by Rafe Posey
“Just a wee young thing when Des brought you home,” Mrs. Carter says affectionately.
“And fat with that one,” Maeve says, her eyes gleaming as she looks at Cullen. He blushes, just a bit, and she puts an arm across his shoulders in a quick hug. “Eat your fish, then.”
Cullen shakes his head. “I can’t. It’s looking at me.”
Alec chuckles, then reaches over and turns the dish. “There. Now it’s watching me instead.”
Cullen laughs. Maeve’s mouth quirks up at the corner.
“Speaking of watching things, I didn’t see very much of the city on the way over,” Alec says. “We’re fairly close to the harbor here, aren’t we?”
Mrs. Carter nods. “When the wind is right we can sometimes hear the tugboat captains talking back and forth with their ships’ horns.”
“I’m going to have a ship and see the whole world when I grow up,” Cullen says. “London and everywhere. Like John Cabot.”
Maeve’s face lights up as she looks at Cullen. “That’s a grand notion.”
* * *
• • •
For dessert Maeve brings out a small cheesecake decorated with strawberries, Mrs. Carter following her with coffee, cream, and sugar on a round silver tray. When Alec tastes the cheesecake, the sweetness melts against his tongue. Mrs. Nesbit leaves a traybake or some other dessert fairly often, but nothing quite so lush as this.
“This is excellent,” he says to Maeve. She smiles.
Cullen takes a bite of cheesecake and chews thoughtfully, quiet for a moment. “So, do you work with the boats at Livingstone and Gray?”
“I do indeed. In fact, I worked with the design chaps on the Highlander. More physical than it sounds, mind.” Alec pauses, remembering the early days of the ship coming together. “To make sure the design is coming together you have to monkey about in its bones, you know? A ship like that, it doesn’t have riggings and so on like a pirate ship, something to climb in, exactly, but in the beginning especially you spend a good bit of time dangling from a rope with the shipwright, checking the lines. Make sure it feels right and all that.”
“That’s amazing,” Cullen says, his eyes wide. He pauses. “Did you work with ships in the war, too? Were you in the navy?”
“No,” Alec says, “I was a pilot. RAF.”
“Well, you’re in it now,” Maeve says to Alec with a laugh.
“Oh, gosh!” Cullen exclaims. “Did you fly Spitfires?”
Alec warms to Cullen’s enthusiasm. “Bristol Beaufighters. Quite a lot bigger than a Spitfire, and two engines rather than the one. And not nearly so nimble.”
Cullen’s eyes gleam. “Were they single-seaters, too?”
“No, there were three of us to a plane—pilot, gunner, navigator,” Alec says. He hesitates. All the glad memories of the camaraderie will never not be confused with the loss. “Got rather crowded.”
Maeve says, “Cullen’s been mad for planes since we saw a demonstration from the base at Shearwater.”
“I was like that about cars when I was his age. And motorbikes. Planes came later.” Alec beams at Cullen, thinking of those long-ago afternoons with his uncle, the sounds and smells of the race-warmed cars. The echoes never really go away, do they? And now here they are awakened by this bright-eyed boy in Canada, of all places.
Mrs. Carter says, “I don’t know how he keeps them all straight, honestly.” She shakes her head fondly at her grandson.
“The show at the base was super,” Cullen says. “There were so many kinds of planes—Spitfires and Hurricanes and all, and a lot of bombers, and some planes from the Great War. We saw an aerobatics demonstration, too!”
“Oh, yes, I expect that was quite a show.” The echoes keep coming, but there’s a lightness in his chest, too. “You have a favorite?”
Cullen tilts his head thoughtfully. “It’s all of them,” he says at last, “but I liked the fighters better than the bombers. How fast they were.”
Alec nods. “The fighter planes make quite a racket, don’t they? Especially a whole flight of them at once?”
“It was brilliant,” Cullen says happily.
“It was a right shebeen,” Maeve says, her voice dry and affectionate. “Now, lad, it’s coming up on time to say good night.”
“Can I show Mr. Oswin my planes?”
Maeve says, “In the morning, perhaps. I expect he’ll be needing some quiet tonight, after his travels.”
The boy frowns a bit. “But, Mum . . . I’ll be quick.”
Maeve stands, her eyes warm as she regards her son. “Cullen, if there is one thing I know for certain, it’s that there’s no quick with you and your models. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“First thing,” Alec says. He’d be happy to look at the planes now, but he doesn’t want to overstep. “I’d love to see them.”
Maeve mouths a thank-you at Alec over Cullen’s head, her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s time we were off, lad,” she says to Cullen. He makes a face but doesn’t protest as she hands him his crutches.
Mrs. Carter steps around the table to kiss Cullen’s forehead. “Sleep well, lovey.”
Cullen kisses his grandmother’s cheek, then turns, pausing with his elbows angled out from his crutches, his left foot limp beneath the stiff braces. “See you in the morning, Mr. Oswin.”
“Good night, Cullen.” Alec gets to his feet, moved by Cullen’s seeming nonchalance. “I’ll see you and your planes tomorrow.”
* * *
• • •
The next morning, it’s a moment before he knows where he is, why the room isn’t moving with the sea, but then he soon remembers. Sunlight slices through the curtains and sets the pines and maples outside aglow. He stays still, listening to the swell of unfamiliar noises ringing through the morning—the house shifting as it warms, the distant thunk of the boiler in the cellar.
The air is layered with the wafting scent of baking spices, and his belly rumbles with a confusing wash of memory and hunger, of missing Cook and the vicarage and the days when he and June were still so young—before the war and his hands and the rest of it. He lets the feelings settle, and he gets up to begin his day.
Alec performs his morning ablutions, washing and shaving carefully, and wincing when the hot water pipe clangs with use. He dresses quickly and heads for the stairs. In the corridor he stops again at the family photos—in the light of day, the picture of Maeve and Cullen with Desmond plucks at him.
* * *
• • •
In the outsized kitchen, Maeve is setting down a rasher of bacon and a carton of eggs, two round cakes cooling on a rack on the counter beyond her. Cullen sits at the kitchen table, a newspaper spread out in front of him dotted with paint and glue. He’s squinting down at a tin airplane, dabbing paint carefully into the markings on its wings.
“Good morning,” Alec says. He smiles at Cullen, taking the seat across from him, eager to resume their conversation about planes. “Fine-looking Spitfire you’ve got there.”
Cullen grins at him, holding up the plane. “It’s my newest.”
Maeve says, “Would you like some coffee, Mr. Oswin?”
“I would love some,” he says. “Thank you. And please call me Alec.”
She reaches across to the rack of mugs warming above the Aga and pours him a cup. Alec takes a long swallow, grateful for its warmth. It may be spring, and Halifax may benefit from the mild coastal climate, but that doesn’t stop the distinct nip in the air this morning.
Alec lifts his face, basking in the scent of ginger and a bit of citrus. “The cake smells marvelous.”
Maeve sips at her own coffee and smiles. “I made one for the bazaar at St. Columba’s this afternoon. The other we’ll be having for the household.”
Alec’s mouth waters hopefully, and he eyes the cakes again. All of this reminds him
so much of his childhood in Fenbourne. There had been bazaars and jumbles at St. Anne’s too, part of the flurry of spring festivals dotted through the Fenlands. One year there had been a troupe of Molly dancers in from Suffolk, and twice he had won a silly trinket for June at the fair. “The bazaar sounds a jolly time. Will there be a coconut shy, things like that?”
“There will be. All manner of craic through the afternoon. All in good fun, though, right, lad?” Maeve tousles Cullen’s dark hair, then sets to work with the bacon, humming quietly to herself. It’s a tune Alec doesn’t recognize, perhaps something from her Irish childhood. He sips his coffee, his mind whirling with quiet questions.
Cullen rolls the Spitfire across the newspaper, adjusting the wheels until they move more smoothly, then holds it up so the light through the kitchen window catches it. “I think this is nearly finished.”
Alec says, “You’ve done well with the markings.”
Maeve calls over her shoulder, “What will you be building next, Cullen?”
“I don’t know,” he says. He flies the Spitfire through the airspace above the table, thinking, then glances at Alec. “I don’t have a Beaufighter. Mostly just Spitfires and Hurricanes. And a Lancaster.”
Alec considers this. “I suppose Beaus are a bit harder to find.”
“I suppose so,” Cullen says. “American planes are easy to find. I have a Mustang upstairs.”
Alec asks, “You only work with Allied planes?”
Cullen shrugs. “So far. I have a friend at school who has a Messerschmitt and a Stuka and a Zero, and sometimes we have dogfights.”
“Very good, as long as you win.”
Cullen smiles. “Were you in the Battle of Britain?”
“Yes. Night sorties mostly.” He shrugs, trying to cover the shiver that rises in him, thinking about those nights.
Cullen tilts his head, thinking. “But . . . how did you know where you were? Or where the other planes were? If it was dark? Did you have to black out your lights?”
“Well,” Alec says, “at first it was quite difficult, of course. But you can steer by the stars, and after a while we had planes with radar, and that changed everything.”
“Like a bat,” Cullen says.
“Yes, I expect so.” Those early nights, flying blind in the dark . . . He’s still not sure how to measure the astonishment of flight against the fear.
“Did you ever shoot anyone down?”
“Heavens, Cullen,” Maeve says briskly, turning to give him a stern look. “I’m sorry, Mr. Oswin.”
Alec shakes his head. “No, quite all right.” He looks down at his hands, then meets Cullen’s gaze. “Yes. A few German planes.” Cullen stares, and Alec continues quietly. “Terrible responsibility, really. I’m glad to be shut of it. But I miss the flying. The sound of a Beaufighter’s engines is quite unlike anything else I know.”
Cullen ponders this. “I heard Spitfires at Shearwater. They’re awfully loud. Wouldn’t a Beaufighter be even louder, if there are two engines?”
“Considerably, yes, but the way a Spitfire echoes when it climbs is something else entirely.” He looks at the airplane again. How many Spitfires had he seen over the years? There had been a squadron of them at RAF Manston, and he remembers them shredded on the runways by the Luftwaffe’s relentless raids just as well as he remembers them airborne over the North Sea, glittering fiercely against the enemy. It’s disorienting to think of them—he had known, sailing across the Atlantic to Nova Scotia, that he would miss Penny and June and the overgrown back garden and Ursa and the rest of it. But he had not for a moment expected to find himself missing the airfields of England and Algeria, the gleaming snouts of planes waiting in a row.
Maeve puts a pot of jam on the table. Her voice gentle, almost as if she can feel how unsettled he is, says, “Mr. Oswin, will you take your breakfast now?”
Alec smiles at her gratefully. “That would be grand, please.”
She nods and turns her attention to the cooker. A moment later she sets down a plate of bacon and eggs with a thick slice of toast in front of each of them.
“Thank you,” Alec says. The bacon is thick and crisp, the scent of it intoxicating, and he tucks in enthusiastically, happy a moment later to emulate Cullen’s eager spreading of butter and jam on his toast.
After a few minutes Cullen looks up from his breakfast. “Mr. Oswin? Were you ever . . .” He glances briefly at his mother and lowers his voice a bit. “Did they ever shoot you down?”
Maeve turns, her lips pursed. “Cullen, lad . . .”
“It’s fine, really,” Alec says, folding his hands together and trying to corral the memories. “Had a couple of bad moments, yes. Inevitable, really, during wartime.”
Cullen hesitates, his brows furrowing. “Well. I was wondering about your hands, what you said last night about the war.”
Maeve raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Cullen, you’re a brilliant boy and my whole heart, but your questions . . .” She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Oswin.”
“No, it’s quite all right. They’re fine questions.” He smiles at Cullen. “They got me over the Mediterranean, and I had a bit of a job getting free of the wreck. Never healed quite right, but I’m lucky it wasn’t worse.”
Cullen says, “Oh, yes, I see.” He takes a breath, shifting in his chair. “I had polio. That’s why . . .” He gestures at the crutches. “My dad, too.”
Ah, Christ. A vague memory snakes in—Bombay, the night clotted with smoke and rot, his own mother’s face taut with grief and glassy with fever as she tells him that the cholera has taken his father. He rubs his hand across his face, banishing the memory, and gazes at Cullen and Maeve. His chest aches when he sees the grief’s shadow on her face, and the clear light of her love for Cullen. He can’t begin to conceive what that must have been like for her, how afraid she must have been. God. “That must have been unspeakably awful for you. For both of you,” he adds, meeting Maeve’s eyes. “I’m terribly sorry.”
Cullen, his voice small, says, “I don’t really remember. I was only three.”
Maeve offers a sad smile to Alec. She lays her hand across Cullen’s. “Your grandmother will be in soon, love. She’ll not be wanting to hear about this.”
“No, I know.” Cullen pushes the Spitfire along the edge of the table toward Alec. “After breakfast do you want to see my other planes?”
“I’d like that very much.”
Cullen darts a look at Alec and turns back to his mother. “Can Mr. Oswin come to the bazaar with us?”
Maeve says, “I’m sure he’s got any number of other things to do, Cullen.”
“No, I’d love to, really,” Alec says, smiling. “I haven’t been to a bazaar since I was a boy.”
Cullen grins happily, and Maeve rumples his hair. “Go on, then, and show Mr. Oswin your airfield.”
She hands him the crutches, and he gets to his feet, watching Alec over his shoulder to make sure he’s getting up from the table, too.
Maeve watches Cullen go, then turns to Alec, her expression warm. “Perhaps there’ll be a bit of extra cake for you later, Mr. Oswin.” Her eyes twinkle as she adds, “Alec.”
* * *
• • •
A week into his visit, Alec is more at home in Halifax than he had expected. Most of his time is taken up at Livingstone & Gray, whose offices occupy the upstairs of a cedar-sided block of a building just past the ferry landing, but the routines of the Carter household have enveloped him as well. Ever since that first afternoon and the bazaar at St. Columba’s, out in the pale spring light with Cullen and Maeve, Alec has felt completely comfortable with them. Watching Cullen be absorbed into a pack of boys, one of them with a stunted arm that makes Alec wonder whether he too had been stricken with polio, had warmed him; it had seemed like a privilege to be part of the everyday with them. He had not minded keep
ing pace with Maeve as she moved through the crowd, and although she hadn’t talked much, the quiet had been companionable and easy.
That camaraderie grows stronger as the weeks pass, as does his sense of the city. By the end of Alec’s fifth week in Halifax, the round front window like a giant eye regarding the shipyard’s domain and the staid blue-and-silver L&G sign mark the top of what he thinks of as his Halifax, just as the Carter house and Point Pleasant Park mark the bottom. He has his patch, as it were, the part of the city where he knows the babies by sight and the dogs by name. He knows which greengrocer Maeve is talking about if she asks him to pick something up on his way back from the office, and what the old woman down the road most wants to hear about her rose garden when he passes by every morning.
It’s reassuring to have his routines, to know which evenings he will write letters home to his girls and which days he is most likely to get the packet from Edinburgh. Those letters are his tether, despite all those moments he’s missing, quotidian though they may be, and each one a thorn in his heart. June’s messages bring him news of Penny’s spring concert at school and the related May Day revels, a loose tile on the roof, a branch come off the pear tree, the boy down the road sick with measles. When he hears that Mrs. Nesbit has slipped on a loose flagstone in the garden and sprained her ankle, Alec has a wave of guilt, as if his absence from Edinburgh is to blame for everything. And Penny’s sporadic notes build in layers in his chest as well—a few lines here and there about Ursa or school, or Penny’s fun with her friends. There are also mentions now and then of “Uncle Floss,” who confusingly seems never to appear in June’s letters. He’s told his daughter a bit about Cullen, and twice she mentions him in her responses. And it warms Alec each time as he thinks about a vague fantasy of a friendship for Cullen and Penny, never mind how illogical the idea is, or how implausible.
He misses home. Stopping to have a natter with the stately old Labrador at the chemist’s down the road is not really a substitute for Ursa, but every bit helps. Too, he feels his place at the Carter house. There had been that first rush of activity—not even twenty-four hours in and he’d had two meals and that glory of a church bazaar with Cullen and Maeve—and since then he has felt increasingly like this is home too, in a way. He has his breakfast with Cullen every day, the two of them talking about airplanes or dogs or a host of other things, and dines with the family in the evenings. Thrice now he has cut the grass for Mrs. Carter on a weekend morning, because it’s one less thing she has to pay a neighborhood boy to do, even for a few weeks. His days are square and secure, the march of time forward sometimes confusing as it moves him deeper into his Halifax visit, deeper into this family and his growing attachment to Cullen and Maeve, and always closer to the day he boards the ship that will take him home.
