Inexpressible Island

by Paullina Simons

  And yet they stay.

  It doesn’t seem right to put themselves in harm’s way.

  And yet they do.

  They are surprised in the mornings that buildings still stand like mountains. Nothing seems to be that permanent. Not the buildings, not the people.

  And yet they remain.

  London, the most lit up nighttime city in the world, has been plunged into darkness. The metropolis has vanished. Two thousand years thriving, and in two months it’s a clutter of wattle and daub shacks, made of sticks and bricks, burning and crumbling. And they can’t see any of it until the next morning when the streets are gone. Holborn, Tottenham Court Road. All the roads are misshapen. Dust, dust everywhere in the great dead city.

  Parts of the city are ashes. The history of London is laid waste, made without meaning. If its tangible relics can vanish overnight, if London’s physical manifest glory can disappear, what’s left?

  Mia, Mia.

  She paints the fake buses red.

  Fire engines are painted gray.

  And policemen wear hats painted blue.

  And yet they stay.

  They get up and go to work, take buses and cabs, they walk, and the pubs are still open, and beer is terrible because sugar is rationed, but at least the terrible beer is not rationed.

  And in the caves, there is life.

  There’s a stage and a boxing ring.

  Unreality weighs upon Julian.

  He wants to tell his friends, brightly colored flowers will grow in the ashes come spring. On Bread Street and Milk Street ragwort will bloom, lily of the valley, white and purple lilac, London pride. For seven hundred years, the earth near Cripplegate has been tamped down by stone. But underneath, it’s still fertile soil. In it, leaps and bounds of asphodel will grow. The wounded city will see the immortal flowers return.

  But not in the dead of November. In November, the kingdom will fall for a song.

  Julian has picked up some new things for Mia on the black market. He got her a Brodie, a tin hat. Does she wear it? Of course not. Discarded it lies at the foot of her bunk. He bought her high heeled shoes, not patriotic wedges, bought her garters and nylon stockings, not patriotic lederhosen, acquired for her a long pink fake-fur scarf, some red lipstick, a garland for her hair, and a black velvet dress with a silk red trim.

  Mia cries when he opens his hands full of offerings. “Why are you bringing me these?” she whispers so Finch doesn’t hear. “These are the most wonderful things anyone’s ever given me.” She tries to act composed, but her eyes are wet. “Brodie’s good, too, but not like this.” In five minutes, she gussies herself up in velvet and fur and brushes out her hair, pulling it back from one side of her face with the floral hair clip. Twirling the ends of the fluffy scarf, Mia gets Wild to introduce her, jumps up on the door, and lustily sings and tap dances for the damp sullen people. For three minutes, she makes them happy. They cheer for an encore. She happily obliges. Four times she obliges, as if she is nothing but jaunty and carefree.

  What is the song the kingdom shall fall for, and who will feel like a king with a crown? Florence Desmond’s spectacular double-entendre classic, “I’ve Got the Deepest Shelter in Town.”

  Julian loves her so much and is so afraid for her, his whole body is in pain.

  Mia, Mia.

  12

  Falling Beams

  JULIAN WRAPS THE STRAPS OF HIS STILL WORKING HEADLAMP around an old bottle of gin filled with water. He points the bulb so it shines into the liquid, and the passageway fills with reflected ambient light. Everyone is impressed. Everyone but Finch who looks as if he wants to beat Julian unconscious in that ginned-up ambience.

  No matter what goes on outside, the disposition of the Ten Bells gang rarely changes, but Julian’s mood changes. He gets progressively less jovial, and he wasn’t so jovial to begin with. They’re playing the Luftwaffe roulette every night. During the day a few bombs, a few missions. At night, hundreds of bombs, dozens of missions. Some nights, fifty tons of bombs fall. Other nights, a hundred tons of bombs fall.

  A hundred tons of bombs a night. Eventually one of those bombs is bound to drop on the singular spot in the city where Mia stands or rides or walks.

  It’s only a matter of when.

  It’s only a matter of time.

  Outside London, nothing is any easier. Coventry gets destroyed. Half of Birmingham is destroyed, because that’s where the Spitfires are made. Liverpool destroyed; that’s where the American ships dock to resupply the Royal forces. And the British Rail gets hit a thousand times. Train wagons stand on the tracks by the tens of thousands, waiting, not moving. There is nowhere to go.

  There is only the Underground.

  Which Mia makes her life’s mission to leave every day and night. She is always itching to be somewhere else. As if she doesn’t even care about being safe.

  “Why do you always want to go outside, Mia,” Julian says, grumbling, trying to pretend he’s kidding so the others don’t notice. He doesn’t care if she notices. “There is nowhere to go.”

  “Sure there is,” she says. “Like the cinema or the cabaret if you were so inclined.”

  “A cinema, really?” a weary and skeptical Julian asks. Not another thing. Not one more thing.

  “What is this, the dark ages?” Mia says. “Well, technically we are in a blackout, but—of course there’s cinema! I told you, we are all going to Gone with the Wind next Thursday. We have to get there early, or we won’t get a seat.”

  The girls flutter with delight. Every time they’ve tried to go before, it’s been house full. There is only one matinee performance. No shows begin after dark. And it gets dark so early these late November days.

  “Or instead,” says Wild, “we could spend Thursday night on the lash, rolling from one West End pub to another until we are thoroughly blitzed. Oh sorry, I thought it was August, when ‘blitzed’ carried a whole other meaning. Swedish, you in?”

  “Swedish is not in,” Julian says, looking away from Wild, the days of pub crawls forever behind him. The Three Horseshoes on the Yorkshire dales has made sure of that.

  “Better yet, the Windmill is still open,” Duncan says with a lewd grin. “That’s my kind of theatre. Who’s with me, boys? Jules, you in? I walked past it the other day. Sign says, Never closed, never clothed. Girls still naked as the bombs fall. Is anybody’s birthday coming up? Jules, yours maybe? Let’s go while the girls are in Covent Garden, swooning over Clark Gable.”

  “You must’ve walked past it a while ago,” Liz says. “It burned last Tuesday. No more Windmill.”

  “Fuck off!” Nick and Duncan and Wild cry in unison.

  With the Windmill closed, the boys reluctantly agree to go with the girls to see Gone with the Wind except for Finch who makes a show of pretending to be excited. “It’ll be almost like a romantic outing, dove,” he says, taking her hand.

  “Yeah, almost,” says Mia.

  Julian sits and twitches.

  Later, Duncan and Wild mock him for his pining face, but he wants to tell them it’s not just Finch and Mia that upset him. For some reason, the Germans love to fly over London on Thursday nights. The last three Thursdays, the city has been ignited by buildings turning into Swedish flames entire.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, two days before the movie outing, there is a major attack. A hundred and fifty tons of bombs are dropped, most of them on Southbank and the Docklands.

  The bombs are mixed, but most are incendiaries. London burns. The Rescue Squad must wait hours for the firemen to bring the flames under control. Wild feels powerless. Finch and Duncan sleep. Mia and Julian talk until Finch wakes just long enough to tell them to shut up.

  There is injury on the streets. People are dead or badly burned. Once the worst of the flames has been put out, the squad is summoned to assist in the recovery of valuables and bodies. Are valuables first on the war list?

  A one-armed Wild serves tea (slowly), while Julian is asked to shadow Dun
can and Frankie in search of bodies. But he can’t. Because he can’t take his eyes off Mia who is searching for valuables. She’s supposed to be getting out blankets and helping to bandage the wounded, but instead she is climbing into a ruined house to get something for someone. Julian can’t concentrate on what’s under his own feet because he is watching her so anxiously. Asking Duncan to give him five minutes, he walks over to stand behind Mia, who is balancing herself precariously on an end of a charred beam to get inside the house.

  “Mia, stop.”

  She turns to see him behind and below her. “What are you doing here? I’m fine.”

  Julian blinks, the memory and the real girl colliding in his eyes. Is she Mirabelle at the peaceful Crystal Palace on a ladder? Or is she Mia in the midst of a disaster? Placing his firm hands on her slender legs, just below her hips, Julian stops her from moving. This isn’t Victorian London. This is war. “I’m serious, stop,” he says, giving her thighs a light squeeze. “Look.” He points up at the ashy window frames above them, teetering above the ripped-out floors, at the roof breaking off in patches.

  “I’ll duck.” She smiles.

  He shakes his head.

  “I’ve been inside a hundred houses like this,” she says. “This one isn’t too bad.”

  “It is bad,” he says, “and your luck is going to run out.”

  “What, right now?”

  Before Julian can nod, the beam she is standing on breaks. Gasping, she totters backwards and falls. He catches her. Like a see-saw, the half-burned crosspiece flies up and ricochets toward her. Julian has barely a picosecond to turn his shoulder to cover her before the beam smashes into his back, knocking them both to the ground, him on top of her.

  Wild is the first one to run over, yelling for Finch and Duncan. “I’m fine,” Julian says. “Mia, you okay?” She is still underneath him. She grunts, her mouth full of soot. Duncan moves the charred timber, and he and Wild pull Julian and Mia out, helping them to their feet. Though he said he was fine, Julian is having trouble standing. A three-inch nail got jammed in his calf when the beam fell on him. He yanks the nail out, fleetingly hoping the tetanus shot he got when he came back from Mary in 1603 is still good.

  Finch looks unhappy instead of relieved. “Are you all right, dove?” he says to Mia, pulling her away from Julian. “Did he hurt you when he fell on top of you like that? You should be more careful,” he says brusquely to Julian. “You could’ve hurt her.”

  “Finch, don’t be an arsehole,” Wild says. “Did you even see what happened? He wasn’t chatting her up, he was . . .”

  “I’m just saying,” Finch says. “What’s the point of hurting the people you’re trying to help?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Jules, he’s a pillock,” Duncan says.

  “He didn’t hurt me, Finch,” Mia says. “That beam would’ve hit me in the face if he hadn’t stepped in front of me.”

  “I’m just saying . . .”

  “What are you saying, Finch?”

  Duncan and Wild support Julian as he limps to the HMU, his arms around their shoulders. Mia runs after them. While Sheila cleans and bandages his wound and confirms that his shoulder blade is not broken, Julian listens to Mia outside the medi truck arguing with Finch.

  “Why are you standing here, dove? If you’re not hurt, as you say, why don’t you go . . .”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Finch. I’m waiting for him to be done.”

  “Why? There’s so much that still needs to be . . .”

  “So hop to it, rabbit.”

  “I have other things to do, as you well know.”

  “So go do them.”

  Julian finally emerges.

  “Are you okay?” Mia asks, almost timidly, stepping forward.

  “I’m fine.” Though Phil Cozens didn’t diagnose it, Julian knows he’s got a muscle tear in his calf, a common injury in contact sports. For the next few weeks, it’s not going to be easy for him to walk around the bomb sites. “Are you okay? Was Finch right? Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” she says. “The beam in my face would’ve hurt a lot worse, so Finch was not right.”

  Facing each other, they stand next to the medi truck.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you,” she says. “But it was just a freak accident.”

  Julian says nothing.

  “Okay, how did you do that?” she says. “You came over at just the right moment, almost as if you knew it was going to happen.”

  “Mia, did you see what you were doing? It didn’t take a genius.”

  “But why did you do that?” she says quietly.

  “Do what?”

  “Why did you throw yourself in front of me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  She can’t say.

  “Anyone would’ve done the same, believe me,” Julian says.

  She stares into his face a moment and doesn’t say anything.

  13

  Gold Rings

  RIGHT AFTER A BOMBING, THE SITE IS UNSTABLE IN ALL WAYS, physical and metaphysical. Fire damage, charring, demolition. Destruction of both people and property. There is bitter cold and falling rain, and wind. There is also frustration, impatience, disagreement. There are short tempers, even among the British.

  The day after the beam incident, Mia gets into it with a woman who accuses Mia of stealing her jewelry. It’s unusual for Mia to argue back. She is normally so placid. She keeps repeating that she did not find any jewelry in the house, but the woman doesn’t believe her, so Mia keeps repeating it but louder. The woman is soon joined by her son and her uncle, both equally truculent, the uncle beefy and intimidating. All three are accusing the beset Mia of taking the woman’s gold rings. Mia is too nice, even when she is arguing. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Having listened to this from a distance, Julian is about to walk over to deal with the situation his own way, even though he knows it’s not his place, but instead Finch saunters over, to deal with the situation his way. At first, Julian condemned Finch’s response time to Mia’s crisis, which, to put it politely, was somewhat dilatory. But as Julian listens in disbelief, Finch asks Mia to turn out her pockets to prove to the irate family that she took nothing from them. Before Mia can respond, the woman herself declares that turning out the pockets will prove nothing. Mia would have to strip naked, the woman says. The uncle joins in by saying even stripping naked will prove nothing because Mia could’ve swallowed the rings. That’s when Julian has really had enough.

  Ignoring Wild’s admonition to stay out of it, Julian drops what he’s doing, limps down from the mound of bricks, favoring his injured calf, slowly walks into the street where the quarrel is proceeding unabated, and steps between Mia and her three aggressors. He steps between them so forcefully that the teenage son loses his balance and falls. Pulling Mia behind him, Julian stands in front of her and turns to Finch. He doesn’t even bother addressing the family.

  “Do you know what your job is?” Julian says quietly. “Your first job? It’s not to write down the quantity of their fucking gold rings. It’s to protect your own fucking valuables. How can you be so crap at that?”

  “Please step away,” Finch says, all officious and prim. “You’re making the situation worse, as always. I’m trying to defuse it.”

  “Mum, he knocked me down!” the teenager cries.

  “Get up, my darling, to your feet at once! Who are you?” the woman barks at Julian.

  The uncle joins in. “Yeah, bugger off, this don’t concern you—”

  Julian won’t hear another word. He shoves the uncle in the chest. “Shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you,” Julian says to him before turning to the woman. “Lady, take your son, take whoever that idiot is, and get out of here. A bomb fell inside your house. You understand that, don’t you, at least theoretically? The house is unstable. It can collapse any second, yet she still walks through it, searching for your shit while you loiter in the street drinking tea and yelling at her. T
rust me, she doesn’t need your gold rings. She’s got forty sovereigns of her own.”

  The stupefied uncle scrambles forward, huffing and puffing. “I’m not afraid of you, you bloody cripple!”

  “I think you are,” says Julian, “and I know you should be.”

  “He can’t talk to us like that!” the man yells to Finch.

  “Yeah,” Finch says to Julian. “You can’t talk to them like that. This is none of your business. Maria, come here, dove, don’t stand near him.”

  Mia doesn’t move.

  “Her safety is your business,” Julian says to Finch. “You’re supposed to be on her side. How dare you ask her to turn out her pockets? You know she didn’t take their fucking rings.”

  “I know that!” Finch exclaims. “I know that better than you. I wanted her to prove it to them. Put this matter behind us. Not make it worse, like you just did.”

  “That’s right!” the uncle yells, swinging at Julian, who jerks his head, pivots and punches the man with a straight left into the center of his face.

  “I told you to shut your fucking mouth,” Julian says. The man’s nose and lip gush blood. The nose is broken. The woman shrieks, the boy shrieks. Throwing up his hands, Finch rushes off to get some rags. Oh, now he’s rushing.

  Taking Mia by the arm, Julian leads her away from the ruckus.

  “You shouldn’t have let them talk to you like that,” he says. “You let it go on too long. You’re too nice.”

  “Tempers flare,” she says. “And what could I have done? I couldn’t have done what you just did.” She glances over Julian’s shoulder. “Uh-oh,” she says. “You’re about to hear it from Finch.”

  “Can’t wait,” says Julian.

  Before he can turn around, Mia grabs the front of Julian’s coat. “Promise me you won’t hurt him,” she says.

  “Julian!” he hears Finch call. “Look at me! I want to talk to you.”

  Mia holds on to Julian’s coat, keeping him from facing Finch. “No, Julian, before you turn around, promise me you won’t hurt him.”

  He peels her away from his lapel, squeezing her hand. “OK, fine. I promise.” Then he turns around.