The War I Finally Won: Chapters 1–10

Coming out of the ether was harder.

Then somehow I was trapped again in the dank cabinet beneath the sink, in our old flat in London.

I knew my mother—Mam—worked nights in a munitions factory in London. I knew bombs were falling on London now, every single night in fierce, horrendous waves. I knew the Germans targeted factories, especially munitions ones.

A whole herd of dirty, shabby children, and Jamie and me the most wretched -looking of all. I was nearly done in from the effort of getting away, my clubfoot oozing blood and hurting so badly my knees shook.

The nurse looked stricken. “You poor dear!”

Every day doctors poked and prodded my leg.

The ward was dark, but some light shone from the nurses’ station in the hall.

“The government will pay me damages for Becky’s house, but they say it might take years. I haven’t been able to find anything for rent in the village.”

It was larger than our village church, but otherwise much the same, brown and rectangular, with a tall steeple and a graveyard filled with upright stones.

“And don’t point, but look over there. See the people, and the empty grave—that’s the hole in the ground—and the wooden box? The box is called a coffin. This is the final part of a funeral. The first part happens inside the church. Now they’re going to bury the deceased.”
“Deceased?” asked Jamie.
“The dead person,” said Susan.

My right foot was smaller, and scarred, and the skin on it still had a callus from how the top used to be the bottom, but it looked like a foot, not a monstrosity.

“It’ll be spartan at first, but we’ll make it cozy. It will be much warmer and drier than living in that tree.”

The cottage was set in a gloomy woods, bare now in winter and somber and gray.

On one side of the big room was a kitchen, with a rickety table and a set of chairs. Behind that was a small back room, empty, and a sort of scullery with a washboiler and a bin full of coal.

Jamie looked up at her through a fringe of tousled hair.

It was large and spare, with a single window, yellow wallpaper, and a cold, bare wood floor.

I could see the stable cupola.

“I didn’t think I’d see you so spry. I didn’t think they could.”

“I’m going to ride astride, like Maggie,” I said.

“Posh ladies ride aside.”
I laughed. “I’m not a posh lady,” I said. “I’m a regular girl.”

It was a joy to settle the saddle onto Butter’s back, to tighten the girth around him, to slide the bit into his mouth and buckle the bridle around his head.

Stephen always kept it neat but now it looked forlorn, abandoned.

I’m staying at the vicar’s overnight.

I wanted Maggie and galloping and sunshine and summer and all I had was cold rain and miserable footing to ride in. I wore a pair of Maggie’s cast-off paddock boots to do the morning chores, and by the time I got back to the cottage they were soaked through.

“They’re a symbol of mourning,” I said. “Mourning spelled with a u, not morning like early in the day. You wear one when you’re sad because someone died.”

I hugged Maggie good-bye at the stables, gave Butter a pat, and headed home along the sodden path.

My feet squelched through the cold mud.

Jamie lay sprawled, alone, unmoving, beneath the tree in the front yard.

Susan made Jamie a nest of blankets and pillows on the cottage’s dingy sofa.

“St. George, the patron saint of England, is said to have killed a dragon. I’m sure there must be stories written about him. I’ll see if I can find us some.”