Secrets of a Charmed Life (19 page)

EMMY’S
new 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 had
never 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 sewing
table 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 recognize
street 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.

“Yanks got plenty to smile about,” one of the other reporters said, a British man who was grinning broadly. “They think this isn’t their war.”

“Hey. I’m here, aren’t I?” the American said.

“You and your little radio aren’t going to help us win the war from underground, mate.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,
mate
. Every time we broadcast from here, your American friends across the pond are listening with bated breath. My little radio is already helping you win the war. You just don’t know it yet.”

The British reporter laughed and stood, as did the others around the table.

“You may as well take him up on the offer, Miss Crofton,” the British reporter said, offering Emmy his chair. “The Americans still have good coffee to put into their cups.”

“Yes, please, join me,” the ginger-haired man said, feigning a serious expression.

Emmy stared at him as the other men walked away, talking to one another. “You are making fun of me,” she said when they were gone.

He shook his head as he motioned for a waiter to bring another cup. “Not at all. Want to have a seat?” Her face was expressionless.

“What I want is to be taken seriously.”

A waiter brought a cup of coffee to the table, unsure whom to give it to.

“It’s for Miss Crofton,” the American said, nodding toward the empty chair where the British reporter had been sitting.

The waiter smiled and set the cup down.

“Please?” the American said, cracking a tiny grin.

Emmy sat down in the chair. The coffee smelled dark and rich, and a half-eaten apple tart in front of the American was practically calling her name. He pushed the plate toward her.

“Would you like the rest? Not as good as my mother’s but passable,” he said, his smile growing.

Emmy hesitated only a second before picking up the fork that was already on the plate and plunging it into the sweet confection. The first bite was nothing short of heaven. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she murmured as she chewed a second bite and then realized that any respectable adult probably wouldn’t. She put down the fork.

“You may as well finish it, Miss Crofton. I’ve had all I can eat. Be a shame to waste it.”

Emmy retrieved the fork after a moment’s pause. “It would be criminal. I can’t believe the cooks at this hotel can get their hands on sugar and cream when the rest of the country is trying to pretend that carrots are candy.”

The American laughed, and the sound of it caused Emmy to raise her head and stare at him. It had been a long time, or at least it had seemed so, since she had heard laughter.

“Sorry,” he said. “I like to smile and I like to laugh. I mean no disrespect. Honestly. I know the rationing hasn’t been easy.”

Emmy slid another bite into her mouth. “The rationing isn’t the worst of it.”

When she swallowed, he put his hand out toward her.

“Mac MacFarland. My real name’s Jonah. But everyone calls me Mac.”

Emmy slowly reached her right hand toward his and shook it.

“Aren’t you going to tell me your first name?” he said, smiling broadly.

“Em . . . It’s Isabel.”

“Isabel. Nice to meet you. May I call you Isabel?”

She brought the coffee cup to her lips and shrugged as she sipped, feeling warmed to her core. “You can call me whatever you like if you promise to let me know if you see any homeless children when you’re out and about gathering news.”

Emmy set the cup down, pulled a WVS card out of her skirt pocket, and handed it to him.

“Women’s Voluntary Service,” Mac said as he read the card.

“Just ring me there if you see any when you’re covering the news. Little girls especially.”

Mac pocketed the card and took a swallow from his own coffee cup. “Well, I am happy to obey but I am not out on the street as much as the other reporters here at the Savoy. I am a sound engineer and I spend most of my time three flights down in a bunker.”

“A what?”

Mac went on to explain that he worked at nearby Broadcasting House for CBS, Edward Murrow, and a clutch of other radio journalists tasked with keeping the people of the United States informed about a war that was now just one ocean away from them. He also told her he was twenty-six, hailed from Minneapolis, and that he had actively sought a London posting after Britain declared war on Germany. He told her being there helped him feel like he was a very small part of holding back the Nazis, since America had yet to join in the battle against Hitler. He had worked at a CBS radio station in Manhattan before requesting to be posted in London when he learned a reporter friend of his from college would soon be in London himself.

“I see,” Emmy said, finding that she was sad Mac would likely be of little help to her. She hadn’t had anyone to talk to about something other than the war in weeks. Something about him was calming and inviting.

“What about you?” Mac said.

“What?”

Mac smiled. “I said, what about you? What were you doing before the war?”

I didn’t exist before the war,
Emmy thought as she pondered a suitable answer.

“Unless you don’t want to tell me,” he continued.

But she found she did want to tell him. She wanted to exist in someone’s eyes. She wanted to be more than just a spectral vapor who lacked an endlessly long string of yesterdays. Pretending to be Isabel Crofton meant she was entitled to a past. It was her right and privilege now to come up with one.

“My mother and I owned a shop, Primrose Bridal, near Saint Paul’s. She was killed the weekend the Blitz began and our flat was destroyed. I am living at the shop for the time being.”

“Oh! I’m so very sorry. And your father?”

Emmy set the fork down on the plate, the ruse now feeling all too real. “He died some years back.”

“Isabel, I’m so very sorry for your loss. Truly. I can’t imagine how hard this must be. And here you are caring for the needs of homeless children when your own sorrow must be so great.”

Emmy smiled wanly. “I know what it’s like to have your parents taken from you and your home destroyed. I know what it’s like to feel lost and alone. It’s terrible.”

He asked her about her work with the WVS and what were her favorite things to do before the war; as they talked, Emmy sensed that Mac seemed interested in her,
attracted
to her—an unnerving and stimulating concept. Emmy had never had a boyfriend before, and had been kissed only once, the spring before at a school dance. It had been a sloppy affair that she hadn’t looked forward to repeating anytime soon.