Maggie Bright

by Tracy Groot

  “Oh, go on—she’s right, you know,” said Captain John indulgently, nudging Mrs. Shrew with his elbow. “Knew she was a sailor the minute she saw old Mags.”

  “Sailor, perhaps,” Mrs. Shrew said. “Detective inspector, certainly not. I was the one to catch him in a lie. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked of the Thieving Priest, after the captain had restrained him—”

  “Restrained is a stretch,” said Clare. He sat meek as a lamb, sipping tea while waiting for the police.

  “—and do you recall what he said? ‘I am in England for the Lambeth Conference,’ and he said it quite carefully as if it had been long rehearsed. ‘Lambeth Conference!’ said I. ‘Well, that is a surprise . . . as there hasn’t been a Lambeth Conference since 1930, and there isn’t one now! Besides all that—what would the Lambeth Conference have to do with your presence on this boat? Who are you really—Father Fitzpatrick?’ Oh, what a trump! Do you recall his face? Like catching a student in a lie!”

  “Yes—and he wouldn’t say a word after that, would he? Not a single word about what he was looking for.” Clare just knew he was on the very brink of confession when Mrs. Shrew had gone all Lambeth on everyone.

  “He was looking to kill us. Do you not know feral nature when you see it? Try teaching school in Liverpool. West Kirby.”

  “I intend to find out what he was after.” Clare studied the paper thoughtfully.

  It hadn’t been just worry in those eyes. It was desperation. And in the end, as he was led away, it was defeat.

  Yet there was something else. She folded the paper. Something she had not felt in over ten years. Just a flicker. She had to find him again to see if it were true, to see if she had only imagined it.

  “Hang on,” the Shrew suddenly said. “Who’s that?”

  They turned to the direction of her gaze—the boathouse at the end of the dock.

  “Who’s what?” asked Captain John.

  “I could swear someone was watching us. And when I noticed, he ducked away. Around the corner of the boathouse. By the shrubbery.”

  “You want I should check it out?” said Captain John, looking very capable.

  Mrs. Shrew studied the area for a long moment and then said doubtfully, “No. No, it’s quite all right. Must be I’ve got the Burglar Vicar on my mind.” She turned a severe look upon Clare’s piece of paper. “Someone else certainly does.”

  “Really, it’s nothing.” She slipped the paper into her pocket. “Join us for tea, Captain John?”

  “Had mine, could use more, thanks,” he said. He followed Mrs. Shrew below.

  Clare hesitated before descending.

  She’d raise the sails today and give them a good scrub down, less to check for mildew than to see Maggie’s glory unveiled, if only at her moorings and not filled with sea wind. She’d check the mail and see if she had any new applicants for renters, not invaders of her sanctuary, as her lesser part mourned. Bright vision saw renters like Mrs. Shrew as a means to an end, and that end was to raise funds not only for the adventure of her lifetime, but quite likely the lifetime of Maggie Bright.

  Vision! Courage! Singularity of purpose! That would conquer all.

  Still . . .

  “I thought you might have a secret, old girl,” Clare said softly, caressing the wooden grain of the hatch cover. She glanced at the shrubbery by the boathouse, then curled her hands around the hatch cover and swung below.

  BARTLETT, NEW YORK

  Murray Vance threw down the chalk and messed up his hair. He shook his fists at the door, then stood deflated until the knock came again. Smoothing his hair, tucking in his shirt, he went to the door.

  How did they find him? He’d ask someday, sure there was a leak at the Times. Likely Eddie the elevator boy, that two-faced river rat. Said he wanted to draw someday and Murray believed him. You know what? That’s what comes outta being nice to people. They use you. That’s what he was learnin’.

  “I ain’t so green anymore,” he muttered.

  Murray put his hand on the doorknob, and some of the mad went out. Aw, kids after autographs, not a big deal. He was a kid not so long ago. For them, a tiny salamander sittin’ on the M, and he’d make the tail curl into the V. But he always felt stupid with adults. Had nothin’ to say to them. No salamander for them.

  Murray opened the door to a pleasant surprise.

  “Say! Mrs. Father Fitz! I thought you was an intruder! What’s cookin’? Where’s the padre?” His eyes dropped to her very large stomach. “Holy smokes—you got a whole nursery in there?” He bent to the stomach and called between cupped hands, “Hey, kid! You a girl, you come out lookin’ like your mother, boy oh boy, are you gonna stop traffic!”

  Confident he had paid her enough compliments, he straightened to smile at her—and his smile quit. She’d been cryin’.

  It was then he realized that A, Father Fitz wasn’t with her, and B, she’d never stand in his doorway without the Fitz.

  “I’ve received a telegram, Murray. David’s been arrested.” She talked some more. She’d tried to contact the American embassy in London, couldn’t get through. Tried to contact Congressman Wilson—they said he’d acted outside of American interests, nothing they could do.

  She talked some more. He didn’t hear it.

  This is some good cement, isn’t it?

  Best stuff ever.

  Murray was eleven, and the Bartlett Road Commission was fixing the downtown sidewalk. They mixed cement in a great cement mixer. It tumbled down into a wheelbarrow. They pushed the wheelbarrow to a square hole framed by wooden forms, and down the cement poured, pushed along the chute by men with long-handled scrapers. A crowd had gathered to watch.

  Murray stared at the miraculous gray substance pouring into the hole. Infinite possibilities crashed down on him at once, and he suddenly knew what cement was capable of, and wondered why they all didn’t go a little crazy. But the crowd seemed to think they saw an ordinary thing, and no one shouted, “Cement! Cement!”

  No one except Murray. But that wasn’t the worst of it. For at some point—Murray didn’t know when, maybe when they finished smoothing it flat with the wide scrapers—he launched out and belly flopped into the middle of the cement-filled pool.

  He rose, and watched the cement ripple down his body. He made his bare feet go up and down. Infinite possibilities became infinite inventions, and he wished with all his heart he could draw. He saw cement held in the air. He saw cement in oceans. He saw it mixed with other things, like coffee grounds, Buck Creek silt, talcum powder; he saw it tumbled with ground seashells, he saw . . .

  . . . an angry crowd, and furious cement workers, and his screaming mother.

  Sound came back and shame rushed in—he saw his teacher who told other kids to steer clear of him, and his mother’s boss from Florsheim’s Cuff Link Factory, and a startled young priest. His mother’s boss shouted at him, wagging his finger, and Mother switched from shouting at Murray to shouting at her boss, and Murray cried out for her to stop, for she could lose her job. The cement workers shouted too, cigarettes bouncing at the corners of their mouths. A policeman came running to find out the fuss. People shouted and people laughed and people pointed.

  Murray wanted to die.

  Then suddenly, no one laughed. No one shouted. They stared.

  “I wonder what it’s capable of . . .” said a calm voice beside him.

  It was the young priest. He was ankle deep in cement next to Murray, but he wasn’t looking at Murray. He was examining a handful of dripping cement.

  It was all over his trousers. It smeared his black coat.

  He sifted it between his fingers. He lifted it to the light.

  Then he noticed Murray. “This is some good cement, isn’t it?”

  And Murray cried out, “Best stuff ever.”

  Never even took off his shoes.

  Murray rubbed his fingers together, surprised he didn’t feel cement.

  “We know where this is goin’, don’t we,” he said to
Helen. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He walked the room. “I ain’t goin’ to England. Hemingway said never again should this country be pulled into a European war through mistaken idealism. I put that in my speech. You know I got elected to the committee? Keep America Out of War? Me and the padre, that’s where we part ways.”

  He picked up an ashtray, looked at the bottom, put it down. Fiddled with chalk in his pockets. Walked the room.

  Helen said nothing. She just stood there, crying, wearing the same perfume.

  “That’s what he gets for stealin’ my girl. He got himself into this, he can get himself out. Goes off when his wife is pregnant. I wouldn’t’ve left.”

  He picked up a paperweight, tossed it hand to hand, put it down.

  She just stood there. Crying.

  “It’ll look bad, me goin’, just on the committee. Papers’ll find out and they’ll get it wrong. Well, I ain’t settin’ foot on foreign soil. We can’t solve our own problems, how can we solve theirs? The American Institution of Public Opinion said 95 percent of Americans don’t want another war. And 92 percent say—”

  She brushed hair behind her ear. It was the signal she and the Fitz worked out long ago to help him stay on track.

  “You know why he went,” she said softly. “A, B, and C, Murray.”

  “I’ve outgrown A, B, and C!”

  “I know—I’m sorry. I’m just upset.”

  He messed up his hair.

  Aw—truth was, it still worked.

  He found the chalk in his pockets and crushed it to crumbs.

  “A, if he went because of the malarkey my old man told him, he’s as crackpot as my old man was. B, you know how hard it is to get to England? Place is surrounded with German mines. Not to mention German submarines in the Atlantic and—”

  “Murray, I haven’t told you all of it.” She looked down, trifled with a button on her coat. “David found the Maggie Bright.”

  A.

  A.

  A.

  He couldn’t think of a B yet because he didn’t have an A.

  “That why he’s in jail?”

  She nodded miserably.

  “Tried to break in?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry to tell you this way.”

  He wished he could put that sun back on her face. He used to make her laugh.

  He sifted chalk crumbs in his pocket.

  There was only one person on earth he’d let use him, and one person he’d be used for. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the powdered chalk on his fingers. Rubbed his fingers together.

  “A, I’ll go get him. B, don’t worry.”

  “Oh, Murray.” More tears came, and Murray took up walking and reaching for things.

  “A, I am worried,” she said. “I can’t help it. And now I’m worried for you.” She dragged the heel of her hand against the tears, and her voice went quavery. “But B . . .” She laid a hand on her stomach.

  He flicked a dangly bead thing on a lamp shade, watched it swing.

  “’Member the last journey? Six years ago?” He flicked it again. “That was steppin’ outta Bartlett. I don’t count trips to New York City as journeys. Those are work related. Forty-three minutes from Bartlett to New York City by train hardly constitutes a journey. That’s what it says on the schedule, forty-three minutes—yeah, 57 percent of the time! That’s false advertising. If it was 97 percent—”

  She brushed hair behind her ear, and he stopped talking.

  She suddenly smiled through her misery. “Do they know who Murray Vance is, in England? I wish they knew him like I do.”

  He rubbed the drawing callus on the side of his middle finger. “I get mail from England.”

  “I hope you get back to it one day. You made me laugh.”

  He caught her perfume, and turned away, and reached for things.

  The Fitz was like the basement of his house, a place you don’t go much but what you gonna do without it? He was the rock bottom of Murray’s life. He anchored it.

  The only mistake Murray’s mother ever made was introducing her boss’s daughter to the Fitz.

  “Look in on my ma, will ya? And get my mail? Holy smokes, the logistics!” He clapped a hand to his head. “A ship to Lisbon, a train through the continent, a boat across the English Channel—it’s mined; hope I don’t get blown up. There goes the kid’s godfather. Hang on, hang on. Let’s write down the details. When’s the next ship out?”

  Off he went for pencil and paper.

  What you gonna do without a basement?

  Hang on, Padre. Ol’ Murray is coming.

  SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE

  “What in me is dark, illumine. What is low, raise and support.”

  No chance for good-bye, no chance to explain. With those guys a whole year, sharing care packages from home and trade secrets on girls, and suddenly this, hustling a broken half-wit to a place on fire.

  Private Jamie Elliott bent to yank the tongue of his boot back in place. It kept sliding down the side of his foot.

  “Trial will come unsought. God towards thee hath done his part—do thine.”

  “Shut up!”

  Little rest or food for two solid days, always on their feet, always moving, sometimes ditch-diving to avoid bullets from a low-strafing airplane, sometimes hiding in terror from German patrols which usually turned out to be civilians running scared; and always, always with a constant backdrop of this eerie howling and quoting.

  The thought summoned direct response from the offender, Captain Milton, who now stopped in his tracks, put his arms wide, and with loud lament aimed right at God, shouted: “Hast thou made me here thy substitute?”

  “Shut it!” Jamie pushed the man. He stumbled forward and regained his shambling gait.

  Did his men find out what happened to him? Kearnsey will worry. Drake will say it’s war, and act like he doesn’t care. Lieutenant Dunn likely sent someone out, and hopefully that someone had discovered Jamie’s fate. But he did not know theirs.

  “Too well I see and rue the dire event, that with sad overthrow and foul defeat hath lost us heaven.”

  Jamie shoved the captain harder than necessary, and he stumbled and fell. Discovering himself upon the ground, he wrapped his arms about his head and rested in the dirt, his backside hiked in the air. Looked like Lawrence of Arabia doing some worshippy Arab thing. Jamie waited. He shifted his weight. He wondered how to secure the boot tongue.

  “All right, all right. Get up. You’re not that bad off. I’ve seen a man carry his hand in a helmet.”

  Not a lick of action until two weeks ago, and nothing but action since. Whole German Army crashed on them like a thousand thunderstorms, and now chased them like monsters from a thousand nightmares.

  “Come on. Get up. Let’s find some water.”

  Why was it burning? Dunkirk wasn’t an ammo dump, it was a seaside tourist town. No way could the Germans have made that much ground that fast. Was it being bombed? If so, why Dunkirk? Calais was closest to Dover, wasn’t it?

  But here was the real question: When will the army stand and fight?

  “What’s the matter with him?” A steel-helmeted soldier stood beside him. No stripes, no need to salute.

  “Got hit in the head. Knocked a bunch of sense out of it.” Jamie looked at the soldier. Dusty, unshaven, wary, haunted, and hunted—looked like Jamie felt. “Who are you with? Any news?”

  “Queen’s Fusiliers, the 2nd—what’s left of ’em. We’re scattered to the four winds. I only know two direct orders: it’s every man for himself, and head for Dunkirk.”

  “Every man for himself?” Jamie repeated, hardly believing such words came out of his mouth.

  “Aye.” Watching the captain, the soldier unscrewed his canteen and handed it to Elliott. “What’d he say?”

  “Oh, he goes off like that. If it’s not poetry, he howls like a shot dog.” Jamie took a swallow and handed back the canteen. “Thanks.”

  “Something yet of doubt remains,” th
e captain groaned, “which only thy solution can resolve!”

  “When do you think we’ll stand and fight?” said Jamie.

  “Dunno. But you better get him off the road. There’s a whole village coming. Half of Belgium, looks like.”

  Jamie had seen hundreds of people on the road over the past two days, mostly terrified civilians carrying or pushing whatever they could. All hurrying, hurrying. A few hurried past now, staring at the man with his face in the dust. They looked like the soldier—haunted, hunted.

  “Where are they going?” Jamie said. “Dunkirk, like us?”

  “I don’t think they know.”

  “We’ll make our stand at Dunkirk, then?”

  “Not a clue. Well, good luck, mate.” The soldier walked off a few steps, then turned. “You know the new directive about the injured, don’t you?”

  “What directive?”

  “Leave any wounded behind.”

  Jamie stared.

  “Heard it from a major. He got it straight from the top.”

  Jamie felt a strange, hot flush. “Never heard of such a thing.” He looked at the captain.

  The soldier shrugged. “Makes sense. Why chance losing two fighting men for one who may die anyway? Leave ’em for the Germans to sort out. Maybe they’ll swap for ’em later.” He gave a little salute. “See you in Dunkirk.” Off he went.

  Jamie kicked the ground. “Curse my sodding, rotten luck!”

  If someone else had got to that hut before him, that man would’ve got stuck with this job. But no—Jamie had pushed past other would-be chumps to end up king chump of them all.

  “Come on, move! We don’t have time for this!” Jamie booted the captain’s hip, and he fell sideways.

  Where were Kearnsey and Drake, his two best mates? Blown to bits in some trench?

  “Did you hear what he said?” Jamie shouted at his ear. “I could leave you for the Germans! Perfectly in my rights!”

  He could not shake the belief that if he was with his unit, they would be all right. They would make it if they were together. A year with those men. He cared more about them than he did his own brother.