“Not me.”
“Not me.”
“Not me,” Frankie says. She never laughs.
“And it doesn’t look like you either, Finch,” says Wild.
“Oh, you taunted me, come on, Finch, don’t be such a ninny, Finch, it’s just a movie, Finch.”
“Come on, Finch,” Wild says.
“Don’t be such a ninny, Finch,” Nick says.
“It’s just a movie, Finch,” Shona says.
“Don’t you want her to be happy, Finch?” Duncan says. “We’re at war. We could die tomorrow.”
“Oh, sure, hope for that.” Finch swirls to Julian standing silently by Mia’s side. “What, cat got your tongue?” he says in a bark.
“Don’t you want her to be happy, Finch?” says Julian. We could die tomorrow.
“You’re saying she won’t be happy with me?” Finch clenches his fists, squares off, then backs off. Julian doesn’t even take his fists out of his pockets. He has pity for Finch, but he’s also relieved he can finally stop pretending.
It’s Liz who comes to the rescue. Putting her arm around Finch, she leads him away to the pile of their stashed whisky hidden under coats and sweaters. “Look at it this way,” Liz says, pouring him a large mug, “your life is too precious, especially nowadays, to waste on someone who doesn’t feel about you the way you feel about her.”
“Oh, isn’t that rich, you of all people saying that!”
“Shut up, Finch,” says Liz.
“Hey, he never gave me a ring!” Mia calls after them indignantly.
And then deep night comes, and the siren goes. They hoped because there had been so many raids that day, that they’d be spared another one in the middle of the night. But no such luck.
Exhausted, still half in their cups, they stagger upstairs to the jeep parked on Lothbury, switch it on, turn to Mia, like a sleepwalking drill, and in the dark ask where to.
Leman Road in Whitechapel, she says, half-asleep.
And Whitechapel gets ignited that night.
The Germans come for Whitechapel.
The road Finch usually takes is blocked off by fallen burning buildings. He takes them another way through an alley. Mia tells him not to because the alley is narrow. Two cars can’t pass each other, and a car can’t turn around if it needs to. But Finch says it’s the quickest way to Leman.
Julian hears the words narrow and alley, hears two cars can’t pass each other, and says Finch please don’t go that way, please. Find another route. I have a bad feeling.
But Finch is mad and defiant. He goes that way.
There is no other car, no head-on collision, no oak tree. There is a bomb that falls through the narrow buildings, cascades, and explodes, cratering the earth thirty feet in front of their vehicle. Julian has just enough time to push Mia down. The force of the blast propels the truck half a block in reverse and shatters the windshield, which sails through the interior of the jeep like hail.
16
Finch and Frankie
JULIAN IS SPARED THE WORST OF THE GLASS, BUT A PIECE OF concrete hits him in the face and breaks open the skin above his brow. It’s not a life-threatening wound but a profusely bleeding one. He can’t see, and he can’t find Mia.
Mia, Mia.
He hears Wild’s voice, Swedish, can you help.
He hears Mia’s voice, Jules, my God.
He presses his palm against his eye, tries to orient himself. Mia presses her hat into his gushing wound.
Mia, you okay?
I’m okay, but Finch is not okay.
Swedish, can you help Finch?
Finch is slumped over the wheel. Duncan has crawled out into the street.
Dripping blood, Julian helps Wild drag Finch from the truck. They lay him on the ground next to Duncan. An enemy incendiary has dropped into one of the nearby houses to let there be light. As the alley burns, Julian pulls shard after shard out of Finch’s face and neck. Wild lies on top of Duncan to stop his convulsions. Mia keeps pressing her soaked wool hat and then her headscarf against Julian’s forehead as he continues to work on Finch. Julian’s coagulating blood drips thickly onto Finch’s head and into Mia’s hands.
From the back of the jeep, Wild gets what bandages they have while they wait for Phil to arrive in the HMU. Mia wraps the gauze around Julian’s head. Tighter, Mia, tighter.
I don’t want to hurt you.
You want me to stop bleeding, don’t you? Tighter.
Duncan is moaning. He has stopped shaking, which is a good sign. But the HMU isn’t coming, and they can’t hear the siren of the fire brigade or the police, only the siren of the enemy.
That’s a good sign, too, says Mia. That means someone out there needs Phil more than us.
Julian doesn’t know if that’s true. Finch’s neck just above the collarbone has been opened by a piece of glass. It didn’t hit his carotid, or he’d be dead, but it must have nicked the external jugular vein. Julian is having a hard time stopping the bleeding.
Maybe we can try to get him back into the jeep and find a Fixed Unit, says Mia.
He needs the hospital, Julian says. He knows the portent of the word “hospital.” He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it.
Mia, Wild, and Duncan gasp. Everyone knows most injuries are dealt with at the HMU, all suturing, splinting, cleaning, bandaging, tracheotomies, even some amputations, are dealt with right on the field. The Fixed Medical Unit takes care of the larger abdominal and head wounds, open fractures, blood transfusions, people unconscious for more than fifteen minutes. There’s a surgeon on staff at the Fixed Unit. But the hospital? The hospital is where you go when there is almost no hope.
Mia’s right, let’s get him back in the jeep, Wild says. Maybe you can drive it to Royal London, Swedish.
The Rescue Squad needs a rescue.
But before they move him, the Heavy Mobile Unit finally arrives. Phil, Shona, Sheila, and Frankie jump out.
I guess we needed help after all, says a flattened Mia.
Phil and Sheila attend to Finch. Everyone else tensely watches. They manage to compress his neck wound to slow the blood loss. They lift him into the truck.
“You need the hospital, too, Duncan,” Phil says, and everyone shudders.
“Fuck no,” Duncan says. “I’m not going to the hospital. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. After Shona drops off Finch, she’ll take you to the Fixed Unit if you really insist.”
“I’m fine, I said.”
Duncan is not fine. He is walking funny. Phil says he may have a cracked vertebra. One of his legs is dragging; it’s a tell-tale sign. The big man doesn’t want to hear it. The squad needs him. Plus, he’s got to be at the Docklands by one.
“Dunk, don’t be daft,” Shona says. “What Docklands? Phil’s right. You can’t walk, how are you going to lift things?” The worry for him on her face surpasses professional interest.
“Well, you know what they say,” Duncan says, “don’t lift with your back.”
Shona gets him to put his arm around her as he stumbles around, trying to get his legs to cooperate. “Come on, Dunk, you mule, come with me and Finch,” she says, looking up at him. “Not the hospital, just the Fixed Unit. Let them X-ray you. Please.” She looks relieved when he agrees. Seconds later, she’s off with both Duncan and Finch in her truck.
While the fire brigade works on putting out the flames, Phil sutures Julian’s brow, and Sheila wraps his head, expertly, tightly, and without fear of hurting him—either without fear or without care.
Julian didn’t think anyone could walk away from a head-on collision with a bomb, but he, Mia, and Wild walk away on their own two feet. Wild is dizzy and wobbles as he walks. He might have whiplash or a concussion. And Mia limps and can’t flex her left elbow. Phil has wrapped her ankle which might be sprained or broken and put her arm in a sling. Julian’s eye socket is turning black and blue. The eye has swollen almost completely shut. Of course the injury is over his good right eye. Of cou
rse.
Tonight the Rescue Squad can’t help the displaced families locate and tag their valuables or to put out small fires in their kitchens. Tonight all the fires are enormous, and the squad can barely help themselves.
With difficulty, Julian drives the jeep. He doesn’t want to confess to Mia and Wild how poorly he can see. What a black irony it will be if he crashes. Burning London, with its pockets of intense heat between strips of frigid night air, looks and feels even more unreal through the Gaussian blur of Julian’s long-damaged left eye. The jeep is also not doing great. He almost couldn’t get it started. It’s sputtering. He can’t get it into gear. He drives the whole way in first and second.
“Finch will kill you, Swedish,” Wild says. “Not only did you take his girl, but you wrecked the transmission in his truck. Frankly, I don’t know which is worse.”
* * *
By the time they return to Bank, it’s after seven in the morning and everyone else has gone to work, except for Lucinda who wakes up long enough to take a look at them, not acknowledging their injuries in any way, ask if they’ve seen Phil and Sheila, and after determining that her husband and daughter are okay, to turn back to the wall. Wild climbs into his bed and is asleep or passed out in seconds. Julian and Mia stare at the empty bunks, at each other. They’re covered in blood and grime and dust.
“The laundry truck is coming at nine,” she says, uselessly patting the dust off Julian’s coat. “We can wash our clothes then.”
“We need a human laundry.”
“That’s at ten. Let’s sleep for a few hours. Then we’ll get up and take care of other things.”
“How can we sleep? We’ll get everything bloody. Look at us.”
“So?” Mia says. “We’ll wash the sheets and blankets, too. But I can’t climb into the top bunk. Let me lie down with you.”
On his side he lies down in the bottom bunk, and she fits in front of him, propping her injured arm with a pillow. He pulls up the blanket to cover them and carefully lays his arm over her. Mia, it’s us, he whispers. The way it’s always been.
“What I wouldn’t give for a bath and a proper bed,” Mia whispers back, as if she didn’t hear him.
“After we wake up, let’s go,” Julian says. “Let’s go to the Savoy.”
Thinly she laughs.
“I’m serious,” he says. “We’ll eat at the Grill and get one of their rooms. We’ll have a real bath.”
“Are we listing our dreams?” she murmurs, sounding almost asleep. “Because I’ve got a few of my own. On whose largesse are we going to do this?”
“Yours.”
“With what, the forty sovereigns you told the old bag were mine?”
“Precisely.” Julian feels in his pants’ leg for the pouch with the coins in it. Less than forty coins now. He sewed the pocket closed a few weeks ago after the purse had nearly fallen out during a tumble in a bombed-out house. Her money isn’t safe. She is not safe.
“I won’t lie, tonight was a little bit frightening,” she whispers. “Being enclosed by fire like that with no way out.”
Saying nothing, he presses himself to her, his face at the back of her head.
“Can I tell you something?” Mia says. “I had the strangest sensation when we were there. I can’t even describe it. It was almost like a memory. I’m breathing the hottest air I’ve ever been in. My throat is bloodied, and I’m about to hit the ground, and the bottoms of my feet are melting. I put my hand out and pray please don’t let us die like this. But it felt like I was the one on the ground not Finch, and you were leaning over me. It was so damn peculiar. I’ve never felt anything like it. I couldn’t tell if I was living it or reliving it.”
Peculiar indeed, Julian whispers.
Don’t take your arm away from me, Mia says. It’s not too heavy.
Wasn’t going to, he says.
They sleep through the laundry truck and the human laundry. They sleep until Wild wakes them at nearly five in the evening. He gives them an update on Duncan and Finch. Duncan’s X-rays were inconclusive, and the giant took that as good news and went to work, even though he could barely stand. “He told Shona he preferred being in a horizontal position anyway,” Wild says, grinning. Finch is still at Royal London. He needed a blood transfusion. Frankie gave two pints of blood to Finch. “Now when Finch wakes up, he’s going to start making puzzles, too,” Wild says.
Wild makes a Swedish flame, just like Julian taught him, and Mia and Julian warm up a pot of water and clean their faces and hands. Mia’s elbow feels better, she says, though Julian doesn’t believe her, since she’s not moving her arm. Phil and his daughters are not back yet, so Wild and Mia together perform emergency medical services on Julian’s head wound. Mia cleans it, and Wild wraps it, and she re-wraps it because Wild can’t tie the gauze with one hand. For dinner, they go to a cafeteria near Monument, and when they return to Bank, everyone’s back. “Frankie, you’re a hero, you gave two pints of your blood to Finch?” Mia says.
“Yeah, by the time it was all said and done,” says Frankie. “You want more blood? I said. I didn’t know I had any left.”
Struggling up on a bench, Mia whistles to get the Ten Bells’ attention. She’s always up on a stage. “Listen, squad, and listen good,” says Mia. “We know that the Savoy Hotel has been hit seven times. But despite that, the Grill remains open for business. That’s how we need to look at life. Hit seven times, yet still open for business.”
“Are you open for business?” Duncan shouts.
Shona smacks him. Wild yells at him. Mia continues.
“The food there continues to be excellent, despite the rationing and the mortar dust. And rooms are available, rooms that have their own private baths and showers! The reason I’m telling you this is because as a Christmas gift to us, Julian is taking us all to the Savoy! Yes, it’s true. So cheer up, mates. Cheer up, Frankie. Let’s get cleaned up. Dresses for the ladies, lounge suits and bowler hats for the gents. We are going to the Savoy!”
She beams at Julian. He fakely beams back. Hadn’t he suggested just the two of them going? He doesn’t remember inviting the entire Ten Bells gang into his reverie.
“Swedish,” Wild says, “you’re a gem.”
“Yeah, well.”
Liz jostles Nick. “Did you hear? Julian’s taking us to the Savoy.”
“Fuck off!” says Nick.
“After afterward, he’s getting us a room and we can sleep in a bed and take baths.”
“Fuck off!”
“Are we all going to sleep in a Savoy bed?” Duncan asks, red with insinuation.
“Duncan!” Shona yells. “One more remark like that, and you’re not going.”
“Mia’s right, though,” Julian says. “We need clothes that are less dusty and torn. We need to look less . . .”
“Less what? Less like we’re in a war?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck off,” says Nick.
“Let’s go to Oxford Street,” says Mia. “We’ll meet up tomorrow evening and find something to wear, and the next day we’ll go to the Savoy. It’ll be a Friday, so no work on Saturday. It’ll be perfect.”
“Are we really going to stay overnight?” Duncan says, unable to wipe the smile off his face.
“Why not?” says Julian.
“All of us?”
With a slight headshake at Mia, Julian nods at Duncan. “Sure, why not.”
They become immeasurably excited, even Peter Roberts, who cautiously says, “Are you sure about this, young man? That’s going to be very expensive.”
“Robbie,” Wild exclaims, “good God, what are you doing? Don’t talk him out of it!”
Frankie is subdued. “Poor Finch. He would’ve liked to go to the Savoy, too.”
“If you want, we can wait until he’s released,” Julian says. Everyone turns to Phil Cozens and his daughters the nurses for their prognosis. And they turn to Frankie who was last to see him.
Smiling a pasted-on smile, Frankie shake
s her head. “We shouldn’t wait,” she says. “He isn’t doing great. He is still losing blood. The doctor thinks he might have a small piece of glass traveling through his body ripping up his veins.”
“Fuck off . . .” says Nick.
“Poor Finch.”
They agree to go to the Savoy without Finch. They make Julian promise that when Finch is released, they’ll go again to have dinner at the Grill.
They plan to meet on Oxford Street the following evening at six o’clock, hoping there will be no bombing. Last Thursday, when they were at Gone with the Wind, bombs fell on Tottenham Court Road at seven. The Germans are not waiting until late night anymore. Their attacks have become more indiscriminate, more random, and therefore more vicious. Because you can’t prepare for them.
On Thursday evening the siren goes off at five. Julian is still walking up from Holborn. Before the Ten Bells can shop and dine, the planes fly and the bombs fall. One drops near Holborn, one on Chancery Lane, and one on Oxford Street. As a limping Julian run-and-guns, he opens and closes his hands. Are they tingling? Or is Mia still alive?
She is still alive. She was late getting out from Lebus and missed the worst.
An entire black cab got blown into a shop window.
One woman’s torso couldn’t be found.
Another woman, waiting on Oxford Street with her husband, was found hours later on the next block still holding her husband’s arm. Only his arm.
That man was Phil Cozens.
And the woman was his wife Lucinda.
The evening at the Savoy gets postponed.
On Friday morning, Oxford Street is mobbed. Despite the massive post-bombing clean-up, Londoners scour the stores, hunting for bargains, getting ahead on their Christmas shopping before the real crunch in mid-December, and all the while Frankie sifts through the rubble and dust. Julian, Mia, and Nick help her. Days later, when Frankie’s work on Phil and Lucinda is complete, they’re released to their daughters, and Kate and Sheila can bury their mother and father.
Afterward, Frankie travels to Royal London with what’s left of the gang, and those who can donate three more pints of blood to Finch.
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