Nine
EMMY had traveled on a train outside the heart of London only once before. During one of Neville’s stretches of living with Mum, he took them all to Brighton Beach for a weekend at the sea. He wanted to take only Mum; Emmy remembered that had been obvious. But they hadn’t lived in Whitechapel then, so they hadn’t had Thea for a neighbor. There was no one who could take the sisters for the weekend. Mum didn’t like any of their neighbors at the time and they didn’t like her, according to Mum. Emmy believed what they didn’t like was Neville floating in and out of the flat, sometimes with an actor friend or two, and that they often loudly rehearsed lines at three o’clock in the morning from the bawdy shows they were in. The only other friends Mum had were fellow laundry maids at the hotel where she was working, but none of them had wanted to babysit a three-and an eleven-year-old for an entire weekend.
Emmy had liked the train ride.
She’d loved the sea.
The rest of the weekend was forgettable.
As she and Julia now sat side by side on the train, she wanted to stay angry at Mum, at the Germans, at the British War Office, at God Almighty himself for whisking her out of London when she was on the very edge of having everything.
But as the city sights fell away, and the landscape relaxed to rolling hills and fields of yellow, she found herself unable to stay angry. The rumbling of the train, the scenery outside her window, and even the lunch Julia and she shared—the nicest they had ever had—calmed Emmy to a state of ordinary melancholy. When they changed trains in Oxford for the last leg of the trip by rail, Emmy’s anger had mellowed to something more like grief.
There were seventy evacuees on the train to Moreton-in-Marsh, accompanied not by one of the schoolteachers, as the larger groups had been, but by a uniformed matron who reminded Emmy somewhat of Nana. Her build was the same, as was her silver-brown hair. She allowed Emmy, the oldest in their group, to call her Alice instead of Mrs. Braughton. As they were about to pull into the station at Moreton-in-Marsh, Alice asked if Emmy would keep an eye on the trio of young boys—all classmates of Julia’s—who were seated behind the girls and who had spent the forty-minute journey from Oxford laughing, poking one another, and kicking the back of the girls’ seats.
“Just see that they don’t get separated from the group,” Alice said as the whistle blew and the train began to approach the station. “We’re being met at the station and from there we’ll walk to the town hall. Just a short stroll. I’ll bring up the rear. If you wouldn’t mind staying in the middle, that would be grand.”
Emmy nodded in soundless compliance.
“There’s a brave girl,” Alice said, mistaking Emmy’s quietness for timidity. She squeezed Emmy’s shoulder before making her way back to the front of the train car.
Once they were off the train, it took some doing to corral the boys and convince them to stay where Emmy could see them. Then the lot of children formed a queue and a billeting official counted heads, comparing names with a list she had in her hand. Their suitcases had been loaded onto a truck so that they would not need to carry them the three blocks to the hall where they were to be sorted out. And then the young Londoners were off, like soldiers marching to the battlefield, or prisoners to their cells, Emmy thought.
“I have to go to the loo,” Julia murmured, her hand tight in Emmy’s.
“You just went at Oxford.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Think about something else. As soon as we get to the next place, I’ll find one for you.”
“I can’t think of something else!”
“Yes, you can.”
The three boys ahead of them stopped to look at a dead bird on the sidewalk. “Come on, boys,” Emmy said.
“I dare you to touch it, Julia,” one of the boys said.
“I dare you to eat it!” Julia challenged, her hand tighter now in her sister’s.
Emmy kicked the tiny carcass with her shoe. It landed in the gutter. “You can compose dares later. Off you go.”
They continued on their way, past shops and cafés and businesses. The town was like Brighton in some ways. The buildings were close to one another, and there were few taxis and no red double-decker buses. But there was no fragrance of the sea, no one selling pasties or ice-cream cones on the sidewalk. And in Brighton, no one seemed to even notice when they had arrived or cared when they left. Here, everyone stopped whatever they were doing to look at the line of children, from the barber sweeping his front step, to the grocer standing by wooden crates full of turnips, to women in unremarkable dresses going about their afternoon errands.
Two young mothers pushing prams on the sidewalk moved aside so that the group could stay together. Emmy heard one whisper to the other, “Oh! These are the London children. The poor dears!”
And the other one replied, “Can you imagine sending your child away like that?”
“Or taking one in? Good heavens, you wouldn’t know anything about them.”
“Nor do we know anything about you,” Emmy whispered as she and Julia walked by them.
She heard nothing else from the two pram pushers and did not look back at them.
After another block they were at the town hall on High Street. The curbs were crowded with parked cars on either side. A few adults, mostly women, were standing outside on the steps, watching as the children made their way past them.