by Phoebe Stone
“He’s away on holiday,” I said, and then for a moment, I felt like a ship, like the SS Athenia drifting along at sea, hearing the sound of a submarine churning nearby.
Then I noticed Derek was looking rather muddled and confused and gruff; his hair was messed up and he looked rather like a bull pawing the ground, thinking about charging. “Romeo? Me?” he said.
I went round and stood by him and I whispered, “Please, Derek. Just for now. Please. Just to get her started. Just for practice until we can find a real Romeo.”
I always thought I was properly cared for. My hair was always brushed, and Winnie always made sure my skirts were hemmed. I had all my manners. I was sure of that. But it’s true there were nights when I was alone. I never liked waiting by the window after dark, watching for Winnie’s white wool jacket under the streetlight, watching for Danny’s overcoat and scarf and his felt hat. They often came up the walk late. Ever so late. I never knew what they were doing or where they went or why.
Once right before Christmas, there was a phone call, and Winnie and Danny had to go away. Winnie cried about it. It’s strange to have someone else’s tears on your cheeks. She hugged me and cried and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, darling. So terribly sorry. Will you forgive me ever? Danny and I have to go. It’s terribly important. Alice will be in to get you. You’ll have Christmas with her and her father. We’ll celebrate afterwards. Later. It will be lovely.” Her tears dried on my cheeks by the time Alice Wentley, our housekeeper, arrived. Winnie and Danny had already left. I was glad to hear Alice’s footsteps on the stairs. I thought she’d never get there. We left our flat and our Christmas tree all decorated with unopened presents sitting under it. I hoped that no bomb would fall on our flat while we were gone. I did so want to open my presents.
I went to the country with Alice in a car. We didn’t say much the whole way there, except that I sang Christmas carols without stopping, one after another, without catching my breath in between. Across the city, I could see all kinds of bombed-up buildings and fires burning. “You really shouldn’t be in London anymore at all,” said Alice.
“I know,” I said, “but Danny works there.”
“Well, we’re lucky we had some petrol in the tank. Just about enough to get home. And that will be it. They’ll have to come out for you when they get back.”
“We are going to have our Christmas when Winnie and Danny come home in two weeks,” I said, and then I started right in with “Once in Royal David’s City” and I didn’t stop singing till we were past a huge pile of bricks partly covering the road. Those bricks had once been a building, and bunches of bobbies (policemen) in capes were waving us by and blowing whistles.
When we got to our housekeeper Alice Wentley’s cottage, she said, “Well, now, here we are at Hollyhock Hill. It’s got a registered name, our house does. And it’s where I live with my father, who’s feeling poorly these days.”
I carried Wink, who seemed quite miserable, into the little brick house, and Alice called out, “Daddy, we’re here. We barely made it. Would you like a cup of tea?” They had a tiny Christmas tree on the kitchen table, but it wasn’t real. It was fake. I could tell when I touched it. “Lucky we had that in the attic or we wouldn’t have had a tree at all, would we. I don’t know where your mother found your Christmas tree in London with these times being as they are.”
“She found it in Piccadilly Circus. A man was selling some. It was ever so dear,” I said.
“Well, Daddy, here’s Felicity Bathburn Budwig come for Christmas with us. What do you say, Daddy?” Her father was lying on the sofa in the small parlor, under a blanket. I didn’t know if he could turn his head or not since he always stared at the ceiling. “Daddy, say hello, won’t you.” It was strange to hear a very old woman, Alice Wentley, calling an even older man Daddy. Because I’d never called Winnie and Danny that sort of thing. Everybody thought it very funny at first. Winnie said I was terribly grown up in some ways and terribly childish in others.
Alice Wentley’s father said, “How old is she?”
And I said, “I’m ten years old, though I’ll be eleven in January.” But he had already started coughing and didn’t even hear the part about my being eleven soon. He didn’t say much after that except, now and again, he would call out, “That chap Churchill is a bloody fool.”
Christmas Eve was a few days later. Alice Wentley cooked Christmas pudding, and her father spit it up. That night I lay awake in my bed in the tiny room near the kitchen. I was thinking about Winnie and what she had said that night before they left. She said, “Felicity, it’s so hard. I have a kind of calling. It’s my work. My work is important to me, but you are also important to me. I’m torn between those two things. Don’t you see? I’m torn in two.”
All Christmas Eve, I lay in bed looking up at the ceiling like Alice Wentley’s father. I was listening for bombers in the sky. They said there would be a cease-fire that night in London for Christmas, and I was hoping it would be true.
Even though Uncle Gideon had said to forget about him, the man from Washington bothered me. Why had he come here to Bottlebay, Maine, and how did he know my Winnie? Even if Derek and I didn’t talk about the code all the time, it seemed to be always with us or near us like the sound of the ocean. We thought of it especially at rehearsals when Aunt Miami and Derek were repeating those lines that we hoped held the answer. Derek often looked at me as he said his lines, but then I was never sure what he was thinking. Did he know I liked him? It nagged at me. Was it possible for an older boy to like a younger girl?
“You know, Flissy,” said Derek one day after school, “I can’t keep playing that Romeo part. I hate doing it, you know. I only did it this far just for Miami because it is nice she’s getting to be Juliet finally. But honestly, Fliss, I hate it.”
“You do such a lovely job of it, though,” I said. “But of course we’ll find someone else.” We were sitting on the porch swing pushing it in circles in a lazy sort of way. It was almost October and there was a smell of smoke in the air. The leaves fell from the tree next to our house all at once that afternoon, filling the sky with fluttering yellow light. The summer people had all gone home, and most of the beach houses down the way were shuttered and boarded up.
“Anyway, those lines are stuck in my head now,” said Derek.
“I know them by heart,” I said.
“Tell me something, Flissy. When you saw the book of Romeo and Juliet in the locked study that day you went in there, was it open to those very lines?”
“I think so,” I said. “But I can’t be sure because I was in such a hurry. Something was circled with a pencil.”
“And how many letters do you think we’ve gotten, all together?”
“I think there are six, though we haven’t received any for over a month.” And just as I said that, I began to have a sort of anxious feeling that started to hover over me like a dark overcoat hanging above me in a closet.
“You know, Fliss, we need to go back into the study and copy over the other letters and look at the book of Romeo and Juliet that you saw in there.”
“I see,” I said. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Flissy,” he said, “let’s go down to the side yard and look up at the house from below.”
And so we did. From down in the south yard, the house seemed enormous and tall, with great, crisp-looking autumn clouds sailing slowly beyond the roof. “Have a look at the windows on the second floor. Count them. The one that is the third from the end is the study. The other two are part of the gymnasium,” said Derek.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” I said.
“And there’s a screen in the window today. The window’s open.” A few yellow leaves floated in the air. “I’ll need a ladder,” Derek said. He pushed his hair off his forehead. I closed my eyes. He wasn’t afraid at all.
“It’s a great thing that no one is home right now. When is Mr. Bathtub due back?” I said.
“He usually stays at least
an hour after school,” said Derek. I was following him down the slope that led under the porch, where the basement door was. We pulled the long ladder out of the darkness and carried it up to the side of the house and set it against the wall.
It was an oddly quiet afternoon. Even the ocean seemed hushed. Shadows were velvety and muffled, lying across the house. “Derek,” I said as he climbed the ladder and I held it steady at the bottom, “be careful. Do. And by the way, can I have the little broken tin soldier. Please?”
“You mean if I don’t make it back alive?” Derek said, looking down at me quite sweetly. The ladder swayed and I held on tight.
To keep from being nervous, which is my way, really, I closed my eyes and wrote another letter to Winnie and Danny in my head.
Dear Winnie and Danny,
After having discovered Derek Bathburn Blakely here in the house at Bottlebay, I am afraid to say that I have rather fallen for him, though I don’t want to use that word “fallen” just now, as he is up on a very high ladder and it’s a bit rickety.
More later, I hope, if we don’t die doing this.
Love,
Your Felicity, who is most definitely a nutter
Derek had climbed all the way up the ladder by then. He was just at the window and he was leaning against it, reaching for the screen, which meant he wasn’t holding on to anything because his other arm could do nothing but hang at his side. I watched him pull the screen out of the window with one hand. Derek always amazed me. Then he lost his balance, with the screen swinging around in the air. Finally, he dropped it, and it went spinning and sailing down, bumping against the ladder. It landed with a flat thump in the sandy grass near where I was standing. Everything else was silent.
“Oh, Derek,” I whispered, “be careful.”
Luckily, the old peeling window stuck open and Derek inched up on the ledge and was able to duck his head inside and then slip the rest of him off the window ledge, down into the room. Then he shut the window.
And so I was left below gripping the ladder, shadows from clouds above drifting in a soundless way across the house. “Derek,” I whispered again. “Derek? Derek?”
I couldn’t wait. I wasn’t sure if it was the British part of me or the antsy Budwig part, but I began to climb the ladder in a shaky sort of way. A group of ring-billed gulls overhead were screeching as they landed on the roof above, breaking up the silence in the air. When you are climbing up high, it is probably a good idea not to turn round and look behind you. And so I didn’t. I just kept climbing and watching the road in the distance for a sign of the black Packard and Uncle Gideon or a cloud of dust that might mean a car coming along. When I got to the top of the ladder, I held on to one of the shutters and I pounded on the window.
Derek looked at me through the glass. “Go back, Flissy, it’s not safe,” he mouthed. But I stayed there pushing against the glass. I daresay I didn’t generally take orders very well. Danny often said I would not make a good soldier.
“No,” I shouted. I held up the screen I was carrying. It flew about in my hand like a gull caught in a draft. Derek rolled his eyes. He opened the window and I climbed partway in, huffing and puffing, dropping the screen into the room. Half of me was in and half of me was out, and Derek was pulling on part of me while another part of me had one of my dreadful laughing attacks. And then suddenly, I fell in on the floor. I lay on my back with my arms out trying to imagine what it would feel like to die. Did you float to the ceiling when it happened?
“Were you worried about me terribly, Derek?” I whispered, still breathless. “Would you cry at all if I had died?”
“Flissy,” Derek said. And he then didn’t finish his sentence. He looked a bit stunned.
“What?” I said.
“Here’s the box you saw delivered a while ago. It’s open.”
“What’s in there?” I said, getting up quickly and going over to look at the box. Derek reached in and pulled out a small crocheted pincushion with an embroidered butterfly across the front.
“Is that all?” I said as I looked at the box and the postmark I had grown to know so well. “May I hold it?” With the pincushion in my hands, I had a fleeting image of Winnie sitting by candlelight, her embroidery needle darting quickly over some fabric.
“We should put it back,” said Derek, reaching for it. But just then, he noticed a small two-inch opening along one seam. “Well, I see something was tucked inside here,” he said, “but it’s gone now. Someone has removed it.” He stared down at the floor.
Then he started opening drawers in the desk where the letters had been before. The drawers as he slid them out squeaked and dragged in the soundless air. Finally, he pulled out a stack of letters, all six that Gideon had received. He held them up towards the light.
We spread each letter out on the desk. It was really startling to see them all lying there. We slipped them gently from their slit envelopes. Each letter was full of a series of numbers and nothing else. We copied them over as quickly as possible.
“Anyone on the road?” said Derek, looking up at me.
I ran to the window.
“So far no, but hurry,” I said. “Have we got every letter copied?”
Derek nodded.
Then we went through the envelopes, quickly checking the postmark dates. Yes, it was true. I was right. We had not had a letter for a whole month. I put my face in my hands and looked at the blackness behind my closed eyes. Why had the letters stopped coming?
“It’s getting late. Come on, Flissy,” said Derek. “You leave by the study door. I’ll lock it behind you.”
“But what about you? Poor you?” I said, pulling a little on his shirtsleeve.
“Quick, go now,” said Derek. “I hear a car up on the road. Go. Now.”
“What ho, Fliss,” Uncle Gideon called as he got out of the old Packard. I stood off to the right of the house so my uncle would look towards me and not off to the left, where through the rosebushes he might glimpse the edge of an old tall ladder and a clever boy climbing down it. Uncle Gideon had a briefcase in one hand and a pile of papers in the other. There were books in his arms too, and it looked as if he might drop them all at any second.
“Lovely day, isn’t it!” I called out, hopping about on one foot. I always seemed to do that when I was nervous. “It hasn’t rained at all. Not even two drops.” And I changed to my other leg and started hopping again.
“Yes, it is a lovely day, a quiet day,” said Uncle Gideon, looking at me sideways and frowning. “You are hopping awfully well these days. Are you in training for a hop-scotch tournament?”
“No, no, I’m just rehearsing something. Um, thinking about rehearsing. I mean practicing something. I mean hopping is good for thinking, isn’t it.”
“Ah, I see. That makes sense, I think. Well, since we’re on the subject of rehearsals, how has my sister been doing at the town hall?”
“Oh, she has been doing a topping good job,” I said.
“Did you say a whopping good job?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “a topping good job.”
“And she’s not dropping out, is she?” he said.
“No, she loves being Juliet,” I said trying to think of other things to keep the conversation going. “Yes, she really does.”
“Yes or no?” said Uncle Gideon. “Which what?”
“Well, I’m not sure. She loves it, that’s all.”
“Oh, she’s a hopeless romantic,” said Uncle Gideon. “I guess we all are around here.”
“Probably not me,” I said.
“Well, then you’ll be the first Bathburn that isn’t, Flissy.”
“Why does everyone love Romeo and Juliet so much when it’s such a sad story, really?” I said, nodding my head up and down to make sure Uncle Gideon looked my way.
“They love it because they can see themselves in it,” Uncle Gideon said, and then he turned his face up towards the sky. A formation of airplanes was flying overhead in a V shape like geese
heading south for the winter. If only they were just geese.
“Bad news every day with the war,” he said. “But your England is putting up a good fight.”
“What will happen if we lose?” I said.
He shook his head. “By the way, Fliss, you haven’t collected the mail for me and forgotten to give me anything, have you? I mean like a letter or anything?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten,” I said.
“I mean, the mail is usually on the dining room table when I get home from school. I mean, you didn’t see a letter for me?”
“No, I haven’t seen one,” I said, and then my heart got heavy again and fell like one of those black-crowned night herons dropping into the sea to feed.
Just then, a gust of wind whipped round the house the way it does sometimes even on quiet days and it ripped all the papers from Uncle Gideon’s arms and it swirled them all over the garden like a group of autumn leaves. Some of them flew about and landed in the rosebushes off towards the left. I ran after those, and Uncle Gideon chased the ones along the front of the house. I could see now that Derek had finally moved the ladder. I took a deep breath.
When I had grabbed all the papers on my side, I happened to see (quite by accident, honestly) my report on Frances Hodgson Burnett. Mr. Bathtub had written A-plus at the top in red and added, “You are a marvel! Well done, Felicity Bathburn! You truly are an expert on this delightful author.”
I felt rather guilty and sorry indeed then that Derek and I had broken into the locked study and poked about in his desk while Uncle Gideon had been off correcting papers cheerily, writing nice things on the top of my report.
“Good catch, by the way,” he said, taking the papers. “We wouldn’t want to have a whole swarm of sixth-grade reports flying about in Bottlebay, would we? Some of the spelling errors would shock the general population!” He smiled a little bit and then he started heading towards the house. Soon he turned round for a moment and said, “I say, old bean, beautiful report you wrote. By the way, I’ve noticed your math is a bit off. You know, we can fix that.”
