AND THEN THERE WERE TWO.
Before they go to King’s Cross and leave London, Julian asks the cab driver to take them to Baker Street. Julian wants to show Mia a café. Of course, it’s not warm; it’s terrible out, there’s snow on the ground, and she’s not wearing a summer dress, and the red beret is gone, gone, gone, but there’s a café on Baker Street that looks . . . well, if not quite right, it looks familiar. He wants to show it to Mia, to see if it jogs her memory. To see if her standing on that street nudges something well-known in his own heart. He wants to see if there’s a small glimpse of the fading dream he can catch with her in their all too real life.
The café is shuttered. The golden awning is pulled up. The large glass window has been blown out and plywood is nailed in its place. The sidewalk is mush and black mud and ice. Mortar dust melts into the water, covering their boots and the hems of their coats in granite glue.
“This is what you wanted to show me?” Mia says.
“I had a dream that I waited for you at a table outside a café like this one,” Julian says. “Not quite like this.”
“I should hope not. This is the pits.”
“There was sun, and a bus, and cabs. Does it look familiar?” He hangs his head. It’s unrecognizable even to him.
“It doesn’t and let’s go,” she says, taking his good arm. It’s hard for her to stand, to walk. “I don’t want to miss the train because we’re gawping at some non-existent thing.”
“It’s not non-existent,” Julian mutters inaudibly. “It’s just invisible to the naked eye. Like time.”
At King’s Cross, there’s one train headed to Leeds. It’s not a direct train, there are several stops and a change in Sheffield. Great, Julian thinks. Sheffield comes under heavy attack sometime in December 1940. He wishes he could remember the day. But if it hasn’t happened already, they’re fast running out of December days. Which means it’s still up ahead. No one can say for sure how long it will take to get to Leeds. No one can even say how long it will take to get to Sheffield, a hundred and seventy miles away. The civilian train must stop and wait for the military trains to pass before proceeding. No trains run past eight p.m., not even military. It’s not safe. They stop on the tracks to wait out the darkness in case of an attack. If there is bombing and the tracks get broken, they need to be fixed before travel can resume. Track engineers are few and far between.
When Mia hears the litany of assault on British Rail, she stares at Julian interminably, as if something is happening here that she doesn’t understand and is afraid to ask about. Why would you be taking me into the war zone, the mute question in her eyes reads. Why would you think this is a good idea? He doesn’t return her gaze.
It’s three in the afternoon by the time the train pulls out of King’s Cross, traveling slow. There is no first class or coach. There is only train. She sits on his left by the window, looking desperately forlorn. Julian wants to put his arm around her, but they’re both so injured.
Be careful with your body. Flesh is mortal. It can and will perish.
“It’s been so blitzy the last few weeks, hasn’t it?” Mia says, as if reading his mind.
“It has.” Julian helps her light a cigarette with the lighter that says sad girls smoke a lot.
“I’m a little bit down today,” she says, her eyes welling up. “I’m not as beautiful when I’m not happy, right?”
“Still more beautiful than anyone,” he says, stroking her bandaged head. “The sadness levels the playing field slightly.”
“Is there any food?”
They didn’t bring much. They can’t carry much. Julian has a bottle of whiskey in his coat, cigarettes for her, old bread, and a bar of chocolate. She eats the bar of chocolate by the time they stop for the night, somewhere near Stevenage. They’re barely out of London.
She closes her eyes. He watches over her. God above, help her. Mia, once I saw you holding a baby. All of it a mirage. The sight, the baby, you. Do you remember? We sat in Grey Gardens and held baby Jacob on our laps and pretended he was ours. It was summer. We were warm, you made jokes. We thought the worst thing that could happen to us was those hateful Pye women trailing us through the halcyon London streets.
* * *
Early the next morning, the train resumes its sclerotic pace across the wintry British countryside. They’re traveling north to Sheffield by taking the more easterly route through Cambridge, to get as far as possible from the continuously assaulted Coventry. From the restaurant car, Julian gets them some fresh bread, hot tea, a pat of rationed butter, and some rationed cheese, and he and Mia pass the time, reading the names of the towns outside their windows and imagining living in them.
They manage to get past Cambridge and then stop for nearly half a day. The tracks have been blown up. While they wait for them to be fixed, the conductor turns off the engine because it’s unpatriotic to waste coal, even though human beings might freeze. The train stands forsaken between a field and a forest, somewhere between Biggleswade and Bulby. Mia says she’d like to live in Bulby. Julian prefers Biggleswade.
Hours later, the tracks are fixed, and the train moves on, traveling barely twenty miles before darkness falls. But this time they’re between two open fields and no cover. The engineer comes through and tells everyone to disembark for their own safety. If the Germans fly overhead and see the train laid out and exposed on the main tracks, it will be the first thing they’ll bomb. The conductor recommends finding shelter in the woods, half a mile away, or three miles down the road in a town called Over. Maybe they could find some shelter there, but they must be back at the train by seven a.m. tomorrow . . .
It snowed, and a white film covers the earth. The temperature dipped right before freezing, and the film has turned to ice. The train turns off its lights. No one leaves. Staying on the train may be more dangerous, but it’s blackout in the countryside, and the train is still a few degrees warmer than out there.
Julian asks the conductor for some blankets. The man doesn’t have enough blankets for everyone and can’t be seen favoring Julian. He’ll have a mutiny on his hands. But for ten pounds, the conductor takes pity on them, and allows them to sneak into the luggage car, away from prying eyes. He brings them some blankets, a candle, and even some bandages. “Her head gash needs to be cleaned,” the conductor says, handing them a bucket of snow. “I’ll lock you in here but don’t get so drunk that you burn the place down.”
“We make no promises,” says Mia.
Julian washes out Mia’s scalp wound with the melted snow water and whiskey and then rebandages her. He takes off his coat and vest and shirt, and shivers in the cold while she cleans his back and rebandages him with the gauze that’s left.
“Look at us fussing over each other like monkeys at Regent’s Zoo,” she says. “And we’re locked in a cage like monkeys, too.”
Before she helps him put on his shirt, she holds out his left arm and studies the tattoos upside down. She sits next to him on a steamer trunk and reads the inky names to herself, running her finger over each one, from his wrist to the crook of his elbow, as her mouth forms the words.
“How have I not noticed these before?” she says.
“How hard were you looking?”
“At the Savoy I didn’t see them.”
“How hard were you looking at the Savoy?”
They glance at each other ruefully. “Time for a drink,” she says, helping him with his shirt and vest.
“Just one?”
They drink; they count their days. It’s the 14th of December. What should we drink to?
They’re not for want of things to drink to. Soon they’ll be for want of drink.
To London!
To Blackpool!
To Churchill!
To Christmas!
To Bank!
To the stage!
To Finch!
To their friends!
God bless them, Mia says. Finch was a good guy. You would’ve liked him.
I already liked him, Julian says. He was funny.
Not on purpose, Mia says.
That’s why he was funny.
They drink to their wounds, she drinks to his missing fingers. She kisses the nubs, one, two, three, and drinks to them again. This is how you know we can’t get married for real, she says. You’re missing your ring finger.
He raises his left hand—with all the fingers.
Oh, yeah. She giggles.
They wonder if they’ve had enough to drink.
Heartily they conclude they haven’t.
Because they forgot to sing.
They sing, “God Save the King.” Julian keeps singing “God Save the Queen” instead. His daughter is going to be queen when he dies, he explains.
Yes, all sorts of things will happen in the far-away future, Mia says. But the King is still a young man. Victoria lived until she was ninety.
And because he’s had too much to drink, Julian says, the King won’t live until ninety. He smokes too much. He’s going to get lung cancer.
Mia puts down her shaky cigarette. You can be a real pill sometimes, she says.
I said the King, not you. Julian flinches from his own words. Terrible ignorance is better than terrible knowledge. Yet no one can protect us if we are not ready. Sometimes they can’t protect us even when we are. Not because they won’t. Because they can’t. I carry oil in my lamp. And yet the day of your death is near. I am your grave. As you are mine. You are my grace. But am I yours?
What else, weepy Nostradamus? What else do you know, Mr. Seer of Seers, Mr. Smarty Pants? Will Hitler win?
No.
Will he invade England?
No.
Will the bombing stop?
Yes. In the spring.
Really, spring? The war will be over in the spring?
No. Only the bombing. Will pause, not end.
Where is Wild?
I don’t know.
What’s going to happen to you and me?
I don’t know.
Will Liz and Nick make it?
I don’t know.
So, when will the war be over?
I told you. 1945.
But you know nothing personal that could help us?
Yes, I know nothing that can help us, Julian says. I’m a font of useless information no good to fucking anyone. Let’s drink and sing.
They sing “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” Except Julian sings it with garbled lyrics Mia says she’s never heard. Her sword is girded on her side, the helmet on her head, and all around her are lying the dying and the dead.
Either I’ve had too much to drink or you are crap at knowing things, Mia says.
It’s both, Julian says.
They sing the Drunken Sailor song, to which they can’t remember the words, even though they had just sung it at Bank. What do you do with a drunken sailor is all they know.
And weigh-HEY up she rises
Weigh-HEY up she rises . . .
They stand, they sit, they slouch, they slump, finally they slide to the floor and lie on their backs, covered by the nastiest scratchiest blankets, and slur their dreams to the ceiling. They wish they could see the stars. They wish the bloody blankets were better. Americans gave us these blankets, Mia says. Would it have killed them to make them softer? It’s like covering ourselves with sandpaper.
They wish it weren’t so cold.
She wishes she had the magic power to not need food. He wishes he had the power of two extra arms, and she says if you’re going to be asking for extra anything, are you sure you want it to be arms, and with a small smile he says yes because elsewhere he already has the superpower, and with her own small smile she says she wishes she could know it again.
They wish their bodies weren’t all busted up. They ooze blood out of their wounds and live inside their regret.
She wishes she could reverse time.
Trust me, he says, reversing time is not all it’s cracked up to be.
She wishes they didn’t only live once.
Trust me, he says, living more than once is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Rolling up his sleeve, Mia touches the tattoos on the inside of his arm, touches her own name in a small script right at his wrist, whispers it in a drunken purr. Mia, Mia . . .
Are these the girls you’ve loved before?
Yes, he slurs back. These are the girls I’ve loved before.
She giggles, like she thought of something incredible. Jules, have you noticed how all of them are a devi—deri—devivative—derirative—devirative of my own name, of Maria?
What do you know, Julian says. I hadn’t noticed that until you pointed it out just now.
I want me to be there, too, she says. But as Maria.
The name of a fervent prayer, he says.
That’s right.
I loved a girl named Maria, he sings, and smiles.
That’s right! I want to be above Shae and ASH. But in big letters. Huge. Like this MIRABELLE.
Okay, he says. You will be. He closes his eyes.
Shae is not Maria.
It is. It was Mary-Margaret.
ASH is not Maria.
No. ASH is Ashton. He was my friend.
Must’ve been a good friend to end up on your arm, all ridged and raised like that.
He was. He was my brother. He died.
Don’t cry, Jules. Can you sit up and cheer up? Let’s have another round. Drink and sing to me about the girls you’ve loved before.
They can’t sit up or cheer up. They’re drowning in whiskey.
What are the dots for? She runs her finger over one set of columns, then the other, touches the dots by MIRABELLE’s name. He doesn’t answer her, and she doesn’t follow up.
Which one of them killed a man in cold blood, she asks. No, don’t tell me that either. I don’t want to know. Rather . . . how do you atone for something like that? Do you atone for it?
You do, he says. Your body is the price. Your soul is the price.
Mia is quiet. Did she atone for it? she asks haltingly.
I think she did, yes.
Tell me about the first, tell me about this other Mia. Was she nicer than me?
It’s not another Mia, he wants to say. There is only one. She was not nicer than you. Sometimes she went by a fake name, Julian says. By Josephine. Josephine Collins.
Oh, I quite like that name, Mia says.
I liked it, too.
But Mia is better, right? She smiles.
Of course.
Bloody right. Where did you meet her?
She was up on a stage.
Like me?
Just like you.
Did she love you?
I don’t know, he replies. I thought she did. But she didn’t love me true. She wasn’t true to me. She kept secrets, Julian says. I could taste them on her lips. But I didn’t want to see.
How about a poem for Josephine? A short one, like a haiku.
I will forgive you
If you don’t love me enough
But not for dying.
Dying or lying? asks Mia.
Dying, Julian replies, looking away.
What about Mary?
We bickered and joked
dreamed of Italy and babies, not
his hands on your throat.
Mallory?
The world ends in fire
We run and run and run and
But the world still ends.
And Miri?
On Gin Alley, we
drink and make wishes while thieves
pitch rocks at your tears.
Mia kisses the tattooed names on his arm after each one. Funny, because you and I are drinking and wishing, too. And MIRABELLE, all capital letters?
MIRABELLE, my love
Cholera prevails and war.
But you and I more.
This Shae character, what about her?
You flense seals, carve up
My dreams. I thought you chose ice
But you chose me.
What will you say about me, Mia whispers. What will you say about our brief but perfect love affair?
We rode horses to
Where the bombs still flew, dreaming
Of a dream machine.
Not horses but trains, she says, and he says, same difference.
I used to work a Dream Machine, she says, on the boardwalk in Blackpool. Did I tell you that? Is that how you know?
I don’t think you told me that.
The girls you loved, what happened to them?
They died.
All of them?
He pauses. Yes.
Wow. That’s unlucky.
Yes.
But to love is lucky, she says.
That is true, I suppose.
You don’t think to love is lucky? Did you love them all?
I loved them all.
Me too? she whispers.
I love you most of all.
I bet you say that to all your girls, she slurs. Their whiskey gone, she falls asleep, but not before she says, will I die, too?
I’m asleep, Julian says, I can’t hear you. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I definitely don’t want to live in a town called Over.