Inexpressible Island Page 4

  “You mean Algernon?”

  “Do you mean you couldn’t love me if my name was Julian?”

  She is still in his arms, but weak in the legs. Her lips are parted. Her breath is shallow.

  “I might respect you,” she says, “I might admire you, but I’m afraid that yes, I could not give you my undivided attention . . .”

  “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?” Cupping her face, he tilts his head to her. They kiss again. They kiss full on, and they don’t stop.

  Tottering, she finally finds the strength to push him away. It’s impossible to talk above the roar of the crowd. Julian and the girl have given the embattled citizens something better than a play, something better than comedy. They have given them life masquerading as art, life real and poignant, an eerie revelry blooming in the dungeons below the blacked-out city.

  “Hey, you, why don’t you get off there,” a tall, unhappy-looking guy calls out, elbowing his way forward. “I mean—get off that door. Two people are not supposed to be on it. It’s not safe. Are you all right, my dove?”

  Julian’s arm is still around the dove’s waist. Dove pulls away, brushes Julian off her sweater.

  “I’m fine, Finch,” she says. “Finch, this is . . .”

  Julian stands. She knows his name. He’s not going to help her with it.

  “Julian?” she says uncertainly.

  “Yes. Julian.”

  Julian and Finch do not shake hands. Julian brings his right hand behind his back to hide his missing fingers. Before he can ask dove what her actual name is, or what her connection is to the gangly humorless fellow, Finch asks where Julian has come from. He simply might mean tonight, but Julian replies with “Wales!” as confidently as he would say Simi Valley.

  “Oh, my goodness,” the girl exclaims. “Finch, another Welshman! I’m gobsmacked. Finch is from a small city called Bangor. Where are you from, Julian?”

  But of course Finch would be from damned Bangor. The only place Julian knows besides Bangor and Cardiff, which is too big and easily disproven, is Rhossili, where Edgar Evans hailed from. So that’s what he tells them. Rhossili.

  Wouldn’t you know it, Finch’s entire family hailed from Rhossili! For some reason this pleases the girl tremendously, though it doesn’t please either Finch or Julian remotely.

  “I haven’t been back for years,” Julian says.

  “I should think not,” Finch says, “because you don’t sound at all like a Welshman.” Though Finch is probably thirty, he looks as if he shaves sporadically at best. His short hair is carefully parted to the side, and his triangular brown eyes are intense and hostile.

  “Yes, lost my accent—”

  “You sound almost American, frankly.”

  “Don’t know what that’s about. Have the Americans come to London . . . ?”

  “Maria and I are getting married,” Finch blurts, “at Christmas.”

  Look how much information Julian has gathered from just one short sentence. All sentences should be so brief and informative. Her name is Maria. She is getting married. To the annoyed string bean named Finch. At Christmas.

  “Well, Finch,” Maria says, “let’s not count our chickens just yet. It’s almost two months away. There’s a war to get through between now and then. Plus, I’m still waiting for that ring you promised.”

  “I told you I’ll get it, dove. Now come,” Finch says, extending his hand. “Don’t stand on that thing with him. Look, it’s teetering. You will fall. Remember last week? You almost fell.”

  She takes his hand and jumps down, turning back to Julian. “Do you want to come meet our friends?”

  “Would love to.”

  Finch yanks her hand with irritation.

  “What, Finch?” she says. “We can’t be impolite.”

  “Why not? We don’t know him!”

  An older woman stops Julian, grabbing him by the elbows. “Young man, you were terrific,” she says, squeezing him approvingly. “You gave us all quite a stir—why, me and my friends was saying we haven’t felt so aquiver since the Great War when we was young women ourselves. Where did you learn to act like that?”

  “Who says I was acting?” Julian says. Both Finch and Maria spin around to stare at him in the tunneled darkness.

  “I don’t like that man,” Julian hears Finch say to her as they walk down the platform. “I don’t like him at all. I have a good mind to deck him.”

  “Finch, calm down. It’s in good fun. He’s just playing with you. Do you want him to continue trying to get under your skin? Keep this up.”

  “Kissing you like that was playing with me? Who does he think he is?”

  “That was acting, Finch.”

  “You heard him, he said it wasn’t. And I didn’t know that Oscar Wilde called for that sort of passionate . . . acting.”

  “What you don’t know is a lot, Finch.”

  “I have a good mind to deck him. Why are you laughing, dove?”

  “I wasn’t laughing. I was nodding.”

  “I could do it. You don’t think I could do it? I could. I played a fighter in Jack Dempsey’s Life last year, remember? I know the moves. And what’s he going to do? He’s crippled like Wild.”

  “Yes, Wild will love him.”

  5

  Wild

  ADJACENT TO THE MAIN PASSAGEWAY BETWEEN TWO SUBWAY platforms is a small secondary walkway, rarely used. There, Julian comes face to face with a group of vagabonds who have made themselves an abode in the Underground. A dozen people, women and men, young and old, in suits and dregs, sit on stools and benches or lie across the half dozen bunks that line the walls. A bony twentysomething woman sits in an armchair at a wooden table, doing a jigsaw puzzle. Four or five kerosene lamps hang off the bunks; there’s a bookshelf, a clothes line, a coat stand; boots on the floor, purses and bags; a large oval mirror propped up against a wall; scarves and hats draping the posts of the beds; and weary faces staring curiously at Julian.

  “Who the bloody hell are you, mate?” says a grinning blond man, stepping up to Julian. “You nearly gave our Finch a heart attack with your kissing. Well done!” The man is in his early thirties, floppy haired, good looking, but missing most of his right arm. The sweater hangs loose above his elbow. He gives Julian his left hand to shake. Gratefully Julian stretches out his own left hand.

  “I’m Wild,” the smiling man says. Julian is not sure if he is hearing a name or an adjective. The man doesn’t elaborate. He is fit and strong, able-bodied in every way except for the missing arm. “How do you know Folgate?”

  “Is that her last name?”

  “Wild, leave him alone,” Maria says. “Stop interrogating him. Let him meet the rest of the gang before the siren goes.”

  “Is the siren going?” Julian asks. He wishes for no sirens. He wishes for it to be 1942 or 1943, after the terrible beginning and before the terrible end, somewhere in the drudging middle. Please, no sirens.

  “Fine, Folgate,” Wild says, “but I’m going to introduce him, not you. You are atrociously long-winded, as if there isn’t a war on. Listen up, everybody!” he yells. “We have a new member . . .”

  Finch protests. “No, we don’t!”

  “Julian, gang. Gang, Julian.” Self-satisfied, Wild turns to Maria. “That’s how it’s done.”

  Rolling her eyes, she pushes him in the chest. “Go away,” she says. She is familiar with him, unafraid of him, and not in love with him despite his brazen good looks. “Julian, come here and meet Duncan.” Duncan is a big guy, at least 6’5”, with a gruff voice and a lamb-like demeanor. He’s deaf in one ear and can’t serve, Maria says, but like many of their friends, he’s a volunteer in the Home Guard, the London Defence League charged with doing whatever is required to help the city get through the nighttime attacks. During the day, Duncan works the docks at Wapping.

  “London Defence League?” Julian asks Maria. “You’re not part of that, too, are you?” He thought only men could join the LDL. Before she can repl
y, Duncan and Wild pull him away.

  “Folgate, the war will be over before you’re done introducing this man. Stop being in love with the sound of your own voice.”

  “Leave him alone, Wild,” Maria says. “Let me—”

  “This isn’t the stage,” Wild continues. “Julian doesn’t give a toss about Duncan’s deaf ear. I just showed you how to do it. Again, watch and learn. Julian—Nick Moore. Nick—Julian. Nick, say something.”

  “Fuck off,” says Nick, a spindly albino chap, spread out on a lower bunk, smoking and not getting up.

  “That’s all you need to know about Nick,” Wild says. “He knows only two words. Right, Nick?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Nick works at the Ford truck and munitions factory in Dagenham, Maria tells Julian, which at the moment is closed on account of being nearly burned to the ground. So at present Nick is working the Wapping docks with Duncan.

  “Julian, do you want to come with us when we go out?” Wild asks.

  “Absolutely not!” says Finch, idling close by.

  “Sure,” Julian says. “Where are you going?”

  “Finch, after losing Lester, you well know we could use an extra pair of hands.” Wild waves his stump around. “We’re a Rescue Squad, Julian. We call ourselves the Ten Bells Watch. Ever hear of the Ten Bells?”

  “The pub over in Bethnal Green?” Julian knows that pub. It’s not too far from Devi.

  “Yes! Good man. When the umpteenth bomb fell into the transept of St. Paul’s, and all the stained glass was blasted out, the church got itself a group of volunteers called the St. Paul’s Watch whose only job was to douse incendiaries. Well, we’re a group of volunteers who douse the incendiaries that fall near Ten Bells.”

  Julian laughs. “Pub saving is so often overlooked during war.”

  “My sentiments exactly!” Wild studies Julian with an approving grin.

  “Is that where you’re all from, Bethnal Green?” Julian doesn’t want them to be from there. Bethnal Green gets incinerated during the Blitz. “Does anyone have a newspaper?” What year is it? What month is it?

  Reaching into one of the bunks, Wild pulls out the Evening Standard and tosses it to Julian, saying to Maria—

  But Julian has stopped listening. The paper hangs from his hands.

  It’s November 8, 1940.

  His shoulders turn inward. He couldn’t have come at a worse time, a worse month, a worse year. He can’t even look up. The math in his head is brutal. He almost wishes he were back in Invercargill where he did no math at all.

  “Are you okay, Julian?” Maria says solicitously.

  The 49th day is Boxing Day, the day after Christmas.

  She peers into his face.

  This can’t be the way it ends. It just can’t be.

  Getting himself together, he takes a deep breath, lifts his head, and smiles.

  “I’m fine,” he says.

  “You want to meet some more people?”

  “Sure.”

  There are a surprising number of men in their motley crew considering all men under 42 must be conscripted. Uh-oh, a wilted Julian thinks, he’s only 39, could he, too, be conscripted, before he remembers his missing fingers, his wonky eye, oh and that he has no ID and is not a British citizen. Never mind. Anxiety and logic make strange bedfellows.

  With vigor, Duncan takes over hosting duties. He wants to be the one to introduce Julian to the girls, he says. “You got yourself well acquainted with Maria—as we can all attest—but we have other beauties with us, too, who unlike her are currently available. Here are the lovely Sheila and Kate. They’re sisters and nurses. They’re like sisters of mercy,” Duncan adds with a mischievous grin, “and I’ve been asking them for months to show me some mercy.” A bald thin smiling man in his sixties jumps out from a lower bunk and cries, “Duncan!” to which Duncan rolls his eyes and sheepishly says, “Sorry, Phil.” And quieter to Julian: “That’s Dr. Phil Cozens. He’s their dad, unfortunately.” He sighs. “Over by his side is their mum, Lucinda. When you talk to her, don’t mention the war.”

  Julian smirks. Isn’t that line right out of Fawlty Towers? But Duncan is not joking. Lucinda, a stout, gray-haired woman, sits on a low bench, knitting to keep her hands busy and chatting to Phil about a trip to the country in the spring. If they book their travel now, she says, they can get a hefty discount.

  Julian has no time to shake his head at the idea of planning a holiday for the coming spring while sleeping underground in the middle of 1940 London before he’s shoved in front of “sexy Shona,” the driver of the medical services truck, and Liz Hope, “who is a virgin,” Duncan whispers, dragging Julian away—past the mute woman working diligently on the jigsaw puzzle.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Frankie, the bone counter. Never mind her. She doesn’t like living human beings.”

  “The bone counter?”

  “I said never mind her!”

  Peter Roberts, or “Robbie,” has his nose buried in a Learn French in Two Months book. He is a 60-year-old journalist on Fleet Street. Formal and stiff, he stands up to shake Julian’s hand. He is clean shaven and sharply dressed in a suit and bowtie, which he carefully adjusts as he gets up, even though it’s perfectly straight. After he shakes Julian’s hand, he sits back down and reopens the French reader. His posture is impeccable.

  “Here, Robbie, let me fix that for you, it got crooked again,” says Wild, flicking up one end of the bowtie.

  “When are you going to stop playing your games, Wild,” Robbie says, calmly rearranging his neckwear.

  Robbie’s family is in Sussex, Duncan tells Julian, which is unlucky because recently south England has become “bomb alley.”

  “Where is safe?” Julian says to no one in particular, glancing behind him for a glimpse of Maria’s amiable face.

  “Here, mate,” Wild says. “Home, sweet home.”

  Julian acknowledges the lived-in, semi-permanent appearance of their quarters, the books, the coats, the lamps. It’s like a college dorm. “You live here?”

  “Nice, right?” Flanking Julian, Wild grins. “We’re by the emergency stairs, so we have our own private entrance. We have Phil on call, several nurses, who also happen to be his daughters, a chemical toilet at the end of the platform, and even our own warden. True, he’s not especially friendly, but if we throw him five bob, he watches our stuff when we’re gone.”

  Julian clears his throat.

  “No, no, whatever you do, don’t cough,” Maria says, flanking him on the other side, pointing at Phil Cozens. “Even if you’re choking. Even if you’re sick. Especially if you’re sick. Phil assumes it’s TB and good old Javert throws you out.”

  “Maybe it is TB,” Finch says, hovering over Maria. “Also, he doesn’t like to be called Javert, dove.”

  “She calls them like she sees them,” Peter Roberts pipes in, his nose in his French lesson.

  “Hear, hear, Robbie!” says Wild—and the air raid siren goes off.

  Julian’s heart drops. Except for the knitting Lucinda, everyone else stops talking and moving and listens alertly, though no one looks crushed like Julian. “Maybe it’s just a warning?” he asks.

  “It’s always the real thing,” Wild replies. “Once or twice a day for some minor shit, and twice a night for the really terrible shit. For the stray bombs, they don’t even bother alerting us anymore. Last week, we had our first all clear day since September. The Krauts couldn’t fly. We were never more grateful for crap British weather than we were that day, weren’t we, Folgate?”

  The squad revs into action. Even Frankie leaves her puzzle, gets her coat and goes to stand by Phil’s side. The bone counter goes with the doctor? She has the stony demeanor of a mortician. Duncan grabs the sticks and cricket bats piled in the corner next to the umbrellas. In less than two minutes, eight of them are ready to head out. Peter Roberts, Lucinda, and Liz remain behind. So do Nick and Kate. “I’m working a double tomorrow at the docks,” says Nick.r />
  “I’m working a double tomorrow at Royal London,” says Kate.

  Liz says nothing.

  “Julian, are you coming?” asks Maria.

  “Of course.” Why couldn’t she be one of the ones who stays behind? Why couldn’t she be Liz.

  A peevish Finch addresses Julian. “Do you have ID? You can’t go outside without it.”

  “I lost my ID.”

  “Then you can’t go.”

  “Who’s gonna check it, Finch, you?” Wild says, pushing Julian past Finch and toward the stairs. Finch runs around to get in front of them.

  “What about your ration card, got that?”

  “Lost that, too,” Julian replies calmly, despite the fact that Finch is crowding him in the narrow stairwell. “Do I need my ration card? Are we going out to eat?”

  “He’s got you there, Finch,” Wild says.

  “He won’t fit in the jeep,” Finch says.

  “He will,” Wild says. “We’ll tie Dunk to the roof.”

  “Try it,” Duncan says, his huge frame towering over Wild.

  “Where’s your gas mask?” Finch demands. He’s being petty and rude and doesn’t care. “Because you can’t be outside if you don’t have one. It’s the law.”

  “Pipe down, archbishop!” Wild says to Finch. “Jules gave his to a dying child. That’s why he doesn’t have it. Right, Jules?” Smiling, he adds, “You don’t mind if I call you Jules, do you?”

  “I don’t mind,” Julian says, scanning Wild’s open face.

  From his trench coat, Wild produces a gas mask. “Here, take mine. We’ll get you another one. Just go to the council tomorrow, say you lost yours.”

  “Council won’t give it to him without ID,” Finch says. “You can’t go without yours either, Wild. It’s the law.”

  “Blimey, shut up, Finch!” Wild yells. “Folgate, of all the guys out there, why him? You’d be better off with Nick. The man never says a word.”

  “Fuck off!” says Nick.

  “Or old Robbie.”

  “I’m married, thank you,” Peter Roberts says, glancing up from his French book. “Married thirty-five years.”

  “Us, too,” Lucinda says, glancing up from her knitting. “Married thirty-five years. But my Phil is clearly intent on making me a widow, the way he keeps going out there in the mobile units, risking not just his life, but our daughters’ lives as well. Why are you going again, Phil? You just went yesterday. You, too, Sheila.”