WILD DOESN’T RETURN TO BANK.
And then there were four.
Only Julian, Mia, Liz, and Frankie are left in the passageway.
On Monday morning when Julian and Mia arrive at Royal London to visit Duncan, they learn that Wild left on Sunday afternoon for the black market and did not come back. Duncan is in bad shape. He did break his back. Now he’s paralyzed from the waist down. Julian and Mia sit with Duncan into the evening. When the big man finally falls asleep, they leave. They go upstairs to the fourth-floor orphanage to check on the little boy. The nurse administrator shows them the three male babies under a year old that have been brought to the hospital in the last 24 hours. They all look about right, and yet not right.
They don’t know what to think.
Sheila Cozens, on her third straight shift, is angry, exhausted, and has no answers. Yesterday afternoon, Wild asked Sheila for some milk for the baby. He said the child seemed hungry. Sheila got upset with Wild, too. “Where do you think I’m going to get milk from, I said to him.” She told him to go to the fourth floor. The orphanage would know what to feed a baby. He said he would, said goodbye to Duncan and Sheila, and left. That was it. Sheila storms away as if Mia and Julian are strangers.
“She is not very nice today,” Mia says.
“We won’t hold the war against Sheila.” Julian presses his lips against Mia’s head. “Not everyone can be good and kind like you. She lost her parents and her sister, and Duncan is hurt bad. We won’t hold the war against anyone. Except the Germans.”
Mia knows where Wild’s parents moved to after their house burned down: north of Paddington. “Maybe he went to visit them?”
They don’t have the parents’ phone number. They’re stymied. If they go knocking on Barbara Wilder’s door, asking if she’s seen her one remaining son, what happens if the answer is no? Are they going to panic the mother, too? Isn’t there enough frenzy to go around?
* * *
A week later, on a Saturday afternoon in early December, Julian, Mia, Liz, and Frankie drive to Ten Bells for lunch. Julian picks it. It’s Wild’s favorite, and he likes the witty sign on the call board outside. “IN THE EVENT OF AN INVASION, WE SHALL CLOSE FOR A HALF-HOUR.”
After burying her sister, Sheila moved back into her family home in north Islington. Shona is in a rehab unit on the fifth floor of Royal London, learning how to function with one and a half legs. A paraplegic Duncan is there, too. No one knows when or how he’ll be getting out. Shona hobbles on crutches to sit with him every day. Sometimes she stays until after blackout and sleeps in the chair next to his bed.
Yes, our ranks have been depleted, Mia says, raising a mug of beer, but we push on. Like Wild said, things can only improve.
London has suffered before, Liz says. We’ll pull through this, too. We can take it. I just wish Wild would come back.
Hear, hear.
The women speak differently to each other, more formally, as if realizing they too might soon be separated. Julian barely speaks at all. “There has never been any drama in London to compare to the drama of the Battle of Britain—” he starts to say and breaks off, watching helplessly as Liz weeps and says she would take the bombing for five more years if only they could find Wild.
She says it like it’s even a choice.
Craters in the street, cellars open to the air, crumbling walls, gas mains in flames, water pipes burst, pavements crunching with broken glass. Dust everywhere. Glass powder, plaster. Gray ash cinders. London like Pompeii after Vesuvius.
Wild is gone. They’ve checked all the hospitals, Great Ormond, St. Bart’s, St. Mary’s. They even checked St. Thomas across the river. At first they didn’t want to worry his mother, but Duncan gave them her number, and Mia called Barbara Wilder, casual as all that. Oh, hello, just trying to get in touch with Wild, have you seen him? She hadn’t seen him. He missed his weekly visit last Wednesday. She wasn’t too concerned. Sometimes he misses a Wednesday, she said.
After Mia hung up, it was the only time they saw Frankie cry. Frankie! She cried for Wild.
“Oh, guess what?” Liz says at the Ten Bells. “I got a telegram!” She waves it around for emphasis.
Liz got a telegram!
“Congratulations, Liz!” says Mia. “What does it say?”
They wait for her to open it.
It’s from her mother in Birmingham. It says: Do not come home STOP Not even for Christmas STOP Brum bombed STOP Our house gone STOP Shelter in London STOP Be safe STOP Love Mum
Commiserating they pat her back.
That’s okay, Liz says, wiping away her tears. I got a telegram.
Mia tells the girls that Julian keeps trying to persuade her to leave London and travel to Blackpool where her own mum is. She says it in a tone of someone who’s tattletaling on another someone and not even feeling ashamed about it.
“I want you to be with your mother on Christmas,” Julian says. “Why does that make me the bad guy?”
“He’s been trying to get me to leave London since he got here,” Mia says.
“After everything that’s happened, do you feel this is irrational?” Julian says.
“He’s right, Maria,” says Frankie. “You should go.”
“But if Birmingham isn’t safe, how is Blackpool safe?” asks Liz. “Blackpool is much farther away, and the railroad keeps getting bombed.”
“Exactly!” says Mia. “Nowhere is safe.”
“Blackpool is safe,” Julian says.
“But we still have to get there,” Mia says. “And my job is here, and my friends . . .”
“Fewer and fewer,” Julian says.
“Okay, Mr. Brightside,” says Mia, opening the menu, “do you know what you want? Because I’m starving.”
Five minutes after they’ve ordered, there is no siren, but there’s a rumble of plane engines. They groan. A crunching explosion rattles their beers. They hear commotion in the back of the pub. They wait. They don’t know whether to leave and try somewhere else, or to stay put. The Germans were on their way to elsewhere. (“Maybe Blackpool?”) They dropped a stray bomb on the Ten Bells just to fuck with them.
“We’re never letting Julian choose where we eat again,” Frankie says.
“Good call,” Mia says. “Jules is a bomb magnet.”
They’ve already ordered so they decide to wait a bit longer.
Ten minutes later, the pale but composed waitress appears with their food.
“Sorry the lunch is a bit dusty, mates,” she says, primly setting down the tray with the plates. “The ceiling’s down in the kitchen.”
After she leaves, they have a laugh and raise a glass to the steadfast British woman, not easily rattled. “Nothing can replace the grace of London town,” Julian says.
“Sometimes when things look bleak,” says Mia, “and we feel a little down, we might say what’s the use? What’s the use of anything, we wail. But those with whom you share your pot and your bed and your bread will not say that. Those with whom you share your days will never say that. And that is worth a great deal.”
“Because what matters most is how you walk through the fire,” says Julian.
Hear, hear. Julian, Mia, Liz, and Frankie raise their pints to London.
And then, another stray bomb falls outside the Ten Bells windows.