The War That Saved My Life: Chapters 26–34

He showed me a strange-looking saddle on a stand. It had a normal seat, and one normal stirrup, but it also had two odd crooked knobs sticking up from the pommel.

“This is how all proper ladies used to ride. Back when, straddling a horse wasn’t thought to be ladylike. But after the war, things changed—the gentry women started riding astride, and after that pretty much so did everyone.”

“This is how all proper ladies used to ride. Back when, straddling a horse wasn’t thought to be ladylike. But after the war, things changed—the gentry women started riding astride, and after that pretty much so did everyone.”

Dr. Graham let go of my foot. “That won’t be enough at this stage,” he said. “I’m convinced you’ll require surgical intervention.”

The vicar came over on a Saturday with a gang of boys and built an Anderson shelter in the back garden for us. Anderson shelters were little tin huts that were supposed to be safe from bombs. Ours didn’t look safe. It looked small, and dark, and flimsy.

“You’ve seen him. And he’s got no family, and when I first got here he was really feeble. A bunch of the food he’d been eating had gone bad, only he’s lost his sense of taste too, so he couldn’t tell, and so it made him sick, and his house was just awful. Bugs everywhere, and rats, and he couldn’t fix any of it...."

When everyone had gone I stood just outside the door of the shelter. I didn’t like it. It was dark and damp and cold; it smelled like Mam’s cupboard beneath the sink. Goose bumps rose on my arms, and my stomach churned. I didn’t go inside.

“‘Ada is a curmudgeon,’” she replied.

“Roast goose, or turkey. In the morning we’d exchange presents—we always had a little tree, and we’d decorate the windowsills with holly—and then we’d have something wonderful for breakfast, hot sticky buns and bacon and coffee, and then we’d just laze around until it was time to start making dinner. On Boxing Day Becky would go hunting...."

We rode together up the big hill, where the wind was blowing hard and we could see down to the barricaded beach.

Maggie was different, stiffer and more standoffish than she’d been the day I rode her home.

Instead of looking horrified by my ignorance, she looked mollified.

By the time we pulled up on the outskirts of town, both ponies blowing hard, Maggie’s hair had come loose from its plait and her cheeks were bright red.

She said she wished she could, but her brother was expected home from aviation training, and her father was coming from wherever he was doing secret war work, and they were all having their traditional Christmas.

“It’ll be a miserable day,” she said. “Mum will be trying not to blubber over Jonathan, so she’ll be snippy with everyone. Dad’s wound up about Hitler and won’t talk about anything but the war, especially since there’s no hunting, and Mum hates talking about the war...."

There were all sorts of oddments of wool, rolled into balls, and there were six balls of fine, white wool.

I ran through my options in my head. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t taking a bath. I couldn’t be listening to the radio. Stalling while I searched for a plausible excuse, I said, “Nothing.”

Bottle green velvet. “I can’t wear this,” I said. I pulled at the bodice, fumbling for the buttons. “I can’t wear it. I can’t.”

The coal embers shone dully beneath a layer of ashes.

She had a long red furrow down one cheek from where I’d scratched her, and her blouse—her best blouse—had a rip at the shoulder and a button hanging by a thread.

I got a new halter for Butter, and a pad of paper and a set of colored pencils.

In January rationing began. It was a way of sharing out what food there was so that rich people, like Susan, couldn’t go hogging it and leaving poor people to starve.

Rationing meant there might not be any butter or meat in the shops, and if there was you’d better get in the queue for it fast before it sold out.

“First of all,” he said, “understand that we can’t proceed without your mother’s permission. At this point it would have to be considered elective surgery, and that’s why we’ve been waiting for her approval.”

Susan and I walked home silently through the blustery freezing wind.

On the twelfth day a letter I recognized fell at my feet. My own. Return to sender was scrawled across it. No longer at this address.

Susan said perhaps Mam had a new job and had moved to be closer to it. She said perhaps the government had requisitioned our flat.

The winter was so bleak I was glad to have something different to do, and, anyway, I wasn’t as afraid of things as I had been.

The colonel wore several cardigans layered over his waistcoat, even though his parlor was warm. He presided very grandly over a tea table set with scones and small ham sandwiches.

The shops looked sparse, coal supplies ran low, and the weather bore down on us like a cold heavy weight.