At the Water's Edge (16 page)

W
hen the siren sounded, I knew instantly what it was. With my heart pounding, I felt my way in the dark to the chair, where I'd laid out my coat and shoes. I was pulling them on when someone flung my door open and hit me in the face with the beam of a flashlight.

“Are you ready?” Meg yelled over the din. She was already zipped into her siren suit, which was made of black-and-red tartan.

“Ready,” I called back, hopping toward her while forcing my heel into a recalcitrant shoe.

The siren continued its deafening wail, rising and falling. Hank and Ellis staggered into the hallway barefoot and in their pajamas. Hank was wearing only the bottoms.

“What the hell?” he said, shielding his eyes from the flashlight.

“It's an air raid. Come on! We've got to go!” said Meg.

“To where?” Ellis said, rubbing his eyes and looking confused.

“To the shelter!”

Meg and I pushed past them and ran down the stairs. I heard them clumping after us, cursing as they navigated in the dark.

Mr. Ross appeared at the bottom of the staircase holding another flashlight.

“Come on,” he said, waving us urgently toward the kitchen.

When we were all at the back door, Meg and Mr. Ross turned off their flashlights.

Meg went out first, and I could see just well enough to follow her. I stumbled and fell to my knees on the frozen earth. Someone—Mr. Ross, I realized immediately—scooped me up and propelled me forward, clutching my elbow with his left hand and keeping his right arm firmly around my waist.

Meg had thrown the burlap flap back and was already inside. Mr. Ross held me by the armpits and lowered me in, handing me to Meg.

“Mind your head. There's a bunk at the back,” she said, pulling me in deeper and leading me to it. “There's another above it, so mind your head there, too. When everyone's in, Angus will get a light on.”

She sat beside me and leaned in close. I huddled against her and we clutched hands. It smelled damp and earthy, and was terribly, terribly cold.

Outside, the men were shouting. Hank and Ellis were arguing that they'd never laid eyes on the shelter in the daylight so how were they supposed to know where it was or how to get in, and couldn't Mr. Ross shine the light on it for just a moment? He replied that he didn't care what the hell they did or did not know, and to get the bloody hell inside.

My voice came out as a raspy screech: “Ellis! Hank! Get in here! It's two steps down. Climb in backward if you have to, but hurry up!”

“Get in,
amadain
!” Mr. Ross bellowed. “Just get in!”

“I would, if I could just fucking—Hey!”

There was some kind of kerfuffle at the front of the shelter, followed by a thud, and a vile stream of curses from Hank. There was another thud, and this time I heard someone scraping toward us.

“We're back here,” I said, reaching my arms out. My hands found the top of Ellis's head, and then his shoulders. He was crawling.

“There's a bunk right here,” I said.

“Conall,
thig a seo
!” Mr. Ross yelled, and shortly thereafter, he turned on his flashlight.

The burlap flap was closed. We were all inside. Our breath curled like smoke from our mouths, and Mr. Ross's expression was so fierce that while I knew his eyes were blue, at that moment I would have sworn they were black.

When Ellis saw that the bunk we were sitting on was made up, he grabbed the top quilt with both hands and yanked it out from under us, nearly dumping Meg and me on the floor.

“Hey!” I said. “Was that really necessary?”

“I'm fucking freezing,” he said, wrapping himself in it.

“Throw me one of those,” said Hank, who was crouched barefoot against the corrugated wall. “I can see my goddamned breath.”

“Get it yourself,” said Ellis. “I'm as naked as you are.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” said Meg, and without even thinking I turned to help her rip another quilt loose, this time nearly toppling Ellis. She balled it up and threw it overhand at Hank. He wrapped it around his shoulders and made his way to the back of the shelter, climbing onto the bunk above us.

The wailing of the siren continued.

“You've not got your gas masks?” said Mr. Ross.

I glanced quickly and saw that Meg had brought hers.

“No,” I said. “I'm very sorry.”

He tossed his into my lap.

My hands shook as I tried to put it on. The smell of rubber was stifling, my area of vision vastly limited, and I couldn't get the straps over the rollers in my hair. Meg pulled her mask on in a single fluid motion and turned to help me.

“Hold still,” she said in a muffled voice. “I just have to thread the straps through…There's one…There's another…Wait…I've almost got it…And there you are. Nice and tight.”

The combination of screaming siren and having my head confined sent me spiraling into panic. It was as though I was back on the SS
Mallory
during the U-boat attack. I felt like I couldn't breathe,
although clearly I could, because the inside of my mask was so fogged up I couldn't see a thing. When I tried to wipe it from the outside, Meg pulled my hands from my face and held them against her thigh. “It takes a bit of getting used to. Just breathe normally and it will clear up.”

I closed my eyes and took deep, deliberate breaths.

“That's it,” she said. “In through the nose, and out through the mouth. In, and then out. That's better already, isn't it?”

When I opened my eyes, the window of my mask was starting to clear.

“What about me? I don't have a mask,” said Hank, from the bunk above us.

“You'd take one off a woman, would you?” Mr. Ross snapped.

Hank was silent for a moment, and then added, in a tone that could be interpreted as chastened, resigned, or both, “I don't suppose there's any whiskey in this tin can?”

Mr. Ross threw him a look of disgust and turned off the flashlight. The starry sky was briefly visible as he went through the flap. A moment later he returned and switched the light back on. He'd retrieved a rifle and was crouched with it by the opening. Just as I remembered his missing trigger finger, I realized he was holding it by his left side.

“How long is this going to take?” Ellis asked. He was curled into a ball in the corner of the bunk, wrapped in the quilt. “I think I'd rather take my chances inside.”

Mr. Ross held his hand up for silence, listening, concentrating.

From far in the distance, over the siren's wail, came the
boom-boom-boom-boom
of large engines.

“Bloody hell,” he said, leaping to his feet and pumping the rifle.

“What? What's wrong?” said Ellis.

“A fucking Heinkel.”

The light went off and he slipped outside with an untranslatable growl. The booming got closer and louder until suddenly it was right over us and Mr. Ross was shouting—and shooting—at it.

“Thall is cac, Mhic an Diabhail!”

After the second shot, the sound of the airplane changed from a steady set of booms to three followed by a gap. It continued on, limping into the distance.

Mr. Ross climbed back inside the shelter and turned the flashlight on again.

“Did you just do what I think you just did?” said Meg.

He shrugged.

“Did you just shoot out an engine?”

“It doesn't matter if I did. He's got three more.”

“But with a rifle?”

“The
shite
was right over our heads. I could have jumped up and touched—”

He was interrupted by a huge explosion in the distance, followed immediately by another—a terrible sound that reverberated across the water and through the glen. I screamed into my mask and grabbed Meg, who gripped me just as tightly.

After about twenty minutes, which felt like twenty years, the siren rose to its highest pitch and stayed there, before finally dropping off into silence.

“What's that? What does that mean?” said Hank, who remained on the top bunk.

“That's the all clear,” said Meg, removing her mask. She was pale. “Sweet Mother of God. I wonder where that was?”

Mr. Ross set his rifle down and simply shook his head.

“Please God they didn't hit anyone,” said Meg, pressing her fingertips to her temples.

“Aye,” said Mr. Ross, nodding slowly.

I tried to pull off my mask, which wouldn't budge, so I yanked even harder. Meg stilled my hands and got me free. I'd forgotten she'd threaded the straps through my rollers.

Without a word, Mr. Ross shut off the flashlight and left the shelter, leaving the flap open.

“Come on then,” said Meg. She and I felt our way to the front and climbed out. I could see Mr. Ross's silhouette as he trudged across the yard toward the inn, Conall at his side. He never looked back.

Meg and I linked arms, feeling our way together across the frozen earth, and trying not to step on the precious winter vegetables. Hank and Ellis followed.

Moments after I reached my room, there was a knock on my door.

“Maddie? Darling?” said Ellis.

“I'm getting ready for bed.”

“Maddie, please. I need a pill.”

I let him in.

“They're in the top drawer,” I said.

Ellis yanked it open and rummaged around until he found the bottle. I could tell from the rattling that he was taking more than one. He kept his back toward me until he'd tossed them in his mouth.

“Do you want one?” he asked, after gulping them down with water from the pitcher. It dribbled down the front of his pajamas. “Fuck,” he explained, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I'm fine,” I said.

“You must be shattered. Here, take these.” He shook a couple of pills into his hand and held them out to me.

“Put them on the dresser,” I said.

I took my coat off, folded it in half, and laid it over the back of the chair. Then I lined my shoes up beneath the chair's edge, where I wouldn't trip over them.

Ellis watched with narrowed eyes. “Were those laid out for you?”

Instead of answering, I smoothed my coat, brushing off the frost.

“They were, weren't they?” he insisted. “That's why you were able to get them on so quickly.”

He glanced at the dresser drawer he'd left open, at the clothes that had been folded until he'd messed them up. He stepped across the room and opened my closet, revealing dresses and other items on hangers.

“They've put your things away,” he said indignantly. “You should see the state of my room. It's like they're refusing to do it on general principle.”

“I put my own things away.”

It took him a second to respond. “You did what?”

“I did it myself.”

He blinked at me in disbelief. “Darling, you know better than that. What were you thinking?”

He launched into a speech about the dangers of making excuses for the help, and how slippery a slope it was from there to familiarity, and then Heaven only knew where it would end, but certainly not well. If Hank's kitchen maid wasn't proof of that, he didn't know what was. Mrs. Boyd had nearly gotten into a legal pickle sorting that mess out. Maintaining a proper distance was crucial, and he certainly hoped I wasn't…

I stared in fascination, watching his tongue undulate behind his teeth. Once, a string of saliva attached itself to his lips and survived the length of a few words before snapping. His nostrils flared beneath his pinched bridge. Deep lines appeared between his eyes, and when he tilted his chin so he could look down his nose at me, I could have sworn I was looking at his mother's head spliced onto his body, a living, breathing cockentrice that had climbed off its platter and spat the apple out of its mouth so it could yammer at me about how surely even I could see that my blurred boundaries not only encouraged the lower classes to be lazy, but threatened the very social structures our lives were built upon.

I realized that he'd stopped talking.

“Maddie?” he said, peering closely at me. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” I said, trying to shake the image from my head. “It's just been a long night, and I'd like to get to bed.”

His expression softened. “I'm sorry, darling. Sometimes I forget how fragile you are. I shouldn't have scolded you, especially right after…”

He left the sentence unfinished, having apparently decided that reminding me of the air raid would send me over the edge.

“Can you forgive me?” He took a step toward me, and I instinctively held up my hand. He stopped, but looked hurt.

I gripped the back of the chair and trained my eyes on the grate.
There was no point in telling him that his behavior in the shelter had been a degree worse than ungentlemanly. I wasn't looking for an argument.

“And now I'm the one who's sorry,” I said, turning to face him. “I didn't mean to be prickly. I just need to sleep.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, becoming the epitome of chivalry. “But if you need anything, anything at all, you know where to find me. And make sure you take your pills. Even if you're not having an episode, they'll help you sleep.”

As soon as he left, I went to the door and turned the lock. I also slid the bolt.

When I put the pills he'd set out back in the bottle, I was alarmed by how many were missing.

Twenty minutes later, there was another knock.

I turned my back to the door and pulled the pillow up around my face. If I ignored him, surely he'd assume I was asleep and leave me alone.

“Mrs. Hyde?” said Meg.

Seconds later, I was standing at the open door.

“Meg—is everything all right?”

“Perfectly,” she whispered. “Except my feet are freezing, and I thought yours might be too, so I brought you a pig.”