The Explosionist

by Jenny Davidson

  “Yes,” said Jean, whose father gambled, “from ten-to-one outsider to four-to-six odds-on favorite.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Sophie, glaring at them both. She went resolutely back to the essay.

  Miss Hopkins returned just as Nan threatened to single out two particularly loud girls for punishment.

  “Girls,” Miss Hopkins said, taking her place before the class, “there’s no need to panic—”

  Several girls uttered small screams.

  “—but I’m sorry to have to tell you that another bomb went off this morning, this time right in the heart of Princes Street.”

  She looked like someone trying not to weep.

  “How many people were killed?” Nan asked, her voice quite calm.

  “More than a hundred,” said Miss Hopkins. She took off her glasses and wiped them on the cuff of her blouse.

  Some of the girls began crying.

  Sophie didn’t dare look at Jean and Priscilla.

  Of course Mr. Petersen wasn’t the bomber. He couldn’t be. On the other hand, where was he?

  Sophie walked in a daze through the rest of the day’s classes, earning a reprimand from the maths teacher and an extra essay assignment from the lady who taught spiritualist instruction, an old crony of Great-aunt Tabitha’s.

  Though she still felt sad and angry and worried and confused—feelings were awful—Sophie’s spirits lifted just a little when the bell rang to mark the end of the last class. Mikael would be able to help her, she told herself as she ran upstairs to pack for the weekend.

  She decided to cram everything into her satchel so that she wouldn’t have to carry more than one bag. It was a tight fit. She said good-bye to the others and ran downstairs, earning a reproof from a prefect in the hallway. She would have to hurry if she didn’t want to be late.

  Lord Nelson’s Column—shaped like a telescope and visible from almost everywhere in Edinburgh—was surrounded by a secluded park, an overgrown brick path weaving through the hilly garden thick with rough grass. The tower had five stories all together, each with a few narrow windows. After climbing a hundred and forty-three stairs to reach the small circular chamber at the top, Sophie passed through the tiny doorway, barely a foot and a half wide, and out onto the little balcony, its sturdy low parapet just hip height.

  Still panting from the climb, she dumped her satchel on the flagstones and used it as a seat, then leaned her elbows on the parapet to look out. It was so clear that she could see all the way down the coast to North Berwick, where Sophie had spent many summer afternoons paddling in the rock pools while Great-aunt Tabitha played eighteen holes on the links.

  Where was Mikael? The trouble with waiting for someone was that it was like not being able to go to sleep, Sophie thought. It gave one altogether too much time to think about things.

  She couldn’t stop worrying about what it would mean if Scotland and the Hanseatic League went to war with Europe. Even worse, what if Scotland lost? Would the streets of Edinburgh be renamed after French and German war heroes? Would troops patrol Calton Hill? Would French become Scotland’s official language, and would a permit from the local prefecture be needed to take the train to North Berwick?

  How much longer would the Hanseatic League hold fast?

  By the time Mikael got there, Sophie was cold and bored and more than a little hungry. Her delight at seeing him warred with her feeling of grievance at his lateness, but when he smiled, her irritation washed away like a bloodstain under cold running water.

  “So which day did you get to Edinburgh?” she asked as Mikael took a seat beside her. The satchel was fine for one person to sit on but small for two, and she shivered at the pressure of his leg against hers.

  “On Sunday,” Mikael said. “My mum kicked up such a fuss, I reckoned I’d better stay away for a few weeks.”

  “You’d think your mother would be used to you by now!” Sophie said.

  “Yes, it’s strange, isn’t it? I can never see why she’s so upset. It’s not like I’ve ever actually killed anybody, or even put anyone in hospital—”

  “You sound sorry for that!”

  Mikael laughed. “Actually,” he said, “though the car episode was entirely my fault, it’s not what’s got her so riled up. For once it’s my brother, not me, who’s in really hot water.”

  “Your brother? But I thought he was a kind of saint.”

  Mikael’s brother was ten years older and had left home to go to university when Mikael was still quite young. Sophie had never met him, but he was by all accounts (and to Mikael’s chagrin) a complete paragon of all the virtues.

  “This time my perfect older brother seems to have done something heinous beyond belief. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but he hasn’t written home for months, and I think my mum’s convinced she’s lost him permanently.”

  “How odd,” Sophie said, her own worries receding a little as the puzzle claimed her attention. It was hard to think what Mikael’s brother could have done to upset their mother so much.

  “At any rate,” Mikael continued, “when the police telephoned her about my little escapade, she well and truly flew off the handle.”

  “What do you think your brother did, then?” Sophie asked.

  “Yes, it’s quite a mystery, isn’t it?” Mikael said blithely, sounding not at all disturbed by his brother’s departure from the straight and narrow. “I’ll see if I can winkle the real story out of Aunt Solvej. It’s probably nothing much, and Mum’s simply making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  They gazed out over the city, Sophie uncomfortably aware of how close they were sitting to each other.

  “Sophie, what about you?” Mikael asked, putting his hand on her knee in a way that made her jump. “How are you? I have to say, you looked terribly worried the other day. Everything all right?”

  After a pause, a string of incoherent phrases poured out of Sophie: the horror of the bombings, the sense they all had at school of waiting passively for their future to be decided, the impossibility of getting along with the others, her dread of war.

  When Sophie fell quiet, Mikael rooted around in his pockets and dug out a waxed-paper packet of sandwiches.

  “Cheese-and-tomato or fish paste?” he asked.

  “Cheese-and-tomato, please,” Sophie said.

  In silence they ate the sandwiches, which were squashed and soggy but extremely satisfying.

  “Sophie,” Mikael said, when they had folded up the wrappers and tucked them into Sophie’s bag for later disposal, “you’re obviously leaving something out, something big. All that stuff you’ve been talking about, none of it’s much good, but it’s not enough by itself to have put you into such a state. No, not even the bombings,” he added.

  Sophie squirmed on her seat, the words lodged like lumps of suet in her throat.

  “It was a séance,” she said, steeling herself. “There was this awful medium and she had a peculiar message for me—for me personally, I mean, a sort of warning—and before that, I saw something that looked like a ghost in the mirror—”

  “Hold on a minute,” Mikael said, putting up his hands.

  Sophie braced herself for ridicule.

  “Slow down, can’t you? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Start from the beginning and tell me the whole story.”

  Sophie told him everything that had happened, her voice growing stronger as she saw his intent expression.

  By the time she finished, he looked quite worried.

  “Those mediums are really wicked,” he said, “preying on people’s weak side like that. It should be illegal to pretend to be able to contact the dead. Outright frauds, the whole lot of them.”

  “It was the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen,” Sophie said. She would like to have believed the medium was a fraud, but if Mikael had been there, surely his skepticism would have been shaken. “Of course it’s ludicrous—great danger and a voyage over water and all that. But the way the medium asked for me beforehand so
that I’d be sure she didn’t have any tricks up her sleeve—”

  “What was her name again?”

  “Mrs. Tansy: Euphemia Tansy, I think it was.”

  “All right,” Mikael said. He jumped to his feet and pulled Sophie up after him. “We’ve got to look into this. It sounds to me as though someone may have put the wretched woman up to this business, and if that’s so, we should be able to find out who it was and what they wanted.”

  “I’ve got her address,” Sophie said suddenly. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it sooner. Having an ally must be good for the brain. She dug through the bits of paper at the bottom of her satchel until she found the medium’s card, and handed it over to Mikael. Her hand brushed against that funny little metal iron in the process, but it seemed hardly worth mentioning.

  “Excellent,” said Mikael, examining the address on the card. “I’ll go there right now, and you and I can meet on Sunday afternoon at the library so I can tell you what I’ve found out.”

  He must have been able to tell Sophie was frightened, or he would have suggested she come with him. Though she supposed it was what she’d hoped for, she wasn’t sure how she felt about Mikael taking charge like this. What if Sophie lost all her self-reliance?

  “You’ll be careful, won’t you?” she said.

  Mikael shrugged away her concern. “I’ll be fine,” he said in an untroubled way. “It’s good practice in case I turn out to be a detective when I’m older.”

  “Do you want to be a detective?” Sophie asked. In December, it had been a fighter pilot, and the summer before, an engineer in the oil fields of Baku.

  Mikael blushed and didn’t say anything, which made Sophie think he might really mean it this time. How interesting! And how convenient for Sophie!

  She told Mikael as much more as she could remember about the medium and what she had said, then noticed it was almost six o’clock. Peggy would be frantic.

  “Oh dear, I must go,” she said, brushing off her skirt and settling the satchel back over her shoulders.

  “I’ll see you on Sunday,” said Mikael.

  They made their way down from the tower, then parted, Sophie hurrying downhill to the closest tram stop. If Mikael could find out more about the medium, she would be greatly in his debt.

  As soon as she got home, Sophie remembered that Great-aunt Tabitha was out for supper, a regular engagement at the Women’s Spiritualism Club, and in the kitchen she found a note from Peggy saying she wouldn’t be back from the dentist until seven. A few months earlier Peggy’s metal fillings had begun picking up spirit voices, and when a long-dead servant from the Stevenson house down the road settled in and began to comment rudely on Peggy’s cooking, Peggy had hauled her life’s savings out from her mattress and gone to have all the old fillings replaced with the new plastic emulsion ones, which couldn’t act as receivers.

  In other words, Sophie might have stayed out as long as she liked. She couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or offended by this evidence of her own insignificance.

  EIGHT

  AFTER LUNCH ON SATURDAY Peggy sent Sophie out with instructions to get a bit of sun and fresh air and not show her face at home a minute before teatime. As Sophie was about to let herself out the front door, Peggy appeared in the hall, marched over, and motioned for Sophie to hand over her satchel. She opened it up and took out the detective novel tucked into the front pocket.

  “Reading’s all very well in its place,” she said, holding the book beyond Sophie’s reach, “but it’s out and about I want you this afternoon, not sitting somewhere cramming your head full of rubbish. I’ll keep this for you in the kitchen, and you can have it again after tea.”

  Sophie begged shamelessly, but Peggy wouldn’t relent, though she did give Sophie a shilling before shooing her away from the house.

  “And stay out of crowds!” Peggy called after Sophie, who waved to show she’d heard. Peggy was sure that as long as one was sensible, one would never find oneself on the spot when a bomb went off.

  Sophie didn’t actively dislike spending time outdoors, but it was hard to know what to do once she was there. In the end she wandered along Heriot Row toward Broughton Street Lane, where she gravitated to the used bookseller in the appealingly seedy row of shops that included a secondhand wig retailer and a little photography studio whose windows advertised the services of Daguerreotype Mediums and Photographic Sitters. She browsed for a while in the bookshop and finally exchanged her shilling for two novels by Ibsen and Strindberg.

  On her way out, Sophie stopped to give her last penny to the Veteran, whose injury didn’t stop him from wheeling himself all over town on his little cart. Sophie often saw him away from his usual post in front of the school, though she didn’t remember ever seeing him so close to her house before.

  With no particular destination in mind, she crossed Leith Walk into London Road and entered the Terrace Gardens through the north gate, formerly wrought iron but now naked wood because the government had stripped the parks of metal for the war-preparedness effort.

  Sophie strolled along the yellow gravel path in search of a suitable bench, one colonized by neither the terrifying uniformed nannies with their grand perambulators nor the vagrants who slept in the park during the daytime and hung around the main railway station at night.

  A sharp piece of stone lodged between Sophie’s heel and the inside of her shoe, and at the next bench she propped her foot on the seat and unbuckled the strap of her sandal. As she shook it out over the walk, she heard someone calling her name.

  She looked up and saw Jean. It wasn’t surprising that Jean should be here—the gardens were only ten minutes’ walk from school, and fifth-and sixth-form girls often spent their free afternoons in the park when the weather was fine. The only surprise was to see her without Priscilla. Sophie said as much, and Jean flushed.

  “Priscilla was supposed to come with me,” she admitted, “but we had a falling-out last night and she’s still furious.”

  Though Sophie nodded, Jean seemed to feel further explanation was needed.

  “It was all my fault,” she said, sounding guilty and miserable. “Priscilla had a letter from a boy she met over the Easter holidays, and I got upset when she said she wouldn’t show it to me. And then I said lots of awful things, and then she told me I’d better find a new best friend if I couldn’t stop being such a jealous monster.”

  Sophie reached across and patted the other girl’s hand. It was impossible not to feel for Jean; the unhappiness in her voice was palpable.

  “I expect she didn’t mean it,” she told Jean. Priscilla wasn’t the type to bear a grudge.

  “Yes, I know,” Jean said, gulping and swallowing, “but meanwhile I’m completely wretched, and the worst is knowing I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”

  They sat in silence for a minute, Sophie wishing she were brave enough to invite Jean to do something with her instead. Something about the bond between Jean and Priscilla was so strong as to repel outsiders.

  She sneaked a look at Jean and was intimidated afresh by the scowl on her face. Then she told herself not to be such a coward.

  “What had you planned to do this afternoon?” she asked, trying to sound noncommittal.

  Jean’s face lit up.

  “We were going to go and look at the electric kitchen in Princes Street,” she said.

  Sophie felt hopeful. Perhaps Jean would ask her to come along!

  Then Jean slumped back down on the park bench.

  “It won’t be much fun by myself,” she said, chucking a pebble at one of the pigeons. The birds flew up and away in a flurry of cries and feathers.

  “I could come with you, if you’d like,” Sophie said, choosing her words carefully so as not to put Jean under any obligation.

  Jean took Sophie’s hand in her own and squeezed it gratefully.

  “I’d love you to come, Sophie,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to go for ages; it’s supposed to be lovely. I’d
have asked you before, but I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  Even if one didn’t care about kitchens one way or the other (Sophie didn’t), it was certainly nice to feel wanted.

  They left the park by the east gate and walked past the grand row of embassies along Regent Terrace until they passed the school, then wound their way through the monuments on the hill and down by way of Waterloo Place into Princes Street.

  They stopped outside the showroom, Jean gazing into the windows while Sophie looked up and down the street. This was where the most recent bomb had gone off, but there were hardly any signs of damage. All the plate-glass windows had been replaced, and only the heap of flowers on the pavement in front of the Army and Navy Store told one that people had died here. Following some impulse she didn’t understand, Sophie leaned down and picked up one of the flowers, which she tucked into the pocket of her satchel.

  Next to Sophie, Jean’s breath was misting up the shop window.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” she said to Sophie.

  Sophie reached for her pocket handkerchief to wipe away the mist.

  “I’d like that for my mam,” Jean continued, pointing to an enormous electric cooker.

  Everybody at school knew that Jean’s mother was a slave to housework as well as to Jean’s father, who was an awful miser. Jean’s godmother paid her school fees. The really monstrous thing was that Mr. Roberts refused to electrify the flat despite his being an electrical engineer who dined out every second Tuesday evening at the electricity lovers’ Dynamicables Club.

  Suddenly Sophie thought of how unhappy Peggy would be to learn that she was right in the middle of the city’s most crowded shopping district. She shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

  “Come on, then!” Jean cried, grabbing Sophie’s hand. They pushed open the door and made their way into the crowded shop. Two girls in black maid’s uniforms and spotless white caps and aprons walked around the room with trays of savories cooked in the electric oven, and Jean and Sophie sampled prunes wrapped in bacon and pigs-in-blankets before wandering to the back of the showroom, where an elegant woman had just taken a beautifully golden sponge cake out of the oven and was inviting members of the audience to lay their fingers on the cake’s perfect surface.