Inexpressible Island Page 18

  From behind him, he hears both Mia and Wild scream. “Julian!” screams Shae. “Watch out!” A flaming crossbeam breaks and falls. It lands on top of Duncan and splits in two. It hits Julian across the shoulders and the woman across the face.

  The woman stops moving. Duncan stops moving.

  Wild is next to them. “Jules, can you get up? Dunk, can you get up?” Duncan can’t. He is breathing, but can’t stand up. One of Julian’s shoulders is dislocated. Wild helps him to his feet. With barely two working arms between them, he and Wild grab Duncan and drag him over the burning rubble into the street, and lay him down on the pavement next to Mia who’s trying to soothe the crying child in her arms. Now that she’s cleared the boy’s air pipe, he turns out to have quite a set of lungs on him. Wild takes the boy from her. He even lifts his stump to steady him. “Why are you shrieking, kid?” he says. “What do you have to worry about? Look around you. Shh.”

  Mia is on the ground, touching Duncan’s face. “You okay, Dunk? What hurts?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “But I can’t move my legs.”

  The all clear sounds. The fire truck arrives. So does the HMU.

  It’s obvious to everyone that Duncan requires the hospital, everyone, that is, except Duncan. He cannot feel his lower body. “What’s wrong with my legs?” he keeps asking. “Have they fallen asleep? Why can’t I feel them? Did I break my back? Fuck, tell me I didn’t break my back. Where is Shona? Shona! Tell me I didn’t break my back . . .”

  No one wants to remind Duncan that Shona lost her leg and is in the dreaded hospital. Duncan keeps trying to grab the hem of Wild’s coat. “Wild, tell them to take me to Fixed Unit. I’ll be fine, but don’t let them take me to the hospital. Please, Wild, don’t let them take me to the hospital.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Wild says, still holding the child. He explains to the new doctor how Duncan feels about hospitals.

  “Where did you get the kid from?” the doctor asks Wild. “Did you pull him out of the fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s his family?”

  Mia tells the doctor the boy was the son of the woman in the burning house, but they couldn’t get her out. And the other woman, perhaps her sister, is also dead.

  “So he’s an orphan? There’s a whole procedure for orphaned children,” the doctor says, reaching for the baby. “Give it here. We keep them at the hospital until either a member of the family comes forward, or we find a placement. The orphanage is on the fourth floor of Royal London. Lots like him there.”

  Instead of handing the baby over, Wild asks the doctor to look at Julian’s shoulder. Julian is in considerable pain, and in the havoc only Wild sees it. The shoulder needs to be reset. While Julian bites down on Mia’s scarf, the doctor yanks his arm back into joint. Julian doesn’t know how he doesn’t pass out. He feels better, but not much.

  “Chaps, I’m going to ride to Royal London with Duncan,” Wild tells Julian and Mia. “Dunk needs me, and I might as well get this thing to the fourth floor, like the doc said. When you’re done here, pick me up from the hospital. Jules, can you come with me to the jeep for a second, help me out with something?”

  At the truck, Wild asks Julian to take some rope and attach the boy to his body in a protective sling. “The HMU jostles on the road, and I don’t want to drop him when we hit a pothole. He’ll be more secure this way.” Wild holds the infant to his chest, and Julian fashions a harness around the boy, tying him snugly to Wild. For extra warmth, they hide him inside Wild’s coat, the coat Julian bought for him. After Julian buttons it, you almost can’t see there’s a baby inside. To protect the boy’s exposed, nearly bald head, Mia fixes him with the red beret Julian gave her. “That’s okay, Jules, right? I don’t have anything else. You ruined my wool hat with your blood. The beret will keep him a little warmer. And Wild will bring it back in a few hours.”

  “You’re talking about the beret, right?” Julian says.

  The plump shivering mass that is baby Michael has quieted down inside Wild’s coat, stopped crying, stopped moving. Only his alert eyes with huge black pupils are open. His ear is pressed to Wild’s chest. He looks up at Wild and smiles toothlessly.

  “What is he doing?” Wild says in a panic. “What does he want?”

  “He’s just smiling at you, Wild,” says Mia.

  “Why?”

  Down the street and affixed to the stretcher, Duncan is howling, afraid they will cart him away to the hospital without Wild.

  “Listen, never mind the hospital. Just head back to Bank, you two,” Wild says. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Look at Dunk, that poor bastard. I may be in for a long day. I’ll come back when I’m done. Jules, I know there are some black-market lorries near Brick Lane. Want me to pick up a few things?”

  Julian reaches into his trouser pocket. He gives Wild what’s left from the sale of one of his coins, over a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds in 1940 is five thousand pounds today. “Get whatever you think we need.”

  “That’s a lot of whisky, mate,” Wild says. “But we’re going to need it. A wake for everyone.”

  “A wake for everyone,” Julian says.

  “What do babies eat anyway? Can they have whisky?”

  “If it’s laced with milk, absolutely.” Julian and Wild smile at each other.

  “Wild,” Duncan calls from his stretcher. “Wild . . .”

  “Pipe down, woman! Honestly, he cries more than the baby. I’ll be right there!” Wild rolls his eyes. “All right, I’m off. I’ll see you, Swedish.”

  “I’ll see you, Wild.”

  Julian doesn’t know why he feels such a stinging ache watching Wild and Duncan drive away in the medi truck.

  “Do you know the names of the women who lived in that house?” the Incident Officer asks Mia. “I need to record it into my log book. Where is Finch? He knows everything. I can’t do this job without him. Is he not better yet?”

  “Finch died,” Mia says.

  The Incident Officer, who’s been everywhere and seen it all, does an unprecedented thing. He bursts into tears.

  20

  Lunch at the Ten Bells

  WILD DOESN’T RETURN TO BANK.

  And then there were four.

  Only Julian, Mia, Liz, and Frankie are left in the passageway.

  On Monday morning when Julian and Mia arrive at Royal London to visit Duncan, they learn that Wild left on Sunday afternoon for the black market and did not come back. Duncan is in bad shape. He did break his back. Now he’s paralyzed from the waist down. Julian and Mia sit with Duncan into the evening. When the big man finally falls asleep, they leave. They go upstairs to the fourth-floor orphanage to check on the little boy. The nurse administrator shows them the three male babies under a year old that have been brought to the hospital in the last 24 hours. They all look about right, and yet not right.

  They don’t know what to think.

  Sheila Cozens, on her third straight shift, is angry, exhausted, and has no answers. Yesterday afternoon, Wild asked Sheila for some milk for the baby. He said the child seemed hungry. Sheila got upset with Wild, too. “Where do you think I’m going to get milk from, I said to him.” She told him to go to the fourth floor. The orphanage would know what to feed a baby. He said he would, said goodbye to Duncan and Sheila, and left. That was it. Sheila storms away as if Mia and Julian are strangers.

  “She is not very nice today,” Mia says.

  “We won’t hold the war against Sheila.” Julian presses his lips against Mia’s head. “Not everyone can be good and kind like you. She lost her parents and her sister, and Duncan is hurt bad. We won’t hold the war against anyone. Except the Germans.”

  Mia knows where Wild’s parents moved to after their house burned down: north of Paddington. “Maybe he went to visit them?”

  They don’t have the parents’ phone number. They’re stymied. If they go knocking on Barbara Wilder’s door, asking if she’s seen her one remaining son, what happens if
the answer is no? Are they going to panic the mother, too? Isn’t there enough frenzy to go around?

  * * *

  A week later, on a Saturday afternoon in early December, Julian, Mia, Liz, and Frankie drive to Ten Bells for lunch. Julian picks it. It’s Wild’s favorite, and he likes the witty sign on the call board outside. “IN THE EVENT OF AN INVASION, WE SHALL CLOSE FOR A HALF-HOUR.”

  After burying her sister, Sheila moved back into her family home in north Islington. Shona is in a rehab unit on the fifth floor of Royal London, learning how to function with one and a half legs. A paraplegic Duncan is there, too. No one knows when or how he’ll be getting out. Shona hobbles on crutches to sit with him every day. Sometimes she stays until after blackout and sleeps in the chair next to his bed.

  Yes, our ranks have been depleted, Mia says, raising a mug of beer, but we push on. Like Wild said, things can only improve.

  London has suffered before, Liz says. We’ll pull through this, too. We can take it. I just wish Wild would come back.

  Hear, hear.

  The women speak differently to each other, more formally, as if realizing they too might soon be separated. Julian barely speaks at all. “There has never been any drama in London to compare to the drama of the Battle of Britain—” he starts to say and breaks off, watching helplessly as Liz weeps and says she would take the bombing for five more years if only they could find Wild.

  She says it like it’s even a choice.

  Craters in the street, cellars open to the air, crumbling walls, gas mains in flames, water pipes burst, pavements crunching with broken glass. Dust everywhere. Glass powder, plaster. Gray ash cinders. London like Pompeii after Vesuvius.

  Wild is gone. They’ve checked all the hospitals, Great Ormond, St. Bart’s, St. Mary’s. They even checked St. Thomas across the river. At first they didn’t want to worry his mother, but Duncan gave them her number, and Mia called Barbara Wilder, casual as all that. Oh, hello, just trying to get in touch with Wild, have you seen him? She hadn’t seen him. He missed his weekly visit last Wednesday. She wasn’t too concerned. Sometimes he misses a Wednesday, she said.

  After Mia hung up, it was the only time they saw Frankie cry. Frankie! She cried for Wild.

  “Oh, guess what?” Liz says at the Ten Bells. “I got a telegram!” She waves it around for emphasis.

  Liz got a telegram!

  “Congratulations, Liz!” says Mia. “What does it say?”

  They wait for her to open it.

  It’s from her mother in Birmingham. It says: Do not come home STOP Not even for Christmas STOP Brum bombed STOP Our house gone STOP Shelter in London STOP Be safe STOP Love Mum

  Commiserating they pat her back.

  That’s okay, Liz says, wiping away her tears. I got a telegram.

  Mia tells the girls that Julian keeps trying to persuade her to leave London and travel to Blackpool where her own mum is. She says it in a tone of someone who’s tattletaling on another someone and not even feeling ashamed about it.

  “I want you to be with your mother on Christmas,” Julian says. “Why does that make me the bad guy?”

  “He’s been trying to get me to leave London since he got here,” Mia says.

  “After everything that’s happened, do you feel this is irrational?” Julian says.

  “He’s right, Maria,” says Frankie. “You should go.”

  “But if Birmingham isn’t safe, how is Blackpool safe?” asks Liz. “Blackpool is much farther away, and the railroad keeps getting bombed.”

  “Exactly!” says Mia. “Nowhere is safe.”

  “Blackpool is safe,” Julian says.

  “But we still have to get there,” Mia says. “And my job is here, and my friends . . .”

  “Fewer and fewer,” Julian says.

  “Okay, Mr. Brightside,” says Mia, opening the menu, “do you know what you want? Because I’m starving.”

  Five minutes after they’ve ordered, there is no siren, but there’s a rumble of plane engines. They groan. A crunching explosion rattles their beers. They hear commotion in the back of the pub. They wait. They don’t know whether to leave and try somewhere else, or to stay put. The Germans were on their way to elsewhere. (“Maybe Blackpool?”) They dropped a stray bomb on the Ten Bells just to fuck with them.

  “We’re never letting Julian choose where we eat again,” Frankie says.

  “Good call,” Mia says. “Jules is a bomb magnet.”

  They’ve already ordered so they decide to wait a bit longer.

  Ten minutes later, the pale but composed waitress appears with their food.

  “Sorry the lunch is a bit dusty, mates,” she says, primly setting down the tray with the plates. “The ceiling’s down in the kitchen.”

  After she leaves, they have a laugh and raise a glass to the steadfast British woman, not easily rattled. “Nothing can replace the grace of London town,” Julian says.

  “Sometimes when things look bleak,” says Mia, “and we feel a little down, we might say what’s the use? What’s the use of anything, we wail. But those with whom you share your pot and your bed and your bread will not say that. Those with whom you share your days will never say that. And that is worth a great deal.”

  “Because what matters most is how you walk through the fire,” says Julian.

  Hear, hear. Julian, Mia, Liz, and Frankie raise their pints to London.

  And then, another stray bomb falls outside the Ten Bells windows.

  21

  Empty Igloo

  WHEN THEY LAY UNDER THE RUBBLE, BLOWING DUST OUT OF their mouths, feeling for each other’s bodies, feeling for each other’s faces, when he held his palm to Mia’s bleeding head, Julian said in a moment of overpowering weakness for which he was sorry, we’re not going to make it, are we, you and me.

  “If you’re speaking, and I can hear you,” Mia said, “then we already made it. We just have to get out of here.”

  But that was then, in the heat of battle. Now that it’s three days later, and she’s left the hospital, and he reminds her of her words, she denies ever uttering them. She tells him he misunderstood. She meant get out from under the rubble, not get out for good.

  “Maria.”

  “What did you call me?” she says. “Are you using my full name in anger, my holy name that’s a prayer?”

  “No. But—”

  “What’s the rush, Jules? Where’s the fire?” Mia laughs. “See what I did there?”

  “Yes. Very good. Don’t you want to see your mom for Christmas?”

  “Mom? What are you, a Yank? And what do you care if I see my mum for Christmas? If we leave for Blackpool, what about Liz? What’s she going to do?”

  Julian hasn’t thought about Liz. He is thinking only about Mia. He’s thinking about time. It’s December 11, 1940. He’s been with her 34 days. Yes, it’s 240 miles to Blackpool. In the present day, they could get there in an afternoon. But this isn’t the present day. The present is a shadow. The past is what’s alive. And in December 1940, the distance between London and Blackpool through the bomb corridor of central England might as well be 240 parsecs through a time warp.

  Besides the brevity of minutes, they have another problem. All travel to Blackpool has been cancelled. Julian found this out when he went to Euston to get some information or, even better, two tickets. Between London and Blackpool lie Birmingham and Coventry, lie Liverpool and Manchester, and those cities and the trains to them are getting swallowed up almost as bad as London, which is to say irrevocably.

  Irrevocably, like Julian and Mia have been swallowed up. All his boxing, his fencing, his fighting, his Krav Maga is nothing to him now. It has no meaning against the current enemy. The strong as well as the weak are laid waste in front of its black lair.

  Mia was injured in the Ten Bells bombing. She hit her head when she was thrown from her chair. She has a hole in her upper chest where a piece of shrapnel entered and broke her right collarbone. A few inches higher, and it would’ve shre
dded her carotid. A few inches lower, and it would’ve collapsed her lung. Ten inches to the left, and it would’ve nicked her heart. She has a wound at the back of her head that bled like Julian’s brow had bled a few weeks earlier. She is weak from blood loss and concussed, showing mild disorientation and lightheadedness. Her head has been shaved on one side and is wrapped in white. Her customary headscarf has been replaced with a field dressing. The doctors told her to take it easy, not to lift things, not to bend, not to sneeze. They’re worried about blood clots and burst veins. She’s been in the hospital for three days, and they want to keep her longer, but Julian knows Mia has no time for hospitals or blood clots. Blackpool is a galaxy of peace away.

  “Is it possible to get to Blackpool some other way?” Julian asks the British Rail ticket seller.

  “Possible?” the ticket woman says. “Yes. Wise? No. Fast? Definitely not. Easy? Pfft.”

  “But not impossible?” He is encouraged. Julian is the prince of all nigh-impossible things.

  “You’re better off staying here,” the woman says, as if Julian has asked for her opinion.

  They can get to Blackpool by traveling north to Leeds, where they can go to Leeds Cathedral and pray for a couple of trains due west. It’s the longest way but the safest, safest if you don’t count Sheffield, which lies between London and Leeds. Sheffield is a major steel producer, and if there’s anything the Germans want to hobble more, besides Liverpool’s ports and Birmingham’s Spitfires and Julian’s girl, it’s Britain’s steel factories. “Don’t wait too long,” the ticket seller says. “The closer you get to Christmas, the fewer civilian trains there will be. The servicemen are coming home. They get priority on the tracks. Even now there’s only one civilian train a day.”

  “There’s a number less than one?” Julian says.

  “Yes,” the woman says, her voice dripping with disdain. “Zero.”

  Julian is not in great shape himself. He needed forty stitches from the top of his trapezoid to the middle of his back. It’s so hard to move his right arm that he suspects that underneath the sliced-up muscle, his shoulder blade may have a fracture. His right forearm is almost certainly broken, but he refuses to put his arm into a full cast. He can’t protect Mia with one arm immobilized. To move a broken arm through pain is one thing. Not to be able to move it at all is another. The doctor fitted him with a field splint and a sling. At least two of Julian’s right ribs are broken. A piece of glass has pierced his cheek. It’s been sewn up, but the bone underneath is swollen and aching. The injury makes it difficult and unpleasant to eat. The Frankenstein gash above his eye is healing poorly. He had pulled out the stitches too soon, and any new trauma to the body opens up the old wound. And his right knee got twisted. He may have an anterior ligament tear. The torn left calf muscle is going to take another month to fully heal. Favoring his right side where most of his upper body injuries are, Julian hobbles like an old man, slightly stooped, limping on both legs.