Inexpressible Island

by Paullina Simons

  Duncan brings him a tangle of rope and a knife.

  “No one here knows how to tie a knot,” Finch says. “So I don’t know what good the rope will do you.”

  In half a minute, Julian binds all three men’s ankles and wrists with handcuff knots. Grimly Finch looks on, while Duncan and Wild celebrate. “We finally found our third musketeer, Dunk!” Wild says.

  “We sure did, Wild.”

  “So what was I, then?” says Finch.

  “Aww, you’re not a musketeer, Finch,” Wild says. “You’re more like Richelieu.”

  Finch ignores the mockery. “I think you made it too tight,” he says to Julian, “their circulation will be cut off.”

  “That’ll teach them to loot houses,” Julian says, kicking one of them in the ribs. “Bastards.”

  When Mia reappears in the street, Wild and Duncan call her over and interrupting each other tell her what happened, while she listens, twinkling approvingly at Julian. “He did that, did he?” she says. A disgusted Finch storms off.

  “Folgate, Julian’s going to show me how to use a knife and a hammer,” Wild says. “And tie a handcuff knot.”

  “Okay, let’s pipe down, Wild,” Julian says. “I’m not a magician. You can’t tie knots with one hand.”

  “Who says?”

  “As you were, boys,” Mia says. “But, Duncan, I need you. That woman is trying to drag a trunk the size of a cupboard out of her house. It’s too heavy for her, and it’s too heavy for me. I tried, but I can’t move it.”

  “I’ll help you, Mia,” Julian immediately says, handing the stick to Wild.

  “There you go,” Wild says. “Jules will help you, Mia.”

  “Shut up, Wild,” she says.

  “Yeah,” says Julian. “Shut up, Wild.”

  “Folgate, are you sure you don’t want Finch to help you move some heavy furniture?” Wild says, not shutting up—just the opposite.

  “Shut up, I said! Of course I asked Finch first, but he’s busy. Pay no attention to him, Julian, come along.”

  Leaving the boys snickering behind them, Julian and Mia make their way through the debris on the street to the old woman’s house. “They’re impossible,” she says. “Don’t mind them. They’re just teasing.”

  “I know,” Julian says, inexpressibly pleased to be teased. “And I don’t mind.”

  “So you know how to fight?” Mia says.

  “I got lucky.”

  “Sure you did,” she says, giving him an amused up and down. “I think it’s us who got lucky when you found us. I can’t tell you how badly we needed someone like you. Now that Lester’s gone, Duncan’s the only one facing the thieves. Nick comes sometimes, but he doesn’t like to fight. Wild likes to, but can’t. Hard to find someone who likes to and can.”

  “Who says I like to?”

  “I don’t know.” She squints at him. “You have that look about you.”

  Julian squints at her in return, takes a breath. “Glad to help. Who is Lester?”

  “One of us. He died last week,” she says. “A blast got him.”

  At the house, Mia holds the kerosene lamp to light the way, and together she and Julian locate the woman’s half-open trunk in the debris of her partially destroyed home. The woman stands out in the street, shouting orders in a trembling but grateful voice. Near the spilled-out trunk lie necklaces and photo albums, a torn and dusty wedding veil, a child’s baptismal gown.

  “Thanks for helping me,” Mia says to Julian as they collect the valuables. “Look how precious these small things are to her.”

  “They’re not small,” Julian says. “They’re irreplaceable.”

  “I guess. Often, finding these items is what matters most to these poor people. Not the house, but the wedding rings.”

  Before he can respond, the all clear sounds. It’s an intense, one-note, high-pitched shriek, and it lasts one interminable minute. Julian can’t express the relief he feels for the blessed silence that follows. “Mia, you don’t do this every night, do you?” he says as they drag the trunk over the bricks. Please tell me you don’t do this every night.

  “We try for every night. It doesn’t always work out.” She chuckles. “Sometimes Nick and Wild and Dunk get so drunk they can’t go anywhere when the siren calls. Finch judges them pretty harshly for that. He never overindulges.”

  “In anything?”

  That makes Mia blush for some reason and hurry past it without replying. “And the week Dunk had a concussion, I didn’t go. It wasn’t safe.” She shrugs, calmly acknowledging the reality of certain disadvantages of being a woman during war. “The thieves bring big wooden sticks. It’s a good thing all scrap metal, including tire irons, has been requisitioned by the city. Otherwise they’d be swinging iron, not wood, and we’d all be in a lot worse shape.”

  After they pull the trunk out into the street and leave the old woman sitting on it, Julian looks Mia over. “Are you okay?” He stops her from walking. With his thumb, he wipes a trickle of blood off her forehead.

  “Tonight was nothing.” She smiles. “It’s not always this easy.”

  “This was easy?” Three houses destroyed, valuables lost, families homeless, looters. Seeing her quizzical expression, he coughs. “I mean, of course it’s been worse, but surely this wasn’t easy.”

  Mia tells Julian that once Duncan had to battle six guys on his own.

  “Well, I can attest that’s certainly not easy,” Julian says.

  Sometimes parachute mines float down, she tells him, and when you get close to them, they explode and rip you open. That’s what happened to Lester. “Have you seen them?” When Julian shakes his head, she continues. Sometimes the incendiaries fall and everything is aflame and no one can get out. “Have you seen any of that?”

  Julian nods. That he has seen, everything on fire and no way out. “People get caught under walls and broken glass.”

  “Yes. Children—the few that are left—get trapped in the houses with their mums and grandmas and aunts. The older men and the kids can’t help. They sit nearby and watch their loved ones die under rubble no one can move or in a fire that’s out of control.”

  “Are you afraid of fire, Mia?” Julian says, mining her face.

  “I’m not not afraid of it,” she says, undisturbed by his scrutiny. “It’s not my favorite thing.”

  He wants to ask her what her favorite thing is but doesn’t. What if she says it’s Finch?

  “Today we helped a little,” Mia says. “But sometimes we can’t. Are you ready for that, to do everything in your power and still not be able to save the lady under the rubble?”

  “No.”

  He will never be ready for that.

  7

  Folgate

  MIA BRINGS HIM A MUG OF HOT TEA FROM THE REFRESHMENT truck. Julian must look as if he needs it.

  “Where are you really from?” she says, looking at him calmly but questioningly. “Forgive me for saying this, but you look like this was your first bombing.”

  “No, no, not my first,” he says hurriedly. “But I told you, I’ve been away. Just came back recently.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Mia says. “We all did. We had to. What a time to come back, though. Why didn’t you stay where you were? Where were you, Wales?” she asks, sparing him an answer. “Bet it was safer.”

  “It’s true, Mia, there are magical dangers here,” Julian says. “But this is our last stand.”

  “By our, you mean London, right? Not . . .” She flicks her finger between him and her and smiles, like a joke. And he forces a smile in return, like a joke also.

  They remain at the site until almost daybreak. Eventually the fire brigades arrive and the police, and the rescue services, who remove the possessions from the blasted-out homes. The Incident Officer appears in an enormous truck. Finch works closely with the IO and without Finch’s meticulous itemization of damages, the IO’s job would be much harder. Finch is indefatigable. Hours after the all clear, he is still i
nterviewing people, taking down information, even comforting them occasionally, if awkwardly. He tags what’s been found, he lists what’s been lost. He catalogs everything. He is like a less genius and less genial George Airy.

  “Finch does this every night?” Julian asks Mia, a grudging respect creeping into his voice.

  “Day and night,” she replies. “This is his full-time job. He gets paid by the Bethnal Green Council. There’s bombing during the day, too. You don’t know that either, East Ender? When did you get here, yesterday?”

  “Hardy-har-har.” Sipping the tea that has cooled down much too quickly, Julian chortles and sputters, pretending her question is a rhetorical jest. Daytime attacks, too? Julian thought Wild had been exaggerating.

  After the anarchy of the bombing, the organized, measured response to the madness makes Julian feel worse, even more out of sorts. He is used to punch for punch, slam for slam, kick for kick. He is not used to clipboards and quiet conversation after a wholesale demolition, not used to pale slim cordial indispensable women casually sifting through the debacle on a stranger’s behalf, looking for lost dolls and pearls.

  In the blue icy pre-dawn, things look more surreal, not less.

  The IO’s men spend hours loading the truck with items that have been recovered and tagged to haul to the storage depot or the “strong room.” Mia, Julian, Finch and Duncan continue to bring the valuables out into the street, one by one, little by little, precious toys, a fire truck, an heirloom Bible. Mia advises the dispossessed families to keep what’s most dear to them on their person, not to lose sight of it. The face she presents to the families is one of unflagging optimism and kindness. It’s going to be okay, she keeps saying. Your things will be found. The council will find you a new place to live. The shelters are warm and there’s food. Don’t worry. Keep your chin up. Don’t panic.

  She’s a far cry from the frightened and desperate woman Julian found in Invercargill. Mia lives amid death, yet has not been ruined by the knowledge of her own death. Poor Shae, Julian thinks, bowing his head as if in prayer.

  Julian, you’re a fool.

  The Inferno is no place for pity.

  In the past, he tried to look too far ahead, and now he’s being punished by being unable to look ahead even one more day.

  Punished or rewarded?

  We may be hopeless, Mia. But we’re not broken.

  “Who are you praying for, Julian?” Mia says, coming up to him. The face she presents to him, too, is one of unflagging optimism and kindness.

  His expression must confuse her, because she averts her gaze. “Do you want to sit, rest your feet a bit? You look exhausted. They’ll be okay, they’re used to it,” she says when she sees him scanning for Duncan and Wild. “Let’s sit.”

  He and Mia huddle on the debris. Now that the fires have been doused and there’s hardly any warmth, the slush is turning to ice. Julian wants to put his arm around her. She seems so cold. He gauges how far Finch is from them, whether he can see them. He’s quite far and paying them no attention, but Julian decides not to antagonize the man any more than necessary, though he yearns to draw her to him, to embrace her.

  “Maybe we should all go inside the strong room,” Julian says, “and leave the trinkets outside.”

  “Why, are you tired of living?” She says it in jest.

  “I’m not not tired,” he replies, wanting to fall asleep right then and there, on top of a crumbled house, next to her. He has been in the river, in the dry beds, in the tunnels, in the flames, awake for weeks or days. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Finch,” Mia says. “It’s at least another hour before he’s done. He drives us back.”

  Julian’s head bobs forward. Feeling her gaze on him, he shakes to stay alert.

  “You got nowhere to go,” she asks. It’s not a question.

  “I got nowhere to go.”

  “So come back with us. We have room. The more, the merrier. Come back.”

  What Julian wants is for her to go with him. Come with me, Mia. Come away with me. Away from this madness.

  But come with him where, the hospital in Scutari, the demon fire, the deepest ocean? “Are you sure?” he says. “You look pretty full up at Bank. And your boyfriend doesn’t like me.”

  “Can you blame him?” Mia smiles, self-aware but jokey. “Don’t worry, you’ve made a friend in Wild. You’ll be fine. He loves the girls but doesn’t usually take to the boys like he’s taken to you.”

  “There’s no place for me,” he says.

  “Sure, there is,” she says. “At night, you’ll be with us, and during the day you can sleep in Robbie’s bunk. He leaves for work at seven.”

  “What about you, where do you sleep?”

  “Who wants to know?” She smiles. “Just kidding. You saw where. One of the top bunks is mine. All the girls are in the top bunks.”

  They exchange a glance. “For safety?” he asks.

  She nods. “At Bank, we haven’t had any problems with assaults and whatnot—touch wood, as Mum would say—but other places have had some trouble, and it’s always better to be safe.”

  Always better to be safe, says the fragile girl whose life has been threatened and snuffed out up and down the centuries, now sitting in the rubble caused by high explosives, the rubble to which she has traveled out of her soul’s own free will.

  “You don’t have a house in London,” Julian asks, “a family?”

  “I had both,” Mia replies. “The house got bombed, the family left. Of course I could go to a proper rest center up on Old City Road, but they’re overcrowded, and I don’t want to stand in the street all day with my blanket, queueing for a space. Finch and I did that back in September. Bollocks to that, we said after a day.” Mia takes out a cigarette, offering one to Julian. At first he refuses, and then accepts. Why not? They light up. Her lighter says sad girls smoke a lot.

  “You don’t seem sad,” Julian says, inhaling the smoke, coughing, inhaling again.

  Mia concurs. “I’m not sad. But the girl who died, she was sad. It was hers.”

  “Why was she sad?”

  “Because she died.”

  He likes the camaraderie of smoking with his beloved over bombed-out ruins in a war. In the war. It’s not the worst thing they’ve shared, by far. “None of you has a home?”

  “Robbie has a home,” Mia replies. “In Sussex. Liz has a home in Birmingham. But those places are getting hit pretty hard. Phil Cozens has a home, but he doesn’t sleep there, because he’s paid to be on call at Bank. It’s not too bad at Bank, really. You’ll see. They’ve spruced up many of the Underground shelters. Bank is like a fine hotel. There’s even a refreshment center.” She smiles wistfully, glancing down the street for the refreshment truck that’s long left.

  “Do you work?” Julian asks. “Or is this your day job, too?”

  Mia has a different day job. She works at the Lebus Furniture Factory on Tottenham Court Road. She sleeps until ten or eleven in the morning and then goes in. Her boss doesn’t mind; he knows why she is up all night.

  “Do you work?” she asks, looking inside Wild’s cloak at Julian’s well-made suit, now dusty.

  “I did. I had a restaurant on Great Eastern Road. It’s gone now. Along with my flat right above it.”

  “Restaurant? I’m so hungry,” she says. “What kind of food did you make, Cornish pasties? Shepherd’s pies?”

  “Beef noodle soup. Squid with garlic. Shrimp rolls.”

  “Tell me about it. Don’t spare any details.”

  When Finch spots them sitting on the broken pile next to each other, he looks upset, even at a distance, even in the early light. But Julian takes the cue for how to behave from Mia. She doesn’t move away from him. So he doesn’t move away from her. Julian is not the keeper of her relationship with Finch. If he’s overstepping his bounds, she’ll let him know. But Julian doesn’t think he is overstepping. Something about the way she kissed him back when they pretended to be Cecily and Algernon.
As if she had been longing to be truly kissed.

  While they wait for Finch to finish up, Mia tells Julian bedtime stories, and he nearly falls unconscious to the sound of her achingly familiar soft breathy voice. She’s known most of the Ten Bells gang since primary school. She, Shona, and Finch grew up together on Folgate Street in the back of Spitalfields Market, and in September were made homeless together. For the first few weeks, they roamed the streets like beggars, and then found the passageway at Bank.

  Shona, the medi truck driver, is a tough cookie, while Liz Hope is the opposite. “She is a soft cookie. Like a sponge cake.” Liz began a promising, bookish career at the British Museum, but now that the Museum has shuttered indefinitely for the war, she’s out of a job and out of sorts. Sometimes she volunteers for the church truck, serving refreshments to the dislocated, but mostly feels she’s not doing enough. “She can’t help it,” Mia says. “People are not going to change just because of a little bombing. The truth is, Liz is terrified of the bombs. Going out into the darkness during the attacks is not an option for her.”

  Liz seems like the sanest of the bunch. “Why can’t you be more like Liz,” Julian says.

  “You mean chaste and shy?” Mia is grimy yet shiny. She smiles. Every time Mia smiles, Finch manages to see it from wherever he is. Maybe because she lights up like a firework.

  “I mean safe and underground,” Julian says. “But chaste and shy, too, if you want, sure.”

  “You want me to hide from life in the dungeons?”

  “Not from life,” he says. “From death.”

  “There’s nowhere to hide,” she says. “A month ago, a bomb fell near the entrance at Bank. It killed twenty people and left a crater in the road so large it had to be spanned by a makeshift bridge. The Bank of England was untouched, though.”

  “Maybe we should hide inside the Bank of England.” Julian says we but he means you.

  Liz likes being part of the squad, Mia says, but because of her agonizing shyness has a hard time speaking up in a group setting. And a group setting is how they live these days. There is no private setting.