The Romeo and Juliet Code Read online

  And the whole enormous dark boat was empty except for us and a handful of other passengers and a small crew. There were long empty dining rooms, tilting dark corridors, vacant lonely staterooms with their portholes painted over.

  We got on the boat at night. Danny had talked to an officer friend for a long time, trying to convince him to let us board. “We are American citizens and we need to go home,” he said. We waited in the small dimly lit office with some other people. We hadn’t been able to find any boat that would take us to America. We heard about another British boat, the SS Athenia, that had been full of Americans going home and had been sunk by a German U-boat.

  But Winnie and Danny were not scared. They played cards all night in that office, waiting to hear. I slept on my suitcases with my head on my stuffed bear, Wink. Danny said later it was Wink that turned the tide. The officer finally just couldn’t say no.

  When I stood on the huge pier on the second level that cold night and looked at the enormous Queen Anne all dressed in her gray war costume, I thought I might faint. I had never seen anything so big in all my life. We boarded quietly and quickly and lay in our tiny room belowdecks listening to the churning engine carrying us through dangerous waters to America.

  Everything on the boat was bolted down, all the chairs, all the many tables in the dining room, a sea of tables, and we were only a tiny group of people sitting in a corner being quiet, listening for a U-boat or a torpedo, listening overhead for a bomber. For the whole eight days, we never saw the sky. And there was a storm at sea and we heard that the waves were as steep as mountains rising gray, higher than we could imagine. Winnie was sick in the hall, and I found a room with a huge swimming pool with no water in it, and the stairs were wide and empty, and most of the time we didn’t speak and when we did, all our voices echoed.

  In June, the sky continued to drizzle and drip in Bottlebay, Maine, USA, and I wrote a letter every day to Winnie and Danny. Most of the time, I tried not to talk to anyone except for Wink. He was quite playful really when we were alone, but with the Bathburns, he too fell silent. The Gram went into town for supplies a couple of times and I was invited along, but I always looked up at the sky instead of answering. Finally, one day I said, “Oh, all right. I’ll go,” but only because I had to.

  And that very morning at the end of June, it stopped raining. It stopped and it stopped and it stopped. And the sun did come out and the sky was a hot summer blue and a few people appeared on the beach below with sun umbrellas and pails and towels.

  If you are feeling uneasy, sometimes a blue sky can make things worse. Better to have the sky match how you feel than to have it be so lovely out while you are so dark and rainy and lonely inside.

  “Riding into town with The Gram, eh? Taking your life in your hands, are you?” said Uncle Gideon, slapping the side of the old black automobile that he had just backed out of the barn for us.

  I frowned to keep the sun out of my eyes and waited while Uncle Gideon helped The Gram ever so gently into the car. She smiled up at him from the driver’s seat with her white hair slipping slowly out of its bun in the wind. I hadn’t seen The Gram smile much before. Then I heard Uncle Gideon say very quietly, “I do think this is a good idea. We should introduce her to the town. Better not to raise any suspicions about anything.”

  “Well, Flissy, perhaps you’d like to buy some supplies to make a proper British tea for us,” said The Gram quite loudly, shaking her head at Uncle Gideon.

  “Jolly good, old thing,” said Uncle Gideon. “Isn’t that what they say over there? ‘Old thing’? I’d love to have a real British cup of tea again.”

  “Have you had one before?” I said, feeling the word suspicion floating round now in my head.

  “But, of course, Flissy,” said Uncle Gideon, “I’m very fond of England.” And he put his hand over his heart and looked at me in a mournful sort of way. “I certainly know the difference between a good cup of tea and a bad one. And I went to university there, you know.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  We were standing in the scruffy grass, looking at the Packard, which was ever so much bigger than our little Austin Minor in England. All the British cars were so much smaller. We were standing there in the bright morning sun, with wild rosebushes all round us being bumped and battered about in the wind.

  “Well, Fliss, the windows are all broken, so don’t try to roll them up and down. And The Gram doesn’t like to go in reverse, so don’t get yourself in any situations where you have to back up. And don’t try to open the door on the passenger side. It’s jammed. But otherwise, have a good time!”

  “Gideon dear, we don’t need any more instructions. Stand aside. Now get in, Flissy McBee.” The Gram started the motor with great pizzazz, as Uncle Gideon would say, like she was just settling into a Halifax bomber and getting ready to take off.

  “Be careful, Mother,” said Gideon, backing away, frowning, and then waving. He stood there waving and waving and waving.

  We drove out onto the road. It was a hot morning and we wound our way along the sea through the gnarled and knotted low-growing bushes and little rocky patches.

  And suddenly I remembered being on holiday once with Winnie and Danny. We had a motorcycle with a dear little green sidecar. Danny was driving the motorcycle (Winnie always said he was a bit wild), and Winnie and I were snuggled into the sidecar. We were whizzing past the chalk downs and the chalk cliffs along the sea in Sussex and we could see the white cliffs of Dover in the distance. Danny stopped the motorcycle and we climbed a great grassy hill to see the Long Man of Wilmington, which was a figure, a great white chalk outline of a man carved on the side of the hill hundreds of years ago. Danny said it was something only someone from high up in the sky could really clearly see all at once, like a God or an angel or an airplane pilot. I wondered about the German bombers flying over England on their way to London. I wondered if they saw the Long Man of Wilmington on a hill in the green grass not far from the ocean.

  The Gram was looking over at me. “You’re very pensive, Flissy,” she said. Then she beeped the horn for no reason at all and said, “What a horn! They just don’t make them like this anymore!” Then she looked over at me again. “Flissy, don’t worry about any questions people might ask you today. Just say ‘la-de-da’ to all of them.”

  I nodded.

  She smiled and beeped the horn again and then she looked over at me in a worried sort of way.

  Finally, we took a turn on the road that headed away from the ocean into town. “Now, keep your eyes out for a nice parker where I won’t need to back up to get out,” said The Gram. “And we’ll just do our marketing and we won’t meander at all. We won’t get mixed up with those ladies at the church with their quilt sale today.”

  But the only “parker” that The Gram and I could find in all of Bottlebay, Maine, was right in front of the white wooden church with a tall, white wooden tower where the quilt sale was going on. A sign said, QUILT SALE, RAISING MONEY FOR THE BRITISH WAR EFFORT. No sooner had The Gram and I climbed out of the Packard through the only working door on the driver’s side, when one of the women from the sale, wearing an apron, hurried towards us. “Hello. Hello. Hello, Helen Bathburn! Where have you been keeping yourself? This just isn’t like you. Come on over to our sale,” she said. “You should have put in one of your quilts. And who is this, may I ask?”

  “This is my granddaughter, Flissy McBee,” said The Gram, pulling me tightly against her.

  “A granddaughter? And you didn’t tell us? Which of your children is married?”

  “Oh, Danny was married some years ago while he was away in England,” said The Gram.

  “Oh, really? It wasn’t in the papers. It’s as if Danny disappeared into thin air. And Gideon doesn’t ever have a good word to say about him anymore. It’s such a shame. Well, if Danny’s home, we’d love to come out and see him. It was so daring the way he once saved Marge Peterson when she was drowning.”

  “Well, actually he�
�s not here right now,” said The Gram, putting her hand up to shield her eyes suddenly as if she was feeling ill.

  “Oh. Where is he, still overseas? Doing what?”

  “Well, Danny is in sales now. You know how charming he is. He could sell salt water to the sea!” The Gram said. Everybody laughed. The Gram swallowed and started rapidly nodding at several people on the other side of the lawn. Then someone else came up to her, and The Gram was hurried away, leaving me to stare at the quilts draped on lines between the trees. I wasn’t sure what my Danny did for work, but I didn’t think he was in sales. I looked among the hanging quilts. Walking through the sunlight and the shadows the quilts cast, I suddenly felt lost, as if I were in a maze.

  I hurried towards a table at the front of the church, where someone was in charge of the money.

  “We’re having a raffle today,” a lady said. “It only costs ten cents. Have you got ten cents? Just write out someone’s name and phone number and put it in the box. And you could win something if your ticket gets drawn.”

  “What do you win?” I asked.

  “Oh, all sorts of things. There’s a list of the prizes on the sheet over there. Are you British? You’ll be helping Mr. Churchill with his war if you put a name in.” She pushed a piece of paper at me and smiled.

  “I am very fond of Mr. Churchill. He’s our lovely prime minister in England,” I said.

  British children are usually ever so polite, and they always obey adults whenever they can. If an adult tells a British child to put a name in for a raffle, they do it. And so I did. I paid ten cents for Mr. Churchill and I wrote a name and a telephone number on the piece of paper. I stuffed it in the box, not realizing then how such a small act might one day come round to haunt me.

  Soon enough, The Gram was back and the other woman was handing me a flyer. “We’re doing a variety show this fall at the town hall. Could you pin this up in the grocery for us, dear?”

  After that, we didn’t meander about at all. We walked down a shady street and turned a corner, and there were all the shops in Bottlebay, Maine. We got right down to shopping. The Gram let me pick out a tin of Earl Grey and some cold cuts for my proper British tea. I fancied a box of biscuits, but The Gram waved at the air and said, “No, no, Flissy. We make all our cookies out at the house.”

  She bought the groceries while I went over to pin up the flyer on the bulletin board. As we left the store, The Gram seemed to be in a shall-we-get-out-of-here sort of mood, as if she didn’t want to answer any more questions.

  It was on the way home in the windy car that I began to think things over. Why had The Gram told her friends that Danny worked as a salesman? And why did she seem to avoid talking about him? And what about the sea captain? Why didn’t he come out of his room, anyway? Was someone even in there? I mean actually, really, truly?

  Once we got out of town, The Gram kept looking over at me again and beeping the horn and saying, “Well, we made it, Flissy McBee. We’ll soon be home.”

  The ride was bumpy and the sky darkening. I tried not to, but I fell asleep as we drove along. When we finally pulled into the driveway, I awoke and found a blanket covering me, and lying in my lap was a little sack. I looked in it and there was the box of biscuits I had fancied at the store.

  By now, it was dusk and as we climbed out of the car, the house was all dark. The moon hung out over the ocean, and clouds of mist and spray floated in the black air.

  “Where are the electric lights?” said The Gram. “You know we only had those installed recently. I hope they haven’t shorted out in the wind. Hello! Miami, are you there?”

  We went in the back door, and The Gram turned on the kitchen light and set the grocery bag on the blue metal table. I went on down the dark hall, hearing music coming from the front parlor. A sad record was playing. The parlor was completely dark. I stopped at the entrance and listened.

  When the clouds roll by

  and the moon drifts through

  When the haze is high

  I think of you.

  I think of you.

  When the mist is sheer

  and the shadows too

  When the moon is spare

  I think of you.

  I think of you.

  My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and I could see someone sitting in the armchair in the corner, someone lost in the music. Then the hall light was turned on behind me, and I could see instantly it was Uncle Gideon sitting in there alone.

  “Fliss?” he said. “Oh, I thought everyone had gone to town. Um, well, I’m just listening to a record, just, you know. This song is, um, a Bathburn favorite. Actually, the record belongs to Derek, but, well …”

  “Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “No, no, no, Fliss, it’s fine. You’re fine. It’s always nice to see you. Really.”

  “The record belongs to Captain Derek, then?” I said.

  “Yes, he collects records, you know.”

  “Oh, well, then, Captain Derek really is here?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Uncle Gideon. “Of course he is. And hopefully he’ll be down soon. Time will tell, Flissy. Time will tell.”

  The sweet, sad song played on, and Uncle Gideon grew quiet then and seemed to become lost again in his own thoughts.

  The postman was early that morning and I ran barefoot down the long wooden steps to the beach. The postman always walked up the shoreline instead of along the road above. He had his postman’s cap off and his hair was all breezy. “He’s young, that one,” The Gram had said to me earlier. “That’s why he takes the long way around, because it’s more fun and he hasn’t yet learned not to waste time. Like you, Flissy, when you walk in circles to cross a room when a straight line would get you there faster.”

  Today, the postman was pleased because all week he’d had nothing but rubbish for us and now he had some real mail. It makes postmen feel miserable and foolish when you come running towards them and all they have to give you is an unpleasant looking electric bill. But today he looked all chipper and important and he held out a letter. The envelope was covered with brightly colored stamps, and in the corner was a little blue rectangle with the words BY AIRPLANE and PAR AVION. Those are the sorts of letters that usually come across the ocean. The letter was addressed to Gideon Bathburn. I looked for a postmark and I thought it said something like Portugal. One side of the envelope was stamped with a triangle that said PASSED BY CENSOR #82.

  “Thank you, Mr. Henley,” I said in my best British English. “Thank you ever so much.” And then I tore up the steps.

  Uncle Gideon seemed suddenly to be at the top of the stairs on the porch. I thought he tried to appear awfully casual, whistling and swinging his arms back and forth. I looked down at the letter again and recognized my Danny’s handwriting. His Hs and Rs always looked like little waving people. I held on to the letter tightly. “This is from Danny!” I said when I got to the top of the stairs. I couldn’t stop jumping up and down. “It’s from Danny!!!!”

  “No, it’s not,” said Uncle Gideon. “Give it to me now, and don’t go off with my mail, Flissy. Ever.”

  “Let me see it,” I said.

  “No,” he said loudly, grabbing the letter in a brusque way. He tucked it into his pocket. Then he turned immediately towards the house. But soon he stopped and looked back and said, “Flissy, perhaps we can play Parcheesi later. What do you say?”

  “No,” I said. “I want to see the letter from my father.”

  A terrible look of pain came over Uncle Gideon’s face. He turned round abruptly and went into the house, the screen door snapping shut behind him with a loud, flat slap. I heard him climb the long stairs, walk down the hall up there, pause for a moment, and then he unlocked the locked door quietly and stepped in, closing the door behind him.

  I thought so, I said to myself. I knew it was my uncle Gideon who had been stealing about in the middle of the night, turning locks and closing doors.

  Really, I felt very
sorry indeed for my curiosity. Winnie always said that my curiosity was my best feature and also my worst feature. But Danny used to make his Hs and Rs into little drawings of people on paper for me, people who talked and made alphabet jokes. Because I knew his Hs and his Rs, all sorts of questions started piling up inside me, the way seashells and sea glass and pieces of driftwood pile up along the beach after a storm. Why couldn’t I see a letter from my Danny? Why was it from Portugal, instead of from England? No one here exactly answered any of my questions. So I got out my knitting, my wool and my needles, and I started in.

  British children, well, girls really, knit all the time. If you were ever to ride an English omnibus, you would look about and see all the girls and women knitting. Danny always said, “I’ve never seen a British baby knitting yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Today, I was knitting a pair of red socks for Wink. Poor, poor Wink. He hated Bottlebay, Maine. And he had a terrible thing happen to him. Before we left London, someone slit him open along his seam in front and put a small object inside him and sewed him back up before Danny and Winnie and I got on the boat. I could feel the little object in there next to his crying box when I hugged Wink. But then by the time we got to Maine, the metal object was gone, and Wink was all sewed up right again.

  Aunt Miami and Uncle Gideon often played Parcheesi in the darkened parlor in the morning. The next day, they sat at a table in the curtained bay window. As I stood in the hallway just outside the room, Uncle Gideon was saying, “Oh, come on, Miami, give up. I’ve got you now.”