The War That Saved My Life

Ada teaches herself how to walk while she’s home alone. She falls constantly, making it a painful and bloody experience, but Ada is persistent. She imagines gaining Mam’s acceptance, going shopping, and going to school, all because she can walk.

Jamie begins stealing food and bringing it back to share with Ada at home. When he’s caught, Mam blames Ada. As punishment, Mam forces Ada to stay in a small cabinet under the sink overnight. Throughout the night spent under the sink, Ada is able to go away inside her head and mentally escape. She continues teaching herself to walk and begins to feel stronger and more confident.

Children are evacuated to the countryside as the war gets closer to London. Ada panics, demanding to know what will happen to her when all the other children are evacuated, and Mam insists that Ada will never leave the one-room flat. Ada is a fighter, though, and tells Jamie not to worry—If Jamie can tell her where to go and when to be there, Ada is determined to escape from London together.

In the early hours of the morning, Ada steals Mam’s shoes and escapes from the flat with Jamie, who is shocked to see Ada standing and walking. They walk to Jamie’s school together slowly, arriving before the streets and halls become crowded with people.

A teacher notices Ada’s limp, and Ada lies, saying that she just hurt her foot that morning. Stephen White, a neighbor boy, is surprised to see Ada leaving London with the other children. Ada assumes he’s surprised that she’s able to leave because she is crippled, but Stephen didn’t know about Ada’s clubfoot. Rather, he thought she was simple, “not right in the head” (21), and offers to carry her to the train station. He asks Ada why she’s been kept locked up if she’s not simple. Ada informs Stephen that she’s been locked away because of her foot, to which Stephen replies, “That’s crazy” (22). Ada tries to reason that it’s her own fault for having a bad foot.

It’s a long train ride out of London with nothing to eat and no restrooms. Ada sees things from the train that she’s never seen from the window of her family’s flat, such as grass, which Jamie describes to her from his own experiences playing with his friends.

A girl on a pony rides alongside the train. Ada watches as the rider and pony fly over a wall with ease. Ada turns to Jamie and insists she will someday do the same thing. Jamie laughs at first, then agrees that Ada does “walk pretty good” (27). Ada doesn’t confess to Jamie how badly her foot hurts after her morning of physical activity, but she remains positive in her confidence that she does in fact walk well.

The train finally stops at a village in Kent. Ada uses the station restroom, her first experience in a bathroom with a flushing a toilet. She stops at a sink to splash water on her face and is shocked by her own appearance in the mirror: “The shabbiest, nastiest-looking girl I’ve ever seen” (30). At first, Ada doesn’t realize this is her own reflection. She considers her pale complexion, the dirt and calluses on her knees, and the grubbiness of her clothing. When she walks out of the restroom, she also considers Jamie’s appearance: “I looked him over with newly critical eyes. He was dirtier than the other boys too” (30). Ada speculates that she and Jamie should have had baths before leaving London, but Jamie shrugs it off, insisting that it doesn’t matter.

Their appearances do matter, though, when villagers select which evacuated children to take home with them. People in the country are doing their bit to support the war by taking in children from locations more at risk to be bombed, but the villagers are critical of Ada and Jamie’s appearances. As the hall clears out, Ada realizes that she and Jamie are the only two children from London who have not been chosen by a village family.

An iron-faced woman with a clipboard is in charge of the student refugee logistics. She assures Ada and Jamie not to worry because there’s a perfect place waiting for them. The iron-faced woman, who is identified later in the novel as Lady Thorton, notices Ada’s foot and asks whether she can walk. Ada tries to walk but quickly falls to the floor. Instead of yelling or dragging her, as Ada expects, Lady Thorton carries Ada to a car and drives Ada and Jamie to their new home together.

Ada and Jamie arrive at the home of Susan Smith, a sleepy house with the curtains drawn shut. Lady Thorton instructs Ada and Jamie to stay in the car while she goes inside, but Ada urges Jamie to go listen to the conversation the two women are having in the house. Jamie returns to report back that “the lady doesn’t want us” (35) to which Ada shrugs, assuming they can always go somewhere else. Her attitude changes quickly when she notices a bright yellow pony with a white stripe and dark brown eyes staring at her through the bushes beside the house. Seeing the horse motivates Ada to walk into the house with Jamie. She wants to live wherever that horse lives, or at least near it.

Lady Thorton introduces Ada and Jamie to Miss Susan Smith, realizing in the moment that she doesn’t know names for either child. Ada is impudent at first, saying that her last name is Hitler, and the women don’t believe her when she then reports that her last name is Smith, the same as her new caretaker’s. Lady Thorton leaves the children with Susan, who insists that she doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of children.

Susan quickly insists on baths for the children. She notices Ada’s foot and, once again, Ada lies about her handicap, telling Susan that her foot was run over by a brewer’s cart. Once she sees Ada’s foot clearly, though, Susan identifies it as a clubfoot right away.

Ada and Jamie bathe, but they have no clean clothing to wear. Ada’s foot bleeds on the floor, so Susan cleans the mess, bandages Ada’s foot, clothes both children in her own shirts, combs their hair, and feeds them. Once they’re clean and fed, Susan demands to know the children’s real names and ages. Ada insists that Smith is their last name, although ages are uncertain. Their best guess is that Jamie is six and Ada is nine. They also don’t know much about their father, other than he’s either dead or gone. Susan offers to write to their mother, then sends Ada and Jamie to bed. The bed is soft and clean, and before falling asleep, Ada asks about the pony she saw outside the house. Miss Smith replies that the pony’s name is Butter, and that he was a gift from someone named Becky, but she doesn’t answer when Jamie asks who Becky is.