The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  He ducked his head, swiping a hand across the back of his neck in embarrassment. “I did say that, didn’t I? Guess there’s a first for everything.” A corner of his mouth curved up, his blue eyes laughing—but at her or with her, she couldn’t tell.

  Bill’s feigned interest in women’s hatwear waning, he’d once more oozed his way forward, nose pressed against the seat ahead. “‘“Hm . . . there’s Gull Island and it was about here that we flew inland this morning . . .”’”

  The man spun round, but instead of giving Bill a piece of his mind, he gave him his paper. “Here you go, lad. I’ve finished the crossword anyway.”

  Bill grinned his delight as he curled up to pass the time with the comic-strip exploits of Popeye, Buck Ryan, and Ruggles.

  “Thank you for not saying anything to the policeman back there. I know you disapprove,” Lucy said.

  “I can’t make you behave . . . much as I’d like to. I’m not your mother.”

  “Amelia never cared what I did as long as it didn’t inconvenience her.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t think she’d have given two hoots about Yoon Hai if it hadn’t affected my stepfather’s finances. That was the unforgivable sin in her eyes.”

  Michael seemed startled at her mention of Hai. She could sense his desire to question her further and tensed, expecting the usual disapproving interrogation. Yet a part of her yearned to speak aloud Hai’s name, if only to acknowledge his existence. To prove that her life in Singapore had not been a dream. That once she had almost been happy.

  “You must have loved him very much to flout social convention,” Michael said.

  She wanted to agree to his romantic narrative of star-crossed lovers. To be Juliet ripped from her Romeo by class and race. But she couldn’t lie. Not now.

  “Hai was a good man. Kind. Honorable. Generous. He looked at me as if he truly saw me. He listened to what I had to say. It was refreshing after so many years of being invisible.”

  “You and your mother don’t get on?”

  “That’s a very civilized way of putting it, but accurate as it goes. If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t get on with most people.”

  “Now that you mention it, you do seem to be a bit . . . shall we say . . . unsociable. It’s as if you want people to dislike you.”

  “Maybe I do. Saves the bother of disappointment.”

  “On whose end?”

  She gave a sniff of resigned laughter. “Both, I expect.”

  She had once thought of Yoon Hai as overly observant. He was a rank amateur compared to Michael, whose shrewd stare peeled her like an orange. She lit a cigarette as a way of putting distance if not space between them. “You asked me about Hai and I told you. So you owe me an answer in return—did you love Arabella?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t even pause.

  She took a breath and ignored the prick beneath her breast where her heart was supposed to be. “Then why won’t you go see her? Don’t you owe it to yourself to make absolutely sure before you close that door forever?”

  “Awfully philosophical about matters of the heart all of a sudden.”

  “I just know if it were me, I’d be hoping you’d give me a second chance.”

  His gaze grew shuttered, his features giving nothing away. The bus slowed as it approached a crossroads. Michael gathered himself to disembark, their moment of shared intimacy over.

  Bill dropped his paper, comics forgotten. “Are you leaving, Michael?”

  “’Fraid so, mate. But keep your head down and your mouth shut and you should make it to London all right.”

  “You could come with us,” Bill suggested.

  “Wish I could,” he said, his gaze shifting from Bill to fall on Lucy, “but I’m already where I belong.”

  “I know you don’t approve, Michael, but Mr. Oliver is my chance at finally getting what I want.”

  “What do you want, lass?” His gaze locked with hers, steel rimming the blue of his eyes. “Do you even know?”

  “Of course I do.” An insolent comeback formed on the tip of her tongue, a quick shot that would put him firmly in his place and release her from his questing gaze. But she found herself unable to turn the knife as she would normally have done. It wasn’t that she couldn’t. Oh, there were plenty of sarcastic comments in her repertoire, and all humdingers guaranteed to crush anyone foolish enough to attempt to see beneath her veneer, but Michael had become more than a target for her put-downs. She didn’t want their last moments to drip with acid. “I know you think I’m an opportunist at best and a tart at worst and I wish it weren’t that way. But when you only have yourself to count on, you learn to count yourself first.”

  “What if you found you could count on someone else? That you weren’t as alone as you thought?”

  He never cracked a smile, and she found her own features sobering, her chest tight.

  The bus jerked to a stop and the doors clanked open. Michael rose from his seat. “Good luck. I hope you find what it is you’re looking for.” He started up the aisle.

  “Michael . . . wait.” She chased him down, grabbing his sleeve just before he reached the top of the steps and pressing a kiss on his cheek. “I couldn’t have made it this far without my knight in shining armor.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in fairy tales.”

  “No,” she said sadly, “but I wish I did.”

  Chapter 17

  Michael’s seat was taken by an older couple. She carried a knitting bag. He read a copy of a James Joyce novel, using his bookmark to follow the page. Quiet people minding their own business who wouldn’t task her with painful soul-searching. Lucy liked them already.

  She settled back with a sigh of relief that started somewhere near her toes. She wanted nothing more than a hot bath, a soft bed, and a stiff cocktail—not necessarily in that order. Hopefully one, or all of these things in combination, would set her firmly back on a track that seemed to grow increasingly muddled with every mile she put between herself and Nanreath Hall.

  It was all Michael’s fault. She wasn’t sure exactly how, but leave it to a man to confuse what should be a completely straightforward endeavor.

  “Candy bar?” Bill asked, holding out a rather melted corner of Hershey’s chocolate.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “A soldier give it to me back at the depot.”

  “Thank you, no.”

  He popped the chocolate in his mouth before digging in his bag again.

  “Was that a gift from the soldier as well?” she asked, eying the cigarette he’d retrieved.

  “Naw, it’s one of Michael’s. I found it down between the seats of the wagon. Only a little crushed.”

  “And now it’s mine, thank you very much.” She snatched it away from him.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Who said life was fair?”

  Bill’s face grew mulish, but he bit back whatever argument he thought of making and instead turned his attention to the basket perched on his lap. Cracking the lid, he crooned softly, “’Ere now, fella. It’s all right.”

  He was answered by a series of distressed burbles and chirps and a fluttering that rattled the basket.

  “What have you got in there?” The woman’s knitting needles clicked as she worked on the sleeve of a lumpy sweater. “A kitten?”

  “A bird. He’s got a bum wing. Want a look-see?” Bill leaned forward to show her.

  The woman gave a sad tsk and a shake of her head. “Ah, the poor wee mite.”

  Bill stroked the bird’s head with a finger while it lay on its side surveying him from one beady black eye. “He won’t eat the worms or the beetle I found for him, and I weren’t able to find him any seeds.”

  “Do you think he would eat currants?” The woman offered Bill a bun from a bag on the seat beside her, which garnered her a forlorn look from her husband but wide-eyed delight from Bill.

  “Crikey!” he gasped. “If Rufus won’t eat it, I sure will.”

  A d
usting of crumbs spread across the front of his shirt as he slowly dissected the bun for bits of currant, which he placed in the basket close to Rufus’s beak. It flapped its broken wing pathetically but otherwise remained unimpressed with this gift.

  “My boy Darren used to bring home strays all the time,” the woman offered with an indulgent softening of her weary features. “Never knew what he’d turn up on the doorstep with next. Kittens, puppies, you name it. Once he even brought home a fox kit, raised it until it was tame as a house cat.”

  The gentleman lifted his head from his book to give his wife a long look somewhere between irritation and bewilderment. She ignored him, continuing to smile wistfully, needles clicking as a sweater grew from the ball of thick blue yarn in her bag. He cleared his throat before returning to his Joyce, but Lucy could tell he’d begun splitting his attention between his book and his wife.

  “He’s in the army now, of course—the tank corps. I was relieved when I heard. Can’t get hurt rattling around in a metal can. I told Mr. Britt our Darren’s safe as houses. That’s what I said.” The man’s face grew longer. His hands on the book whitened. He hadn’t turned a page in at least ten minutes.

  “I’d like to drive a tank,” Bill exclaimed, momentarily distracted from feeding Rufus by thoughts of military derring-do. “Or maybe a Spitfire. That would be brilliant. I’d shoot up those Jerries what come over to bomb London. I’d be an ace, and they’d give me a medal for it.”

  “Darren’s elder brother Alistair flies planes,” Mrs. Britt said with a proud smile. “Hurricanes. He’s somewhere up north, though he can’t tell us where, of course. Security, you know.” She put a finger to her lips and gave a furtive glance around her. “All four of my boys are serving. The twins are in the navy. I tell the gals at the WI, the Britts of Blythe Street have done their part to beat the Hun. And Mr. Britt did his bit in the first war, didn’t you, dear?”

  Her husband grunted, but his face had gone quite gray. He looked as if he wanted to be sick. Lucy moved her bag subtly out of the line of fire, just in case. Hopefully, his nausea wasn’t a result of his wife’s currant buns.

  “I couldn’t have asked for four better boys. So handsome and so smart. Futures bright as four copper pennies. Growing up, the girls buzzed round them like bees, and now they’re in uniform, why, they have to beat them off with a stick.”

  So much for Lucy’s peace and quiet. At least she didn’t seem to have to do much more than look interested and nod at proper intervals. Mrs. Britt seemed quite capable of holding up both sides of the conversation.

  “I’m knitting this sweater for Alistair. He’s told me the weather is horrid. He’s never liked the cold, poor thing. Used to have to put two hot water bottles in his bed to keep the chilblains away. Blue’s his favorite color. Matches his eyes.”

  “Stop it, Gladys,” Mr. Britt shouted, his voice strained, the color bleached from his face. “Just stop it now, do you hear? I don’t want to hear any more. Not one more word.”

  He yanked the sweater from her grip, unraveling the threads. A knitting needle slid under the seat. His book fell to the floor, the bookmark fluttering loose to settle between the seat cushions. He tore at the seams, the sleeve unraveling, the sweater losing its shape until there was nothing left but a jumbled knot of unshapely yarn. He tossed it in the bag.

  Mrs. Britt’s face crumpled into her handkerchief. Her shoulders shook. Her husband huffed as if he’d run a race; his face was red, his eyes large, the pupils dilated to near-black.

  Bill moved closer to Lucy. She cleared her throat and grew extremely interested in the edge of her skirt.

  Hours passed. Shadows lengthened. The countryside trundled past as the bus made its slow but steady way east, stopping to add and subtract passengers at every rural crossroad and village green. Bill’s stomach growled. Lucy bought them each a packet of crisps.

  At an unidentified depot in an unidentified town that looked much like every other depot and town they’d passed through, the bus hissed to a stop. The lack of signposts and markers might be vital to the war effort, but it was a damn nuisance. She checked Bill’s sad excuse for a map. If she was reading his illegible scribble right, they were in Hungerford—or perhaps Faringdon.

  Wherever they were, Mr. and Mrs. Britt stood up. He grabbed a battered leather suitcase. She took up her knitting bag. She shied when he put his hand up to assist her. He dropped his arm back to his side as if she had burned him. His fingers opened and closed. His face tightened.

  She smiled her farewells. “You take care, miss. Little boys are experts at finding trouble. But I’d not trade my four for any prim and proper daughters, no sir.” She gave Bill one last pensive look before passing down the aisle, her face drawn and gray with age as if she’d grown older in the few short hours they’d been traveling.

  Mr. Britt hovered as if biding his time. Lucy clutched her handbag and met his hard gaze head-on.

  When his wife was safely out of earshot, he cleared his throat and his thin-lipped frown now seemed anxious and unhappy more than angry. “I wanted to apologize for Gladys.”

  “Apologize for her? That’s rich.”

  “It’s our boys, you see,” he carried on. “She natters on and on about them. She won’t stop. Bends everybody’s ear whether they want to hear about them or not.”

  “She’s proud of them. Any mother would do the same.” Amelia probably not, but this was a normal mother. “You should be proud of them too, I should think.”

  “They’re dead, miss. All of them.”

  “I don’t—”

  He pulled his bookmark out of his book. It was a much wrinkled and dog-eared photograph. Four uniformed young men standing arms linked in front of a nondescript terrace house. They were mugging for the camera. No hint of fear or misgiving, just cocky smiles and swaggering confidence. No idea of the horrors they would soon face.

  The grief they would experience.

  The losses they would suffer.

  War had been something distant, a game to win, not a fight to be survived. If Lucy had thought of it at all, it was only as an endless bounty of dashing men in smart uniforms queuing up to take her out for the evening. She’d had her pick of the services’ finest; anything less than a lieutenant need not apply.

  Was it naïveté that had blinded her to the truth? Or had she simply refused to see what stared her in the face?

  Even after Singapore fell and the reality of war became her reality, she continued to push aside what she didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to face. At Nanreath Hall, among the sick and injured, she ignored the devastating physical evidence of battle’s cost and called the oversight compassion. Made fun of those who talked of responsibility and duty and selflessness.

  She looked at those four laughing men, unbearably young and incredibly earnest, purpose etched in every grinning visage, and felt shame like a lance between her ribs.

  “The twins died last year,” Mr. Britt explained, his voice quiet but containing only the hint of a tremble. “Alistair’s plane went into the North Sea this past January. We received word just this week that Darren’s been killed. She won’t believe it. She keeps on about them as if they’ll be home for Christmas. And they won’t.” He tucked the photo lovingly into his jacket pocket. “She knits socks. She sends care packages. She writes them letters and then harasses the postman every afternoon. She acts as if all’s right. It’s not. It won’t be ever again. I try not to say anything. I’m afraid I shall lose her too, but sometimes it just grows to be too much.”

  “I see.” Lucy hid her shaking hands in her skirt, her fingers curled tight into the leather of her handbag.

  “Well, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I suppose I just thought you should know after the way I behaved. I wanted . . .” His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what I wanted.” He clutched his book. Like his wife, he seemed to have aged before her eyes. “Take care of the lad. He does have the look of Darren at that age, Gladys was right about that
.” He wiped his eyes with a great handkerchief as he left, shoulders hunched within his raincoat.

  “Is the old lady cracked?” Bill asked. “There was a lady lived below us on Marvin Street. She was bats. Used to run around the streets in her nightgown screaming little men was after her. They took her away in a Black Maria.”

  “Mrs. Britt’s not cracked. She’s unhappy, and so she . . . she dreams.”

  “She wasn’t dreaming just now, was she? I mean she was awake and talking to us. She even gave me a bun. Someone asleep wouldn’t do that. Unless they were sleepwalking, I suppose.”

  “Some people don’t have to be asleep to live in dreams. They simply pretend to themselves things are one way when in reality life is really quite different.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  Lucy stared past him to watch Mr. Britt’s hunched body disappearing down the aisle.

  If her stay at Nanreath Hall seemed like a lifetime ago, Singapore seemed like another life altogether. A life she would never see again.

  She swallowed around the sudden ache in her throat. “Because it hurts less that way.”

  The light grew purple and gold across the far hills before graying into spring twilight and then night. The coach slowed to a crawl as the driver fought to see the road with the weak glimmer of light his painted headlamps gave off.

  Bill lay curled against Lucy’s side like a puppy, the basket containing Rufus on the floor at his feet.

  “I don’t remember what she looks like.” His voice was soft, almost frightened.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was, but I got to thinking. I can’t remember my mam. She’s all faded and jumbled in my head. What if I get home and I can’t recognize her? What if she don’t recognize me?”

  “Of course she’ll know you.”

  “I ain’t seen her since the start of the fighting when all us kids was evacuated.”

  “You haven’t been home since then?”

  “Naw, I wanted to, but Mam wrote to say it weren’t safe and I should stay put and be a good boy. I tried. I tried something awful, but the Sayres didn’t think anything I did was good.”