too.”

  Lord Thorton folded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and returned the envelope to his waistcoat pocket. He nodded at me. “Open your gift, my dear.”

  Inside the box was a leather halter, cleaned and oiled soft and supple. The brass nameplate on the cheek piece read “Oban.” It was Oban’s halter.

  I said, “I don’t understand.”

  Lady Thorton looked fierce, almost angry. She said, “We’re giving him to you. We’re giving you the horse.”

  I said, “You can’t do that. He’s Jonathan’s.”

  I don’t think I really understood death until that moment. I mean, I knew what dead meant. I knew that Jonathan, like my father and mother, like Stephen White’s family, like Becky, like every other dead person ever, was not coming back. But I didn’t get it until then. If that’s hard to understand, well, so are a lot of things.

  No one said anything. Everyone in the room looked at me. I lifted the halter, rubbed the nameplate, remembered that beautiful, beautiful summer dawn. I said, “I love him very much.”

  Lord Thorton said, “Good. That’s all we ask.”

  I said, “Do you mean it? Is he really mine?”

  “Of course we mean it,” Lord Thorton said.

  “I can do anything I want with him?”

  “Yes,” Lady Thorton said, a touch sardonically. “I see where you’re going with this. Oban is yours. You can let anyone ride him that you want.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I got up and pushed the halter into Ruth’s hands. I said, “If he’s mine, then I’m giving him to Ruth. He’s her horse now.”

  Chapter 49

  Ruth stared at me. She said, “I’m Jewish. I don’t get Christmas presents.”

  “It’s not a Christmas present,” I said. “It’s a friendship present. It’s—it’s a sister present. You heard what Jonathan’s friend wrote—he thought we were sisters. I have Butter. I don’t need Oban. You do.”

  “I’m leaving next week,” Ruth said. She clutched the halter. “I can’t take a horse.”

  “You’ll come home sometimes,” I said. “I’ll take care of him for you until you do.”

  Ruth bent over the halter. Her shoulders shook. Her mother put her arm around her and said something softly in German. Ruth answered, in German, without raising her head.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Lady Thorton said, annoyed.

  “Yes,” said Susan. “I’d say so.”

  • • •

  I could tell Lady Thorton didn’t like what I’d done, but she couldn’t undo it. I couldn’t tell what Lord Thorton thought, but I didn’t care.

  Maggie was grinning. Jamie was too. Susan said, “Come help me make tea, Ada,” and led the way into the kitchen.

  “Are you angry?” I asked her, once it was just us two.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Why should I be? Only Oban’s a far fancier horse than Butter. Even I know that.”

  “Ruth’s a fancier rider than me. Plus, I love Butter. Plus, why would I ever need more than one horse?”

  Susan laughed. “You’d be surprised,” she said, “how much some people think they need.”

  I shrugged. “There’s a war on.”

  “Yes,” she said, “and you’re winning it. Only, fair warning. I don’t think Lady Thorton’s going to be happy about all this, once she’s had time to think.”

  • • •

  Susan was right. All Christmas evening, I could feel Lady Thorton’s anger building. I could see it coming like a storm across the sea from up on my lookout hill. She was angry that I’d given Oban away, and to a Jewish German. She was angry that Jonathan had come to see me and Maggie instead of her.

  She was very, very angry that we hadn’t given her the chance to see him one last time.

  She was also angry that Jonathan wanted to name his airplane after me. She didn’t say so, but I knew.

  • • •

  “You should have told me,” Lady Thorton said to Maggie the next morning. It was Boxing Day, the anniversary of the paper chase. I remembered Jonathan stopping Oban when I fell off at the ditch, remembered him saying, “I’m trying to act like a gentleman.” I remembered his smile, and felt his loss all over again.

  If it was this bad for me, it had to be so much worse for the Thortons.

  “I promised Jonathan I wouldn’t tell,” Maggie said.

  “You should have told me before you promised. You shouldn’t have promised. You should have told me first thing.”

  “I couldn’t!” said Maggie. She ran back upstairs, choking on half-suppressed tears.

  Lady Thorton turned to me. “You should have too.”

  “I should have ratted Maggie out, or broken my promise to Jonathan? Which? I’m glad I didn’t,” I said.

  I knew I shouldn’t be rude. I should be grateful. But the nastier Lady Thorton acted, the less gratitude I felt.

  Ruth and Lord Thorton took Ruth’s parents to the stables to meet Oban. The Schmidts were so knowledgeable about horses that Lord Thorton arranged we should all go riding together that afternoon: me, Maggie, Ruth, Lord Thorton, and Ruth’s parents. “You too,” he said to Lady Thorton.

  “I think not,” she sniffed.

  “It would be good for us,” Lord Thorton said.

  “No,” she said.

  The rest of us went anyhow. We galloped and jumped things and for two hours felt happy. Oban went beautifully; Ruth couldn’t quit smiling. Afterward her mother petted me and made a fuss. I didn’t know what she said, but I rather liked it.

  Ruth was sleeping in Maggie’s bed while her parents slept in her room, and Maggie was sharing my bed with me. After our ride together I couldn’t sleep. I kept talking, about Butter and Oban and how we’d saved him from colic, and about our ride that day.

  “Ada,” Maggie said, “be quiet.”

  “It’s like having sisters,” I said. “I never had family except Jamie.”

  “You had your mother,” Ruth said.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Someday I’ll tell you.”

  Ruth extended her hand across the space between the beds. We’d taken the blackout down, and I could see dimly in the shadowed light. I held my hand out to Ruth. “Maggie too,” Ruth said. Maggie sat up on her elbow so that her hand would reach ours. “All three together,” Ruth said. “Sisters.”

  “Say it in German,” I said.

  “Schwestern,” Ruth said.

  “Schwestern?” Maggie giggled. “That’s hilarious.”

  “Schwestern,” Ruth repeated firmly. “You two are my schwestern now. So I will tell you a secret. I’m not going to Oxford.”

  I dropped her hand and sat up in bed. “You said you passed your exams!”

  “I did,” Ruth said. �
�I learned all the maths. I’m ready. But Lord Thorton said that if I wanted to, I could work where he and my father are working instead. I will go to Oxford after the war.”

  “Real war work?” Maggie said.

  Ruth laughed. “Yes. Very real.”

  “Where?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t tell,” Ruth said. “But I will write to you, and you will both write to me, and, Maggie, you need to exercise my horse for me whenever you are home from school. You’re starting to outgrow your pony.”

  “You’ll come home when you can,” I said.

  Ruth lay back on her bed. I could hear her smiling. She said, “Your government has decided we aren’t spies. My family will live together, and my father and I will work together. And yes, I will come home when I can.”

  • • •

  The next morning, Lady Thorton started in on Maggie first thing. Susan, Ruth, and I escaped to the kitchen to make breakfast. Lady Thorton came to the table in a cloud of fury, stiff and upright. Maggie sank into the chair beside her, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

  Suddenly I blew up a cloud of fury of my own. None of this was Maggie’s fault, or mine. “I don’t see why you’re being so horrible,” I said to Lady Thorton. “You’ve known about that letter for weeks.” She had. Lord Thorton had sent her a copy. He’d said so.

  “Hearing it read aloud again was difficult,” Lady Thorton said, “and when I think how my own daughter acted deceitfully—”

  “You didn’t have to read it out again,” I said. “You could have kept it secret, or handed it to us to read.”

  She sniffed. “That was Lord Thorton’s choice.”

  I gathered myself up taller. “Then be angry with him,” I said, looking Lady Thorton in the eye. “Not Maggie. You’re making her miserable about something she can’t ever fix. It isn’t fair.”

  Bright spots of color appeared on Lady Thorton’s cheeks. “I hardly think,” she said, “that I deserve to be reprimanded by someone like you.”

  “Oh—” Susan said.

  I held Lady Thorton’s gaze, even though my heart was hammering. “You don’t deserve a daughter like Maggie,” I said. “You are a terrible mother.”

  Everyone in earshot froze. Lady Thorton went white. Then Ruth said, into the cold, dead silence, “Ada, apologize this instant. You know that isn’t true.”

  Chapter 50

  I glared at Ruth. She glared back. “She’s not doing anything right,” I said. “Maggie needs her and she keeps being angry. She’s angry Jonathan’s dead and Maggie can’t fix it and it’s not Maggie’s fault.”

  Ruth said, “She’s doing the best she can.”

  “How would you know?” I felt frustration building up inside me like a rising wave. “She’s horrid to you! She’s horrid to everyone!”

  “Ada!” Susan said.

  “All the mothers are horrible!” I got up from the table and ran up the stairs to my room.

  • • •

  A few minutes later someone knocked on my door. I didn’t answer.

  “Ada?”

  It wasn’t Susan or Maggie. It was Ruth.

  She came in and sat on the foot of the bed. I’d wrapped myself in my coverlet so that only my eyes showed. I wasn’t crying.

  “Susan said Christmastime is hard for you,” Ruth said.

  “I did all right this year,” I said.

  “The whole season is hard,” Ruth repeated.

  “So?”

  “So maybe you can see not everything is Lady Thorton’s fault.”

  “I don’t know why you’re on her side,” I said. “She’s never liked you.”

  Ruth sighed. “I’m not on anyone’s side. It was awful, what you said. That she didn’t deserve to have Maggie. When Maggie’s all she has left.”

  “She shouldn’t be so mean to Maggie. She should listen to Maggie. She should love Maggie, even if Maggie isn’t perfect—”

  “She does,” Ruth said. “Lady Thorton isn’t perfect either. She does love Maggie.”

  “How would you know?” I knew I sounded rude. I didn’t care.

  Ruth grabbed the edge of my blanket and tucked it over her feet. Our bedrooms were always cold in winter. “My mother is a genius,” she said. “That’s what my father says. That we’re smart, him and me, but that she’s smarter than both of us. Only her parents never allowed her to go to university, because she was a girl. So she never got to do anything with all her brains, and sometimes it frustrates her and she gets angry, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  “So?” Ruth’s mother was kind. She kissed me and petted me. She was nothing like Lady Thorton.

  “My mother got us out of Germany,” Ruth continued. “She persisted. She kept trying and trying until she found somewhere that would take us. She wasn’t afraid to leave our home behind. She was sorry she couldn’t convince the rest of our family to leave, but she was brave and strong for my father and me.”

  “My mother was a monster,” I said. “I can’t remember one good thing about her.”

  “So your mother was a monster. It doesn’t mean mine is. It doesn’t mean Lady Thorton is.” Ruth prodded me with her foot. “People are complicated. You, yourself, are not the easiest person to love. But you are still my sister.”

  I glared at her. “You aren’t the easiest person to love either,” I said.

  “I’m sure I’m not,” Ruth said, “and yet you love me. I am your sister too.

  “When my mother is difficult,” Ruth continued, “and she is difficult, quite often—I think about the look on her face when our boat landed in England—how grateful she was not just that she was out of Germany, but that she’d gotten me out of Germany. That I was safe.” Ruth looked at me. “Lady Thorton is trying to keep Maggie safe.”

  “She’s doing it wrong,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Ruth said. “That doesn’t mean she isn’t trying to do right.”

  I blew out my breath. “So?”

  Ruth said, “So you need to apologize.”

  • • •

  I didn’t want to. I dreaded what might happen. But after Ruth left, Maggie came in. “You shouldn’t have said that,” she said.

  “I was trying to stick up for you,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “You still shouldn’t have said it. Ruth and I are going to the stables with our fathers and Frau Schmidt. My mother’s staying here.”

  “All right.” I understood what she was telling me. My stomach hurt. My hands felt damp. I sat in my freezing bedroom and reminded myself to breathe.

  After a long time, I unwrapped myself from the coverlet. I walked carefully down the stairs. Lady Thorton and Susan were sitting by the fire in the big room, drinking tea. I didn’t see Jamie.

  “I—” I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I walked toward them. My knees shook.

  Lady Thorton and Susan looked up. They waited.

  “I’m sorry I said you were a bad mother,” I said.

  Lady Thorton nodded. “Thank you.” She took another sip of tea.

  I waited for what happened next.

  “Have some breakfast, Ada,” Susan said. “You haven’t eaten. There’s oatmeal on the back of the stove.”

  “I can eat breakfast?” My voice came out small and frightened.

  Lady Thorton frowned. “We are not in the habit of starving children who misbehave. I’ve accepted your apology. Go eat.”

  I walked toward the kitchen in a sort of daze. Was that really the end of it? Mam used to put me in the cabinet—I swallowed hard. I couldn’t eat any oatmeal, but I had a cup of tea.

  • • •

  Later in the day, when I’d had a chance to calm down a bit, Lady Thorton sat beside me on the sofa. “What was the worst thing about your life?” Lady Thorton asked. “Before
you came here.”

  I thought for a while. Coals fell in the grate. “My mother could have fixed my foot,” I said at last. “She chose not to. And then she blamed me for it.”

  Another silence stretched out long and thin. “That’s why you’re so angry,” Lady Thorton said. “You think I’m blaming Maggie for things to do with Jonathan. I’m not. I blame myself.”

  Chapter 51

  In our room that night I still felt fragile. “I thought something worse would happen,” I said to Maggie. “I was still willing to defend you, though. I was trying to help.”

  “I know,” Maggie said. “St. Ada slaying the dragon.”

  “Why do you think my mother was so horrible?”

  Across the room Ruth made noise between her teeth. “Why is Hitler horrible?” she asked. “No one knows. Some people are horrible. You were unlucky with your first mother. You were lucky with your second.”

  “Susan’s not my mother,” I said.

  Ruth shrugged. “You can say that if you want to.”

  • • •

  Ruth and her parents and Lord Thorton left. The rest of us walked them to the train station. The government had finally completely forbidden any private use of gasoline. Lady Thorton’s car was up on blocks in the corner of the stable yard.

  Ruth hugged me good-bye. “Don’t look so tragic,” she said. “I’ll write to you. You’ll write back.”

  Her mailing address was an office in London. It wasn’t where she was really going to be. “They’ll forward your letters to me,” Ruth said. “Don’t be sad. I’m not gone forever.”

  Stephen White seemed to be gone forever. After he left, I’d never heard from him. Not once.

  Ruth gave me another hug. “My little schwester,” she said. She kissed Jamie. “Little bruder,” she said. “Take care of that pig for me.”

  Maggie and I rode across snow-covered fields in bitter wind. I was riding Oban, for Ruth, for Jonathan. Oban tossed his head, wanting to gallop, but I couldn’t let him on the icy, uncertain ground.