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1
Descent into Hell, 1941
The day the bombs fell on Maggie Leigh and tore her life apart, she was out shopping for fabric with her aunt Joan. Maggie usually didn't spend too much time with her aunt, because the family considered her a bad influence.
"Joan is a lost cause," Maggie's mom had told her more than once. At first, Maggie wasn't sure what she meant by this cryptic statement, because her mother wouldn't elaborate. She'd just say with a resigned sigh, "Your aunt's morals have been compromised -- I'll explain when you're older." But from overhearing hushed conversations between her mom and other relatives late at night, Maggie learned that her aunt had gotten involved in a secret relationship with a married Indian officer.
Maggie's aunt had left Britain five years ago to work at a civil service office in Bombay, an Indian city that according to Maggie's mom was "godless," and therefore suited Aunt Joan much better than London did. Maggie's mother was extremely conservative and religious, and had tried to raise Maggie the same way, although the indoctrination hadn't fully taken. Maggie imagined she took after her scandalous, travel-loving aunt much more than she did her strict mom. Her aunt always talked to her like she was fullgrown, and not just fifteen. Maggie could ask Aunt Joan questions she'd never dare ask her own mother, and her aunt would usually give her pretty honest answers.
Aunt Joan's illicit romance with the Indian officer was seen as tawdry and immoral by some, but to Maggie, the whole thing sounded like a great adventure. She tried to picture the Indian man, his features coalescing in a vague way out of clichéd images from the Rudyard Kipling stories she'd been forced to read at school. She wondered if he had a beard like coiled black wool, and maybe a turban or a sash to go with it. India seemed like a world she couldn't start to understand, a mystical place where the rules of daily life were suspended. Maggie had never left the British Isles in her entire life and found it hard to imagine exotic places like India actually existed.
The fateful day that Maggie got caught in the blitz of German bombs, her aunt had picked her up from her house, and they'd taken a taxicab to the fabric district near Oxford Street. Maggie was excited, because since the outbreak of World War II nineteen months ago, her mom didn't let her go many places anymore, except for school and the local market. Maggie still remembered hearing the prime minister's shocking declaration of war as she huddled next to the wireless radio. "We shall be fighting against evil things," he had said. She hadn't realized his words would bring an end to many of the childhood freedoms she took for granted.
The war also marked the beginning of many other nasty new experiences, such as cowering during air raids and learning how to put on gas masks. War rationing also meant that luxuries like certain foods and items of clothing were in short supply. However, Maggie's mom had always been frugal before the war, so this element of wartime Britain was no great change. Maggie's dad had left the family three years earlier; he'd been a part-time coal trimmer, and a full-time alcoholic. No one had any idea where he was, and in his absence Maggie and her mother frequently had to scrimp and save out of necessity. But Aunt Joan was an oasis of relief from all that. She made good wages in India and wasn't afraid to spend her money whenever she returned to visit London.
In the back of the taxi on the way to the fabric store, Maggie noticed that her aunt's palms were decorated with strange red designs: tattooed lines and patterns in concentric circles. Her aunt saw her looking at the markings, and she held up one hand for Maggie to scrutinize. "It's not permanent. It's henna, see? Only lasts a few weeks."
"Henna?" Maggie asked, peering closer. The color of the ink nearly matched her aunt's hair.
"It's a decorative tattoo they do in India. Don't you think it's neat?"
Maggie couldn't decide. "Sort of," she said, because she didn't want to sound critical, although truthfully she wouldn't have wanted that mess all over her own hands. She glanced down at them unconsciously where they lay, small and white in her lap. To her, they still looked like a little girl's hands, with short, stubby fingers.
Her aunt laughed. "It's okay if you don't like the henna tattoos. I thought your mother was going to faint when she saw them. You'd think we were fifty years apart, not five. She's like a decrepit old biddy in that chair..." Aunt Joan was referring to the fact that Maggie's mom had been confined to a wheelchair for the past two years, due to premature arthritis in her joints.
"Mum doesn't take to new things very well," Maggie pointed out. "She's old-fashioned."
Her aunt smiled. "Your mum takes after our mother -- your grandmother -- in that way. I was always the black sheep of the bunch, always breaking the rules...always getting punished." She glanced down at her hennaed hands, flexing them. "I got these done by a lady on Dinsbury Lane. She didn't do a half-bad job for the price." She looked out the window and saw they were close to their destination. "Driver, stop here," she called out, and the cab came to an abrupt halt in front of a row of stores.
The driver didn't say anything, and Maggie thought he looked unhappy, slumped behind his well-worn steering wheel. Because of the curfews, and the blackouts at night -- which meant that cars couldn't turn on their headlamps -- most people used the underground trains to navigate London these days, so there wasn't much use for taxis. Many of the streetlamps and traffic signals had been taken down or permanently disabled.
Maggie slid out of the cab while her aunt paid, the soles of her black boots landing on the cobblestones as her eyes scanned the wide street. It was an upscale neighborhood, and Maggie instantly felt out of place. She saw two girls her own age at the other end of the road, both in fancy black dresses, with colored ribbons done up in their hair. She suddenly felt self-conscious about the way she was dressed, which was in a cheap gray skirt and a brown sweater-blouse, so she looked away from the girls. She caught one of their voices and could tell from the accent that they were posh, and probably lived somewhere in this rich neighborhood. Maggie and her mom lived in the lower-middle-class district of Hudsworth Green, which couldn't compare.
Maggie knew these girls would probably hate her if they realized where she was from, because class warfare remained intense, even during a real war. As the taxi slunk off down the street, Aunt Joan walked over and put her arm around Maggie's shoulders, distracting her. "Come this way, dear. I'll show you why the British empire can't hold a candle to India when it comes to cotton and silk."
When Maggie and her aunt entered the fabric store, which had an indecipherable name written in Sanskrit symbols, the shopgirl behind the counter greeted Aunt Joan warmly. Maggie noticed the air in here was thicker than outside, thicker even than a London pea-soup smog, and it held the sweet tang of oriental incense. The smell was strong enough that she could taste it, like cinnamon, oranges, and pepper tickling the back of her throat. She fought the urge to sneeze, afraid it might make her seem unsophisticated in a place like this.
As she looked around, she realized the store contained a blizzard of fabrics, all kinds of shapes and colors and textures. They were piled in bales against the walls, hanging from the ceiling, and wrapped around large wooden slats, like giant rolls of Christmas paper. Fabric was even draped over several lamps, muting their glow but casting warm, colorful patterns across the walls.
Maggie's aunt moved around the store, swiftly assessing the different fabrics based on their colors and textures. Maggie followed, unsure what her aunt's standards were but certain that she had some definitive ones. Her aunt picked out a swatch of fabric from a pile on a table and turned around. She held it up to Maggie's chest and said, "This blue silk matches your eyes. We could make a sari out of this. Turn you into a real maharaja's bride." Her aunt made a funny fish face, and Maggie couldn't help laughing, even though she was also flushing faintly with embarrassment. The idea of herself as a bride seemed a million years away.
"Auntie, please," Maggie said, looking around to see if anyone else in the store had heard. But there was no one else except the shopgirl, counting receipts. "I'd like to go to India one day, to see what it's like," Maggie said, trying to change the subject. "It sounds so different from here. It sounds fun."
"If you want to go there, you probably will. Desire can provide excellent motivation. Remind me to stop by the bookseller on the way home, and I'll buy you a real book about India. I can't imagine your mum buys you too many books, does she?"
"The only book she ever gave me was the Bible."
Her aunt laughed. "Why am I not surprised? Now come on, I want to talk to the stock girl. I need to ask if she -- " Her aunt suddenly broke off midsentence, her mouth still open.
"You okay?" Maggie asked.
"Listen, do you hear that sound?" Aunt Joan's voice had dropped several octaves into a husky whisper of fear. She reached out a hand and grabbed Maggie's arm. "Tell me I'm imagining things."
Maggie cocked her head to one side and followed her aunt's gaze through the front windows of the shop. It took her a moment to realize that faintly, in the distance, she could hear an unmistakable whine that had become all too familiar in the past several months.
"Oh no," Maggie whispered. It was the rising and falling sound of an air-raid siren, the kind that signified great danger. Usually when she heard this sound, she and her mother were already on their way into the Anderson bomb shelter at home. But here in this store, on this cobblestone street in an unfamiliar part of London, she and her aunt were trapped.
Then, under ...
