Inexpressible Island

by Paullina Simons

Because they forgot to sing.

  They sing, “God Save the King.” Julian keeps singing “God Save the Queen” instead. His daughter is going to be queen when he dies, he explains.

  Yes, all sorts of things will happen in the far-away future, Mia says. But the King is still a young man. Victoria lived until she was ninety.

  And because he’s had too much to drink, Julian says, the King won’t live until ninety. He smokes too much. He’s going to get lung cancer.

  Mia puts down her shaky cigarette. You can be a real pill sometimes, she says.

  I said the King, not you. Julian flinches from his own words. Terrible ignorance is better than terrible knowledge. Yet no one can protect us if we are not ready. Sometimes they can’t protect us even when we are. Not because they won’t. Because they can’t. I carry oil in my lamp. And yet the day of your death is near. I am your grave. As you are mine. You are my grace. But am I yours?

  What else, weepy Nostradamus? What else do you know, Mr. Seer of Seers, Mr. Smarty Pants? Will Hitler win?

  No.

  Will he invade England?

  No.

  Will the bombing stop?

  Yes. In the spring.

  Really, spring? The war will be over in the spring?

  No. Only the bombing. Will pause, not end.

  Where is Wild?

  I don’t know.

  What’s going to happen to you and me?

  I don’t know.

  Will Liz and Nick make it?

  I don’t know.

  So, when will the war be over?

  I told you. 1945.

  But you know nothing personal that could help us?

  Yes, I know nothing that can help us, Julian says. I’m a font of useless information no good to fucking anyone. Let’s drink and sing.

  They sing “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” Except Julian sings it with garbled lyrics Mia says she’s never heard. Her sword is girded on her side, the helmet on her head, and all around her are lying the dying and the dead.

  Either I’ve had too much to drink or you are crap at knowing things, Mia says.

  It’s both, Julian says.

  They sing the Drunken Sailor song, to which they can’t remember the words, even though they had just sung it at Bank. What do you do with a drunken sailor is all they know.

  And weigh-HEY up she rises

  Weigh-HEY up she rises . . .

  They stand, they sit, they slouch, they slump, finally they slide to the floor and lie on their backs, covered by the nastiest scratchiest blankets, and slur their dreams to the ceiling. They wish they could see the stars. They wish the bloody blankets were better. Americans gave us these blankets, Mia says. Would it have killed them to make them softer? It’s like covering ourselves with sandpaper.

  They wish it weren’t so cold.

  She wishes she had the magic power to not need food. He wishes he had the power of two extra arms, and she says if you’re going to be asking for extra anything, are you sure you want it to be arms, and with a small smile he says yes because elsewhere he already has the superpower, and with her own small smile she says she wishes she could know it again.

  They wish their bodies weren’t all busted up. They ooze blood out of their wounds and live inside their regret.

  She wishes she could reverse time.

  Trust me, he says, reversing time is not all it’s cracked up to be.

  She wishes they didn’t only live once.

  Trust me, he says, living more than once is not all it’s cracked up to be.

  Rolling up his sleeve, Mia touches the tattoos on the inside of his arm, touches her own name in a small script right at his wrist, whispers it in a drunken purr. Mia, Mia . . .

  Are these the girls you’ve loved before?

  Yes, he slurs back. These are the girls I’ve loved before.

  She giggles, like she thought of something incredible. Jules, have you noticed how all of them are a devi—deri—devivative—derirative—devirative of my own name, of Maria?

  What do you know, Julian says. I hadn’t noticed that until you pointed it out just now.

  I want me to be there, too, she says. But as Maria.

  The name of a fervent prayer, he says.

  That’s right.

  I loved a girl named Maria, he sings, and smiles.

  That’s right! I want to be above Shae and ASH. But in big letters. Huge. Like this MIRABELLE.

  Okay, he says. You will be. He closes his eyes.

  Shae is not Maria.

  It is. It was Mary-Margaret.

  ASH is not Maria.

  No. ASH is Ashton. He was my friend.

  Must’ve been a good friend to end up on your arm, all ridged and raised like that.

  He was. He was my brother. He died.

  Don’t cry, Jules. Can you sit up and cheer up? Let’s have another round. Drink and sing to me about the girls you’ve loved before.

  They can’t sit up or cheer up. They’re drowning in whiskey.

  What are the dots for? She runs her finger over one set of columns, then the other, touches the dots by MIRABELLE’s name. He doesn’t answer her, and she doesn’t follow up.

  Which one of them killed a man in cold blood, she asks. No, don’t tell me that either. I don’t want to know. Rather . . . how do you atone for something like that? Do you atone for it?

  You do, he says. Your body is the price. Your soul is the price.

  Mia is quiet. Did she atone for it? she asks haltingly.

  I think she did, yes.

  Tell me about the first, tell me about this other Mia. Was she nicer than me?

  It’s not another Mia, he wants to say. There is only one. She was not nicer than you. Sometimes she went by a fake name, Julian says. By Josephine. Josephine Collins.

  Oh, I quite like that name, Mia says.

  I liked it, too.

  But Mia is better, right? She smiles.

  Of course.

  Bloody right. Where did you meet her?

  She was up on a stage.

  Like me?

  Just like you.

  Did she love you?

  I don’t know, he replies. I thought she did. But she didn’t love me true. She wasn’t true to me. She kept secrets, Julian says. I could taste them on her lips. But I didn’t want to see.

  How about a poem for Josephine? A short one, like a haiku.

  I will forgive you

  If you don’t love me enough

  But not for dying.

  Dying or lying? asks Mia.

  Dying, Julian replies, looking away.

  What about Mary?

  We bickered and joked

  dreamed of Italy and babies, not

  his hands on your throat.

  Mallory?

  The world ends in fire

  We run and run and run and

  But the world still ends.

  And Miri?

  On Gin Alley, we

  drink and make wishes while thieves

  pitch rocks at your tears.

  Mia kisses the tattooed names on his arm after each one. Funny, because you and I are drinking and wishing, too. And MIRABELLE, all capital letters?

  MIRABELLE, my love

  Cholera prevails and war.

  But you and I more.

  This Shae character, what about her?

  You flense seals, carve up

  My dreams. I thought you chose ice

  But you chose me.

  What will you say about me, Mia whispers. What will you say about our brief but perfect love affair?

  We rode horses to

  Where the bombs still flew, dreaming

  Of a dream machine.

  Not horses but trains, she says, and he says, same difference.

  I used to work a Dream Machine, she says, on the boardwalk in Blackpool. Did I tell you that? Is that how you know?

  I don’t think you told me that.

  The girls you loved, what happened to them?

  They di
ed.

  All of them?

  He pauses. Yes.

  Wow. That’s unlucky.

  Yes.

  But to love is lucky, she says.

  That is true, I suppose.

  You don’t think to love is lucky? Did you love them all?

  I loved them all.

  Me too? she whispers.

  I love you most of all.

  I bet you say that to all your girls, she slurs. Their whiskey gone, she falls asleep, but not before she says, will I die, too?

  I’m asleep, Julian says, I can’t hear you. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I definitely don’t want to live in a town called Over.

  23

  Two Prayers

  THE NEXT DAY, BOY ARE THEY SORRY THEY HAD SO MUCH TO drink. Their sore heads lowered, they repent and beg forgiveness with their parched dry mouths. They drink the rest of the melted snow water out of the bucket and bang on the door for the conductor to let them out.

  Mia is lightheaded. She can’t orient herself for a few moments. She has not recovered from her concussion. They scrounge in the food car for something to eat, but other people without hangovers got there first, and all the food is gone until the next stop. They find an old dry scone on the floor. They break the bread. It’s delicious.

  The train doesn’t move. Five miles ahead, the tracks are still being repaired.

  They bundle up and go out into the fields for a walk in the frigid air to clear their heavy heads. The ground is white except for the black grass.

  Maybe we’ll have a white Christmas, Mia says, as they look for something in the fields to eat. They find a potato! They break it in half and eat it raw. It’s delicious.

  They stumble on a pond blanketed with crystal snow.

  They slide on the ice. They can’t run, and they can’t jump, but they slide to see who can go the farthest. She wins. They pretend to skate, trying not to bend their swollen knees, holding hands and gliding in their wet boots. For a few moments he takes her gingerly into his arms, and they waltz on the ice, until they hear the whistle of the train. They hurry as best they can, limping through sheets of snow, yelling, don’t leave without us, don’t leave without us.

  Back in their seats, their flushed faces red, they hold hands, his left, her right. She is pressed against the cold window and he is pressed against her. She tells him about the Blackpool boardwalk, how much fun she had there in the summers with her friends. She wonders if the Ferris wheel is running in December, if the amusements are open. You were right about leaving London, she says. I’m sorry I didn’t want to listen. My mum will be so happy to see me for Christmas.

  Let me out. Don’t leave me. Let me out. Don’t leave me.

  Mia, Mia. Mia, Mia.

  Free me.

  Don’t leave me.

  Bristol, Birmingham, Portsmouth and Hull, Belfast, Coventry, Glasgow and Liverpool, Cardiff, Manchester, Plymouth, and Cornwall. London.

  Not Blackpool.

  But everything else is bombed.

  Including Sheffield. Oh, how Sheffield is bombed the night of December 15, as their train stands abandoned and out in the open. They’re evacuated a quarter mile into the cold woods, where they huddle under fallen trees and watch as their train blows up and burns.

  Covering her with his body, to protect her, to comfort her, Julian whispers to her of happier times in the unknowable future.

  Don’t worry. I will never leave you or forsake you. We are co-stars. We’ll always be co-stars.

  We’re bomb magnets, she says.

  No, we are train jockeys, he says. Riding companions. Camping buddies. Lovers. Adventure seekers.

  She smiles. How do you do that, Jules, make even a wartime bombing sound romantic?

  His lips are against her cold cheek. We’ll go roughing, you and I, another day when we are healed, Julian whispers. In the summer when it’s warm, we’ll set up a lean-to in the field. No light, no water, no heat. Just us under a trench coat tied between two trees on the side of a meadow. It will pour with rain for days. It won’t matter. We’ll be together.

  What are we going to do under a trench coat for days? she says.

  I will show you.

  Mia is skeptical. Can you imagine me, getting down in a tent, she says.

  Oh, you’ll get down in a tent, all right, Julian says.

  And she laughs.

  * * *

  They survive Sheffield, with new small wounds, new cuts, new burns, their old wounds seeping fresh blood. Several hundred of them were in the woods. Eight have died. The rest get slowly transported by buses and trucks twenty miles east to Doncaster, where they wait another day for a train to take them forty miles north to Leeds.

  Did you catch the names of the towns we passed, she asks. Dinnington, Doddington, and Diddington. Which one for you?

  I’d like to live here, in Loversall, Julian says, pointing to a few glum shacks in the middle of the desolate flatness.

  In Leeds, there are no civilian trains on the docket. They have the rest of the day free to find the Leeds Cathedral on Cookridge Street, a half-mile from the station. The church is unharmed and quiet. To their surprise it’s also Catholic! This does not distress Mia. She tells him her family is Catholic.

  “Mine, too,” says Julian.

  They’re both pleased. “I can’t believe it, Jules. Both of us Catholics, on top of everything else. It’s like we’re meant to be.”

  “You think?”

  They sit inside the cathedral the rest of the afternoon, waiting for the five o’clock Mass to begin.

  “I feel bad that so much of the time we live as if there’s never been a cave in Bethlehem or a cross on Calvary.” Mia sighs. “But inside we all want to believe so much, don’t we? Believe that there is light eternal somewhere over yonder.”

  “There is,” Julian says. “I know there is.”

  “Oh, that you know.”

  “I know it!”

  They fall asleep in the pews until a deacon wakes them, sternly saying there is no sleeping inside the church. He softens when he sees their battered bodies.

  “Did you pray?” Mia whispers to Julian.

  “Of course.” God on high, hear my prayer. Help her—please.

  “What did you pray for?” she asks.

  “What did you pray for?”

  “My priest once told me besides the sacramental prayers and the Jesus prayer, there are only two personal prayers ever worth bothering God for. One of them is help me. And the other is thank you. Which was it for you?”

  He smirks. “Mine is almost always help me,” he says. “You?”

  “Mine is almost always thank you,” Mia replies. “Because what have you got, really, that you have not received?”

  24

  Mytholmroyd

  TWO EVENINGS LATER, AFTER FINALLY CATCHING A TRAIN out of Leeds, they stop twenty miles east in a picturesque upland town called Mytholmroyd, high in the Yorkshire moorlands. They’re ordered off the train, which has been requisitioned for the military. They’re told the next civilian train won’t be until the day after tomorrow. They have just sixty miles to go until Blackpool, yet can’t seem to get there.

  Christmas is six days away.

  And Boxing Day is seven.

  Julian is distraught, but Mia is enchanted. “There’s a town right below Mytholmroyd called Hoo Hole,” she exclaims, studying the map at the station. It’s not even four in the afternoon, yet the sun has already gone down. “I want to live in Hoo Hole, Jules! If not live, I want us to find an inn there.”

  He doesn’t want to travel too far from the station in case there’s an earlier train. “Look,” he says, pointing across the road. “There’s a perfectly good inn right here called Shoulder of Mutton. What’s wrong with that? It’s on a brook.”

  “Shoulder of Mutton! What happened to the romantic in you?”

  “It’s on a burbling brook!”

  At the Shoulder of Mutton, all the rooms but one have been taken by travelers without
leg injuries and broken clavicles who didn’t take so long to peruse maps and dream of Hoo Hole. Their room is in the dormered attic up on the third floor. It takes them a while to climb the steep narrow stairs. The room is nice. It has a bathtub and a small standing balcony between the dormers.

  “Mia, look,” he says, “a view. Overlooking the brook perhaps.” It’s hard to tell because it’s blackout, and all the lights are off for the war, even at the foot of the hilly Pennines.

  She is not impressed. “That’s not a balcony,” she says. “You can barely fit two people on it.”

  “Actually, it is,” he says. “It’s a Juliet balcony.” His voice almost doesn’t break.

  She softens. “Named after Juliet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s a little romantic.” She softens some more. “Can you help me out of these clothes,” she says, “and maybe you can recite some Romeo to me.”

  It takes them a long time to undress, to have their shallow baths, to be mindful of the wounds they can’t get wet. He dries her and changes her dressings, and then she changes his, as best she can, because her broken clavicle makes it painful for her to move her arm. They are bandaged, but they leave themselves naked, they allow themselves the small indulgence, a hat-tip to better times—for Julian in remembrance of the days gone by, for Mia, in hopes of the days to come.

  Alas, that my love so tender should be so tyrannous and impolite, Julian whispers.

  Finally I get my Romeo.

  And I my Juliet.

  Where is this tyrannous and impolite love? she says. Alas, indeed! When did we get so old, Jules?

  He helps her into bed, covers her, and carefully lies down facing her under the heavy quilts.

  The splint for his fractured forearm is inadequate. He must lie on his left side, but he can’t raise his right arm to touch her. His shoulder, shoulder blade, and the ragged, stitched-up back wound are on fire. With his index finger he caresses her skin below her bandaged chest. Even her breasts are bandaged, her nipples.

  Are you sleepy? she asks.

  Not really.

  Do you feel like talking? They lie on their sides, face to face.

  Sure. What do you want to talk about?

  I want to ask you about something you said to Duncan at Bank, and to me at the Savoy.

  Uh-oh.

  When Dunk asked if you’ve ever had a thing with two girls you said it wasn’t the time for that kind of story, and you wouldn’t tell him even if it were.