Cook, seeing a pair of idle hands, set him to work at the kitchen table peeling carrots and potatoes for Sunday dinner.
It was there, in the warm steaminess of the kitchen at eleven o’clock in the morning, that he heard Prime Minister Chamberlain announce over the wireless that Britain had declared war on Germany.
Cook sat down, fanning herself and clucking with dismay. “Oh, Lord, who’d have thought it, after the last one? All the young men will go—such a terrible waste.” She shook her head. “I lost both my brothers in the Great War. Just boys they were, too young to die in the trenches.”
At the sight of Lewis’s face, she reached out and pressed her damp, red hand against his. “Oh, dearie, I am sorry. You told me you had brothers, didn’t you?”
Lewis nodded, but the constriction in his throat kept him from speaking. What he hadn’t told her was that his brothers meant to sign up the very second that war was declared, and had sworn him to secrecy. His mum would be inconsolable when she found out what they’d done.
“Well, mayhap it’s a tempest in a teapot, and nothing will come of it,” Cook said comfortingly. “And speaking of tea, I think a nice cuppa would brighten us up a bit,” she added, heaving herself to her feet. Watching her ample backside as she bustled about the cooker with kettle and teapot, Lewis tried to come to terms with the fact of war. In spite of the weeks of preparing for the blackout, the talk of shelters, the antiaircraft balloons that floated above London like escapees from a child giant’s birthday party, he hadn’t really believed in it. He hadn’t thought his evacuation would mean more than a week or two away in the country, and now it looked as though he was here to stay.
The door to the hall swung open and William Hammond came in. He was dressed as he had been yesterday, in school blazer and tie, but his hair had sprung up from its neat combing as if unable to contain itself. “I say, have you heard? Isn’t it tremendously exciting?”
Cook turned from the kettle with an admonishing shake of her head. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Master William. If your mother heard you—”
“Mummy’s had hysterics all over the parlor. Father’s administered the smelling salts and sent her upstairs for a lie-down,” William volunteered. “And Aunt Edwina wants to see everyone in half an hour, in the drawing room. I think she’s going to make a speech. I’m to tell all the staff.” With that, William charged out as energetically as he had entered, and Lewis was left to wait with Cook.
They gathered in the kitchen—John Pebbles and his wife, Mary, a delicate woman with soft brown hair; Kitty, the parlormaid, a girl not much older than Lewis; Owens, the Welsh butler with the singsong voice; Lewis; and Cook. As they waited, they muttered and exclaimed among themselves, yet when the bell summoned them they trooped to the front of the house in silence.
Lewis found himself last as they entered the drawing room, but that gave him a moment to take in his surroundings. After the smokey dimness of the kitchen and the polished, dark woodwork of the hall and staircase, the white-plastered room seemed garden-bright. A chintz-covered sofa faced the fireplace, flanked by needlepoint chairs displaying a profusion of roses. A side table held a large vase of late summer flowers, and a painting over the mantel carried on the soft reds and blues. Lewis drew his eyes from the oddly dressed children in the painting to the slender man who stood turned away from them, one elbow on the mantel as he gazed out the window.
Then the figure turned, and Lewis saw that it was not a man at all, but a tall woman in riding breeches and coat, with the shortest bobbed hair he had ever seen. Her face was sharp and browned to the color of oak, and she had blue eyes that stood out bright as cornflowers against her dark skin.
“You will all have heard the news,” she said, lifting a packet of cigarettes from the mantel and lighting one with a silver lighter. “It seems I was wrong in believing it wouldn’t come to war, but I hope that will not be the case when I say I don’t think this can last long.” Edwina Burne-Jones spoke with such conviction that for a moment Lewis felt his fear lift. “But in the meantime, we must take the necessary precautions. We will rigorously enforce the blackout. Owens, Kitty, from now on that will be your responsibility.”
“Ma’am,” Owens acknowledged calmly, but Kitty looked terrified.
Edwina drew on her cigarette, then continued as she exhaled. “Everyone should make sure that their gas masks are in working order. And if we have warning of a raid, the cellar should do as a shelter.” She fixed Lewis with her startling blue eyes. “You’re the boy from London?”
Lewis could only nod. Then John’s elbow jabbed him sharply in the ribs and he managed to croak out, “Yes, ma’am. Lewis Finch.”
“It looks as though you may be with us for a while, Lewis. Is there anything you need?”
Blushing crimson to the roots of his hair, Lewis stammered, “Ma’am. I lost my postcard—the one they gave us to send home.”
The skin round the corners of Edwina’s eyes crinkled up as she smiled. “I think we can arrange something for you,” she said, going to the secretary near the window and removing a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a stamp, which she handed to Lewis. Under his fingers, the paper felt smooth as rose petals.
She studied Lewis, narrowing her remarkable eyes against a veil of smoke. “I understand from the billeting officer that your school class will meet at the Institute until room can be made for you in the village school. Lessons will start as usual tomorrow morning.” Pausing, she raked the others with a swift glance, then added, “I want your position here to be clear, Lewis. You are a guest, not a servant. You may help John with his tasks if you wish—he is certainly shorthanded since that infernal boy ran off to join up—but you are not obligated to do so. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lewis said, although he was not at all sure that he did. How could he be a guest in a place so grand he’d never set foot in its like before?
What he did know was that from that moment on he would attempt to walk on water if Edwina Burne-Jones asked it of him.
GEMMA TOOK THE FIRST PARKING SPACE she came to on East Ferry Road. To her right lay the green playing fields of Millwall Park, spanned by the old brick aqueduct that now carried the red and blue trains of the DLR. To her left, across the street, was a terrace of simple, prewar houses, some painted and stuccoed, some still sporting their original brown brick. According to Janice’s instructions, Gordon Finch lived just a few doors further along.
She started to roll her window up, then shook her head and reversed the crank. There was hardly anything worth stealing, after all, among the odds and ends of papers and food wrappers that littered the car’s interior, and ten minutes with the windows closed would turn the Escort into an oven.
As she walked slowly up the street, checking the numbers on the houses opposite, she wondered what had prompted her to take this interview on her own, knowing it was against procedure, knowing that Kincaid would likely have her head for it.
She’d already stretched the limits of truthfulness by not telling Kincaid that she’d met Gordon Finch before—if you could call their brief encounter “meeting”—and the longer she put it off, the more awkward an admission would become.