Mum had the address.
She had the day off.
She owed Charlotte a visit anyway.
There was nothing to worry about.
Emmy grabbed her satchel, and together she and Julia tiptoed soundlessly down the stairs, out the front door, and into the sparkling night.
Fifteen
KENDRA
Arap at the door startles me, but Isabel merely turns her head toward the sound.
The door opens slightly and Beryl pokes her head inside the parlor. “Can I freshen the pot for you ladies?” Her words are polite, but the tone and her facial expression are fraught with worry. I can see that she’s concerned the interview is taking too long, that I am exhausting Isabel and potentially sabotaging the party.
“I am quite happy with the two cups I’ve had,” Isabel replies without a moment’s hesitation or a hint of fatigue. She turns to me. “Kendra? Would you care for more tea?”
“No, I’m good. But thank you very much.”
Isabel directs her attention back to Beryl. “You can take the tea tray, dear.”
Beryl enters the room, her anxiety only slightly lessenedas she hoists the tray. “Is there anything else I can get for you? Are you needing to rest, Auntie? Do you want your medicine now?”
“No, but thank you. We’re fine.”
Beryl turns toward us before she leaves the room. “If I can bring you anything else—”
“We’ll be sure to let you know. Don’t worry about us. You attend to the party details, Beryl.”
“Right, then,” Beryl says, obviously unconvinced as she closes the door behind her.
I turn my attention back to Isabel. She doesn’t exhibit signs of fatigue and yet surely she must be tired after having talked without stopping for the last hour or so. I am thankful for the full charge on my recorder’s battery. I have written nothing on my notepad, so spellbound have I been. From behind where Isabel sits, I see one of her Umbrella Girl paintings and I know now where the polka-dot umbrellas came from, though I don’t know how. I only know that Isabel is somehow connected to the story she is telling me about the two sisters, one named Emmeline and the other, Julia.
Furthermore, we are sitting in Thistle House. Part of the story she is telling me happened right here in this room.
Isabel inhales deeply, as if needing a fresh charge of oxygen to continue. I am about to ask her if she would like to take a break after all, when she speaks.
“You, being a history major, probably know what these two sisters were headed into, don’t you, it being the seventh of September.”
I nod. “The Blitz began that day.”
Isabel takes a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket and blots her nose, gently and with practiced gentility. “Indeed it did.”
“But Emmy couldn’t have known that.”
“No. No, she could not.” She folds the handkerchief and places it on the table next to her.
Then she laughs gently. “It is strangely amusing how proud Emmy was for getting herself and her little sister to Moreton, in the dark, after carrying Julia when her feet and legs got tired. And then they had to hide in the ladies’ room like mice until the ticket office opened. Emmy had thought of a good excuse for needing train tickets to London while they walked, not that it should have been anyone’s business. But she knew the station master would be curious. Children didn’t travel to London those days; they left it, by the thousands. So she told the ticket man their mother was deathly ill and that their aunt had called them back to the city to say a quick good-bye before she passed from this life to the next. Oh, Kendra. Such looks of sympathy they got then. The porter—whom they didn’t need because of course they had no luggage—and the conductor, and everyone went out of their way to be kind to the poor girls whose mother lay dying. So convincing was Emmy that she had to whisper several times to Julia while the train rumbled down its tracks that she’d made it all up. Julia was nearly convinced Mum was on her deathbed, too.
“And when they stepped out of the Tube at the station near their flat, you’d have thought Emmy had pulled off the greatest feat in modern history. That’s how proud of herself she was.” Isabel laughs with more energy. “And all the while the greatest feat was actually happening already as hundreds of Luftwaffe pilots climbed into their cockpits.”
Her smile dies away slowly. Then she turns to me.
“Did you know, Kendra, that the RAF pilots whosaw the German bombers headed for the coast of England had never seen so many aircraft in the air all at the same time? Never had they seen the likes of it. Their coming was like a sheet of black across the sky.”
“I—I can’t even imagine.” I am at a complete loss for words and already anxious about what she is preparing to tell me. It can’t be anything good.
