The Romeo and Juliet Code Read online

  On the whole, I am quite shy until you get to know me and then, Winnie says, I can be rather “rambunctious,” whatever that means. I do try to be very proper the way my Winnie always said I ought to be, though sometimes I can’t keep myself quiet. Sometimes, whatever it is that wants to pop out of my mouth goes right ahead and pops. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m frightfully sorry, but is there a captain of some sort upstairs somewhere?”

  Uncle Gideon looked at me with sorry surprise then, as if I were a glass jar he had just dropped and broken by mistake.

  Aunt Miami bit her lower lip. She was clutching a little book against her heart and wearing a lovely, soft, silk party dress. She seemed always to be ready to attend a party.

  The Gram looked at Aunt Miami and then at Uncle Gideon. Their eyes all went round and round to each other and then back to me, like bumblebees stuck on the wrong side of the window glass, knocking against the same useless spot over and over again.

  Then finally, Uncle Gideon said, “Um, well, yes, um, actually, Captain Derek is here.” He cleared his throat again. “Somewhere.”

  “Oh, he’ll be coming out of his room soon,” said Aunt Miami.

  “Perhaps he’ll be down for dinner,” said The Gram. “Of course, he will.”

  “Or breakfast tomorrow,” said Uncle Gideon, nodding his head up and down. Then The Gram pushed her face into Uncle Gideon’s large shoulder, and he patted her hair gently and shut his eyes very tightly.

  I put my hand on the letter in my pocket. I didn’t know how to send it, but I was not going to cry. I decided to look up at the ceiling, hoping to find something terribly interesting up there that would help. But ceilings never offer any assistance. They are usually very plain. This one was dark and too far away to see anything except shadows. I decided I was not going to talk anymore at all. I turned round completely so I was facing the wall.

  “Never mind about Derek for just now,” said Uncle Gideon. “The Gram has made muffins this morning. Haven’t you, Mother?”

  “Oh, well, have you ever tasted one of The Gram’s muffins?” asked Aunt Miami.

  “Oh,” said Uncle Gideon, “there’s no other word to describe them. Ohhhh is the perfect word. Won’t you come and try one? Please?”

  When I finally did turn back round, Uncle Gideon was looking at me with his brown eyes tilted down. Then he wiped his face nervously with a handkerchief. “They’re made with almonds and a secret ingredient that The Gram won’t divulge. She won’t tell a soul, not even the president of the United States.”

  “That’s right,” said The Gram.

  “Please?” Uncle Gideon said again.

  “Very well, then. I’ll try one bite,” I said, looking up the long stairs for a sign of Captain Derek. But all I saw were endless steps going round and up, round and up to the next floor, and then beyond to my windy tower room at the top of the house.

  Aunt Miami went over to the open door and leaned her head against the screen, looking out at the slapping, wet, rainy, gray sea. She sighed and then she opened her book and started reading aloud, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo. Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet. Isn’t it a lovely passage?” she said. “So poetic, so dreamy.”

  “There she goes again,” said Uncle Gideon. “She’s rather stuck on that play, in my opinion. Shall we have our muffins, then?”

  I did finally go into the kitchen, but only because I had to.

  Most British children generally believe that all Americans wear cowboy hats and cowboy boots and ride horses about and like to shoot at things. I hadn’t expected Americans to be like this. I don’t think any British child would have liked the Bathburns (myself included). They were too big and strange and sad. Well, Uncle Gideon was, anyway. And I hadn’t expected to be in such a dark house with an unseen sea captain roaming about and no mailing address for my precious Winnie and Danny.

  And so it was on that very first miserable, wet morning in Bottlebay, Maine, USA, that I took a bite of The Gram’s secret almond and honey muffins. And I had to close my eyes afterwards, to keep my British balance. I tried not to say anything, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  “What did I tell you?” said Uncle Gideon.

  “See what we meant?” said Aunt Miami.

  “Well, that settles it,” said The Gram. “She must have a nickname. Everybody gets a nickname here if they like my muffins. What about Flissy? We’ll drop the Budwig part altogether for now, if that’s all right with you. You really can’t go around with a great big, long name like Felicity Bathburn Budwig.”

  “Flissy Bathburn is better,” said Aunt Miami. “It’s got more pizzazz.”

  “What do you say, Fliss?” asked Uncle Gideon, tilting his head in a shy way. He backed up and knocked over a plant on the edge of the kitchen counter. Then he put on a fake British accent and said, “Jolly good, eh?”

  I didn’t answer him. I wasn’t sure at all how I felt about being Flissy Bathburn. Finally, I said, “Perhaps we should ask my Danny what he thinks first.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Uncle Gideon, looking down. “Of course. Really. No. Fine. Of course.”

  But I had a feeling it was no use. Sometimes pet names stick and sometimes they don’t. Flissy seemed to stick instantly and I was instantly stuck with it. I could just tell. I knew it.

  I heard no more about Captain Derek. I saw nothing of him anywhere in the house, and I had a chance that rainy afternoon to poke about the whole dark place. On the dining room table was the day’s newspaper, dated May 25, 1941. On the front page I read, “The British sea giant, the largest warship in the world, the HMS Hood was blown to bits yesterday in the waters between Iceland and Greenland by the new German battleship, the Bismarck.” It went on to say that the war in Europe was still raging and that the bombing in London by Nazi planes had grown worse that month. I sat down and put my head on the table and cried. I knew Danny’s work was terribly important and I knew Winnie had to be with him. But why did they go back to London with all the bombing?

  I had pulled Wink out of bed earlier. He had been, as Americans say, “taking it easy” up in my room. I meant not to carry him about so much. Even my teacher in London had been alarmed when my mum mentioned in a teacher’s conference that I still carried Wink about. “You haven’t let go of your old bear yet at eleven years old?” she said to me. “Not a good sign. Not at all. Not at all.” And then she shook her head at Winnie and wrote something in her notebook.

  I hugged Wink over and over again now. I kissed his ears, which always made me feel better because his ears were still deliciously soft. I kept thinking about that box my Danny had slipped into Uncle Gideon’s pocket. It couldn’t have been a box of sweets, because why would he make a secret of that? And everyone here seemed always to be whispering together and nodding towards me. The Gram cried a bit, and Uncle Gideon was overly jolly and bumped into things, knocking vases and cups over by mistake, and Auntie read all the time and didn’t talk much, and then, suddenly, they all seemed to disappear, leaving me to wander about alone.

  I went upstairs to look at the door I was to steer clear of. I must confess I put my head ever so lightly against it, trying to hear a sound coming from within. Perhaps all I heard was the ocean. I wondered if Captain Derek was in there. I pictured his old matted beard and his long, white tangled hair.

  I looked in the other doors down the hall as they were all standing open. There was Uncle Gideon’s messy bedroom in front, with a full view of the sea. Newspapers and books were all over his bed and on the floor. Across the hall was The Gram’s tidy room, which smelled of lilac soap. And then there was Auntie Miami’s room with a Clark Gable signed photograph taped to her mirror. Yesterday she had said she mails away coupons and gets back photos of movie stars signed “To Miami Bathburn with love.” (Uncle Gideon had called it “a poor substitute for a social life.” Auntie swatted at him with her book when he said that.)

  A
cross and down the hall from the door I was to steer clear of was another dark wooden door where another bedroom ought to have been. I wasn’t told to stay away from that door, so I turned the knob ever so carefully. But I found the door was locked.

  Finally, I took Wink back up to my room. He was certainly a bear that preferred to be lying down rather than being dragged about by his soft ears. He needed time to adjust, to think. He hated being moved about constantly, and I knew he hated it here. Wink was not a suspicious bear at all, but he felt Uncle Gideon was too interested in him and quite secretive about something. And so was The Gram. All this led Wink to be slightly suspicious. Uncle Gideon had said things in his fake British accent like “What ho, Wink! Enjoying yourself? Not a bad old place here, what?” And he squeezed Wink’s nose and kept babbling on at him even when it was quite clear that Wink was not going to answer him. He was a British bear after all and he did not wish to become American. And anyway, Wink loved Danny very much and had no room in his small bear’s heart for someone who was angry with Danny.

  I sat on the bed in my widow’s peak room. I could see and feel the ocean all round me. It seemed as if I was in a lonely boat cast off to sea all by myself. I was quite used to loneliness, since Winnie and Danny were often very busy and I was often alone in London. But that was a comfortable loneliness, while this spot in this house that was constantly roughed about by the wind seemed perhaps the loneliest spot in the whole world. Most British children probably think that living in a tower at the top of a house by the sea would be a wonderful thing. Perhaps they might think it “educational,” as Winnie would say. Or “quite amusing,” as Danny would add. But I couldn’t get away from that wind or the sea or the sound of the sea. At night, the moon seemed to be following me and pestering me as I turned in my bed, and it was a big, yellow, noisy American moon.

  It actually happened on the third night, when I was getting up to go to the loo. (The Bathburns called it a bathroom.) I hadn’t gone halfway down the stairs in the darkness, when a shadowy someone came from the front of the house and passed along the corridor and stood near that locked door not far from the door I was to steer clear of. I heard the sound of a key clicking and turning. I heard a door open and then shut. Then I heard the door being locked from the inside.

  I came down the stairs ever so quietly. I inched along the hall, breathing slowly in, slowly out, though I suppose I should have been minding my manners, as Winnie would say. I passed the door I was to stay away from. It was silent and dark. But there was a light coming from under the other door. Someone was shuffling papers about in there.

  I waited for a while afraid to move, but no one came out, and my feet were very cold. I had chilblains on my toes from our British winters and that meant that when my toes got even a little bit cold, they became terribly itchy. I was feeling itchy, itchy, itchy all over. And so I hurried back up to my bed, lightly running, barely touching the floor with my feet. But I lay there all night hearing the ocean howling and the wind whining, all the while listening for the click of a door key and wondering why that room was locked in the first place.

  I had been trying all night to think of a way to get back to my Winnie and Danny. I wanted a plan, a way out of here. Where was my passport or my ticket home? My mum, Winnie, was British, but my dad, Danny, was all-American, so that meant I could have what Uncle Gideon called “dual citizenship,” which he thought was so super, but I thought it was miserable. Most British children like to feel they belong and I did not belong here, especially tonight after hearing those slow footsteps shuffling down the hall.

  In the morning, it was still raining. They were saying in the newspaper that this was the wettest spring they’d had in Bottlebay for many years. In the daylight, none of the Bathburns mentioned anything about anyone unlocking doors in the middle of the night. There was no mention of trays of food that went up and came down untouched. But when I looked through the stairwell from my room, I saw The Gram hugging Auntie Miami in the hallway, and Auntie seemed to be crying. “Time will come, dear,” The Gram was saying to her. “Time will come.” Then they started whispering and I thought I heard my new nickname, Flissy. They went on down to the kitchen, and soon I could hear pans crashing about and I could smell more of those muffins cooking.

  There was a wooden-paneled room at the end of the hall upstairs, a kind of little gymnasium. As I came downstairs, I could see Uncle Gideon in there. I sort of leaned out of sight and put my ear against the door that I was supposed to stay away from. I was quite sure by now that if there was a Captain Derek, this would have to be his room. I also felt quite certain that it was Uncle Gideon sneaking about last night, unless it was Captain Derek.

  “Good morning, Flissy,” said Uncle Gideon, who was now standing on his head in the gymnasium. “I’ve had breakfast and I’m already on my head. I’ve always been able to stand on my head, and my brother Danny never could get the hang of it. What do you think? Am I doing all right? Have you ever seen Danny do this? I bet not. How am I doing?”

  “Speaking of my Danny,” I said, “would you mind saying when they are coming back? How many days does ‘soon’ usually mean?” I was very sober and stared straight at him.

  “Oh, well, um, yes, we could talk about that later. But, um, could you do me a favor in the meantime and look out the window up front and see if our mailman is coming down the beach with our mail?” he said. His face had turned very red. Then he fell over, crashing down on the floor in a very awkward way. Soon he sat up looking a bit dazed. “Danny can’t do that,” he said softly. “I suppose you will be having breakfast now, but we can talk about it at lunch. Do you call it lunch in Britain or is that your tea?”

  “Tea is our supper,” I said.

  “Oh, super,” said Uncle Gideon. “I’ve got that straight, I think.”

  I looked out the window down to the beach below. “Oh, there’s the postman,” I said, hopping up and down, first on one foot and then on the other so as not to play favorites.

  “Well, then run and get the mail for us, will you, Fliss?” Uncle Gideon said, getting out of answering my question altogether, I thought. It was rather obvious.

  At the front door, I stuffed my feet into my tall, black rubber Wellington boots, which we call wellies in England, and I threw myself down the many wooden steps in the rain to the beach and the sea below. Mr. Henley was the postman, and I thought he was terrifically polite and cheerful. I was ever so pleased to be rushing back to the house with a newspaper and a postcard for The Gram from someone named Jane in Chicago. But The Gram and my uncle were standing in the shadowy hall, watching me again.

  “This was probably not a good idea,” said Uncle Gideon, frowning at me.

  “Oh, I don’t see it could do any harm. She can just leave the letters on the dining room table,” said The Gram. “You wouldn’t open a letter, Flissy, if it wasn’t addressed to you, would you?”

  I shook my head no.

  Now I was quite sure I wanted to go home. For a moment, it felt like I had a crying box stuck in my throat, like the one Wink had in his stomach. If you poked Wink there, he used to make a crying noise, but his crying box was broken now. You could poke away these days, and Wink was always silent.

  Uncle Gideon patted me on the top of my head again, but his hand was rough and awkward like a great bear’s paw, and one of my braids got caught on his cuff link. “Okay, then, Fliss?” he said. “Okay? Fine?”

  I went off into the parlor without exactly answering him. I was listening instead to a lovely song in my head that reminded me of England. I stood by the velvet curtains, halfway humming and standing on one foot. Aunt Miami was in there. She was all dressed up in a purple taffeta dress with a rose pinned in her hair. Aunt Miami was reading Romeo and Juliet again.

  After a while, even though I was switching from one foot to the other, both feet were getting ever so tired. Auntie nodded at me and patted the cushion on the sofa next to her. I finally gave up and went over and sat beside her.


  She was reading aloud the scene in which one night Romeo stands in the courtyard below Juliet’s bedroom. Aunt Miami read those words with great feeling.

  Then Uncle Gideon came barging in, saying, “See what I mean about being stuck, Flissy? She just keeps reading Romeo and Juliet over and over again. There are other wonderful books in the world. What do you say, Fliss? Do you agree? Isn’t it so?”

  Aunt Miami sighed and held the book up, covering her face.

  “Alas,” said Uncle Gideon, “we Bathburns are a lonely lot. All we know is the wind. None of us have gotten mixed up with life. Your aunt Miami is a frustrated actress. She wants the stage! She wants lights! Applause! But does she do anything about it? No. Typical Bathburn.”

  “What about my dad, Danny?” I said. “He’s a Bathburn.”

  Uncle Gideon didn’t answer. He looked down at his feet instead and then he looked away altogether.

  Aunt Miami said, “Oh, Danny’s different. He’s the daring, brilliant one. It’s always been like that.”

  “I see,” I said to myself.

  “Anyway, you mustn’t listen to him,” Miami said, pointing to Uncle Gideon. “He’s a big tease and doesn’t know beans. If you hang around with him, by the time your parents get back you will be completely confused.”

  By the time my parents get back. That’s what Auntie Miami said. It was lovely to hear those words.

  Dear Winnie and Danny,

  I was outside today even though it was still raining. I made huge letters out of sand, ones that you can read from high up. The letters said “I Love You, Winnie and Danny” stretched across the beach, so if you happen to fly over in an airplane, look down and see it.

  Love,

  Fliss

  P.S. That’s what Uncle Gideon calls me. I can’t get used to it at all. Miami says Gideon thinks he’s hot potatoes cause he’s got the same name as the Gideon Bible.

  The smokestacks were painted gray; in fact, the whole enormous ship was painted gray; even the windows were painted out, covered in gray and sealed shut. That was how I came to America, on the HMS Queen Anne’s maiden voyage and it had to be secret because the waters were full of German U-boats. They had to sneak the Queen Anne over the ocean to New York City. The windows were painted over so no light would escape, so no bomber at night, flying overhead, could spot the Queen Anne sailing along in great silence. Winnie and Danny and I were some of the few passengers on that boat. It had been built to be a luxury liner, but it was now being moved to an American harbor for safekeeping.