On
the 7th of September, 1946, Kathryn watched as Lucy Delamar showed
up at the girls’ orphanage on 22nd Street to collect a child. She
observed as Aunt Judy, the main caretaker at the girls’ orphanage in London,
greeted Ms. Delamar with a steely handshake and the same solemn look she gave
all strangers that could be mistaken for hardness, but which the girls
understood to be motivated by a genuine concern for her orphans; to them, it
was a dependable sign of her good character.
Aunt Judy glanced at Kathryn out of the
corner of her eye as Lucy wandered into the orphanage and made petty attempts
to converse playfully with the timid children. Kathryn, a quiet but observant
seven year old, detected something like sympathy in Aunt Judy’s eyes. It was a
look that assured Kathryn that this visitor, a thirty-something-year-old woman
with graying dark hair and a worrisome countenance, did not mean any ill will toward
the children. She simply had a certain way about her that was off-putting. So,
while the other girls naturally avoided her, Kathryn paid her some attention,
and responded to her nervous giggles and winks with a faraway smile.
“I
would be most grateful to take care of that adorable blond-headed girl,” said
Lucy to the caretaker at the conclusion of her tour of the orphanage. “I have
all my documents and accreditations here. Do you think she would like to go
with me?”
Aunt
Judy, finding no fatal flaw in the fidgeting woman, confirmed the documents and
asked Kathryn if she approved the adoption. Kathryn hesitated a minute,
glancing around at the other girls who were cleaning the dishes from their
breakfast or playing with each others’ hair. She never knew until that moment
that she had always yearned for a home, nor the extent to which she cared for
Aunt Judy and the other girls.
She looked at Aunt Judy and said, “Can I
come back and visit sometimes?”
“You will be welcome here whenever you
want,” Aunt Judy replied. “Do you want to live with Ms. Delamar?”
Kathryn nodded. She packed all her
clothes and belongings into two large suitcases, hugged everyone, and followed
Lucy out of the orphanage.
Thus
the two walked the streets of London all the way back to Lucy’s shadowy,
foreboding flat on 61st Street. The walk covered two miles, and
required nearly an hour and a half of awkward conversation. Whenever Kathryn
found a moment of calm among the endless waves of Lucy’s chatter, revealed her
favorite foods, her favorite pastimes, and the friendships she would miss the
most. Lucy talked about everything. More than anything, she talked about the
war. She said it was a tough time, and that she was grateful to have made it
through alive.
“Do you have a family?” Kathryn asked
innocently.
“No. I never did have children, and I am painfully
lonely now. I married Gerald just before the war, and it would have been hard
to have children when he left for France. He was away most of the time for five
years. We were so happy when the war was over; it was so awful living through
that, especially toward the end. On the radio, in the streets, it was constant
fear. Was it safe to be in the city in light of all the other German air raids
in England? We never felt safe, and we never were safe. And then, the war ended
and Gerald returned home. We were so happy…” Her voice trailed off. When she
finished, she spoke quietly, trying to hold herself together. “But, of course,
we were never safe.”
She then recounted the story of a
mysterious group of officers or policemen who came in the night and invaded her
flat shortly after Gerald’s return. She woke to the sound of them in the next
room, yelling,“Where is it? Where are the
documents?”. As she turned in a panic to confide in her husband, she found
his side of the bed vacant. In a cold sweat, she rose from her bed and rushed
into the living room. She found dishes broken on the wood floor, the sofa
turned on its side, papers and every other object in the flat littering the
floor everywhere. Standing in the darkness, which was more profound than it
ever seemed before, were four unidentifiable officers holding securing her
husband with his hands behind his back. One officer had a gun drawn at his
back. Gerald replied, very calmly, that he didn’t know about any POW documents,
that he was never involved in any POW camps, and that they were looking for a
different man. “We know who we’re looking
for, Mr. Delamar” one officer said. “You’re
coming with us for some interrogation.” And with that, the four officers
forced Gerald out of the flat. Lucy had run out into the street after him,
begging the officers that there was surely some mistake, and that what they
were doing certainly could not be allowed. They shoved her away like a bothersome
dog and told her to go home and that she would get her husband back once they
got some facts straightened out. But, more than a year had passed and she still
hadn’t seen Gerald or heard anything about him.
“Who were the men that took your husband?”
Kathryn asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “Wolves.
Filthy, despicable wolves. They said they’d bring him back, but they never
have, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see my Gerald again. One thing I’ve
learned, Kathryn, is it’s not safe to trust anyone anymore. The world is full
of wolves.”
Kathryn
was thankful when they arrived at Lucy’s flat on 61st Street. The
façade was covered in sooty brick, disappointingly ordinary, and the inside was
neat. Lucy used only lamps; all the furniture was a touch too dusty, and seemed
to be, like Lucy, surviving the aftermath of the war. She took her to the
bedroom in the back of the flat, opening the door to a pair of twin beds with
oak frames and an oak work desk at the foot of the beds that looked like it predated
the Victorian Era. A mess of papers decorated the top of the desk, and it was
only then that Kathryn thought to ask the woman what she did for a living.
“I
work a few hours each morning at a quilting factory a few blocks down the
street. I’m on an assembly line—it’s all women—and we make quilts and blankets
to be sold to everyone else. It’s a good job. Calm. Everyone needs blankets,
especially in the winter, as I’m sure you know.”
“Are
you going to teach me my lessons like Aunt Judy?”
“No,
dear, you will go to the Anglican school down the road.”
“Will
I have any friends to play with out in the street?” said Kathryn.
“I’m
sure the teachers will let you play outside, but I can’t tolerate it. As soon
as your school finishes every afternoon, you are to return immediately home.
Make no stops on the way back, and should anyone try to speak to you, you
should reply with a curt nod or a slight grin. But never be too open or too
closed off; never an inviting smile or a rude look, just simple acknowledgment.
Nothing to draw attention to yourself. If any man acting suspiciously tries to
say something to you, you should ignore him completely and continue toward the
house. But never change the speed of your walk, and never do anything to
acknowledge his presence—if a man should ever bother you during your walk to or
from school. In the morning, you will walk with the neighbors to school. They
leave at 7:15 every morning. In the afternoon, you will do as I just said, and
I will be awaiting you just inside the window. You mustn’t be even five minutes
late, or I will begin to fret.”
“Is
London very dangerous?” Kathryn asked.
“Very
dangerous,” Lucy said. “You can’t trust anyone strange. The neighbors and the
schoolteachers I trust, but no one else.”
Lucy
paused as she noticed what morbid fear she was planting in the young girl’s
mind. She tried to assuage the girl somewhat with a chuckle and a smile. She
reached out and touched the girl’s shoulder with a stiff hand. “I don’t want
you to feel like a prisoner here. Of course you can go out in the street to
play, as long as I’m here to watch you. It’s just that everything that happened
to me during the war has taught me to be careful. The intruders, I mean. You
have to keep a tight grip on the things you love. The world is full of wolves.”
“I’ve
never seen a wolf,” Kathryn said. “Well, I have, in some of the lesson books
Aunt Judy used with us, but never in real life.”
“Oh,
dear! They are beastly animals. But I confess, I have never seen one either. My
dear, have you ever heard of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’?”
“I’ve heard Aunt Judy mention it before,
but I don’t know what it’s about.”
“It’s about a young girl who is not
careful enough, so she is fooled by a wolf that would have eaten her had she
not called out for help just in time for the woodsman to save her. I will have
to show you the picture book sometime. The pictures make it better.”
And
so Kathryn grew up under the anxious eye of Lucy Delamar. At first, the woman
tried to entertain Kathryn with pleasant conversation, but this receded after a
few months. More and more, Kathryn began to see that her new mother was a
tedious bore, who complained if she tarried after school, never let her leave
the flat, and never let her have friends over to play—not even the neighbors. She
was a complete recluse. In the afternoons, she peeked through the thin lace
curtains, waiting for Kathryn to come in after school. When the girl came
inside, she drew the blinds and flipped on a solitary lamp on the kitchen
counter. The house was in a perpetual state of gloomy dusk. On a normal day, Kathryn
entered the house with small, morose footsteps, spoke a few words with her
mother, and headed straight for her bedroom, where she would flip on a lamp on
the desk Lucy had bought for her to attend to her studies. She passed the
evening hours of boredom with homework and novel reading. She preferred
whatever room her mother was not in: as Lucy spent most of the evening cooking,
Kathryn spent most of her time reading at her desk. After dinner, when Lucy
retired to her room to read the newspaper before going to sleep early, Kathryn
wandered into the living room and turned on the radio just loud enough to hear
it. She sometimes listened to the news, but more often preferred the popular
music channels.
Lucy’s
restlessness extended to her sleeping hours, so that often she would wake up
every couple hours, which disturbed Kathryn from her already uneasy sleep. Some
nights, Kathryn got in the habit of sleeping on the couch in the living room.
The couch, with its old, worn-down cushions and cotton fabric, was draped in
numerous soft, warm blankets. It was easily the best feature of the flat, and Kathryn
slept better on it than in her rigid bed.
Kathryn
had but one close friendship at her school, a girl named Azhine, who was a quiet,
small girl with piercing brown eyes and thin eyebrows that stretched perfectly
away from the bridge of her nose toward her temples. Kathryn didn’t know
whether she was born in England, but from the brown tint of her skin and the look
of her face, she had decided Azhine was Indian or Middle Eastern. Kathryn convinced
Lucy to let her come see the flat a few times, but eventually Azhine began to
find excuses to avoid the house. Maybe it was the incessant questions Lucy
asked about the girl’s family, her upbringing, her schoolwork and
extracurricular activities. What was her parents’ involvement in the war? Why
had she moved to London? Kathryn noticed that her mother asked a lot of
questions; in fact, that was just about the only way Lucy knew to communicate
with people—particularly strangers. Before long, Kathryn stopped asking Azhine
to come over, and the friendship dwindled into little more than an occasional
word between class lessons or a quiet lunch in the cafeteria.
During
the first two years of Kathryn’s life on 61st Street, she visited
the orphanage on a few occasions, the frequency diminishing over time. During
her final visit, Mrs. Judy asked her how was she doing at Lucy’s house, at
school, with new friends?
“I’m
doing pretty well,” Kathryn replied with a small, but perceptible hesitation.
“My classes are very entertaining, and I have one friend named Azhine, who
moved here from Bristol and started school the same time I did.”
“What
about Lucy?”
“She’s
okay, I suppose. She’s nice enough, I think, although sometimes she vexes me so
much I want to scream. I usually don’t speak to her much.”
“Why
does she vex you?”
“She
gets angry if I forget to lock the door. It’s hard to have a conversation with
her because she talks all the time, and as soon as you say something, she’s
talking again. And she asks so many questions. She is such a bore, and
sometimes I wish I had not gone with her.”
Aunt
Judy firm jaw and tensed lips slackened just enough for Kathryn to notice. “I’m
sorry to hear that, dear. Unfortunately, I have no control over you anymore;
you belong to Ms. Delamar. I would advise you to pick up some activities or
sports outside of school and to try to make some new friends. I’m glad you have
Azhine; she sounds like a nice girl.”
“Thanks,
Aunt Judy. It wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t keep me locked up in the house
so much.”
Aunt
Judy stared at Kathryn until the young girl was positively unsure if the
caretaker was going to say anything or not.
“I’ll
have a talk with her soon,” Aunt Judy said. “I’m glad you came back to see us
today. Go along now; your mother is outside waiting for you.”
Aunt
Judy came to the flat a few days after the visit. Kathryn was planning on
eavesdropping on the conversation between the two women from behind her bedroom
door, but their voices suddenly disappeared. When Kathryn opened her bedroom
door, she realized they had stepped just outside the door of the apartment so
they could talk in privacy. She tried to hear what they were saying through the
door, but couldn’t make out anything. Defeated, she went back to her room to
read.
So
she passed eight years of her life in that dull house. Her eyes grew dim from
both the darkness of the house and the gloomy presence of her mother Lucy, who
watched over the house like a restless owl. Although only forty-three, Ms.
Delamar had the appearance of a lady of sixty, the years of stress after the
war reducing her to a creeping, sulking shadow. Kathryn was now fifteen. She
carried herself with a slow, defeated air, although without any
self-consciousness. She lived in misery, yet she was not without hope.
At
about six-o-clock one evening, a knock came at the door. From Lucy’s custom, Kathryn
knew to ignore the visitor until he or she went away. But Ms. Delamar was in
her room, door closed, and Kathryn had a desperate curiosity to interact with
anyone; anything would be better than the tiredness she felt. But she couldn’t
bring herself to stand from her position on the couch. She waited.
“Milk
delivery!” came a young man’s voice from outside the door, after waiting a
minute with no response.
Taking
this unfamiliar voice as a fateful reason to break the monotonous habit of
ignoring all visitors, Kathryn rushed to the door to greet the young man—a boy,
maybe two years older than her.
“Will
you buy some milk?” he said. His face shone with a jovial enthusiasm so foreign
to Kathryn, which she could only return with a weak grin and a frail voice.
“I
don’t know,” she said. “Wait, let me go ask my mo—”
“Well,
look here,” he interrupted. “This is a new job, and I’m a new boy at the job.
Normally a quart of milk will cost you sixpence, but it’s a fine day, and
you’re a fine young lady, and I can feel myself nearly bursting with good will.
So, I’m going to give you this quart free of charge.”
Kathryn
had grown to be a lovely creature despite her imprisonment in Lucy’s melancholy
apartment. Her blonde hair had turned golden, she had grown tall and slender,
her cheekbones naturally high and friendly, and her skin, though pale, was
exceedingly soft. Only her droopy eyes betrayed the gloom that had dragged her
spirit along the past eight years. But this young man, apparently, found her
blue eyes ever more inspiring, for he said, “My name is Marcus. Whom do I have
the pleasure of meeting?”
“Kathryn,”
said the girl.
He
reached out a hand to give hers a kind squeeze. “A joy to meet you, Kathryn.”
He handed her the quart of milk.
Kathryn
said, “Why, I don’t know how to thank you…”
“Only
with your jolly presence, dear,” he said. “I’ll have you know this is the new
custom, this milk delivery, and I’ll be at your service every Monday and
Thursday at the same time. Goodbye, now!”
With
that, he scurried off through the modest garden to the next door, and greeted
them with equal enthusiasm. Before the girl had time to think about what a
curious fellow she had just encountered, the foreboding voice of her mother
travelled across the room. “What have I told you about opening the door to
strangers?” She tried to keep the exasperation from her countenance, but those
eyes, wide and strained from years of relentless agitation, could not betray
her. She stood, hands on hips, facing the girl from the bedroom doorway. “Who
was that?”
“I
know, mum, and I’m sorry. I heard his voice from outside after he knocked and I
waited a minute without answering. He sounded like a nice enough fellow, so I
opened the door. His name is Marcus; there’s nothing the matter with him. He’s
a milk delivery boy.”
“Milk
delivery? That’s strange. We’ve never had a milk delivery boy before. You
didn’t notice anything peculiar, did you?”
“What
do you mean?”
“He
wasn’t wearing anything funny, was he? Any radios, or suspicious equipment? Any
foreign emblems on his clothing? Any concealed packages? He didn’t look German,
do you think?”
“German?”
Kathryn said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a German. And I don’t remember
seeing any of those other things either.”
Lucy’s
shoulders settled a bit. “Okay. Never answer the door again without consulting
me first. We can’t make ourselves vulnerable like that. The world is full of
wolves. When you open the door to someone, they find out who you are; they
might be told who lives here, but until they match a face to the name, no one’s
going to cause you harm. Leave him be from now on, and he’ll eventually lose
patience for an answer.”
Kathryn
had heard this countless times before. Flustered, she said, “Mum, no one is out
to get you. The war ended ten years ago. No one ever comes here, anyway. Who
would want to? The curtains are always drawn. It’s like a crypt in this place.
If anything, you should be happy for visitors, because maybe—just maybe—they
would ease your loneliness and help you to forget what happened to your
husband. Who knows but that he’s not still alive, hoping to return to you. All
the harmless people you’re so afraid of could be the one link you have to him.”
Kathryn
knew she shouldn’t have said it. She knew from her Current Events classes in
school that there was not a great chance that Gerald was still alive. But she
needed to vent her frustration somehow. There was no talking sense into that
woman.
“Gerald
is gone,” said Lucy Delamar. “I have come to accept it, and I don’t want to
hear anymore about it. What I have to do now is protect the things I do have: you and myself.”
Kathryn
wanted to tell her mum that she was doing more harm than good, that she wasn’t
protecting her from anyone; but she refrained. Instead, she muttered a tired
agreement and withdrew into her bedroom.
The
next time Marcus came for delivery, Kathryn had the good fortune of being alone
in the living room, her mother in the bedroom behind a closed door. To her
added luck, she was able to hear the boy approaching from down the street, so
that she rose to open the door for him before he could knock. As soon as she
peaked her head out the door, he opened his mouth to greet her with a loud and
cordial remark, but Kathryn silenced him with a sharp glance before he could
speak. “We must converse very softly,” she said. She continued to explain to him her mother’s wary condition,
and together, they agreed that from that point on, Marcus would tap lightly on
the window following a specific rhythm. That way, if Lucy was in the living
room and heard the knock, he could be out of view of the front door within a
second. If, however, it was safe for Kathryn to open the door, the rhythmic tap
would be just enough for her to recognize.
For
a month, Kathryn and Marcus chatted just outside the front door of Lucy
Delamar’s flat on 61st street, every Monday and Thursday at 6:00 in
the afternoon. There were three exceptions, owing either to Lucy’s presence in
the living room or the door to the bedroom being left open, but Kathryn didn’t
much fear her mum. Marcus’s spritely arrival became her central entertainment,
the ten or fifteen minutes a week that she anticipated on the edge of the sofa,
always darting glances from the bedroom door to the front door, to the window
and back. Her short chats outside the doorway with Marcus became her one brake
from the monotony of her otherwise boring life. When Marcus rapped on the
window, she felt like the children in the primary school at the end of the
street when they were allowed to leave the classrooms for playtime. She
contented herself listening to his stories and basking in his talkative energy.
The few words she spoke were met with profound interest and curiosity; for
once, she felt like she was caught up in something good, something exciting.
“Some
of my friends and I put on amateur shows every few weeks at the Derbyshire
Theatre,” he said after a month of his visits. “One girl in the group,
Charlotte, has an uncle who is in charge for renting out the theater to
different professionals. Well, he’s arranged a deal to let us perform free of charge.
We’re doing a few short skits this coming Sunday at 8:00 at night. You’d be
wise to please us with your shining face.”
She
nodded in a state of near rapture. Of course she would go.
As
Lucy was in the custom of going to bed early, Sunday nights were especially
early nights. Lucy peeked her head into the living room to say good night to Kathryn
at 8:30. Kathryn stared at the crack under the door until the light from within
was extinguished; then, she stole silently out the front door into the cold night,
locking the door at her back. She trotted the five blocks to the theatre, all
the while praying she wouldn’t be too late to catch at least one or two skits.
The door to the theatre was unlocked, but there was no one at the window to
sell tickets, no one in the lobby to direct the spectators into the theatre. Kathryn
found it easily enough; the stage was dimly lit, the cheap, gray kind of light
you’d expect at a rehearsal. There were no more than thirty visitors seated in
the theatre, and although the audience was caked in near blackness, Kathryn
chose a solitary seat in the rear, too timid to risk drawing attention to
herself by moving closer to stage. To her delight, the young performers played
on till after 10, and seemed charged with a spirit of youth.
When
the acting ended, the band of amateurs disbursed. Some hopped offstage and
struck up conversation with folks in the audience, some formed small cliques
onstage, and others, like Marcus, disappeared somewhere backstage. Kathryn’s
heart raced to see Marcus in this new and romantic setting, so she waited twenty
minutes for him to reappear onstage. When the frightful idea seized her that
maybe he had exited some unseen route, she raced out the front and waited ten minutes
more in the cold, stale street, but he never appeared.
She
resolved to reenter the theater and try her luck once more, but before she
pulled open the door, she heard a crash nearby, like the sound you would
imagine if a dog knocked over a tin garbage can. The crash was accompanied by
two arguing voices: a man and a woman. She followed the sound cautiously, her
stomach fluttering within her. She stopped at the opening of a narrow alley
behind the theater. The woman she had heard was a young brown-headed girl with
exceptionally pale skin, and the male voice that had drawn her attention
belonged to none other than her boy Marcus. Unsure what was happening, Kathryn offered
him a wave, but he was too occupied in his conversation with the brunette to
notice her. Kathryn parted her lips bravely to call out to him, but hesitated,
wondering whether it might be bothersome for her to interrupt him. Maybe this
was his girlfriend; in that case, it might be awkward for Kathryn to call his
attention, especially from her position at the opposite end of the alley.
She
had just decided she would take a frigid, half-defeated walk back to her flat
when she heard Marcus raise his voice to the girl, his words spitting with a
biting malice, “So you thought I wouldn’t find out? You think it’s okay to
betray my confidence like that; at the least, you could have come to me first.
You have no idea how little I have to live on, let alone to spend on hobbies.
You have quite the nerve, you worthless slut. You ought to show me your tongue
right now, so I can crush it with a pair of bricks. That would shut you up.”
The
brunette got close up to Marcus’s face, her own face contorted with rage and
fear. “You think you own the world, don’t you? Well, you don’t.. Stealing is
always wrong, Marcus. You should be fired for this, you know. I should tell
Josh you’ve been stealing other boys’ delivery money, and using it on whores
all over the town! You are a brute and a pig.” Her tensed finger was cutting
through the air dangerously close to his eyeball.
Kathryn
watched the scene, her eyes transfixed. Too shocked to move, she watched as Marcus’s
face quivered almost imperceptibly, and in a swift motion, he tensed his arm
and swung a flat hand into the brunette’s face.
“I
will not tolerate that kind of disrespect,” he said to the girl, who was bent
over, nursing her bruised face in both hands. In another equally swift
movement, he reached to the ground, picked up a brick, and struck her a vicious
blow to the side of the head. Kathryn heard the crack of the brick on bone 30
meters down the alley, a horrific audible collision. Kathryn watched in horror as the young girl fell to the
ground unconscious from the force of the blow. She turned her head, overwhelmed
and scared, before the brunette’s limp body sank onto the street, blood soaking
through her hair the moment Marcus hit her.
Marcus left the brunette in the alley and
fled from the scene in the opposite direction. When he was out of sight,
Kathryn ran toward the scene of the altercation to find the girl semi-conscious
near the doorway of what she guessed was the theater’s back door. Her eyes were
flickering open and closed, never more than a wink, and her lips were quivering
soundlessly, as if trying in vain to say something. The left side of her head
was smeared with blood, some starting to dry and some still fresh, centered
around a brown, black, and purple swelling starting at the ear and extending to
the corner of her eye. Kathryn shook the girl softly on the shoulder and asked if
she was okay. When the girl made no response other than the sporadic facial
movements, Kathryn yelled for help, timidly at first, but with increasing
volume. A tall man with a lot of facial hair, a long black coat and a large
black hat rushed into the alley toward the two girls. He asked Kathryn what had
happened and said he would call the police and take care of everything.
Kathryn
left the alley and walked quickly back to the flat on 61st Street.
All she could think of was Marcus standing in front of the brunette with the
brick in his hand, telling her he should smash her tongue in that menacing
voice, the same voice that had sounded so completely foreign when he used it to
flatter her all those times outside her apartment. Her quiet sobs stirred the London
night as her mind replayed images of Marcus. She was haunted by two different
people: Marcus the milk delivery boy and Marcus the criminal.
When she made it back to the flat, she
closed the door and dead-bolted it behind her. Lucy was standing in the middle
of the living room.
“Where
on earth have you been?” she said.
Kathryn
could barely make out her face in the dim light—the kitchen lamp needed
repairing. For the first time, she was not annoyed to see the concern on her
mother’s face. She wanted to cry, to fall apart right there in front of Lucy,
to tell her mother everything and embrace her and feel her warmth and drink her
comfort. But she couldn’t. Instead, she said the only thing that really made
sense to her in that moment, the only thing she could muster up. “Wolves,” she
said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “The world is full of them.”
Lucy
approached her daughter Kathryn and embraced her, a warm and tight embrace.
“I’m
so sorry,” Kathryn said, and she wept into her mother’s shoulder.
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