The Romeo and Juliet Code

by Phoebe Stone

  As I was running, I got the terrible feeling that I was about to cry. So I leaned against the wall outside The Gram’s room. The feeling was coming towards me like one of the boats in the Cunard line, like the HMS Queen Anne, huge and gray and all painted over in her war costume, coming into the harbor silently. I knew it was going to happen.

  I was truly sorry for what I had done to Aunt Miami. I hadn’t even realized she would be angry or upset. Now all sorts of things were coming to a peak inside me. I could feel everything rolling towards me like floodwater.

  I listened to the sound of the sewing machine. It was buzzing along as if nothing in the world was wrong, as if there wasn’t a war across the ocean, as if my life hadn’t been torn into a million pieces, as if Winnie and Danny hadn’t left me here all alone in a strange land, not explaining anything.

  The door was open a crack, and The Gram was sitting there sewing away, making something. She seemed to know I was out here in the hall all scrunched up in a heap about to cry. She turned round and waved to me. “Come over here, Flissy,” she said. I waited. She waved at me again. Then I poked my head through the door very quietly. I could see the fabric she was sewing with. There were British flags printed all over the flannel. I went in to the room and stood by The Gram. And as I stood there, she smelled of roses and soap, and it was because of the soap and the smell of roses that I started to cry. If it hadn’t been for the roses, it wouldn’t have happened.

  I cried and I cried and I cried and I laid my head on The Gram’s soft shoulder and she hugged me and that made me cry even more.

  “Go ahead and let loose,” she said. “You’ve been very brave and you’ve been through a lot.”

  “I have?” I said.

  “You have,” she said.

  “But Auntie Miami’s angry with me and she’ll never speak to me again. And you’re angry with my Winnie. And when are they coming back for me? How long will I have to wait? And I know about Danny and Uncle Gideon. I know how they fought over my mum, Winnie. I know everything. The only thing I don’t know is where my parents are and what they are doing. What are they doing?”

  “Well, Danny has always been a terrible risk taker. You know that.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He’s a risk taker and he wants to save the world. He won’t be happy with less. Some people need the thrill of danger. But I’m angry with him and Winnie for hurting Gideon, and I have been for twelve years.”

  “Haven’t Danny and Gideon started making up?” I asked.

  “It seems that they have, or you wouldn’t be here. In a way, you were part of the quarrel, though I am not at liberty to explain how,” said The Gram, smoothing my hair away from my face.

  “I’m not a part of their quarrel,” I said. “I only just met Uncle Gideon when I came to Bottlebay. And were they really so close once?”

  “Oh yes, they were the greatest of friends growing up. Though I will say Danny always seemed to outshine Gideon. He won all the games and races. Danny was so much more outgoing and better-looking than Gideon. Gideon was a bit in his shadow. But they were so close, they even spoke a secret language together.”

  “A secret language?” I said.

  “Yes, and they went to the same university studying languages and they wanted to go into the same line of work. But of course, that didn’t work out for Gideon. Still, in the end, Gideon has something that Danny doesn’t have, and though I’m not at liberty to explain, that is what you call a blessing in disguise.”

  “And what about Auntie Miami,” I said. “She’s so terribly hurt and angry with me.” And I started to cry again.

  “Oh, I think what you did was extraordinary. It was just what Miami needed. A good push. It was very forthright and clever of you. It must have been the Budwig in you that did it. We Bathburns are terribly, ridiculously hesitant and retiring. Except for Danny. Yes, it was the bold Budwig part of you that came up with it, and I think it is a grand idea.”

  “You do?” I said.

  “I do,” she said. “Now, let’s put a barrette in your hair and pull it over to the side to show off your lovely Bathburn forehead.”

  “But the Budwig part of me wants to know something,” I said. “When are my Winnie and Danny coming home?”

  “Well, we can’t know for sure, but we’re going to wait. Waiting is hard, especially now at the edge of war. But we Bathburns are good at waiting, aren’t we? Think about the sea captain’s family that once lived here. They were Bathburns too, you know. How that family must have had to wait and wait and wait for their father’s ship to come home. Imagine them rushing up to your room to watch the water for a sign. Finally, one day, perhaps they saw the mast of his boat slowly coming over the horizon.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “And what are you making with this material covered with British flags?”

  “Well, I’m making you a pair of pajamas, Flissy,” said The Gram. “It will be getting cold soon and you’ll be needing something comfy to keep you warm at night.”

  It was already getting chilly at night. Somehow, summer was climbing towards an end, and the air had a different feel. I thought about all the times during the full summer that Derek and I had sat together at the top of the porch stairs, looking off at the horizon, as if an answer to the code might be found there. I thought about all the times we had stretched back on those steps, watching the sky turn over and change, as if every pattern above us might hold the answer to the letters.

  But the light was different now and the ocean seemed gray again instead of turquoise. A bird’s nest blew out of a tree in the garden that next day, and I brought it into the house, worrying about the babies. Gideon had said, “They’re all grown and gone by now. Fall is here, Flissy. School starts tomorrow. Are you ready to get ready?”

  I planned to give Auntie Miami the nest because she liked dried flowers and shells and things from nature, but she wouldn’t answer her door when I knocked. I hadn’t realized until then, when I stood there knocking away, that I had grown to love my aunt Miami. I missed our walks and our raspberry picking. She’d been in her room since the day before and I felt very sorry for it.

  “Terribly dramatic, that one,” said Gideon, rolling his eyes up towards her room as he passed me in the hallway earlier.

  Today, Derek and I were supposed to get new shoes for school. The Gram had been a bit angry at Winnie about the shoes I wore here when she saw that I had a hole in the bottom of one of them. “But I like the hole,” I had told her. “I can feel the ground a little bit and it’s quite nice, really, to be able to know exactly what you are walking on.” But The Gram didn’t agree and she shook her head back and forth, looking at my shoe.

  Now I was going to have to give up my ever so comfortable black English plimsolls with a nice hole in the bottom of one of them. I hadn’t really outgrown them yet. But most of the other clothes I brought with me were getting too short and too tight. “You are growing in spurts, Flissy, and I think you’ve just had one of your growing sessions,” The Gram had said to me a few days before. Uncle Gideon had taken a measurement on the wall near the kitchen when I first arrived, and when I stood against it recently, it was clear The Gram was right. I was getting taller. I wasn’t nearly as tall as Derek yet, but I wanted to be. I stretched and stretched and hoped I could match his height. I thought it would be jolly nice to be tall enough to look straight across at Derek, face-to-face, without having to hop about and stretch my neck.

  “Put on clean socks, Flissy,” The Gram called up the stairs. “You can’t try on new shoes without wearing clean white socks.”

  I was singing “Away in a Manger” and hoping Derek wasn’t going to stay in his room forever this morning, though I had heard him calling out to The Gram that he didn’t need new shoes because he wasn’t going back to school. There were two Bathburns behind locked doors right now. Well, three if you counted Uncle Gideon in his secret study. So I decided it was really and truly a Bathburn trait.

  The Gram had
brought breakfast up on a tray earlier for Miami, and I had seen the tray sitting outside her door afterwards with everything all eaten up, and so at least I knew Aunt Miami was still alive in there. Then the Budwig part of me took hold again and I got out my writing paper and I began a letter to Aunt Miami.

  Dearest Auntie Miami,

  I am ever, ever so sorry about entering your name in a raffle. The Gram says all you have is a case of stage fright, which she says is completely normal. But I would like to tell you it would be lovely to see you onstage being Juliet finally. I promise to go with you to every single rehearsal and I promise to clap and cheer and laugh and cry in all the right places. Please reconsider.

  Your adoring niece,

  Flissy B. Bathburn

  After I finished the letter, I put on a new pair of socks and then I brushed my hair and I put the barrette back in. I peeked in the mirror to see how my Bathburn forehead looked today and then I gave Wink a wink and told him not to be antsy or fidgety while I was gone. I hadn’t paid much attention to him recently. He was quite neglected now, but luckily, he was not at all aware of it.

  I was just at the top of the stairs, when I heard The Gram calling out, “Derek dear, come now and let’s get going. You can pick out your own shoes, whatever you like.”

  I slipped the letter to Auntie Miami under her door and then I went on down to the front porch. It was a crisp morning, and a slight feeling of cheerfulness was seeping through me. It had come through my toes and was up about as far as my knees even though Auntie was angry with me, even though Uncle Gideon was doing something secretive, even though The Gram didn’t love my Winnie. Still, the cheerfulness was clearly at my kneecaps, even though most of the Bathburns were locked away pouting. But then I realized there were voices on the porch.

  Voices? We hadn’t had anyone here at the house before. Not a soul. It was not encouraged. Even when Derek had received a call from a friend in town, Uncle Gideon had written a note on a piece of paper and held it up while Derek was on the phone. The note had said, “Not today. Not here, anyway.”

  But now Uncle Gideon was sitting out there chatting with a man wearing a suit and a necktie. For some reason, seeing that made my new cheerfulness drain out of me. It dropped all the way down to my big toe and then sat there on the tip of it, ready to disappear entirely. Who was the man in the suit and why was he here?

  The Gram called me into the kitchen. “Before we leave to go shopping, would you take this tray of tea out to the porch? There’s a gentleman from Washington here to visit your uncle, and he wants to meet you.”

  “Me? Someone from Washington?” I said. “Does this have something to do with my birthday being a day before the president’s?”

  “Not at all, Flissy, and don’t forget the sugar,” she said, putting it next to the teapot.

  I took the tray out to the porch carefully and I set it down on the table. Then I stood there on one leg, trying to see what it felt like to be a blue heron. They stand on one leg all day in the marsh across the fields here. I was thinking about that, but I was also looking round at Uncle Gideon and the man from Washington. He had a briefcase with him, which appeared to have a little lock on it. I had never seen a briefcase with a lock before.

  “Here’s Winnie’s daughter,” said Uncle Gideon, nodding to the man.

  “Ah,” said the man, “I was hoping I would get a chance to meet you. Your mother is quite wonderful. Did you know that?”

  “Where is she and what is she doing?” I said.

  “This is Mr. Donovan, Fliss. It would be lovely if you’d shake his hand and say hello,” said Uncle Gideon, beaming away.

  “Hello,” I said, switching legs and wondering how a blue heron kept from feeling tippy after a while. I shook Mr. Donovan’s large hand. Suddenly, my nose felt very itchy indeed. In fact, I felt itchy all over from my head to my toes and I just had to run upstairs and see Derek. It was of the utmost importance.

  So I said, “Excuse me,” in a very proper British way that would have pleased Winnie, and then I shot back into the house, as if I were a blue heron flying over the marsh towards the sea.

  “Derek,” I said, knocking on his door, “quick, let me in.” And then I turned the doorknob and I rather barged in, in an American sort of way.

  “Derek,” I said, “get up quick. There’s a gentleman from Washington downstairs. He’s got a locked briefcase and he knows my mum, Winnie.”

  Derek was up in a flash, sitting with his legs crossed the way they sit round the bonfire at Camp Wabinaki, where he went for two weeks last summer. “Washington, DC?” he said.

  “Yes, indeed,” I said.

  “Did he seem strange at all or unfriendly in any way? Is he questioning Gideon like an investigator perhaps?” he said.

  “I’m not sure. You should go down and have a look at him,” I said.

  “Hmm,” said Derek. Then he was quiet for a minute while I sat there feeling all fidgety, just exactly what I had told Wink this morning not to be. “That settles it. We have to get to Peace Island the next time Gideon goes there.”

  “I know,” I said. “We’re supposed to go buy shoes in town now, but on our way out, you must have a peek at Mr. Donovan before he gets away.”

  But when we got downstairs, Uncle Gideon and the man from Washington were no longer on the porch. And Derek was stuck. He had to go buy new shoes.

  So The Gram drove Derek and me in the old Packard out through the rosebushes under the morning sky. The Gram managed to hit every pothole by mistake, and the wind seemed to push the car about like a little badminton birdie, and we sang “O Holy Night” over and over again because sometimes when I am worried, I sing. And besides, it was the prettiest Christmas song to sing in late August.

  And so it was that Derek and I bought brand-new shoes for school. I got brown oxfords, which made me think of the school named Oxford where Danny and Gideon and Winnie had gone. And Derek got a pair of black canvas high-tops, which they call sneakers in America and I teased him about them, saying he was a bit of a sneak.

  And the whole time, Derek and I were in the shoe store with our feet being pinched and poked and measured, we were thinking about how we might find Mr. Henley and his boat.

  When we got back from town, Uncle Gideon and the man from Washington were still gone. But Wink was sitting on my pillow instead of by the window, where I’d left him. He was holding a white envelope in his paw or at least it was leaning against his paw. As soon as I saw that, I rushed up to him, snatching the envelope, leaving Wink looking rather stunned. (Perhaps he always looked rather stunned.) I couldn’t help it. I was ever so curious, wondering who had written to me.

  The outside of the envelope said, “For Miss F. B. Bathburn, Care of W. P. Wink, Tower Room, Bottlebay.” In the back of my mind, I was hoping it was a letter from Winnie and Danny saying that the war was over and that they were coming back to get me. But then I felt a slight tug of regret, thinking that I wouldn’t want to leave Derek all alone to face school without me. Well, perhaps if they were coming back for me, Derek could visit us in the summer.

  I sat on the bed now and looked sideways at Wink. “Wink, tell me,” I said in a half-joking sort of way, “who wrote the letter.” I was thinking to myself, I must truly be a nutter to be talking to a bear when I’m soon to be in the sixth form.

  There are two schools of thought about stuffed bears, Uncle Gideon said. It was true for adults who liked bears, as well as children. One theory is that stuffed bears know everything about the lives of humans they live with, the future and the past and the present, but they can’t say anything. All they can do is give their love and support. The other school of thought is that bears know nothing at all about humans or their lives and they don’t care a fig about any of it; they just offer unconditional love. That was what Uncle Gideon said. He could say things that were quite thoughtful sometimes and he often looked very “poetic,” as Miami would say, when he was walking on the beach. And I did think it was a pity that
he wouldn’t play his piano anymore. I just couldn’t quite decide what I thought about Uncle Gideon. And tomorrow he would become my sixth-form teacher, and I did hope he wouldn’t tease me too terribly with all that British nonsense.

  I knew, of course, it wasn’t possible for Wink to answer me, and so I kissed his fuzzy ears and then I set about opening the envelope ever so carefully so as not to rip the paper at all.

  When I got it open, it said,

  Dear Flissy sweetest,

  Of course I am not completely angry at you. I’m only a little bit angry because you didn’t ask first about the raffle. But then I might have said no. And of course now I can’t say no. So I’ll have to say yes. Yes, I’ll do it. But you must accompany me. And you must cheer constantly!

  Love,

  Aunt M.

  P.S. Good luck with school tomorrow and see you at supper.

  I put the letter down and went to the window. The ocean suddenly looked breezy and playful. The sky was all windy and blue, and Aunt Miami wasn’t angry with me anymore.

  Then I started thinking about what to wear tomorrow to the John E. Babbington Elementary. What did American girls wear to school anyway? In England, the girls wore dark blue wool skirts and a white blouse of your own choice. You had to go to a special department store for the blue wool skirts and dark blue knickers. Some richer girls had five skirts so they could get through the week nicely. I only had two and I lost one of mine once and I had to wear the same blue wool skirt for two weeks straight. But I didn’t tell anybody. Then my other skirt was found under a pile of laundry. Thank goodness.

  I opened my cupboard (or closet, as the Bathburns say) and began to look at my clothes. There wasn’t much to choose from. I pulled out a cotton dress with little flowers all over it, but when I held it up, it was really too short. Then I noticed the yellow-checked suitcase at the bottom of my closet and I remembered the letter hidden under it from Winnie, written to Uncle Gideon. I remembered I was to wait till one week before Christmas to give it to him.