The War That Saved My Life: Chapters 16–25

I dropped my hands to my lap—I’d sat down in one of the purple chairs—and stared at her, perplexed.

I told the whole story, except for the part where Maggie said bad words. Miss Smith straightened up. Her face looked grim.

He lurched forward for a few stumbling steps, but dropped back almost immediately to his usual shuffle.

I slid off Butter, pulled the bridle off his head—I wasn’t going to get chewed out for leaving it on him again—hobbled to my crutches leaning against the wall, and went into the house as quickly as I could.

She gave a little laugh, and tapped my knee as she stood. “Persistence,” she said. “Ponies are stubborn until they know who’s boss. Enjoy the new things.” Miss Smith saw her out.

Jamie and I went to bed before the sun went down, so we didn’t care, and Miss Smith could sit and brood in a dark room as easily as in a bright one.

“Dressing gowns,” Miss Smith said, as though reading my mind. “For winter. Something warm you can ride in. Perhaps something pretty? The red dress is very nice, but it’s not the best color for you.” She looked at me in a way that gave me the feeling of being a fish on a slab. “Blue, perhaps. Or a nice bottle green. Green’s a good color with your complexion. Velvet? I loved the velvet dress I had as a girl.”

It was like magic, it was, how the father would think it was a shame they didn’t have any wheat for bread, and next thing they’d stumble onto a whole wheatfield, or a wild pig would run out of the forest just when they got a hankering for bacon.

It was Miss Smith, not me, who saw the welt on Jamie’s wrist.

“When I was at Oxford,” she said, “my professor of Divinity, Dr. Henry Leighton Goudge, was left-handed. It is not the mark of the devil. Dr. Goudge told me himself that fear of left-handedness was nothing more than silly superstition and unwarranted prejudice. There’s nothing in the Bible against people using their left hands. We can write and ask him, if you like. Meanwhile you will allow Jamie to use whichever hand he prefers or I shall take action for the wounds he’s received.”

“When I was at Oxford,” she said, “my professor of Divinity, Dr. Henry Leighton Goudge, was left-handed. It is not the mark of the devil. Dr. Goudge told me himself that fear of left-handedness was nothing more than silly superstition and unwarranted prejudice. There’s nothing in the Bible against people using their left hands. We can write and ask him, if you like. Meanwhile you will allow Jamie to use whichever hand he prefers or I shall take action for the wounds he’s received.”

“When I was at Oxford,” she said, “my professor of Divinity, Dr. Henry Leighton Goudge, was left-handed. It is not the mark of the devil. Dr. Goudge told me himself that fear of left-handedness was nothing more than silly superstition and unwarranted prejudice. There’s nothing in the Bible against people using their left hands. We can write and ask him, if you like. Meanwhile you will allow Jamie to use whichever hand he prefers or I shall take action for the wounds he’s received.”

Miss Smith pursed her lips, but we’d gotten to the front of the line, so she didn’t reprimand him.

“No,” Miss Smith said. “They’re evacuees. The surname is just a coincidence. I don’t know their birth dates,” she continued. “It wasn’t on their paperwork, and the children couldn’t tell me.”

“But now we have birthdays,” Jamie said contentedly. “What you told the man. I’ll tell teacher this afternoon and she’ll write it on her calendar.”

“Ada,” Miss Smith said, “I may be negligent, but I am not blind. I’m well aware how much you ride that pony.”

“I’ve told you and told you to call me Susan,” she said. “Your refusal to do so is starting to feel like an affront. Why do you want to visit Mr. Grimes?”

I got off, put it right, and tightened the girth again—it had gone loose, I didn’t know why.

We went through the gate and ambled down the road.

Partway down the road Butter balked, and wanted to turn and go back home. I made him continue.

“Ponies’ hooves are like our fingernails,” he said. He picked up another tool and rasped Butter’s short hoof smooth. “They grow and they have to be trimmed.”

He taught me how to clean the saddle and bridle, and how to oil them, over and over with tiny dollops of oil on a rag.

“Well, I am sorry. It was ignorance, not deliberate abuse—but that’s never an excuse, is it?”

“It’s awful having to face your own shortcomings,” she said.

Miss Smith looked tight-lipped. “Yes. My father has made it clear he doesn’t think I can be redeemed.”

But I kept kicking him, and he trotted faster and faster, until suddenly everything evened out, and he was cantering.

This made Jamie so upset that eventually she relented, and gave him an old nasty chip pan to turn in.

Susan looked cross. “Don’t be patronizing,” she said. “Becky got along with your set because of the horses, but that’s all.”

I couldn’t think what to do. My stomach roiled.

Not long after that Jamie came home from school carrying the ugliest cat Susan and I had ever seen. Its filthy, matted hair might have been any color at all beneath the dirt.