THE NEXT DAY, BOY ARE THEY SORRY THEY HAD SO MUCH TO drink. Their sore heads lowered, they repent and beg forgiveness with their parched dry mouths. They drink the rest of the melted snow water out of the bucket and bang on the door for the conductor to let them out.
Mia is lightheaded. She can’t orient herself for a few moments. She has not recovered from her concussion. They scrounge in the food car for something to eat, but other people without hangovers got there first, and all the food is gone until the next stop. They find an old dry scone on the floor. They break the bread. It’s delicious.
The train doesn’t move. Five miles ahead, the tracks are still being repaired.
They bundle up and go out into the fields for a walk in the frigid air to clear their heavy heads. The ground is white except for the black grass.
Maybe we’ll have a white Christmas, Mia says, as they look for something in the fields to eat. They find a potato! They break it in half and eat it raw. It’s delicious.
They stumble on a pond blanketed with crystal snow.
They slide on the ice. They can’t run, and they can’t jump, but they slide to see who can go the farthest. She wins. They pretend to skate, trying not to bend their swollen knees, holding hands and gliding in their wet boots. For a few moments he takes her gingerly into his arms, and they waltz on the ice, until they hear the whistle of the train. They hurry as best they can, limping through sheets of snow, yelling, don’t leave without us, don’t leave without us.
Back in their seats, their flushed faces red, they hold hands, his left, her right. She is pressed against the cold window and he is pressed against her. She tells him about the Blackpool boardwalk, how much fun she had there in the summers with her friends. She wonders if the Ferris wheel is running in December, if the amusements are open. You were right about leaving London, she says. I’m sorry I didn’t want to listen. My mum will be so happy to see me for Christmas.
Let me out. Don’t leave me. Let me out. Don’t leave me.
Mia, Mia. Mia, Mia.
Free me.
Don’t leave me.
Bristol, Birmingham, Portsmouth and Hull, Belfast, Coventry, Glasgow and Liverpool, Cardiff, Manchester, Plymouth, and Cornwall. London.
Not Blackpool.
But everything else is bombed.
Including Sheffield. Oh, how Sheffield is bombed the night of December 15, as their train stands abandoned and out in the open. They’re evacuated a quarter mile into the cold woods, where they huddle under fallen trees and watch as their train blows up and burns.
Covering her with his body, to protect her, to comfort her, Julian whispers to her of happier times in the unknowable future.
Don’t worry. I will never leave you or forsake you. We are co-stars. We’ll always be co-stars.
We’re bomb magnets, she says.
No, we are train jockeys, he says. Riding companions. Camping buddies. Lovers. Adventure seekers.
She smiles. How do you do that, Jules, make even a wartime bombing sound romantic?
His lips are against her cold cheek. We’ll go roughing, you and I, another day when we are healed, Julian whispers. In the summer when it’s warm, we’ll set up a lean-to in the field. No light, no water, no heat. Just us under a trench coat tied between two trees on the side of a meadow. It will pour with rain for days. It won’t matter. We’ll be together.
What are we going to do under a trench coat for days? she says.
I will show you.
Mia is skeptical. Can you imagine me, getting down in a tent, she says.
Oh, you’ll get down in a tent, all right, Julian says.
And she laughs.
* * *
They survive Sheffield, with new small wounds, new cuts, new burns, their old wounds seeping fresh blood. Several hundred of them were in the woods. Eight have died. The rest get slowly transported by buses and trucks twenty miles east to Doncaster, where they wait another day for a train to take them forty miles north to Leeds.
Did you catch the names of the towns we passed, she asks. Dinnington, Doddington, and Diddington. Which one for you?
I’d like to live here, in Loversall, Julian says, pointing to a few glum shacks in the middle of the desolate flatness.
In Leeds, there are no civilian trains on the docket. They have the rest of the day free to find the Leeds Cathedral on Cookridge Street, a half-mile from the station. The church is unharmed and quiet. To their surprise it’s also Catholic! This does not distress Mia. She tells him her family is Catholic.
“Mine, too,” says Julian.
They’re both pleased. “I can’t believe it, Jules. Both of us Catholics, on top of everything else. It’s like we’re meant to be.”
“You think?”
They sit inside the cathedral the rest of the afternoon, waiting for the five o’clock Mass to begin.
“I feel bad that so much of the time we live as if there’s never been a cave in Bethlehem or a cross on Calvary.” Mia sighs. “But inside we all want to believe so much, don’t we? Believe that there is light eternal somewhere over yonder.”
“There is,” Julian says. “I know there is.”
“Oh, that you know.”
“I know it!”
They fall asleep in the pews until a deacon wakes them, sternly saying there is no sleeping inside the church. He softens when he sees their battered bodies.
“Did you pray?” Mia whispers to Julian.
“Of course.” God on high, hear my prayer. Help her—please.
“What did you pray for?” she asks.
“What did you pray for?”
“My priest once told me besides the sacramental prayers and the Jesus prayer, there are only two personal prayers ever worth bothering God for. One of them is help me. And the other is thank you. Which was it for you?”
He smirks. “Mine is almost always help me,” he says. “You?”
“Mine is almost always thank you,” Mia replies. “Because what have you got, really, that you have not received?”