by Mark Dunn
“Still—” Lucille returned her attention to Ruth. “I assume there’s an A.R.P. shelter near the Palais, if one should be needed.”
“Of course there is, Auntie. And if the sirens sound tonight, I’ll just follow all the others right down into it. You needn’t worry.”
“It cannot be avoided,” Mobry contributed. “I must tell you, though, Ruth, that we do worry less—Sister and me—when you’re close by and safe—well, as safe as any Londoner can be these days. But then again, it’s good to have friends who understand you as Sister and I do.”
“Do you understand me, Uncle? I am rather a complication.”
“All of God’s children are complications, child. We’re entangled bundles of nerves and sinew and twisted-up brain matter. Who can probe any mind with success, let alone the mind of, say, an Adolf Hitler who each day conceives new horrors to unleash upon the world? Of course, invoking the Fuehrer doesn’t make my point at all. I suspect he is the exception to the rule. There are exceptions to be found now and then—these men of diseased consciences and cankered souls. Our loving Lord and Savior implants a soul in each of His children, but sometimes that soul withers or festers. Hitler and the men who willingly serve him—men responsible for the kind of atrocities that stagger the mind—these men have a sickness that robs them of every ounce of their humanity.”
“Or perhaps they were defective to begin with,” offered Lucille. “Perhaps God dozed off a bit, and Hitler and Goering and Goebbels slipped off the assembly line ill-formed.”
“I would not dismiss that possibility,” said the former pastor, just finishing his postprandial spot of tea. “On the other hand, God—we have been taught—doesn’t make mistakes. So it is a conundrum. But then again, there are a good many mysteries to this world that won’t be solved until after we’re gone on to our reward—and perhaps not even then.”
“Here’s another mystery, Ruth,” said Lucille Mobry, pushing herself away from the table. “It was left on our doorstep this afternoon.” Lucille went to the sideboard to retrieve the parcel she’d placed there earlier. “Your name is on it, but nothing else. It feels like a book.”
“Thank you, Auntie,” said Ruth, taking it. She turned it over in her hand.
“Should we avert our eyes?” asked Mobry, with a grin. “Perhaps it’s from a secret admirer who wishes to go on being ‘secret.’”
“I have no admirers,” shot back Ruth, “secret or otherwise.”
But Ruth knew that she did. And for this reason she went to her room to open the package in private.
Lucille had guessed correctly; it was a book. And one Ruth didn’t have. It was a very special book, in fact, and had come all the way from the United States. Ruth knew this because she knew all about the novel’s troubled history. The Well of Loneliness had come up in conversation between Ruth and her forewoman, Miss Colthurst, at the filling factory. The book had been ordered destroyed by the British courts several months after its publication in 1928. Copies occasionally made their way into the country from France, where it was still being published, and from the United States, where its American publisher was successful in winning a court ruling declaring that the book wasn’t obscene, though it depicted an unambiguous romantic relationship between two women. The conversation between Ruth and Vivien Colthurst orbited round both the story and the curious name of its author, Radclyffe Hall. “She sounds rather like the name of a building, doesn’t she?” asked Miss Colthurst, who put the question to Ruth with a look that indicated an intense interest in knowing just how much Ruth was enjoying their private chat.
Ruth could not believe that Vivien had obtained a copy of the American edition. She looked forward to thanking her friend for going to so much trouble (for surely it wasn’t an easy thing to put one’s hands on such a book). But she looked forward even more to the chance to actually read it.
As Lucille cleared away the tea dishes, Bert Mobry browsed through his copy of Radio Times in his easy chair. With his recent retirement from the pulpit, Mobry was indulging himself in all the radio programmes he’d missed over the last few years. During his many busy seasons in ministerial cassock there had only been time for the news broadcasts, but now he could listen to anything he pleased, although there was much that displeased him. He adamantly refused, for example, to twiddle the dial for the broadcasts of the German propagandist Lord Haw-Haw, who set many a Briton’s teeth on edge, though his programmes were popular; with the continuing clamp-down of information on British air and sea misadventures, this was sometimes the fastest way for British citizens to learn the outcome of engagements that did not go so well.
Lucille came into the parlour and stood next to her brother’s chair. “Would you like me to turn on the wireless?”
“If you don’t mind. Once I’m settled into this upholstered marshmallow my poor old back doesn’t allow me to get up without complaint.”
But Lucille remained for a moment longer just where she stood. “Do you think our Ruth might have herself a follower? Perhaps someone who loves to read as much as she does?”
Bert shrugged. “Ruth is an enigma. I cannot say.”
“I’m surprised that she’s going dancing with her friends on Saturday night. But I’m happy for her.”
Bert turned his head to look up at his sister. “Your troubled expression tells me otherwise.”
Lucille fabricated a smile as if to contradict her brother. “I’m happy and I worry. Isn’t that the way it is for everyone these days? Even our most pleasant moments are never without their dark edges of care and fear. It does make me sad to think of Ruth and those four special friends of hers. What a terrible time to be young and so full of life—only to have all the verve and spirit drained out of you by all the retched things men have shown themselves capable of doing to one another.”
“Do you mean men as representatives of mankind, Sister, or men as—well—men?”
“Both, I fancy.” Lucille sat down upon the fat arm of the chair and placed her hand lovingly upon its occupant’s shoulder. “You spoke of men like Hitler earlier—those with a sickness that robs them of their humanity. Might there be men of similar infirmity—men right here in London of whom Ruth and her friends must take careful heed? I’m thinking of the girls in our congregation who found themselves—need I say it?”
“You needn’t say it,” said Mr. Mobry, patting his sister on the hand. “I’m rather glad I’ve retired from the ministry. ’Tisn’t a good time to be a shepherd among men. Far too many black sheep in the flock these days.”
“And what else is on the agenda for the evening?” asked Mrs. Hale. “I mean, besides approving which frocks you’ll be wearing Saturday night—which, may I just say, makes absolutely no sense unless you’re all hoping to go there looking like a colour-matched, fully-grown version of the Dionne quintuplets?”
“Mother, you’re a panic,” said Carrie. Mother and Daughter were sitting on Daughter’s bed amongst all the various pleated skirts and panelled skirts and straight skirts Carrie had been trying on. At present, Carrie was decked out in a pale green silk dress (her nicest one) for which the matching fabric-covered belt could not be found, and which, as it was, fitted much too tightly just below its sweetheart neckline. A long interval had passed since she’d last put it on, and during this time her breasts—which had already made Carrie the most mammarily blessed of We Five—had expanded to even greater proportions. “It’s really the entire package which we want to carefully put forward, Mother, and clothes are only a part of it. This is what Jane says. She says we should be careful when we make our appearance at the ballroom not to appear as either Bow’s Belles or Mayfair slummers. Jane would like us to stake out some spot in the cautious middle: girls without too terribly much money, but girls who are still capable of comporting themselves with taste and decorum. It’s not an easy thing to put over, Mother, so we’ll need to work at it.”
Carrie’s mother clasped her hands together in a show of cheery confidence. “You’ll b
e a credit to all those middling girls just like you. Why should only the very rich and the very poor have all the fun?”
“And you do want me to have fun, don’t you, Mother? Even though you’ll have to sit at home, rocking and knitting away with only the voices of the BBC for company?”
Sylvia Hale shook her head. “Do you fancy I’ll be lucky enough to spend the entire evening so indulgently? More than likely it will be me and Mr. Whiskers in the staircase cupboard. And if I’m very lucky, I’ll have Deloria Littlejohn crawling in beside me, so I’ll be treated to her unkind opinions of all the neighbours until blessed ‘All Clear.’”
“Why doesn’t she use her Anderson? I’ve seen the inside of it. It’s very nice the way she’s fixed it up.”
“Mrs. Littlejohn said she’d rather take rat poison than spend even an hour in such close quarters with Mr. Littlejohn. They don’t get on, or didn’t you know? At any rate, don’t go fidgeting yourself over me. You said on Monday that you and I—that we may have got a bit dull, even in the midst of this terrible war. And I’ve thought about it, and I have come to fancy there is some truth to it. We go round like lifeless twin automatons until the bombs fall, when we run all about like frightened children. And then when the sirens shut off and those nasty Messerschmitts disappear for the night, we’re back to tea and yawns and languid violin sonatas by Austrians, which we aren’t even supposed to be playing since the Anschluss. I want you to be happy, Carrie. You’re a beautiful girl and it’s time you met a young man who will appreciate you for your beauty—but also one who’ll be drawn to your cleverness and your winning personality.”
“You left out my various musical talents and my ability to stand on my head. You’re being a dear, Mother, but you’re being far too generous. Next you’ll say you’re troubled not in the least by the possibility that I may fall in love with a conscientious objector.”
“But it’s true, pet! If you love the lad—whoever the lad may be—I intend to respect your choice, because I’m confident my daughter will choose wisely. And by the way, conscientious objectors stand a far better chance of surviving this war than their counterparts in the service; it’s a simple fact. I’m being selfish, I know it, but I don’t want a young war widow for a daughter. I remember the last war, dear. Almost a million of our young men killed. Why else do you think I was forced to settle on your horrid father? You go to that ballroom on Saturday, my darling, and you bedazzle every young man there, conchie or not, and you come home and tell me every little thing about it. I’ll be your housebound girlfriend who lives vicariously through your breathless adventures.”
“Mother, one of these days you’re going to slip up and actually treat me like a daughter and not like your best friend in the world—and you’ll have to go looking for the sal volatile to revive me.”
Carrie got up, smoothed herself, and started to put all the skirts away.
“Let me do that,” said Sylvia. “You run along. The dress isn’t too tight?”
“A little, but we have until Saturday night to let it out, and I do want my sisters to see it tonight. Thank you, Mother.”
“Caroline?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“You don’t think—for just this coming Saturday night—that We Five might not become, well, We Six?”
Carrie regarded her mother with surprise. “You’d like to join us?”
Sylvia Hale nodded.
Carrie smiled. She went up to her mother and kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t be silly. You know you can’t come.”
Sylvia’s look of excited anticipation over what could be Carrie’s answer vanished without a trace.
Carrie appended: “But I promise to rush right home and tell you every niggling detail. Breathlessly!”
This wasn’t much of a consolation to Carrie’s best friend in the world, but it would have to do.
___________
Jane stared at Lyle and Lyle stared back at Jane from across the kitchen table. Lyle had a blackened eye, for which he couldn’t account. “I fancy you won’t be going out tonight with an eye like that,” said Jane.
Lyle, having finished his tea, licked his fingers like a hungry man in a bad play. “It might stop me. It might not. I haven’t made up me mind yet.”
“Perhaps if you retrace your steps from last night, you’ll recall how you got it.”
“My guess is that I rattled some bloke’s cage and he punched me lights out.” Lyle grinned mischievously. “Oh I have it now. You want me out of the way so’s you can have the chickies here. I heard you talking to one of them on the Ameche earlier.”
“Maybe they are coming tonight. But I’ll not let you get anywhere near them. If you so much as wink or blink in their direction whilst they’re here, you’ll have to fend for your own bloody self for all of next week. You’ll have to take all your meals at the Fatted Pig, and just how easy will that be, when I don’t intend to give you a brass farthing to pay for them?”
“You wouldn’t do that to me after how badly things have been going for me lately.”
“Everything what’s happened to you I wager has been of your own making. Now what is it? Will you be going to your room and mind yourself like a good lad, or will you be going out and trying not to get yourself another black eye? It’s all one to me. Either way, you’re out of my way for the evening.”
Lyle thought about this. “I’m completely stonkered. I think I’ll go to my room and sleep for twelve hours.”
Jane nodded.
A moment passed. Then Jane said, “Now that you’ve made up your mind, I’d like to say, speaking honestly, mind, that I was hoping you wouldn’t go out. Generally speaking, I don’t care, but today I was almost proud of you—the way you ran the shop like some creature what was very nearly human. Mrs. Meeker just rang me up to say that you were such a good-hearted gent to give her the discount on the mahogany dressing table with the missing leg. And, wonder of wonders! the money you got from the sale was still sitting in the cash drawer when I came home this evening.”
“Mrs. Meeker was friends with Mum and Dad. It seemed the right thing to do.”
“I wish you was that person all the other days of the week.”
Lyle didn’t look at his sister. “I wish I was that person too. Apparently, it isn’t in me nature.”
“Run along to your room, now. I want to tidy up a bit before the girls get here.”
Lyle nodded. He rose from the table. He reached out his hand to touch one of Jane’s folded arms. She didn’t pull away. She allowed his fingers to rest for a long moment upon the crook of her arm. Then he removed the hand, turned away, and moved slowly and heavily from the room.
It was a single tear that escaped Jane’s left eye and she quickly brushed it into nothingness.
Chapter Ten
Bellevenue, Mississippi, February 1997
It was after two in the morning and only one of We Five was asleep.
Molly had been dropped off at nearly 1:40, had walked around to the back alley and climbed the outdoor stairs to the small apartment she shared with her father over his chiropractic and holistic dentistry office. She’d seen the blue glow of the television through the street-front windows of the den. (The Osbornes had no living room.) After letting herself in, she’d wordlessly crossed the thick, faded-green shag carpeting and sat down next to her father on the sofa. He patted her hand but kept his eyes focused on the television screen, where the boxer George Foreman was demonstrating his popular tabletop grill.
After a moment, Michael turned to his daughter and said, “Now there’s somebody I’d buy a product from. You’d never know from that Pillsbury Doughboy face of his that he still climbs into the ring to take power punches at people.”
A silent moment passed. Then Molly said, “He looks like Mr. Biggers. You remember the crossing guard at the elementary school? He once saved a woman who was choking to death on a peanut shell.”
“Right in the middle of the crosswalk?”
“No. Wh
en he was off duty. I think it was at the Big Star. In the produce section.”
Silence.
“What was she doing—just popping peanuts into her mouth without paying for them?”
“Apparently.”
“Oh.”
Another silence passed. Then Michael Osborne said matter-of-factly, “The infomercial before this one was for something called ‘Mick’s Club.’ It looks like a golf club, but it isn’t. It’s a hollow tube a golfer can pee into whenever he has the need to go.”
Molly thought about this for a moment. “Male golfer, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
Molly thought some more. “But couldn’t he just find a tree or a bush or something to do his business on?”
Molly’s father shook his head. “You’re not supposed to go peeing all over golf courses. They generally frown on that.” Michael Osborne turned down the sound on the television so they couldn’t hear what George Foreman was saying about all the grease he was drawing off his hamburger meat. “How was it?”
“The place was kind of touristy, but the music was good. And the food. I had the fried catfish. It was ‘all-you-can-eat night.’ I just kept eating.”
“Did they act like gentlemen or like those boys in that Animal House movie?”
“They were pretty well behaved. Although one of them had too much to drink and got a little handsy with Mags. But she put him in his place.”
“So nobody got fresh with you?”
Molly shook her head. “Somebody told me that George Foreman has four sons and they’re all named George.”
“Somebody told you correctly.” Michael sniff-laughed to himself. “I suppose Mrs. Foreman isn’t complaining. She just has to shout ‘George!’ and the whole family shows up for dinner.”
Michael turned the volume back up. Then almost immediately he muted the television again.
“So did you all kind of pair off like you thought you might?”
“Yes and no. I mean, we were pretty much coupled up, but we were all still sitting at the same table.”
