She had to find a way to search for Julia. But how could she without money? Without Mum?
Mum...
Emmy dug her fingertips into her temples. She couldn’t think anymore about having lost Mum. She couldn’t start thinking about having lost Mrs. Crofton. Grief sapped her of mental clarity and made her feel weak. She could not be a companion to it now. All that mattered was finding Julia. Somehow she had to insert herself into the workings of the war effort so that she could be privy to what became of lost or abandoned children. She needed to volunteer somewhere so that she was in the know. With the Women’s Volunteer Service, perhaps. The women of the WVS were everywhere with their official badges, helping to ease suffering, administrating the evacuation of children to safety, serving food to the firemen, assisting the homeless and hurting. But how in the world was she going to pass herself off as an adult who had every right to be on the streets of London on her own in wartime?
Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw the little stack of papers.
And Isabel Crofton’s birth certificate.
Twenty-four
EMMY’Snew life as eighteen-year-old Isabel Crofton began with a set of new routines.
She sheltered during air raids under the sewing machine at the bridal shop, covered in a dozen wedding dresses. She found she much preferred taking her chances under a table with easy access to the street rather than huddled in a claustrophobic shelter belowground. A bona fide shelter was no guarantee one could survive a bomb. Mum hadn’t.
Emmy dared not be noticed coming and going from Primrose Bridal. The ARP warden for these city blocks was under the impression that the owner, Mrs. Crofton, had left London. If it came to pass that Emmy was noticed and questioned, she would just give the man her new name. She didn’t think the warden would know that the real Isabel died twelve years ago. Mum hadnever volunteered much personal information to their warden. Surely the loss of a daughter all those years ago was a sad detail Mrs. Crofton had shared with very few people.
Afternoons were spent volunteering with the WVS, specifically with finding relatives or foster families to take in the orphans of the city. Emmy projected a particularly impassioned heart for the fatherless and motherless, an ardor that all the other WVS ladies in the relocation and evacuation scheme seemed amazed by. Her tireless efforts to find and relocate the most innocent and youngest victims of the war to loving foster families often meant she stayed the night at the office, sleeping on a cot in case an ARP warden during the wee hours brought in a frightened child who hadn’t been evacuated and now was suddenly bereft of his or her parents. She ate her one meal a day at the WVS canteen, sometimes hiding a roll or two in her pocket for later, as she hadn’t summoned the courage to apply for a ration book under her stolen identity and she had exhausted what was left of Mrs. Crofton’s ration book.
She visited the hospitals looking for orphans and scouted out parks and alleys and abandoned homes, looking for children who believed they were safer on their own.
Emmy befriended the journalists and the foreign press, many of whom she could find drinking at the bar at the Savoy in the late afternoons or eating breakfast in the hotel dining room in the mornings. She told them to let her know if in their coverage of the war on London they came across children who seemed to be in the care of no one.
After a few weeks of being Isabel, and spending every waking moment either crouched under the sewingtable or looking for Julia, Emmy began to forget her old dreams, and, in the forgetting, she found a numbing emptiness that she welcomed. The wedding dresses that had at one time entranced her were now wrinkled, smudged, and smelled of smoke and ash. And yet they protected her, cushioned her, were nearly a wall against the forces of evil. In the mornings when she pushed the dresses aside, they still swished a greeting, but it no longer had anything to do with any dream of hers other than to find Julia.
Halfway through the month, there was a turning point in the battle for London. Despite its relentless nightly attacks, the Luftwaffe was unable to flatten the British defenses and take London as Paris had been taken. The air raids continued past the middle of September, but they weren’t as harsh, or at least that was how it seemed to Emmy.
Near the end of September, she finally went to an IIP and looked at the casualty list. She found Eloise Crofton’s name on an older listing. Her employer had died, as Emmy had already guessed, on the evening of Sunday, September 8, before the Dabneys were to leave for Edinburgh, the same day as Mum. Her flat in Islington had been crushed by a bomb and she with it. The Dabneys, Emmy noted, were absent from the lists of the dead.
Emmy wondered only for a second whether Mrs. Crofton had been buried in Towers Hamlet along with Mum. But no, probably not. She had next of kin. Mr. Dabney surely came for her the next day, and saw her to Edinburgh just as planned, only on a different kind of train car.
Emmy left the IIP heavyhearted and yet strangely grateful. In her death Mrs. Crofton had unknowingly given Emmy a way to stay in London and look for Julia,as well as a new name and a new home, such as it was. A new life. Emmy didn’t know when someone would come by Primrose Bridal to empty it of its contents but it was hard to imagine that would happen while the war raged.
By October, the weather turned cold and damp. Emmy finally opened Mrs. Crofton’s suitcase—until that point she had revered it as the last vestige of the woman’s presence on earth—hoping there was a winter coat inside since Emmy had left her own flat without even thinking about autumn’s being on its way. She found a blue wool coat, as well as woolen stockings, several knitted sweaters, and flannel pajamas. Everything was a little big on Emmy but she would not complain. She would be able to stay warm at night and outside.
Again, Mrs. Crofton had gifted Emmy with what she needed to survive.
Emmy started visiting the Savoy on Monday mornings to talk to members of the foreign press as they prepared for the week ahead, to remind them to be on the lookout for orphaned children, and to pump them for information about any street children they might have seen but neglected to ring her about. She was often greeted warmly with a polite nod but more often it was a cocky, “Here comes Isabel the Crusader.” Emmy didn’t care what the reporters thought of her. She didn’t care if they found that her passion for war orphans bordered on fanaticism. All that mattered was that one of them might possibly come upon Julia.
On one of those mornings near the end of the month, she was going about her usual stroll through the lobby and dining room when an American seated at a table with other journalists asked if she’d like to have a cup of coffee while she tutored them all on how to recognizestreet children. Emmy had not noticed this man on any previous visit to the Savoy and she wasn’t sure whether he was taking her seriously or mocking her.
“Are you new here?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” he answered, smiling broadly. “The place where I have been staying the last few months doesn’t exactly exist anymore. So the Savoy is home now.”
“And you think the plight of orphaned children living on the streets is amusing?” Emmy replied, one eyebrow arched.
“Watch out, Mac,” one of the other reporters said. “Miss Crofton will have you looking for lost little ones in your sleep.”
The American, ginger haired and handsome, gazed at her, wide-eyed, and his smile was even wider. “I definitely don’t think it’s funny, Miss... uh, Crofton?”
“Then why are you smiling at me?”
The other men at the table laughed.
“I wasn’t aware that I was smiling at you, Miss Crofton.”
More laughter.
