Toad in the Hole (13 page)

Spotting a roundabout, a cold sweat broke on my forehead. “Sonny, I barely evaded Turkish kidnappers. You can’t expect me to have a night out on the town to watch lions jump through hoops.”

“I’m not suggesting we faff around, it’s the nearest underground.”

“Subway?” I asked.

“It’s the quickest way in and out of London.”

“Then what?” Travis asked.

Sonny wiped his sleeve on his mouth. “Then we forget any of us ever met.”

‘Boozy breath’ navigated and we aimlessly drove around a few loopdeloos before reaching the subway station. Abandoning the van in a no parking zone, we hustled away. Outside of the underground, my heart strained against my ribs.

Travis traced a finger across the rail lines on a map. “Brown line to the yellow line. Quick and easy. Sonny, where do you live?”

Head down, I traced my eyebrows with my fingertips. My heart lodged in my throat and my brain went all fuzzy. “Please tell me one of you has the oyster brooch.”

Travis looked to me, then to Sonny. Sonny mirrored Travis, and swayed his head between the two of us. In a wobbly motion, Sonny’s feet dragged and wavered like a puppet. The empty bottle dropped from his hand and clattered on the ground. Slumped against the wall, gravity pulled his bottom downward. “If word leaks it will be an embarrassment to the nation.”

“Everyone embarrasses themselves.” Travis frowned at me. “Some more than others.”

I smacked his arm.

“Ouch.”

Keep it together, O’Brien. We got a situation on our hands. Seems Sonny has hit a wall.

“Sonny, Sonny,” I called.

The jeweler’s face was a blank smile. “I’m a bit tiddled.”

Leaning in close, I fought the ripe odor that wafted from his pores. Lifting an eyelid with my thumb, I peered into his eyes for signs of life and he belched in my face.

“What are we going to do with him?” Travis asked.

NOTE TO SELF

The brooch is a goner and it’s my fault.

U
nexpected
C
argo

T
ucked against Travis’s bare chest, I ignored the blunt object that thumped my shoulder. A seasoned boater, I was now accustomed to rocking and the noises that pinged and creaked. Even from the docks, London street traffic bustled late into the night, and I’d lain awake next to a slumbering Travis while reeling through the day’s events in my head. At this point, I actually had more questions than answers, and it was near dawn when a frustrated exhaustion eventually lulled me to sleep.

A window in the cabin had been left open and above the quilt, the temperature hovered low enough to keep a slab of meat chilled. Under the covers our body heat had calibrated at that perfect not-too-hot, not-too-cold temperature. It was as though I was sleeping on clouds, and I didn’t dare move even an eyelid.

“Lass, you decent under there?”

Sleep deprivation and funky food consumption had me delirious. That had to be it. It was the tinned Heinz baked beans and bangers we’d cooked on the makeshift stove last night. Brown food after ten p.m. can’t be digestively healthy. That and the half pack of cigarettes I managed to puff through on deck.

“We had visitors, but don’t worry, I unmoored us,” the voice said.

Wrenching an eye open, I caught a close up of Sonny’s cane. He held it backward, and kept tapping me with the curved bit, which helped my mind rewind. The throb in my bad shoulder prodded an image to appear of Travis and I hauling a scotch-soaked Sonny on and off the underground. Not knowing what to do with him, we’d brought him back to
Her Grace
and plunked his ass onto the cushioned galley bench for the night.

“I’ve been steering
Her Grace
, but it’s not working.”

My tee shirt had bunched against my ribs and as Travis’s warm hand slid forward—off my hip toward my stomach,—I had to concentrate to focus.

“Sonny, quit talking gibberish. It’s still dark outside.”

“Just. It’s nearly six.”

“A.M?” I whined.

“What visitors?” Travis asked.

“Not sure. They pulled up in a big black paddy wagon. My guess is police. I didn’t like the look of them.”

GG hadn’t been keen to meet the authorities either, but maybe they could stop Ahmed and his goons. “Where are they now?” I asked.

A wry smile cracked the corners of Sonny’s thin lips. I had a front row view of his beard stubble, a mix of ginger and gray. His teeth, the color of a meadow of golden rod at summer’s end, zigzagged across his gums.

“They’re gone now. We slipped away.”

“We’re on a boat. How did we slip away?”

“I told you. I unmoored us.”

Travis stirred and let a cold draft creep under the covers. “I don’t hear the motor. Who’s captaining?”

A nearby horn blared. Throwing the covers off, Travis bolted off the foot of the bed. Shirtless, in his new Egyptian cotton boxers he lunged to the cockpit. “We’re adrift on the Thames,” he shouted.

Serenity under Travis’s arms—in the perfect temperature bedding—and the chance of a spontaneous romantic something, was kyboshed down the well-of-missed-moments. I made a mental note to inflict extreme pain onto Sonny for ruining my alone time with Travis and for whatever else he’d done to the narrowboat.

“Rachael, get out here. There’s a container ship coming.”

Hustling past Sonny while pulling my tee down to cover my panties, I poked my head outside the cabin. Daylight had begun to lighten the silver sky and on the plus side, it wasn’t raining.

“Where are the keys?” Travis screeched.

We were the middle of the Thames and I tried to gauge if Blackfriars Pass was ahead of us or behind us. The freighter in the distance approached us like the rising sun. And like the rising sun, it swept a growing wake behind it.

Sonny dangled a jangly keychain. “Right here.”

“Not your keys. The boat keys.”

Her Grace
drifted and bobbed in the river’s current in the mammoth ship’s path. “Travis, there’s a wake. It’s gonna be big.”

He dug through cubbies near the tiller and looked on the floor. “There’s a good chance we are going to sink.”

“I don’t swim.” Sonny confessed.

Last night, we came into the locked cabin, so we had to have the keys. I toggled the events through my head: Put Sonny in a deck chair. Unlocked cabin. Checked on Sonny. Smoked cigarette. Unpacked groceries and bottled water supplies from dockhand. Found Guinness. Drank one. Travis massaged my aching feet. Checked on slumbering Sonny and smoked a cigarette. Travis modeled his new jeans and rugby shirt. Drank another Guinness to settle nerves while Travis worked the knots out of my dodgy shoulder. I realized with certainty that the brooch was no longer in my possession. Travis scolded me for smoking another cigarette. Stomach grumbled. Cooked beans and bangers—some kind of English sausage—not code for having sex, but hopeful. Went on deck to offer Sonny some food. He didn’t open his eyes. Got changed into clean clothes from Marks and Spencer. Took keys out of jean jacket pocket and put them in the refrigerator Tupperware container with money. Ha.

I shouted as I ran. “In the fridge. Tupperware container.”

Travis beat me to the container and pitched the keys in my direction. Fumbling with the metal bits, I lodged the largest key into the starter and didn’t breathe until she turned over. Holiday narrowboats are not speed boats and when I shifted the gas gear forward, the metal and wood beneath me didn’t lurch ahead. Instead, it ground, spat, and puttered resentment. There was no outrunning the giant ship. At best-case scenario, I’d clear the middle of the river and angle us to take the wave it generated head on. Travis and Sonny hurried to batten down the cabin windows.

“Rach,” Travis lectured, “why not tell the police about the attempted kidnap?”

Sonny shook his head. “I don’t trust them. They may have been paid off. We can’t risk information falling into the wrong hands. We have a saying here in England,
Help the police—beat yourself up
.”

“Brace yourselves. I see whitecaps.” I shouted.

“This is why I don’t drive,” Sonny said.

“What information? We don’t have any information,” Travis said.

“Um. Er. Lad, what was your name again?”

“You don’t remember my name?” Travis squeaked.

“Last night isn’t very clear, help an old man out, will ya?”

Even though the deck chairs were roped to the rail, they clanked and rattled. “Here it comes,” I yelled. Gripping the tiller hard, I was knocked off balance and Sonny and Travis ate it as a sheet of water washed over the wood deck. The bow pivoted and dropped half a dozen more times, the rolling effect lessening with each crest and plunge.

“We’re through. Everyone okay?” I asked.

“Wet,” Travis remarked as he helped Sonny to his feet.

“Look for a landmark so we can make our way to Blackfriars Pass.”

Sonny paced, his hand trembling. “We can’t go back.”

“I was accosted last night. Practically kidnapped. My grandmother’s brooch has been stolen. What am I going to tell her when and if we find her in Stratford? We have to.”

Settling onto a kitchen counter stool, Sonny sank his face in his hands.

Crouching onto a step near where I steered, Travis said, “We need a plan.”

Sonny popped his head up. “We’ll go to my house in the country.”

“You have a country house?” I asked.

“No, it’s a house in the countryside, in Stoke Bruerne, South Northhamptonshire to be precise.”

“We can’t abandon the boat,” Travis said.

“It’s off the Grand Union Canal, on your way to Stratford.”

“My grandmother’s directions say we should take the Oxford Canal. Are you messing with us?”

“Of course not. The Grand Union Canal also leads to Stratford, and it’ll be quicker. We need to keep things quiet. Think this through. You can spend a night or two at my place.”

I’d known Sonny for less than twenty-four hours. He was quirky, liked to swill hard liquor, had some ties to the crown jewels, my oyster brooch, and my grandmother. Ahmed had converted a good chunk of my fear into anger, and with the anger came determination to unravel this riddle. I didn’t know if I should believe Sonny or go with him. I didn’t have a choice, he was my only lead.

NOTE TO SELF

The brooch is gone, could it be for the best?

J
ULY 1988

T
hird
W
heel

B
eing in close quarters with a guy you find attractive and who you think is attracted to you even though he’s gay can go one of two ways. Underneath my outward smartass cynicism, I’m a positive person. And I thought if anything between us were ever to happen, it would be on this trip. In the back of my mind, I wondered if Travis would be the person who would make me forget the other southern men I’d rendezvoused with. That fantasy would have seemed more plausible if I got to spend some quality alone time with him.

Green and brown triangles were arranged in a felt track on the game board. Dice clunked the dinged wood edges and Sonny chuckled, “Laddie, prepare to part with another shilling.”

“Not on your life. You’ll be carrying a lighter load in those weighty pockets.”

Travis and Sonny had a newfound addiction: backgammon. Their tournament started where the Thames met the Grand Union Canal. The only time they stopped was when it was Travis’s turn to steer, when we passed through a lock, or when we went ashore to use facilities and get supplies. At first I didn’t mind. I was glad to be alive, out of London, and en route to Stratford-upon-Avon to meet up with GG and Edmond. But the board game had become an obsession with them. I needed answers that Sonny pushed off, regularly inserting one of three excuses: “We’ve plenty of time to talk.” “I need a rest.” “After the next game.”

My American companion was no help. Kicked back, downing brewskies, he seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened and that could still happen.

Once we passed through the Hanwell locks and cleared a handful of bridges, we’d given Sonny a chance to steer, but he’d run the bow hard into a piling at the Anchor Pub. Pier-crashing cooled his captaining confidence and he settled in as a passenger.

The rain stopped and warm, sunshine-filled days settled into comfortable evenings cooled by the river water. We glided by umpteen residences through towns from Watford to Leighton Buzzard, and passed under a gazillion bridges with names like Wolf, Bull, and Rigby. They opened to rows of shoulder-to-shoulder brick semi-detached brownstones clustered in villages that abutted next to the canal. Sometimes in the midst of countryside, a rural home could be seen through a clearing on a hillside or beyond a stone wall enclosed pastures. The picture perfect landscape popped with ivy, petunias, and primrose trailing down pots and baskets at nearly every distant cottage.

“The paths that run next to the canal,” Sonny said, “were for horses to pull the narrowboats before they had engines.”

“What’d they do about the long tunnels?” Travis asked.

“Aye, the boat crews would lie on their backs on deck and walk the boats through with their feet.”

By day the rectangular windows surrounding the boat cabin were left open, and unless we needed food or a drink, we all stayed on deck. The reason was unspoken: day two up the canal, three people on a boat. No shower, no washing machine, cell-size accommodations. At least Travis and I had clothes to change into. Besides borrowing Travis’s t-shirt, Sonny was in the same pants he’d worn in London. When I suggested he might want to freshen his shirt, his shoulders straightened and he’d asked me “What for,” so I let it drop.

Before we reached London, we’d rescued an old lawn chair tangled in shallow reeds and put it next to the exposed tiller. It allowed the captain to zone out on straight passes, take in the flowers, the country meadows, the occasional fish leaping out of the glass top water for a fly. It was my turn to captain again and impatience swelled. Up to this point, I’d been gracious about being outvoted on choosing pub stops, and held my tongue even though I knew that Travis was gypping me out of free time, claiming he was about to crush Sonny in some rematch. I listened to everything they said. It wasn’t eavesdropping since there was nowhere to go to not hear their conversation. Travis was a smart guy. He knew this whole brooch thing charted murky waters. I figured he was befriending Sonny so he could get the back-story. But that hadn’t happened, and I now doubted his crack-Sonny’s-wall-of-silence skills.