Ten
THE road between Moreton-in-Marsh and Stow-on-the-Wold was narrow but straight, taking them past rock walls, grazing sheep, fields of hay, and cottages of fawn-colored stone. London and all that Emmy had left behind seemed remarkably distant. It was as if they were traveling back in time or maybe to an entirely different world. There were no sandbags here, no air raid shelter signs, no barrage balloons in this endless sky. Emmy wondered how anyone out in this vast countryside knew they were even at war.
She and Julia sat up front with Charlotte in a dusty blue jalopy that sputtered like a steam engine as she drove. It was a four-and-a-half-mile jaunt between the two towns, Charlotte said, but since she lived on the edge of Stow, it would seem more like five.
The woman filled the silence inside the car by telling the girls about herself, which allowed Emmy to sit back and memorize the route they were taking so that one day soon, if she had to, she could make her way back to London on her own.
Charlotte was sixty-six, a retired schoolteacher, and a widow of five years. She and her husband, Oliver, hadn’t been blessed with any children, but she had a younger sister, Rose, whose disabilities made her childlike in many ways, so Charlotte felt as though she’d been gifted the chance to mother someone.
Oliver, bless his soul, had owned a hardware store in Stow-on-the-Wold, as had his father before him, and his father before him. He had been quite handy and liked to build things. She had an indoor loo before anyone else she knew did, thanks to Oliver. The century-old house had been in Oliver’s family all that time, and had a lovely name, Thistle House. Many houses in the Cotswolds had names.
“What is a cot’s wold?” Julia asked.
Charlotte Havelock smiled. “The Cotswolds is everything you can see out the window. For lots of miles. A hundred of them. Think of England as a very large book. The Cotswolds would be an unfussy chapter in the middle somewhere where there is lots of limestone and even more sheep.”
“But what is a cot’s wold? I want to see one.”
“Oh, I know exactly what you mean. I’d like to see one, too. Here’s the thing. Everyone agrees ‘wold’ means ‘hills’ but not everyone agrees what the ‘cots’ are.”
“That’s easy,” Julia said. “Cots are little beds.”
“Indeed.” Charlotte’s smile was broad. “Right you are, Julia.”
Charlotte then told the girls that she had been born in Cornwall, near the coast, and that she met Oliver at his brother’s wedding in Bristol in 1893. They fell in love, and married a year later, and she moved to Thistle House. It had been her home ever since. She and her husband took in Rose eighteen years ago when Charlotte and Rose’s mother died.
“I know I wasn’t born here in the Cotswolds, but I feel like I was. This place has a way of welcoming you in, even if you are a stranger.”
Her words were meant to convey welcome, but Emmy didn’t want to imagine she could belong there, even for a little while. Still, she sensed the subtle embrace of Charlotte’s seemingly warless world where everything appeared to be bathed in butter.
“I’ve never seen so many houses and buildings all made of the same yellow stone,” Emmy said.
“That’s Cotswold stone. We are sitting on a vast blanket of limestone here. Loads of it. They’ve been building with it for centuries. When it’s been out in the weather decade upon decade, it turns a lovely honey color, which is rather nice. Can you imagine if it turned pink with age?”
“I like pink,” Julia chimed.
“A lovely color for flowers, but not so much for houses,” Charlotte said.
“It’s—it’s pretty here,” Emmy said, unable to stay disconnected from her new surroundings.
The woman nodded. “I think so, too, Emmeline. I know it’s not your home. And I wish there weren’t a war. But I do want you to feel it is your home for as long as it must be such for you.”
Her words were heavy with the weight of what could happen. No one knew how long the war would last or how long England could defend herself. But Emmy refused to give in to such negative thinking on the first day of the evacuation.
“I’m sure it won’t be for very long,” she said.
“I hope you’re right. I really do.”
The three of them were silent for a few seconds.
When Charlotte spoke again, her voice was bright. “Now, then, would you girls like to call me Mrs. Havelock or Aunt Charlotte?”
“I like Aunt Charlotte,” Julia answered.
This woman, kind though she was, was not Emmy’s aunt. “I prefer Mrs. Havelock,” she said.
Charlotte regarded Emmy for a moment, taking her eyes off the road ahead for a second or two. “You know, Emmeline, you’re very nearly an adult. How about you call me Charlotte?”
“Fine with me.”
“Right, then. That’s settled. So here’s Stow.”
They entered a village that was what Moreton might have been like fifty years before. Stores and offices made of Cotswold stone lined both sides of the street that led into the center of town, some with thatched roofs, some with shingles. They passed a town hall, a pub, a grocer, a bank, a butcher, a dentist. There seemed to be one of everything needed for a town to survive on its own without any interaction from the outside, ever.
“There’s the hardware store,” Charlotte said, pointing to a toast brown building with a shiny red sign with black lettering in front. “It’s called Browne and Sons Hardware now. Used to be Havelock Hardware. We sold it the year Ollie retired. I used to have tea with him Saturday afternoons before Rose came. I’d bring it down in the basket of my bike. Down that way is our train station, so if your mum wants to come see you, she can come straight here. Oh, and there’s my church.” Charlotte nodded toward a castlelike structure with a bright blue door and a steeple arrowing past the treetops. “And down that way is the primary school. The secondary school is back behind us a bit. I’ll show them to you sometime if you want.”
“That’s all right,” Emmy said as politely as she could. She didn’t see much purpose to that. It was June. The school term was three months away.
Then they were back in the countryside, on a narrow, treelined lane.
“This is the Maugersbury Road,” Charlotte said. “The village officials had to take all the road signs down because of the war, but everyone here knows this road leads to little Maugersbury. Rose and I live on the edge of both towns. Maugersbury is small, just a few houses, some farms, and the manor, really. Now, tell me about you. What do you girls like to do when you’re not in school?”
Emmy nodded to Julia so that she could answer first. “Well, I like going to the park and playing with my paper dolls and I like Thea’s cat and kittens and I like going to my friend Sybil’s house because she has lots of toys. And her own tea set.”
“Well, how lovely.” Charlotte beamed. “My back garden is sort of like a park. I’ve lots of fruit trees and a little pond and a vegetable garden and chickens. And I have the tea set that was mine when I was a little girl. I’ll have to get it out for you.”
“Do you have a pony?” Julia said, as animated as Emmy had seen her since Thea’s kittens were born.
“I don’t have a pony. But my neighbor has two goats. Edgar and Clementine. And my other neighbor has a miniature horse named Jingles.”
Julia whipped her head around to face Emmy, her eyes bright with anticipation and an “I told you so” gleam.
“How about you, Emmeline? What do you like to do?”
“Emmy draws brides,” Julia said before Emmy could answer, her attention fully back on Charlotte.
“She draws brides?”