The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  Unease squirmed in the pit of Lucy’s stomach—and, for some odd reason, embarrassment. Not just for this poor girl, but for herself.

  She had gleefully broken every rule and boldly crossed every line, heedless of those who sought to curb her intemperate excesses. Hell, their opinions only made her further test the riskiest waters. Some had called her courageous for flouting convention so boldly, but courage had never entered into her decisions. Nor even hedonistic enjoyment. What was there to enjoy in kneeling over a basin spewing your guts up? Or popping seltzer tablets like candy allsorts?

  She had used her excesses as a blunt-force weapon.

  A way to hurt as she hurt.

  Somewhere along the way, it had simply become habit.

  Now, with Amelia gone, that chronic need to outrage and appall seemed less—necessary. Less appealing.

  The woman drove off in her cab, taking Lucy’s second thoughts with her. Faint heart never won fair lady—or anything else for that matter. And she’d not come this far to fold like a bad hand of poker at a passing hint of uncomfortable doubts. She had to find out what was going on even if it meant being seen in togs no self-respecting charwoman would wear.

  Juggling her suitcase and Rufus’s basket, she stepped off the pavement to the frantic ring of a bicycle bell and a surprised shout just before a sharp pain caught her behind the knees and she was knocked to the ground, luggage one way, she the other. Her hands scraped along the roadway, her elbow struck a curb, and she ended up with the heavy steel frame of a Raleigh SF Model 11 lying on top of her, a pedal digging into her ribs.

  “Oh dear, I’m frightfully sorry. I didn’t see you standing there and then my brake went wonky and I lost control. I hope you’re not hurt. Please tell me you’re not hurt. I’ll feel just awful if I’ve damaged you.”

  The bicycle was lifted away, and Lucy was helped to her feet by a fine-featured pixie of a young woman in slacks and a tunic, under a raincoat with the ARP badge prominently displayed on the breast. “Golly. Look at your knee. I really am very sorry.”

  Blood slid warm into Lucy’s shoe and her knee stung like the devil. She tried dabbing at it with her handkerchief. “I’ll live, but where’s Rufus? Damn it all, where’s that blasted bird?”

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” The woman set the basket beside her, from which sad little warbles could be heard. “A bit tossed about, but all present and accounted for.”

  “Thank heavens. Bill would kill me if anything happened to him.”

  “I do hope you’ll forgive me. Daddy says I’m a threat to the general public on this thing, but it’s so much handier for getting about in the city. I brought it up with me from Kent last time I was home. It was my younger brother’s, you see, he’s in the navy, following in Daddy’s footsteps and all that. Daddy’s an admiral, don’t you know, and, well . . . are you sure you’re all right? You look a bit pale around the lips. You’re not going to faint on me, are you?” She turned to Bill, who’d just come running up and was standing in silent awe at the stream of consciousness. “She’s not going to faint on me, is she?”

  “Crikey,” whispered Bill, staring goggle eyed at Lucy. “She’s hinged both sides, miss.”

  “Golly. I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I tend to babble when I’m nervous. I’ve always done it. Can’t seem to help myself.”

  She was indeed talking too much—with a voice straight out of the ranks of the upper ten thousand. Amelia had that same drawing-room drawl. She’d once tried to have Lucy taught those regal tones, but no amount of elocution lessons could impart the sense of entitlement that rolled off the tongue in clear vowels and crisp consonants.

  Right now, it made Lucy’s head pound.

  “Are you certain you’re not limping? That gash looks terribly deep. And your frock has a horrid rip in it.”

  “No bones broken and this outfit could only be improved by tire tracks.”

  “I feel terribly dreadful about that. It’s so hard to find decent clothing nowadays.” The girl surveyed Lucy with pained sincerity. She could almost see her totaling the cost of blouse, skirt, cardigan, and shoes down to the last ha’penny. “My flat is just a few streets over. I’ve an entire cabinet full of gauze, sticking plaster, and iodine. Positively swimming in the stuff. We can fix you up and have you back on your way in no time.”

  “I’m fine. Really,” Lucy demurred, unable to decide whether it was the fall or the stream of conversation making her head throb until her brains felt as if they were oozing out her ears, but lights swam across her vision like fish and the world had taken on a strange shimmery halo.

  “I insist. That’s what I do . . . well . . . one of the things I do—first aid. I’m a bit of an odd-jobber, really. I’m ARP officially, I work in a response center on the other side of Green Park, but I do a bit of ambulance driving and fire watching on the side when I’m needed, which isn’t so much these days, thank heavens, but I like to keep my hand in, and since I bowled you over the least I can do is patch you back up again.”

  Somehow the young woman was moving them along without any conscious effort other than the force of her words. Lucy had a feeling the Pied Piper must have had this sort of mesmerizing effect on his audience. “It’s actually my parents’ flat, but when Daddy went to sea—did I mention he’s an admiral—Mummy closed it up and retired to the house in the country. She wanted me to join her in Lower Stokenoor, but I ask you—what happens in Lower Stokenoor? Nothing. So I moved to London. Mummy was furious but Grand-mère was on my side, and if she’s on your side, you know the battle’s half-won.” She smiled, revealing an endearing gap between her two front teeth. “She lives on her own in Kensington with only Mr. Pidge for company. I think he’s her butler, but there are rumors . . .” She gave a delicious lift of her eyebrows. “Grand-mère is terribly bohemian. It gives poor Daddy palpitations.”

  “We really have to be on our way. Bill’s anxious to—”

  “But you’re limping.”

  Lucy did feel as if she might be listing to port just a tetch. “Yes, but—”

  “And you really are awfully pale.”

  The pavement did move under Lucy’s feet in a rather disconcerting way.

  “She only ate a piece of toast for breakfast,” Bill said with a worried glance.

  “Then that settles it. I’m perfectly useless in the kitchen, and while my parents allowed me use of the flat, they didn’t actually allow me use of any of the staff, so I don’t prepare much but beans on toast and an occasional bread pudding if I’m feeling particularly ambitious, but I can fix a cup of tea, and I have some egg-and-cress sandwiches left from a luncheon I attended with Grand-mère yesterday. She was scandalized when I asked them to wrap up the scraps for me to take away, but honestly, it would be a waste to just throw it out. Please say you’ll come.”

  “Much as we’d love to, Bill and I are on a very tight schedule.”

  Bill piped up. “I’ve got time for a sandwich.”

  “How did I know you were going to say that?” Lucy grumbled.

  “Then that’s settled,” the young woman replied briskly.

  “But, Bill,” Lucy said, grappling for control of this roller coaster of a conversation, “what about that very important errand I sent you on? We should really be getting on so that we can discuss it.”

  “Errand?” He goggled blankly at her.

  “You know . . . the visit to the . . . place . . . with the man . . . and you were going to find out . . . things . . .” She tossed him a wink-wink, nod-nod pointed stare.

  He glanced innocently over at the woman. “I’m afraid she’s awful poorly, miss. You think she might have taken a crack in the head?”

  “It’s entirely possible,” she replied.

  “I did not take a crack in my head, and I feel perfectly fine,” Lucy argued, though the effort cost her in a renewed wave of stomach-lurching vertigo.

  Bill gave a mournful shake of his head. “That’s what people always say right before the
y topple over stone dead. I knew a bloke what tripped coming out of the pub. Thought nothing of it. The next day they was measuring him for a box.”

  “I’ll be measuring you for a box in a minute if you don’t stop this madness.”

  “He has a very good point,” the woman answered. “Head wounds can be devilishly tricky things. And your leg really is a mess. I’m sure your errands can wait ten minutes.”

  “Ten itty-bitty little minutes, Lucy. That’s hardly no time at all,” Bill wheedled.

  “Who’s in charge here anyway?”

  His face lit up with puckish satisfaction.

  “That’s what I thought,” Lucy grumbled, admitting defeat.

  “Right. All settled,” the woman said. “You’re coming home with me. No more arguing. I’m Irene Turnbull, by the way.” She stuck out a friendly hand for Lucy to shake.

  “Lucy Stanhope. And this little con artist is Bill.”

  “Nice to meet you, miss.” He grinned. “What kind of sandwiches did you say?”

  Irene’s flat turned out to be a palatial set of elegant rooms taking up the top two floors of a converted town house just off Clarges Street. Only the ground floor had been let out, and this, according to their hostess, was currently inhabited by a Jewish couple originally from Munich. “Grand-mère knew the Fleischers from her time wandering the Continent. He played cello in a chamber orchestra there and she taught at the conservatory, but of course that all ended under Hitler’s horrid laws. They left everything behind, poor dears, and now he sweeps floors and she gives music lessons to nasty little children who bang away night and day with no sense of rhythm.”

  Horrible noises did seem to be coming from beneath their feet, compounding Lucy’s mounting head-thumping nausea.

  Irene tossed her keys on the table and shucked off her coat onto a chair. “There’s a bathroom at the end of the passage. You can wash up while I rummage through my first aid kit and then I’ll see to that cut on your leg. Despite my poor bicycling skills, I’m a whiz with iodine and a gauze pad, I promise.” Bill was peering round him with a hopeful hungry look. “The sandwiches are in the icebox. There might even be some cake. Help yourself.”

  Now that she was here, Lucy had to admit a sponge-off and a few sticking plasters might not be a bad idea. Her knee ached, her palms stung, and there was a knot the size of a golf ball on the back of her head from hitting the sidewalk. She hoped Mason Oliver had a soft spot for the walking wounded. Splashing water on her face, she wiped away the worst of the road dust. Any makeup she might have worn was long gone, leaving her with smudges beneath her eyes and a jaundiced pallor reminiscent of an underbaked tea biscuit.

  “I look a positive fright,” she stated as she dragged her aching body back into the drawing room.

  “No worse than you did before,” Bill offered cheerfully.

  “Thanks . . . I think.”

  “Here.” He shoved a glass in her hand. “Miss Irene made you a drink.”

  “A bit early for cocktail hour, but under the circumstances, don’t mind if I do.” Lucy tossed it back, nearly choking on the sugary tang of—vegetable. “Sweet mother of pearl, are you trying to poison me?”

  Bill frowned. “It’s carrolade—carrots and rutabaga. What did you think it was?”

  “Something suitably medicinal and numbing to help me recover—a Bloody Mary wouldn’t be out of the question.”

  “It’s not even lunchtime.”

  “Since when did you join the temperance league?” Lucy set the glass down. “Thank you, but unless there’s Worcestershire, horseradish, and vodka involved, I’ll pass on the veggie juice if it’s all the same to you.”

  Irene entered just then, shooting both of them an odd and somewhat alarmed look before motioning toward the couch and a table full of various mystery potions in dark pharmacy bottles, squares of gauze, and enough bandages to wrap a pyramid full of mummies. Even a small sewing kit, though it looked rarely used. “Sit, and let me take a look at that knee.”

  “You’re not planning to stitch me up, are you?”

  “This is for your skirt, silly.” She retrieved the glass of carrolade and handed it back to Lucy. “You may not like it, but you need to drink it.”

  “I don’t want—”

  Hard to believe, but that pixie face became positively stern. “All of it. If nothing else, it’ll distract you.”

  “Why do I need distra—criminy! What is that? Sulfuric acid?”

  “It’s just iodine. Hold still and don’t be a baby.”

  Ignoring Bill’s smothered laughter, Lucy focused on the carrot-and-rutabaga juice through Irene’s ministrations. Her knee still hurt, but oddly enough her stomach felt better, the odd bursts of light fading after not one but two glasses of the homemade orange brew. Who knew?

  Both eyes pointed in the same direction, she was finally able to properly study her surroundings, which were like something out of Country Life magazine. All the place needed was its very own Jeeves offering pearls of wisdom with his extra-dry martinis. “You’ve landed in the clover, haven’t you? Living on your own in urban splendor with a sea of lonely homesick men right outside your door.”

  “Not quite on my own. Grand-mère has a tendency to drop in unannounced every few days to ‘see how I’m getting on.’ I’m not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed that she’s never caught me in flagrante delicto with a man. But I have five loud, smelly brothers. The last thing I need is another male in my life.” Irene sniffed. “Besides, I’ve seen too many of my friends taken in by the thrill of a wartime romance. Next thing they know, they’ve a row of nappies on the line and they’re trapped in a marriage with a man they barely know. I didn’t want that before the war. I certainly don’t want it now.”

  “Who said anything about marriage? A nice evening out. Dinner. Dancing. A few laughs. Then sayonara, sailor, and you’re on your merry way.”

  “I suppose,” Irene said, obviously unconvinced.

  “Carpe diem. Isn’t that what the poets say? Seize the day.”

  “My days are bally well full already.” With a stern grimace, Irene jerked tight the bandage round Lucy’s knee. “What about you? Are you staying at the Dorchester?”

  “Do Bill and I look like people who would be staying at the Dorchester?”

  Bill looked rather like a delinquent casing his next target, but that seemed to be his normal expression. As long as his attention was taken up with egg-and-cress leftovers and kept off the priceless Lalique glassware, Lucy decided he was safe to leave to his own devices.

  “Hard to say anymore,” Irene said. “We’re all looking a bit faded and worn round the edges. If one’s bang up to the fashion mark, it usually means they’re buying from the black market or gaga over some American GI with a fat pay packet.”

  Lucy bent her knee, hoping to return circulation to her toes. “Desperation can be a powerful force.”

  “For shampoo and nylons?”

  “For normal. Or as close a facsimile as we can find right now.”

  “But when everyone else is muddling through, it seems wrong to pretend that nothing’s changed, don’t you think? Almost cowardly in a way.”

  Drawing in a breath, Lucy focused on the ache in her elbow and the sting of the antiseptic on her knee. Was she a coward? Michael had accused her of running away. But she wasn’t. She was merely being practical. Making the best out of a bad situation. England wasn’t her home no matter Amelia’s nationality. But then neither was Singapore . . . nor Australia . . . nor Switzerland . . . nor France . . . nor any of the places she’d settled for a year or two at the most before moving on. She’d called herself a citizen of the world. Maybe that just meant she didn’t fit in anywhere.

  Irene wiped her hands on a towel. “There. No permanent scars but keep that gash clean and change the plaster daily.”

  “Feel better, Lucy?” Bill asked, his plate empty, his belly full.

  “I expect I’ll live, no thanks to you and your garden juice.”


  They were interrupted by the door buzzer, which sounded as if someone leaned against it. Irene hadn’t even risen to her feet before a key rattled in the lock.

  “Irene, darling. Are you at home?”

  “In here, Grand-mère!”

  “I just stopped by to bring Mrs. Fleischer some fresh eggs and real butter your mother was kind enough to have shipped up from Lower Stokenoor this morning, and thought I would pop up to ask you about that wretched invitation to Sir Reginald’s birthday. You know I hate going to these dreary engagements alone, darling, and if I ask anyone else, they’ll insist I act my age. You know how I dislike to do that. Acting your age is much more jolly.”

  A vibrant butterfly of a woman floated into the room, a silken patterned jacket billowing out behind her like a sail and a bright Liberty scarf tying up her hennaed hair. She had a slightly wrinklier version of Irene’s pixie features, but her eyes shone with the same brilliance as the string of beads at her throat, and her lips and nails were touched in unapologetic scarlet.

  “Oh, I say, darling. I didn’t know you had company?” It was said in the form of a question, as if she was unsure whether Lucy and Bill were on a social call or here to scrub the floors.

  “Not company so much as a patient,” Lucy commented wryly.

  “This is Miss Stanhope, Grand-mère,” Irene said, delightfully pink. “I knocked her over with my bicycle outside the Dorchester and brought her back here to—”

  “Mummify her? The poor lamb is practically suffocating under all that sticking plaster.” Up close, the impression of masquerade ball meets operatic grande dame was only enhanced by an almost overwhelming aroma of patchouli. “How do you do, Miss . . . you did say Stanhope, didn’t you? I’m a bit hard of hearing.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Lucy Stanhope.”

  The woman’s plucked and painted brows drew close, her amused gaze sharpening for a moment before she turned to Bill with a shake of her head. “And you are?”

  He left off picking a scab on his elbow to swallow and smooth a nervous hand over his hair, which refused taming. “Just Bill, mum.”