Romeo Blue (9 page)

I was on my way to the attic with a box of empty canning jars. Once there, I sat on a broken rocker. I wanted to be alone. I stared at an old papier-mâché jack-o’-lantern. It had a terrible grinning smile and it seemed to leer and glow in orange from the dark shelf where it sat. Halloween was in eleven days, but it had been canceled this year in Bottlebay because of the war. Unfortunately the autumn dance that night was still being held. Yes, I was being pulled by so many things suddenly and I didn’t know what to do.

Still, normal life seemed to go on. We were asked recently not to use our car very much because petrol was needed for the war. There was a little bus that came round every morning now, which we rode to school, and that meant getting up sometimes before daylight. Mr. Bathtub rode the bus with us and Miss Elkin got on a few stops after ours. She always wanted to sit with Mr. Bathtub but he was dreadfully popular with all the students and she never seemed to get a chance. Right away Mr. Bathtub had the whole bus singing funny army songs.

The biscuits in the army they say are mighty fine.

One fell off of the table and killed a pal of mine.

Oh I don’t want no more of army life.

Gee but I wanna go home!

A lot of the children happily sang along and forgot, during those rides, that their fathers and older brothers had been drafted or enlisted and would soon have to go to war.

My father was in contact with Mr. Donovan in Washington by telephone, though they often spoke in odd
ways, saying things like, “The orange isn’t ripe yet, but perhaps the apples are.” I wasn’t really supposed to know about this and yet I heard a sentence here and a word there. But my father trusted me about this, and that only made me feel more torn about Derek and his wishes. It seemed fitting that one morning I found a butterfly on the porch floor that had been battered by the wind, its wings torn and full of holes.

Derek and I spent many hours talking about the invisible-ink message and wondering if Mr. Fitzwilliam could be the Gray Moth. We went round one afternoon to his great, dark house to have a look in his windows but he wasn’t about and his deaf housekeeper came out to the garden and threw her arms into the wind, telling us with gestures and expressions that Mr. Fitzwilliam was gone. Gone.

One day Aunt Miami and I rode bicycles into town and Auntie bought me a lovely green-and-red plaid taffeta frock. Oh, it was a smashing dress. We left the store and I was carrying it in a shopping bag when Auntie said, “Sweetest, little ladybug dearest, would you do me a favor and run this letter up to the post office and drop it in the slot? If you see Bobby, don’t say a word about it, will you?”

“But, Auntie, what is the letter about?” I said. We were headed towards the soda fountain where Auntie had promised me an iced tea. I took the letter. It was addressed to an office in New York City.

“Mrs. Boxman has been urging me,” said Miami. “She feels I have talent and that I should be helping with the war like the rest of my family. I’m applying for a job as an actress with this USO traveling theater. It will be to entertain the troops. Mrs. Boxman knows the director.”

“Oh,” I said. “Would you be going to New York City, then?”

“Maybe, if the theater accepts me,” she said.

“But maybe you won’t be accepted. It’s possible, isn’t it?” I said.

“Felicity Budwig Bathburn, how can you say that? I must do some work for the war. Everyone is doing something and all I’m good for is acting. I want to help. I just can’t sit by and watch.”

“But what about Bobby Henley?” I said. “You can’t just go off and leave him. His heart will break. You said you loved him. You told me so.”

“Oh, sweetest,” said Auntie. “I do love him very much. That’s why I don’t want him to know yet. I so much don’t want to upset him. He’s in the reserves, Flissy. Every day, I worry that he’s been called up and soon I’m afraid he will be. If I have something to keep me busy, I’ll manage. And I must do my part as a Bathburn, you know. Bobby and I will have our whole lives to spend together after the war.”

I walked down Main Street, feeling quite mixed up, really. I didn’t want Auntie to go away. The only good
part might be that I could sleep in her big canopy bed while she was gone. But I didn’t want her to go! I wanted her to stay here and accept the beautiful ring Mr. Henley had for her.

At the post office I looked at the letter in my hand. I was thinking that I could easily tear it in two right then and toss it into the dustbin and be done with it. I stood in the lobby of the post office for the longest time and then I dropped the letter in the proper slot and off it went to New York City.

The dress was even more smashing when I brought it home. I loved Auntie for buying it for me. I tried it on in her room. As I stood before the long oval mirror at her dressing table, The Gram came in. She wanted to look at the seams and the fancy metal zipper up the back. “Well, it’s pretty, but frivolous, Flissy B. Bathburn. I could have sewn you a much sturdier dress. You’ll freeze to death when you wear it this winter. I don’t know what Miami was thinking. That girl has her head in the clouds. She should have bought you a winter corduroy.”

“But it’s lovely, isn’t it?” I said, spinning round. Derek poked his head in the doorway and the oddest thing of all was that he blushed. It was a slow blush that started at his neck and crawled all the way up to the top of his forehead. Soon he looked like a red jellyfish. Then he hurried off down the hall, singing quite loudly.

Uncle Gideon came in next with Aunt Miami. He sat in the soft, pink stuffed chair in the corner, smiling at me. “Oh, Fliss,” he said, “you’ll be all grown up by the time I get back. Don’t do it, will you? Stay just like you are right now. Don’t change.”

At that, Miami jumped up and threw herself on Gideon’s lap and kissed his cheek and said, “Oh, Gideon, don’t be such a goat.”

Yes, the dress was perfect. But I wouldn’t be wearing it to the dance because no twelve-year-old had ever been admitted to that dance at Babbington El. And so the dress too had a shadow over it, because Brie and Derek would soon be swinging and bebopping and jitterbugging together, while I would be out here sitting on the porch in the darkness looking up at the stars.

I was thinking about all this when the back doorbell rang. I’m like a horse when I hear a doorbell or telephone ring. I always start racing. I tore downstairs in my new taffeta dress, leaping over everything in my path. I simply adored the swishy sound the taffeta skirt made when I ran.

But when I opened the door, there was Mr. Henley beaming at me. He raised his eyebrows, nodded and then he handed me a letter, looking at me in a very hopeful manner. I’m sorry to report that I smiled back quite cheerfully and grabbed the letter and leapt out of the kitchen like a prima ballerina. I did several unmatched grand jetés in the hallway. I was only stopped from completing another leap because I bumped into Derek, who looked at me in a stunned way. He immediately started singing again quite loudly.

I took the letter into the library, staring at the envelope the whole way. It came from Selsey, West Sussex.

“All the way from England!” said Uncle Gideon, popping into the room and peering at the envelope. “Now, that’s amazing. They say mail from England never makes it all the way here. Most of those slow-moving ships get blown up.”

“You are quite nosy, actually,” I said, holding the letter away from him.

“It takes one to know one, Fliss,” said Uncle Gideon, tweaking my nose and smiling. He didn’t mind at all when I pushed him away. He just kept humming a tune.

When I opened the letter I saw that the handwriting was extremely messy. The letter read:

Dear Felicity,

It rained here yesterday and I made a fishpond in the mud. We are moving out of our council house. Sheila Wills is in hospital. I shall be going on a boat with other children to stay with Canadians in Quebec. Last week a big silver ball washed up on the shingles at our seashore. It looked like a gigantic Christmas ornament. It was a mine, a bomb that had been dropped off a ship and had made its way to shore. All the children came to have a look, but the bobbies sent us packing. Everyone was scared but me. I didn’t give a toss. The man came to defuse it. Then they took it away in a lorry so we did not get to play with the big silver ball.

Well, I didn’t know who Sheila Wills was, though I was quite sorry she was in hospital, but I guessed the letter was from Dimples McFarland, even if she forgot to sign her name at the end. Actually, I knew it was from Dimples because of the splotchy ink and the messy handwriting and the drawings of sad little ghosts at the edges of the paper.

I held the letter carefully. It had come all the way from England. My England.

Autumn was winding down now. Most of the leaves had turned brown and blown away. The crows at the top of the pines in the woods cawed and cawed. What could they see from their highest perch? I had been here with the Bathburns for a year and a half. I had seen the wild roses and the butterflies come and go along the American sea. And I received no word from Winnie and Danny. But they would not forget me. They would write one day. They would know I was waiting and longing and wondering and worrying.

I worried about other things as well. Now Derek had begun to truly get to know his newfound father. And the more he heard from him, the happier Derek became. His father rang up one day when everyone was out and Derek had a good chat with him. But I still did not feel right about it. Something was nagging and tugging at me. I hadn’t always been like this. Wasn’t it lovely seeing Derek happy, after all?

Derek planned to invite his father back to the house for lunch again and now he said I could visit with him too. But all this had to be kept a secret still. And I had to promise Derek and I did.

“Fliss,” he said as we waited for the small school bus one morning, “I have told my father all about you. He likes you already. He calls you the little general.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to be a general,” I said. “I’d rather be a mess cook or something like that because I do not like to shoot at things. And I hate fighting. I even hate to hear birds in the trees squabbling.”

The bus then came to a stop in front of us. We hurried aboard. Derek found a seat with his pal Stu Barker. Derek didn’t ever mention to Stu any of the things that had happened. I had an idea the various things that had occurred were in some way knitted together. Derek didn’t mention anything to anyone, not even to his father. But perhaps we
should
have told Uncle Gideon. Yes, perhaps that was our mistake.

Mr. Bathtub wasn’t on the bus this morning. I didn’t know how he got to school some days, but he often took long walks in the morning and he was quite busy with preparations for his journey to Europe. I sometimes thought about why he might need a German officer’s uniform and why he might need to speak perfect German. And all in all I was nervous and uneasy about everything.

Mr. Bathtub was busy with his sixth-grade classes as well, but very often when he hadn’t been on the bus that morning, he would be at school already when we got there, welcoming us, ready to start making jokes and poking fun. “What ho, Fliss!” he would say when I
walked down the hall, passing his classroom first thing in the morning with all the others. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you for eight moons and a dog!”

Soon enough, the bus stopped and Miss Elkin got on. I saw her glancing round for Mr. Bathtub and I saw her look disappointed as well. She had her enormous cello in its huge black case with her and she sat with me. Well, it wasn’t all peaches and cream because her big cello case poked me a bit in the ribs. We were rattling along the motorway when Miss Elkin finally said, “Felicity, you know how the chaperones at the autumn dance always jump in for a few of the dances, especially the fox-trot?”

“Yes,” I said, looking out the window as we passed a new group of winter seabirds flocking over the salt marsh.

“You know the tradition at Babbington El. The chaperones always have as much fun as the kids,” said Miss Elkin.