WHEN EMMA ARRIVED at the Booklover’s Library later that morning, Miss Bainbridge called her into the office.
The manageress met her with a smile. “I’m pleased to announce you’ve performed with such exemplary skill and diligence within the lending library that we’ve been given permission to hire more widows.”
Emma straightened in surprise. “I thought no one else knew.”
“They didn’t until the topic came up and I mentioned you and your efforts—not by name, mind you. But my manager was so impressed, he spoke to his manager and on and on, and, well, you’ll be meeting Mrs. Upton today. I’d like your help in training her.”
Mrs. Upton.
Apparently, Emma had done such a bang-up job that future widows were now allowed to be addressed as married women. She might have spoken up then, to fight for her right to wear the ring on her finger, to be called “Mrs.” But the ring had gone cold against her skin long before she had been forced to sell it.
In her time at the Booklover’s Library, she had become more than a man’s wife. More than even a mother. She was a reader, a lover of books who could procure the right story for the right person at the right time. In doing so, she had begun to reclaim who she had once been, and there was a part of her that felt freed by the absence of her ring and married title.
“I look forward to meeting her,” Emma replied with sincerity.
Miss Bainbridge tutted to herself. “The poor dear lost her husband at Dunkirk. Do be kind to her.”
Many women had lost men to Dunkirk. Sons and husbands and fathers. The devastating news was delivered in the worst way—on the printed script of a telegram.
Emma had experienced the agony of losing a father she loved, and a husband she’d relied upon. Even though her life with Arthur had been tumultuous, his loss had still been devastating. “Oh, of course.”
Miss Bainbridge paused with a gentle smile. “I ought to know better than to even ask.”
Several minutes later, Emma found a woman cautiously looking about the lending library, her dark hair rolled back and pinned to reveal her pretty face. Her brows were penciled into two perfect arches and her lips were painted a similar red like the color Margaret wore.
But despite the cosmetics, the telltale bruising of a poor night’s sleep showed at the delicate skin beneath her eyes. She brightened when her gaze caught on Emma. “Miss Taylor?”
Her stare was assessing, though not with shrewd criticism. In the way some women regard another, looking for kindness rather than weighing competition.
Emma offered her most welcoming smile. “Mrs. Upton, I presume.”
“Please do call me Irene. Mrs. Upton is my mother-in-law.” She flashed a quick grin. “She’s a fine woman, watching my little William while I’m working, but I’ve been living in her house since Tom and I wed right before the start of the war. Well...” Her rambling petered off as she shifted her attention to the floor. “Well, I suppose I’ll be there with her for a while longer, until I can afford a place of my own. I can’t believe they hired me here. I heard widowed mothers could never find jobs, except at factories, but I’m too old... Anyway, I took a chance and asked and was shocked when I received notice they meant to take me on.” She twisted her fingers nervously against one another.
“But I’d like to still just be Irene if that’s all the same to you.”
“I was in a similar position as you, and formerly went by Mrs. Taylor.” Emma winked to put Irene at ease, to let her know she was not alone. After all, single parents often did feel completely alone. “And all that’s well and good by me, so long as you call me Emma.”
“I’d like that very much.”
“Well, you won’t like me very much when you find out how much dusting you’ll be tasked with in these early days.” Emma chuckled and led Irene around the library, showing her all the various spots that were hardest to dust, and instructed her on how to be mindful of book placement so she would know their location in case a subscriber asked.
There was something refreshing about not being the newest member of the Booklover’s Library anymore, and knowing that there was another potential ally against Miss Crane’s censure.
That night, when Emma climbed up the stairs of the tenement house after her walk home from work, she did not detect the ever-present droning of the wireless. Her breath caught with excitement and she took the stairs two at a time.
She unlocked the door and threw it open to reveal Olivia curled up on the couch with Anne of Green Gables propped in her small hands.
Emma strode into the flat with a feigned nonchalance. “Is that a good book?”
Olivia startled, then lowered the book, her eyes wide with eager. “It’s so good.” Then she put Mrs. Chatsworth to shame as she detailed every moment Emma had missed since she stopped reading. “I can’t read as fast as you, but I don’t mind.”
“Do you like reading on your own?” Emma carried her small shopping bag from the grocer’s into the kitchen. There wasn’t much to be had that day in the way of meat, but Emma would make do, especially since Mrs. Pickering’s garden out front yielded so many vegetables that summer. Magazines these days were all about new recipes, creating something from nothing, but Emma had been doing that for years. The ration was just one more hurdle to tenaciously overcome.
“I do enjoy reading to myself,” Olivia said. “It’s like my brain drinking in something good, like warm chocolate milk.”
Emma always loved the odd phrasings her daughter used to describe the world around her. That unique context gave Emma insight to life through Olivia’s eyes in the most wonderful ways. “I think that sounds delightful.”
As Emma prepared dinner, Olivia didn’t bother with the wireless. Instead, she immediately lifted the book and slipped back onto the farm at Cuthbert place with Anne.
Emma’s father had been right—every person just needed the right book to make them a reader.
Several weeks later, Emma climbed the stairs to her flat, only this time the silence in the stairwell was not uncommon. Sure enough, when she opened the door, there was Olivia, tucked into the right-hand corner of the couch, her face obscured by a green linen-bound book with a Booklover’s Library badge marking its cover.
As it turned out, Olivia was not just any kind of reader. She was a voracious reader.
“Hullo, Olivia,” Emma called out in a singsong voice.
Olivia lowered the book with a grin on her face, revealing the canine on the other side now missing. At least her new teeth seemed to be growing as fast as her old ones were falling out. “Good day at the Booklover’s Library?”
Even as she spoke, she peered at Emma’s handbag for the telltale shape of a book jutting out.
Emma coyly hid her handbag. “I did. And I might have a surprise for you if you’ve been well-behaved.”
“I’m always well-behaved.” Olivia tilted her head pensively. “Wistful, but well-behaved.”
“‘Wistful,’ that’s a good word.”
Olivia straightened up where she’d been slumped against the soft back of the sofa, clearly delighted with the praise, but then, then her brow furrowed. “What does ‘becoming’ mean? Not in the way something turns into something else, but another meaning.”
Emma swirled her mac off the coatrack and onto her shoulders like a cape and swept into the living area like an actress gliding onto the stage. “When someone, or something, is lovely.” She batted her lashes.
Olivia giggled. “You are always becoming, Mum.”
“As are you, darling Olive.”
Nearly every day, there was a new word Olivia asked about. What did “ingenuously” mean? What color was “alabaster”? What precisely was an “epoch”? The latter of which she pronounced ee-potch, learning the very important lesson that vocabulary words read in one’s mind can be used properly in speech, but may not be pronounced correctly.
It was a beautiful thing seeing Olivia, who had struggled for so long in school, embracing learning. And in the best way possible—through the enjoyment of a story.
Emma pulled out the week’s rations and surveyed the freshly picked summer vegetables Mrs. Pickering harvested from their narrow garden to assemble dinner. That was the part of their evening when Olivia talked. And talked. And talked. She regaled Emma in vivid detail with everything she’d read, likely speaking more words than were written in Anne of Avonlea.
Truth be told, Emma had wondered if the book about Anne growing up to become a schoolmistress would hold any appeal, especially given Olivia’s disinterest in school. Surprisingly, it did. She was just as riveted by the story of Anne as an adult coming into her career as Olivia had been by Anne’s life as an orphaned little girl seeking a home.
That night when they went to bed, Olivia regarded Emma thoughtfully. “Since we both love books, that makes us kindred spirits.”
“Indeed, it does.” Emma ruffled Olivia’s hair. “Your grandfather loved to read. We even had a bookshop.”
“You owned a bookshop?” Olivia’s mouth fell open, a reader imagining a trove of treasure.
“We lived above it,” Emma replied.
“And that also burned down with your home?” Olivia surmised solemnly.
Emma nodded. She’d mentioned that she’d lived through a fire that destroyed their home when she was young, but she’d kept the worst of the details from Olivia. Mentioning the bookshop was something Emma hadn’t been ready to bring up then.
“Your father loved to read too.” Emma had forgotten that part of Arthur, how much he’d enjoyed talking about books with a similar enthusiasm as Olivia. But Emma had still been too raw from her father’s death, and the tender, vulnerable parts of her couldn’t stand even the lightest touch of memories of him.
Arthur had been left to read alone, to think about those books alone. The realization struck her then that in many ways, she had not given their marriage the chance to blossom.
It was curious how the day-to-day of life could sometimes bury the past.
Olivia perked up. “My father loved to read?”
Emma nodded.
“Do you think he’d be proud of me?” Olivia pressed her lips together as she sometimes did when she was anxious.
“I know he would be.” Emma pressed a kiss to her daughter’s brow and snuggled her close. “Just as I am.”
Emma didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when the world beneath her shuddered violently. Olivia screamed and clawed at her even as Emma tried to gather the frantic writhing limbs of her daughter into her arms.
Everything was dark, leaving them blind. Fear blared in the back of her mind. Hitler was consuming all in his path, and they were next.
There hadn’t been an air raid siren.
Why hadn’t there been an air raid siren?
Emma snatched up the torch she left by her bed after the first air raid siren went off last September following the declaration of war. At the press of a button, a beam of light cut through the dark.
The rumbling beneath them did not still. Something in the kitchen popped to the ground with a shatter.
“We’re going to die,” Olivia screamed and held on to Emma so fiercely, her skinny arms shook with effort. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
The panic in Olivia’s voice set loose a primal protectiveness in Emma, fortifying her. “Shhh, it’s all right,” Emma soothed, her tone emollient despite the erratic thrum of her own pulse.
The floor continued to tremble and rock.
This was no bomb.
But nor was it normal.
Carrying Olivia, Emma rushed to the stairwell as Mrs. Pickering called to her amid Tubby’s frantic barking.
“Mr. Sanderson,” Emma cried.
Above, the sound of the door opening echoed down the corridor. “Do you need my help?”
Emma held her shivering daughter. “No, but it isn’t safe.”
“So I should go into those flimsy shelters?” He scoffed. “They don’t even have mortar.” The sound of the door being closed abruptly echoed down the stairwell.
“Outside now,” Mrs. Pickering shouted.
She waited at the bottom of the stairs, as if fearful of leaving Emma and Olivia behind, then shepherded them into the summer night along with Tubby. They had agreed not to bother with the coal bin, not when the house falling in on them would kill them as surely as a bomb.
Others were already outside their tenement houses, their faces reflecting the same fear and confusion that crackled through Emma.
Though the quaking ground went still at last, they all swept into the large, blocky buildings in the middle of the street, a mishmash of pajamas, rolled hair, slippers, and bare feet. A row of narrow benches ran parallel on either side of the shelter. Emma pulled Olivia into her lap as Mrs. Pickering did likewise with her large handbag, which contained Tubby secreted inside.
No sooner had they sat down than the trembling started once more—without an air raid siren to warn them. The bricks shifted against one another, yielding a cloud of sifting dust, and Emma couldn’t help but recall what Mr. Sanderson had said about the lack of mortar. Upon examination, there was some, but very little, as though the builders had been conserving the precious resource.
Perhaps at the cost of people’s lives.
The paper the next evening cited an earthquake, followed by an aftershock. While knowing Nottingham hadn’t been attacked brought relief, the terror had been too close for comfort. Especially in light of Olivia’s reaction.
That her daughter had been so fearful told Emma the time had come to do something she’d been putting off since the start of the war. Something she didn’t think she would ever do in a million years.
It was time to connect with her in-laws, to see if they would be willing to take Olivia into their home in Chester. Not now, but should evacuation become necessary.