“What’s all this about, Alf?” the vicar asked.
“Nuthin’,” Alf said and ran off again.
“Perhaps I’d best check the churchyard when I get home,” the vicar told Eileen. “Alf may have decided tombstones would make excellent roadblocks when the Germans invade.”
“No, it’s something else,” Eileen said. “If it were anyone but Alf, I’d think he was worried about his sister being”-her voice caught-“buried so far away from home.”
“There’s no improvement?” he asked kindly.
“No.” And if there hadn’t been two floors separating them, she’d have laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed.
He gave her a comforting smile and said, “I know you’re doing your best.”
But I’m afraid it’s not good enough, she thought, and went to bathe Binnie’s hot limbs and coax more aspirin into her, though she worried she might be making things worse, not better. But the next night when she didn’t wake her to give the tablets to her-deciding it was better to let her sleep-her temp immediately shot up again. Eileen resumed giving it to her, wondering what she’d do when the tablets ran out.
I’ll have to tell the vicar and hope he doesn’t tell Dr. Stuart, she thought. Or tie my sheets together and go out the window after some, but it wasn’t necessary. That afternoon Binnie’s temp abruptly went down, leaving her bathed in sweat.
“Her fever’s broken,” Dr. Stuart said. “Thank God. I feared the worst, but sometimes, with Providence’s help-and good nursing,” he patted Eileen’s hand, “the patient pulls through.”
“So she will recover?” Eileen said, looking down at Binnie. She looked so thin and pale.
He nodded. “She’s through the worst of it now.”
And she seemed to be, though she didn’t rally as quickly as the other children. It was three days before her breathing eased and a full week before she was able to sip a little broth on her own. And she was so… docile. When Eileen read her fairy stories, which Binnie usually despised, she listened quietly.
“I’m worried,” Eileen told the vicar. “The doctor says she’s better, but she just lies there.”
“Has Alf been in to see her?”
“No. He’s liable to give her a relapse.”
“Or shake her out of her apathy,” he said.
“I think I’ll wait till she’s stronger,” Eileen said, but that afternoon, watching Binnie lying in her cot, gazing listlessly at the ceiling, Eileen sent Una to fetch Alf.
“You look ’xactly like a corpse,” he said.
Well, this was a good idea, Eileen thought, and was about to escort him out when Binnie pushed herself up against the pillows.
“I do not,” she said.
“You do so. Everybody said you was goin’ to die. You was out of your ’ead and everything.”
“I was not.”
Just like old times, Eileen thought and, for the first time since Binnie had fallen ill, felt a loosening of the tightness around her heart.
“She did almost die, didn’t she, Eileen?” Alf said and turned back to Binnie. “But you ain’t goin’ to now.”
Which seemed to reassure Binnie, but that night as Eileen put her into a fresh nightgown, she asked, “Are you certain I ain’t going to die?”
“Positive,” Eileen said, tucking her in. “You’re growing stronger every day.”
“What ’appens to people who die, when they ’aven’t got no name?”
“You mean, when no one knows who they were?” Eileen asked, puzzled.
“No. When they ain’t got a name to put on the tombstone. Do they still get to get buried in the churchyard?”
She’s illegitimate, Eileen thought suddenly. Having an unmarried mother had been a true stigma for children in this era, with the child branded a bastard.
But the stigma hadn’t extended as far as tombstones. “Binnie, your name is your name, no matter whether your mother is married or not…”
Binnie made a sound of complete disgust, and Eileen was certain that if she hadn’t still been too weak to get out of bed, she’d have stomped from the room like her brother. As it was, she turned over onto her side and faced the wall.
Eileen wished the vicar was here. She racked her brain to recall any customs involving names and tombstones in 1940, but she couldn’t think of anything. Alf, she thought. He knows what this is all about, and hastily gathered up the dirty linen. “I’m taking these downstairs,” she told Binnie. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
No response. Eileen dumped the linens in the laundry and went to the ballroom, where Alf was wrapping Rose in bandages. “I’m practicin’ for the ambulance,” he said.
“Alf, come with me,” Eileen said. “Now,” and took him into the music room and shut the door. “I want to know why Binnie’s worried over her name being on a tombstone, and don’t say you don’t know.”
Something in her tone must have convinced him she meant business, because he muttered, “She ain’t got one.”
“A tombstone?”
“No, a name,” and at Eileen’s bewildered look, “Binnie ain’t a real name. It’s just short for ’Odbin.”
“Can you believe he told Binnie she didn’t have a first name?” she told the vicar when he arrived the next day. “And she apparently believed him.”
“Did you ask Binnie?” he said.
“What do you mean? You can’t seriously think… everyone has a first name. Just because they come from a poor-”
He was shaking his head. “The Evacuation Committee’s run into more than one slum child without a name, and the billeting officer’s had to make one up on the spot. I’m not certain you realize how hard some of the children’s lives were at home. Many of them had never slept in a bed before they came here-”
Or used a toilet, Eileen thought, remembering her prep. Some evacuees from the slums had urinated on the floors of their foster homes or squatted in a corner. And Mrs. Bascombe had told her several of the evacuees at the manor had had to be taught to use a knife and fork when they’d first come. But a name! “Alf has a name,” she argued, but the vicar wasn’t convinced.
“Perhaps their father felt differently about a boy. Or perhaps it wasn’t the same father. And you must admit, Mrs. Hodbin-if she is a Mrs.-hasn’t shown much maternal instinct.”
“True. But still…” she said, and when she went in to talk to Binnie, tried to reassure her. “I’m certain your name’s not short for Hodbin,” Eileen told Binnie. “That’s only Alf teasing. I’m certain it’s a nickname-”
“For what?” Binnie said belligerently.
“I don’t know. Belinda? Barbara?”
“There ain’t no ‘n’ in Barbara.”
“Nicknames don’t always have the same letters,” Eileen said. “Look at Peggy. Her real name’s Margaret. And there are all sorts of nicknames for Mary-Mamie and Molly and-”
“If Binnie’s short for somethin’, why ain’t nobody ever said what?” she said, and was so skeptical Eileen wondered if their mother had made some comment that had put the idea in their heads. Whatever had, it was the last thing Binnie needed while she was recovering. After a fortnight her eyes had a shadowed look and she hadn’t gained back any of the weight she’d lost.
Eileen said briskly, “If you haven’t got a name, then you must choose one.”
“Choose one?”
“Yes, like in ‘Rumpelstiltskin.’”
“That wasn’t choosin’. It was guessin’.”
Why did I think this would work? Eileen wondered, but after a minute, Binnie said, “If I chose a name, you’d call me it?”
“Yes,” Eileen said, and was immediately sorry. Binnie spent the next few days trying on names like hats and asking Eileen what she thought of Gladys and Princess Elizabeth and Cinderella. But as maddening as the parade of names was, it did the trick. Binnie began to make rapid progress, growing rounder and more pink-cheeked by the day.
