There weren’t any hounds now. Instead we chased a trail of scraps of paper, strewn by Fred from horseback a couple of hours beforehand. Lord Thorton led the way. Maggie and I held our ponies until the field cleared. As juniors we had to ride in the rear.
The galloping horses made Butter wild. He wanted to race. I held him tighter while he fought me, snatching at the bit. Sweat streaked his sides. I braced my hands against his neck. “Stop it, stop it,” I said to him. “You idiot, behave!”
Butter tossed his head. He danced sideways. He jigged.
“Let him go,” Maggie said. “Let him run a little, he’ll settle down.”
I let him run, but I still had to grip the reins so hard my fingers hurt. I’d never known Butter to misbehave.
“You’re winding him up!” Maggie said. “Relax!”
I couldn’t relax. I didn’t dare. A rabbit darted out from under Butter’s hooves, startling me more than it startled Butter. My hands hurt. My breath hurt in my chest. The wind forced tears from my eyes.
We came to a big ditch full of water. Ivy plonked into it and waded through. Butter hesitated, then leaped. I flew with him, up, out of the saddle, miles from the saddle. He landed on the ditch’s far side. I kept going.
I dropped the reins, pulled my arms in, and took the fall on my shoulder like Lady Thorton had said. I rolled across the grass, unhurt. Butter pranced in place, his feet tangled in the dangling reins. He’d break the reins next, the wretched pony. I scrambled to my feet.
Jonathan Thorton stopped Oban at Butter’s side. “Easy,” he said to Butter. To me he said, “Are you all right?”
I nodded. I could feel my face flame. It had been months since I’d last fallen off—since before the hospital.
Jonathan dismounted. He untangled Butter and offered me a leg up.
“I can do it myself,” I said.
“Of course you can,” he agreed. “I’m just trying to act the gentleman.”
I didn’t mean to be prickly at him. “I’m sorry.” I let him toss me back into Butter’s saddle.
“Don’t be,” he said. “We don’t call it the Champagne Ditch for nothing.”
I didn’t know what he meant.
“That ditch is famous for getting people off. And if you fall off during a hunt you have to buy a bottle of Champagne for the masters.” He grinned. “Don’t worry. I don’t think the paper chase counts. Besides, you’re a little young for Champagne.”
I frowned at him. I didn’t know the word Champagne.
“Fizzy wine,” Maggie said helpfully. “French stuff. I’ve had a sip, it’s lovely.” Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “A sip,” Maggie said.
The other riders had left us far behind. We started after them at an easy canter. Butter quit fighting; either he was finally tired or he was sorry he’d dumped me. Probably tired.
“Where’d you learn to ride?” Jonathan asked.
“Here,” I said. “Fred teaches me.” Then I laughed, remembering. “I actually started with your horse. Oban. He jumped into our field. I jumped him out again.”
Jonathan stared. “That was you?”
“That was me,” I said. It had been the day I first met Maggie, the day she whacked her head.
“But Mum said that was an evacuee,” Jonathan said. “A lame little girl from the slums. She made it sound like an accident you weren’t killed.”
“It probably was an accident. I didn’t know anything.” I added, “I’m not lame.”
“I see that,” Jonathan said.
“I was never lame,” I said.
Maggie frowned at me but didn’t say anything. Neither did Jonathan.
“Your horse is lovely,” I said, to fill the odd silence.
Jonathan grinned. “My sister despises him.”
“I know,” I said, “but I love him. He didn’t dump me when he could have. And he’s beautiful.” Oban had a grace and elegance Butter could never touch. It was like the difference between the Honorable Margaret Thorton and me.
We cantered on, jumping a stile and then another smaller ditch. Butter had settled, and I felt safer riding between Jonathan and Maggie.
“I have to go back to the airfield tomorrow,” Jonathan said, “but next time I’m on leave we’ll ride out together. The two of you and me, just us three.”
“Do you mean that?” I asked.
His brown eyes looked directly into mine. “Word of honor,” he said.
• • •
The rest of the riders had paused at the far end of the field. Jonathan trotted toward some of his friends. I said to Maggie, “You never told me he was so nice.”
She shook her head at me. “I never knew he was.” Then she said, “Why’d you say you were never lame? He knows all about your clubfoot and your surgery.”
I shrugged. I didn’t know why. “I’m not lame,” I said.
It wasn’t entirely true. I knew I still limped some even now. But all those words—lame, crippled, nobbut a disgrace. I wanted to forget I’d ever been that girl.
• • •
After the chase, the Thortons hosted what they called a breakfast even though we didn’t start eating it until midafternoon. “Any meal you have after hunting is called a breakfast,” Maggie said. “It doesn’t make sense to me either.” Maggie said if there wasn’t a war on we would be eating steak and kidney pie, but instead we had a variation on Lord Woolton pie, a particularly awful wartime dish of baked vegetables thickened with oatmeal.
It was nearly full dark by the time I got home. Susan had put the blackout up by herself, and she and Jamie were snug by the fire. She smiled when I came in. “Did you enjoy it?”
I took off my filthy boots in the entry. I nodded to Susan, smiling back. She got up and came toward me.
“I’ve come up with the perfect gift for you,” she said. She handed me a slip of paper. “Here. Happy Christmas.”
I padded into the room and pushed Jamie over so I could sit on the sofa. I unfolded Susan’s paper. In large, clearly printed letters, it read: “Transfer of ownership: the pony named Butter, from Susan Elisabeth Smith to Ada Maria Smith. December 26, 1940.”
Chapter 13
Butter.
To Ada Maria Smith.
To me.
I swallowed. I said, “If you’re joking, it isn’t funny.”
“Why would I be joking?” asked Susan.
I said, “And no one can take him away?”
“No,” Susan said. “No matter what.”
I said, “What if something happens and I can’t take care of him?”
Susan said, “I’ll help you. I’m your guardian. We’ll manage.”
“What if something happens to you?”
“Nothing will happen to me.”
She didn’t know that.
“We’ll manage,” Susan said. “We’ve managed so far.”
I closed my fingers around the paper. I whispered, “Thank you.” Then I turned and ran up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Susan yelled.
“I’m putting this in the box with my birth certificate!”
• • •
Susan had shown me how to look up words in my dictionary. I stayed up in bed that night with my light on, reading.
Guardian: one who guards, protects, or preserves; a keeper, defender; sometimes = guardian angel.
Guardian angel: an angel conceived as watching over or protecting a particular person or place.
Angel: A spiritual being believed to act as an attendant, agent, or messenger of God, conventionally represented in human form with wings and a long robe.
Honestly, I had no idea what any of that meant. Guardian was someone who guards, sure. That made sense; it was what I expected. But humans with wings? Messengers of God? Not so much.
Ward. That word w
as complicated. It meant the rooms of a hospital, like where I’d stayed after my surgery. It meant a division of a city or a town. It meant a minor under care of a guardian—that was me—but then it said, “archaic: to guard.”
Archaic: belonging to the past.
• • •
The next morning, I asked Susan, “Do you know anyone with a guardian angel?”
She didn’t look up from slicing bread. “Maybe,” she said. “It’s one of those odd religious ideas. Sounds nice but doesn’t actually matter.”
I wished she’d look at me. “Have you ever seen one?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’d be rather surprised if I did. Set the table, please. Where’s Jamie?”
Once we’d sat down to breakfast I said, “You call Jamie and me your wards. The word ward used to mean the thing that did the guarding.”
This time Susan gave me her attention. “Have you been reading your dictionary?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Well, the key part of what you just said is used to mean. Ward used to mean the thing that did the guarding. Now it means the girl who gets to be guarded and who therefore doesn’t have to spend quite so much energy worrying.”
Jamie said, “Why can’t you just be our mum?”
I said, “Because she isn’t.”
“Ada,” Susan said, “I really don’t mind Jamie calling me Mum.”
I said, “I’d rather be your ward. I want to help you.”
Susan paused to sip her tea. She said, “You’ve been very strong your whole life, Ada. You get to be guarded now. You get to feel safe.”
“Huh,” I said. “I’m supposed to feel safe?”
“Of course.”
I never did. Never once. Anything could happen, anytime—Mam’s death proved it. “Do you feel safe?” I asked her.
She looked back in surprise. “I do,” she said. “I mean, for a bit there, with the air raids, and when we thought the invasion was coming, and that night in London—but mostly, yes.”
“But Becky died,” I said. “She left you all alone.”
“That made me sad,” she said. “It still makes me sad. But not unsafe.”
I said, “Can I go fire-watching?” Susan had done a shift already. She’d stood in the church steeple for two hours in the dead of the night. She’d watched for fires and protected the village.
Susan looked me up and down. She said, “I think that’s an excellent idea.”
Chapter 14
The WVS was pleased to let me help fire-watch, but they said it would take a few weeks to get me onto the rota. On Saturday, in daylight, Susan took Jamie and me up the church steeple so I’d know where to go and what to do. Right inside the church was a small door near the vestibule that I’d never noticed before. Behind it rose a narrow, ancient staircase made of chipped, uneven stone.
Susan led. Jamie followed. I went last, slowly and carefully, picking my way. I could never have climbed stairs like these before my surgery—my crutches wouldn’t have been able to find steady purchase. I would have fallen for sure. I clutched the handrail. My heart pounded and my mouth went dry.
The stairs opened into a space like a balcony, high up, looking down on the rows of pews. For a moment the pews swirled dizzily. I scooted sideways into a room where thick, tied-up ropes hung through holes in the ceiling. “This is the bell-ringers’ room,” Susan said. “Those ropes ring the church bells.”
Jamie pretended to pull one of the ropes. Susan frowned. “Absolutely not.” Since the start of the war, church bells were only to be rung to signal a German invasion.
Susan, then Jamie, climbed a wooden ladder nailed against the wall. I stared at the ladder. I’d never climbed a ladder before. Couldn’t, with a clubfoot. “Hold on to the sides and use the rungs like stairs,” Susan said.
I wedged my right foot forward as far as it would go until my toes touched the wall behind the ladder. That brought the weight of the rung under the back of my heel, so climbing didn’t hurt so much. It still wasn’t easy. When I looked down, the floor again seemed to swirl.
Above the bell-ringers’ room, eight bells filled the bottom of the steeple. They were huge—big enough to bathe in. I paused to steady myself. “I didn’t expect them to be so large.”
“Each bell plays a different note,” said Susan. “If they’re pulled in a certain order they make music. It’s called change-ringing. I was a change-ringer in my father’s parish, when I was a girl.”
Now my hands were shaking. I went up more wooden steps between the bells to a small inward-slanting door. Susan opened it. We stepped outside. We were halfway up the steeple, standing on a narrow ledge framed by a waist-high stone wall.
I looked over the edge of the wall. The ground was miles away; I had no idea we’d climbed so high. The churchyard grass seemed to rise and fall. I could feel myself pitching forward. I shrieked.
Susan grabbed my shoulder. “Ada, what’s wrong?”
My hands clutched the stone wall. My stomach heaved.
“You’re all right,” Susan said. “You can’t fall. The wall’s strong.”
I’d spent my life looking out Mam’s window, down three stories to the street. You’d think I’d be used to looking down.
Jamie ran from one side of the steeple to the other, squealing in delight. “Jamie!” I said. “Get away from the edge!”
“He’s fine,” Susan said. “He can’t get hurt.”
My head rang. Standing in the steeple was as bad as being bombed.
Susan said, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Let’s go back downstairs.”
“No!”
“It’s all right to be afraid,” Susan said.
I gritted my teeth and glared at her. “Of course I’m not afraid.”
“The fate of the war does not depend on you fire-watching,” Susan said.
What if it did? Not the big war, but my own? What if my fear kept me safe? “I am going to fire-watch,” I said. I stood, locked my knees, and steadied myself against the steeple with one hand.
If I looked up instead of down, it wasn’t so bad. On one side hills rose covered in brown winter grass. On the other, the ocean spread flat and clean. I took a deep breath, and filled my lungs with the scent of the ocean. I felt the wind on my face. The sky seemed safe.
As long as there weren’t any bombs.
Going down was harder than going up. Going down, to get onto the ladder, I had to swing one foot out into open air. Either I swung my unreliable right foot, and hoped it could find the ladder, or I had to trust my weight to the right foot while swinging the left.
“You don’t need to torture yourself,” Susan said, watching me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I crossed the bell-ringers’ room and started down the stairs. They were difficult for me even going slowly. I could never get down them fast.
If I started letting myself feel afraid I would never be able to stop.
• • •
Outside the church, I stood still for a moment, my feet firm on the ground. I let myself settle. I looked out at the stones in the graveyard.
Mam wasn’t there. Mam was gone.
A sudden thought struck me. “Where’s Becky’s body?” I asked Susan. “Where is Becky buried?”
Chapter 15
“Not here,” Susan said. “She’s buried in the town where she grew up.”
“But her funeral was here,” I said, with a sudden flash of memory. “Half the village came.”
Susan furrowed her brow. “How do you know that?”
“Lady Thorton said so,” I said. “Ages ago.” Most of the village came to the funeral. I hadn’t known what a funeral was, but I remembered Lady Thorton saying those words.
“How odd that you remember.” Susan took Jamie’s hand and shepherded us down the road. She
reached for my hand, but I pretended not to see.
“I remember everything people say about Becky,” I said.
“Why?” asked Susan.
I shrugged. “She was important. You loved her. She gave you Butter.”
Susan took a deep breath. When she blew out, it made a white cloud in the cold air. She walked faster. “After she died her parents made the decisions,” she said. “They held her funeral here because she had friends here. Her house had belonged to her grandmother before it belonged to her, so she’d visited the village ever since she was a little girl. But they had her buried in their own churchyard. I suppose they wanted to be able to visit her grave. People often visit their loved ones’ graves.”
“You said that before,” I said. “With Mam.” Though Mam wasn’t exactly a loved one.
“Yes,” Susan said.
“But you don’t visit Becky,” I said.
“No,” said Susan. “I never have.”
“Do Becky’s parents not like you either?” Susan’s parents didn’t like her. I didn’t understand why.
Susan sighed. “I don’t know. I never asked them. Her father certainly never seemed friendly.”
I asked, “Is that why you wanted Mam buried here, because you don’t get to visit Becky?”
Jamie asked, “If you went to visit Becky’s grave, would you feel less sad about her dying?”
Susan’s eyes were watering, but it may have been only the wind. “No,” she said. I didn’t know which question she was answering.
• • •
Two weeks passed. Maggie returned to school. Several days later, toward the end of January, I was reading in the front room when someone knocked briskly on the door. I got up and opened it. Lady Thorton blew in on a rush of wind, cold and fierce like the weather. She looked me up and down. “Where’s your mother?” she asked.
“Dead.”
“I don’t—honestly, Ada. I mean, where’s Miss Smith?”
“Where’s Susan?”
“Yes, of course.” Lady Thorton sounded right ticked. “Who else could I possibly mean?”