“WHY DO YOU have my daughter?” Emma asked, barely concealing the fear creeping into her tone.
“I was worried when you were gone so long.” Mrs. Pickering’s brow creased and she studied a small crack at the corner of a tile on the floor. “With the war so close, I thought Olivia might be scared and figured I’d offer to let her come downstairs for a spell to play with Tubby.” Whatever unease played over her expression now shifted to a smile that set her pale blue eyes twinkling. “The two had such a day romping about in the garden. They were both knackered after. Olivia is sleeping on my sofa now. And until you came in the door, Tubby lay right beside her. They were a sight, the two of them.” Mrs. Pickering chuckled softly to herself.
Perhaps Emma ought to have been upset at Mrs. Pickering’s interference, but the idea of Olivia playing with Tubby rather than sitting alone in the flat all day eased some of her guilt for having to leave.
“I’ve recently become employed,” Emma confessed. “At the Boots’ Booklover’s Library on Pelham. Today was my first day.”
The mirth dissolved from Mrs. Pickering’s face. “On account of the rent?”
Heat flooded Emma’s cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”
Mrs. Pickering folded her hands anxiously in front of her. “Is the rent too high?”
It was. And it wasn’t.
The sum was next to nothing compared to what most landlords charged for half the space with a shared water closet for the entire tenement house. And yet even that minimal cost chipped away at Emma’s savings that had no way of growing.
That Mrs. Pickering assumed she couldn’t afford the rent, however, was untenable.
“Not at all,” Emma exclaimed through her burning mortification. “The opportunity for employment presented itself and school will resume soon, so I knew I would have the time on my hands.”
The lie was bitter on her tongue, but the truth was far more caustic.
Mrs. Pickering waved Emma into her flat. This time Tubby was not trying to break through the widening gap in the door, but was on the couch, nestled next to a sleeping Olivia, her cheeks flushed and mouth open. Mrs. Pickering’s living area was lovely, with polished mahogany furnishings and two stuffed chairs of a plum-colored velvet set beside a full bookcase. Tubby’s pet-safe, gas-resistant kennel was off to the side, next to Mrs. Pickering’s gas mask box. The entire room carried the delicate fragrance of roses Emma so often associated with her landlady.
A smile tugged at Emma’s lips. It had been years since Olivia napped. But then, she’d never been one for playing outdoors all day the way she clearly had with Tubby. She’d never connected with the other children at school enough to join them outside in their games. In fact, attending school was what had made her become more subdued. Whatever unfettered and carefree delights she’d enjoyed as a girl had slipped away not long after her lessons began, leaving her more reserved when outside the home. Her marks reflected that same unhappiness with her lessons, but one couldn’t simply not go to school.
Emma followed Mrs. Pickering into her cheerful kitchen, the all-white cabinets and appliances set off by rose-printed wallpaper that matched the curtains draped over the windows in the room. The kitchen in Emma’s flat was nearly identical, though the walls upstairs were a buttery yellow with a green trim that reminded her of mushy peas. And the appliances were not nearly as well appointed.
Mrs. Pickering filled the kettle. “Tea?”
“Please.”
“Olivia still has a little more than two weeks before school resumes, I believe.” Mrs. Pickering spoke as she moved about the kitchen. “How many days a week will you be working?”
Warmth burned in Emma’s cheeks once more and she knew the stain of her guilt was scorched across her fair skin. “Five days. I’m off on weekends.”
“I can watch her, if you like.” Mrs. Pickering busied herself pulling two teacups from the shelf, the fine porcelain painted with a similar rose motif as the wallpaper.
Emma waved off the offer. “That isn’t necessary.”
After all, she and Olivia had gotten by these seven years without help. And Papa had never needed assistance with seeing to Emma. They had been a team the way she and Olivia were now.
The two of them against the world.
“Oh, having Olivia here would be a great favor to me.” Mrs. Pickering turned to Emma. “Tubby has more energy than I can handle, the rascal. I haven’t seen him so happy as he’s been today playing with your Olivia. And she’d be wonderful company for an old woman.”
Before Emma could reply, Mrs. Pickering put up a hand to stop her from protesting. “No need to answer now. Have a think on it.”
The following morning, when Emma left the flat, she wrote a note for Olivia telling her she was welcome to go to Mrs. Pickering’s if she liked. The decision would be best made by Olivia. After all, she was the one most impacted.
The coursework at Boots’ Booklover’s Library was far more intense than Emma could ever have imagined. What she thought would likely take only a few days turned into two weeks’ worth of instruction. In that time, she learned how to properly offer advice to the Class A members who required the experience of having their books curated for them, how to handle potentially difficult patrons, the procedures for ordering books from other Boots’ locations and warehouses, and so, so much more.
Every afternoon she arrived home to find Olivia at Mrs. Pickering’s flat, either playing with Tubby on the floor or enjoying a bit of lemonade in the kitchen with some new baked item that left the elegant kitchen smelling like a confectioner’s haven.
But Emma was never one to accept anything without offering a form of payment in return. In this particular case, it cost her a penny to purchase a copy of The Protection of Your Home Against Air Raids. The thirty-six-page manual contained a litany of precautions one might enlist to prevent damage in the event of an attack.
“Do you think we have enough sand on the floor?” Mrs. Pickering pressed her hands to her lower back and regarded the empty attic late Friday afternoon, its floor layered with a hefty sifting of sand.
They’d spent the last few days after Emma came home from work clearing out the attic per the manual’s instructions. The boxes, trunks, and spare furniture now resided in Mrs. Pickering’s flat, cluttering the formerly neat space.
Once the attic had been divested of its inventory, they had poured an inch of sand over the scuffed wooden floorboards. The manual had suggested two inches, but its warning of “if the floor can withstand the weight” had given them both pause.
Olivia held up her trowel with a grin. “I can add more.” She’d been a little sand pixie, dashing about the place while sprinkling the grains like fairy dust. Her jubilant demeanor at home now extended to any time she was in the presence of Mrs. Pickering and Tubby, a bond of trust drawn tight by their time spent together.
“More sand might be risky,” Emma warned.
Mrs. Pickering pursed her lips and met her gaze with a look of concern. “I think we should leave it as is. And I doubt we’ll have need of the precaution in any case. I’m sure there won’t even be a war and we’ll be lugging Mr. Pickering’s desk back up here by Christmas.”
Emma gave a playful groan, though truly she was not looking forward to hauling the unwieldy mahogany piece upstairs when taking it down had nearly done her in.
Mrs. Pickering laughed, a dry, husky sound. “Or perhaps I might be able to find a place for it in my flat. Permanently.”
“Now can we have lemonade?” Olivia asked hopefully.
Though Mrs. Pickering owed Emma nothing at all for her help with the tenement house, she had promised cold lemonade after each day of their labor. The task of emptying the coal vault below the stairs to transform into a refuge had been the hardest. The filthy work had left a fine dusting of stubborn black silt in its wake. Emma was still finding dark smudges throughout her flat. A good coat of whitewash helped make the former coal vault less messy, but the task was one Emma had no interest in ever repeating.
At least the space would serve as a makeshift shelter in a pinch. If war came.
Or, as the urgency of the government’s insistence on preparations implied, when war came.
Goose bumps prickled over Emma’s arms despite the oppressive heat of the attic.
“Now we will have lemonade.” Mrs. Pickering swept a hand over her gray hair, dusting away grains of sand. “Leave one of the buckets. We’ll need to keep sand on every floor just in case.”
She didn’t add the reason, but she and Emma both understood why after having read the manual from cover to cover. In the event of a bombing, there would be so many in need that the limited rescue services would be overwhelmed. Nottingham’s residents had to be prepared to fight their own fires. Literally.
The prospect was terrifying, but one they had to be prepared to take on.
Mrs. Pickering paused on the third floor on the way down and set a bucket of sand by Mr. Sanderson’s door. Not that the third-floor resident had done a bit of work to help them with their efforts.
As they were turning to continue their descent, the door flew open. Mr. Sanderson prodded the heavy bucket with the toe of his old brown slipper. “What’s this?”
“Sand to douse flames if need be,” Mrs. Pickering replied matter-of-factly.
Mr. Sanderson scoffed, his face lined heavily under his sparse gray hair. “’Twon’t do no good if a bomb hits directly.”
“The odds of that are very slim,” Emma said quickly and cast a reassuring smile at Olivia, who grinned back, full of childish trust.
Mr. Sanderson glanced at Olivia and scrubbed a hand over the top of his head where the pink pate of his scalp showed glossy beneath a halo of thin hair.
Just as he’d opened his mouth to offer some other thoughtless invective, Mrs. Pickering quickly added, “Might I remind you that this building belongs to me, and I would like to ensure the protection of my investment.”
At that, Mr. Sanderson grunted and closed his door on them.
Mrs. Pickering rolled her eyes heavenward and led them down the stairs to her flat. Her usually tidy living space was a sight to behold, now more of an attic than the fashionable home it had been only days before. While likely something of a fire hazard, Tubby enjoyed the clutter as a playground and enthusiastically ran around the abundant chair legs and over piles of boxes.
Olivia dropped to her knees and scrabbled after the dog.
“What do you plan to do with all of this?” Emma asked as she followed Mrs. Pickering into the kitchen.
The late Mr. Pickering’s desk abutted the dining room table like a misplaced appendage and several boxes with Harold Pickering written in neat print on their sides covered the desk’s surface.
“I haven’t the foggiest.” The landlady skirted around the desk with ease, as if it had always been blocking most of her kitchen, and pulled open the larder.
“Do you want some help going through everything?” Emma offered.
“I confess, I don’t even know where to begin,” Mrs. Pickering replied from behind the door before appearing with a pitcher of opaque yellow lemonade. “It’s rubbish mostly, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. Like the old slippers he wore every day, shuffling about the house. I was always on him to lift his feet properly when he walked. But now with him gone, I’d give anything to hear that lazy scuttle over the floors again.”
Her marriage to Mr. Pickering had lasted a good thirty years, but he’d been gone over a decade. She had sold the fine house they’d lived in, opting to remain in the tenement house he’d purchased early in their marriage as an investment. Emma suspected the change in residence had everything to do with fending off loneliness. No doubt the act of Mrs. Pickering sorting through the boxes would be both difficult and painful.
“If you need help, I’m always here,” Emma offered a final time.
“Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Pickering poured a glass of lemonade and Olivia came running as if she’d been summoned by the sound of liquid splashing in the glass. Her sudden appearance was a good reminder of that age-old idiom that little pitchers have big ears.
“Why don’t you take Tubby and have your lemonade outside, Olivia?” Mrs. Pickering suggested, obviously having the same thought.
Olivia carefully carried the glass in one hand and grabbed a small red ball with the other. Tubby leaped into the air in acrobatics of elation.
When the door closed, Mrs. Pickering clicked on the radio. She didn’t like to listen to the wireless when Olivia was nearby in case any terrible war news came on.
News exactly like what was being conveyed now. Through the crackle of static, they listened in horror as the announcer declared Germany had attacked Poland, bombing cities and towns.
“Those poor people,” Mrs. Pickering whispered under her breath.
Yes, indeed those poor people. Had they prepared for bombings like Emma and Mrs. Pickering, doing so out of duty without ever expecting to truly have their efforts tested?
And with an ally so brutally attacked, what would this mean for England?