The Romeo and Juliet Code (16 page)

“Me? Someone from Washington?” I said. “Does this have something to do with my birthday being a day before the president’s?”

“Not at all, Flissy, and don’t forget the sugar,” she said, putting it next to the teapot.

I took the tray out to the porch carefully and I set it down on the table. Then I stood there on one leg, trying to see what it felt like to be a blue heron. They stand on one leg all day in the marsh across the fields here. I was thinking about that, but I was also looking round at Uncle Gideon and the man from Washington. He had a briefcase with him, which appeared to have a little lock on it. I had never seen a briefcase with a lock before.

“Here’s Winnie’s daughter,” said Uncle Gideon, nodding to the man.

“Ah,” said the man, “I was hoping I would get a chance to meet you. Your mother is quite wonderful. Did you know that?”

“Where is she and what is she doing?” I said.

“This is Mr. Donovan, Fliss. It would be lovely if you’d shake his hand and say hello,” said Uncle Gideon, beaming away.

“Hello,” I said, switching legs and wondering how a blue heron kept from feeling tippy after a while. I shook Mr. Donovan’s large hand. Suddenly, my nose felt very itchy indeed. In fact, I felt itchy all over from my head to my toes and I just had to run upstairs and see Derek. It was of the utmost importance.

So I said, “Excuse me,” in a very proper British way that would have pleased Winnie, and then I shot back into the house, as if I were a blue heron flying over the marsh towards the sea.

“Derek,” I said, knocking on his door, “quick, let me in.” And then I turned the doorknob and I rather barged in, in an American sort of way.

“Derek,” I said, “get up quick. There’s a gentleman from Washington downstairs. He’s got a locked briefcase and he knows my mum, Winnie.”

Derek was up in a flash, sitting with his legs crossed the way they sit round the bonfire at Camp Wabinaki, where he went for two weeks last summer. “Washington, DC?” he said.

“Yes, indeed,” I said.

“Did he seem strange at all or unfriendly in any way? Is he questioning Gideon like an investigator perhaps?” he said.

“I’m not sure. You should go down and have a look at him,” I said.

“Hmm,” said Derek. Then he was quiet for a minute while I sat there feeling all fidgety, just exactly what I had told Wink this morning
not
to be. “That settles it. We have to get to Peace Island the next time Gideon goes there.”

“I know,” I said. “We’re supposed to go buy shoes in town now, but on our way out, you must have a peek at Mr. Donovan before he gets away.”

But when we got downstairs, Uncle Gideon and the man from Washington were no longer on the porch. And Derek was stuck. He had to go buy new shoes.

So The Gram drove Derek and me in the old Packard out through the rosebushes under the morning sky. The Gram managed to hit every pothole by mistake, and the wind seemed to push the car about like a little badminton birdie, and we sang “O Holy Night” over and over again because sometimes when I am worried, I sing. And besides, it was the prettiest Christmas song to sing in late August.

And so it was that Derek and I bought brand-new shoes for school. I got brown oxfords, which made me think of the school named Oxford where Danny and Gideon and Winnie had gone. And Derek got a pair of black canvas high-tops, which they call sneakers in America and I teased him about them, saying he
was
a bit of a sneak.

And the whole time, Derek and I were in the shoe store with our feet being pinched and poked and measured, we were thinking about how we might find Mr. Henley and his boat.

When we got back from town, Uncle Gideon and the man from Washington were still gone. But Wink was sitting on my pillow instead of by the window, where I’d left him. He was holding a white envelope in his paw or at least it was leaning against his paw. As soon as I saw that, I rushed up to him, snatching the envelope, leaving Wink looking rather stunned. (Perhaps he always looked rather stunned.) I couldn’t help it. I was ever so curious, wondering who had written to me.

The outside of the envelope said,
“For Miss F. B. Bathburn, Care of W. P. Wink, Tower Room, Bottlebay.”
In the back of my mind, I was hoping it was a letter from Winnie and Danny saying that the war was over and that they were coming back to get me. But then I felt a slight tug of regret, thinking that I wouldn’t want to leave Derek all alone to face school without me. Well, perhaps if they were coming back for me, Derek could visit us in the summer.

I sat on the bed now and looked sideways at Wink. “Wink, tell me,” I said in a half-joking sort of way, “who wrote the letter.” I was thinking to myself,
I must truly be a nutter to be talking to a bear when I’m soon to be in the sixth form.

There are two schools of thought about stuffed bears, Uncle Gideon said. It was true for adults who liked bears, as well as children. One theory is that stuffed bears know everything about the lives of humans they live with, the future and the past and the present, but they can’t say anything. All they can do is give their love and support. The other school of thought is that bears know nothing at all about humans or their lives and they don’t care a fig about any of it; they just offer unconditional love. That was what Uncle Gideon said. He could say things that were quite thoughtful sometimes and he often looked very “poetic,” as Miami would say, when he was walking on the beach. And I did think it was a pity that he wouldn’t play his piano anymore. I just couldn’t quite decide what I thought about Uncle Gideon. And tomorrow he would become my sixth-form teacher, and I did hope he wouldn’t tease me too terribly with all that British nonsense.

I knew, of course, it wasn’t possible for Wink to answer me, and so I kissed his fuzzy ears and then I set about opening the envelope ever so carefully so as not to rip the paper at all.

When I got it open, it said,

Dear Flissy sweetest,

Of course I am not completely angry at you. I’m only a little bit angry because you didn’t ask first about the raffle. But then I might have said no. And of course now I can’t say no. So I’ll have to say yes. Yes, I’ll do it. But you must accompany me. And you must cheer constantly!

Love,
Aunt M.

P.S. Good luck with school tomorrow and see you at supper.

I put the letter down and went to the window. The ocean suddenly looked breezy and playful. The sky was all windy and blue, and Aunt Miami wasn’t angry with me anymore.

Then I started thinking about what to wear tomorrow to the John E. Babbington Elementary. What did American girls wear to school anyway? In England, the girls wore dark blue wool skirts and a white blouse of your own choice. You had to go to a special department store for the blue wool skirts and dark blue knickers. Some richer girls had five skirts so they could get through the week nicely. I only had two and I lost one of mine once and I had to wear the same blue wool skirt for two weeks straight. But I didn’t tell anybody. Then my other skirt was found under a pile of laundry. Thank goodness.

I opened my cupboard (or closet, as the Bathburns say) and began to look at my clothes. There wasn’t much to choose from. I pulled out a cotton dress with little flowers all over it, but when I held it up, it was really too short. Then I noticed the yellow-checked suitcase at the bottom of my closet and I remembered the letter hidden under it from Winnie, written to Uncle Gideon. I remembered I was to wait till one week before Christmas to give it to him.

I got it out now and looked at the envelope again. It was all crinkled and wrinkled. I really wanted to open it, but I didn’t. I stayed true blue to Winnie. But I thought over what The Gram had said about the fight and the blessing in disguise. I lay back on my bed, using Wink as a nice pillow (poor, patient Wink). I had two letters in my hands now. A letter from Auntie Miami in one hand and a letter from Winnie, unopened and unexplained, in the other hand.

And then it came, the day John E. Babbington had been waiting for. Knowing it was
the day
, I woke up early and I got right out of bed. I moved some things about, making a place against the wall. Then I stood on my head. I had been watching Uncle Gideon do it for three months now. I had been going into the gymnasium from time to time with a cup full of blueberries, and while he went to work getting his balance just right, I would look on and munch blueberries.

“It’s good for the spirit, Flissy. And being all upside down is a super way to start the day,” he said. “Everything just looks wonderful when it’s all right side up later.”

I hadn’t told him, but I had actually been practicing a lot and I was getting used to standing on my head every morning just like Uncle Gideon. Not to say I liked my uncle, because I still thought he was a terrible teaser and possibly a great pretender, appearing to be nice when all along he was sneaking about snatching letters, keeping me from knowing where my parents were. And what about that poor piano? I was really quite dismayed and wasn’t sure what I thought. I did very much enjoy learning to stand on my head. But what was it going to be like having him as a teacher?

As I clumped down the stairs in my new brown oxfords, I could hear a lot of bumping and banging and doors slamming. A typical Bathburn morning. Then Derek was sitting in the parlor, all dressed up in a nice pair of trousers and a blue ironed long-sleeved shirt. His hair was brushed back and it seemed to have Brylcreem in it.

Derek looked dashing and handsome and sweet and angry. Very, very angry. He was wearing that lovely sling that Aunt Miami had made for his bad arm. He didn’t say a word. And neither of us fancied any part of any breakfast. As we were sitting there,
not
eating breakfast together, I wanted to reach out and take his hand in mine and hold it gently and say, “Oh, Derek. We’ll see each other in the halls at school.” But of course, I didn’t dare; and besides, he was ever so grumpy this morning and he might have pulled his hand away and growled at me.

It was quite early in the morning, and after breakfast, I looked off the porch and saw that the tide was out, leaving all sorts of wet new things exposed, and there were whole chains of seaweed looping and stretching across the sand. I should have liked to run out to the edge of the world then, to find where the ocean had gone. I should have liked to have danced away on the long stretches of wet sand and to have slipped off over the horizon, but instead I had to go to school.

“What ho, Flissy and Derek! Two willing victims, I see,” said Uncle Gideon.

Nobody answered him.

Derek and I went quite soberly to the car. Uncle Gideon drove along, humming a little song for a while.

“Who
is
Mr. Donovan?” I said suddenly, quite boldly in the silence of the car. Derek jumped up and started whistling loudly. Then he knocked the side of one of my brand-new oxfords with the toe of one of his brand-new sneakers.

“What?” I said to Derek.

Then Uncle Gideon said, “I do not want you to mention his visit at school, Flissy. It’s, um, well, crucial that you don’t, in fact. Can I trust you? Can I?”

“Well, then, who is he?” I said, staring straight ahead out the windscreen.

“He’s a friend of an old buddy of mine from Dartmouth College.”

“I thought you went to Oxford in England,” I said.

“Oh, I did. But that was for graduate school. He’s just a friend of a fellow I knew at Dartmouth. You see, that’s all. Okay?”

I looked out the window and I tapped my foot on the floor of the car.

“Come on, Flissy. Forget about all that, okay?” Uncle Gideon said with one of those smiles that asked for a smile back. But I wouldn’t. I never would. Even though he still loved my Winnie.

When we turned away from the ocean and headed towards town, Gideon looked over at Derek. Then he frowned and said softly, “Look here, Derek, why don’t we say you broke your arm for now and leave it at that? No one will know the difference.” Derek didn’t answer either. He just kept looking out the window.