Chapter Nine #2
“I’m Emmeline Downtree and this is my sister, Julia,” Emmy said. Julia, wide-eyed, said nothing.
The woman bent down and touched Julia’s corn silk hair. “My, aren’t you a pretty little cherub.”
Julia looked up at Emmy. She could see her question in the little girl’s eyes. What’s a cherub?
“Say thank you,” Emmy whispered.
Julia obeyed.
The woman peered at Julia’s tag and then crinkled her brow in pity. “Oh. So, you’ve only a mum, then? What happened to your dad, little one?”
“He’s in India,” Julia said. “He’s making a movie about the treasure of the seven lost princes.”
“What’s that?” said the man.
Julia proudly repeated the answer to the question.
Mr. and Mrs. Trimble swiveled their surprised faces to look at Emmy.
“What is it exactly that your father is doing in India?” the woman said to her.
After a morning of not knowing what anything was about, to be asked something about which she had ample knowledge loosened Julia’s tongue. “Neville’s not her dad,” Julia said without a hint of embarrassment. “He’s only mine. But I just call him Neville. We don’t know where Emmy’s father is.”
The couple stared at Emmy, thoroughly scandalized. Emmy didn’t care. Maybe if no one wanted her, she and Julia would be put back on a train to London. Several long seconds passed before Mr. and Mrs. Trimble recovered.
“Aren’t you a little old to be sent off to the countryside?” Mr. Trimble finally said to Emmy.
Emmy laughed; she couldn’t help it. For the last five days she had tried to convince everyone of this exact thing and no one would listen to her.
Now here she was in a strange little village, standing in front of a couple obviously appalled by the details of her existence, and the man had pronounced—with no urging from Emmy—what she had so desperately wanted everyone else to say.
“Oh my!” the woman murmured. Emmy’s ill-timed chuckle only added to Mrs. Trimble’s growing impression of Emmy as an undesirable foster child.
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Emmy said, reining in her amusement. “Believe me, I’d much rather be home than standing here talking to you.”
Seconds of silence.
“Well, we’ll just take little Julia here, then. Can’t we, Howard?”
“No,” Emmy said before Mr. Trimble could respond.
“I beg your pardon?” the woman said.
“I said no.”
Alice, hovering nearby, sidled up to the girls, her expression anxious. “We try to keep siblings together if we can,” she said, looking from Emmy to the couple.
“We can only take the little one,” the man said.
“Then you’ll need to keep shopping,” Emmy said. “Julia stays with me.”
Alice admonished Emmy with her eyes. She could read what the woman was communicating to her. It was something along the lines of Can you please try to be nice?
“Come along, Margaret.” The man put his hand on his wife’s back to guide her away from the sisters.
“But, Howard, I want the little one,” the woman protested.
Howard Trimble ignored his wife but turned his gaze on Emmy. “A word of advice,” he said with feigned courtesy. “You’ll get nowhere with that attitude. You should be thinking about your little sister.”
“That’s exactly what I am doing,” Emmy replied, matching his tone. “She stays with me.”
Their conversation had attracted some attention. As Howard and Margaret Trimble moved away, Emmy noticed other conversations had stilled. People were staring at her.
Alice leaned in close. “I can see that you’re not happy about being here, Emmeline, but please try to be polite or I’m afraid no one will want to take you.”
“I don’t care if no one wants to take me. And who are these people to look down on all of us and decide which of us they want. We should be choosing them.”
Alice shushed her. “Keep your voice down.”
All eyes were on Emmy now. She and Julia would be back on the train in no time; she was sure of it. “I will not keep my voice down. I will not allow my sister and me to be trafficked like slaves. This is debasing.”
“Now, now. I’m sure these are good people.”
“And all of us forced out of our homes, are we not good people? Do we really deserve to be picked over and poked like melons on market day?”
There wasn’t a sound now in the room except Emmy’s voice.
Howard Trimble, a few feet away, was shaking his head. It was no surprise to him that Emmy was mouthing off like she was. What could one expect from someone like her—an illegitimate urchin of a girl.
For a long moment there were only silence and wide-eyed stares.
Then Emmy saw movement out of the corner of her eye. And then there was a voice.
“You are absolutely right, my dear.”
Emmy turned. The woman who had spoken was older than either of the Trimbles.
Her silver hair, flecked with hints of a former coffee brown, was bound in a braid that lay across her shoulder and then trailed down past her left breast. She was tall and slender, and her skin was wrinkled but in a nice way, as if she had one day started smiling and then had never stopped.
She was wearing a cornflower blue blouse and twill skirt with a smudge on the hem that suggested she had been gardening that day.
The spectacles on her face were slightly skewed; perhaps she had recently sat on them and had to bend them back into shape.
“Please forgive our thoughtlessness?” the woman said.
Emmy didn’t detect a hint of sarcasm or a patronizing tone, but she said nothing.
“Please?” she continued. “My name is Charlotte Havelock. It would be my great honor to welcome you and your sister, Julia, at Thistle House during this distressing time of war. I have a nice bedroom for you to sleep in, and a garden to play and read in, and I promise to treat you with all the respect that you are due. That is, if you will have me.”
Again silence reigned in the room. Emmy felt Julia tugging on her shirt. She looked down at her little sister.
“I like her,” she whispered.
The woman smiled.
The room was library-quiet and Emmy still had everyone’s attention.
Alice nodded to Emmy, a wordless gesture of desperation.
She wanted Emmy to be wanted by someone; it made her job easier.
There was no going back to London; Emmy could see that in her eyes, too.
She would have to find a place for the girls, if not here in Moreton-in-Marsh, then in some other little town.
Emmy could not return to London by refusing Charlotte Havelock’s invitation.
But she would return to London.
One way or another she would return. It was just a matter of time.
“All right,” Emmy said.
Charlotte Havelock extended her hand and Emmy, after a second’s hesitation, took it. Charlotte’s grip was warm and firm.
“Shall we take care of the paperwork, then?” She released Emmy’s hand, and an openmouthed Alice led them all to the billeting table to complete the process. Several seconds passed before the hum of conversation resumed.
Charlotte filled out her contact information so that Mum could be notified where Emmy and Julia would be staying. Emmy looked over her shoulder as Charlotte wrote. Her home, Thistle House, was located in Stow-on-the-Wold, a village Emmy had never heard of.
Charlotte set the pen down and turned to the sisters.
“Let’s go home.”