I wish you were the woman, I the man;
I’d get you over your sweet shudderings
“SONNET XXXVII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
November 1953
England embraced us with cold, foggy arms. Douglas had turned eight years old on the Britannic in the midst of a gale fierce and wild. He’d clung to me and wondered in dramatic fashion if we would make it to the port alive. Well, we did. Alive and bedraggled and quite nervous.
Life is ahead.
Whatever dreams or fantasies I’d formulated of our romantic arrival in England evaporated in the soggy air as Davy stood on the dock and declared, “I don’t like it here. It’s ugly and cold.”
I’d arranged for us to stay at Avoca House Hotel, near Phyl and her son, Robyn, in the convenient London neighborhood I’d already come to know. When we arrived, Davy clung to me in fear and Douglas was wide-eyed with hesitant wonder. My sons hid behind me as we entered the boarding house, seeking tea and biscuits on our first morning.
“Mommy, I want to go home.” Davy’s voice cracked under the exhaustion and unfamiliarity.
“Davy.” I cupped his chin in my hands as the clerk came to check us in and give us our key. “This is home.”
“No,” he said. “Our real home.”
“Love, sometimes we ache for what is familiar even though there is something better out there for us. Just give London a chance.”
“What about school and friends and Crum Elbow Creek?” His eyes overflowed with tears, and my own rose also. Would heartbreak ever end?
“We will find a new school and new friends. And wait until you see the pond behind Mr. Lewis’s house. You know what he told me one time? That sometimes we want to stay and goof off in a mud pit when God has an entire seashore for us to play in. England is our new seashore.”
I dangled the Kilns like bait for my little fishes, but I too was scared to death as I wondered what I had done.
Life is ahead.
That first week hit us all hard. We’d rushed straight from the hotel to Phyl’s house to discover that Bill hadn’t sent the money he’d promised. Because of the Aliens Order of 1920, I needed to register as a foreign national, which meant I couldn’t job hunt until I heard from the government. In my mind I calculated and recalculated the money I had and how long it would last: not long was the answer. Had I been too impetuous? Had I left America too soon?
I shoved fear from my mind, stretched food as far as I could, and didn’t let on that I was as terrified as I’d ever been. Was I as big a fool as Bill said I was? No. It had been change or die—and I’d decided there was too much to live for.
When I saw Jack the next month I could ask him for money, but I was loath to do so. I wanted so much from him, but none of it was material.
I filled our time, the boys and mine, with sight-seeing and a forced cheerfulness to try and help them adjust. We trounced through Westminster Abbey, and I remembered the atrocious afternoon when I’d gone there on my knees, repenting of my sins and wanting to go home and fix what remained. That had been only one year ago. As the boys trailed along behind me, I stared at the stained glass window where Jesus peered down at me. Silently I asked him, Did I do right by all of us?
No answer came.
Buckingham Palace with its statues and gardens fascinated both boys, and they stared at the Queen’s Guard—soldiers in red with their furry black hats—motionless and statuesque.
“They’re like the statues at the White Witch’s castle,” Douglas whispered.
“But not frozen,” I countered and tugged on his earmuff hat to pull it down.
“They look frozen to me.”
“But they aren’t,” I told him. “When their shift is over, they walk off just like you or me, to their homes and their families and their beer.” I laughed, catching the sight of a soldier, and swore I saw the corner of his mouth move the tiniest bit toward a smile.
It was in Trafalgar Square that a pigeon landed on Douglas’s shoulder, and he shrieked. We collapsed, laughing, and sat on the curb. The fountain in the middle of the square, larger than most swimming pools I’d ever seen, sprayed water, and Douglas asked if anyone ever jumped into it.
“Try it,” I said.
“You first,” he joshed in return.
Davy noticed the grand carved lions—four of them—on Nelson’s Column. “Oh, look,” he said, pointing to one. “Aslan.”
“Nope. Just another lion. But I can tell you a secret I know about this one,” I said. “The Nazis were going to take it back with them if they won the war. Lions are beloved that way.”
“The war,” Douglas said with a low voice. “It was really here.”
“It really was,” I told him. “It wasn’t just something you read about in books.”
It was later that day when Davy asked what must have been niggling at him. “What will we do about school? Don’t we have to go? All we’ve done is play. Not that I mind very much.” He was right—we’d been to the zoo and the museums, the aquarium and the parks.
“I’ve been thinking quite a lot about that, darling, and I think boarding school is what is best for you both. Here they call it public school.”
“No, Mommy,” Davy said. “I don’t want to leave you again.” He set his fists on his waist, looking like such a man in his buttoned jacket and furry hat.
I shifted his hat on his head. “It’s not leaving me at all. You come home for all the holidays and all the summer. Any school I choose will only be a short train ride away. Tomorrow we’re having lunch with a woman whose son went to one of the schools I’m looking at. Mrs. Travers.” I ran my hand through Davy’s hair, straightened his crooked glasses. “She wrote Mary Poppins and she has a son your same age, nine years old. I bet he can tell you how wonderful it all is.”
He stopped moving and looked pointedly at me. “I won’t think it’s wonderful.”
I kissed the top of his head, which seemed to be the only answer I had lately.
When we returned home that evening, worn-out and hungry, the innkeeper of Avoco House entered the kitchen. Mrs. Bagley had her hair wrapped in a bright-red handkerchief and her robe buttoned tight with a belt pulled into a knot that looked too strained to hold.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Gresham,” she said with her crinkled smile that had become familiar in a homey way.
“Good afternoon to you in return.” I slipped off my coat and hat to smile at her as the boys and I sat at the small oak table for afternoon tea and biscuits.
Mrs. Bagley sat with us. Her double chin bobbled up and down with her smile and nod. Her warm brown eyes, set deeply in the folds of her eyelids, seemed to see right through me. “You must be very tired, my dears, from all the travel and adjustments.”
“I can’t even begin to tell you,” I said and exhaled, relaxed. “But there’s much to be done, and honestly, Mrs. Bagley, I don’t believe I can afford to stay here at the inn for much longer.”
“Tell me, dear, what is your situation?”
I paused in embarrassment, but then relinquished the truth to her kind eyes. “I’m going through a terrible divorce and can’t yet lawfully search for a job. Right now I’m a single mother without enough money.” I glanced at Douglas and Davy and didn’t elaborate.
Mrs. Bagley’s downcast eyes filled with understanding. “I have been in your spot.” She rubbed her face as if the memory itched. “Almost thirty years ago I was alone with a young daughter and baby son. I’m here to tell you that it was most awful, but we rose from those ashes and were better for it.” She punctuated her remarks with another firm nod. “Listen, Mrs. Gresham, I have a townhome annex for twelve guineas a month. Would you like to see if it is satisfactory for you?” She smiled at Davy and Douglas, who moved closer to my side.
I calculated in my mind: that was thirty-six dollars. It was less than what I paid now and a tad more than I could afford. But I could find a job. Bill had finally sent sixty dollars, and if I stretched I could make it work.
“Yes,” I said. “Please. I have searched, but no one wants to take in a boarder with two young boys.”
“I know,” she said. “I do know.”
The brief walk to the annex was cold and rainy, an omen I ignored. But when Mrs. Bagley opened the doorway to the rooms, I was flooded with relief. I remembered, with such remorse and melancholy, the first time Bill and I had walked into our house in Staatsburg, chock-full of dreams with our babies and our money and our optimism. But as I walked through the front door of the Avoco House annex, my dreams had tapered down to the most simple: peace, safety, and rest in God.
I walked through the front door and into the square living area with high molded plaster ceilings, a room the same size as our living room in Staatsburg. And it was furnished! There was a woman, short and bundled in a coat, her hat pulled low over a weary face with a broad smile, standing at the far end of the room. I startled and jumped back before I ripped into laughter. I pointed. “I thought that was someone in the house.” The image pointed back at me from a floor-to-ceiling built-in mirror surrounded by ornate trim.
Mrs. Bagley laughed also. “Yes, that has happened before.”
“This is a beautiful duplex.” I exhaled in relief.
“Well, let’s show you around.”
We walked to the far side of the room, and my attention shifted as my hand flew over my mouth, stifling my cry. “A grand piano.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Bagley said. “We can have it removed if you’d like.”
I didn’t answer but went straight to it, lifted its cover, and ran a quick scale, the out-of-tune instrument rising to life beneath my hands. “No,” I said. “Please leave it here.”
“We will have music,” Davy said to Douglas, serious and sure.
Mrs. Bagley smiled. As we walked down the hall she told us, “It’s heated by gas. No shoveling coal here.”
“What a relief that will be,” I said quietly.
“There is daily housekeeping from the inn with linens and bed making. Breakfast and lunch are across the street at the main, and you have a small kitchen, which you share with the other residents.” She pointed to a door. “Down there—that’s where the shared bathrooms are as well.”
Off the side of the living room sat a small table and a counter with a gas ring for light cooking if I didn’t want to venture to the kitchen. There were two bedrooms, one for the boys at the front of the house and mine in the back. Davy walked into their room first, running to the high bed and turning to me with laughter. “How does a boy get into this bed?”
“Why, I think he has to jump.” I feigned a crouched position.
With a laugh, Davy jumped onto one of the wooden four-poster single beds with its cream bedspread and single pillow.
In one fell swoop, I imagined our life in that house. I saw the boys’ clothes and books scattered around the bedroom with its high ceilings and windows facing out to the street. I heard the piano music and laughter. I saw us cuddled together reading and talking.
“This way to your room,” Mrs. Bagley said.
Davy jumped from the bed and Douglas followed, down the hallway with its white paint and detailed moldings. I walked into a bedroom where a queen-size bed dominated the center of the room. A brass chandelier surrounded by an ornate and gilded medallion was lit by only one bulb; the other four were out. There was a dark wooden dresser with six drawers and a cracked mirror hanging over it. I imagined framed photos of our new little family, of London and Oxford, sitting on it along with my hairbrush and bottles of cosmetics. I was already living in the bedroom I hadn’t yet moved into.
Back in the main room, I spied the French doors that opened to the backyard, or what might pass for a backyard but was merely a courtyard of dried and deadened plants. But that didn’t matter. I knew how to plant a garden; I knew how to make it more than it appeared. I turned around to face Mrs. Bagley with tears puddling in my eyes. I reached to take a swipe, knocking my tortoiseshell glasses off my face and onto the floor. Davy picked them up and handed them to me.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said. “This is a home. And we three most desperately need a home.”
She took both my hands and held them in hers. “You are welcome,” she said. “I once needed the same, and we must all help one another.”
The boys and I moved in the next morning. We unpacked our things and then settled into our bedrooms for naps. We all fell into a sleep so deep and dreamless it was as if we’d been waiting for it. When I awoke, the boys were still facedown in their clothes with the roar and honk of London traffic outside their windows.
I let them be and settled down at the tiny kitchen table, where I started a letter to Bill. I had agreed to rent this annex, but I also knew the facts: I didn’t have enough money to make it if he didn’t send money or I didn’t make some myself. We’d made it this far: the house sold, the divorce moving forward, the ocean crossing with my boys, and now a place to live. One step and then another and then another.
I would be brave enough; I must.
Dear Bill,
You cannot do this to your boys. You must not deprive them of your money to punish me. I’ve decided that they must go to public school here . . .
I lifted my pen as a rustling came from the front room.
“Mommy?” Davy’s voice called out.
As I jumped up, a shot of pain from my left hip sent me crashing into the table. I shook it off and ran to his voice.
“Yes, my dear?” I asked as I entered, the late-afternoon sun rushing into the room in the evening of foggy London, all muted and gray flannel.
“Where am I?” He sat in his little bed, rubbing at his face.
Douglas, in the bed next to him, stirred also and sat, looking around. “We’re in our new room in London.”
“Yes.” Davy dropped back onto his pillow. “I just forgot.”
I hopped onto Davy’s bed. He snuggled into my softness. How had I left them for even a moment? The curdling conscience and anxiety I’d had last year had not been for missing Bill. It was for my children.
Douglas thumped down from his bed and wandered to the window, pulling aside the damask curtain to stare out at the streetscape. “Does it stay foggy all the time?”
The disappointment in his voice made my heart squeeze tight.
“No, darling. In fact, I only saw it once when I was here last time. When it clears, and spring arrives, you will think you are in a land of fairies. It is the most beautiful country in all the world.”
“You can’t know that,” Douglas said and turned to me, dropping the curtain to fall back over the window.
“Oh yes, I can.” I laughed and jumped from the bed to hug him close. “Just you wait and see.”
“Mr. Lewis’s house will be like that too,” Davy said.
“Yes, yes, it will,” I agreed.
Douglas walked toward us and rubbed his stomach. “I’m hungry.”
“Well then, I have some mulligatawny soup. We can heat it on our new gas circle.”
“I don’t like that stuff,” Davy said in a defiant voice. “I heard you tell Mrs. Bagley that we don’t have money and you can’t get a job yet. Do we have enough money for something else?”
“The money will come, Davy. We will find a way. We always find a way. God is with us; I know that.”
“How can you know that?” His face tightened.
I closed my eyes; I reached inside for the calm, centered space—around the corner from my ego, bypassing my grasping need and fear, and then opened my eyes to look directly at my son. “I can’t know, not like that. But I trust.”