Maggie Bright (7 page)

WHAT MURRAY LIKED
best about the movie
Beau Geste
was the way the sand blew over the dune in the opening scene, revealing the film’s title. Thrilled him every time. Now that’s art, he’d say to whoever sat next to him at the Palladium.

When Murray first saw
Maggie Bright
at her berth on the Thames dock, it was as if sand blew over the dune.

Good to see you, Mags, he called out in his heart.

Little Miss Chatty Clare was all fluttery and proud and saying something, but Murray set down his bags on the dock and went to work ’cause oh, she hollered to be drawn.

He pulled out a pad of sketch paper from the side pocket of his briefcase. He took out his pencil box and sorted through it until he found a Kimberly 4B with a reasonably sharp point.

He hadn’t seen her in six years, not since he was seventeen. His father or Clare had changed the sails
 
—they used to be white
 
—and
now the mainmast sail, currently furled, was an ugly salmon color, as was the foremast sail. Unless, pray his heart out, they were sail covers. Couldn’t tell from here.

The rest of her was the same. Oh, there were some pots of flowers and herbs on the deck, which his old man never had, some painted paper Chinese lanterns strung out in a cheery red and yellow dotted line, some colorful rag rugs thrown about, and
 
—well, there it was, a painted sign with curlicue letters that said
Bed and Breakfast
. A short garland of red flowers dangled from a corner of the sign.

Sixteen feet at her beam, fifty-two feet on her length, and add another three feet if you count the retractable swimming platform off the port stern his old man put in the summer Murray was seventeen. Same beautifully paneled woodwork and shiny brass fittings that made other yachties pause for a look when she came into a marina. Same lettering on the transom, which Murray could not have done better, his mother’s name when his old man met her one summer at the resort on Long Island:
Maggie Bright
.

Clare watched Maggie come to hollerin’ life beneath his pencil.

When he finished, he withdrew as he always did from a drawing, backing out from one reality into another, and cocked his head.

Clare studied the drawing, and then looked up at him. She looked at the boat, back to the drawing.

He felt a pleased flush.

“Like it?” he said like a little kid.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s marvelous. I feel foolish.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

The drawing time gave him a chance to get used to seeing her again. Things might go easier when he went aboard. The cabin Clare had described was his. And Clare’s was his old man’s. It raised a sweat in his scalp.

“It’s perfectly foolish,” Clare said with unexpected fierceness.
“You’re wasting your talents on propaganda posters. Father Fitzpatrick surely knows this.”

Murray put his pencil and drawing pad away.

“Wait
 
—give me the drawing. I have an idea.”

He retrieved it from his briefcase, and gave it to her.

She studied him for a moment, and then sighed. “Well, come on then
 
—let’s meet our fate. Please try not to look like a burglar. Or a murderer. Don’t even frown. You look very intense when you do. Be on your
best
behavior, for Mrs. Shrew is going to kill me but we may as well present a good show. And remember
 
—you know
nothing
about the dear BV. We must
not
let on that you are connected.”

“Why?”

“She’ll think another American has come to kill her. Oh dear, there she is. Courage, now.” She swallowed. “Courage. Vision. Singularity of purpose. That will conquer all.”

She didn’t look like she believed a word.

Clare needn’t have worried.

She used the sketch of Maggie as a peace offering for bringing a disapproved man aboard. She held it out like silver before a werewolf, and after a sharp look around Clare at Murray, whom she had instructed to stay safely behind her, Mrs. Shrew snatched and studied the drawing.

It was somewhere in the middle of Clare rushing to say, “He’s another paying tenant, you see, isn’t it wonderful? He is an American and his name is Murray Vance. I know he is a man, but isn’t that a
splendid
drawing of our Maggie? What a clever little creature there on the bowsprit. Such talent, wouldn’t you say?” when Mrs. Shrew grabbed her own throat, not Clare’s, and said, a bit strangled, “Good heavens
 
—
the
Murray Vance? I thought you were dead! I wore black.”

Astonished, Clare turned to Murray. He gave a charming smile, spread his arms to display himself, and said, “I ain’t dead.”

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Shrew, her voice now musical, “that my nephew and his friends are your
biggest
fans? They have a club. Rocketkids, they call themselves. Not very original, but they are young. Oh, please tell me: When
will
you get back to the funnies? Haven’t read anything new since January. Are you on hiatus?” She gasped, and a hand flew to her mouth. “Are you on sabbatical?”

“If sabbatical means I’m here to refill the ol’ tank, sure am, ma’am.” Murray pushed up his hat. “Things got mossy in the old magic well, see. Hopin’ a change of scenery will help.”

Oh, well done, Clare silently admired. He was very good at deception.

Murray looked down and patted his stomach. “This is where I drop the bucket, see, and when I crank it up, I just look and see what I got.”

“
That’s
where you found Rocket Kid?”

“Doin’ the backstroke.”

“And Salamander?”

“Same place, one year later. Rocket Kid rescued him. Buncha punk kids were beatin’ him up.”

Mrs. Shrew made a very small noise. Then she covered her lips with a set of fingertips, and ventured, “Tell me
 
—please
 
—Salamander is
not
dead, is he? Oh, he can’t be! True, such exquisite sorrow with your last comic strip
 
—yet you left a
trace
of ambiguity as to his
actual
demise. All of your fans suspect the same. We
 
—that is, the Rocketkids
 
—refuse to believe he is dead. You can tell me. I promise I won’t say a word.”

Clare certainly hoped that Salamander, whoever he was, was very much alive as both sets of fingertips now hovered at her lips. Clare looked anxiously at Murray.

“You kiddin’ me?” Murray said. “Ain’t no Rocket Kid without Salamander.”

“Just so!” Mrs. Shrew sang. She pressed a hand against her heart, laughing in relief. “Oh, I knew it. Bravo! Mr. Vance, I don’t suppose I could keep this?” she asked very meekly and hopefully and obsequiously of the drawing
 
—Mrs. Shrew! Meek! Hopeful! Obsequious! Clare could only stare, feeling faintly nauseous.

“All yours,” Murray said.

“Oh, thank you ever so much!” She gazed at the drawing, extremely pleased. “It’s so
good
to see Salamander again. Could I ask you to sign it?”

“Of course.” He did so, and handed it back.

“Look
 
—there he is again!” said a very pleased Mrs. Shrew, showing Clare. There was a tiny salamander sitting on the
M
, its tail curling into the
V
. “How clever!”

“Yes. Well. Shall we go below and get you sorted?” said Clare. “You’ll want a washup before you turn in
 
—the head is directly across from your cabin.
Head
means
loo
on a houseboat, by the way.
Bath
room, I think you say in the States. Though of course, there’s no bathtub
 
—this is a boat, you know. Can’t afford that sort of water usage. Very impracticable. I do miss bathing. In a bathtub. I do
wash
, of course
 
—I’m perfectly clean. One learns to get along without a bathtub while maintaining perfect . . . hygiene.”

She colored. Had she ever said the word
hygiene
in front of a man? Mrs. Shrew had put Clare completely off center.

Who
was
this man? Suddenly he was
the
Murray Vance?

“Isn’t it too early to turn in?” protested Mrs. Shrew. She laid a hand on his arm. “Love to hear how you intend to save Salamander.”

“He’s very tired,” Clare said quickly, at the same time Murray said, “So would my editor.” They glanced at each other. Clare said to Mrs. Shrew, “He hasn’t slept in days.”

“What?! That’s no way to treat the Muse!” Mrs. Shrew declared. “Off you go!” She shooed him to the companionway. “We’ll fill that
well to overflowing!
Maggie Bright
is just the ticket for you!” She waved him on. “Embrace your destiny, lad!”

“I’ll be along directly,” Clare told him.

They watched him go below.

“I can hardly believe it,” squeaked Mrs. Shrew.

“Yes. Ah. Met him by chance in London. He was looking for lodgings. What great luck, don’t you think, to find someone who comes with his own references?
International
references? Good old . . . Rocket Kid.” She’d never heard of Rocket Kid.

“Was ‘Embrace your destiny’ a bit much? I don’t want to fawn. Oh! You are sixty-seven. Retired. And one day . . . you meet Murray Vance, who becomes a fellow tenant. What a wonderful world. Oh, to be thirty years younger.”

“Do you mean forty?” Oh, the naughty words fell out before Clare could stop them. At least she didn’t say fifty.

“He’s not
that
young,” Mrs. Shrew said sharply.

But you are that old, Clare thought unkindly, and only because Mrs. Shrew had something to talk to him about, and Clare did not.

Not unless it involved a priest. And there, Murray wasn’t talking.

“Do you know what this means? We get to help Murray Vance find his muse again! I’ve guided young minds all my life; it seems as though it was preparation for my biggest task of all. My nephew will go absolutely crackers.”

“I’ll have to tell the captain he has some competition,” Clare dared to say, only because Mrs. Shrew was quite bemused.

“Hmm? What? Shall I get him some cocoa? Do Americans drink tea? Oh, we can show him the box! He’ll be delighted!”

“What box?”

“The box the Burglar Vicar ransacked. With all the newspapers in it. Do you know that whoever owned this boat was a more devoted
Rocket Kid and Salamander
fan than
 
—than my nephew?”

“How so?”

“Why, it’s the
entire
collection! Even when it was just
Rocket Ki
d
! Every single one from the very beginning
 
—until that first week of January, 1940. I was quite astonished. Found three I hadn’t read. It’s a rare find, really. That box is probably worth a mint, or will be one day, especially the ones that are just
Rocket Kid
. Isn’t it interesting? How could the collector know what he was collecting? What instinct. Did he
know
it was the start of a worldwide sensation? My nephew is from Australia. They’re positively mad about
Rocket Kid
down there. They have festivals. Costume parties. Frolicking picnics round the billabong, ha-ha!” She studied her drawing, and said softly, “What amazing instinct this collector had.”

A very strange feeling came to Clare.

“Right. We must make a plan,” the Shrew took up briskly. “A Muse Retrieval Plan. This is
quite
serious. It will affect the entire world. I shan’t sleep at all tonight. He used to make me laugh. He still does, but they are
repeat
laughs
 
—as if everyone doesn’t know it’s all been
filler
material since January. Stuff that doesn’t advance the plot at all.”

“Oh dear,” Clare breathed.

Arthur Vance died in January.

Arthur Vance had collected every comic strip ever published by . . .

His son.

IF JAMIE HAD HOPED
the tide had turned for communication with Captain Milton, he was disappointed; the portal that had cracked open seemed to close as surely as the doctor had closed the wound.

The doctor had left hours earlier without a word, even after Jamie had thanked him. The captain huddled against a bale of hay in a corner of the shed. Jamie sat on a bale opposite, looking at him. First time, really.

He was of average height and build and looks, with dark hair sharp against the white of the bandage. Midthirties, maybe? He wore a wedding ring. Did he have kids? He had no identifying name on his ill-fitting jacket, no stripes to indicate rank, no ID tag, no name on his rucksack. Nothing personal in there save the book and some shaving supplies, nothing else except a packet of tea and a few tins of apricots. Maybe his belongings had blown up with his squad. It explained the loss of his jacket. It didn’t explain why his shaving kit and the Milton book had survived.

He hadn’t said anything Milton, direct or indirect, since the doctor left. He’d dropped down into himself again, if not to that place of wrestled hell then maybe to a place of simple survival. He looked like a child, digging in bewilderment at his ears, staring at his wedding ring for a foreign object.

That moment before the doc fixed him, was it real? Didn’t the captain actually look him in the eye, didn’t they share a few words of understanding, Milton or not?

“Say something, Cap. I know you’re in there.”

But he acted deaf, body and soul, shell-wrecked on the outside, maybe grief-wrecked on the inside.

Jamie sighed and got to his feet.

“Look, I’m afraid we’ve got to keep moving. We’ve got to get to Dunkirk. Do you understand? The Germans are coming and I won’t get caught on the wrong side of the line, wherever it’s finally drawn.” He went to the captain. “None of this is fair. Not the shape you’re in, not what’s happened, and it’s
bloody
unfair that I have to flog a half-dead man who hasn’t a clue what’s going on. Makes me feel like Genghis bloody Khan. But there’s nothing for it. Come on, then. Upsadaisy, Captain. Here we go. Steady, now. No, this way.”

They emerged from the hay shed into a bright and humid afternoon, and started walking west.

Hours later, Genghis bloody Khan opened a tin of apricots and made Milton drink the juice. He tried to feed him the apricots, and it went well for a few bites, but then the captain got a queasy look and threw it back up. The force of it produced freshened bloodstains on the bandage. Jamie changed the bandage, promised Milton no more apricots, and got him moving again.

Some of the boys Jamie served with had never been to London, let alone France and Belgium. And now they’d been to Germany,
too, if it counted to see the face of a German behind a gun. That was days ago, on an eight-mile stretch along the Franco-Belgian border that Jamie’s division was supposed to hold. They didn’t hold. They fought for a murderous two hours, and fled
 
—rather, they were
ordered
to flee.

Yesterday he and Milton caught a ride on the back of a lorry with a group of guys and rode for hours. If the medic was right, and Dunkirk was only twenty miles off, they should have arrived yesterday. The lorry ran out of diesel, with no supply truck or fuel dump in range. To make the vehicle useless for the Germans, the men drained the oil and let it run until it seized; for good measure, they trashed the belts and yanked wires and punctured the fuel tank, then they gathered their gear and walked away. Jamie tried to stay with them, but they moved too fast for the captain.

He realized later how lucky they had been for the ride. Hours of walking now produced an arc of blisters at the top of Jamie’s feet where the boots did not give. If he unlaced them and pulled back the tongue, it made them too loose and produced blisters on his soles when his feet slid around. The best he could do was pad an extra pair of socks between his skin and the boots and lace the literally bloody things up again.

He unshouldered the Bren and switched it to the other side. The heavy automatic rifle could be set to fire single shots or bursts. He missed his Lee-Enfield. A 1914 model, to be sure, but it wasn’t as heavy and it was the weapon he’d trained on. He’d left it with the boys when Lieutenant Dunn sent him for orders. Pulled the Bren off a dead soldier on the road. He’d never fired a Bren.

Jamie walked behind the captain. A man with a horrible wound like that would be in the emergency ward back home. Jamie had him hoofing it like some sadistic drill sergeant. He wished he could find a motorbike.

He came to himself, and glanced about
 
—he’d gone into that
walking stupor, and just now realized that for the first time in two days, he saw no one else on the road.

They came to the outskirts of a little village. The posted sign at the side of the road, just before the canal bridge, said
Montmartre
. The other side of the bridge opened into a place with houses on either side. Maybe they could find somewhere to rest for a few hours, take up again at dusk; Milton’s gait had gone a bit weavy.

“Winning cheap the high repute which he through hazard huge must earn,” said the captain.

“Well
 
—welcome back, old man. Have a nice holiday? You know, sooner or later you’ll
really
regain your senses, and I’ll be in serious trouble. You’ll remember all sorts of things. Try and keep in mind it was in your best interests.”

“To perish rather, swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night, devoid of sense and motion. Shall we then live thus vile, the race of heaven thus trampled, thus expelled to suffer
 
—”

“Why can’t you find something cheerful to say? Isn’t there something cheerful in that book?”

Captain Milton stopped walking.

Jamie had a hopeful flash that it was some sort of response. Then he saw what the captain did.

All along the road for two straight days they’d passed evidence of war: abandoned army equipment, abandoned home goods that were too heavy for civilians to push or pull or carry. But they sometimes passed dead soldiers or dead citizens, strafed by aircraft since enemy ground forces had not yet come through. In the dire haste to get to Dunkirk, Jamie could do no more than avert his eyes and wish the departed souls well. Haste was a relief, then, with no moral obligation to tend to the dead bodies.

Jamie came beside the captain.

Two small girls lay in the ditch, tumbled from a child’s wagon. The wagon half covered one of them, whose face was turned away.
Then Jamie realized it wasn’t turned; she
had
no face, strafing bullets had made off with it, made it blend with the dark compost of the earthy ditch.

The other little girl lay staring at the sky, face cold and sweet, eyes filmed, delicate eyebrows raised as if in surprise. Black curly hair with a purple ribbon, black-and-white checked dress, white lace at the collar, a great dark compost hole in her chest.

Jamie’s head swam, and he pushed away from the captain. He stumbled about, and then stared at the sky.

Surely, even a fighter pilot could see they were kids. He took a few steps forward.

“How could you?” he shouted, shaking his fist at the sky.

Two little girls in a wagon. Maybe pulled by a big brother. Big brother gets hit, family leaves the little girls who are clearly dead, grabs him, goes to the . . .

He swiveled toward the town. No, no, something wasn’t right. It was too quiet, too . . . empty. No one on the street. No dogs.

No one on the road for a while, and it usually ran with refugees. Had they taken a wrong turn? Jamie’s heart began to race.

Where
were
they? How far was Montmartre from Dunkirk? He had no compass, no map. He’d always followed others. Sometimes soldiers, sometimes civilians, and they always outstripped them.

They had come to a fork a while back, and with no signposts, Jamie chose to stay on the curve bearing right. Right seemed north. Wasn’t it? Or had they doubled back east?

Was this a German-hit town?

Infantry?

Milton stepped down into the ditch, slipping, sliding, righting himself. He stood over the girl in the checked dress. “For in their looks divine the image of their glorious Maker shone,” he said softly. He knelt beside the body.

“Something’s not right.” Jamie scanned the area. “I’ve got a bad
feeling.” A wood lay on the right side of the road, just before the canal bridge, with a far more open area on the left. They should take to the woods.

He went to the ditch. “Captain
 
—”

But tears ran down Milton’s face. He touched the girl’s lace collar.

“So lively shines in them divine resemblance, and such grace the hand that formed them on their shape hath poured.”

“Milton. We’ve got to go. I think the Germans have actually
been
here.”

The captain lowered his head. A tear dripped from his nose. Did he have girls this age at home?

Milton looked like Jamie felt, all undone. Maybe the same thing that broke this man and made him a Milton box had broken other things, too, maybe a wall of defense. But soldiers could not afford to come undone. No, there was no training for dead civilians along the road, for little girls murdered in a ditch, but it was a thing to be sorted later, ideally with a bottle of whiskey and a captured German in their midst.

Milton was a brave man who had saved the lives of an entire unit
 
—they didn’t hand out the Victoria Cross for being nice. And now he was broken, and now he sat crying beside a dead girl, and Jamie felt a flash of rage.

Maybe the captain felt it too
 
—he raised a darkened face to the sky, frighteningly livid, and there came a guttural growl like a hackles-raised dog. He rose, and shouted at the sky, “Consult how we may henceforth most offend our enemy! If not victory, then revenge!”

Jamie suddenly felt better.

“Easy, easy! I’m with you on that one, mate, but I’m buggered if I’ll let you wreck those stitches.” Jamie slid-stepped into the ditch, and took Milton’s arm, but he threw off Jamie’s hand, and cried, “War hath determined us!” Then the captain gasped and clamped both sides of his head, sinking to his haunches.

“Hands up!” A steel-helmeted soldier stood at the top of the ditch, aiming a rifle.

Jamie’s hands went up.

“Who are you?” the man demanded.

“Private Jamie Elliott. Queen’s 9th Lancers, infantry. Who are you?”

The rifle lowered. “Private Todd Balantine, 2nd Grenadiers.”

“Where are we?”

Balantine turned and pointed to the right of the bridge. “Best we can sort, looks like this canal leads that way to Bray Dunes, on the sea. West of that is Dunkirk. The word is to head for Dunkirk.”

“How far is it?” Jamie realized his hands were still raised, and lowered them.

“Don’t know. Twenty, maybe thirty miles due north to Bray Dunes. Truth is, we’re really not sure. Not a map among us, and the town’s deserted. Except for the dead. This canal will at least get us to the sea, even if it’s not Bray Dunes. Maybe we can see England from there. Won’t
that
be nice?”

Maybe it was just jolly good to have company again, but something about Balantine made Jamie like him instantly. He seemed friendly and capable.

Jamie looked down at the girls. “What happened?”

“Germans, mate.”

“Aircraft?”

“Infantry.”

“Infantry?” Jamie stared at him. “This far west? This far north?”

“Oh, it’s worse than that. They’ve cut us off.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve shot straight through. They’ve made it to the Atlantic. They’ve taken southern France.”

Jamie couldn’t speak.

“Afraid it’s true,” said Balantine grimly. “Last we heard, they’re just south of Boulogne.”

“No,” he breathed in horrified awe.

“Cut through us like butter. Best we can sort, seems they met some opposition here, maybe one of Gort’s divisions, then withdrew to the south to concentrate. Truth is, we don’t know.” He looked over the bridge to the town. “Truth is, we’re lost and there’s dead people everywhere. Can’t’ve been aircraft that did this.”