“No. Of course you can’t. The radar station at Foreness was the first to pick them up, even as Emmy was making her way to Knightsbridge. Isn’t that astonishing? Those planes were already in the air, already streaming toward London, as Emmy walked to her appointment, and no one had any idea.”
Isabel seems to withdraw into a protected place where the details of that seventh day of September are kept. She learned of these details after the fact, perhaps months later, maybe years later, and it appears that she filed them away, to bring them out now, with me.
“There was all of London, going about its Saturday afternoon business. A WAAF corporal at the radar station was confused by the size of the formation on the radar screen and she called for one of her superior officers. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. ‘What is that?’ she probably said, pointing to the monstrous cloud on the screen. Can’t you just see her, Kendra?”
I nodded. I could see her.
“Then the Dover radar picked up the giant shadow, and then Rye,” Isabel continues. “And oh, the chatter as they took to their radios to warn their brothers at arms that an armada from hell was streaking across the Channel toward them.”
She pauses for a moment. I can almost hear the throaty hum of all those engines.
Isabel turns to the window as a breeze catches the lace and lifts it in our direction, almost in greeting. The laughter of a child outside wafts into the room.
“It started on the south side of the Thames at about half past four.” Her voice seems almost detached from her body. “Emmy was already finished with her meeting with Mr. Dabney when the sirens began to scream. And then everyone was running for shelter, and they heard the planes, and they felt the impact of what was happening at the docks. It was...” She stops and shakes her head as she struggles to find the right words. “It was as if the end of the world had begun. The end of everything.”
Then Isabel slowly raises her head to look at me. “For a long time, Emmy wished it had been the end of the world. A very long time.”
PartTwo
Sixteen
EMMY
WHENEmmy and Julia arrived at the flat, it was as if they had never left it. The two and a half months they had been at Thistle House had seemed much longer until they stepped over the threshold, and then the days with Charlotte immediately took on the form of a prolonged dream. Everything seemed to whisper to Emmy that they had been gone only a day; everything except the evidence of Mum’s lonely nights without them. The sitting room sofa was a tumble of pillows, unfolded laundry, and scattered magazines. Teacups and biscuit wrappers lay about, as well as plates and bowls with food remains clinging to them. A collection of nearly empty nail polish bottles was pushed together on the coffee table, looking like a tiny mob of dissidents.
“Mum is messy,” Julia said as the girls made their way from the sitting area to the kitchen, which was just as unkempt as the front room.
“She misses us,” Emmy said. “There’s no one to clean the flat for without us here. That’s all.”
“I’m hungry.” Julia frowned at the bits of dried egg and toast on a plate on the kitchen table.
Emmy checked her watch. It was just one o’clock—plenty of time before she needed to be back on a train toward Knightsbridge. “Run some soapy water in the sink and put Mum’s breakfast dishes in it to soak,” she said. “I’ll see what there is to eat.”
Mum had little by way of food in the cupboards, but Emmy did see that there was half a loaf of bread and a can of beans so that she could make Julia beans on toast. While the beans heated on the stove, the girls went about the flat, picking up the dishes Mum had strewn about and bringing them to the kitchen to soak. They also tidied up the sofa, put the laundry away, and straightened the magazines and newspapers. The truly empty nail polish bottles Emmy tossed into the bin. The couple with still a bit of polish inside them she set on Mum’s bureau, which she found to be also littered with papers, hosiery, hair combs, and handkerchiefs.
Emmy sat Julia down with her lunch and then went next door to see whether Thea was home. There was no answer at their neighbor’s door.
Back inside the flat, Emmy sat down next to Julia, who was halfway through her meal.
“Jewels, Thea isn’t home right now, so I need you to be a brave girl and wait here for Mum to get home from work. It won’t be long. If you take a little nap, it will seem like no time at all. Then you can surprise her when she comes inside and sees you.”
Julia licked bean juice off her fork. “Where are you going?”
“I have to be somewhere else this afternoon.”
Julia looked down at her plate and poked a piece of toast with the tines of her fork. “Is this about the brides?”
“Yes.”
“Mum doesn’t know where you’re going, does she?”
Emmy paused only a second. “No. Not yet. This is our secret. Yours and mine. I want to surprise her.”
“Surprise her with what?” Julia sounded skeptical.
Emmy leaned forward in her chair, wanting Julia to catch her excitement. “When my bride dresses are real, when people can buy them in stores, and women can wear them on their wedding day, she will be proud of me.”
Julia swirled a cube of toast in the beans and then skewered it. “What time are you coming home?”
