How I Live Now

14

A few days later we had another visitor only this time he wore a British Army uniform and brought a lackey with him to take notes and check things off on a list. He didn’t seem particularly interested in us living without adults, though I noticed him giving Edmond’s burning cigarette a look and I thought Boy oh boy if you’re going to spend any time nosing around here you’d better be a little more particular about what shocks you and what doesn’t, and then Edmond gave me a look like Watch What You Say only it should be Watch What You Think when he’s around.

The guy poked around and asked a lot of questions like how many rooms we had and did the roof leak and how many outbuildings were there and who if anyone had been here to see us and I noticed Edmond answered the question of the outbuildings without mentioning the lambing barn. Then Mr. Regular Army and his Man Friday tramped off to look at the lay of the land and came back a while later and said It will be perfect and boy did I ever NOT like the sound of that.

It turned out that we were being Sequestered which had to be explained to me since I’m not exactly in the habit of having people take over a perfectly private house to send the inhabitants off to live god knows where for The Duration, and all I could think was this would not happen in America but of course for all I knew the Green Berets were already holed up in Bloomingdale’s.

Osbert was so anxious to look helpful he was practically standing at attention but for once I felt sorry for him because it seemed pretty obvious that we were all going to have to do what they said no matter what, and maybe Osbert was only hoping that somehow he could protect us all by being Respectful. I stuck with what I was good at, i.e. Blank bordering on Sullen and when I looked over at Edmond he had the saddest expression on his face but when he saw I was looking he smiled.

Osbert was the only one with the courage to say what we were all thinking, which was What about us? And the army guy looked up in an absent kind of way that told us everything we needed to know about how concerned they were for our happiness and we kind of drifted off together like a huddled mass yearning to breathe free, no one wanting to lose track of any of the others.

Of course at this point it hadn’t occurred to me that we might be separated, but do you know anyone, even in the middle of a war, who’s going to take on a group of five kids especially ones like us who don’t exactly remind you of Little Women even on our best day?

The army guy went away and said he’d be back tomorrow and afterwards we all stood there shell-shocked if you’ll excuse the expression and silent, just in case anything we said out loud turned out to be true.

I started out in bed with Piper that night and as I lay awake with my arms around her waiting for her to fall asleep I wondered if Dr. Jameson had anything to do with this, after all it seemed pretty coincidental to have two visitors in less than a week when no one had noticed us for ages. After an hour or so when I was sure Piper was calm and safe I slipped off to be with Edmond and we said even less than usual only climbed inside each other for comfort and oblivion and fell asleep that way wrapped in black sheep blankets and together dreamt a single dream that there was no one left in the world but us.