Seven
THE first time London’s children had been evacuated, nearly a year earlier, Mum had flat-out refused to send Emmy and Julia away. Her attitude then had been that there wasn’t a war, not on English soil, anyway, and she was not going to put her daughters on a train to God-knows-where. Emmy remembered her saying as much to their teachers at school, Thea next door, and anyone else who asked why Julia and Emmy were still in London. Emmy also remembered seeing something else in Mum’s eyes besides the defiance. Mum had felt it wasn’t in her best interest to send them off into the countryside, but for reasons Emmy was unsure of. There seemed to be more to Mum’s refusal than just outward unwillingness to be parted from her daughters.
There was no precedent for London being emptied of her children; no previous war had demanded it. The last time there had been an exodus for safer homes was during the plagues, and then it was only the rich who fled the cities. The adversary this go-around was not a disease but legions of army planes carrying bombs. It was an astounding concept that Germany could strike England by air and subdue her without even setting foot on her soil. But Mum had scoffed at the idea that the only way to ensure Emmy’s and Julia’s safety was to entrust them to strangers.
“You and Julia aren’t going anywhere,” she had said when the letter had arrived in August 1939, advising her to prepare her daughters for evacuation. When the other children in the neighborhood trudged to school carrying suitcases and gas masks, their weeping mothers trailing after them, Emmy and Julia had stayed home and played checkers. Some mothers, who had looked down their noses at Mum the day before, apparently hopped over the police cordon at the train station and snatched their children back before they boarded. Those who bravely waved good-bye got postcards from billeting officials a week later advising them of where and with whom their children were living. Emmy found out after many of her classmates started coming back to the city that foster parents arrived at designated churches and community centers in rural villages to look over the trainloads of London children and then they chose the ones they wanted like buyers at an auction. One of Julia’s six-year-old friends had been parted from her older brother because, so the story went, he could work a field and she could not. That little girl still had nightmares six months later. In the end, it had all been for nothing. The doomsayers who foretold that the Luftwaffe would flatten London had been wrong.
Emmy and Julia weren’t the only children whose parents could not or would not bow to the notion that evacuation was the only course of action that made any sense. There was a set of parents just down the street from the Downtrees who kept their children back, and on the next block over, a couple more. The sisters and these other children had gathered at the home of one of the houses for impromptu lessons since the schools closed after the children left the city. But within a month, the schools had all opened again because most of the children had been brought back home. At the time, everyone had concluded that Britain would win the war on the fields of France and in the air over the English Channel.
But when Dunkirk fell some months later, the air raid sirens began to wail a little more often and the doomsayers began to raise the specter of a second evacuation of London’s children. Emmy gave it little thought. Mum had kept them back during the first one; she’d do the same if there was another.
Emmy had been happy to stay behind during the first evacuation.
And now she was insistent that she stay behind for the second.
But this time, Mum would not hear of it.
For half an hour Emmy argued with her.
Emmy was too old to be evacuated.
There was no real danger.
How did Mum know they would be safe just because they weren’t in London?
And the real reason, of course. Emmy had a job. And a dress designer interested in seeing her sketches.
Emmy was not going.
Mum had an answer for every excuse Emmy gave her. The letter in her hand said every child fifteen and younger was to be evacuated. The danger was genuine. The only safe place was in the country.
As for Emmy’s little job, as Mum called it, did Emmy really think there would be fittings for wedding dresses with the war looming for real now, overhead?
Besides, Julia could not go alone. Not after what they had seen happen to classmates the last time.
“You have to go with her,” Mum said. “We’re done talking about it. You’re going.”
“Please don’t make me, Mum.”
“It’s not up to me!”
“Yes, it is. You can do what you did last time. Just refuse to comply.”
Mum’s eyes had glossed shiny with emotion. “This time it’s different. You really must go, Emmy. It is for the best.”
Emmy wanted to grab her mother by the shoulders and shake her. Shake her until she told Emmy everything.
“The best for you, you mean,” Emmy said instead. “Now you can spend the night with whomever you wish, whenever you wish, and as often as you wish.”
Emmy waited for the slap across her face. She wanted it. She wanted to feel the sting of Mum’s reproach. She wanted the welt to rise on her skin and blossom crimson in front of Mum.
Mum raised her hand slightly and Emmy braced herself for the impact.
But the slap didn’t come. Mum lowered her arm and a second later it hung loose at her side.
“You and Julia are leaving on Wednesday,” she said. “Don’t tell her about Neville. She doesn’t need to know right now and this is going to be hard enough. You have to go with her, Em. Hate me if you want, but you know I can’t send her away alone. You know I can’t.”
Mum turned and walked out of the kitchen.
Emmy felt as if she had been slapped anyway.