CHAPTER 36
September 8, 1940
Harry’s sketch slid under the bedroom door that morning of September 8 and it was one of her favorites so far: Flora running toward something blurry in the foreground. Her hair flew behind her, her arms akimbo. Her unclear destination consisted of rounded objects and pointed tips. It could, Hazel thought staring at it, be anything she wanted it to be: a castle, a mountain, a cathedral.
Before waking, Hazel had been deep within a fuzzy dream. Father Fenelly had been in her house in Bloomsbury, and he’d been laughing and talking to Mum, who flitted around him in a long gown of gossamer and bright blue ribbons. Her hair was so long it swept along the ground. Mum paid no mind to Hazel and Flora, even as they called out for her.
Hazel shook off the odd dream, the last of the night’s shadows, and dropped Harry’s drawing on the dresser for Flora to look at when she awoke. Later, she’d place it into a folder where all the other sketches had gathered—352 of them so far, kept in the same drawer as her stories.
Hazel put on her fuzzy slippers that had by now formed to her feet and entered the sun-drenched kitchen, surprised to find it empty. Even when Bridie had such a bad cold that her nose turned cherry red, she’d been there, stirring porridge, frying sausage, and brewing tea, which she now let Hazel drink each morning from her own flowered china cup they’d found in a thrift store in Oxford on one of their adventures.
That was the thing with Bridie—nothing was an errand or a market run—it was an adventure.
The room was empty.
Something was wrong.
Hazel walked to the sink and stood higher on the balls of her feet to look out the window. The beat-up Flying Nine that always surprised Bridie when it started was gone. Frost licked the window’s edges, beginning to melt with the rising sun. Morning shadows distorted the grass and garden so that, like Harry’s drawing that morning, she could, if she was in the mood, make the shapes become anything she pleased. But she wasn’t in the mood. She wanted to know what was happening, what wasn’t right, what niggled at the edge of the morning.
Hazel turned on the wireless by the kitchen sink.
The announcer’s voice filled the kitchen. “London has been bombed.”
Hazel dropped to a kitchen chair. Even as they all knew it was coming—for why else was she in Binsey?—the truth slammed into her chest. She turned off the radio so Flora would not hear. She waited for Bridie or Mum or anyone to come tell her what was happening. These were the bombs they’d been waiting for, the anticipated explosions that sent them to Binsey a year ago.
Not long after, Flora woke and Hazel toasted some bread for them both. Then came the sound of the car chugging into the drive. Bridie and Harry had driven into town for a newspaper.
Bridie sat them around the fire’s hearth and told Hazel and Flora that at 4 p.m. yesterday the first bombs had whistled from the sky to shatter the streets, homes, cathedrals, and beauty of London. Father Fenelly’s voice had not been a dream—he’d come by the cottage in the morning hours to tell Bridie of the devastation.
Bridie continued with a wavering voice. “Your mum called and sent a message through Father Fenelly to tell us that she is okay, and your home is safe. But I have terribly sad news.”
“Kelty,” Hazel said, knowing it was Kelty. She never should have run off that night to return to her family.
“Well, yes, Kelty is in hospital. She and her mum were walking home from visiting a friend in hospital when a bomb dropped near Willowbridge Road where they were walking, shattering two homes and…” Bridie shuddered. “And igniting a busload of people.”
“And her mum’s okay?” Hazel asked with a clenched feeling in her throat.
“No.”
Ice filled Hazel’s chest, a chill moving down her arms and up her spine making her dizzy.
“Is she hurt?” Hazel hoped for a terrible thing rather than its alternative.
“She was killed.” Bridie’s voice broke and tears fell from her eyes and down the sides of her nose to the creases at the edge of her mouth. She didn’t even wipe them away as if she didn’t know they had fallen.
“Like Papa,” Flora said, so matter-of-fact it cracked Hazel’s heart. Death should never be matter-of-fact. Not one bit.
“I am so sorry,” Bridie said, and took both girls’ hands in her own. “Kelty is in hospital, injured but alive. Nothing life-threatening. From there, she’ll go to her aunt in Lancashire. I’ll try to find out more.”
“She has an aunt?” Hazel asked as if this was what mattered. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t she take Kelty instead of her mum sending her here, to the hag?”
“I don’t think her aunt, her father’s sister, wanted her. But now, she must.”
“Oh, poor Kelty.” Hazel pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Her father, where is he?”
“Right now they say he’s missing in action; last seen in Luxembourg.”
The various names of the places across the warfront meant little to Hazel. She heard them rattled off from her own mum and in the newspapers; foreign names where men were fighting with guns and knives and bombs, places where people died while she sat in a cozy cottage in the countryside of Oxfordshire and made stories of a magical land.
It wasn’t fair or right. She shouldn’t be allowed this life when others suffered so much. “It could have been our mum. It could have been…” Hazel choked on the words and the knowing.
“Bring Kelty here!” Flora said, jumping from the couch.
“Darling, I wish I could, but I can’t. When this is over, we’ll all be together again.”
Hazel cried out, “Mum. I need Mum.”
Three days later, their mum arrived in Binsey, her red-rimmed eyes telling them all they needed to know about London’s horrors. Sixty-three miles away was a whole different world, and Mum didn’t want to talk about it.
Instead she asked about the news in Binsey, oohing and aahing over their schoolwork, the garden Flora had helped Bridie plant for winter vegetables, the stew Hazel made for them all from the recipe Bridie had taught her. Mum said their home was safe and so was she: She rode her bicycle to and from her job at the war offices, and she ran to the air raid shelter in the Tube whenever the sirens whirled through the night air.
Rain fell steadily that evening, drumming on the roof, and soon the last train for London was leaving. Bridie convinced Mum to spend the night on the soft couch, instead departing early the next morning.
In the middle of the night, Hazel was unsure of the time, but the moon wasn’t in her window and the house was silent but for the creaks and whispers in the floors and walls. She crawled next to Mum on the couch and allowed herself to be held the same way she held Flora every night.
Hazel thought of poor Kelty without a mum. Finally she slept, and in the morning, Mum slipped from the couch without waking her. She woke to the sounds of Mum bustling about with Bridie, in preparation to leave and catch the first train.
Hazel knew what she must do. While Mum said goodbye to Flora and finished her tea, Hazel ran into her bedroom and hastily packed her knapsack, attached the rubber mask, and slipped the name tag that hung on a nail next to the dresser mirror over her neck. It was the same tag she’d worn the day she arrived here in Binsey.
When she ran outside, rain pelted her rain jacket. Her wellies sloshed through the wet grass until she reached Mum’s side at the open passenger door of Bridie’s car.
“Take me with you. I need to see Kelty,” Hazel said, her bottom lip trembling in a giveaway that she might cry. They huddled under a bright red umbrella Mum held. Flora and Harry were inside, watching from the cottage’s front door, Harry holding Flora’s hand as she strained against him to join Hazel and their mum.
“It’s too dangerous,” Mum said. “If anything happened to you…” She swallowed and shook her head. “You need to be here for Flora. Be my big girl.”
“Just for the day, Mum. That is all. Take me with you on the train, and I’m grown-up enough to come back alone.”
“No.”
Hazel stomped her wellies; mud splashed, staining the hem of her dress and the edge of the car door. “If you don’t take me, I’ll come anyway. I know the way to Great Ormond Street to the hospital where Kelty is.” She sounded much braver than she felt, her voice strong but her insides jiggling like aspic. She wasn’t actually sure she knew how to get there, despite everything she’d just said. “I need to see Kelty.”
Mum stared at Hazel, Bridie already in the driver’s seat turning on the ignition, once, twice, until it caught. “Okay, but you’re returning to Bridie this afternoon. I will not allow you to spend the night.” Her voice was stern, almost cold. “I’m taking no chances with you.”
“All right, Mum, I promise.”
Hazel opened the back door and crawled into Bridie’s car.