Inexpressible Island Read online

  “Oh, it has,” Mia says. “Fourteen times. Once again, where have you been that you don’t know that?”

  “Hand on heart 153 Great Eastern Road,” Julian says. “And Greenwich.”

  “The King is right to stay,” Duncan says. “The very awareness of our impermanence is what gives our lives meaning.”

  “You’re less impermanent than you think, my friend,” says Julian.

  The radio picks that moment to start playing “The Land of Hope and Glory,” and the genteel patrons of the Grill, who’ve all had a bit to drink, let their guard down for a few minutes and sing along, none more raucously than Julian’s gang. “God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!” they bellow, their arms around each other. By the end of the song, their rousing drunken voices drown out Vera Lynn’s on the speakers.

  “Getting together with friends and holding court over a meal is one of the great joys in life,” a smiling Julian says when the song is finished. A great actor, Robert Duvall, will say that one day.

  Hear, hear, his new friends yell. We told you things must improve and have they ever.

  What a thing it is to have friends again, Julian thinks, taking Mia’s hand under the table.

  For dessert they have chocolate bread-and-butter pudding with vanilla bourbon sauce. They wash it down with cognac, listening to the slow intoxicating beats of “When the Lights Go On Again,” watching a tall, elegant woman in trousers dance with her gentleman.

  “Englishmen are unhappy at the sight of women in trousers,” Duncan proclaims—too loudly. He’s had an inordinate amount to drink. “A woman in trousers is considered fast.” He burps. “What I would give for a fast woman. The faster, the better. Who’s got time for a slow woman? Not me.”

  “Not me either,” says Wild. Both men bob their heads and grin at Julian. “What about you, Swedish? You got time for a slow woman?”

  “He most certainly does not,” says Mia, standing up and extending her hand. “Would you like to dance, my fake husband?”

  Wild asks Liz to dance. Liz physically swoons as she rises from the table. Duncan asks Shona and Sheila. They both say yes. He asks Frankie and Kate, and they also say yes, though Julian senses that if it were allowed, Frankie and Kate would like to dance together. There is something in the look they give each other as they stand up. Liz dances with Wild, and Shona with Duncan and then Duncan switches four times, and dances with each of the girls, at one point, the changeover coming so slowly that he seems to be dancing with all four at once. Julian and Mia laugh as they watch the intoxicated giant with his tie askew, two-stepping under the dimmed down lights, his big arms around the ladies, looking as if he’s already in heaven.

  Julian holds Mia lightly around her waist as they waltz while “There’ll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover,” plays on the turned-up radio, and Mia sings along, her gin-spiked breath near Julian’s mouth. Just you wait and see, she murmurs, and he replies with, but tomorrow, right, and not tonight?

  “Don’t be afraid,” she says. “There will be a tomorrow.”

  He is glad she is sure. “How’s your arm? How’s your ankle?”

  “They’re fine,” says Mia. “What kind of Brit would I be if I complained about a sore ankle? How’s your back?”

  “All better.”

  “Your head better, too? Because it still looks . . .”

  “Yup, it’s good,” he says.

  “Your leg? You’re dancing but when you walked, you limped.”

  “Can’t feel a thing.”

  They smile. She sways a little closer. Her breasts press against his chest. Liz leans over to them on the dance floor and says, “Hey, leave a little space between you two for Jesus.”

  “We’re united in holy matrimony, Liz,” Mia says. “It’s not only allowed, it’s expected.” Her arms go around Julian, the injured left arm gingerly. “Right?”

  He kisses her as they dance. “More than expected,” he says. “It’s encouraged. The natural instincts and affections imparted to us by God are hallowed and directed aright in marriage.”

  She smiles into his face. “Julian Cruz, do you have some natural affections that you might like to direct at me?”

  “Direct at you aright,” he says. His hands tighten around her waist. “Perhaps we should go see if they have any rooms available.”

  “Yes,” Mia says. “It would be a shame if they were all booked up.”

  “Such a shame.”

  “Duncan is looking forward to being upstairs,” she says. “And do you hear Wild over there, drunkenly trying to persuade Liz to give him her virtue because who knows what tomorrow will bring? I can’t believe him. He’s trying to seduce her!”

  “Does he really need to try?” Julian says, and into her tut, adds, “Mia, Wild knows how Liz feels about him. He doesn’t need to say anything. He knows she will give it to him without any words.”

  Mia steps back and studies Julian. “So why is he talking to her like that then? What kind of a farce is this?”

  “Not a farce.” Julian pulls her back to him. “He does it because he knows that’s what she wants. He tells her what she wants to hear to please her. She wants to hear him want her with his words, even if they’re drunk words.”

  “Hmm,” says Mia, shimmying against him. “If that’s the case, how come you’re not trying to seduce me?”

  “Who says? What do you think all that Pink Gin was for? Are you dancing with me? Letting me maul you? Did you kiss me, go to the movies with me, fake marry me? What won’t you do with me?”

  “Julian!”

  “Yes, Mia?”

  “Let’s go get that room.”

  Julian pays the check, and the nine of them amble over to the pristine and elegant reception area. The only indication inside the marble and granite lobby that there’s a war on is the three men by the open doors sweeping glass and dust into bins, the glass and dust that’s been dragged into the reception hall from the Strand. One of the jobs of a grand hotel in a grand city is to shield its guests from the world outside its doors. And if ever there was a time to be shielded from that world, it’s today.

  “We’d like a room, please,” Julian says to the tall, sharply attired front desk manager who scornfully scans their ragged inebriated ranks.

  “Who is we?” he asks. “You and Mrs . . .”

  “All of us,” says Julian.

  “You can’t, sir. Maximum occupancy per room is four. It’s a fire hazard otherwise.” The officious man says this with a straight face, even as the fire brigade douses a flame on Waterloo Bridge just behind the hotel, even as another fire brigade douses a fire on Exeter Street, across the Strand.

  “It’s okay, Swedish,” Wild says, pulling on his sleeve.

  “No, it’s not,” says Julian. “How many rooms would we need?” he asks the clerk. “There are nine of us.”

  “Well, then, you would need a minimum of three rooms, sir.” The man smirks.

  “Very well,” Julian says. “We will take four rooms. Preferably adjoining. Any with connecting doors?”

  “We don’t have four rooms tonight. The house is full. We have two rooms. We also have a two-bedroom suite.”

  “We’ll take it,” says Julian.

  “Uh-huh,” says the clerk. “That will be ten pounds per room, or twenty pounds for the suite, sir.” Self-satisfied, the smug man snaps closed the reservation book.

  “We’ll take the rooms and the suite.”

  “That would be forty pounds.”

  From the jacket pocket, Julian takes out his cash. He counts off forty pounds, and another forty—and another forty.

  “Here’s one hundred and twenty pounds,” he says. “Paid in full for the entire weekend.” He gives the stunned man another five. “Please bring extra robes, towels, pillows, blankets, extra soap and shampoo, toiletries for the ladies, and for the men razors and shaving foam.” He gives the man another ten. “And also ten bottles of champagne, a bottle of your finest gin, a small bottle of
angostura bitters, and some tonic water. Oh, and a tray of light sandwiches and scones with jam, in case we get hungry. You know what, make it two trays.”

  The clerk stands with his mouth open.

  “The keys please,” Julian says, extending his hand.

  The gang maintains their British exterior until they get inside the suite, and then it’s pandemonium. They really test the limits of the soundproof walls. Wild hugs Julian so hard he reopens the cut above Julian’s eye. They scramble for the white towels to clean him up with while they continue to cheer.

  “Nick will piss himself when he finds out he’s missing this, the poor bastard,” Duncan says.

  The suite is large, warm, clean, well-lit, and has two baths. The blackout curtains have been drawn by the turndown maids. They peek outside. There is no river, no Big Ben, no Westminster Palace, no Southbank. There is nothing. What a mistake it was to look, they say, swishing the drapes shut. Let’s not do that again. They turn their backs on the reality outside and turn their faces to the revelry inside.

  “We are five-star refugees,” Wild says. “We are going to get blitzed, as in the old days, and every glass we raise, we will raise to Swedish. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life. Jules, can I call you my best friend?”

  “No,” says Mia. “He is my best friend.”

  “Just because you have boobs, Folgate, doesn’t make you his best friend,” Wild says. “Swedish and I are brothers. We have lost our appendages. We have lost our brothers. Jules, who’s your best friend?”

  “Why do I have to choose?” Julian says.

  Duncan comes to the rescue. “Who do you want to sleep with, Jules? That’s your answer.”

  “Duncan, if that was the answer,” Shona says, “you’d be calling a hundred women from Wapping to East Ham your best friends.”

  “My God, where are these hundred women?” mutters Duncan.

  “Where did you get the money for all this, Jules?” Shona asks. “The black-market runs, the dinner tonight, the suite. That’s a lot of cash.”

  “Remember my story about a murder in a brothel? The Master of the Mint died, and left all his precious coin behind in the floorboards.”

  “That was during the Great Fire. I’m talking about now.”

  “Are we not living through the Great Fire?” Julian says. “A fire that’s going to last nearly five more years?”

  “Fuck off, as Nick would say,” says Duncan. “This bloody war is not going to last five more fucking years. Shoot me if that’s true. But not tonight.” He grins. “Shoot me tomorrow.”

  “Did you spend every last penny on us, Jules, or is there more?” Shona asks.

  “Why, Shona, do you want to kill him for it, too?” Duncan says. “Or do you just want to stay here with me for five more years?”

  “Yes,” says Shona.

  Frankie, true to herself, takes out a small bag from her purse, spills out her puzzle pieces on the table by the blacked-out window, mixes them up, and begins to put them together. She is impervious to mockery, even Wild’s mockery. “Why even bother to trade the Underground for the Savoy if you’re just going to do the same bloody thing?” he says. Kate perches across the table from Frankie and asks her if she needs help. Frankie doesn’t say no.

  Wild turns up the radio. They drink champagne, argue who is getting which room, and who’s staying in the suite, and who will use the bath first. They draw straws, curse, disappear behind closed doors. They dance and fall on beds and take off their dirty suits and dresses and put on fresh robes and slippers. They call housekeeping and ask for their clothes to be laundered and returned to them in the morning, all except Julian, who keeps his suit on because that’s where his money is. Mia curls up on the couch and drifts off. “I think I’ve had too much seduction in the form of Pink Gin,” she mutters when Julian wakes her by softly kissing her face. He helps her up as they begin to make their escape to their own room down the hall.

  I will sleep with you, Julian overhears Liz say to Wild, if you agree to marry me.

  Julian and Duncan exchange an incredulous stare, as in, poor fucking Wild. Duncan laughs. “How I wish our Nick could hear this,” he says. “Shona, Sheila, what do you say, my beauties? Will you sleep with me if I agree to marry you? Because I’m nicer than Wild. I’m taller. I’m much bigger”—Duncan horselaughs—“and I’ve got two of my arms.”

  “If you think what you need is two arms,” Wild says, “I pity your women.”

  A few doors down the hall, Julian and Mia’s room is positively a tomb compared to the revelry in the suite. Mia disappears into the bathroom. Julian takes off his tie and vest, unbuttons his shirt, loosens his belt and lies down on the bed to wait for her. She draws a bath that seems to last hours. He may have fallen asleep. “Are you okay in there?” he calls through the closed door, too tired to get up. “Come on out. You’re going to dissolve in that water.”

  “Like a sugar cube,” she says in a purring voice. “Jules, it’s so nice. It’s so nice. I haven’t had a bath in months. Why don’t you come in here with me? Walk in, my lord, walk in,” she burbles. “It’s from Troilus and Cressida, in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t wondering, Miri,” says Julian. “I know.”

  As he is about to come in, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Liz. She doesn’t even notice that Julian is half dressed, his shirt unbuttoned, his chest bare. She looks panicked.

  “Uh-oh,” Julian says, off the expression on her face.

  “I need to ask Maria a question.”

  Julian points to the bathroom.

  Liz wants to know if she should take Wild up on his offer even though she knows he will not marry her, even though she knows he doesn’t really love her and will not stay with her. And if she does take him up on it, which room should they use? She asks Mia for other advice, too, advice that is too hushed for Julian to eavesdrop on.

  There’s giggling, intermittent exclamations, a “What?” and an “Oh, my goodness, I can’t do that!”

  There’s another knock on the door. It’s Shona and Sheila. This time, the women have come to Julian for advice. Duncan has made them an offer—to love them both—and they don’t know if they should accept. “At the same time!” says Sheila.

  “Not in tandem, but at the same time, Julian!” says Shona.

  “Yes, um, I got that,” Julian says.

  “What do you think?”

  He looks over the women’s glistening faces, their beguiled expressions.

  “I think it would be extremely patriotic of you,” he says. “You will be going above and beyond your call of duty for the war effort. Just think about how happy you’re going to make that man. Trust me”—Julian smiles—“Dunk is going to have a smile on his face for a month. He needs that to work the bomb sites every night.”

  They’re excited, but they want a second opinion. Julian points them to the bathroom.

  There’s another knock. It’s Frankie. With all the potential debauchery about to go down on the fifth floor, Frankie wants to know which room she and Kate can sleep in, because they’re tired and have had too much to drink. Julian gives her the key to the second room. Wild and Duncan can divide the suite bedrooms between them as they see fit.

  He barely has time to let Frankie out before Duncan and Wild crowd the doorway. “Has the party moved in here? Where did our dates go? Only Kate was left in the suite, and she looked so terrified of us, we had to scram before she called for security.”

  Behind the bathroom door there’s mad exalted giggling.

  “What are they yakking about?”

  “Take a guess,” Julian says.

  There’s a pause. “How long is that going to take?” Duncan says.

  “I guarantee, longer than the act itself,” says Wild.

  “Yeah, if you’re crap at it,” says Duncan.

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  “Swedish, when are they coming out?”

  Julian knock
s on the bathroom door. “Mia?”

  “Don’t come in,” she says. “We’ve run Liz a bath.” There are peals of laughter.

  “Liz has her own bathroom, you know,” Julian says. “We don’t all have to live in one room like communists.”

  There is no answer, only hilarity.

  Duncan and Wild stretch out on their backs on the bed, while Julian sinks into the armchair.

  By the time the girls finish talking and bathing, dry off, and leave with the boys, it’s nearly two in the morning.

  Julian finishes with his bath in five minutes, but it’s five minutes too long. Still damp, wrapped in her robe, Mia is unconscious on top of the covers. He rolls her inside the bed, climbs in himself, and is asleep before his hand can find her.

  Some time later he’s awoken by her feline voice.

  “Jules,” she’s whispering. “Jules!”

  He bolts straight up like he’s in the army. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. But . . . you’re naked.”

  He falls back on the pillow. “You woke me up to tell me that? I know I’m naked. What time is it?”

  “Nine in the morning.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Why are you naked?”

  “You and your friends took all the robes.”

  “Oh.”

  He uses the bathroom, brushes his teeth, swills his mouth out with gin, takes a swig from the bottle, and climbs back under the covers.

  It’s dark in the room. The heavy curtains block out the morning. He closes his eyes and when he opens them, she’s still staring at him.

  “That damn Wild.” She touches his brow. “Your cut is bleeding.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Do you want me to change the dressing?”

  “I’m okay for now.”

  She is silent. “Did you think it was going to go differently last night? I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “And took so long in the bath.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “You’re not upset with me?”

  “No, Mia.”

  “Then why are you staring at me like that?”

  Julian shuts his eyes. He doesn’t mind her seeing the love, but he doesn’t want her to see the seeping sadness he feels even during happy moments like this. He doesn’t want her to see his fear. The fear of the broken clock, of the dying days, of the limitless horrors perpetrated on him and her. Look down on us and this holy house with pity, O Lord. He takes a deep breath, composes himself, opens his eyes, and smiles.