The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  “Why would Bill be there?” Lucy asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

  He said no more, merely turned to pull more pints.

  She left, hearing the tuneless squall. “But she is too young to be taken from her mother.”

  The mist had thickened, swirling up to press wet and hot against Lucy’s face and coat her throat with the taste of rotten eggs and rubber. Overhead, the moon that had shone so bright on her evening with Oliver had been swallowed by low green-rimmed clouds. Michael nearly collided with a sandwich board advertising kosher beef at eight pence per pound. She turned her ankle stepping off a curb. A torch would have been helpful, but neither of them had thought to bring one.

  Feeling their way along, they rounded a corner, Lucy coming nose-to-chest with another unfortunate soul caught blind in the blackout. The collision knocked the breath from her lungs and sent her reeling into what felt upon impact like the unyielding edge of a Royal Mail postbox.

  “Steady on, miss,” said a disembodied voice smelling of cloves, leather, and sardines. “Not a good night to be out. A real pea-souper. You’re the second person I’ve run into tonight. Tripped over a lad and nearly landed on my backside.”

  “A boy? What did he look like?”

  “Couldn’t say. He begged a fag off me and away he went.”

  “Bill—it has to be.”

  “Hold on, Lucy,” Michael chimed in. “It could be anybody. There’s no way to know if it was Bill.”

  “I know it was him.” She grabbed the man’s coat sleeve before he escaped. “Where did you bump into him?”

  “A few streets back just by the Cambridge Heath stop for the 653 bus.” He pointed over his shoulder.

  “I thought Cambridge Heath Road was that way,” Michael said.

  “Naw. You’ve turned yourself all sorts of around, mate. You need to head back down the lane by the old telegraph office, turn left at the second street—not the one by the school, but the other one what runs off toward the church. Turn at the York Hall baths and you’ll be on Cambridge Heath.”

  Thanking him, they followed these somewhat vague directions only to end up right back where they started. What followed felt like a vaudeville act. Did that make her Laurel or Hardy?

  “Pack of hoodlums whooping it up by the mission hospital. Told ’em to shove off or I’d call a constable.”

  “Hanging about smoking fags and rolling dice near that old block of council flats next to St. Lawrence School.”

  “Young boy, you say? Aye. I bumped into a lad over by the carrier’s yard. Begged a pack of gum off a chap in the ambulance service.”

  “Go back along Bonner Road until you come to the fork and head right until you reach the school.”

  “Take the shortcut past the Paragon.”

  “Take the very next left after the church . . . or is that a right just before the church?”

  Winded and blistered, Lucy leaned against the postbox. By now, she and it had become very close acquaintances. “We’re going to need a Sherpa with an Ordnance Survey map to find Bill in this rabbit warren.”

  Michael leaned against a building, his head tipped back to rest against the bricks, arms folded over his chest. “This is pointless. We’ll never find him in this mess. Maybe if we head back to that café on the corner, we can gain our bearings and start fresh.”

  “There’s no time if Ace already has Bill in his clutches.” Her insides quivered with all sorts of dire imaginings.

  “You make him sound like a mustache-twirling Jack the Ripper.”

  “You didn’t meet the chap. He gave me the shivers, and I don’t shiver easily. He’s up to no good and he’s going to drag Bill right into the middle of it.”

  “Wandering in endless circles isn’t working. We need to fall back and regroup.”

  “Then you go find that café and have yourself a nice long sit-down. Maybe even grab yourself a cup of tea while you’re at it. I’m going to keep looking until I find him.”

  “You’re not being reasonable, Lucy.”

  No. She wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t. She knew Michael was doing his best. More than his best. He had gone above and beyond from the moment she’d rung him up out of the blue and asked for a lift as far as the nearest train station. And now here he was in the middle of London’s East End at midnight chasing a boy he barely knew with a woman he barely knew who—oh, by the way—drove him crazy.

  Had she left any part of this insanity out?

  Was it any wonder he chose caution over calamity?

  But logic and Lucy had long ago parted company. And any delay, no matter how rational, churned her insides with something very close to panic. She continued to argue, though now she was struck by a strange sense of déjà vu. “I’m being perfectly reasonable. If you don’t want to help, fine. I can do it myself.”

  “That’s not what I said,” Michael replied, as always the voice of affable reason, damn him.

  “But it’s what you meant.”

  “Steady on, Lucy. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. I’m not the enemy. You can stand down.” She could barely see her hand in front of her face, but she didn’t need a streetlight to know he was laughing at her.

  “I’m just a big joke to you, aren’t I? A ridiculous tart who’s stupid enough to chase halfway across the country after a chance at . . .”

  “At what, Lucy?”

  “I don’t know. A life. A home. A place where I belong. Where I can follow my dreams. Where I can be myself—not my mother’s mistake or my aunt’s responsibility or ‘that girl’ that no one quite knows what to do with.” She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. The fog condensed on her cheeks like tears.

  “I don’t think you’re a joke. Or a tart. Or stupid for chasing your dreams. If I did would I have come to your hotel tonight?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Arabella was busy saving puppies or reading to sick pensioners and you were bored.”

  “I came to apologize for last night.”

  This just ratcheted her unfounded irritation up a few more notches. “Please. It was a kiss. I was feeling sorry for myself and I never could handle my champagne. Consider your apology accepted and the episode forgotten. You’re off the hook. C’est fini and all that.”

  “If you could stop throwing punches long enough to listen . . .”

  He grabbed her arm, but she wrenched away. “To what? You telling me what a disappointment I am? I’m well aware, so if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Now you’re just being childish.”

  “Childish? Ridiculous? I don’t know why you continue to hang around if I’m so completely distasteful.”

  “Neither do I,” he muttered.

  “Why don’t you run back to Arabella? Maybe the two of you can play a rousing game of Parcheesi.” She stomped off.

  “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?” he shouted after her.

  But by then, she’d left Michael behind. She’d only gone half a street over before she realized why that conversation felt so familiar. Was this the same panicked desperation Bill had felt? Had he found her patient logic as irritating as she found Michael’s?

  Oh God, Michael. She’d been horrible. She hadn’t meant it.

  Any of it.

  She turned back, but now the familiar postbox was nowhere to be found. She tried a cobbled side street. Then another. No sign of the blasted postbox—or Michael. She called out, but the green soupy fog warped sound so that voices reverberated strangely and footfalls scraped and tapped like insects. It deadened the spearing lights from antiaircraft batteries and the rising wail of an air raid siren.

  Her insides quivered. She hugged herself as a chill swept through her and the cloying claustrophobic damp of the fog finally gathered the strength to become a steady downpour. “Michael?” she called once more. “I’m sorry.”

  A muffled shout came from somewhere to her left, barely audible over the rain.

  Not Michael. A wet cat? A lost child? She called
again, and this time the shout was louder, more distinct. And very familiar.

  She followed the cries for help, but now something told her to keep silent, afraid of who else might be searching, who else might be out in the dark looking for Bill.

  Her hair dripped into her face. Her shoes squished through mucky puddles. Water weighed down her thin coat and plastered her skirt to her legs.

  Just past an empty lot, roped off and rubble strewn, stood a large brick building. A wide cement ramp ran up to great hinged doors. The shouts came from an alley running alongside.

  “Bill?” she called as loudly as she dared.

  “Lucy?” His voice came from a grilled window ten or twelve feet up. “I’m locked in a broom closet.”

  “How on earth did you . . . never mind. Hold on. I’ll be there in a tick.”

  Feeling her way along the bricks, she returned to the bay doors, which stood ajar, a long thick chain dragging on the ground, a padlock hanging loose in its latch. She stepped inside out of the rain. A cool musty breeze gave the sense of a cavernous space; a snap of a light switch confirmed it. Pulleys hung from rafters. An industrial trolley sat propped by an open equipment lift. A forklift was parked beside a lorry with its hood up. A cage enclosed what looked like a foreman’s office with file cabinets and desk. Another narrow window was set high in one wall, but this one had no grille. The casing was splintered. Smashed glass littered the grease-stained cement and the piles of folders and correspondence on the cluttered desk.

  The warehouse bay itself held floor-to-ceiling stacks of crates, half-emptied of liquor, chocolate, nylon stockings, and French perfume. Tire tracks led down the ramp to be lost in the storm.

  The shouts came louder now. Lucy broke off her investigation of this treasure trove of ill-gotten goods to follow the verbal bread crumbs past a series of offices to a locked door at the branch of a passage.

  “Bill?” she said, her mouth pressed to the keyhole.

  “Lucy?” came a sniffling wobbly voice from within. “Ace locked me in.”

  “I’ll have you out in a trice.” She backtracked in search of something she could use to jimmy the door loose. By now, rain drummed against the roof with the force of bullets and a jagged slash of lightning crackled like a spent flashbulb in the dark gap left by the open bay doors. This was followed immediately by a wall-rattling boom of thunder.

  Hopefully, the ferocity of the storm would dissuade Ace and his gang of thieves from coming back for the rest of the crates while also keeping the police snug in their station rather than out on the beat, where they might notice a broken window and come snooping.

  Another rolling boom vibrated the ground underneath her feet and set the pulleys to swinging, dust caught in the wild sway of the overhead lights. A string of smaller explosions followed. What she had taken for thunder was now recognizable as a German attack.

  “Lucy!” Bill’s wail possessed a more desperate impatience. “Hurry!”

  She counted under her breath as she rummaged in a rolling tool chest by the lorry. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  The explosions seemed to be growing in intensity and proximity, though interspersed with the storm, it was impossible to tell for certain.

  Either way, her nerves jumped like live wires under her skin. She drew a deep breath as she snatched up a heavy spanner.

  One . . . two . . . three . . .

  “Lucy! I’m afraid!”

  “I’m coming, Bill.”

  She ran back down the passage to the closet door. The lights flickered and went out, plunging her into darkness. She stumbled and fell to her knees. Picked herself up and felt her way along the corridor. A near miss rocked the building, bursting against her eardrums and pummeling her chest like a fist.

  One . . . two . . .

  “Step back, Bill.” She slammed the spanner down against the latch. The wood groaned and splintered. Down again. The latch bent and twisted. A third time, the weight pulling on her shoulders and aching her hands. The latch broke away with a crack, and the door swung open. “Bill?”

  He fell into her arms, snot running down his chin, eyes red and swimming, his thin body shaking uncontrollably. “Lucy, I’m sorry I scarpered. I didn’t mean what I said. None of it.”

  “No time for tears.” She yanked him down the corridor toward the loading bay and the doors beyond. She stepped out onto the ramp, Bill dragging behind.

  One . . .

  A crack of thunder split the sky. A flash of light burst against her face. She threw up her hands to fight off the sudden blindness of a policeman’s torch.

  “Oi! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  She wouldn’t call Aunt Cynthia. Telephoning Aunt Cynthia was not an option. Aunt Cynthia was a refuge of last—and very final—resort. Yet she was cold, tired, sore, and very close to chucking in the towel. She knew it was bad when she began fantasizing about being back in her bedroom at Nanreath Hall, just she and the taxidermist’s menagerie.

  The hard wooden bench outside DS Mason’s office on which they’d been instructed to sit until further notice bore the graffiti of at least a century’s worth of criminals. Bill was currently adding his initials to the who’s who of Bethnal Green lawbreakers with the stubby end of a pencil he’d conjured from some overlooked pocket.

  At least surly resignation had replaced his overt belligerence in the two hours they’d spent kicking their heels. He no longer referred to DS Mason as “that bleedin’ fat stinking copper” nor threatened to bust his way out of “the nick,” which Lucy took as a hopeful sign.

  She pulled Constable Lewis’s borrowed coat closer over her shoulders. It didn’t help the slimy cold seeping into every pore, but its comforting scent of pipe tobacco and spearmint gum reminded her heart-achingly of Michael. She immediately chastised herself for being a sentimental heartsick fool. She’d told him to go, and he’d gone. No doubt, he was tucked up in a snug somewhere sipping the foam from his pint and thinking himself well rid of her. He wouldn’t be the first.

  No doubt he wouldn’t be the last.

  Raised voices could be heard coming from behind closed doors.

  “Don’t know what they’re so cheesed off about.” Bill continued to carve with his pencil. “It weren’t a big thing or nothing.”

  “You broke into a warehouse. That’s not nothing.”

  “I just shimmied through the window and found the key. Ace and the boys nicked the goods. Besides, they’d already been nicked once. Ace was just nicking ’em again.”

  “That’s hardly a point in your favor.”

  “I only helped ’cause Ace promised to tell me where my mam was.”

  “Did he keep his promise?”

  “No,” Bill answered grudgingly.

  “Of course he didn’t. It was just a way to trick you into doing what he wanted. He dragged you into his crimes and then he left you to take the fall.” Bill chewed his sulky lip, his pencil slowing to a standstill. Were her words sinking in? Or was it too late? The answer lay behind that ominous closed door. “The marked deck of cards was amusing; lifting a few coins from that boor on the train in Par was justified—almost. But this is serious, Bill. This is stand-in-the-dock-and-be-sent-away-for-years real.”

  “Think it’ll be the Scrubs for me?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  “What if I told ’em I wouldn’t do it no more? What if I said I was sorry?”

  “An apology with a heaping side of wobbly lips and sad puppy-dog eyes doesn’t magically set things right. You have to mean it. You have to turn your back on Ace and his boys once and for all. Can you do that?”

  Bill kicked idly against the leg of the bench, his hair falling into his face, the blanket he’d been given sliding off one shoulder. The clock on the wall inched toward half two. Lucy was in a limbo between exhaustion and panic. She rummaged in her handbag for a cigarette to calm her nerves. Her fingers touched, then closed on Lady Turnbull’s now-soggy calling card.

&nb
sp; Aunt Cynthia was definitely out of the question, but maybe . . . just maybe . . .

  “I won’t never do it again, Lucy. Cross my heart and spit.” Bill proceeded to do both.

  “I believe you. Let’s just hope they do.”

  The raised voices fell ominously quiet.

  “What ya think they’re doing in there so long, Lucy?”

  “With our luck, debating the noose or the chair.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Maybe not, but if I don’t laugh, I’ll weep.”

  “You’re not in trouble, Lucy, are you? You didn’t do nothing wrong.”

  She leaned back, closing her eyes on her starry-eyed Technicolor dreams. “I did everything wrong, Bill.”

  Chapter 25

  With a rattle of flung gravel, Lady Turnbull jumped the curb in front of her Kensington town house and cut the engine.

  “All ashore who’s going ashore,” she announced, a few hennaed curls escaping her jaunty beret to becomingly frame a face glowing with wide-eyed delight.

  Lucy had a feeling hers more closely resembled horrified terror. There were at least three instances when she’d seen her life flash before her eyes and wished she were back in a nice quiet cell in Bethnal Green Station Six.

  “That was a lovely invigorating drive,” Lady Turnbull said with relish. “I should do it more often.”

  “I’m not sure that man with the umbrella would agree.” Lucy released her death grip on the dash, her legs like rubber, her stomach rolling.

  “Pish posh. He was clearly in the wrong stepping off the curb like that. And so I told him with a good mash of my horn.”

  “I never saw nobody scurry like that, ma’am,” Bill chirped. “Almost climbed that lamppost, he did.”

  “Obviously he possesses an unstable and nervous disposition. He was never in any danger.” She beckoned them after her up the wide marble steps. “I’m an impeccable driver.”

  Lucy hung back with a hand on Lady Turnbull’s sleeve. “I want to thank you, my lady. I know it’s late, but I didn’t know who else to call.”