The tea smelled stale. The biscuits, however—oh, the biscuits were nearly still warm and iced with maple sugar. I wished devoutly that one of the Tommies would offer me one, but not a single man returned my stare.
A young boy to my left was sobbing. He had hugged both arms around his mother’s knees, refusing to let go.
“Now, Bobby,” she was pleading with him over and over, her hat dribbling faux blackberries and her skirts all bunched up by his grip. “Now, Bobby, please.”
He wasn’t the only child in tears. There were scores of them, probably hundreds, all over the station, everyone wan and sniffling and red-eyed, their parents—if they’d come; sometimes it was clearly only the nannies—forcing smiles and making promises that no one in their right mind would believe, no matter how young.
“It’s just for a while, sweetheart. Just a short while. You remember your auntie’s farm, don’t you? All the fine ponies and sheep? Of course you remember—”
“—and I’ll come get you soon. As soon as I can, me and your grandmum both. Soon as I can—”
“—Because you’ll be safest there, that’s why. I’ve made up my mind about this, Sally, you know that I have, so do stop arguing with me about it; you’ve given me the migraine. I need you to get on that train this instant—”
“—it’ll be over in no time. Right? Right? We know that. Buck up, son, there you are! Milk a few cows for a few weeks, and there you are. Home again quick as a wink, m’boy, I swear.”
There was no one accompanying me to offer any lies about returning to the city soon. I’d left the foundling house alone, astonished enough that they’d paid for the hansom cab to get me to the station. It would have been a very long walk.
I turned my gaze to the ceiling once more, inhaling the scent of damp wool and biscuits and tea, watching the billowing steam from the trains wind upward in corkscrews, condense into rows of silvery tears strung along the steel ribs.
Then I moved past Bobby and his mum, shouldering my way through the crowds to the train that would take me away from this place.
What with the dismally methodical determination of the Germans to blow us all to smithereens, it seemed a strange miracle none of the glass above me had yet cracked.
• • •
“Ticket, luv?”
The ticket agent stood over me, his gloved hand flat out in front of my nose. I’d been daydreaming, gazing out the window at the last looming shadows of the city whipping by. With my eyes half closed, with my breath clouding the pane, the outlying dregs of London became one long, lovely smear of mist.
The agent startled me out of my reverie; my head jerked back and my hat mashed against my seat.
“Er—sorry—”
“Righto,” he said cheerfully enough, but his hand didn’t move.
Ticket, ticket—I straightened my hat and patted my empty coat pockets. Where had it gone? I’d begun to run both hands rather desperately down my skirt before I recalled I’d stuck it in the suitcase at my feet.
I bent over to snap open my case. The stout woman crammed next to me shifted irritably. The third-class compartments had rows of narrow wooden benches and too many passengers and precious little else. My bench mate had been pushing her boot against my bag for the last half hour, as if she could shove it through the wall of the train to get it out of her way.
She reeked of days-old sweat and chickens. I wished I could shove her out of the train.
“All the way to Wessex, then?” the agent inquired, still jovial, his hand punch biting holes in my ticket with a series of rapid click-click-clicks.
I nodded.
He cocked his head and gave me a dubious squint. “Land Girl, izzit?”
I knew I looked young; I was small and angular in all the wrong places, something the too-tight coat seemed to emphasize. But the Land Girls, those strapping city girls headed out to England’s farms to finish the work all our fighting young men could not do, were usually at least eighteen. However old I actually was, I knew I was nowhere near that.
“School,” I said, and the man’s face cleared. He gave me back my ticket.
“Aye. Wessex, then. Good luck, luv.”
“Thank you.”
He walked on. As the train rocked back and forth, the chicken-woman began to brush at the wrinkles in her dress, using the movement as an excuse