The War that Saved My Life (23 page)

“Aye,” Fred said, nodding, as though girls rode to him through snowstorms all the time, needing wool. He disappeared into the stables, and I heard him clop up the stairs to the rooms in the loft where he lived. He came down carrying a cloth bag printed in bright flowers. “It’s the missus’s knitting bag,” he said, thrusting it at me. “It’s full of wool. All sorts. You can have it.”

I didn’t know he had a missus. “Aye,” he said, in response to my unspoken question. “She’s been dead five years. Was nurse to Miss Margaret and Master Jonathan, and before that to their mother and her brothers.”

I squashed the bulky bag beneath my jacket to keep it out of the snow. Butter tossed his head, restless, and I let him turn for home.

“Wait.” Fred grabbed Butter’s bridle. “When someone gives you a present,” he said, with a gentle smile, “you say ‘Thank you.’”

Susan had taught me that, but I’d been so busy thinking about the wool the bag contained that I’d forgotten. “Thank you, Fred,” I said. “Thank you very much. I wish I could say thank you to your missus too.”

“Ah, well.” He shook his head. “Happen she’d be glad I found her things a good home. You’re very welcome, child.”

It was Thursday already and Christmas was Monday, so I didn’t have much time. When I got home I dumped the bag onto my bed. There were five sets of knitting needles, from thick to thin, and a handful of smaller thin sticks that were pointed on both ends. There were all sorts of oddments of wool, rolled into balls, and there were six balls of fine, white wool.

The white wool would be best. I had plenty of it. I cast on and started to work.

I expected Susan to be suspicious when I spent the whole afternoon in my cold bedroom, and she was. “What are you up to?” she asked at dinner.

I ran through my options in my head. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t taking a bath. I couldn’t be listening to the radio. Stalling while I searched for a plausible excuse, I said, “Nothing.”

To my surprise, she grinned. “Oh, really? I’ll make a bargain with you. You can have a few hours of nothing time upstairs anytime the rest of this week you like, as long as you give me the same amount of nothing time downstairs. You shout before you come down, and wait until I tell you okay. Deal?”

I could only nod. In the days to come I could sometimes hear the whirr of her sewing machine while I knit upstairs. I took a hot water bottle with me and put a blanket around my shoulders, and I knit white wool and oddments all the next two days. Wretched Bovril started wanting to sit in my lap on top of the water bottle, until I threw him out and shut the door.

The day before Christmas was a Sunday. When Jamie and I got up we dressed in the clothes Susan insisted we save for Sundays, Jamie in his white shirt and tweed shorts and good dark socks, me in the red dress Maggie had given me. We went down to breakfast and Susan shook her head. “Sorry, forgot. Go put your regular things on for the day. We’re going to church at night. All of us, even me. It’s Christmas Eve.”

Because it was Christmas Eve we had bacon at breakfast. During the day I helped make biscuits. Jamie roasted chestnuts for the goose’s dressing. Susan put the radio on, and sang along to the Christmas music.

Midafternoon she made us bathe. She brushed my hair downstairs by the fire until it was dry, and braided it in two plaits instead of one. We ate supper, and then she told Jamie to go upstairs and put on his church clothes. She told me to sit still. “I have a surprise.”

She put a big box wrapped in paper onto my lap. Inside was a dress made of soft dark green fabric. It had puffed sleeves and a round collar, and it gathered at the waist before billowing out into a long, full skirt.

It was so beautiful I couldn’t touch it. I just stared.

“Come,” Susan said. “Let’s see if it fits.”

I held perfectly still while she took off my sweater and blouse, and settled the green dress over my head. “Step out of your skirt,” Susan said, and I did. She buttoned the dress and stepped back. “There,” she said, smiling, her eyes soft and warm. “It’s perfect. Ada. You’re beautiful.”

She was lying. She was lying, and I couldn’t bear it. I heard Mam’s voice shrieking in my head. “
You ugly piece of rubbish! Filth and trash! No one wants you, with that ugly foot!
” My hands started to shake. Rubbish. Filth. Trash. I could wear Maggie’s discards, or plain clothes from the shops, but not this, not this beautiful dress. I could listen to Susan say she never wanted children all day long. I couldn’t bear to hear her call me beautiful.

“What’s the matter?” Susan asked, perplexed. “It’s a Christmas present. I made it for you. Bottle green velvet, just like I said.”

Bottle green velvet. “I can’t wear this,” I said. I pulled at the bodice, fumbling for the buttons. “I can’t wear it. I can’t.”

“Ada.” Susan grabbed my hands. She pulled me to the sofa and set me down hard beside her, still restraining me. “
Ada
. What would you say to Jamie, if I gave him something nice and he said he couldn’t have it? Think. What would you say?”

Tears were running down my face now. I started to panic. I fought Susan’s grasp. “I’m not Jamie!” I said. “I’m different, I’ve got the ugly foot, I’m—” My throat closed over the word
rubbish
.

“Ada. Ada.” I felt I could hardly hear Susan’s voice. A scream built up from somewhere inside me, came roaring out in an ocean of sound. Scream after scream—Jamie running half-dressed down the stairs, Susan pinning down my arms, holding me against her, holding me tight. Waves of panic hit me, over and over, turning me and tossing me until I thought I’d drown.

We didn’t go to church. We ended up on the floor in front of the fire, wrapped in blankets Jamie dragged down the stairs. All of us. I don’t know how long I screamed and flailed. I don’t know how long Susan restrained me. I kicked her and scratched her and probably would have bitten her, but she held on. I don’t know what Jamie did, other than bring down the blankets. Susan wrapped me in one, rolled me up tight, and the panic started to ease. “That’s it,” Susan croaked. “Shh. Shh. You’re okay.”

I was not okay. I would never be okay. But I was too exhausted to scream anymore.

When I woke, the first rays of winter sunlight were coming through the window onto the little Christmas tree. The coal embers shone dully beneath a layer of ashes. Jamie slept wrapped in a blanket with Bovril’s face peeping out beneath his chin. Susan snored gently. One of her arms was flung up, under her ear; the other still rested across me. Her hair had come out of its bun and was sticking out in all directions. She had a long red furrow down one cheek from where I’d scratched her, and her blouse—her best blouse—had a rip at the shoulder and a button hanging by a thread. She looked like she’d been in a war.

I was so completely wound in a gray blanket that I could only move my head. I turned it from side to side, looking first at Jamie, then at Susan, then at the little Christmas tree. Susan would be angry when she woke. She would be furious, because I’d screamed about the dress, because I hadn’t been grateful, because I’d messed up her plans. We hadn’t gone to church because of me.

My stomach worked itself into a knot. She would be angry. She would hit—no. She wouldn’t hit me. She hadn’t, at least not so far. She hadn’t hit me once the night before, not even when I’d hurt her. She’d wrapped me up and held me tight.

I didn’t know what to do. Susan was temporary. My foot was permanent. I lay in the weak sunshine and wanted to weep instead of scream. But I almost never cried. What was wrong with me now?

Jamie stirred. He opened his eyes and
smiled
—smiled his beautiful smile. All of my life I would remember the sweetness of that smile. “Good morning, Ada,” Jamie said. “Merry Christmas.”

I didn’t know what Susan had said or done to Jamie before he fell asleep, but he woke as though sleeping on the living room floor was perfectly ordinary. He sat up, rubbed Bovril’s belly, then put the cat outside to do his business and added coal to the fire.

The rattle of the coal scuttle woke Susan. I watched her carefully as she opened her eyes and came to an awareness of where she was. She saw me, and she smiled too.

Smiled
.

“Good morning, Ada,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

I wanted to bury my head in my blankets and weep and scream, but I didn’t. Instead I said, “I can’t get up. I can’t move my arms.”

She sat up and untangled me. “I wasn’t trying to trap you,” she said. “It seemed to soothe you, to be bundled like that.”

“I know,” I said. “It did.” I pointed to the rip on her blouse.

“It’s in a seam,” she said. “I can fix it.” She brushed my loose hair back from my face. “Would you like some breakfast?”

We got up and went upstairs and washed our faces and used the loo. At Susan’s suggestion we took off our good clothes and put on our pajamas and dressing gowns. When we came back down the stairs, there was a pile of brightly wrapped packages under the tree.

Presents.

“Looks like Santa Claus has been here,” Susan said gaily.

Seemed odd that Santa Claus would stay away all night, but come while we were changing our clothes. I opened my mouth to say so, but saw Jamie’s glowing face in time and shut up fast.

Jamie’s eyes were lit with joy. “He really did come! To us! He did!” he said. “Even though Ada was bad.” He gave me a quick guilty look. “I mean—”

“It’s okay,” I said, slipping my arm around his shoulders. “I
was
bad.” I wondered if the presents were all for Jamie. Could any possibly be for me?

“Not bad,” Susan said. She helped me down the last few steps. “Not bad, Ada. Sad. Angry. Frightened. Not bad.”

Sad, angry, frightened
were
bad. It was not okay to be any of those. I couldn’t say so, though, not on that gentle morning.

I had the gifts I’d made stuffed into the pockets of my dressing gown. I didn’t have any paper to wrap them. I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Breakfast,” Susan said. She’d put the kettle on for tea, and started a pan full of sizzling sausages. She fried us each an egg. On the table, laid across our plates, were two of our stockings, one each. They were stuffed full and knobbly. I poked mine. “You should have hung those up last night,” she said. “But I see Santa found them anyway. Have a look inside while I finish cooking.”

An orange. A handful of walnuts. Boiled sweets. Two long hair ribbons, one green and one blue. In the toe, a shilling.

Jamie had the same, except he had a whistle instead of hair ribbons, and an India rubber ball.

Shiny bright girls, with ribbons in their hair.
I wanted to weep all over again. I wanted to scream.

What was wrong with me?

I couldn’t mess up Jamie’s Christmas. I stroked the satin ribbons and went away in my head. I was on Butter, up on the hill, galloping, galloping—

“Ada.” Susan touched my shoulder. “Come back.”

Fried sausages on my plate. A fried egg, its yolk as bright as the sun. Toast, and strong hot tea. Jamie blew his whistle—a piercing shriek. “Save that for outside,” Susan said, ruffling his hair.

After breakfast we opened our presents. Jamie got a toy motorcar and a set of building blocks. I got a new halter for Butter, and a pad of paper and a set of colored pencils. We each got a book. Mine was called
Alice in Wonderland
. Jamie’s was
Peter Pan
.