Audrey clung to Margery’s apron strings with one hand and to Eve with the other as they made their way to Margery’s cottage in the dark. Audrey hoped they wouldn’t take a wrong step and fall in the harbor as they skirted past it. Margery’s little cottage was clean but very primitive, and Audrey decided not to ask for soap and a towel after seeing how very little the woman had. Margery herself looked exhausted as she led them up the steep wooden stairs to an attic room. It had only enough space for a narrow bed and a chair, but Audrey was grateful for it. “It’s my son Ralphie’s room,” Margery said, setting the candleholder on a windowsill. “He’s one of the boys they’re trying to bring home from France.”
“We’ll pray that he makes it,” Eve said.
“Thank you so much for taking us in, Margery,” Audrey said. “Will you wake us, please, so we can help you in the morning?”
“It’ll be before dawn,” Margery said. “We fix jam toast and tea to give out as soon as the boats arrive.”
Eve stripped to her underwear and snuffed out the candle, falling asleep almost instantly. Audrey stayed in her clothes, lying awake for a long time as the harrowing boat trip played over in her mind. Her stomach felt as tightly clenched as a fist. The lumpy bed sagged in the center, and whatever they’d used to stuff the mattress made her skin itch. Or maybe it was the rough cotton sheet. Eve was accustomed to sleeping this way, and so were the London children who had stayed at Wellingford. They’d been content to sleep two and three to a bed or even on the floor. Audrey knew she was spoiled. If this war toppled the barriers between the classes as Miss Blake predicted, would Eve be raised to her level, or would she be reduced to Eve’s? Audrey doubted if anyone would be content to meet in the middle.
Audrey’s head ached when she awoke the next morning. Margery fed them weak tea and thick porridge before leading the way back to the church. Airplanes droned overhead in the dawn light, dozens of RAF planes flying south toward the Continent. The train must have come for the soldiers during the night because they were gone, the streets emptied. They neared the seaman’s shack and the wall where Audrey had tied up her boat last night.
“We’ll catch up with you at the church,” she told Margery; then she walked with Eve to the water’s edge. The flotilla was preparing to leave with all sorts of ships, from ferries and tugboats to paddle steamers and fireboats. Audrey spotted hers in the middle. She recognized the harried naval officer from last night walking toward her and wondered if he’d slept at all.
“Good morning, miss,” he said, tipping his hat. “I didn’t have a chance to warn you last night, but you should know it’s possible your boat may be damaged before we’re through. I’m sorry, but the channel is mined, and the Luftwaffe will attack our ships from the air. Mind you, the RAF will give them a run for their money, but enemy planes still hit some of their targets.”
“I would hate to lose our boat,” Audrey replied, “but there will be little need for it if we’re forced to surrender.”
“You’re right about that.”
Audrey felt useless at the church when it came to slicing bread and brewing gallons of tea, so she helped spread jam on the toast. They left for the dock just as the first ships neared the shore. Audrey stared in amazement at the sight. Soldiers in round tin hats and bulky life vests filled every inch of deck space on the vessels. A vast forest of men in olive drab, thousands and thousands of them, moved from ship to shore in long, silent lines like colonies of ants. Their faces had the weary, haggard look of beaten men. “Where do we even begin?” Audrey breathed.
“The most important thing,” Margery told her, “is for the men to see your pretty faces and smiles. They’ve been to hell and back, shelled while on land and attacked from the air. Your job is to welcome them home.”
Audrey waded into the stream of weary men, smiling as she passed out jam toast from her basket, searching the sea of unshaven, dirt-smudged faces for Alfie’s. Eve stayed beside her, pouring tea from a large kettle into the soldiers’ mess cups. “How will we ever find Alfie?” she asked Eve. “He won’t stand out among so many!”
“No, but we’ll stand out. He’ll see us, Audrey. If he’s here, he’ll recognize us.”
The soldiers’ dazed expressions all looked the same, numbed by shock and fear. And shame. Armies were supposed to fight, not retreat. It isn’t your fault, Audrey wanted to tell them. No one ever dreamed the Nazis would be so powerful. Or that the combined armies of Europe would be unable to stop them.
“Welcome home,” she repeated again and again to hundreds of murmured thanks.
“Is that blood on your face?” Eve asked a soldier as he reached for a piece of toast. “Do you need medical attention?”
He absently wiped his cheek. “The blood isn’t mine. It’s my mate’s. They bombed the beach and we had no place to hide. Men were blown to bits all around me. Guess I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“Ever hear the screaming sound the Nazi dive-bombers make?” the young man beside him asked.
“No, I—I . . .”
“It sounds like a siren coming down out of the sky. They dove straight at us with their load of bombs. I kept thinking, This is it. I’m done for now.”
“Right, and just when we’re thanking God for not being hit, back they’d come to have another go at us.”
Audrey didn’t hurry the men along, letting them talk, unloading their horror. Some of the men were shell-shocked, staring straight ahead as they walked past the refreshments, trembling like palsied men. Some needed help to hold the cup of tea and lift it to their lips.
“Where are you from?” Audrey asked to put them at ease. They named places she’d never heard of.
“I felt like a sitting duck,” she heard a soldier telling Eve. She was much better at getting them to talk. “Our destroyers couldn’t get close to shore, so they used smaller ships to ferry us out to them.” That was probably what Audrey’s boat would be used for. Many of these working-class men would be boarding a boat like hers for the first time.
“They had this long pier-like thing that stretched out into the water,” another soldier said, “and we all lined up, waiting for a ship to pull alongside it so we could board. I was next in line when they told me no more room. I watched the ship move away, carrying my mates and leaving me behind. . . . Then, out of nowhere—boom! A Nazi plane got through and bombed the ship. I stood there watching it burn and sink, smoke boiling up, men jumping off into the water.” His voice broke and he started to weep. “It might have been me!”
Eve shoved her kettle into Audrey’s hands and pulled the soldier into her arms to let him cry. It was such a natural thing for her to do, so like Eve—and so foreign to Audrey. It wasn’t that she felt no compassion for the man—his story brought tears to her eyes. But she’d never experienced warmth or consolation for her own tears and had no idea how to offer it to a stranger. Eve had once comforted her with a handful of strawberries.
The soldier thanked Eve and wiped his smudged face. He moved on. Audrey pasted on a smile and served the next soldier and the next as airplanes droned overhead and the sounds of battle rumbled in the distance.