Mum ignored Emmy. “I’ll take care of that, pet.”
“So you’ll tell him?” Julia asked, less alarmed but still worried, and perhaps a little upset with herself for not having thought of this before.
“Yes, I’ll take care of everything.”
Mum answered Julia’s question without answering it at all and then turned to Emmy. She did not hold out her arms to embrace her. Instead, she cupped one hand under Emmy’s chin. “Don’t forget what I said, Emmy.”
Emmy didn’t have to be told to watch out for her little sister. She was more of a mother to Julia than their mum was. She always had been, even those rare times when she resented the responsibility. “Do you really think I would let anything happen to her?” Emmy said, pulling her chin out of her mother’s slight grasp.
Mum let her arm drop. “I’m talking about what I said about what you choose to hate. You don’t know everything. I know you think you do, but you don’t.”
“And you thinkyouknow everything. You don’t know what Mrs. Crofton said about my drawings because you don’t want to know. You haven’t even asked.They mean nothing to you. Well, they’re everything to me, Mum. Just so you know.”
Mum shook her head. “For the love of God, Emmeline. You’re so young—”
“Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I can’t make my own decisions about my future. You of all people should know that.”
An official walking by saw Emmy’s and Julia’s name tags and where they were bound. “Come along, then, lasses. Right here, now. You’ll see your mum soon enough. Off you go, then.”
With the official’s hand gently on her back, Emmy reached for the book of fairy tales that Julia had in one hand, and then looped the handle of her gas mask box over her wrist. Emmy added the book to what she already carried in the crook of her arm.
“Carry your suitcase in one hand and grab hold of my skirt with the other. Don’t let go,” Emmy told her. They walked away from Mum, carrying luggage that had appeared in the flat the previous day—out of nowhere—and which smelled slightly of men’s aftershave. In her other arm Emmy carried Julia’s book, the brides box, and a sack lunch that Mum said Mrs. Billingsley had bought for her and Julia from her favorite sandwich shop.
Julia turned back to wave to Mum as she stepped up to board the bus, a red double-decker that had been pulled from its usual task of ferrying tourists around London. Emmy turned as well. Mum stood unmoving, her arms folded across her chest as people scurried about, her expression unreadable. She unhooked one arm to return Julia’s wave and to blow her a kiss. When her eyes met Emmy’s, she lifted her chin slightly as if to communicate she was pleased that Emmy had realized they weren’t so very different from each other after all.
Nine
EMMYhad traveled on a train outside the heart of London only once before. During one of Neville’s stretches of living with Mum, he took them all to Brighton Beach for a weekend at the sea. He wanted to take only Mum; Emmy remembered that had been obvious. But they hadn’t lived in Whitechapel then, so they hadn’t had Thea for a neighbor. There was no one who could take the sisters for the weekend. Mum didn’t like any of their neighbors at the time and they didn’t like her, according to Mum. Emmy believed what they didn’t like was Neville floating in and out of the flat, sometimes with an actor friend or two, and that they often loudly rehearsed lines at three o’clock in the morning from the bawdy shows they were in. The only other friends Mum had were fellow laundry maids at the hotel where she was working, but none of them had wanted to babysit a three- and an eleven-year-old for an entire weekend.
Emmy had liked the train ride.
She’d loved the sea.
The rest of the weekend was forgettable.
As she and Julia now sat side by side on the train, she wanted to stay angry at Mum, at the Germans, at the British War Office, at God Almighty himself for whisking her out of London when she was on the very edge of having everything.
But as the city sights fell away, and the landscape relaxed to rolling hills and fields of yellow, she found herself unable to stay angry. The rumbling of the train, the scenery outside her window, and even the lunch Julia and she shared—the nicest they had ever had—calmed Emmy to a state of ordinary melancholy. When they changed trains in Oxford for the last leg of the trip by rail, Emmy’s anger had mellowed to something more like grief.
There were seventy evacuees on the train to Moreton-in-Marsh, accompanied not by one of the schoolteachers, as the larger groups had been, but by a uniformed matron who reminded Emmy somewhat of Nana. Her build was the same, as was her silver-brown hair. She allowed Emmy, the oldest in their group, to call her Alice instead of Mrs. Braughton. As they were about to pull into the station at Moreton-in-Marsh, Alice asked if Emmy would keep an eye on the trio of young boys—all classmates of Julia’s—who were seated behind the girls and who had spent the forty-minute journey from Oxford laughing, poking one another, and kicking the back of the girls’ seats.
“Just see that they don’t get separated from the group,” Alice said as the whistle blew and the train began to approach the station. “We’re being met at the station and from there we’ll walk to the town hall. Just a short stroll. I’ll bring up the rear. If you wouldn’t mind staying in the middle, that would be grand.”
Emmy nodded in soundless compliance.
“There’s a brave girl,” Alice said, mistaking Emmy’s quietness for timidity. She squeezed Emmy’s shoulder before making her way back to the front of the train car.
Once they were off the train, it took some doing to corral the boys and convince them to stay where Emmy could see them. Then the lot of children formed a queue and a billeting official counted heads, comparing names with a list she had in her hand. Their suitcases had been loaded onto a truck so that they would not need to carry them the three blocks to the hall where they were to be sorted out. And then the young Londoners were off, like soldiers marching to the battlefield, or prisoners to their cells, Emmy thought.
“I have to go to the loo,” Julia murmured, her hand tight in Emmy’s.
“You just went at Oxford.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Think about something else. As soon as we get to the next place, I’ll find one for you.”
“I can’t think of something else!”
