The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  “Let you? I couldn’t have stopped you if I tried. I spent hours searching up and down every blasted street, lane, alley, road, and avenue. But between that bloody fog and the blackout, I couldn’t see a damn thing. Finally ended at the police station and they told me a young woman and her accomplice had been brought in on suspicion of looting and black marketeering.”

  Bill shoved his way between them. “That was us. Lucy broke into a warehouse and smashed a door, then the coppers came and we was taken in, but I landed the bloke five right on the jaw. That’ll teach ’em to sort it with me.” He spotted Lucy’s frown, and his eagerness drained away, leaving only deflated and slouch-shouldered repentance. “But I’ll not do nothing like that ever again. Not never,” he added in reverent Sunday-school tones.

  “How did you find me?” Lucy asked dumbly, trying to understand why Michael had gone to so much trouble to track her down. Probably just his overdeveloped knight-in-shining-armor complex. Didn’t he know by now she didn’t need saving? Didn’t want saving?

  Couldn’t be saved?

  Besides, he had Arabella Nash, a paragon of modern womanhood. Compared to her, Lucy was a complete mess.

  “I went to the Connaught but they said you’d checked out. Luckily, a doorman overheard Lady Boxley when she was settling your account. For the right price, he was able to recall the address she gave the taxi driver.”

  “Who always gets what he wants?”

  Pidge stepped forward. “I’d say Corporal McKeegan has shown a marked persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. Tea, sir? I’ve just put the kettle on.”

  “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  “Come, Master William. You can assist me with the tray.” Pidge shooed the boy out ahead of him, leaving Michael alone with Lucy.

  “You’ve explained how you found me, but not why.”

  And just like that, he was Michael again, laughter dancing in his eyes and a smile playing over his square-jawed, clean-cut features. “Because I didn’t want to end up bent and wrinkly with a cane and an ear trumpet and all the while pondering what if.”

  “Oh.”

  “I should have known you’d land on your feet, lass. You’re like a cat.”

  “No,” she said angrily, brought up short by the comparison. “No, I’m not. I’m not anything like a damned cat. I don’t even like cats.” She swallowed, suddenly tongue-tied. Not a condition in which she often found herself. “I still don’t understand. What about Arabella? You dropped everything and came all this way . . .”

  “If you must know, when push came to shove, I couldn’t do it,” he said flatly.

  “Do I need to draw you a diagram?” she replied with a mocking glance and a coy arch of her brows. It was that or continue to gape at him as if she’d lost her mind. Which, come to think of it, might explain an awful lot about her day thus far.

  A dry smile played over his face. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “So they tell me—repeatedly.”

  His smile faded, and now he merely looked tired and almost puzzled. “We hit it off just as if I’d never shipped out. Arabella’s as wonderful as ever, and the man who wins her heart will be a lucky man.”

  “But . . .”

  “But it wasn’t twenty-four hours before she was trying to set me up with a position in Sir Reginald’s office and calling round to estate agents about flats in Chelsea.”

  “That’s brilliant—isn’t it?”

  “It would be if I wanted to count widgets for the military and live cooped up in London.”

  “Yes, I suppose there aren’t many flats in Chelsea with room for a cowshed.”

  Michael moved to the front window, looking out on the park much as she had done the night before. This afternoon, a kite-flying wind sent spring blossoms spilling like pink-and-white snow across the paths while a row of plane trees stood like sentinels over a man walking his dog and a child jumping rope, their crowns a vibrant green against the gray sky.

  He stood with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. “That cowshed is going to be my studio and office when I’m through.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He turned toward her, a serious glint in his eye. “I plan to go into the design and building trade. After the war, people will need places to live, and not just trumped-up Nissen huts with a kitchen and a bath, but something they can take pride in. Something they want to come home to. I aim to be the one to give it to them.”

  “And the old cottage in Charbury?”

  “Will be my base of operations. Can’t beat a commute of twenty steps out your back door, can you?”

  “I take it Arabella didn’t see the possibilities in cowsheds and building firms.”

  “Our conversation never made it that far. I kept waiting for that bolt of lightning I used to feel when I was around her. But it never happened. Not even a hint of a spark.”

  “You haven’t seen her in two years. How can you take one look at her and know you’re not in love?”

  His gaze met hers, no amusement hidden in those blue eyes now. “The same way I can take one look and know I’m in love, I expect.”

  Lucy’s skin prickled, a queer slippery excitement curling along her limbs and pooling in her stomach. “Now who’s being utterly ridiculous?”

  He lifted a hand to trace the outline of her jaw, his fingers cool against her flush of fever heat. “That’s probably it.”

  “Tremendously impulsive and exceedingly reckless.”

  “That’s definitely it.” His eyes still burned, but now the fire within them scorched with a new and more tempting emotion. Her loyal sheepdog had gone dangerously feral.

  “I don’t cook,” she stammered, her tongue seeming to thicken even as her mind went horrifyingly blank. “I can’t clean. I drink too much, smoke too much—”

  “Talk too much.”

  He kissed her. That’s right. He kissed her. And he was sober—at least she thought he was. He didn’t taste like alcohol. Instead, he tasted like licorice and tea and maybe toothpaste, his kiss slow and deep and toe-curlingly thorough. His stubble scraped her cheek. Had she been a match, she’d have gone up in flames. He pulled her close against him, his heart thundering under her palm. Her own keeping pace.

  The telltale rattle of an approaching tea tray was Pidge’s subtle warning signal.

  Michael reluctantly let her go, though there was a look in his eye that, well . . . let’s just say she hoped it was one promise he meant to keep very soon.

  “Does this mean you’ve decided to stay with Lady Boxley?” he asked.

  “It means I have a choice to make.”

  “Between running off to America or staying in England?”

  She kissed him once, then again—just because she could. “Between holding on to an old dream or reaching for a new one.”

  Chapter 27

  The man at the butcher’s said it’s just up here past the church,” Lucy said, studying this down-and-out section of Newham.

  Canning Town turned out to be a clustered warren of streets bordered to the west by the India Docks, the south by the Victoria Docks tidal basin, and the north by Barking Road, home to many of the wharfies, factory workers, and clerks employed by the nearby shipping companies, factories, and warehouses. Like its closest neighbors of Silvertown and Poplar, it had suffered from the intense bombing attacks of the last few years, but there still remained, among the blasted crush of ruined buildings and rubble-strewn streets, blocks of shabby terrace houses, shops, and offices where people continued to work and live as if thumbing their collective noses at Hitler’s bombardment.

  Bill looked around eagerly, his face bright with tamped excitement, but there was no hurry to his pace. He ran ahead to check round a corner, one thin shoulder leaning against the dusty brick of the wall, a hand trailing along the crumbled mortar, his hair ruffled in the acrid tidal breeze.

  “Now that the end is in sight, he seems almost hesitant,” Michael said.

  “I know how h
e feels,” Lucy replied. “Wanting to arrive and dreading it at the same time.”

  “It’s his mother, not a stranger.”

  “But he’s spent years dreaming of being with her. Building it up in his head. Thinking of how it will be when they’re together. Once he finds her, he’ll have to face a reality that won’t be all dewdrops and snowflakes.”

  “Is that how it was with you and your mother?”

  “I would imagine what would happen when we saw each other again, build it up in my head until it was as real to me as you are standing there. Then she’d explode back into my life and it never lived up to my fantasy—not once. You’d think I’d have learned after a while, but I never did. I don’t want Bill to face that.”

  “Bill’s mum isn’t your mum, Lucy.” Michael regarded her carefully. “She sent him away out of love. She’ll want him back for the same reason. Wait and see, it’ll be all right once they’re together again.”

  The shade of Mrs. Pratchett surfaced like a ghost from the waves. Lucy shivered despite the spring warmth. “Do you ever look on the bad side?”

  A dry smile played over his face. “Would it help?” He pointed across the street. “There’s number twelve, just like Mr. Bournville said.”

  Tape crisscrossed the windows that weren’t blown out, glass dust and cement rubble crunched under their feet, and washing hung limp and gray from a line in a nearby vacant lot. But children played a riotous game of football farther up the street and a postman whistled as he made his rounds. Two careworn housewives in curlers and aprons took a break from the housework to chat on a doorstep.

  They stood with Bill on the opposite corner, his arm looped round a lamppost as he drew circles with his left foot in the dirt. “Suppose she’s home?” he asked.

  “Only one way to find out.” Lucy nudged him forward, feeling the tension stringing his limbs.

  As if diving into cold water, he took a breath and plunged forward, arriving at the stoop out of breath and as pale as chalk. With a final glance back at Lucy and Michael, he rapped on the door.

  It was as if time froze. The boys at their game, the women on the steps, the postman at his box; all hovered in anticipation. Lucy held her breath. Her hand found Michael’s.

  Bill rapped again.

  Lucy’s heart thudded. She was sweating. Please be there. Please want him back. Please love him.

  The door opened on a pretty woman in her midthirties with the same light brown hair as Bill’s, though hers was tied up in a flowery kerchief. Her body went stiff, a hand flying to her mouth. The other gripped the doorknob as if she might faint.

  Bill smiled and said something. Lucy could hear the high babble of his chatter. His mother’s tones, softer yet no less animated. They flung themselves at each other in a tearful, joyful reunion. She dragged him inside the house and closed the door.

  And just like that, it was over.

  Bill was back where he belonged.

  Lucy should have been overjoyed, yet something felt both incomplete and all too familiar.

  Then she realized—he had never once looked back.

  “Come on, Lucy.” Michael put his arm around her. “We can go. He’s home. He’ll be all right now.”

  “Of course.” A boulder crushed her chest, her stomach sick and aching. She allowed Michael to turn her away, though her steps dragged, her shoes gray in the swirling dust of the street. “Guess I’m not an expert at good-byes after all.”

  She stumbled on a broken bit of sidewalk. The boys up the street resumed their noisy game. Unbidden tears washed her vision.

  She never heard Bill approach until hands snaked around her middle, nearly knocking her off her feet. The air was driven from her lungs. Her spine was nearly snapped. “Lucy! Wait! Don’t leave.”

  She hugged him back, feeling the press of his bones in his underfed frame, smelling the faint scent of shampoo and the even fainter aroma of cigarette smoke in his hair. Her chest swelled, her throat closing around a hard knot. “I have to go, Bill. But you’re safe now with your mam.”

  “And my dad.”

  “Your what?” She looked up to see Bill’s mother had been joined on the stoop by a broad-shouldered bear of a man with a grizzled beard sprouting from a weathered face.

  “My dad. He’s come back. Turns out he was a motorman on a tanker, sailed all over the world, but he’s home now for good an’ all. Mam says he’s made a honest woman out of her.”

  Of course! That must have been what Mr. Bournville meant with his final cryptic comment about a married woman. No wonder Miss Matilda Smedley had been so difficult to find.

  Lucy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “What if he turns out to be a rotter like all the rest?”

  Bill grinned. “Mam says if you want to win the prize, you have to buy your ticket and take your chance. That sounds about right, don’t it?”

  “It sounds absolutely right.” She cast one last sidelong look at the couple standing arm in arm with the somewhat stunned but dewy look of newlyweds. “I guess this is it, then. We did what we set out to do. We got you home.”

  Bill glanced up at Michael standing nearby. “We got you home too, didn’t we, Lucy?”

  She rested her cheek on the top of Bill’s head. Old sorrows and fresh grief dissolved in the crushing strength of Bill’s embrace. Her mother’s face swam before her eyes, not pursed with disappointment or icily indifferent, but as it had been that long-ago day at the fair. Tender. Vibrant. Contented. She smelled her perfume. Heard her laughter.

  This was the most perfect day ever.

  Lucy wholeheartedly agreed.

  The afternoon sun stood high to the west.

  Lucy watched outside the gates of Whitchurch Airport as a BOAC passenger plane rose up above the far trees in an ascent that would take it out over the ocean on its way to Lisbon, then across the Atlantic to the Azores and finally America.

  The roar of the engines vibrated along her bones and down into the soles of her feet. She squinted into the gray sky, a hand to her eyes as the plane ascended. Her chest seemed to lift with the plane, a lightness that brought a smile to her lips.

  “Good-bye!” She waved madly as the plane tipped its wings, already high and distant. “Give my regards to Hollywood!”

  She stood in the field watching until the plane became a smudge, then a speck, then disappeared altogether. Birds sang in the high hedge bordering the airfield. A petrol truck drove past toward a far hangar. Another plane coughed to life.

  “Lucy?” Michael leaned against the door of the estate wagon, obscuring the faded stencil advertising McKeegan’s Garage. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and there was a smear of grease on his cheek. “You coming, lass?”

  She stepped to meet him, hand to hand, side by side. “I’m coming.”

  Acknowledgments

  From a hasty one-paragraph proposal, an entire book was born. As always, the process was fraught with false starts, dead ends, and a roller coaster of creative highs and lows. But I was never alone as I battled my way toward “The End,” and for that I have to acknowledge everyone who stood with me along the way.

  Thank you to my amazing and talented agent, Kevan Lyon, who never lets me rest on my accomplishments but challenges me to reach further, dream bigger, and never underestimate myself. My editor, Tessa Woodward, who answers every question, discusses any problem, and is always there to reassure me when my confidence falters. With help from her able assistants, Nicole Fischer and Elle Keck, she keeps me on track and on time and manages to do it all with kindness, good humor, and infinite patience.

  My appreciation goes out to Camille Collins, who looks for every opportunity to shout my success to the world even when I’m too shy to do it myself, and everyone in the HarperCollins family who has taken the time to make me feel at home.

  I would still be lost in the virtual weeds without my partners in crime, Do Leonard and Maggie Scheck, who help turn my plot bunnies into words on the page with laughter, munchies, and two big re
d pens. A shout-out goes to everyone in my tribe at Washington Romance Writers, whose friendship and support has been a constant since the very first day I arrived nervous and frightened in their midst with a crazy idea that I wanted to tell stories for a living.

  And last, my love and gratitude to my husband, John. I could never have made this wild journey without him by my side. He is and always will be my definition of brave, loyal, and true. And bear hugs to Georgia, Thomas, and Matthew, who no longer question why Mom and her computer seem to be welded together at times. If I’ve taught them anything, I hope it’s that hard work pays off, love conquers all, and a happily ever after is always worth striving for.

  Glossary

  ARP—Air Raid Precautions organization. A civil defense organization set up in 1937 whose main duties included serving as wardens, ambulance drivers, fire guards, and communications personnel, and as first aid, decontamination, and rescue workers. In 1941, it changed its name to the Civil Defense Service.

  ATS—Auxiliary Territorial Service. The women’s branch of the British Army during World War II, the ATS started out serving mainly as cooks and clerks, but by the war’s end, it had taken over such essential duties as radar operations, antiaircraft gunnery, and military policing. Princess Elizabeth served in the ATS as a second subaltern during the war.

  ENSA—Entertainments National Service Association. A branch of the NAAFI in charge of organizing concerts, parties, movies, and other entertainment for servicemen at home and abroad. It was sometimes referred to sarcastically as “Every Night Something Awful.”

  FANY—First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Begun in 1907, this organization trained personnel comparable to today’s army medics to assist at field hospitals and as ambulance drivers. It changed its name in 1936 to the Women’s Transport Service (WTS) and in 1938 was rolled into the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). A small portion of FANY trained and served in espionage roles as part of the Special Operations Executive.

  JWO—Joint War Organization. In 1939, the British Red Cross and St. John Ambulance Corps combined their efforts. JWO worked in hospitals, convalescent homes, and rest stations; provided refugee relief and delivered packages to prisoners of war; and created the wounded, missing, and relatives department to assist in information gathering on servicemen reported missing overseas. The organization was also instrumental in supplying much-needed aid to the German-occupied Channel Islands.