Twenty-seven
IT was nearing the middle of November before Emmy felt well enough to rise from her sick bed on the parlor sofa and take her meals in the dining room with Charlotte and Rose. The attending physician at the hospital in London had said she was suffering from an advanced case of pneumonia, although Emmy knew it was more than that. She hadn’t the energy to climb the stairs, nor the courage to spend much time in the bedroom that she had shared with Julia.
Charlotte had driven out to Moreton-in-Marsh to inform Mrs. Howell that Emmy had returned, and as Emmy was too weak to accompany Charlotte, she did not have to go. There had been no word on Julia. It was recommended to Charlotte that she apply to be appointed as Emmeline’s legal guardian so that she could make decisions on her behalf until she came of age. She asked Emmy if she was in favor of this and Emmy found it did not matter to her what Charlotte did or didn’t do for Emmeline Downtree. If she thought it made sense, she should do it.
Charlotte didn’t want to rush Emmy back into studies, so she allowed her to read what she wanted as she convalesced, and said that they would pick up on the sciences and mathematics after the Christmas holidays. Charlotte brought home a basket of books to her every Monday, even after she was well enough to go to the library in Stow on her own. Emmy preferred to stay with Rose and leave it to Charlotte to provide her with books to read. She had no desire to be seen in the village. Those who knew Charlotte surely also knew Emmy was that rebellious runaway who had lost her sister in the bombings. Emmy didn’t want anyone looking at her, staring at her, whispering about her. She was Isabel, not that other girl they thought she was. So she stayed at Thistle House unless it was absolutely necessary to go out. If Emmy had to go into town, Charlotte agreed to take her to Moreton, where hardly anybody knew who she was. Visits to the doctor, the dentist, the clothing store, the shoe store, all took place in Moreton where, except to Mrs. Howell, whom Emmy avoided as much as she could, Emmy was viewed as a London refugee named Isabel who was helping an older woman named Charlotte Havelock take care of her handicapped sister, Rose.
On the day that Emmy was to move back into the bedroom upstairs, Charlotte sat Emmy down after breakfast and asked her how she felt about taking in two evacuees, now that she was finally well again. The need for homes in the country was still great and there was room at Thistle House. Emmy was flattered that Charlotte asked, because in truth, she didn’t have to. Emmy’s first reaction was to balk at any kind of intrusion into the carefully scripted world she was rebuilding for herself, but when Charlotte said there was plenty of room for a second bed in her bedroom and that Emmy could join her, which would make the yellow bedroom available, Emmy saw the beauty of Charlotte’s plan. She was handing Emmy a way of staying at Thistle House without having to sleep in the spare bedroom that she had shared with Julia. They both knew her plan was as much to insulate Emmy from the damning weight of her regret as it was to provide a home for evacuees.
When Emmy agreed, Charlotte asked if Emmy wanted to move her things from one room to the other, or if she preferred Charlotte did it. The wardrobe, desk, and bedside tables were still full of Emmy’s and Julia’s things. And the brides box was surely hidden in the crawl space in the yellow room; Emmy was sure of that, though she hadn’t been upstairs yet. Charlotte, who believed the sketches had been lost in the bombings, obviously hadn’t found the box shoved under a bed or stuck in a wardrobe after the girls had left, which meant the crawl space was the only place the box could be. Julia had had no time to hide it anywhere else.
As Charlotte waited for an answer, Emmy realized she wished the box had been lost in the bombings. She wanted it to have been blown to tattered bits. It would’ve been a fitting end to them. Emmy didn’t know whether she had the courage to do what the bombs should have done, for surely that was what she would have to do with those sketches when she had them in her hands again. She knew she couldn’t bear the sight of them, but would she be able destroy them? The burn pile out in the garden would be a willing partner if she was able to just toss them in.
“I’ll take care of it,” Emmy said to Charlotte.
Charlotte nodded and rose to begin making her inquiries.
Emmy headed up the stairs.
The room was cold and cheerless from having no warm souls sleeping in its beds at night. Emmy changed the linens first, stopping a time or two to stare at the little table along the wall as she assessed her readiness to be reunited with that which had parted her from her sister. The box was there; she needed only to crawl inside the narrow space and retrieve it.
She’d save that chore for last.
Emmy took a wicker basket and loaded up Julia’s few clothes, the dolls Charlotte had given her to play with, and the tea set. She put this basket on the floor of a smaller wardrobe in Charlotte’s room that had been emptied for Emmy to use. Then she moved her own things. Her satchel was gone, but she had Mum’s travel bag with the few things she had grabbed from the flat: Julia’s book of fairy tales, the felt-lined box of trinkets, and Geraldine’s hammer.
She hung up Mum’s clothes, which were hers now, put her box of trinkets on the extra bureau Charlotte and she lugged in from Rose’s room, and placed Julia’s book on the bookcase by the window. The hammer she held in her hands for a long time before sliding it between the mattresses of her new bed. She could not see placing it among Charlotte’s tools in the utility cupboard downstairs next to the loo. It wasn’t just a hammer to her. It was something else entirely: a steeled and weighted reminder of what she had been parted from.
Emmy went back into the yellow room and swept and dusted.
The room was clean now, and ready for its new occupants. There was only one thing left to do. She propped the broom up against the wall and then moved the little table away from the wall, revealing the crawl space door. Emmy knelt before it and saw that it was slightly ajar, further proof that Julia had shoved the box inside in a desperate hurry. Emmy pulled the door open and its hinges squeaked a faint protest. She leaned forward on her knees and stuck her head inside, expecting to see the box lying there at an angle after being hastily shoved in.
It wasn’t there.
She dropped to her elbows and crawled halfway inside, letting her eyes adjust to the shadowed light as she felt around. She touched dust-covered piles of books, the frayed top of an embroidered step stool, a hobbyhorse, old shoes, and their button hook.
But no box.
No box.
Emmy withdrew from the darkness and sat back on her bent knees, unable to fathom where else Julia could have hidden it.
A queer ache pulsed inside her at the cruelty of not being able to find the box, but the ache was quickly and surprisingly replaced with relief. She would not have to be the one to destroy the sketches after all. They were gone and it did not matter how. Somehow, the brides had been taken as atonement for her offenses.
She only had to offer the rest of what Emmy had once been.
Emmy had been given what every penitent thief wants more than anything: a merciful way to compensate for what she stole.
She turned her hands over in her lap, empty.
And outside, a light snow began to fall.