The Romeo and Juliet Code

by Phoebe Stone

  What was Uncle Gideon going to do with this new letter and how long would he be? What would we do or say if by chance he should stop by the closet for a hat? In the kitchen, The Gram and Auntie Miami were unpacking groceries from bags. I could hear cans being stacked and the icebox door being opened. The Gram was saying, “Well, if Flissy is a little immature for her age, I wouldn’t blame her. I would be too, given her unstable situation. Under these circumstances, Winifred had no business having a child in the first place. And then to be so neglectful and selfish.”

  I was hoping I had been mixed up and heard that all wrong. Perhaps they were talking about someone else named Winifred and not my lovely Winnie. I wanted to shout out loudly again, “No, that’s not so. The Gram is wrong. I know she’s wrong. You’re wrong.” I closed my eyes and I pinched my lips shut with my fingers so I couldn’t say a word.

  “Fliss,” said Derek. He tilted his head and looked at me up close. “Are you upset? Come on,” he said, putting on a partly smashed black bowler hat, the kind all the businessmen in London wear, minus the smash. “Don’t be sad.”

  Just then, we heard Uncle Gideon coming down the stairs. Derek and I waited silently, watching through the crack as Uncle Gideon passed quickly by, holding in his arms a plain brown folder.

  Uncle Gideon already had a good start on us because it took a few minutes getting out of the hats and capes and snowshoes. As we were creeping out of the closet, The Gram was still talking with Auntie. She was saying something like “Well, they were only married three months and then it was over, from Winifred’s perspective. I can’t understand how one woman could wreak such havoc with my sons. Did you put the mayonnaise away, dear?”

  I wasn’t sure what “wreaking havoc” meant, but I wanted to go into the kitchen right then and shout out, “I awfully, terribly, dreadfully hate hearing you say any bad things about my Winnie!”

  I was about to leap towards the kitchen when Derek gently pulled on my arm. “Fliss,” he said, “now’s our chance. Come on.” He motioned to me to be quiet and to follow him, which I did. All the while, The Gram’s words were tumbling about in my head.

  We slipped out on the porch and looked off towards the beach below. There was Gideon scooting along. We hurried down the steps, doing two at a time.

  When we got to the beach, the sand was clean and wet and firm, once again the best conditions for making very nice footprints, and Uncle Gideon was leaving perfect ones behind him as he walked.

  We decided to step only in Uncle Gideon’s footprints so that no one would ever know that we had been following him. His footprints were big (my print took up less than one half of his), and they were far apart so that I had to leap sometimes to make it to the next print. Derek did it too, and one time he tripped over me and we both fell onto the sand, having another laughing fit. It was nice to see Derek outside lying on his back, looking up at the clouds, laughing. It seemed as if he had forgotten all about his paralyzed arm for a moment. I was laughing too, as if The Gram hadn’t just said all those terrible things about my Winnie, which was good because when you can’t do anything about something, it is better to try to forget all about it.

  We had lost Gideon completely by now. He had gone quite far down the beach, moving at a fast pace, and had taken a turn away from the water towards land. We were able to follow his footprints right to a forest path, which cut across the point. There in the brush we lost the footprints, but we followed the path anyway, all the way to the other side of the woods.

  Derek was looking rather pleased and energetic, like a hunting dog happy to be out running, one of those lovely brown and white springer spaniels with long legs, the kind Winnie grew up with in Devonshire. He looked so interested that I took the opportunity to say, “Derek, do you think I could have the little tin soldier with the missing arm, the one who’s got chipped paint on part of his uniform? He’s so much sweeter than the others.”

  “Well, he’s my mapmaker,” said Derek. “I kind of need him. Look where we are now. Look up, Flissy.”

  And I did look up and we had reached the edge of the woods and we were on a bluff covered in wild yellow flowers. The sky was a pure, drop-away, British blue, the same blue on the British flag, the same blue in one of Winnie’s summer dresses, the same blue as the sky above the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex County, England. There was one big, fat, white cloud puffing along that looked a bit like Wink floating across the sky, wondering why he was always left behind these days.

  I could hear the ocean, which was rougher on this side, but until we got to the top of the bluff, I couldn’t see it, and then we went over a rise amidst hundreds of windy yellow flowers and there it was, way down below at the bottom of the cliff, the true blue, forceful, crashing ocean that makes all creatures in every corner of the world feel small and shivery and lonely in a terrible, lovely sort of way.

  The drop-off made me take a deep breath. My feet felt light, like they might lift up and away into the air, and I tried to push down on them so that they would stay put. There was a steep path that wound down the bluff and I could see, far below, a short wooden dock and a small open boat, and Uncle Gideon was in that boat, starting the motor.

  “I guess he’s going to Peace Island,” said Derek. “It’s over there. It’s like a bird sanctuary, covered in cliffs of nesting plovers, sandpipers, puffins, seagulls, and blue herons.” Derek looked all shadowy for a moment, as if the sun suddenly had gone behind a cloud, taking the color out of everything. “There’s nothing over there,” he said. “Nothing except birds and fields of long grass and rocky cliffs. Because of those jagged bluffs and the heavy wind over there, it’s considered dangerous. As far as I know, nobody ever goes to Peace Island.”

  From where we were, we could watch Uncle Gideon as his boat moved towards the island. We saw him dock the boat and climb the path up the cliff. We sat crouched there in the scratchy yellow flowers for ever so long. “If we only had a boat,” I said.

  “The mailman has one,” said Derek. “He talks about it all the time. He was painting it last summer and apologized about a big blue thumbprint on the newspaper he handed me.”

  “I see,” I said, “but if you mean Mr. Henley, he’s off delivering mail right now, isn’t he.” I rolled over onto my back among the leaves, trying to stay out of the sun. I wanted to lie there in the flowers forever. I didn’t want to go back to that big house full of whispering. I wanted to know what was going on. Did Winnie and Danny need some kind of help? Were they in danger? My face was beginning to feel sunburned, and my arms were turning pink. My head felt cloudy and light.

  “Did you hate my bouquet really and truly?” I said again to Derek, picking one of the yellow flowers near me. “And by the way, Derek, do you say bucks or dollars?”

  Derek looked a bit confused for a moment and then his face cleared and he smiled. “Oh, I say bucks. Can you loan me five bucks?”

  “I thought so,” I said.

  “We need to get you out of the sun, Flissy,” Derek said, “unless you want to turn into a cooked lobster.”

  “I am starving,” I said.

  “Me too,” he said.

  “I could eat a horse. Could you? Could you easily eat something that enormous right now, even with those great big hooves?”

  “Yup,” said Derek. “I could. Easily.”

  “Me too,” I said. Then I closed my eyes and tried to look terribly hungry and sad.

  “Fliss, don’t die on me. Are you okay? Wake up,” said Derek.

  I opened one eye and looked at Derek. I kept the other eye closed and gloomy because I liked it when Derek tried to cheer me up. In fact, I liked everything about Derek. The problem was, I was beginning to worry that he didn’t like me back.

  As we were walking along later, I was wondering to myself again why Winnie and Danny would send a letter all full of numbers and why Uncle Gideon would take that letter in a folder to a wild island full of birds. If only there had been a note on the outside of the envelope
for me, saying something like “I love you, little think tank.”

  I decided I had more nicknames than any girl in the USA and I had the longest name in the world too. Felicity Bathburn Budwig took three full seconds to say, which was much longer than most children’s names. Lily Jones and I timed it once. That’s why I liked Wink’s name. It was quite short and easy to remember. He wasn’t born with a last name at all, which was rather unusual. His name was just plain Wink.

  Instead of crossing the point and going straight back home, we went the other way, towards town. We ended up walking along the wharf where the boats were kept, not far from downtown Bottlebay. The reason the town had that name was because a long time ago, there used to be lots of bottle factories here. There still is a faded advertisement painted on the side of an old brick building that says BOTTLED IN BOTTLEBAY.

  Derek was frowning again, and even though he was much taller than me, I could still look up at him and see his eyebrows turning down, especially after we got into town. We passed some benches and clipped bushes and flower gardens. Derek looked a bit uneasy.

  “I do like benches. They’re quite nice, really,” I said. “Shall we have a seat for a moment?” Even though Derek didn’t want to, we found a very good one in the quiet park, and we sat down feeling dreadfully, weakly hungry.

  Across the park and through the trees there was a school. Derek and I tried to look the other way, but it seemed to be pulling at us just like a magnet.

  “There it is,” said Derek, pointing across the park to the big brown school building. “That’s where I’m not going this fall.”

  “Me either,” I said. “It’s very dark and menacing looking, isn’t it.” I stared at the large school building for a while. The name of the school was carved in stone above the door. It said THE JOHN E. BABBINGTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

  “Now, how did John E. Babbington get to have a school named after him?” I said. “I should like one day to have a school named after me. I should like very much to see one day ‘The Felicity Bathburn Budwig Elementary School.’ Wouldn’t that be lovely? How do you suppose you arrange something like that?”

  After a while, we got tired of sitting on the bench, swinging our feet and trying not to look at the John E. Babbington Elementary. Since we were both so very hungry, I was working away at Derek, trying to convince him to spend his quarter at the drugstore and soda fountain in town. I had always wanted to try an American soda fountain. Derek stalled a bit, kicking a stone about on the pavement, and I said, “Derek, nobody cares about your arm but you.”

  And finally, because of extreme hunger, he gave in. We crossed the street right away because neither one of us wanted to walk on the same side as the school. And all the way to the soda fountain, I sang “Good King Wenceslas” because of the footprints in that song and the way we had walked in Uncle Gideon’s on the beach. And anyway, I do love Christmas carols.

  When we got to Sal’s, a drugstore and soda fountain, I went right in and sat on one of the stools that spin round. I could see Derek through the glass, standing outside, hesitating. I waved and smiled at him and I started spinning round and round. Then through the blur, I saw Derek push through the door and take the stool next to me. And soon enough, we were both spinning like tops.

  Derek ordered a black cow. I did too, even though I didn’t know what it was. And I have to say, it was the best black cow I ever had, even though it was the only one I ever had. It was kind of a cold creamy chocolate drink with a lovely straw.

  While he was sipping his black cow, Derek started working on the code again, writing out numbers on a napkin. And I looked in the mirror along the counter. There were mirrors everywhere in Sal’s. They reflected into each other, and I could see a woman eating a tuna fish sandwich, repeated over and over and over again. Every time she took a bite, there were hundreds of her munching away, the same reflection going on into forever.

  And Derek and I were there too. Flissy and Derek and Flissy and Derek and Flissy and Derek into eternity. It seemed to me then that I was ever so Flissy, and not much Felicity at all anymore. It was like I, Flissy, was on the shore, and Felicity was in a little rowboat, floating slowly away.

  The next morning, the telephone rang. The sound blaring through the house came as a complete shock to me. I honestly hadn’t heard the telephone ring much before. I was lounging about in the parlor, reading The Secret Garden for the second time. (When I fancy a book, I like to read it at least five times. Uncle Gideon says I’m getting “obsessed” like Auntie Miami with Romeo and Juliet.)

  The loud ringing almost caused me to fall off my chair, but only because I really like diving and falling and all that. It gets tiresome just sitting properly in a chair all the time. I think it makes things exciting once in a while to just fall over like you got struck by lightning or something.

  Auntie was in the kitchen finishing up making more blueberry jam. Everything smelled of hot bubbling blueberries and steam. Uncle Gideon was up in the gymnasium, standing on his head. Soon enough, I heard a clunking sound, which must have been Uncle Gideon losing his balance and crashing over.

  What I mean to say is, no one was able to answer the telephone but me. Anyway, I was the first to get to it, probably because I threw myself towards it, knocking Frances Hodgson Burnett’s greatest work clear across the room. I slid in my stocking feet over the floor, bringing with me all sorts of cushions and newspapers and whatnot. Even though I am a proper British girl, I must confess that I grabbed the receiver. I was sure it was Winnie and Danny. They had always rung me up before. They would call and everything would be explained. And they’d have something wondrous for me … a new puzzle, a windup bird, a package of little paper umbrellas.

  I picked up the heavy receiver and I was almost going to cry out, “Winnie and Danny, it’s me, your Felicity! Where have you been? Where are you now? When are you coming home?”

  But in the confusion and darkness of my head, I heard the voice on the other end, and it wasn’t one I recognized. It wasn’t warm and comforting. It wasn’t Danny saying, “Hello, little think tank, miss you.” It was a strange, brusque voice with an American accent.

  “Hello, is this the Bathburn residence? Is Miami Bathburn there?”

  “Miami?” I said, feeling then as if I had been a house made of bricks and had just been reduced to a pile of rubble by one of those whistle bombs.

  “I believe so,” I said quite politely.

  “Well, we have good news for her. She has won the Bottlebay Women’s Club raffle. The main prize being a twenty-minute slot in our upcoming talent and variety show. These twenty minutes are all hers. Rehearsal will start next week. May we speak with her, please?”

  “Auntie Miami,” I called out.

  Auntie Miami came out of the kitchen, wearing an apron that was all covered with blueberry juice. The spots reminded me of blue teardrops falling across the fabric.

  “Phone call for you,” I said in a terribly casual way, going over to the curtains and looking up close at the stitching along the edges. And then I ran into the parlor and threw myself on the sofa. I grabbed a big straw sun hat belonging to The Gram and I pulled it down low over my ears and almost over my eyes. Then I fetched The Secret Garden from under a table and got behind it and started reading fiercely. Or pretending to read, anyway.

  I sat there feeling very sorry indeed that I had done such a thing, that I had entered someone else’s name in a raffle without asking that someone first. I hadn’t really meant to do anything. Honestly, I never dreamed Auntie would win that raffle. I already had a sunburn, but I could feel my face turning red, red, even redder. Redder than Auntie’s hands after steaming the blueberry jars. Redder than the poor jellyfish that I found on the beach last evening. He was all tangled up in seaweed, and you’re not supposed to touch jellyfish, so I got a little pail and scooped him into it and took him back to the sea and let him loose in the water.

  My face was definitely burning up. I pulled the hat down lower and I tried
to read a passage from The Secret Garden, but words like rose and rock wall were sort of bouncing all about, and I couldn’t get the words to line up and act like a regular sentence at all.

  I tried to remember the moment I had written Miami’s name on that piece of paper at the quilt sale. It seemed as if I had just arrived in Bottlebay. I did it for Mr. Churchill, didn’t I? I didn’t really know what I was doing. Was I sleepy? Yes, that was it. I had been terribly sleepy and mixed up.

  I put my book down for a minute and listened. Winnie always said that British children should mind their own business, that they should not be nosy or impolite. I didn’t mean to be nosy, but I could hear Miami very clearly. She was just saying, “Oh, oh, I see. Thank you so very much.”

  When she hung up the phone, she shouted out, “Felicity Budwig Bathburn, what have you done to me?” And she started crying and she ran upstairs to her room and slammed the door.

  Uncle Gideon came down from the gymnasium, looking all interested, like someone was handing out free biscuits and perhaps it might be a good time to say hello. “What ho, Fliss,” he said. “What’s all the racket? What have you done now and where is Wink? Perhaps it’s all his fault.”

  I held The Secret Garden up over my nose and I didn’t answer.

  “Sometimes I can be a good listener, Flissy,” said Uncle Gideon. “Really.”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you very much.” I peeked at him over the book.

  Finally, I broke down and said, “Wink didn’t do anything. I did it all. I’m terribly sorry. But I did it for Prime Minister Churchill, actually. Yes, I did it for Winston.”

  I decided then I absolutely had to disappear completely and forever. So I held the big hat down over my face and I pushed past Uncle Gideon and I headed for the upstairs. I tore down the hall, passing The Gram’s room, hearing the buzzing of her sewing machine.

  I planned to go up to my room to lock myself in forever. I was thinking Derek would have to design some sort of pulley system to send food up to me through the window because I was never going to answer the door, even if Derek came by and said, “Flissy, open up! I’ve got the code figured out.” I was going to stay in there until I became a grown-up and then I would emerge, cool and calm, wearing high heels and red lipstick.