“No,” he said. “Our real home.”
“Love, sometimes we ache for what is familiar even though there is something better out there for us. Just give London a chance.”
“What about school and friends and Crum Elbow Creek?” His eyes overflowed with tears, and my own rose also. Would heartbreak ever end?
“We will find a new school and new friends. And wait until you see the pond behind Mr. Lewis’s house. You know what he told me one time? That sometimes we want to stay and goof off in a mud pit when God has an entire seashore for us to play in. England is our new seashore.”
I dangled the Kilns like bait for my little fishes, but I too was scared to death as I wondered what I had done.
Life is ahead.
That first week hit us all hard. We’d rushed straight from the hotel to Phyl’s house to discover that Bill hadn’t sent the money he’d promised. Because of the Aliens Order of 1920, I needed to register as a foreign national, which meant I couldn’t job hunt until I heard from the government. In my mind I calculated and recalculated the money I had and how long it would last: not long was the answer. Had I been too impetuous? Had I left America too soon?
I shoved fear from my mind, stretched food as far as I could, and didn’t let on that I was as terrified as I’d ever been. Was I as big a fool as Bill said I was? No. It had been change or die—and I’d decided there was too much to live for.
When I saw Jack the next month I could ask him for money, but I was loath to do so. I wanted so much from him, but none of it was material.
I filled our time, the boys and mine, with sight-seeing and a forced cheerfulness to try and help them adjust. We trounced through Westminster Abbey, and I remembered the atrocious afternoon when I’d gone there on my knees, repenting of my sins and wanting to go home and fix what remained. That had been only one year ago. As the boys trailed along behind me, I stared at the stained glass window where Jesus peered down at me. Silently I asked him, Did I do right by all of us?
No answer came.
Buckingham Palace with its statues and gardens fascinated both boys, and they stared at the Queen’s Guard—soldiers in red with their furry black hats—motionless and statuesque.
“They’re like the statues at the White Witch’s castle,” Douglas whispered.
“But not frozen,” I countered and tugged on his earmuff hat to pull it down.
“They look frozen to me.”
“But they aren’t,” I told him. “When their shift is over, they walk off just like you or me, to their homes and their families and their beer.” I laughed, catching the sight of a soldier, and swore I saw the corner of his mouth move the tiniest bit toward a smile.
It was in Trafalgar Square that a pigeon landed on Douglas’s shoulder, and he shrieked. We collapsed, laughing, and sat on the curb. The fountain in the middle of the square, larger than most swimming pools I’d ever seen, sprayed water, and Douglas asked if anyone ever jumped into it.
“Try it,” I said.
“You first,” he joshed in return.
Davy noticed the grand carved lions—four of them—on Nelson’s Column. “Oh, look,” he said, pointing to one. “Aslan.”
“Nope. Just another lion. But I can tell you a secret I know about this one,” I said. “The Nazis were going to take it back with them if they won the war. Lions are beloved that way.”
“The war,” Douglas said with a low voice. “It was really here.”
“It really was,” I told him. “It wasn’t just something you read about in books.”
It was later that day when Davy asked what must have been niggling at him. “What will we do about school? Don’t we have to go? All we’ve done is play. Not that I mind very much.” He was right—we’d been to the zoo and the museums, the aquarium and the parks.
“I’ve been thinking quite a lot about that, darling, and I think boarding school is what is best for you both. Here they call it public school.”
“No, Mommy,” Davy said. “I don’t want to leave you again.” He set his fists on his waist, looking like such a man in his buttoned jacket and furry hat.
I shifted his hat on his head. “It’s not leaving me at all. You come home for all the holidays and all the summer. Any school I choose will only be a short train ride away. Tomorrow we’re having lunch with a woman whose son went to one of the schools I’m looking at. Mrs. Travers.” I ran my hand through Davy’s hair, straightened his crooked glasses. “She wrote Mary Poppins and she has a son your same age, nine years old. I bet he can tell you how wonderful it all is.”