by Maile Meloy
“It’s just scary,” I said. “I don’t know anyone. At lunch I sat near a Russian kid, and a girl called me a Bolshevik.”
“Ah,” Olivia said, growing serious. “Well, imagine being the Russian kid.”
“And the food is terrible.”
“Welcome to England.”
Just then, a girl in her twenties with big eyes and a wide, lipsticked smile put her head into Olivia’s office. I knew she was going to be their Maid Marian because I’d seen a photograph, but it was still startling to see her up close. I’d lived in Los Angeles long enough, at fourteen, to know that actress beauty isn’t like ordinary beauty and always seems kind of otherworldly. Her hair was set in soft curls and she had eyelashes that you could sweep the floor with. She wore a black dress with an impossibly tiny waist and a full skirt.
“They took my measurements and I’m off,” she said. “I have a date!”
“To play chess?” Olivia asked.
The girl looked confused. “No . . . we’re going dancing.”
“Of course you are,” Olivia said. “This is Janie, who just moved here from Hollywood.”
“Oh, that’s so tragically sad,” Maid Marian said. “Do you miss it terribly?”
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s just a neighbourhood.”
“Just a neighbourhood! Will you beg your parents to write some good scenes for me so I can go there, and be famous?”
I looked at my parents. “Uh—sure.”
“Thank you!” Maid Marian said. “Now I have to run.”
“Knock him dead,” Olivia said.
Maid Marian beamed, and the skirt disappeared out the door with a flounce. My parents and Olivia looked at one another.
“She’s beautiful,” I said.
“Yes, well, she’s giving me a pain,” Olivia said. “She seems to think the program is about Maid Marian and her Merry Men.”
My father said, “What if we do a story where she has to flirt with the Sheriff of Nottingham, to—I don’t know, steal the keys to the jail or something, to spring Robin. And the sheriff thinks she’s really in love with him.”
Olivia shrugged. “Maybe—then what?”
The three of them started spinning the idea out. They were happy and comfortable with one another, and good at what they did, and they didn’t treat me like a child. They treated me like one of them. I thought about the apothecary’s powder and realised I wasn’t homesick anymore.
I kept thinking, as the adults talked, about Benjamin taking a train to Hammersmith that he didn’t need to take, just because I interested him, and I couldn’t keep a dopey smile off my face. I had a date, I was pretty sure. It wasn’t dancing, and I didn’t have perfect curled hair and a bell-like skirt, but I had a date to play chess.
CHAPTER 6
His Excellency
I got through the Friday at school by keeping my head down, and I stayed in study hall at noon because I couldn’t face the lunchroom. I would have loved to sit with Benjamin, but what if he didn’t want to sit with me? I couldn’t take the chance.
That night, my mother made a dinner of scrambled black-market eggs from the landlady. She had brought home, as a hand-me-down from Olivia Wolff ’s daughter, a warm flannel nightgown that was so long it touched the floor. It was old-fashioned and shapeless, but I was grateful—the apothecary’s honeysuckle and aspen might work, but the hot water bottles only lasted so long in a chilly bed.
On Saturday afternoon, Benjamin met me on the steps of St Beden’s with his satchel slung across his chest. I hoped my face didn’t show my relief that he’d actually turned up. On the walk to Hyde Park, we talked about school. He laughed when I said the secretary reminded me of a sheep, and I wished I’d been brave enough to sit with him at lunch. It was so easy to talk to him, especially when we were both walking and looking around at the London streets and I didn’t have to stare at him across a lunch tray.
In the park, Benjamin chose a table and set up the chessboard swiftly, giving me the white pieces and lining them up without having to think. I always had to think about where they went. I wished I’d let my dad give me some advice.
“I’m not very good at this,” I said.
“Terrific,” Benjamin said. “Then we’ll play for money.”
“Seriously, I’m not going to be a match for you.”
“Never mind,” Benjamin said. “I want you to watch the park bench over my left shoulder. There’s a man sitting there with a wooden leg.”
I looked up. A broad-shouldered man in a grey overcoat was seated facing away from us, reading a newspaper. Beneath the bench I could see two feet in black boots. They looked like ordinary feet. Maybe one was a little smaller than the other. “How can you tell?”
“I’ve been watching him,” Benjamin said. “Do you know the Russian boy at school, Sergei Shiskin?”
“He sits behind me in Latin,” I said. “He’s nice.”
“That’s his father, Leonid Shiskin, who works for the Soviet embassy. He comes here every weekend. Tell me when someone else sits down.”
The chess date suddenly seemed less like a date, and I felt myself deflate a little. “Is that why we’re here? I’m helping you spy on him?”
“We’re just playing chess. It’s your move.”
I slid a white pawn towards his king, and Benjamin pushed out the black pawn in front of his queen’s bishop.
I slid out my own bishop, and Benjamin frowned at it. “Are you sure about that?”
“What does it matter, if the game is just a cover?”
Benjamin sighed. “You have to make your cover convincing,” he said. He moved a knight out. “You have to believe in it. For example, Leonid Shiskin is an accountant for the embassy. He acts like an accountant and lives like an accountant.”
“Maybe because he is an accountant.”
“But he’s an accountant who passes secret messages to people in this park. By leaving part of his newspaper on that bench. It’s your move.”
I saw a chance at his king, and moved my queen out two spaces.
Benjamin shook his head. “Janie.”
“I’m threatening checkmate!”
“No, you’re not.” He moved his knight so it blocked the checkmate and could take my queen or my bishop.
“Oh,” I said. I studied the board. “I told you I wasn’t any good.”
“When English people say that, they don’t mean it,” Benjamin said.
“Well, Americans do!”
“What’s Shiskin doing?”
I looked. “A man just sat down on his bench,” I said, and then I stared. “Oh, Benjamin, he took the newspaper!”
“What does he look like?”
“Plump. Nice coat. He has a black walking stick. How did you know that would happen?”
Benjamin peeked over his shoulder at the man, who moved lightly away, like a much smaller man, sauntering as if out for a Sunday stroll. He didn’t seem to need the walking stick, and swung it once in a circle. “I’ve never seen that man before,” Benjamin said.
“Do we follow him?”
Benjamin seemed unsure. “What’s Shiskin doing now?”
“Still reading the rest of his paper.”
Benjamin swept the chess pieces into his bag. “Let’s follow.”
We set out in the direction the man with the walking stick had gone, and I cast a glance back at Mr Shiskin, who looked up at me over his newspaper. I quickly turned around. Benjamin was ahead of me, and beyond him our target was waiting to cross a street.
We followed at a distance, down side streets to a handsome brick building with white trim, where the man went inside. A sign over the door said CONNAUGHT HOTEL. I thought the doorman gave us a suspicious look as we hesitated outside.
“Act rich,” Benjamin said. “Pretend we belong.” And he strode with a burst of apparent confidence and entitlement towards the hotel door.
I followed, having to take a few quick, not-so-confident steps to catch up to him. He nodded curtly to
the doorman, who opened the door for us. I tried to think what Sarah Pennington would do: smile at the doorman? Flirt? Condescend? In my sudden shyness, I stared straight ahead, as if the doorman wasn’t there, which I knew wasn’t right at all.
There was a hush in the lobby. Plush carpet absorbed sound, the voices were muted and polite, and there were high notes of clinking glass from a bar somewhere. A carpeted staircase led up to the right of the dark, polished wood reception desk, and the man from the park bench was nowhere to be seen. Benjamin went to the desk.
“I’m meeting my uncle here,” he said. “He’s a bit fat, I’m always telling him, and uses this silly walking stick. Have you seen him?”
The long-nosed clerk at the desk gave Benjamin a level stare. “Many people use walking sticks,” he said. “May I ask your uncle’s name?”
“Oh, I just call him Uncle.”
There was a pause. “I’m sure you do. But that wouldn’t be what we call him, would it?”
“I suppose not.”
The clerk gave him a tight smile. “It’s not my place to determine which of our guests is more corpulent than others.”
“Well, I didn’t mean that—” Benjamin said.
“Good day, young man.”
“Oh!” a voice from behind me said. “It’s Jane from California.”
I turned to see Sarah Pennington standing in the lobby. It was as if, by trying to imitate her rich girl’s entitlement, I had summoned her into being. She wore a blue raincoat the colour of her eyes, and she stood with an older version of herself, a blonde woman with a dove-grey hat perched on one side of her elegant head.
“This is my mother,” Sarah said. “Jane is a new student at St Beden’s.”
“How do you do?” Sarah’s mother said.
“It’s really Janie,” I stammered. “I’m fine. And—this is Benjamin.”
“I know Benjamin,” Sarah said, smiling at him and then meaningfully at me. “Quick work, Janie.”
“Sarah!” her mother said.
I was shocked, too. I could feel myself blushing up into the roots of my hair. And Benjamin wasn’t acting rich anymore, in the presence of actual rich people. He seemed very interested in the buckle on his satchel.
“Are you staying here?” I managed to ask.
“Oh, no, we were only shopping,” Sarah said. “And we stopped for tea.”
“Thank you, your excellency,” the clerk said behind us.
All four of us turned to see who was so grand. I noticed that Sarah and her mother turned more subtly than Benjamin and I did, and then my heart skipped. The man at the desk, who’d been called “your excellency,” was the one we’d been following! He nodded to us and walked in his effortless way to the front door, swinging his black walking stick.
“Do you know that man?” Benjamin asked Sarah’s mother, when the door had closed after him.
“I don’t,” Mrs Pennington said.
“What does it mean that the clerk called him ‘your excellency’?” I asked.
“I suppose he might be an earl or a viscount.”
It was the first time I had heard the word, and it sounded like “vye-count.” I know now that it’s a level of aristocracy above a baron and below an earl.
“Maybe he could marry Aunt Cecilia,” Sarah said.
Mrs Pennington pressed her lips together and it was her turn to blush, behind her face powder. “It’s time we went home,” she said. “Perhaps next time the two of you could join us for tea.”
“Aunt Cecilia’s an old maid,” Sarah said confidentially, in a way I knew was meant to torment her mother. “We’re desperate to find her a lonely viscount.”
“Sarah!” her mother said.
“Bye!” Sarah said, waving over her shoulder as she was hustled out the door.
Benjamin turned to the desk clerk. “Is that man who just left an earl or a viscount?”
“I thought he was your uncle,” the clerk said.
“He will be if he marries Aunt Cecilia,” Benjamin said. “And she’s a treat. Looks like Lana Turner.”
The desk clerk smirked and looked very interested in his paperwork.
“I bet he’s an exiled Russian prince,” Benjamin said.
“We protect the privacy of all our guests, titled or not. Now I’m afraid I must ask you children to leave.”
When I got home, my father looked up from a script he was reading. “Who won the great chess match?”
“Benjamin.”
“Well, you’ll take him next time.”
“I hope so. I’m going tomorrow.”
My parents glanced at each other. “Already?” my mother asked.
“For a rematch,” I said. “I have some pride.”
The truth was that Leonid Shiskin, of the Soviet embassy, went to the park on Sundays, too, and Benjamin wanted to watch him again.
“Huh,” my father said, closing his script to look carefully at me.
“Huh,” my mother echoed.
“Do we get to meet young Master Figment?” my father asked.
“Only if you stop calling him that,” I said. “And not tomorrow. I’m meeting him at the park.”
I was already planning the things I would write in my diary, but first I got the chessboard out. Benjamin’s spying might be crazy, but he was dashing and brave, a real Robin Hood, not a fake one. I thought some of his boldness must be rubbing off on me, and I wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.
“I’ll take that chess lesson now,” I said.
CHAPTER 7
The Message
When we got to Hyde Park on Sunday, Mr Shiskin was already on his bench with his back to us, in his grey overcoat. Benjamin set up the chess pieces, giving me the white ones again, while I kept an eye on Mr Shiskin over his shoulder.
I moved my king’s pawn out, and Benjamin, as I knew he would, slid out the pawn in front of his bishop. I brought out my king’s knight, as my father had told me to, and was rewarded by one of Benjamin’s approving smiles.
“Very good!” he said. He brought out his queen’s pawn.
I brought out my queen’s pawn and Benjamin took it, and I took his pawn with my knight. Benjamin nodded with pleasure and moved his king’s knight out. I looked over his shoulder at Mr Shiskin. Another man was sitting next to him. I’d completely missed his arrival.
“Someone’s there!” I said. “A man.”
“What kind of man?”
“I can only see the back of his head. He’s wearing a hat.”
Benjamin watched my face, as if to read there what I was seeing. “What’s he doing?”
“Nothing. Just sitting there.” The newcomer, even from behind, seemed oddly familiar.
Benjamin glanced over his shoulder to look at the man, then put his head in his hands. “Oh, no,” he said.
Then I realised. I hadn’t recognised him, out of context. “It’s the apothecary!” I said. “It’s your father!”
Benjamin pretended to study the chessboard. “He’s going to muck it up,” he moaned. “Why’d he have to choose that bench? If he’s there, Shiskin can’t make his drop.”
“Maybe he is the drop.”
“He’s not the drop.”
But as I watched, Benjamin’s father took a section of the newspaper from the bench, without looking at Shiskin. I felt goose bumps rise on my arms. “Your father just picked up the newspaper,” I said.
Benjamin stared at me. “No he didn’t.”
“He did! He’s walking away now. You can look.”
Benjamin turned, and we watched his father pause to unfold the newspaper and read whatever was there. Then the apothecary’s whole manner changed. He tore up a small piece of paper, threw it with the newspaper into a rubbish bin, and hurried off down the street. Shiskin had already disappeared in the other direction, walking unevenly on his wooden leg.
“Come on,” Benjamin said. “We need that message.”
We ran to the rubbish bin his father had used.
“Watch w
here he goes,” Benjamin said, and he reached into the rubbish and came up with the folded newspaper and some shreds of paper. He pieced the scraps together on the ground as I looked over his shoulder. The note was in scrawled capitals:
I felt dizzy and wondered if someone was playing a game with us—or if Benjamin and his father were playing a game with me. “Is this real?” I demanded. “Are you making this up?”
The desperate look on Benjamin’s face told me he wasn’t. “Which way did he go?” he asked.
“Across that street. Who’s Jin Lo?”
“I don’t know.”
As we followed his father, I looked to my left, instead of to my right where the cars were coming, and heard the blare of a horn. Benjamin pulled me back and kept me from being run over by a taxi. The driver leaned out the window and swore at me. Benjamin’s father ducked into a red phone booth on the other side of the street.
“Did you know your father knew Shiskin?” I asked.
“How would I know that?”
We crossed the intersection at an angle and stood in line with people waiting for a bus, trying to blend in. I had never felt so conspicuous. The apothecary came out of the phone booth without seeing us.
“Give him fifty paces,” Benjamin said.
“Is he working for the Russians?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he knows that viscount? Or earl?”
“Stop asking me questions!”
We trailed his father through the streets. The apothecary moved surprisingly quickly, and seemed to be headed for his shop. By the time we’d reached Regent’s Park Road, we’d lost sight of him. We stood in a recessed doorway, watching, but no one went in or out of the shop.
“Let’s go in,” I said. “Just ask him what’s going on.”
“I can’t,” Benjamin said. He was pale and had lost all his courage.
“You have to.”
“What if he’s a spy for the Soviets?”
“Then at least you’ll know.” I stepped out into the street, looking to my right this time.
Benjamin gave in and we moved uncertainly towards the shop. He looked over his shoulder to see if we’d been followed. The door was locked, and he opened it with his key.