FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS OF JULIAN’S LIFE, HE AND DEVI lived side by side. They ate sesame noodles and cabbage salad, made kimchi and sliced calamari, grated ginger and ground garlic paste. Julian learned how to cook. He went with Devi to the market to buy squid and octopus and shrimp, and to the shanty town in Hoxton where the hippies grew the sweetest, juiciest tomatoes and cucumbers so sweet they tasted as if they had no skins.
Every Sunday after church, they took the tube to Hampstead Heath and spent the afternoon with Ava. She was doing better. The therapist kept working on her speech, and little by little she relearned how to write with her dominant hand. The first thing she wrote in a childlike scrawl and showed to Julian was her name.
Ava Maria Delacourt McKenzie, she wrote.
And the second thing she wrote was to Devi.
I think I love you.
“You think?” Devi said.
She held their hands as they sat by her side, read the paper to her, and Julian told her jokes and stories of a Mia Delacourt of Morecambe Bay and Babbacombe Road.
* * *
“By the way,” Julian said to Devi inside St. Monica’s, waiting for Mass to begin, “don’t think I forgot how you told me Ashton’s father comes almost every Sunday to pay his son a visit. Funny how I haven’t seen him for sixteen Sundays in a row. I knew you were making it up just to get a rise out of me.”
“Why would I need to work that hard to get a rise out of you?” Devi said calmly. “You are on a hair trigger every day. But ironic you should mention him, because he was here two weeks ago. I thought you ignored him deliberately.”
“Why would I ignore him? Clearly I didn’t see him.”
“Now’s your chance to prove me wrong,” Devi said. “Because he is here today.”
Julian spun around. In one of the pews in the back, the older Bennett sat, glum and gray.
“He looks so old,” Julian whispered, facing front.
“He’s probably a few years older than me and Ava. Are we old?”
“I take the fifth,” said Julian.
“Which one of us walks to the market with an umbrella he’s too vain to admit is a cane, you or me?” Devi said. “I rest my case.”
“It actually is an umbrella,” Julian said. “You never know when it’s going to rain.”
“Yes, because you need a three-foot umbrella. Now shh.”
After the service, Julian got up to look for the man, but he had already slipped out.
“He’s probably at the graveyard,” Devi said, holding a small bouquet of lilies he had brought for Ashton.
“I really don’t want to confront him at the grave of his son,” Julian said.
“Confront him? Why are you always in beast mode? Why not say, hello, Mr. Bennett, nice to see you again, Mr. Bennett. How have you been? Thank you for giving me a job, sir, and keeping me on even when I was derelict in my duties. Why not try something like that?”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” Slowly they moved toward the exit doors. “He’s just going to cry,” Julian said.
“You sure you’re talking about him?”
“I really don’t want to speak to you.”
In the small, tree-covered cemetery on the side of the church, Julian and Devi made their quiet way to Ashton’s grave. Ashton’s father wasn’t there. His bouquet of flowers was left propped against the black granite. “Where is he?” Julian whispered, looking around, as Devi laid his lilies down.
On the far side of the cemetery, in a secluded corner under a tall oak, Michael Bennett stood with his wife at another gravesite.
“There’s someone else here he visits?”
“You never listen to me. I told you it looked as if he brings two bouquets,” Devi said. “Maybe someone on his fifth wife’s side?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Are you going to go say hello?”
“I don’t know, should I?” Julian watched the stooped man put down the flowers, leaning on his walker, supported by his wife.
“Of course you should. I’ll wait here. The grave needs weeding anyway. You’re a terrible executor.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Julian walked slowly, reluctantly, through the tombstones, supporting himself with the umbrella. He didn’t want to fall on the uneven ground and break his other hip. The wife meanwhile had left, and Bennett lingered alone under the trees.
Quietly Julian came up behind the old man and stood back at a respectful distance. After a few seconds, he took a tentative step forward, clearing his throat. “Hello, Mr. Bennett. I don’t want to startle you. It’s me, Julian.”
The old man turned and glanced at Julian as if he didn’t recognize him.
“Julian Cruz, your son’s friend, remember? I worked for you for seven years?”
“Yes, of course. How are you, Julian?”
“Fine, sir, how are you?”
Michael Bennett blinked once, his mouth moved, and he said nothing. His gaze returned to the grave marker. Julian’s gaze followed to read the name on the old stone.
FREDERICK THOMAS WILDER
BELOVED “WILD”
1910—1952
Julian reeled. For a moment, to steady himself, he clutched Bennett’s walker with his fingerless hand.
“What’s the matter with you?” Bennett said.
Julian stood without words.
Wild lived. He didn’t die. He lived.
“You knew Wild?” Julian said hoarsely. “How?”
“What could you possibly know about anything,” Bennett said, just as hoarsely.
Julian’s heart thumped heavy and full. “How did you know Wild?” he whispered. “Oh my God!” He gaped at the man. “You’re Michael. You’re that Michael.”
“He raised me,” Michael Bennett said. “He saved me and raised me.”
Julian shook. He turned his head away.
“What’s wrong with you?” the old man said.
“Where did he go?” Julian asked, wiping his face. “We looked for him everywhere.”
“Who is we? Who are you talking about?”
“Sit down with me for a minute,” Julian said, placing his hand on the man’s back. “It’ll be easier for both of us.” Certainly it would be easier for him. He led Bennett to a stone bench under the trees and collapsed on it.
“Did my son tell you about Wild?” Bennett asked.
“No.” Julian didn’t want to reveal to the broken man sitting next to him that Ashton was so disgusted with the way he had been cast off by both his parents that he never spoke about anything having to do with his family unless he was forced to, pretending for all concerned that he had sprung from a cabbage leaf. It was years before Julian found out that Ashton’s father was British, years more before he knew the father was still alive, multiply re-married, and running a successful business. Julian had never heard a word about the war, the Blitz, London, or a man named Wild.
“Who is Bennett?” Julian asked. “Why weren’t you Michael Wilder?” His friend could’ve been Ashton Wilder. Then Julian would’ve known. He would’ve known as soon as he met Wild.
“Bennett was my family name. Wild looked them up after the war. He refused to return me to my one surviving aunt, but out of respect for my mother, he left my father’s name on me. He hoped I’d have a son to pass my own name to, and my son would have a son, and so on.”
“Yes, and so on,” Julian said, willing his mind a blank, trying to erase every single thing about the dead end of that shabby dream.
“I can’t believe you forgot Ashton’s stories,” Bennett said. “How could you? The stuff about Wild was the stuff of legend. Ashton grew up on tales about Wild. I don’t know, maybe he forgot, too. He was so young when I left. How Wild and his friend Swedish found me in a fiery blaze that took my mum and my aunt.” Michael Bennett smiled, his eyes wet. “It always seemed so implausible, like Wild had made the whole thing up. He said I fell out of the sky while the house burst into flames around me. There wasn’t a scratch on me. He said I fell with grace from God into his one arm. My mother died, but he pulled me out. He told me I changed his life. He was supposed to deliver me to an orphanage. But he said he would kill anyone who tried to separate me from him. He asked Swedish to tie me to him with ropes so he wouldn’t lose me; he hid me in his coat and fled London. It seems so far-fetched. I was an infant, and he had one arm and had never even touched a baby.”
Julian couldn’t speak. There was silence in the cemetery on a balmy Sunday afternoon.
“Where did he take you?”
“Somewhere in Wales,” Ashton’s father said, “to a tiny village in the middle of some unknown forest. He said Swedish had told him about such a place. Away from coal mines, trains, anything that could be bombed.”
“What happened to him? 1952, he was still so young . . .” About the age Julian was now.
“Lung cancer. Like the King. He died a month after George, in March.” Bennett’s eyes welled up. “When God couldn’t save the King, I knew he’d never be able to save my Wild. Why are you staring at me like that? What did Ashton tell you?” Bennett studied Julian with suspicion and misgiving. “I don’t know why you’re so interested in Wild. What’s he to you?”
“Ashton was in my life because Wild had saved you. So, everything.”
“I suppose.” The man sighed.
“You two returned to London after the war?”
Bennett nodded. “Wild’s mother wasn’t well. We lived with her up in Camden and when she died, moved down here. Not far from this church actually, a few blocks away, on Folgate. The area was rebuilt after the war. For the first few years we searched for Wild’s friends, especially for Swedish, and then gave up. When Wild died, I became a ward of the council. They found my aunt, eventually. I lived with her for a while.”
Julian forced himself to stop shivering. When Ashton’s mother died, he, too, became a ward of the council. He, too, was twelve. Except Ashton still had a father.
“The name Ashton was Wild’s idea,” Michael Bennett said. “If he ever had another boy, he always wanted to name him Ashton.”
“But he died before he got a chance to,” Julian said. “So you did.” He took a breath. “How did Ashton end up with the red beret?”
Bennett considered Julian with anxiety and unhappiness. “What could you possibly know about that? I left it with him when his mother and I split up, if you really must know. What happened to it, I have no idea.”
“He gave it to me,” Julian said.
“What did you do with it?”
“And I gave it to you. Folgate and I put it on your head.”
The old man whirled to Julian. “What did you say?” he croaked. “How did you know what he called that girl . . .”
Julian put his palm on his heart. “Because I’m Swedish,” he whispered.
Terror and disbelief was on the old man’s face.
But more of the former than the latter.
Bennett’s wife came rushing back. “Oh, you’ve upset him!” she said, glaring at Julian. “Look at the state he is in. He’s cold and sweating. Well done.” She gave Bennett her arm to lift him off the bench. “Come on, luv, let’s go home. No use hanging around here. I’ll make you lunch and a nice cup of tea. You can sit in the garden.”
Julian tried to help. The wife would have none of it. “Haven’t you done enough?”
Before he left, Bennett turned to Julian. His lip trembled. “I wish my son could’ve known Wild. He was a remarkable man.”
Julian shook his head. “Do you know who else was a remarkable man? Your son.”
“I know that,” Michael Bennett said, crying, his head low. “I learned it too late.” Leaning heavily on his walker, he shuffled away.