The War that Saved My Life (34 page)

Susan made a face. “She remembered passing you, because you were moving so slowly. So I hoped you’d made it to a shelter. I’ve been searching the shelters. I never realized there’d be so many.”

I had a more important question. “Why? Why did you come for us, after you let us go?”

Susan stirred her tea with a spoon, round and round, looking thoughtful. The restaurant had sugar on the table, but it was bad manners to take more than a bit. “You’ll find out,” she said at last, “that there are different kinds of truth. It’s true your mother has a right to you. I was thinking of that when I let you go.

“But then I couldn’t sleep. I sat in the shelter with the wretched cat and I realized that no matter what the rules were, I should have kept you. Because it was also true that you belonged to me. Do you understand that? Can you?”

I said, “We were coming back to you this morning.”

She nodded. “Good.”

A few minutes later she added, “I took the first train I could, yesterday. But it was so slow, and it stopped so many times, and then when the bombing started they wouldn’t keep going into London. We spent most of the night on a siding, and only pulled into the station at dawn.”

She stopped talking. Jamie had slumped against the table. He was sound asleep.

Susan held my arm as I limped to the station. She said, “You needed new crutches anyhow. You were getting too tall for your old ones.”

I nodded, grateful I didn’t have to explain. Someday I’d tell her the whole story, what I’d said to Mam and what she’d said to me, but not now. Maybe not for a long time. It tore a hole through my heart just to think about it.

The train to Kent was packed. Susan found a seat for me, but Jamie ended up lying down beneath the benches and Susan sat on a soldier’s bag in the aisle. The train moved in fits and starts; I dozed with my head against the wall. When Jamie had to use the toilet, soldiers passed him over their heads to the one at the end of the car, and back again when he was done.

When we stumbled out of the station at our village, Susan waved toward the taxi parked by the curb. “Get in,” she said to me. “I’m not making you walk another step.”

We drove through the quiet Sunday morning village and down Susan’s tree-lined drive. Suddenly, she gasped.

I got out of the taxi, and saw what she saw.

The house was gone.

A direct hit from a German bomb.

What seemed like half the village stood among the rubble, carefully lifting away bricks and stones. They looked up at the taxi.

They saw us, and it was like when we saw Susan in London all over again, the astonishment on their faces. The fear turning to happiness, to laughter and smiles.

Susan stood frozen, her hand covering her mouth.

They rushed toward us—Fred, the vicar, Stephen White. The publican and his wife. The policemen. Pilots. Lady Thorton threw her arms around Susan and burst into tears.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?” she sobbed. “You never go anywhere—why didn’t you let anyone know?”

A blur of gray fur streaked out of the rubble straight toward Jamie. “Bovril!” he shrieked.

The pasture lay beyond the rubble. I tried to run, but after three steps Fred caught me. “He’s fine,” he said. “Your pony’s fine. He must have been on the other side of the field when the bomb hit.” Tears were coursing down Fred’s cheeks. “It’s you we were missing,” he gasped. “You we were digging for. The sirens never went off last night. We thought we’d lost all three of you.”

Jamie bounced over to Susan, grinning. “We’ve been shipwrecked,” he said.

Susan still looked stunned, but at Jamie’s insistence she stroked Bovril’s head. Then she put her arms around Jamie and looked directly at me. “It’s lucky I went after you,” she said. “The two of you saved my life, you did.”

I slipped my hand into hers. A strange and unfamiliar feeling ran through me. It felt like the ocean, like sunlight, like horses. Like love. I searched my mind and found the name for it.
Joy
. “So now we’re even,” I said.

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