The woman’s frown deepened. Not enough to alarm. But it put Lucy on edge. As if cogs and wheels were slowly grinding into motion.
“Well, just Bill, mum. I am Lady Turnbull, Irene’s esteemed grandmother.” She sat heavily in a rather flimsy armchair Lucy was worried might collapse in an explosion of gaudy floral silk, but other than a few creaks—of chair or old bones she couldn’t be certain—all stayed put. “I apologize for Irene. She only has to say the word and I’d have Pidge drive her anywhere she needs to go, but she insists on riding that calamity on wheels.”
“Pidge is too busy looking after you to spare the time,” Irene interrupted.
“Then I suggest you invest in some lessons before you kill someone—or yourself.” She focused her attention back on Lucy. “You have a lovely accent, but I can’t seem to place it. It’s not American and certainly not Australian. Are you from Canada by any chance?”
“I’m not from anywhere really.”
“Pfah!” She waved a dismissive airy hand. “Everyone is from somewhere. You didn’t drop from the heavens or spring into being like a soap bubble.”
“My father’s American. My mother, English.”
“There, you see? Puzzle solved.” Her probing gaze slid from Lucy to Bill and back, the cogs gaining traction. The wheels whirring.
Lucy’s insides knotted. Lady Turnbull was onto her. Another few moments of glancing interrogation and she’d have the entire unvarnished truth.
It was time to go.
“It was lovely meeting you, but Bill and I really must dash,” Lucy explained, uneasy, as she sidled toward the door.
“What about my cake?” Bill whinged.
Lucy flashed Bill a look. He scowled right back.
“You say your mother is English? Would I know the family?” Lady Turnbull asked, completely ignoring Lucy’s attempt at a dignified retreat.
“It sometimes seems as if Grand-mère’s related to half of England and friends with the other half,” Irene interjected, equal parts pride and exasperation in her face as she said this.
Lucy subtly backed toward the door while keeping up a steady stream of conversation. Maybe they wouldn’t notice. With one arm behind her back, she fumbled for the knob. “Yes, well, we Stanhopes are all tediously dull and make it a habit never to come to London . . . one has to practically pry us from our little corner of the country like turtles from our shell.”
By now, Lady Turnbull’s frown of confusion was beginning to look like a frown of consideration. “Stanhope . . . Stanhope . . . why does that name sound so familiar?”
“It’s a very familiar sort of name. There are positively scads of us about.” Lucy grabbed up her suitcase. “Come on, Bill. Thank you for the first aid.”
“Wait,” Irene called after as Lucy clambered down the stairs, Bill at her heels.
“TTFN!”
Back on the sidewalk, Bill laughed as they hurried down the street toward the bus stop, but Lucy felt as if she were running away all over again.
We’re almost there, Lucy. Look, it’s the Odeon.” Bill wriggled in his seat, nearly clambering over Lucy in an attempt to see out the window as the trolley bus rumbled up Hackney Road. “You think she’ll be home? She usually works until half four.”
“Let’s hope she took a rare day off.”
He wiped at the grime of the glass and peered with great hungry eyes. If the West End had been a gritty jigsaw of cordoned-off streets and bombed-out buildings, the eastern reaches of the capital looked as if a giant foot had smashed flat whole neighborhoods. A knot of ragged children clambered over piles of bulldozed scrap for bits of shrapnel while a pair of women in aprons and scarves smoked cigarettes as they watched from fresh-swept marble doorsteps across the way. A district nurse cycled past in her prim blue cap and coat.
Bill’s fevered giddiness seemed to falter with each exploded alteration to the world he remembered. His body took on an almost nervous tension, bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Look at you. You’re a positive mess, Bill Smedley,” Lucy said, seeking to distract him as yet another bombed-out building came into view. “At least run a comb through your hair.”
He allowed himself to be tidied, though without pomade or water, there was no taming the rooster’s comb he sported at the back. “There. That’s a little better. We don’t want your mother thinking I haven’t taken proper care of you.”
“She wouldn’t think that. I’d make sure.” Lucy was relieved when the sparkle returned to his otherwise pinched and sallow features. “I can’t wait to show you our street. I’ll introduce you to everyone in our building, even Mr. Purslip what some think done away with his missus. Not me. I think she run off with that salesman was selling toasters from out the back of a lorry. Mam always said Mrs. Purslip had airs above herself and a toaster salesman from Hutton-on-Tilby was just what she deserved.”
“I’m sure Mr. Purslip is well rid of her.”
“And there’s the canal where us boys used to swim in the summer, and the old schoolyard. My teacher Miss Blessing was pretty as the pinup girl in the back room of Mr. Tate’s butcher’s shop. All the boys used to make eyes at her.” He put his hands out in front of him, palms cupped. “She had bazoombas—”
“Got the picture. Enough said about Miss Blessing.”
Bill turned back to the window. “You wait, Lucy. We’ll have a cracking time.”
“It sounds wonderful, Bill, but you know I can’t hang about once I’ve delivered you.”
His face fell. “Oh, right. Mr. Oliver from America.”
“You did say he’s still registered at the hotel, right?”
“That’s what a baggage porter told me. Said as how he’s got a whole string of girls chasing after him. All wanting to star in his picture. Is that what you want to do, Lucy? I mean, this bloke could turn out to be a rotter like all the rest.”
“A chance I’m willing to take.”
“But you’ll be all alone once I’m gone. Won’t you be lonely?”
“I don’t plan on being alone long, Bill . . . and if I play my cards right, definitely not lonely.”
“That don’t sound half-proper.”
“The way I do it, it won’t be.” She tried to cajole him with a sly wink, but he only gave a halfhearted smile. “Come on. You know me. I’m like a cat . . .”
“You always land on your feet,” he recited in a dull monotone as he played with a bit of bent metal trim. “I suppose.”
She nudged him with an elbow. “Buck up. You’re back home where you belong. No more Mr. and Mrs. Sayres. Just you and your mam together again.”
A dimple winked at the edge of his mouth, his mood lifting. “You think she’ll be surprised to see me? You don’t think she’ll cry, do you? I’d hate to have her cry. It makes her eyes all puffy. She don’t like it when she looks puffy. Says it’s not elegant-like.”
“I have a handkerchief if the waterworks start.”
Bill turned back to the bus window with a jiggle in his legs like a puppy at the door, so he didn’t see Lucy’s smile fade or catch a glimpse of the wad of crumpled linen twisted between her hands.
They were set down halfway up the road by the gutted abandoned remains of what once must have been a pretty garden square. Bill strained against her slower pace, his breath shallow and quick, his eyes everywhere at once as if drinking in this bitter taste of home.
“How much farther along?” Lucy asked, hurrying to keep up.
He looked around as if gauging his bearings. A barrage balloon floated above the rooftops to the east of them. Another farther along loomed sinister to the north. “It’s another street over and then down the way past the school.”
Lucy followed, nearly colliding with him as he drew up short at the end of a street—or what had once been a street. They stood on the corner beside a dented phone box, a scarlet gash against the destruction beyond. Tidy shops and busy warehouses, grubby tenements and neat rows of terrace houses were nothing more now than jumbled piles of scatt
ered rubble, splintered timbers, and gaping glassless windows.
He took a few steps up the street before turning around. “This ain’t right. Can’t be. Must have passed it somehow.”
They retraced their steps, not once but twice, ending at the same point of destruction each time.
She looked about for someone to ask the way and spotted a man in cap and suspenders wheeling a barrow. “Pardon me, but is this Mansford Terrace?”
He gave a doleful shake of his head. “It were until last year.”
Chapter 19
Eat something. It will make you feel better.”
Bill shook his head as he pushed his mushy peas about with the tip of his fork.
“Then do it because it will make me feel better. You look pale as a ghost and I haven’t had to shout at you once in the past hour. It’s positively terrifying.”
Bill just stared at the scratched marble-topped table, kicking his chair in a steady rhythm that set Lucy’s teeth on edge.
She was at a loss. Sarcastic banter tended to be her way of dealing with anything unpleasant. Never take life too seriously. Never let them see they could hurt you. But Bill’s crumpled silence called for more than a clever quip or a droll comment. It called for empathy and compassion. She was out of practice at both.
“I’m sure they would have sent a telegram to the Sayres if something had happened to your mother. She probably moved in with nearby relatives.”
He shivered and there was a sickly sheen of sweat across his brow. “Ain’t got none.”
“What about friends or people she worked with?”
He picked at his food.
“Well, if you’re not going to eat your lunch, why not offer it to Rufus?” she said, hoping caring for the bird might take his mind off his grief.
Bill tore a palmful of crumbs off a piece of uninspiring brown grainy bread. He peered into the basket, chewing his lip. “Go on, Rufus. Eat.” He looked up, his expression bleak. “What’s wrong with him? He won’t eat. He don’t even chirp no more.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” she said with a pointed look.
“You think he misses his mam like I miss mine?”
Lucy joined Bill in examining the bird. It lay unmoving, its broken wing spread like gray lace across the newspaper lining the bottom of the basket. The crumbs from this morning were soggy and smeared across the newsprint. “I think you’re doing all you can, but sometimes that’s still not enough. Sometimes bad things just happen and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
His eyes glistened, his face twisted now with anger rather than sorrow. “I shouldn’t have brought him. I should have left him in the hedgerow like you said. Now he’ll die and it’s my fault. And me mam’s not even here to see him.”
A couple at a nearby table looked over. A waitress paused in pouring a cup of tea.
“What if she’s”—he swallowed hard—“dead, Lucy? I got what’s left of that half crown and the tuppence I found in the drain. Think that’ll be enough?”
“For what?”
“For going on with until I can find a job. They might hire me at the gasworks, mightn’t they? I can lie and tell ’em I’m sixteen.”
“Don’t even start talking like that.”
“But I’ll have to be doing something if . . .” His words petered out in another shove of peas with his fork.
“I know exactly how you’re feeling and it’s completely beastly.”
He offered up a ferocious look of hostile disbelief.
“It’s true. I was younger than you when my parents split up.” She drew in a breath to steady herself and clenched her hands until her nails dug into her palms. “I still remember driving away from our house in Philadelphia. Seeing everything I’d ever known getting smaller and smaller out the back window.” The memories were drawn from her like splinters with a needle. She licked her lips and cleared her throat before she continued, but at least Bill watched her now with interest rather than rage. “For months, I woke each morning expecting to be back in my old bed with Nanny rocking beside me and light streaming through the lace at the windows making patterns on the floor. It was like a part of me was left in that moment before, when my life was humming along just as I wished, and the moment after, when the world shifted and cracked under my feet, and no matter how I wished it, nothing would ever be the same again.”
Bill’s fork had paused, tines deep in his mash, and his jaw clenched and unclenched as he fought back tears. “It’s not the same. Your mam is still living.”
She felt her own jaw clenching, her throat closing around her words even as she spoke them. “No, of course it’s not the same.” She swallowed back the swamping rush of emotion threatening to consume her. It would do Bill no good and turn her into the kind of sniveling drip she despised. Amelia wasn’t worth her tears. “I have an idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Remember what Sergeant Raneri taught you? Close your eyes and listen for your mother.”
“But—”
“Go on. Open your mind and your ears and tell me what you hear.”
He scrunched his eyes shut. His screwed-up little face looked on the verge of tears, pale and pinched and unspeakably young. He sat still but for the shallow rise and fall of his chest for what seemed an eternity.
Lucy felt herself leaning forward in her chair, palms dry, shoulders damp from nerves. “Well?” she asked finally.
His eyes snapped open. “I heard her, Lucy. I did. Just a few words, mind you, but it was definitely her. She was singing ‘Billy Boy.’ She’s alive. I know it.” He smiled through his shining eyes and his cheeks were flushed.
“Of course she is,” Lucy replied, tartness back on her tongue. “I never doubted it for an instant. One small question, though—amid all that singing, did she happen to mention an address?”
They started their search for answers on Bethnal Green Road. The woman selling eels said she knew of the bombing at Mansford Terrace and wasn’t it a crying shame. Last she heard, some of the families had moved south into tenements nearer Whitechapel.
A butcher selling offal and “C” sausages from the back of a cart cursed the bloody Jerries whose bombs had killed his sister as she made her way from the bus stop on Cable Street, but no, he didn’t know nothing about the residents of Mansford Terrace. Best try the local ARP first aid station.
A warden there sent them to a shelter near Liverpool Street, which in turn sent them to Town Hall, a very official building full of very official people, none of whom seemed to either know what happened to Mrs. Matilda Smedley of Mansford Terrace or particularly care.
One rather condescending clerk suggested they try the shelter near Liverpool Street or perhaps the local ARP first aid station, at which point Lucy finally gave unladylike vent to her frustration that had even young Bill goggle eyed at her invective.
Unfortunately, while completely satisfying, her colorful—if physically impossible—suggestions as to what the toffee-nosed upstart could do with his advice landed her and Bill on the corner with a stern warning not to come back. The bright spring day had taken a decidedly gray turn. Slow-moving clouds thickened black-rimmed across the sky and a dank wind carried with it the sour greasy odors of the Thames at low tide.
“I’m sorry, Bill. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
“Crikey, miss. That bloke inside went red as a boiled crab.”
“Serves him right, but it’s left us no better off than when we started.”
“Maybe so, but it was worth it to hear you give him what-for. Where to now? Back to the shelter like the man said, or maybe down toward Cheshire Street or Brick Lane? Mam spent a lot of time down that way.”
“I say we try the police. We passed a station five minutes ago.”
“The coppers, miss?” Bill’s eyes flashed in alarm. “We can’t.”
“They’re not my first choice either, but I’ve run out of ideas. And they could help.”
Bill’s chin firmed. “They won’t do no
thing but poke their noses in and ask a lot of questions. They’ll find out I ran away. They’ll make me go back to the Sayres to live.” He folded his arms across his chest, his legs spread in a fighter’s stance. “I won’t go, and you can’t make me.”
“I wouldn’t let them send you back to the Sayres. Even if they can’t find your mother, I’m sure they’d find you a better place to stay.”
“It wouldn’t matter where I went. The people wouldn’t want me. Not really. They’d only be doing it because they had to. Because it was their duty.”
The Sayres. Aunt Cynthia. Bill might have come from the tenements of Bethnal Green while Lucy was born to power and position, but they were more alike than different. Her defiance faded. “Fine. No police, but what do you propose we do?”
“We could try down the Lion. Mam never missed a Saturday night there. Maybe someone will know where she’s gone.”
“Fine. I could use a drink, and my feet are killing me. To the pub it is.”
The Lion stood on the corner of St. Peter’s Avenue and a more uninviting place could hardly have been dreamed up. Its front window had been blown out at some point and replaced with a large piece of muslin tacked over the gaping hole. The door, once a cheerful red, was now a chipped and weathered grubby brown, while a drunkard sat on the pavement just outside with a jug in one hand and a watery toothless gaze for all who entered.
“That’s Joe. He always sits there. Hiya, Joe.”
The man squinted at Bill but gave no other sign he acknowledged the salutation or even comprehended it.
The pub’s interior was barely more appealing. It was dim and smoky with a floor scarred and warped from years of abuse and a drab air of wartime neglect. In the public bar, a few hardy souls nursed their pints as they exchanged gossip with the barman while a young couple, the boy in uniform, the girl dolled up in lipstick and a victory roll, sat at a table in the saloon staring into each other’s eyes over two glasses of cider.
She’d get nothing sensible out of those two lovebirds.
Ignoring the disapproving looks, Lucy bellied up to the bar alongside the men. “A gin if you have it.”
The Way to London Page 23
