Inexpressible Island
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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.
“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.”
“I’m a doctor, Luce.”
“I’m a nurse, Mum.”
“They have plenty of other doctors, other nurses.”
“No, they don’t.”
“I told my kids—peace, war, no matter what, we’re staying together,” Lucinda tells Julian. “No one is getting evacuated.”
“And here we all are, Mum,” Sheila says. “Staying together. Going out together on the Mobile Unit. Mum, Kate, want to come? So we can all stay together?”
“Don’t be cheeky,” Lucinda says. “Someone has to stay with your sister.”
The siren continues to wail.
“Mia,” Julian calls out, “you don’t happen to have an extra coat for me, do you?” Why is he always grubbing for a cloak?
The passageway quietens down. The pitched warble above is the only sound.
“Why did you call me that?” she says. “No one calls me Mia but my mum.”
“Yeah,” Finch says. “Her name is Ma-ri-a.”
“You can pronounce your own girlfriend’s name?” Wild says. “Well done!” He throws Julian one of his coats. “Here, take mine. Let’s go.”
“I don’t mind you calling me that, by the way,” Mia says quietly to Julian in the stairwell. “I just wanted to know why you did, that’s all.”
“I knew someone like you once,” Julian says. “Her name was Mia.”
Mia smiles. “Yeah, but did she look like me?”
“She looked just like you.”
He doesn’t meet her questioning eye as they climb the stairs.
6
Musketeers
THE STREET IS COLD AND DARK. JULIAN BUTTONS HIS COAT. They feel their way down Princes Street, down the block-long granite sidewall of the Bank of England. The Rescue Squad jeep and the Heavy Mobile Unit medical truck are parked behind the bank on Lothbury. Julian doesn’t know how anyone can find Lothbury. He cannot see his hand before his face. In the blacked-out city, the streetlights are off, and the windows are covered with curtains. The night sky is under cloud. Finch gets behind the wheel of the jeep, Duncan rides shotgun, Julian, Mia, and Wild pile in the back. Phil, Sheila, Shona, and Frankie ride separately in the HMU van.
Julian had gambled on where he might end up and has read a bit about the Battle of Britain, about the bombs and the ruins. Here’s what he didn’t read about: under the night sky, the relentless air raid alarm is an insanity maker. It’s an echoey, up and down howling of a million wolves. Julian doesn’t know how everyone doesn’t plug up their ears and scream. His compatriots seem a lot calmer than he is, even the girl.
Especially the girl.
“Where are we headed to tonight, dove?” Finch says to her.
Leaning over Julian’s lap, Mia sticks her head out the window and listens to the drone of the enemy plane engines. Julian sucks in his breath and closes his eyes. Do any of us really know where we’re going, C.J.?
“Let’s drive to Stepney,” she says, settling back between Julian and Wild. “Something always falls near the docks.” She glances at Julian. He attempts to affect a neutral face. “Stepney, Wapping, Bethnal Green, Shadwell. All of East End is in pretty bad shape. Where are you from, Julian?”
“The East End,” Julian replies. “The East End originally,” he amends, knowing he won’t be able to fake a “been there, seen that” indifference to the coming destruction. “I’ve been away. Is Finch going to turn the lights on?” Finch is driving without them.
Mia shakes her head. “Can’t. Not allowed.”
“He plans to drive all the way to Stepney in the dark?”
“That’s one of Finch’s many gifts,” Mia says.
“You mean his only gift,” says Wild.
“Shut up, Wild.”
“Finch knows the city like a blind man,” Mia says.
“And drives like one,” says Wild as the jeep rattles over a pothole.
“You’re not in the Rescue Squad, are you?” Julian asks Mia. Women aren’t allowed to join the Home Guard, he refrains from adding. It’s for their own safety.
“I am,” she replies. “From the side. I’m with the Women’s Voluntary Services.”
“So what do you do?” Stay in the truck? Keep it running?
“Anything. Everything. Depending on what needs doing. Tonight, for example, you can help by being security with Dunk and Wild until the police come.”
Finch scoffs. “What’s he going to be able to do? You might want to put a glove on that hand of yours, mate. Might appear more menacing.”
“He’ll act menacing,” Mia says. “You’re a pretty good actor, right?” Lightly she nudges Julian. “They liked you tonight. They’ve been getting quite bored with me. Maybe we can put on something else for them if we make it out alive.”
If we make it out alive? She says it so carelessly. It’s a good thing it’s dark, and she can’t see the expression on his face.
With the streets empty of vehicles and people, it takes Finch less than seven minutes to get from the Bank of England to Commercial Street, where he pulls up to a curb and idles the engine. Even though it’s cold, everyone leaves their windows rolled down. The rumble of a hundred enemy planes is not distant enough.
It takes Julian a few moments to figure out that the squad is waiting to see where the bombs will drop. But what if the bombs fall on Commercial Street? he wants to ask. What if the bombs fall on the jeep where they sit and wait? The rising and falling of the piercing siren has not stopped. The sky flares up, followed by the sound of thunder. The night air is suddenly not as dark. In the brief bursts of light, he can see Mia’s calm, focused face.
Lightning.
Thunder.
Rise and fall of the wolf howl.
Like fireworks at a state fair, one two three, a dozen flares all at once, still at some distance downriver. The sound of long booms and sharp cracks gets nearer, grows louder. The bombs whistle and explode. It’s one of the most unnerving noises Julian has ever heard. He can’t help himself. Turning slightly, he leans against Mia. He wants to cover her with his body. Why would anyone be out in this awful ruckus? It’s like being out in a category 5 hurricane.
Lightning is followed by instant thunder over the buildings a few blocks away. Brick-busting explosions, plumes of flame, smoke.
There’s screaming.
“Now we go,” Mia says.
Finch shifts into drive and races the jeep around the corner, to one of the narrow residential side streets.
Between rows of terraced houses, two bombs have fallen in the street. Choking dusty wreckage rises in the air and small fires light up the cratered holes in the smashed-up homes, windows blown out, doors blown off. The street is littered with brick and wood and glass. There is some human exclamation, but not much on balance, not very much at all, considering. As they get out of the vehicle, Julian hears someone say, rather calmly, “Bloody hell.”
Three women covered in black ash stand crying. One of them holds a small child. Wild immediately goes to her and tells her to move away from the house. She refuses. There’s a fire in her kitchen, she says, and she just had the cabinets redone, “last spring!” The fire brigade is nowhere to be found. Julian feels that the woman’s renovated kitchen might not be the brigade’s priority. Four other houses on their street need dousing, and on the next street, the fire already rages. Julian can see it over the rooftops. Because of the fire, there is now light. Night is now day. It’s a perversion of what’s good in the world.
From the back of the jeep, Wild grabs one of the buckets filled with sand and runs into the woman’s house, through the gaping hole in the wall. He heads to the kitchen.
“What is he doing?” Julian asks Duncan, watching Wild fling sand on the woman’s cabinets. “By himself, with one arm? Why don’t you go help him?”
“You go help him,” Duncan rejoins. “Wild used to be a fireman. Who else is crazy enough to run inside a burning house? Don’t worry about him. He’s wearing a flameproof coat. He knows what he’s doing.”
The HMU with Shona at the wheel and Phil Cozens shotgun pulls up to Finch, patrolling the street to assess the damage. Finch gives Phil the all clear—meaning there are no injuries at the moment requiring the doctor’s immediate attention. This does not seem credible to Julian.
“Duncan, go!” Mia calls, gesturing down the street. Standing next to Julian, Duncan doesn’t move. “You’re needed there, not here,” she says, stepping over the bricks in the street to get closer to them. “Wild will be fine.” Julian resists the urge to give her his hand. “Julian, will you go with Duncan, please? The valuables in the bombed houses need to be protected from looters.” She must see Julian’s expression because she shrugs. “War brings out the worst in some people. Though not that many, fortunately. But if they do come, it’s immediately after the bombing. They hurry to get here before the police do.”
“The thieves like the jewelry,” Duncan says, “but prefer not to put themselves in any real danger.”
Mia nods. “Somehow they always manage to find the street with the least catastrophic damage.”
Julian glances up and down the block. “This is not catastrophic damage?”
Mia chuckles. “I thought you were from the East End? This is nothing. No real fire, no major casualties. Go, you two. Take the cricket bats.”
“Don’t need a cricket bat,” says Julian.
“I’ll take one,” Duncan says to Mia. “But I don’t need him. I’ll be fine. What’s he gonna do?”
“Wait, where are you going?” Julian catches Mia’s arm. “Don’t wander off,” he says, holding her. “It’s not safe.” The planes have droned off farther west. But the street is full of flying debris, of falling unstable beams. The air raid siren continues to howl.
“What do you think I do, sit in the car and knit like Lucinda?” Mia says. But she hasn’t disengaged from him.
“That sounds wise.”
“Wise but not helpful. Look at that poor woman.” Mia points down the block where a dusty disheveled older woman stands wailing. “I’m going to help her get her things out before the house falls on her head.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” Julian says earnestly.
Mia chuckles, as if he is being so funny! and rushes off. Julian fights off the urge to rush after her.
Duncan smirks with amusement.
“What?”
“Nothing. Stay put. Watch over Wild. He should be done soon.” Both men shake their heads as Wild swats one-armed at the remnants of the flame, using blankets and a piece of cardboard. “He’s bloody mental,” Duncan says with gruff affection. “As if the mother is going to be able to warm up the milk for her baby in that kitchen. What’s the difference if her house burns down now or is demolished in a week? There’s no repairing it. Kitchen cabinets! Mental, I tell you. Stay with him, okay?” He walks away.
“If you need help, holler,” Julian calls after Duncan, who turns, glances at Julian’s fingerless hand, and says yeah, I’ll be sure to do that.
A minute later, Wild comes to stand by Julian’s side, smelling of heat and smoke.
“How did you do?”
“Not great. There’s no saving that kitchen.”
“You knew that going in, though, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Wild says. “But you gotta do what you can. What are you standing guard for?”
“Doing what I can.”
“Duncan left you alone? That fucker.”
“Not alone,” Julian says. “With you. We’re going to protect this house together, Wild.”
“Nah,” Wild says. “I’m no good in a scuffle. Not anymore. I know my limits.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Sometimes those bastards bring sticks and bricks. We need Duncan. Duncan!”
Julian stops him. “We don’t need him, and he’s busy besides. Just stand on my right, will you? And look tough.”
“I got no problem looking tough,” Wild says, moving around to Julian’s right. “But usually only Duncan can take care of the looters.”
“Tonight, you and I are going to take care of them.”
With skepticism but no fear, Wild points at Julian’s hand. “You want my glove to cover that up? As it so happens, I have an extra.” He grins.
Julian shakes his head. “I want whoever comes to see my hand. It acts like an anesthetic. It lulls my opponents into a false sense of confidence in their own strength. My missing fingers become my lucky fingers.” He smiles.
“Okay, say they’re lulled. Then what?”
“Then, you and I will solve problems together. We’ll get creative.”
“I can’t use a bat.”
“Do you see a bat on me?” Julian says. “But you should carry a knife, Wild.” Recalling Edgar Evans’s Bowie knife that saved his life even as it nearly ended it.
“I’m a righty. Can’t use a knife with my left hand.”
“Sure you can. I was a righty, too. Once.”
Wild appraises the severed half-hand, the man. “You want to show me how?”
“Not in the next five minutes. Have you got a hammer at least?”
“For you?”
“No, for you.”
Wild shakes his incredulous head.
“What, you can’t even swing a hammer left-handed? You just spent fifteen minutes whacking a useless kitchen cabinet!”
For now, knifeless and batless and hammerless, Julian and Wild stand shoulder to shoulder on a pile of bricks and wood. The siren wails up and down. What has Julian’s girl gotten herself into? Doesn’t she know it’s the end of the line?
“Stepney has it worse,” Wild says as they wait. “Anything near the river is a shambles. That’s how you gotta look at everything—some poor fucker somewhere has it worse. Like: sure my arm is gone, but that’s why the good Lord thought to give me a spare.”
“How’d you lose it?”
“Don’t want to talk about it.”
Julian glances at Wild’s suddenly distorted face, at his body struggling not to double over, and looks away.
The ambient light from the nearby fires illuminates the street. In the glimmer, Julian’s eyes search for Mia. He spots her a few houses down, comforting the old woman who has stopped wailing. His gaze steadies and rests on her. When he blinks, he catches Wild staring at him.
“Who are you?” Wild says. “It’s like you know Folgate from another life.”
“That must be it.” He nudges his new friend. “Heads up,” Julian says quietly. “On my ten.”
From the left, three young guys appear stealthily out of the darkness, heading for the house in front of which Wild and Julian stand. “See, if you hadn’t put out the fire in the damn kitchen, they’d walk right past us,” Julian says to Wild, and louder to the trio, “Move along. You have no business here.”
“And what business do you have here?” one of them says.
Wild shows them his Home Guard badge.
“Step out of the way, cripple,” an intense-looking chap says, approaching them. “You too, old man,” he says to Julian. “You don’t want to get hurt.”
“You don’t want to get hurt,” Julian says.
“Nice one, Jules,” Wild whispers.
“Thanks, Wild.”
The three boys laugh. They taunt Julian. “What are you going to do, swat at us? Point at us with your pointer?”
“He can’t even make a V sign!”
Julian turns his body sideways and kicks the talking bloke straight in the chest. The guy falls backwards. His head hits the bricks. “Move, Wild,” Julian says, and to the attackers, “Go on, you two. I told you, you don’t want to get hurt.”
The two young men menace Julian, both edging to his right, where they assume he is weakest. One guy swings a stick. Julian catches the stick in the crook of his right elbow and chops the guy on the side of the neck with his open left palm. The boy reels, is thrown off balance, and now Julian is armed. He hits the guy once on the forearm and even harder across his shoulder, all secondary but debilitating injuries. He squares off against the remaining youth. “Did you see how gently I tapped your friend’s arm with his own stick?” Julian says. “I could’ve bashed him in the face. And then he’d be dead. But, the night is still young. So what would you like to do? Run? Or fence?”
The dude clearly has learned nothing. He swings. Julian blocks, and kicks him in the knee. Howling, the guy drops to the ground. The entire confrontation has taken no more than twenty seconds.
Wild is overjoyed. “Finch, Dunk!” he yells. “Come here. I can’t fucking believe it! Did you see that?”
“He hit the dirt with such a beautiful thud,” Julian says with a light smile.
Finch and Duncan run over. Finch is not overjoyed. “No reason to knock them out like that,” he says dourly. “The cops will be here soon.”
“And now there’s less for them to do,” says Julian.
“Don’t listen to a word Finch says, Jules,” Duncan says. “That was amazing.”
“You got lucky, that’s all,” Finch says. “You caught them off guard.”
“You’re right, I did,” Julian says agreeably. “Otherwise I wouldn’t stand a chance.” He winks at Wild.
Wild throws his one arm around Julian. “Jules, you’ve been baptized by fire. You’re now officially a member of our Ten Bells Watch. Finch, go get him a Home Guard badge.”
“I can’t get him anything without an ID.”