Maggie Bright (9 page)

“I’m not a complete idiot, am I?” Clare wanted to say, but settled for, “Yes, Mrs. Shrew
 
—sbury.”

“Oh, go on then,” she said cheerfully. “Call me Mrs. Shrew. All my students did. I rather liked it.” She seized her notebook with delight. “Goodness! What events! I’m
mad
to know what you learn from our vicar. Quite obviously, he had some sort of relationship with Arthur Vance. And then of course perhaps
Arthur
had the diplomatic mission, and
he
had hidden something quite important that only the BV knew about.”

Clare stared
 
—no, a connection between the BV and Arthur Vance hadn’t occurred to her until Mrs. Shrew said it.

“
Do
question him thoroughly about Murray
 
—he may hold some clues to the Muse retrieval. Because isn’t it interesting? His father dies in January
 
—and that’s the last we heard from
Rocket Kid and Salamander
.”

“Oh dear,” Clare said, dazed, laying a hand on her cheek.

“He may be here to collect his priest, but I don’t doubt for one moment that this is all about collecting his muse. Gone missing since his father’s death. And we
 
—” her tone softened
 
—“we shall help him get it back.”

She fell upon her notes with hand-clasped rapture. “Isn’t life just full of glorious havoc at every turn? My dear Cecil would have something to say about these extraordinary times. He’s giving St. Peter an earful now, surely prodding him to join the great cloud of witnesses surrounding me; telling him to look on, just
see
what that woman is up to next. Always called me ‘that woman.’ Always quite proud of me. Thought of me as rather a maverick. . . .”

When Clare reached for a plate of toast crumbs, Mrs. Shrew placed her hand over Clare’s and said earnestly, “We’re in it together, aren’t we
 
—this glorious and dreadful time that has come upon us?
Muses, and vicars, and war?” She squeezed her hand, and went back to her notes.

Clare turned the three steps into the galley. She put the plate in the sink, and meant to take down her toothbrush from the shelf above, but gripped the counter’s edge and held very still. Mrs. Shrew was nothing like them.

Aunt Mary was nothing but a vacancy, ruled over by the one who had absorbed her so completely that nothing was left, her lord, her master, Uncle Sebastian
 
—Clare made her escape just in time before she suffered the same fate, and when she did, met Mrs. Iris Shrewsbury.

No vacancy was she; she made the air quiver for the simple fact that she was in the room. She was demanding and kind and interested and controlling, and sometimes treated Clare like a child; and in all these things she was utterly unapologetic, and in all these things there were no eggshells to tread upon, no worries that Clare was perceived as utterly incapable of correct thought or action. Such notions would never occur to the Shrew. It wasn’t in her.

The Shrew, Captain John, something in the Burglar Vicar, and now Murray Vance. Clare dashed at her eyes, laughing suddenly at Mrs. Shrew’s imperious claim upon Seville marmalade, glad to have found real people once more. Life seemed to have come full circle to a place long forgotten. A place she last knew as a child.

Captain John seemed pleased whenever Clare popped in to ask if he needed anything when she went out. His wife had died several years earlier, and he must miss the feminine fuss.

It was a chilly May morning on the Thames, with a brisk breeze coming down from the northwest, and she buttoned her light jacket the rest of the way as she stepped from Maggie’s boarding plank to
the dock. She faced east at her first footfall on the wooden dock, as was her habit; one day she would sail
Maggie Bright
east on the Thames down to the sea. She’d round at Sheerness, sail south, and follow the Channel west, then pass by the continent southward until she came to Spain and the Straits of Gibraltar; then she would enter the Mediterranean, and that would be Maggie’s first full sail with Clare at the helm.

Of course
 
—once she learned to sail.

She’d never even taken her out by motor. Maggie hadn’t left this dock since she was hers. No matter! Vision, courage, and singularity of purpose would make all the way it should be.

Clare walked the dock, looking about. She didn’t see the captain in the boatyard. Didn’t see him aboard his fishing trawler, the
Lizzie Rose
. He must be in the boathouse at the dock’s end, a little bait and supply shop for boaters. His living quarters were at the back of the shop.

She tapped on the shop’s door as she entered.

“Hello? Captain John?”

No one about, and she didn’t smell tea. Rather chilly in here, too
 
—he didn’t have the little space heater on. Odd. If he wasn’t in the boatyard or pottering about on his fishing trawler, he was here, stocking shelves or chatting with someone or making tea behind the counter.

She turned to go, but heard a rustle. It came not from his rooms past the counter, but through the doorway to the Anderson shelter.

It wasn’t any surprise for Clare to learn that before she came to Bexley-on-the-Thames from Liverpool, Mrs. Shrew was a devoted ARPer
 
—Air Raid Precaution worker. In addition to the stack of government pamphlets on how one should conduct oneself during a war, she’d brought her own gas mask and pronounced it as the only thing up to code at Elliott’s Boatyard. Upon taking a room aboard the
Maggie Bright
, she insisted that a bomb shelter go in at the boathouse. She had her own Anderson hut, a regulation-issue movable
room made of corrugated iron, transferred by train from her home in Liverpool to Elliott’s Boatyard, where mason workers fused it to the small supply annex built into the side of the boathouse. Clare never dreamed her name would one day label a peg upon which hung her own gas mask. A bomb shelter! Who could imagine?

The first thing Mrs. Shrew installed in a corner of the shelter was a modesty screen, behind which sat a chamber pot. (“One must think of these things. You will thank me later.”) She also made sure that the shelter remained stocked with necessities, and periodically cycled out the supply of drinking water to keep it fresh. There were sleeping cots, the personalized pegs with hanging gas masks, and a typed list of all persons in the area assigned to this particular Anderson hut.

“Captain John?”

A rustle, and a moment later, Captain John appeared in the doorway of the Anderson shelter. He was holding a framed photograph, gazing at it. “Lizzie had it done when he was sixteen. Thought it proper. Always looking after her little brother.”

His lovely thick white hair was uncombed. Looked as if he’d slept in his clothing. She’d never seen him this way.

“Captain John . . . is everything all right?”

He looked up. “Hmm? Oh, yes. All is well.” He looked at the picture. “Only, I thought it was nonsense, having his photograph done. Seemed vain. A waste of money. Likely said as much. Wish I hadn’t
 
—he’s a good boy. He has a stout heart. He’s very kind, you see. Some mistake that for . . . Well, I’m just finding a spot for it in the shelter.” He gave a smile, swift to disappear. “You never know
 
—Mrs. Shrewsbury may be right. Perhaps they all are. Old Calhoun at Evelyn’s. Churchill. Eden. Only, you don’t want to believe it, you can’t believe it, that Herr Hitler is upon us at last. But he is.”

“What’s happened? Your son
 
—is he all right?” She went to him, and discovered that he smelled as though he’d spent the night in a pub.

He polished the glass of the photograph with the cuff of his sleeve,
and angled it so she could see. “That’s my Jamie,” he said proudly. “Handsome lad, don’t you think? Took after his mum.”

Jamie Elliott was handsome. Well
 
—perhaps not
physically
. But his features were arresting. Expectant, challenging eyes, looking just off the eye of the photographer; it made you feel as though his eyes wanted to go straight to yours. A lifted chin, a confident smile. His carriage made him handsome. It was very interesting to finally have a look at this boy of whom she’d heard so much.

“Oh, I think he takes after you,” Clare said warmly. “Looks to be a very clever, confident lad.”

“He does, doesn’t he?” Captain John said, rousing from his reverie with a spark of enthusiasm. “That’s my Jamie. Very engaging boy. Very good with people. Liked to work with customers. Never took to the water, not like Nigel, but not everyone does. I hope he knows I don’t care about that. I wish I’d told him. Wish I’d said it out loud.”

What wasn’t he telling her?

“Mrs. Shrew wondered where you were for tea.”

Any mention of the Shrew usually made him stand at attention. He couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. It was as if Clare weren’t in the room.

“I should tell you we have another guest,” she said brightly. “Don’t know how long he’ll be staying. Mrs. Shrew will have to add another name to the Anderson list. I’m sure she’ll fill you in. His name is Murray Vance. An American. It appears his father owned the
Maggie Bright
. Isn’t that interesting?”

But Captain John didn’t answer, and Clare was suddenly quite alarmed. What had happened? Was it a letter? Did he hear some news? Was the war going badly? She’d never seen him like this. All felt as wrong and askew as the appearance of his hair.

“Well, then
 
—I’m off to see the BV on a matter of diplomatic importance. Need anything from the grocer?”

“Quite right. All is well,” he said, eyes on the photograph. “Only, I didn’t want him to go. Didn’t want a war to change him. But it will.”

He turned into the shelter and Clare fled not for the Teddington bus stop but for Mrs. Shrew.

Mrs. Shrew pledged to get to the bottom of it. When she added a very brisk and determined, “Leave it to me,” Clare felt enormous relief, and raced with a lighter heart to catch the next bus.

“Yes, this is Blake. Westminster Station. William Percy, please. Thank you very much.” He hummed a few bars of Mozart. Or was it Beethoven? That popular bit sometimes played at weddings. Why he should think of a wedding march, he didn’t know
 
—should be a military march. Something was up. Something dire. All manner of grave military folk scurried about the street this morning.

“Yes, Blake here. It may interest you to know that the American priest has a visitor. Yes,
currently
. She just went in. You’ll have thirty minutes to get here before she leaves. You said to call immediately
 
—there you are. Have a good
 
—Ah, let’s see . . . a Clare Childs. Lovely girl. Very expressive. Rather captivating, actually. Yes, I’m sure it says Clare Childs. Same one who was here yesterday.
Yes
, she was here yesterday, didn’t I just
 
—? Well, she was the one who left with the American. No, no
 
—not the ratlike bloke
 
—the other one. Well, the
same
American I 
told
you about
yesterday
. Murray Vance. Yes, they left together, didn’t I
 
—? Well, I didn’t
know
it was Clare Childs yesterday, did I, as she didn’t sign the
 
—? Hang on! Is that any way to
 
—? Oh, you will, will you? Why don’t you just come down here and we’ll settle it
 
—?”

He stared at the receiver, then replaced it, grumbling, “Scotland . . . bloody old . . . Yard.”

WELL, WASN’T THIS WAR
just a bushel of discovery
 
—Jamie realized how like his father he was when it suddenly occurred to him that he
liked
people, he liked to be in a group. No loner was he
 
—not like Nigel, who took after the old man in other ways but wanted only a fishing trawler and a locker full of bait. Jamie wanted a crowded homey pub. He very much looked forward to falling in with Balantine’s crew. Sure to be pure relief after two days of . . .

“A flock of ravenous fowl come flying, lured with scent of living carcasses designed for death.”

“Not a very cheerful sort, is he?” said Balantine, who walked backward along the town street, rifle ready, eyes moving.

“No, he wouldn’t be. But it’s not always like that. Some of it’s all right. What will happen when we get to Dunkirk?”

“No idea. I’m sure there’s a plan.”

“Like this one?” Jamie said darkly, taking in the deserted streets. “This wasn’t the plan. We were supposed to stop them.”

“Well, we didn’t, did we? It’s all we talk about.” To the captain, he said, “Come along, sir. This way.”

“His head is pretty bad. Look, I have to warn you, he sort of has these fits. It’s getting a bit better, but he’ll make a horrible groaning sound, sort of turn into himself, and sometimes it gets loud. Lasts only a few minutes, puts the hair straight up your neck, but it does go away.”

“Have you heard the latest on the wounded?” The question sounded sly, like a test.

“Oh, I heard,” Jamie said, his tone answering.

Balantine eyed him. “You sound like me. One of
my
men gets wounded, not gonna leave him for the bloody Germans, I’ll tell you that. I’ll drag him to Dunkirk if I have to.”

Jamie rather liked this Balantine.

“How close do you think they are?” Jamie asked, eyeing the perimeters.

“Don’t know,” he answered. “But they’re coming. Right now, due north is our only hope. I’ll swim for England if I have to.”

“Have you seen action?”

“Some. You?”

“Oh sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams that bring to my remembrance from what state I fell
 
—” Captain Milton stood in the middle of the street and lifted his arms to the sky
 
—“how glorious once above thy sphere, till pride and worse ambition threw me down.”

Jamie jogged back to collect him, answering Balantine over his shoulder, “Yes, if you count fleeing as action. For eight months we were on the French-Belgian line, near a decent little town we’d got to know quite well. All right, Milty? Come along.” He pulled him into step behind Balantine. “Nice place. One of our guys married the daughter of the mayor. Then a week or so ago, the Jerries came down like a thousand thunderstorms. And didn’t we bless Lieutenant Dunn then, for keeping on us without pity at drills. So
there we were, hot at it, finally doing our job, and then suddenly we’re ordered to pull out. Pull out! Couldn’t believe it. What were we
there
for? It was the worst thing in the world. All that training, all the drilling, for what?” His voice dropped to a mutter. “I’ll never forget the looks of the townspeople as we left. Worst day of my bloody life. Treated us like heroes when we came, when we’d not done a bloody thing to earn it, treated us like villains when we left, and we were only obeying orders. Felt rotten, leaving. Felt like we left our own grandmothers defenseless.” He went quiet. “Don’t know what happened to them. It’s like we knew them, you know? They felt like us. Foreign, but like us.”

“Your story sounds just like ours,” said Balantine. “We had a woman come up to our retreating column and throw a pan of dirty dishwater at us. Here we are, mate.”

They stopped in front of a large bluish-gray brick home. The bivouac was well chosen. It was the tallest building at the halfway point of the main street with clear lines of sight in either direction. It was two or three stories high
 
—Jamie couldn’t really tell, because the side they faced was flush, roof to ground, with only one window. He saw a soldier on lookout at the window.

“Look what I’ve found,” Balantine called up.

“Well, there’s a tidy catch for the day.” The soldier nodded at them. “Welcome to Camp Grayling.”

“Private Elliott, meet Lance Corporal Grayling,” Balantine said. “He’s with me, 2nd Grenadiers, artillery, and he’s the senior officer of the lot. Beat out Griggs by enlisting three weeks earlier. Elliott’s with . . . Who are you with again?”

“Queen’s 9th Lancers. Infantry.”

Grayling nodded at Jamie. “Who’s your friend?” The captain had stopped walking when Jamie had put a hand on his shoulder. He stood quietly.

“Don’t know his name, actually. All I know is he’s a captain and
he’s taken a serious head wound.” Jamie twirled a finger at his own head and half mouthed, half whispered, “Gone a bit daft.”

“Come on in, then. Don’t know when you’ve had tea last, but we’ve got lots.”

“I could do for a cup,” Jamie said gratefully.

It suddenly occurred to Jamie that he wanted Milton on his best behavior. When Balantine went through the door first, Jamie held Milton back.

“Look, mate, don’t do anything
 
—”

Stupid
, he was going to say. Don’t make me look like a fool. But Milton made eye contact. Second or third time that had happened, if it didn’t last long; then his gaze drifted, and he looked down at his jacket. Bewildered, he plucked it for something he didn’t recognize.

Jamie tried to smarten him up a bit, tucking in the frayed edges of a hole in his jacket, pulling down a bit of bandage to cover a protruding stitch. “Look, we’re with a unit again. They’re not going to understand all the
 
—”

The captain held his hand up and turned it front and back, looking at his wedding ring.

“Just . . . keep a lid on the poetry, all right?”

“What in me is dark, illumine! What is low, raise and support!”

Jamie sat bolt upright in darkness, heart pounding. He stared about in confusion.

“Shut up, you imbecile!” came a whispered growl from the other side of the room.

“You want the Germans to hear?” hissed another.

“Milton?” The captain was not at his side, where he’d fallen asleep last night. “Where are you?”

“Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled.”

A clatter, and the sound of shattered glass.

“What’s that moron gone and done?” growled the first. Griggs, Jamie thought grimly. The one he didn’t like.

“He’s not a moron.” Jamie grabbed his boots. He pulled them on, wincing as they slid over the arc of blisters. “He’s wounded, and he outranks you.”

Another clatter came from outside the room.

Men came awake, reaching for their rifles.

“What’s going on?” said a groggy Balantine.

“It’s Professor Shakespeare,” Griggs complained. “
I’ll
bloody well kill him before the Germans get a crack at it. Come this far, only to have some nutter give us away. . . .”

“Oh, shut it, Griggsy,” said Grayling, in a wearied tone that sounded well familiar with him. “Elliott?”

“I’ll get him.”

“Baylor’s on watch. You best do so before he puts a hole in him.”

“No luck there,” said Griggs. “The little pansy’s probably reading. Excellent lookout
he
makes. Never sleep a wink when he’s on watch.”

“Shut it, Griggs!”

They’d gone to bed some hours ago, all in various stages of inebriation except for Baylor, who had first watch, and Milton, whom Jamie would not allow to have a drink
 
—especially when Griggs wanted to see if alcohol would make him quote something more entertaining, like Jack London or P. G. Wodehouse.

When Jamie got to the entryway of this living room turned sleeping room, glass crunched under his boots. He peered through the dimness both ways down the hall. No Milton. He turned left and followed the hall to the kitchen, where Baylor sat at the table, reading by candlelight, a rifle propped at his side.

Jamie couldn’t help but agree with Griggs. Seated leisurely at a kitchen table for sentry duty, cozily reading? What a joke. Upstairs, at a window, no candlelight, and no rations if you’re caught doing
anything other than watching
 
—that’s what Lieutenant Dunn would have done.

Baylor looked up, adjusting his glasses. “What’s all the fuss?”

“Have you seen my friend?”

“He went upstairs. Heard them creak. The stairs are down the hall and round the corner to the left. Look what I found.” He closed the book and showed the cover to Jamie:
Le Paradis perdu
. Jamie shrugged. “It’s
Paradise Lost
, in French. Whoever lives here has the most marvelous library. Actually found some of the lines your mate quoted last night. Quite fascinating. Have you read it?”

“Me?” Jamie almost laughed. He wouldn’t be caught dead reading poetry. “No.”

“I have.
Paradise Regained
, too, though Milton should’ve stopped with the first. He said it all with
Paradise Lost
, and far better. By the by, fair warning
 
—you best keep your friend on Griggs’s good side.”

“He has a good side?”

“I have to admit, it’s rather nice for him to pick on someone else for once. Glad your friend doesn’t understand it.”

“He might, and I do. That ‘moron’ is up for the Victoria Cross.”

“Oh, I’m not sure he means anything by it
 
—he’s just angry we’re not fighting. Looking for a whipping boy. Freud calls it displacement.” A creak overhead, and they both looked up. “Speak of the new boy.” He looked at the book. “Has he actually quoted the whole thing, front to back? In order?”

“Not a clue. Not exactly a Milton fan.”

Baylor sat back in his chair. “You really need to report this to someone back home. Had me spellbound last night. Professor Cathay would go mad over him. I really should do a paper on him, for posterity at least. I should take notes. Fascinating overlap of the mental and the physical, don’t you think? We must swap addresses.”

“You’re at university?”

“Oxford,” he said with casual pride.

“What are you
 
—what is your . . . ?” He didn’t run with university blokes, didn’t quite know the lingo.

“My field? Psychology. I know about a dozen professors who’d love to get their hands on him.”

“I better do that myself, before he breaks something else.” He nodded at Baylor, and turned back down the hall.

The floor crunched at the entryway to the sleeping room. There was enough light from the kitchen to see that a framed photograph had fallen from the wall, shattering the glass. Jamie picked up the photograph, studied the French family, put it back on the wall.

He found the stairs and went up, trying to be as quiet as possible.

So much for Milton keeping a lid on it.

Yesterday when they came into the house and everyone had assembled in the kitchen to greet the new arrivals, Milton had acted the strangest yet upon meeting the men
 
—he seemed eager, seemed drawn out of that private little box of his. He was alert and watchful, without looking anyone in the eye. At first Jamie thought it was nervous agitation in being around so many people after days with just the two of them, and hoped it would mean that lid on the poetry he had requested. It was not to be.

Turned out, the captain found opportunities to spout the
most
Miltonage yet, and stuff Jamie had not heard. He acted like a street-smart kid at the edge of a busy road, waiting to dart across at a break in traffic; when a pause in conversation came, off he’d launch into one line after another, just as if he were part of the banter
 
—not that he seemed to understand what was said to him, but certainly as if he expected his comments to be perfectly clear.

As if anyone knew what to do with, “To all the fowls he seems a phoenix!”

Yet, Jamie surprised himself. He found he wasn’t embarrassed at all. He found instead some sort of protection for the man, surely brought about by the duty laid upon him to get him to Dunkirk.
And the man wore a wedding ring. If Jamie couldn’t win this bloody war
 
—if he couldn’t even fight
 
—he’d get this lunatic home to her, and that won something.