The Blossoming Summer

It was just after the Germans invaded France and the Low Countries that Rosemary received two telegrams: one from her mother, and one from her father.
One said: Terribly worried, keep your spirits up dear
The other said: Have made plans, will write soon
It might have been amusing—the difference between Mum’s “you poor darling” and Dad’s “we won’t take this lying down” approaches—if it hadn’t been for how very terrified Rosemary felt inside.
Mum telephoned two days after the invasion—after two interminable evenings of listening to ghastly news pouring from the speakers of their wireless. Belgium invaded. Holland and Luxembourg, neutral countries, also invaded. The announcer predicted that this might evolve into the “most gigantic battle of all times.”
“Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Calais, Dunkirk, Lyon—all have been bombed,” the broadcaster was saying. “Many other towns as well—houses in Brussels are in flames—the Jemelle railway was set on fire—”
“Oh, John,” said Aunt Katie Alexandra as the three of them listened, transfixed. “Do they think we will be next?”
Uncle John’s expression could only be described as grim. “Yes.”
And he was right. It emerged that England was already in danger: the Germans had tried to attack the Royal Air Force bases in France; German planes had been spotted over the Thames Estuary—and on the southeast coast.
“They’re coming here,” said Rosemary, feeling numb. All throughout the broadcast she had been tugging at a hole in her jersey, unable to stop her fingers.
If only she could be sure the rest of her family was safe. But her parents and brothers were scattered across England—who knew if Hitler would start bombing them? If only she could be there to comfort them . . . or if they could have been miraculously transported here . . .
“Rosemary, we simply must come and fetch you,” Mum said when she called, with the firmest conviction Rosemary had ever heard from her. “It is a fairly good position I have now, but this is too much—your father and I are frightened.”
“But—your job,” stammered Rosemary.
“I simply can’t stay. And neither can Dad. You children are too important.”
Dad, too, had just gotten a steady job—his first in a very long time—at a munitions factory. Finally, finally, he had work. The Depression had made it ever so hard, and the family had endured separation for three years for want of money. Each child had been sent to live under a different roof: Rosemary in London, Patrick in Birmingham, and Kenneth near Liverpool. Both parents, who had been seeking employment for so long, had finally found positions that would earn them money, enough money to allow the family to reunite under one roof, but now . . .
Panic flooded Rosemary’s throat.
“We should have had you evacuated before,” Mum fretted. “We should have. But we were so badly hoping that things would be well . . .”
“You mustn’t leave your jobs. We have wanted this very much.” Mum and Dad couldn’t ruin all their plans now, their lovely hopes and dreams of being a real family again.
“Anyplace might be the next target. No, we’ve decided. Dad has a plan. It’s not quite finalized yet, but I will call again.”
And Rosemary had to be satisfied with that.
“I don’t know what to think,” she murmured when she hung up the cool black receiver of the telephone. For a moment she stood there, staring at the hallway wallpaper of red and yellow flowers.
Flowers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world of flowers instead of being stuffed in a city, not knowing when the Germans might decide to attack, wondering if terror would drop from the sky—A world of sunshine, and beautiful growing things, and newly-baked bread, and—
“You’re lost in thought,” Aunt Katie Alexandra remarked.
Rosemary blinked, then pasted on a smile so that Aunt Katie Alexandra would not press the issue. Whenever she slipped into one of her cherished daydreams about her perfect life, she wanted it to be just for herself.
For she had a secret world that she’d kept carefully manicured ever since Mum and Dad had split up the family. It was a glorious place of colorful flowers growing in happy profusion, and of orchards dotted with blossoming trees. She called it Paradise.
There was a house in Paradise, too. A grand white house that sheltered its family from the rain and wind and welcomed newcomers on bright summer days. It winked its eyes in the blizzards of December and kept fires burning in its hearth during January; it shone like china in the June sun, and its lawns turned green as a parakeet’s plumage in August. It was a vivid picture that Rosemary kept tucked away in her mind’s eye, and she took it out often to look at it, savor it, and examine it like one would a rare jewel.
“Someday,” she had always promised herself. “Someday, we will go to Paradise.”
On dark nights when the wireless was blaring, and Rosemary’s chest grew tight with fear, she elaborated on the dream, doggedly furnishing the house and plotting the sprawling gardens.
She escaped to Paradise any time the world seemed ugly and dangerous—when she was trying to avoid looking at newspapers, or waiting in line to receive their ration cards for the month, or searching for candy to send to her brothers that didn’t cost too terribly much.
She also liked to imagine the family inside the Paradise house. It wasn’t quite her family, exactly; not yet. But they were a fondly familiar group of people: there was a mother, a father, and three young children, and they were a remarkably special family. They never quarreled, and they always did things together, having a marvelous time whether they were weeding the ever-blooming garden, throwing an extravagant lawn party, or holing up inside on a damp night to read aloud by the fire.
It was never wartime in Paradise, either.