Tidings of Comfort and Joy (18 page)
It was as I walked the trio back to the helicopter that Bradley mentioned, "Seems like something more than sick kids is bothering you folks."
I tried for a smile. "Is it that obvious?"
"Folks gathering in corners for a quiet sigh when they should be happy," Bob offered. "That's pretty noticeable."
"You've been so kind," I replied. "We didn't want to involve you with our problems."
"Hey." With a grand sweep of his arm, Bradley took in the chopper and the doctor and the orphanage. "In case you haven't noticed, we're already involved."
So I told them about the difficulties we had faced since the beginning with the Ministry. Then I described the present threat of closure. The trio of faces grew steadily grimmer as I recounted the meeting with Miss Hillary Tartish, and her plans for our children.
Brad's tone was taut as a whip. "So they're gonna farm out these kids to a load of camps?"
"Over my dead body," Bob muttered.
"We're doing everything we can," Colin interjected, stepping up beside me. "The village authorities have spent the past two days desperately seeking someone with sufficient clout to halt this madness."
"Madness is right." Brad rubbed a tired hand over his crew cut. "You said you got them to back off before, why not now?"
"Because we threatened to hold up their misdeeds to the light of day," Colin replied. "Unfortunately, closing an orphanage and moving the children elsewhere does not interest our press."
The three Americans carried their grim expressions into the helicopter. As Bob settled behind the pilot's controls, Brad leaned through the open door and said, "It ain't right, Miss Emily."
"I'm sorry you had to hear about it." I tried hard to reward them with a smile. "No matter what happens from here on out, today you boys are heroes."
"I don't feel like a hero," Brad replied as overhead the rotors chuffed through their first rotation. "I feel like calling out the cavalry."
WE STOOD ON the back veranda, too weary to do more than wave and smile as the helicopter lifted up. Three American faces could be seen in the sun-glinted windows, waving and reflecting the same tiredness we felt.
After the noise and the wind had vanished with the chopper, Colin and I stood there in quiet satisfaction. The sun was directly overhead, blazing down from a cloudless sky, warming us despite the day's lingering chill. I closed my eyes and lifted my face upward, wishing there were some way to open up and drink the sunlight in like water.
"I don't know when I have felt so tired," Colin confessed.
That brought me around. "That's the first time I've ever heard you admit to any weakness."
"I have so many," he admitted quietly, "I hate to talk about them."
"Like your heart," I said, and was instantly contrite. "I'm sorry, Colin. I shouldn't have said that."
"It's all right. I suppose it had to come out sometime." He raised his hand. "Only don't start about needing to take it easy. Please, not that."
"But you do."
"The entire free world has been called to give until it hurts," he replied. "That is one of the tragedies of war. Why should I do any less?"
Before I could think of a reply, Rachel came racing back outside. "Hurry up, both of you. Fred's just come through the front gates. He's done the rounds and is bringing in replacements."
She vanished, but still we did not move, as though we were both held by something unfinished. Colin cleared his throat, then asked, "Emily, would you perhaps care to join me for a meal tomorrow evening?"
"I would be honored," I replied shyly, retreating behind the same odd formality I heard in his voice.
"There's not much on offer these days, I'm afraid. But we could walk down to the pub and see what they have on the board."
It felt as though the sun reached down and generated a warmth inside me. "I'm sure it will be just fine."
THE ONLY REASON I knew I made it upstairs before conking out was because I woke up in my bed. My clothes were scattered in a haphazard line down the hall and into the bedroom. I dressed as I retraced my steps, stopping in the kitchen for a cup of tea and two slices of stale bread with margarine—it was all I had in my larder, and I did not want to risk waking Rachel from a much-needed sleep. She had looked positively haggard by the time we arrived home the afternoon before. I suspected that I had not looked much better.
Now that I felt fewer qualms over venturing into the village, I was eager to see if I could stock my pantry with something more substantial. Armed with Grant's discarded ration coupons, I started down the stairs. But I froze on the bottom step. Poking through the front door's mail slot were two letters.
My hands were shaking as I pulled the letters free. One was from my former boss at the shipping company. The other caused my heart to quaver. Instandy I recognized the handwriting. It was from my father.
I had not expected him to write me. I recalled how angry he had become during our quarrels about Grant. I knew he would have been mortified by how I had left without saying what I was doing or where I was going. By now my hands were trembling so I could hardly hold the envelope, much less open it. I was terrified that he would tell me not to come home. The thought left me scarcely able to breathe.
I set the letter from my boss down on the side table. That one could wait. Holding the letter from my father, I clenched my eyes shut, and prayed as hard as I had ever prayed in my entire life. I did not deserve anything better than to be disowned, I knew that. But I could also not help but pray for something more.
My stomach felt as frozen solid as the trees behind the orphanage. I slit the envelope and pulled out the single page. Daddy had never been one for a lot of words. Even so, the thinness of this letter drew the steel band around my chest even tighter.
I could put it off no longer. I unfolded the page and began to read. The words jarred so hard I dropped the sheet, and just stood there, trying to remember how to breathe.
I picked up the letter, and reread the page. A third time. Then more slowly. Through the closed door, I could hear the village church bells begin to peal. I lingered over the short note, the words vibrating in time to the ringing bell.
My dearest Emily,
I have asked your mother to allow me to write you first. Your letter arrived last night, and I have scarcely been able to sleep a wink. You have inherited my own stubborn strength, but you have grown far beyond anything I could ever hope to be. Your letter contained both newfound humility and a remarkable wisdom.
I am sorry this man hurt you so badly, but Iam proud that you have managed to grow from the experience. Yes, proud. Your mother will write more tomorrow. This is all I wanted to say, except that I do so hope you will hurry home.
The leaves continue to fall from my calendar, each passing day marking the void your absence has caused in our lives.
With love, Dad.
I crushed the letter to my heart, wanting to shout, to cry, to sing out loud. Instead, I offered a single note of joyful thanks to the Lord above, then opened the door and stepped into the new day. I was instantly blinded by the sun.
As ALWAYS, THERE were lines in front of every store. And, as usual, I could feel the eyes turn toward me as I strolled along the sidewalk. Today they did not bother me, not even when I joined the line at the grocer's and a trio of ladies turned to stare and whisper. I recognized them as having been among the group standing before the church on New Year's Eve. The Grim Brigade, Rachel had called them. As I observed them from the corner of my eye, with their tight mouths and hunched shoulders and angry looks, I decided they deserved the title. They certainly did look grim.
Turning away, I tried to focus my thoughts on the good things that had happened. My family loved me. The children had been inoculated. They would be getting better. A few might even be adopted. The sun was shining. Even so, I could feel the trio's whispered words cross the distance and strike me like darts.
I pulled the second letter from my pocket, the one from my boss at the shipping company, and used it as a shield. The letter held about what I had expected. The man was sympathetic, but also irritated—he had done so much to find me a way over to England. Naturally, he wrote, he would do all he could to find me a position. Or he could be called upon to write a recommendation. But as to a passage back, his connections were all for places going the other way. I sighed and stuffed the page back into my pocket.
"Oh, hello, Emily. Didn't see you standing there."
I looked up. The woman who had joined the queue behind me was Kate, the mistress of the night shift. Tears streaked her broad face. Instandy, concern over her pushed my own distress aside. I knew she had a boy who had not yet returned from Singapore. "What's the matter?"
"Oh, it's silly." She lifted the news magazine she was holding. "There's this article on the DP crisis. I suppose you've heard about it."
"Who hasn't?" DPs, as displaced persons were known, had been streaming in from Eastern Europe ever since the fighting had stopped last May. According to what the papers said, there were millions and millions of them. Some were survivors of the death camps. Others were fleeing Stalin's army. Still others had seen their villages destroyed, their livestock killed, and had taken to the streets in search of food. Whole cities were on the move to nowhere.
"There were these pictures; here, have a look for yourself." Before I could object that I already had enough to worry about, Kate thrust the page under my nose.
Two photographs were set side by side. The first was of a train station, or what once had been one. The building itself had been bombed to rubble. The railroad tracks were lost beneath a sea of people. Thousands and thousands of them, huddled under makeshift tents, wrapped in rags, freezing on the snow-covered ground. I asked weakly, "Where is this?"
"Do you know, I didn't even get that far." She pointed at the second picture. "That one stopped me cold."
The photograph was of a dozen or so children, all of them trying to share two blankets. They were lying side by side, tight as sardines in a can. Snow had fallen while they lay, dotting the tattered cover with white. All but two of the children were still asleep, their faces almost lost beneath heaps of rags used to keep their ears and noses warm. But two girls looked up at the camera. They were perhaps eight or nine years old. One of them was flaxen-haired, the other dark. Hunger and fatigue and fear had turned them into twins. Especially their eyes.
"They look so much like our own little ones," the woman sniffled.
"Hmph." One of the trio sniffled loudly. "My Jim warned you at that first council meeting, you were getting in over your head, taking on that orphanage."
"There's too many of them," another agreed. "Your lot can't save the world on your own."
Kate reddened. "We certainly won't be having any help from you, now, will we?"
"I do my best to avoid lost causes and futile gestures," the first replied loftily.
"Aye, and it's a grand thing to see them finally clearing those wastrels out," her friend agreed. "Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say."
I did not join in the ensuing argument. The pair of images lingered, making a mockery of this petty gibing. The impressions stayed with me as I stood in line at the butcher's, and then the bakery. The eyes and the whispers were still there, but I did not have room for them. I felt as though the girls were trying to communicate with me, or perhaps it was God speaking through them. And I felt ashamed that, try as I might, I could not understand what was being said.
I'm afraid the woman was correct, at least about one thing," Colin chided gently over dinner that night. "You can't go about trying to save the world."
"Oh, I know that." Yet the feeling of missing some vital message had stayed with me throughout the day. That and the image of those two girls. I wanted Colin to understand. For some reason, it was vital to try and share the power that photograph held for me. "It wasn't two strangers I saw there on the page. It was two of our girls."
Colin nodded slowly. "I see what you mean. And it very well could have been, you know. For some reason, the train stations have become gathering points for DPs."
"Not the station. It wasn't the setting at all." Trying to explain it to him was helping me draw it into focus for myself. As was the intent way he listened. "It was the
look.
Their expression and their gaze and the way I was staring at two totally different faces, but really seeing just one set of experiences . . . Oh, I don't know. I can't seem to explain myself at all."
Colin suggested, "Perhaps you feel like you were seeing into the past of those children who have been given into our care."
"That's it," I said, and was filled with the pleasure of being with someone who understood, who cared enough to
want
to understand me. "That's it exactly."
We were seated in the White Hart Inn, a riverside establishment dating back to the sixteenth century. Like most village inns, there were two main rooms—the public bar with its raw wood floors and louder voices, and the more subdued atmosphere of the carpeted parlor. Colin and I were seated near the fireplace, warmed by the flames and the company. We had just completed a wondrous concoction called venison stew; while there had been little meat to be found, the publican's wife had managed to elevate the common carrot and stalk of celery to wondrous levels. I was as pleasantly full as I had been since my arrival in England.
An image coalesced from the recesses of my thoughts. "I just thought of something. Did you notice how few of the children cried over the injections?"
"They were doing a jolly good j ob of wailing there at the start," Colin pointed out.
"While they were afraid, yes," I countered. "But once we had them calmed down, most didn't make a sound when they were inoculated."
"What are you saying, Emily?"
"It struck me as odd at the time, but you know how busy we all were. And then I thought of it again this afternoon. I found myself thinking of the way Annique watched me as the doctor gave her the injection."