“Blimey!” said the soldier.
“For crying out loud,” said the airman.
I brushed off my trousers and extended my hand to the airman. Taking a firm grip, we introduced ourselves. I warned him that I’d have to jump back under the seat when the conductor came to collect the tickets, but that it was vitally important we speak.
“Fire away,” he said. I got right to the point, asking him if he’d heard of my brother, who’d been stationed at RAF Rochford in Southend-on-Sea. I described my brother to a tea. “Mooney?” he said, looking up at the ceiling and exhaling rings of smoke. “I believe not. I do know one chap with the Eagles though, name of Oscar Coen. He’s with the 71st. He’d know your brother Jack, without a doubt.”
I told him it was crucial I meet this Oscar Coen. Before the airman answered, the cabin door began to slide open and a conductor bellowed, “Tickets!” The airman stood to block the conductor’s view as I slid back under the bench.
After handing over their tickets, I heard the door slide shut again and the airman put the latch on. “Coast is clear, old bean.” I slid out from under the bench, just as he was closing the curtains. He got right back on track: “Oscar Coen—Well, you’re in luck. It happens that my best girl and his are thick as thieves. Happy to give you Sally’s number—just ring her up. But why not simply phone your brother Jack?”
“Jack’s missing somewheres in Belgium, is why,” I said. “I want to know what my brother might be up against over there. You know—get the lay of the land.”
“Reconnaissance is what it’s called,” said the soldier. “Recon for short.”
“You think this Oscar fella might help with recon?”
“Oscar? Most assuredly,” said the airman. “Why, Oscar was downed as well. Missing for almost two months and everyone assumed he was dead. I hadn’t a minute with Sally the whole time. She was off comforting Oscar’s sweetheart. Luckily for me, one day he waltzed into the ops building at North Weald. Like nothing had happened. Said to the sergeant on desk duty, ‘Did ya miss me?’
I blurted: “He should’a said, did you miss me.”
The airman slapped my back. “Right you are!” Then he rubbed his chin trying to remember where he’d left off.
Suddenly I had a vision of myself in a nun’s habit, the kind that’s jet black from head to toe. My lower lip started wobbling. Wasn’t right that I’d corrected a war hero, flying ace, and original Eagle Squadron pilot. And when he wasn’t even there to defend himself. There was one way to make up for my blunder, so I said, “What happened after Oscar said, did ya miss me.”
The airman snapped his index against the fourth and picked up where he left off. “Turned out that during a raid over France, debris from an ammo train Oscar’d fired on hit his Spitfire, forcing him to bail out. Not a scratch on him. Good thing for Oscar the French Resistance got to him ahead of the Gestapo. They smuggled the old boy to Spain and from there he took a boat back to England. If anyone can help you, it’s Oscar.” He stopped short, combed his fingers through his moustache and said, “What are you—like eleven years old?”
“Practically thirteen,” I said.
Consulting his watch, he wanted to know if my mum knew that I was out this late. His watch was a fine military issue chronograph, the kind with three dials, but I didn’t even think about taking it. “Oh, sure,” I said. “I’m traveling home from my grandma’s. Ma will be waiting for me at the station.”
“And your granny neglected to give you train fare?” asked the soldier.
Before I could stop it, a story about using the money for a comic book slipped out. Hopefully the soldier wouldn’t want specifics. The English probably had different superheroes than us Americans, ones that spoke properly and drove Rolls Royces. After all, Superman was fighting for Truth, Justice, and The American Way. He worked for the Daily Planet, which every kid knew was really the Daily News. And where’s else was Metropolis but New York City? But maybe in the English version Superman fought for Truth, Justice, and The English Way. Maybe English kids thought that Metropolis stood for London. And the problem didn’t stop there: Flash Gordon graduated from Yale, a college in Connecticut. But maybe in the English version be graduated from somewheres else. Eton.
“Well, that’s fine then,” said the airman. He put his left ankle on his right knee, leaned his elbow on the armrest, and sank back into the seat.
I pleaded for Sally’s phone number, getting my knees dirty to drive home the point. He put her exchange and number on the back of his ticket stub and handed it to me with a wink, “Promise me you won’t ask her out on a date.” I held up three fingers: the Boy Scout pledge.
People began piling into the corridor as the train pulled into a terminal big as Penn Station, only you couldn’t get a Nathan’s Famous hotdog here; and that’s what I always looked forward to on trips into New York City. I figured this was Waterloo Station, London. My plan was to head straight to Daphne’s address. Before I left East Hempstead, I had the bright idea to write Jack’s fiancée, informing her of my imminent arrival.
She’d be expecting me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FINDING DAPHNE’S PLACE was more trouble than I counted on. First off, I made the mistake of thinking London was the same as Manhattan. New York City is a cinch to navigate, what with most streets numbered and running the whole length of the island. Everything that runs width-wise is divided into east and west, and even some of them streets got numbered and called avenues. All you need to know is the names of a few streets: Park, Lex, and Madison. If you have that down, and your numbers, it’s impossible to get lost.
Well, maybe not impossible. Once we’d all gone in to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and I got a hankering for one of them huge pretzels with rock salt that are sold from carts. I slipped out during the stupid dog act, because I hate dogs—especially when they dress them up and make them walk around on their back legs. I didn’t pay enough attention—my slip-up—and once I ate the pretzel, I was shocked to find I didn’t know my way back. This was when I was younger and scared easy. But before terror could grip me, Jack showed up, grinning and bending his index finger. It was that pretzel’s fault we missed the trapeze act, which was the whole reason for coming in the first place.
London was different, one huge maze. Every little street had a new name and there didn’t seem to be a connection between them. On Long Island, neighborhoods are organized with a theme. If you’re looking for Maple Street, for example, and you happened on Pine Street, you’re getting hot. But in London, Maple Street might be next to Woodpecker Street, which might be next to Daffodil Road. I got frustrated walking in circles—getting farther and farther from Waterloo Station but probably no closer to Daphne.
I didn’t want to stop and ask for directions, because I couldn’t trust anyone. Ma always warned me not to talk to strangers in the city and not to take candy from them when they tried to lure you into their car—even if they were waving Tootsie-Rolls. Besides, it was now near mid-night. A kid walking around by himself might raise a red flag—like he’d run-away from home or something like that. The world is full of do-gooders who would want to drag him to the nearest police station.
My stomach began to growl and I realized I was starving. Just then, my nostrils got filled with the mouthwatering smell of French-fries. I followed my nose and took a seat on a stool in front of a food booth. The cook behind the counter said, “What’ll it be, guv’nah?” I had a little trouble making out what he’d said.
“French-fries, sir.”
The man laughed and said, “Yank, huh?”
Now, why he’d think that? I wondered. “Been a Brooklyn Dodger fan my entire life,” I said. Too bad I didn’t have a baseball cap to prove it.
“That’s a good one!”
A beautiful plate of French fries was slap down in front of me, gleaming with hot grease—the way I liked them. “’Av some fish to go with ’em chips?”
“No thank you, sir, but I w
ill have some ketchup.”
“Vinegar.”
“Pass,” I said, and tucked into the plate of fries, happy as a clam in a shell. I finished in no time flat and asked for another order.
“Don’t yer mum feed you at home?”
“Oh yes, sir. But she’s Irish and we get our potatoes either baked, boiled, or mashed.” Lifting a fry, I said, “This is the way to get your potatoes, if you ask me.”
The cook watched me wolf down the second serving. “’At explains it,” he said. “The Irish can’t cook for nothing. Me wife is Irish, so I should know.” He draped a dishtowel over his arm. “Truth be told, we English aren’t exactly masters of the culinary arts. I’d say what you ’ave in front of you is the very summit of our skills: fish and chips—that is if you’d ’ad the fish. Now, you didn’t hear me saying it—but the French, they’re the ones know what’s what.” He pointed at my empty plate, rallying, “They don’t ’ave fish and chips like that in Germany. Keeps us going, it does.”
“You got Coca-Cola?” I asked.
“Tea. No sugar, I’m afraid. There’s a war on, if you ’aven’t noticed.”
“I’ll pass.”
Just as I finished the last fry, an ear-piercing siren went off and the cook began to shut up his booth. He said, “Better come along, lad,” and we headed with a wave of people to a staircase in the middle of the sidewalk and began stepping down into a chute. I heard airplanes coming closer, and the sound was like a swarm of buzzing bees. Any second and a bomb could fall on our heads, but everybody was being polite: After you—No please, after you—Pardon me. This never would’ve happened in New York—there’d be a stampede right off the bat. But when the sound of German bomber engines got right overhead, some people began pushing. One lady stumbled, breaking the heel off her shoe. My new friend, the cook, helped her up. I held onto his apron for dear life.
We entered a train station identical to the New York City Subway. I took the subway loads of times with my parents, when we’d go to visit an uncle who lived up in the Bronx. In New York only hobo’s sleep down in the subway. Here in London, there were hundreds of ordinary people making their beds for the night. It was like a crazy sleep over party.
“Might as well get comfy,” said the cook, who found an empty space along the wall and invited me to sit. “We could be here a while.”
I overheard one lady say to another, “Bloody Hitler. I hope someone drops a bomb on his head tonight.”
“Now, wouldn’t that be lovely, dearie,” said her friend.
After a few minutes I heard a whistling sound above and the first bomb hit nearby. The lights in the station flickered on and off. Dust floated in the air, and people huddled closer together.
My heart was thumping. Nothing as exciting had ever happened in East Hempstead, not since the Revolutionary War, anyway. At first I was glad to be in London and in the thick of it, and not just hearing about the war on The Voice of America—thousands of miles from the real action. Then a bomb dropped close—almost a direct hit—and it shook the whole place so bad, tiles fell off the walls. Right then I would’ve given anything to be a thousand miles away, listening to The Voice of America. I wouldn’t of even complained about the boring parts, like “A Word From Our Sponsor,” followed by a advert for cold cream.
I’ll confess that I even screamed a few times, which wasn’t something English people did, them already used to the war. But they sure looked terrified, same bug eyes as me. Soon though, the explosions started sounding more distant. The tension loosened and everybody got chatty with one another. I figured this was a good time to find the men’s room but, when I stood up, my legs were shaking so bad I had to sit down again or fall over.
“My sister’s place got leveled in the Blitz,” said a lady on our left, to no one in particular. “She was sitting on the loo, you understand, and when the bomb hit everything around her crumbled—including the wall facing the street. There she was, with her knickers pulled down around her ankles, for all and sundry to see. She’s still not recovered from the shame of it.”
“I’ve got one to top that,” said a man seated to our right.
“Let’s hear it,” said the cook. “We need a little entertaining down here.”
“You see—me wife, she were having her bath when the house was hit. She ran straight out the front door, starkers, she were. She’s a looker too. Had nothing on but her wedding ring. A bloke comes strolling along, looks down at her ring and says, ‘Nice day to you, ma’am. Tips his hat and continues on. A real gent.”
BOOM, BOOM, came the sounds above us. I scooted closer to the cook, who put his arm around my shoulder. Ma’s rosary beads would’ve come in handy then.
“That’s the one good to come out of all this,” said the lady, when the ruckus died down. She was wearing a hat with a parrot feather stuck from the side. “Seeing people rise to the occasion, pulling together and acting decent.”
“’ear, ’ear,” said the cook. “Makes you proud to be an Englishman.” All the people around us made sounds or nods of agreeing.
The man to the right continued his story where he’d left off. “Me wife took a bath in her swimsuit for a month afterwards. Now she never gets in the bath, not unless she’s got her robe right near by.”
“No wonder,” said the lady. “I’ll start doing that myself.”
Another bomb dropped close by and the lights went out. It got quiet then, quiet enough that I heard a lady weeping and her husband saying, “Lost our boy in the Blitz, we did. Hard to be reminded, not that we forget for a second.” My friend the cook heard it too, and squeezed my hand.
“The boy died?” I whispered.
“Seems so,” said the cook, all choked up. I got choked up too, so I didn’t say anything more.
The lights came back on, and a lady with the feather cap reached into her string bag and pulled out a package, “Biscuits, anyone?” I was the first to volunteer when I realized she was offering us cookies. The man with the naked wife pulled out a thermos and offered us all tea.
“Lovely!” said the lady. Her happy-grunts, as she sipped tea from the thermos cap, made me want some myself. I dunked a cookie into the tea and it wasn’t half bad. She opened up a blanket and made a place for me to lie down. “Poor little thing,” she said. “We’ll find your mummy in the morning. For now you’re safe with us, duck.”
I crashed fast asleep, as bombs rained down above us. This much hair-raising tuckered a fella out. I dreamed about fireworks on the Fourth of July. When I got to the grand finale, another siren blared and woke me. The lady with the parrot feather cap said, “That’ll be the all-clear. Time to be getting home to make breakfast for the hubby.”
That reminded me that I’d never paid for my French fries the night before. I reached into my pocket and removed my stack of dollar bills and reminded the cook that I owe him for the fries.
“Ah, forget it. They’re on the ’ouse,” he said and pointed to my dollar bills. “Besides, what would I do with that? We’ve got King George on our notes, not George Washington.” I hadn’t thought of that.
“Tell your mum to trade those in for you at her bank,” said the lady. “That or the black market.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“It’s not where, it’s whom,” said the cook.
“Criminals,” said the lady. “People making a profit off of our misfortunes. They’ll sell you a pair of nylons for a 1000% mark up.”
“I don’t want nylons,” I said.
“Lucky you.” She pointed out the line she had drawn up the back of her bare leg. “Barclays, stick to that.” She rose and patted down her wrinkled dress, and then reached out her hand to me and said, “Come now, let’s help get you home.”
I took Daphne’s letter out of my back pocket, unfolded it, and handed the envelope to the lady. I told them it was the address where I was staying but wasn’t sure how to get there. It wasn’t really a lie because I figured that Daphne would put me up. The cook, the lad
y with the feather hat, and the man with the naked wife, all leaned in to examine the address. They had a tug-of-war for the envelope and a corner tore from the thin blue airmail paper.
“Leytonstone. That would be in the East End,” said the cook.
The man snapped his finger. “Hop on here and after three stops switch for the Central Line at Tottenham Court Station—then ride Central all the way to the Leytonstone tube station.”
Just as he said that, a train pulled into the station and we said our good-byes. When the lady bent down to hug me, the feather in her hat almost took out my eye. As we parted, the cook put a coin into my hand. “That will cover your fare.”
“I’ll come back for the fish some day, I promise.” I was serious too.
“And a double order of chips,” he said, smiling.
I boarded the train and it pulled away from the station. Before we entered the tunnel, I turned to look out the window. My three new friends were waving wildly to me from the platform. Spending the night in a subway station, while the Nazis pound you from above, and death can come at any minute, makes you feel warm and fuzzy toward people.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ARRIVING AT THE LEYTONSTONE STATION, first thing I done was to check the clock above the ticket seller’s booth: the hands pointed to seven. It was the weekend, so with any luck Daphne was asleep in her bed. She was 17 or 18-years-old and probably still lived with her folks. I couldn’t just ring the bell and announce myself, not with grown-ups around. I’d have to concoct a cover story.
No one had collected the fare for the subway ride and I still had the English coin in my pocket: the one with a picture of a king. As I exited the station, I heard a lady call out, “Bouquet for your sweetheart! A dozen posies for a bob!”
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