Eighteen
EMMY rushed as quickly as her legs could take her back to Knightsbridge station and then sailed down the stairs to the train tracks. It was just a few minutes before four thirty. If a train came quickly, she could be at Oxford Circus station within ten minutes. She would have to run to Mrs. Billingsley’s home a few blocks away to catch Mum before she left at five o’clock. But she had to try.
Emmy knew if she caught Mum as she was getting off work, she could prepare her for coming home to Julia on her sofa. She could also use the time they would be together in public transit to appeal to her. Mum’s main reason for Emmy’s accompanying Julia to Gloucestershire in the evacuation was to make sure Julia didn’t end up in a terrible placement with ogres for caregivers. Mum had nothing to worry about now. Charlotte was every inch the ideal foster mother.
There was no reason for Mum to decline the Dabneys’ kind offer except for spite. Mum had her flaws, but malice was not one of them.
If Emmy could get her to agree, then perhaps a few years down the road, when the war was long over, Emmy’s gowns would be hanging in a lovely boutique. She would have the money to get Mum out of whatever degrading situation she was trapped in. Emmy could get them all a nice flat on a quiet street and Mum wouldn’t have to be a kitchen maid anymore. She could work in the boutique with Emmy. Julia could, too. The three of them would be surrounded by lace and loveliness and happy young women shopping for the day when they would look like and feel like princesses.
These thoughts propelled Emmy as she switched trains for the Oxford Circus station and then sprinted for Mrs. Billingsley’s home off Regent Street. She had been to the home only once before. The previous Christmas, Mrs. Billingsley had invited her staff for a tea party on Boxing Day. Instead of serving, Mum got to sit in the parlor while hired hands poured tea and passed around platters of sweets and sandwiches. Emmy wasn’t entirely sure she could find the house again, but she would ring the bell on every doorstep on the block before she’d give up.
When she turned the corner onto Regent Street, Emmy scanned the homes, at once certain that the glistening gray mansion with ironwork on every window halfway down the block was Mrs. Billingsley’s. Relief flooded her; it was twenty minutes to five. Plenty of time.
Emmy rang the bell and waited, using the seconds to catch her breath. The door was opened by a woman Emmy had met on Boxing Day nearly nine months before. She remembered the woman’s name was Gladys. She seemed quite surprised to see Emmy.
“Hello. I’m Emmeline Downtree,” Emmy said. “I am wondering if I might wait for my mother, Annie Downtree, to get off work?”
“Oh, my gracious. Is everything all right? I thought you and your little sister had been sent to the countryside.”
Emmy’s breath still came in ragged swells. “No. Yes. I mean, yes, everything is all right. We just . . . We just had to make a trip into London today to take care of a few errands. May I wait for her, please?”
“I’m afraid she went home early today. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“She’s left already?” Emmy’s rapidly beating heart did a somersault. Of all the days Mum had to leave early, it had to be today?
“Yes. I’m afraid so. She left at four. Maybe even before. I think she—”
But Gladys didn’t finish her sentence. Sirens suddenly pierced the air. The sirens never sounded during the day and so the two stood there dumbfounded for a moment, as if they had no idea what the strange keening meant. The Luftwaffe didn’t fly during the day when antiaircraft guns could pick the planes off. The Luftwaffe flew at night, using darkness as a cover. Yet the sirens wailed.
“What the devil—” But Gladys’s words were cut short by a series of loud booms that punched the air somewhere in the distance. Both women turned toward the sound. And then there were more thundering wallops. Smoke began to rise from the direction of the Thames, south and east of where they stood.
Several seconds passed before Emmy realized the sounds she was hearing were bombs. Dropped in daylight.
As she processed this knowledge, more bombs fell. Gladys reached for her. “Come inside, dear! We’ve a cellar!”
Emmy instinctively stepped back from her grasp. “I have to get home.” Emmy turned from her even as Gladys yelled for her to come back.
“You can’t leave now!” the woman shouted.
But Emmy was already off the doorstep, out the gate, and then running back the way she had come. And all the while the sirens kept wailing, the horizon ahead kept filling with smoke, and a cacophony of explosions kept rocking the air in the distance.
She could no longer hear Gladys bellowing for her to return. She was only barely aware of the other people on the sidewalk who, like her, were rushing to be somewhere. Emmy’s sole focus was getting on a train headed southeast toward home.
Emmy rounded a corner and nearly ran into a man coming from the opposite direction. They skipped the courtesies due each other and kept charging ahead. Emmy could see the steps to the Underground.
As she closed the distance, she heard herself saying aloud, “Thank God, thank God, thank God.”
Thank God Mum had left early. A few moments earlier, Emmy had been perturbed that Mum wasn’t at Mrs. Billingsley’s, and now she was nearly crying with relief that she had gone home at four.
That meant Julia wasn’t alone.
Thank God Julia wasn’t alone.
People were cramming themselves onto the steps of the station to get belowground. Emmy pushed her way forward down the stairs to get on a train. Surely one or two were still running. The sirens had been wailing for only ten minutes. She pressed her way to the tracks, surrounded on all sides by women with shopping bags, men with briefcases, grocers and bus drivers, wardens and waitresses, bankers and beggars.
She could feel the incoming rush of air as a train approached and the people moved forward as one, crushing her to the wall so that she could not take a step toward it. As soon as the train slowed to a stop, the people inside the station were at its doors. When they slid open, a few of the people on the train attempted to disembark.