Then Charlotte opened the next box, which held two dolls, one golden-haired and one brunette, and a smaller box of tissue-wrapped doll clothes.
She placed the dolls in Julia’s arms.
“This one with the brown hair I called Guinevere and the other one Henrietta, but you can call them whatever you want. They are also yours to play with while you’re here. But I want you to take good care of them. No leaving them outside or tearing the clothes or bringing them to the table. Can you do that?”
Julia nodded solemnly, astonishment in her eyes. “I promise,” she whispered. She pulled the dolls close to her chest and kissed each head. “I love their names, Aunt Charlotte.”
Charlotte got to her feet and picked up the smaller box with the unwrapped tea service resting at oddangles inside it. “I’ll just wash the tea set and then it will be ready for you to use. That sound all right?”
Julia nodded, enraptured beyond words. It was the happiest Emmy had ever seen her.
She sought Charlotte’s gaze. “Thank you for doing that,” Emmy said softly.
“I’ve something to show you, too.”
Emmy followed Charlotte to her room across the hall. The woman set the box with the tea set on her bed and walked to a wardrobe. After opening the door, she reached for a long, deep box on a shelf above the rod of hanging dresses and blouses.
This box Charlotte also set on her bed. She lifted its lid, pushed away the tissue paper, and pulled out an ivory gown, its skirt glistening with tiny seed pearls that had aged to twilight gray. Lacy sleeves that buttoned tight to the elbow ballooned to the shoulder in Victorian elegance. A close-fitting bodice completed the top half, and the crushed full skirt hinted at the gown’s former glory.
“My wedding dress,” Charlotte murmured, gazing at the gown, not at Emmy.
“It’s beautiful.”
She turned to Emmy. “I thought it might inspire you. Sometimes an old design will spark a new idea. You—you can take it apart if you want. If it helps you.”
Emmy touched the fabric, a low-luster satin that nearly murmured hello back to her. “I couldn’t do such a thing,” she whispered.
“It is of no use to anyone sitting in a box,” Charlotte continued. “It’s no longer in style and I have no daughter to give it to. Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to take it apart and study the construction? You could use theparts to reinvent it, or come up with your own design. Not just a drawing but an actual dress.”
“You would let me do that?” Emmy was incredulous.
“It would make me very happy if you did. Now, I don’t have a sewing machine. But I’ve sharp scissors, several spools of white thread, and lots of sewing needles. You’ll have to do it all by hand, but I’m thinking you’re probably going to have the time during these long summer months.”
Emmy, like Julia, found she could not express the right words of gratitude. To say a simple thank-you to such generosity seemed too shallow.
So she thought of something else to say.
“Would you like to see my sketches?”
For the next few minutes, while Julia played with Guinevere and Henrietta in the other room, Charlotte and Emmy sat on the bed and looked at the sketches in the brides box.
Charlotte said they were the loveliest dresses she had ever seen.
A day that could not have been more surprisingly pleasant for Emmy and Julia became even more so. Late in the afternoon when it was time to take care of the chickens, a gentle rain started to fall. Charlotte let Julia use her umbrella: a red polka-dot umbrella with a curly black handle that looked like licorice.
Thirteen
THEdays at Thistle House fell into a routine as days always do. After the beds were made and breakfast things put away, mornings were spent tending the vegetable garden, weeding the berry patch, pinching off the heads of spent blooms, and watering the flower beds and the apple, plum, and pear trees, of which there were several each. Even though being outside made the girls hot and sweaty, it was Julia’s favorite part of the day and the work made the morning fly by. After lunch on Mondays and Fridays, Emmy would walk to town to buy Charlotte a newspaper. The afternoons were spent inside reading, working on puzzles, or writing to Mum. Late-afternoon tea was often enjoyed at one of the neighbors’ homes. All of the neighbors seemed to be Charlotte’s age or older. Julia and Emmy were the only children among Charlotte’s friends, and that they were London evacuees made them especiallyinteresting. In the evenings, after listening to the BBC for a bit, Charlotte and Rose would knit, Julia would play with the dolls or the tea set or both, and Emmy would work on dissecting Charlotte’s wedding dress—her favorite part of the day.
Some days Charlotte loaded everyone into her blue jalopy and they headed to Moreton or Cheltenham, to see Rose’s doctor or to shop in stores that had more in the way of staples to offer, though the queues were longer. On Sundays they attended services at the church with the blue door that Charlotte had pointed out the day they arrived. Emmy liked the vicar well enough, and she enjoyed the way their voices echoed when they sang hymns or recited the creed and prayers. The stone floors and walls made the sound bigger than it really was. And more eloquent. Church was also one of the few places where they saw the other London children all at the same time. They, like the girls, seemed to have settled in to their new surroundings. Emmy felt no need to converse with these other children, but she was a bit surprised that they didn’t, either, even though most were younger. It was as if they had all struck a careful balance between where they lived now and where their true homes were. To speak to one another was to trifle with that balance.
Emmy had summoned the courage and snipped away every seam of Charlotte’s wedding dress, a process that took her nearly a week. She then laid out the pieces so that she could study their structure and also compare them with the brides box sketches. Some nights Charlotte would sit with her while she worked, and sometimes Rose would, which was always a bit unnerving as Rose was convinced the dress in pieces was for her wedding and she worried Emmy wouldn’t get it sewn in time.
Mum’s first letter came at the end of June, nearly two weeks after they had arrived at Stow. She wrote that she missed her daughters, that the entire city seemed out of sorts without its children, and that there had been annoying air raid warnings nearly every night since the girls had left. Emmy didn’t think this was quite true. She read the newspaper that Charlotte had her buy. The rest of June had been relatively quiet in London. Julia and Emmy had left one week after Mr. Churchill announced on the radio that Britain would fight the Germans on every beach, street, hill, and field, and never, ever surrender to them. That had been as near an invitation to Hitler to come see if Britain would do just that as anyone could have given. And yet the attack on London did not come. The few bombs that had fallen in the open country, like those at Addington and Colney, had been so insignificant and so far from the city center, some wondered if London wasn’t the safest place after all. There were no landing fields to strafe, no troops to engage, no planes to shoot down. London was a city of civilians—shopkeepers, firemen, watchers, and mothers without their children. But the girls wrote Mum back and told her they missed her, too, to keep the blackout curtains pulled tight, and to mind the sirens.
Only one letter came from Mrs. Crofton, in late June, which Emmy read as she walked to town and then hid inside her pocket. Mrs. Crofton had heard again from her cousin. He was much intrigued by the two sketches she had sent him, and he had an idea he wanted to run past Mrs. Crofton when he returned to London, which probably wouldn’t be until sometime in August. She didn’t know what the idea was or even if it had to do with Emmy, but she thought it might. She also wrotethat she missed having Emmy at the shop and that business was dreadfully slow. Emmy wrote her straightaway, posting the letter at the post office before she walked back to Thistle House. She wrote that she missed her job at Primrose Bridal and that she was keeping up with her sewing skills by hand.
In mid-July, Charlotte planted a winter squash garden, something she had wanted to do for several years but hadn’t because she hadn’t known what she would do with so great a harvest. Now there would be plenty of people in the cities to whom she could give the squash if they had more than they would need. They also moved tomato plants that Charlotte had started in May into the main vegetable patch and harvested the early potatoes, beets, and carrots.
