Page 49 of Strangers in Time

“Mrs. Pride, can I continue to live here without my mother and father? Isn’t there some… I don’t know,law? While I am nearly sixteen I still am considered underage, am I not?”

Mrs. Pride rubbed her hands along her apron; nervous fingers smoothed away errant wrinkles in the fabric. “I… I don’t know, Molly. I suppose you might be. Heard somewhere that you had to be twenty-one to be considered an adult. Yet I was married when I wasn’tmuch older than you, though my parents did have to consent. And your father may walk back in that door anytime,” she added stoutly.

“And he may not.”

Mrs. Pride went back to smoothing out wrinkles and said nothing.

“Do we at least receive regular information from Cornwall about my mother?”

“Your father had quite a number of letters and I believe he left them here.”

“Can I see them?” Molly said anxiously.

“I can fetch the first one he received,” said Mrs. Pride. “I know right where ’tis.”

“Do the letters say that she is getting better?”

“I… well, I’m not versed in medical terms. But I’m sure if you write to them, they’ll answer any questions you might have.”

“Iwillput questions to them, Mrs. Pride,” Molly said decisively.

“And I know all you want is for your mum and dad to be here. I dearly wish I could make it so,” she added in a quavering voice.

“Well, wanting something and having it are two very different things, Mrs. Pride. They often are in life. Now, the letter?”

Mrs. Pride rushed from the room but was back presently with it and handed the envelope over to Molly.

Molly rose and said, “I will read through this, get a better picture of her condition, think on things, and then we’ll go from there, shall we?”

“You… you sound ever so grown up, Molly,” said Mrs. Pride hesitantly.

“Do I have a choice otherwise?”

Before Mrs. Pride could answer, Molly retreated up the stairs, fled down the hall to her room, shut and locked the door behind her, collapsed on her bed, and pushed her face deeply into the pillows so that no one other than herself could hear the wails.

CEDRIC

IGNATIUSOLIVER HAD FIXEDthe front door himself because he could not afford a proper repairman. He also took the bell off the inside of the door and screwed it onto the outside wood. The police had questioned him about the attempted robbery. They had told him about the accident with the lorry and the two deaths. And about the pair of boys who had gotten away, one taller and older, one smaller and younger.

He kept the door locked now with a handwritten sign on the glass to ring the bell if you wanted service. He didn’t think he would have many such requests. There had been unsettling word from the BBC that the Germans might soon commence their regular bombings again, day or night. It seemed Hitler was becoming increasingly unhinged with the war turning against him and had decided to kill as many people as possible before all was lost.

How a single madman could do so much damage to the world, Oliver thought. God was indeed testing them all.

Oliver religiously listened to his wireless, an old Philips radio that sputtered and buzzed, but the BBC still came through with sufficient clarity. If he had the choice between sleeping and listening to the wireless, he would choose the latter. Folks would fixate onthe BBC weather forecast with as much intensity as they did their King’s speeches, to see if a bombing seemed imminent.

Yet it wasn’t all bad tidings. They had programs to lift the spirits and make folks laugh, which was quite important, for otherwise there was nothing much at all to find funny with the world at war.

Later, he took his ration book around to the shops and collected his food for the next few days. Back at the bookshop he dusted off some tomes and replaced them on the bulging shelves as he thought about his duties as an air warden.

The shelters provided refuge for those terrified of the bombings. But they were often not safe places, and it had nothing to do with the Germans. The air was unhealthy with so many bodies packed together. There were also mosquitoes, lice, and rats; scabies outbreaks were numerous. And other germs that spread in those places were sometimes more deadly than the bombs. There were also always some men who filled up on pints before going there and who often brought hostility and active fists to the congregations. Oliver had had to break up many fights in the shelters, often getting pummeled in the process. People were simply not designed to sit calmly and peacefully while others were attempting to kill them with bombs dropped from the sky.

And then there was one poor young woman who always showed up at the same shelter with the same doll in hand, to replace the daughter she had lost in the war. Oliver would sit with her and stroke the doll’s hair and talk to it at the woman’s urgings, to keep her “child” calm during the raid. Oliver didn’t know if he was actually hurting or helping the woman by doing so, but he did as she asked.

Folks brought electric fires, and also wirelesses and sometimes hand-cranked gramophones to the shelters, so they could listen to something other than bombs exploding. Little boys with “medals” and Home Guard bands on their slender arms would run around with their tiny air guns playing war and always convincingly defeating the Germans. Nurses would come to some of the shelters andinstruct new mothers on how to properly knit clothing, while their newborns were safely tucked away on overhead bins.

As the bombings went on, some stations had planks put over the tracks to accommodate more people, and other stations even added bunks for folks to sleep in overnight.

Oliver would sometimes perform simple magic tricks for the youngsters to keep their minds off what was going on above them. White lies were also told to try to make the experience easier for the kiddies. Yet Oliver had seen that once the children passed the age of five, those lies and distractions no longer worked.

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