by Meg Rosoff
I could hear Jet and Gin down below us in the barn, and a long time after I thought he was asleep Edmond said in a quiet voice that the dogs always stayed up here during lambing because that's when they were needed most for rounding up the sheep and we were probably confusing them by being here now. And the soft sound of his voice made me want to move closer to him so I did, a little, and for a while we just looked at each other without blinking or saying a word. Then he moved his head to the right just enough so he could brush his cheek against the part of my arm that was near his face and after that he closed his eyes and fell asleep while I lay there and wondered if that's the feeling you're supposed to have when your cousin touches a totally innocent part of your anatomy that's even fully clothed.
I lay there for a while more, smelling the smell of tobacco in Edmond's hair and waiting to fall asleep, and I remembered thinking about a painting we had to copy in art class once called The Calm Before the Storm. It showed an old-fashioned sailing ship on a dead flat sea and the sky behind it was all sorts of gold and orange and red colors and it looked like the picture of peace if you hadn't noticed the greenish black section up in one corner, which was obviously The Storm. For some reason I used to think about that painting a lot, I guess because of that feeling you get when you know that something awful is going to happen and no one in the painting does and if you could only warn them then the rest of their lives might be different.
The Calm Before the Storm seemed like the right sort of phrase to jump into a person's mind on this occasion no matter how happy I was just at the moment because given how my life had gone so far, I'd had lots of practice in not expecting everything to turn out like your basic Hollywood tearjerker with the blind girl played by this year's Oscar Hopeful and the crippled boy miraculously walking and everyone going home happy.
7
The next day, without actually saying that we were abandoning our plan to live in the barn we kind of gravitated back toward the house to have a bath and get clean clothes because if you want to know the truth about how romantic it is to sleep in a barn, it isn't very, due to the hay itching and the bats and how cold it gets at night even though it's supposed to be spring.
Back at the house Osbert was annoyed because he'd had to milk the goats himself and it was Piper's job, and it turned out that Aunt Penn had called from Oslo and told him she was doing everything in her power to get home and in the meantime there was some money in the bank account to tide us over, and she'd already spoken to the bank manager about us getting it. Osbert said she sounded more worried about the world than about us, but he didn't seem annoyed at being second best and Piper said It's because she knows we'll be fine.
For a second while Osbert was talking about Aunt Penn, Edmond's face looked very pale, but he was facing Isaac so I couldn't be absolutely sure and when he turned around again he looked fairly normal and said There are people all over the world who will help her if they can. And that was the end of the conversation.
The good old Royal Mail didn't seem to have any clue that there was a war starting up and that day there was a letter from my dad, and one from Leah. Dad yammered on a lot about Davina the D and how she was feeling what with the pregnancy and all, like it was preying on my mind that she might be feeling uncomfortable when in fact I just hoped her ankles would swell up like balloons and her breasts would sag down to her knees and the silicone in them turn to cement. There was a little something stuck on at the end of the letter about missing me, and how I should be careful not to become a Victim of the Terrorist Threat and had I managed to gain any weight blah blah blah.
Leah's letter was much more entertaining, with reports that Ms. Cool Herself, Melissa Banner, was going around telling everyone that she and Lyle Hershberg were Hooking Up. Well if this banner headline is true, I swear to god I will assign all my worldly goods to the Salvation Army and I'd say there's no danger of some religious tuba player ending up with my DVD player given that Lyle was famous for telling his last girlfriend Mimi Maloney that if she didn't Satisfy His Needs at least three times a day he'd have to find relief elsewhere and Melissa Banner is the world's most famous living professional virgin. Leah walked in once on Lyle Satisfying His Needs all by himself in homeroom when everyone should have been at school assembly and she said Well well well Lyle Hershberg, don't look now but there's a Smurf with a hard-on in your pants. Or at least she claims that's what she said but not to be disloyal or anything I've always had my doubts.
I wanted to talk all this through with Leah right then and there and I nearly cried with how much I missed having a cell phone that worked and e-mail even if I did have a hundred and twelve wacky cousins instead.
So I sat down and wrote back all about Edmond and Piper and Isaac and the animals and the house and the war, and I made it sound even better than it actually was, and by the time I finished the letter I'd convinced myself that This Was the Life oh yes and Boy Had I Lucked Out. But it's easier said than done to convince yourself that god has smiled on you when the actual fact is that you're living with strangers due to the evil workings of your wicked stepmother not to mention your official next of kin.
Then in came Osbert again with a face like a dead pigeon and said there were more attacks this time in the U.S.A.
And when, to seem interested, I said How terrible, where? He said Pittsburgh and Detroit and Houston only he pronounced it Hoos-ton. Well part of me was happy they hadn't bombed the Upper West Side and part of me started having this pretty good fantasy about Dad and Davina all bandaged up and limping and trying to come live here with us and us saying We are just SO SORRY but the airports are shut otherwise we'd simply LOVE to have you, really we would.
I tried eating a little bit of bacon today because Edmond particularly asked me to but it tasted like pig and I gagged.
8
I'm thinking now would be a good time to talk about Isaac because he's the one who gets left out of most of the action due to hardly ever saying a word but I'm starting to realize it's the ones who aren't yakking all the time who sometimes turn out to be worth keeping an eye on.
At first I barely noticed him what with noticing Edmond so much and Piper holding my hand all the time and chickens clucking, dogs barking, sheep baaing, not to mention half the world blowing up and the pipes banging night and day. So it took me longer than usual to get the picture that while Piper and Edmond were busy watching over me, Isaac was busy watching over them.
He didn't do it in an obvious way like Osbert who was always pushing himself into the conversation with superior information and making it clear that he was the one with Family Responsibilities which Frankly Exhausted Him and He'd Rather Not Be Bothered only Seeing As How He Was the Eldest, Well, deep sigh.
Edmond on the other hand was totally up-front even if he did surprise you in about half a million ways each day. When Edmond was listening in to your thoughts, you could tell by looking at him looking at you.
Isaac was more shadowy and Kept His Counsel, as my doorman used to say about anyone who didn't like to gossip. This doesn't mean there was anything sneaky about his way of watching, or anything sentimental either. He just accepted the things people did, without comment or judgment and maybe without being terribly concerned. Even his family seemed to interest him in an abstract way, like lab specimens he'd come to feel responsibility and affection for.
At times I thought he was more animal than human. For instance if you were walking in town on market day and there were tons of people milling around, you would never have to worry about losing him in the crowd even if you totally forgot he was there and got separated for ages. You could zig and zag and make turns on a sudden whim and stop for tea and cut across a few back streets and decide that today would be a good time to do something totally different and try that bakery that none of you normally went to when in actual fact you had plenty of bread already at home so there'd be no reason to be in a bakery at all, and the next time you looked up Isaac would be right at your elbow, totally c
asual, like he'd been there all along or possibly just followed your train of thought through the crowd.
It was like he understood humans objectively and could see your entire life stretching out in both directions including whether you were going to make a detour to the bakery and which one and when.
With nonhumans he was completely different. With a dog or horse or badger or fox every fiber of his being was totally engaged. Even his face was different around animals, with the expression of polite distance he always wore for humans replaced by something concentrated and alive.
They knew it too. You could search hours for a pregnant cat and Isaac would tell you to Look under the hedge felt in the garden shed and there she'd be with five kittens, probably already having told him what each one was named. Piper said people used to borrow him when they went to buy a new dog because he could always see if something wasn't quite right just by looking, or if it was the type to savage your new baby to death on a whim.
You might wonder, as I did, what a dog or a sheep had to say to a person like Isaac that's so interesting but I guess he might have said the same thing about a foreign life-form like me. What have I ever said that's so riveting to anyone but myself?
Shrinks don't count.
They listen for cash.
9
Today there was a knock on the door and it turned out to be two bored-looking men From the Council coming to register us and Determine our Medical and Nutritional Exigencies which turned out to mean did any of us have appendicitis or scurvy?
They had a list about as thick as a phone book with names and addresses and some were checked off and some crossed out and there were hundreds of question marks scattered around the pages and boy did you ever get the sense that they wished they'd asked a few more questions before signing up for this job.
After finding Aunt Penn on the list and putting a bunch of x's and a question mark by her name and asking a few official-type questions, they asked to speak to our guardian and seemed fairly taken aback to discover that the closest we had to a grown-up on the premises was Osbert.
But seeing as how there wasn't much they could do about our situation short of filing an official report that no one would ever notice or read or care about, they decided to stick to the questions they'd asked everyone else for miles around like, Were any of the animals on the farm kept for food? Osbert said the sheep were very rare and kept for breeding and wool and for selling on to other farms, and the goats were pets but the hens were all layers which struck me as funny because after that all I could think of was layers and layers of hens.
Then they asked for everyone's names and ages and Osbert said that I was their American cousin and they looked even more confused and wanted to see my passport and then asked lots of questions about Dad and what was he doing sending his only daughter away from home at a time like this and I said Well don't think that question hasn't occurred to me too.
Then they both looked at me with the evil eye I seem to get from just about everyone these days and asked if we had enough money for food, and Osbert explained that we had some money in his mother's account and the men said, We'll do what we can for you, and added that it wasn't definite but rationing would probably start any day now due to the embargoes, and school was closing early for summer holidays and we should stay off the roads. Like hanging around on the roads was the world's best entertainment.
We asked them what was going to happen next and how long they thought the war would last but by the totally blank looks they gave us in return you got the sense none of these questions had occurred to them before.
Well it was reassuring to know that local government was taking an interest, but their visit didn't exactly cause any radical changes to our lifestyle since for the last few days we'd mostly been hanging around wondering what to do next, broken up by trips to town where we had to wait in line for hours listening to people's gossip about what was Really Going On. The short answer if you ask me was that nobody had the slightest clue but it sure didn't stop them from pretending they did.
People who had friends or friends of friends who had managed to get phone calls or e-mails through said that London Was Occupied and there were tanks and soldiers in the streets and fire and anarchy all around. Supposedly the hospitals were filled to bursting with all the people who'd been poisoned or bombed and everyone was fighting over food and drinkable water.
One crazy old man kept whispering to anyone who would listen that the BBC had been taken over by Malign Forces and that we shouldn't believe anything we heard on The Wireless but his wife rolled her eyes and said he was still worried about the Germans from last time around.
Everyone tried to look like they knew all about all the news already, or that they had Much More Recent Information but weren't At Liberty to give it away. I saw expressions on people's faces that I'd never seen before, something like anxiety and superiority and paranoia all mixed up in one polite grimace.
Each day we'd walk down the hill to the village and hang around in a line outside the village shop waiting for our turn to get inside and choose a few essentials. For some reason it reminded me of Supermarket Sweep which I'd always wanted to go on, only there wasn't much in the way of food and you weren't allowed to run around stuffing as much as possible into bags.
The worst part was having to listen to everyone's crackpot theories and there was no hope you could pretend to be deaf due to it being such a small town and everybody knowing everything about you.
Here's the sort of thing we'd hear, all in low hushed tones especially when us Children were around, and if it doesn't sound so bad to you try playing it on an endless loop while you listen and smile politely until your cheeks go into spasm and you develop a twitch:
1. My brother-in-law says it's the French bastards.
2. My friend in Chelsea said the looting is terrible and she got the most amazing wide-screen TV.
3. My neighbor in The Lords says it's the Chinese.
4. Have you noticed that no Jews have been killed?
5. There's a nuclear bunker under Marks & Spencer that's only open to shareholders.
6. People are eating their pets.
7. The Queen is Bearing Up.
8. The Queen is Breaking Down.
9. The Queen is one of Them.
You can imagine it was the social event of the day, everyone competing for the worst piece of news.
One of the couples who lived in London but had a weekend house near the village were here for The Duration, saying that they had two kids and a purebred Bouvier des Flandres, which turns out to be a dog, and they figured it would be a whole lot safer here than in London. Well they were probably right about it being safer if you didn't count the locals who were suddenly getting all Them and Us all over the place. So far it was fairly civilized but you could see that under the surface everyone hated those people and their fancy French-sounding dog and were just waiting for a chance to get even when the food ran out.
A lot of worried families asked if we needed a place to stay because of Aunt Penn being gone but it was obvious they didn't really want us even if we'd wanted them, which we didn't. Sometimes when we said No thank you, they looked so relieved we couldn't help feeling a little hurt.
As every day passed you could see the panic on more and more people's faces, and the rest carefully composed their features to look somber and made clucking noises and said How Awful It Was. But once we were away from them we actually felt pretty cheerful and laughed on the walk back to the house, partly to cheer Piper up and partly because it still felt like an adventure and because the sun was shining and it was a beautiful walk, war or no war.
I was desperate to tell Leah about all this stuff and how totally great it was to have no grown-ups around telling you what to do all the time. Not that I went around saying that out loud, but let's face it. No matter how much you put on a sad expression and talked about how awful it was that all those people were killed and what about democracy and the Future of Our
Great Nation the fact that none of us kids said out loud was that WE DIDN'T REALLY CARE. Most of the people who got killed were either old like our parents so they'd had good lives already, or people who worked in banks and were pretty boring anyway, or other people we didn't know.
Osbert and his friends from school said they thought it would be amazing to live in London and be spies and duck around the enemy trying to get information and I thought, Right, Osbert and a bunch of his snotty schoolboy friends would be the first people I'd fall back on to save the nation if I happened to be Prime Minister.
Later that day I found Edmond in the lower barn feeding the animals and I played with Ding while he milked the goats. Ding was as nice as a puppy and would just butt you politely with his head until you rubbed his ears and then he'd stand there in a kind of trance with his eyes closed leaning on you more and more the more you rubbed and if you stepped away he'd fall over.
After a while we took the milk back to the house and it started to rain and Edmond and I went and sat in my room and he smoked and we talked about lots of things and he asked me all sorts of questions that usually drive me insane like why I didn't eat much.
For some reason I didn't get mad at him for asking, and I really tried to explain about at first not wanting to get poisoned by my stepmother and how much it annoyed her and how after a while I discovered I liked the feeling of being hungry and the fact that it drove everyone stark raving mad and cost my father a fortune in shrinks and also it was something I was good at.
He didn't look at me while I was talking, but after a few minutes he lay back and let his knee rest against my knee and I got another one of those feelings you're not supposed to get from your cousin and I wondered very quietly to myself What Was Happening Here but of course it doesn't matter how quietly you wonder things when Edmond is listening. It takes a whole lot of practice to get used to being careful about what you think in the privacy of your own brain. On the other hand, there are advantages in being able to think something that you can count on being overheard. It eliminates a lot of fumbling around.
