Beheld

by Alex Flinn

  James was in London, and now I would be there too. I would find him!

  9

  Cornelia

  Seven Months Later

  For seventeen years, my life was like the Isar River, which flows past our mill, beautiful but all too consistent, always the same.

  Then I had a grand adventure. In hindsight, it is possible to see it that way. I met a man I thought I loved. And I met a man I do love.

  Rum, for that is what I have decided to call him, takes me back to my father’s mill. He says he came upon me, lost and alone. This is not quite a lie, as I was lost when he found me.

  “Was anyone with her?” my father asks.

  “No, she was quite alone,” Rum says. This is true also.

  My father peers at me. “What happened, Cornelia? Were you harmed?”

  I know what he means, and I do not know how to answer.

  Rum says, “I believe she is unharmed, sir, but her ring and her necklace were stolen from her.”

  I forgive him this lie, for it makes the story more believable. And he will give me a new ring, soon enough.

  Once he ascertains that I am unharmed, my father is so grateful that he invites Rum for dinner the following night. I will cook, of course. And the night after. And the night after that. Each day, Rum brings a book with him. We read it aloud and discuss it. My father does not say that he thinks books are silly, for that would be rude to our guest. In truth, I think he comes to enjoy the stories as much as I do.

  Within the month, we are married, and seven months later, I bring into the world a lovely baby girl, a bit early but very healthy. As soon as she finishes nursing, my husband (who is now the proprietor of the bookseller’s stall, because the previous proprietress, Kendra, had a family emergency which, she said, compelled her to leave Bavaria, possibly never to return) plucks her from me. He holds her close, bouncing upon the balls of his feet to calm her. “Dear baby girl,” he says, “dear baby girl.”

  “You are good with babies,” I say, a bit surprised. We are living at my father’s house, for he is old and would be lonely if I left. So I have to raise my voice to be heard over the rushing water from outside.

  He grins, and though the baby, whom we named Gretchen, is still asleep, he continues to rock and bounce her. “Yes, at the foundling home, I often took care of the babies. It was the closest I came to having a brother or sister.” He pulls Gretchen close and kisses the top of her head.

  “My darling,” I say, “I am so sorry she—”

  “Do not say it.” He clasps his hand around Gretchen’s head as if covering her little ears. “Gretchen is mine, mine and yours, the first family I have ever had.”

  I smile. “I was going to say I am sorry you had to be up all night, waiting for her to arrive.”

  We both know that is not what I had planned to say, but he nods, accepting it.

  “Father and I are your family too.”

  “You are.” He places the baby on the bed beside me, then lies down with her between us. “This is what happiness feels like, I suppose.”

  Outside, the water races toward the mill. I know that, a few miles down the river, there lives a prince. I wonder if he thinks about us or is curious about my disappearance.

  But I don’t wonder for long.

  “Yes, darling,” I say. “This is it.”

  And we fall asleep listening to the water, steady and unchanging, going on forever.

  PART 3

  Kendra Speaks

  I traveled by train, then by ship, to London. Every day of that voyage, I searched for more clues as to James’s whereabouts. My plan, if I found nothing else before I arrived, no street, no flat, was simply to sit on a bench on the banks of the Thames, staring at the Tower of London, hoping he would walk by. And then we would take a walk along the Thames together. It would be so romantic, the romance I had dreamed about all the time we were apart. The romance I had never had, never in so many years.

  I was rather girlish in my naïveté. I realize it now. But I was so excited to see him!

  But I did find something else, one night as I lay in my bunk, staring into the mirror. I saw him with a woman. They were walking in a park, or perhaps it was her garden. She was a prettyish thing, perhaps twenty, with bright blond hair, and he presented her with a bouquet of flowers he’d gathered. She held it out in front of her, like a bride. He laughed and kissed her.

  “It won’t be long,” he said. “Next week.”

  “Thank goodness,” she said. “So no one will know.” She looked down at her stomach.

  “I would have married you anyway. I did not think I would ever again meet someone I wished to marry.”

  “After your lost love.” She pronounced lost love in an annoying, singsong way, as if she ridiculed the idea of it. Of me! “I know.” She giggled a bit. Annoying creature.

  He kissed her again. “You have finally made me forget her.”

  Forget me? I could watch no longer. I hated her. But, really, I had no reason to hate her. She’d done nothing wrong. It was James. He had said he would wait for me. He’d said that. But he’d lied. Or he’d given up, which was even worse. To wait all this time only to give up on the very eve of our reunion!

  I wanted to throw the mirror into the North Sea. I waited for you, James! I waited ever so long! Was I not worth waiting for? It had only been a hundred and twenty years!

  What if I was not the one he was waiting for at all? What if it was this woman, whose name I found was Lucy, all along? He certainly married her quickly enough. I had been staring at him for years, and I had seen no such Lucy in all that time!

  But, instead of sitting in London with my broken heart, I decided to see the world. I spent a great deal of my time at sea, on the Birkenhead, the Lusitania, the Titanic, the Morro Castle. Ships I boarded tended to fare poorly. But I was not on the Lancastria, one of the greatest naval tragedies in history. I knew someone who was, though. I met him when I was in London, a hundred years after I lost James for the second time.

  1

  In the Darkness

  London, 1941

  “Shake a leg, Ethel. We don’t want to be late.”

  “I don’t want to go at all,” my older sister Ethel said, staring at the wadded-up stocking in her hand.

  “Oh, Esther!” I looked at my other sister, Ethel’s twin. “Do something about her! We can’t go as the Andrews Sisters with only two of us.”

  The party, a fancy-dress ball held at one in the afternoon in the basement of the primary school, was the first we’d attended in the half year since my seventeenth birthday, since the bombings had begun. Esther had heard about it, a fundraiser for the war effort, and it had been my idea to go as the Andrews Sisters, American recording artists who looked just like my sisters and me, two brunettes and one prettier blonde. We had spent the past week making over our dresses to look like their costumes. Since we didn’t have three that matched, we’d decided that Ethel and Esther would wear their matching blue dresses from last Easter, while I’d wear a similar dress in pink. But Ethel was the best at styling hair, and so we needed her to perfect our victory rolls, a hairstyle created by sweeping the hair up into a V shape above the forehead, the way Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne Andrews wore it.

  “Please, Ethel,” Esther said. “Let’s have a bit of fun for once.”

  “It isn’t safe,” Ethel said. “What if something happens? I still say it’s wrong to go out and frolic when so much is happening. You never think of such things, Grace.”

  I thought about such things all the time. I wished my brother Jack were there, and my older brother, George. But Jack was my closest companion. We’d played together while Esther and Ethel huddled in the corners, giggling. He’d been at war these six months.

  If Jack were there, even sitting inside would have been fun.

  “Don’t be a twit,” I said. “That’s why they’re having it at one o’clock, to be safer. And it’s in a basement.” At night, the street lights were out, so that
the Germans wouldn’t be able to see us, and we had black drapes over the windows to keep any light from seeping through. The blackout had been going on for well over a year.

  Ethel sighed. “And my stocking is ripped.”

  “Oh, well, if that’s all . . .” I held up my eyebrow pencil. “I can fix that. You do Essie’s hair.”

  “What are you going to do?” Ethel asked in that high, nervous tone I hated.

  “You’ll see.”

  So, while Ethel rolled and pinned Esther’s hair, I used a ruler and my brown eyebrow pencil to draw a line up the back of Ethel’s left leg, to look like the seam of a stocking. It would have been quite horrifying had anyone noticed, but no one would, and necessity is the mother of invention, especially in wartime. Then Esther crouched and drew a line up Ethel’s right leg (we decide it would be better to have both legs match, even though only one stocking was ripped) while Ethel styled my hair. Finally, we waited for Ethel to do her own hair.

  It was almost one before we were finished. Now, the true test. Our mother.

  “Whatcha think, Mum?” I asked as we posed to be the very picture of the Andrews Sisters, me in the center, with Ethel and Esther leaning in toward me.

  “You look very nice,” she said, quietly.

  If only she could have mustered up some enthusiasm, but she too felt my brothers’ absence. I supposed she wouldn’t be the same until they came back.

  At least she hadn’t noticed Ethel’s stocking. If she didn’t, no one would. Mum had eyes like an eagle.

  It was strange going out in costumes in broad daylight. I had no idea who would be there, even. I supposed there would be some chaps my own age, who were still in school, but no one for my sisters, who were three years older. All the able young men their age were gone to the war.

  Poor Ethel. Poor Esther. Lucky me. I fairly skipped to the party until Ethel scolded me.

  “Remember your dignity, Grace,” she said. “And if you can’t do that, remember that those hairpins might not hold if you skip.”

  “Fine.” I slowed down and walked just as I imagined Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret might walk, slowly and boringly. “But we’ll be out of harm’s way more quickly if we step lively.”

  So we did, and we got there soon after one.

  They’d tried to make the room look swanky, with streamers hanging from the ceiling and some old balls made of blue and red tissue paper, which I think they must have had from when I attended the school.

  “It still looks like the basement of a primary school,” Ethel said.

  “Well of course it does,” I snapped. “That’s what it is. Doesn’t mean we should stay home every day.” I tried not to roll my eyes.

  “Remember when we went to that dance at the church hall?” Esther asked, likely trying to distract me.

  I nodded. It had been my first dance. I’d been thirteen and was wearing an old dress of Ethel’s, but Mum had gotten a new sash for it.

  “None of the boys my age wanted to dance with any of the girls,” I said. “But when Jack asked me, I was embarrassed because he was my brother.”

  “But then another boy cut in,” Esther reminded me.

  “Ralph Martin,” I said, remembering his hair, combed so neatly. “And then everyone was dancing. Jack saved the day!”

  “Indeed he did,” Ethel said, and even she had a little smile.

  We walked around a bit, looking like the Andrews Sisters and admiring other people’s costumes too, though most people had boring costumes like scarecrows and witches. A few people were dancing, but I didn’t know any of the chaps there. But then I saw Dora and Helen, whom I hadn’t seen since they’d finished school the year before, and my sisters saw some friends from the factory where they worked and our neighbor, a girl named Kendra. So we separated. Our costumes didn’t make sense that way, but I didn’t really care. I ran up to my friends.

  “Girls, what’s new?” They wore matching costumes, as a black and a white cat, which just involved wearing cat ears with a black and a white dress.

  “Um, nothing much for me,” Helen said, “just work, work, work. But I think Dora has some news.”

  That was the cue for Dora to remove her hand from behind her back and hold it up, showing off a ring with a speck of a blue stone.

  “Ned?” I asked her.

  “Of course Ned!” She beamed.

  “Is he here?”

  “No, he’s enlisted,” she said proudly, “but he’s getting leave for the wedding.”

  “Oh, that’s nice . . . but how hard for you to have him leave straightaway.”

  “I know. But at least we’ll be married.”

  We went on like this for a few minutes, and then I noticed someone at my elbow.

  I beheld a man who was tall, broad-shouldered, and graceful, with blond hair. He wore a red satin jacket and a white ruffled shirt. I looked up at his face and gasped. It was hidden by a mask.

  “I see you’ve become separated from your sisters, Miss Andrews.” His voice was soft and cultured. “May I have this dance?” He held out his hand, which jutted from a ruffled sleeve.

  “I . . . I don’t know. I don’t know you.” I noticed his hand shook a bit. Was he nervous to speak to me?

  “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to approach you. It’s only . . . I just came back from overseas, from France, and I have no friends here who might introduce me. I saw you come in with your sisters. When I was in hospital, I listened to the Andrews Sisters day and night, and Patty was my favorite.” He stuck his hand in his pocket, as if to stop it shaking. “You look like her.”

  “You were in hospital?” I said. “From the war? You were injured?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly I recognized his costume. He was the Scarlet Pimpernel, after the film with Leslie Howard, and the books too. Had the Scarlet Pimpernel worn a mask? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t think so.

  “My apologies. I would be happy to dance with one of our heroes,” I said. “My name is Grace.”

  “Phillip.” He offered me his hand. I worried that his palm would be warm or clammy, but it wasn’t. It was cool and dry, and his grip upon mine was firm. He was a gentleman.

  He led me out onto the dance floor. A new song was starting, “You and I,” which was slow, but with a lovely, lilting beat. He put his other hand on my waist. He was tall, and I wondered what his face looked like behind the mask, but the rest of him was so handsome, and the hint of eyes I could make out were vivid blue.

  “I love this song,” I said.

  “Me too.” He turned me around. “I can play it on the piano.”

  “Lucky! I took piano lessons as a girl, but I gave it up. My mother said I’d regret it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. But I can sing.”

  He was very light on his feet, and since I was the best dancer in my class, we made a good pair. Only a few people were dancing, and some of the ones who did stopped to watch us. His elegant costume likely made us a handsome couple.

  “Are you supposed to be the Scarlet Pimpernel?” I asked him.

  “You’re the first to recognize me!” he said.

  “I saw the movie, years ago, with my family. My brothers, they’re at war now. Your costume reminded me of happier times.”

  He smiled. “If I had a drink, I would drink a toast. To happier times.” He raised my hand as if it was a glass. “And happier times to come also, I hope.”

  “Yes. When this is all over and they come back. I loved that movie.”

  “A nobleman going out in secret, fighting injustice,” he said. “Sir Percy Blakeney. I wish I could be more like him.”

  “Exactly.” I swayed in his arms. He was tall and made me feel tiny and light, like Ginger Rogers, the dancer. “But you did that. You’re a hero like Sir Percy. You said you were in the war.”

  “I was.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t wear your uniform.” Several boys had done just that.

  He shrugged. “Well . . .
it was fancy dress. And sometimes one likes to forget.”

  I nodded. I wondered what had happened to bring him back. Something horrible, maybe. I dared not ask what.

  I felt his arms around me, guiding me. Nothing wrong with them. Or his legs either, judging from his dancing.

  As if reading my mind, Phillip said, “I was on a ship. It sank off the coast of France.”

  “How awful!” I had not heard about a British ship that had sunk. I would have to ask Father. “And you were in hospital all this time?”

  “Yes.” Phillip smiled. “And while I was there, I was able to read all the books about the Scarlet Pimpernel. I’ve grown quite attached to the chap. He helped me forget that awful night.”

  On the record, the singer sang.

  So to sweet romance,

  There is just one answer.

  You and I.

  I sang along with it.

  “You have a lovely voice,” he said.

  “Thank you. I sing at night, when we’re stuck in the house. That’s how my sisters and I decided to be the Andrews Sisters. We sing their songs together.”

  He was smiling. He had such straight, white teeth, and he said, “How lovely. I wish I had someone to sing to me.”

  But then I felt self-conscious, and I didn’t sing anymore, not even when the next song was “He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings,” which was my favorite. Still, the evening felt like a dream.

  “I read aloud sometimes too,” I said finally. “I’ve read the Pimpernel books. Only I haven’t read Mam’zelle Guillotine yet. I haven’t got a copy. It’s so hard to find things now.”

  “I have it. I could loan it to you . . . if I can see you again?”

  I recognized the question he was asking, and I knew my answer. “I’d like that.” I smiled up at him, then tried to suppress it. I didn’t want to look like a fool. My sisters said I looked like a twit when I smiled too much, but I was so happy. I’d come to the party expecting nothing except to see some old friends, but instead, it was like a grown-up dance, and everyone was looking at me dancing with this man, a war hero, who wanted to see me again. “Do you read much then too?”