The Number of Love

by Roseanna M. White

  His lips curved into a smile. A reason to look forward to his next trip to London, whenever that might be.

  7

  Where was she? Margot stood just inside the door of the Old Admiralty Building, clutching her umbrella and staring out into the pouring rain. Most of the day shift had already arrived, though there were still a few stragglers jumping over puddles and hurrying inside.

  None, however, were Sophie De Wilde. Margot sighed and glanced at her watch. Five minutes late. Not a lot for some people, perhaps, but quite a bit for her mother. And no doubt it was Margot’s fault—she’d grabbed the good umbrella when she left for her weekly night shift yesterday evening, hoping the weather would have improved by the time Maman would need to leave this morning. The other umbrella had been giving them problems for weeks, refusing to go up—or back down after they’d managed to wrestle it into position. It had probably broken outright, leaving her mother to scramble for one she could borrow from a neighbor. Or perhaps even detour to a shop to spend a few precious coins on a new one.

  Exhaustion had settled over her shoulders an hour ago. The night shift had managed to break the new codes without too much problem, but Hall had passed her another packet from Thoroton to decipher. “If you have the time,” he’d said as he turned for the door. “If you don’t, I’ll handle it myself tomorrow.”

  Had they not managed to break the German codes in ample time, she wouldn’t have minded handing the stack of HUMINT back to the admiral without its plain script counterpart, but she could hardly nap at her desk as Culbreth and de Grey had done with that packet sitting there. So she’d spent her remaining time scribbling like mad, trying to get it finished before her shift was over.

  Now the words were a jumble in her mind as the rain poured down before her vision. Wolfram. Agent Thirty. Anthrax. Cartagena. Erri Barro. Codebooks. Agent Eighteen. Bacilli. Madrid. Sugar. Bilbao. Agent Four.

  Margot checked her watch again. Was it possible that Maman was waiting at home for her, so she could use the good brolly? It didn’t seem the most plausible course of action, but Maman was not always the most logical creature in the world. Most of the time she was utterly rational. But on rare occasions, frustration or joy or some other incomprehensible feeling would trump better reason and make her do the strangest things. Like sit on the couch with a huff after fighting with an umbrella for ten minutes and declaring to the otherwise empty flat that she wouldn’t move until a working example arrived.

  “Everything all right, Margot?”

  Margot looked over her shoulder with a muted smile for Dot. She’d obviously only come back downstairs on some sort of errand, as she had a clutch of papers in hand. She had arrived ten minutes ago. Margot lifted a shoulder. “Maman is not here yet.”

  Dot’s brows drew together. “Has she come down with that flu that’s been going around, perhaps? She looked a bit pale yesterday.”

  Margot shifted her weight to her other foot. She hadn’t considered that very likely possibility—which proved how tired she was. “Possibly. She did seem run-down. But she would have telephoned Lady Hambro to tell her, if so.”

  “And I daresay she will. If so, I mean. But she may have overslept, or been waiting to be sure her ladyship was in.”

  True, all. Margot let that possibility slip into the row of them in her mind. Stay or go? Wait or check on her mother?

  The numbers were muted, sluggish, as tired as the rest of her. But she thought they agreed with the idea of marching out into the cold rain and going home. The powers of three were singing through her mind. No, of four. No . . .

  “Are you feeling all right?” Dot had come closer and reached now to touch a hand to Margot’s forehead. Her own was creased into a frown. Symmetrical lines, equidistant apart. “You feel warm.”

  She wouldn’t let just anybody touch her head like that. But it hadn’t taken long for Dot to feel like a sister. And she was too tired to jerk away. “I’m well enough. Just tired.” Though now that she mentioned it, her throat was the tiniest bit sore too.

  Nothing a cup of tea and a morning of sleep wouldn’t fix. With what was meant to be a marshalling exhale but came out as a resigned sigh, Margot lifted the brolly. “All right, enough dillydallying. I’ll either find her on the way or see her at home. Good night, Dot. See you tomorrow.”

  Her friend grinned. “Good morning, Margot. Stay dry—and put a bit of honey in your tea, if you have any. You sound hoarse.”

  “Yes, Mother.” She issued the tease knowing well it would make Dot laugh—rare indeed was the occasion that her friend got to take care of anyone else now that her aunt had left the city.

  Then came the draft trying to hold the door shut, the first gust of wet wind lashing against her, the quick snick of her umbrella going up, and the drumming of rain upon it. Margot set off with her coat cinched tightly around her waist and her head down as she fought the wind that snuck under her brolly.

  Gentle rains were entertaining. She could count to the patter, try to find the pattern in the falling droplets. From the safety of her window, she could even imagine that, were she an inch tall, she could map out a path around them.

  Rain like this was too complete. A solid wall, moving in sheets, the drops tripping and pushing one another in their haste to find her umbrella. And her shoes. And the hem of her skirt.

  What she wouldn’t give just now for a pair of trousers and some boots. Perhaps one of those so-dubbed trench coats that, according to the chattering secretaries, were now all the mode since they were introduced in the military.

  Not that she’d had a new coat since her first autumn here, when it had been necessary. Also not, for that matter, that Maman would ever consent to her daughter wearing trousers.

  And not that Margot would waste any more than those thirty seconds thinking about, of all things, fashion. Good grief, she could only imagine the way Maman and Dot would laugh if they knew.

  Thunder rumbled across the sky as Margot hurried around the last corner. She hadn’t passed her mother anywhere along the route. That and the throat that really was more than a little sore, now that she thought to pay attention to it, made her think Dot was likely right about Maman having caught the cold or flu or whatever it was going around. It seemed Margot had, and they were always in the same places.

  Agent Eighteen. Wolfram. Anthrax.

  As if a cold was anything to really fuss over these days. Hurrying through a wet English autumn wasn’t exactly unpleasant compared to what those field agents faced on a regular basis. She shuddered at the memory of some of the words she’d decoded an hour ago. They reported enemy agents—opposite numbers, Thoroton had called them once, which had made her smile—stealing from them, chasing them. Agent Twenty-two, whoever he was, had been arrested last week in Morocco.

  Margot wouldn’t snivel over a cold or a broken umbrella. She wouldn’t.

  Finally, the door to their building swallowed her up. She shook the water from her now-lowered brolly onto the front step and then let the door swing shut behind her.

  It smelled of damp and mold in this front hallway, as it always did. Maman had tried once to scrub it into lemony bliss, but even wood soap couldn’t long hold out against the century or two of damp that had crept into the banisters and floors and walls.

  Margot took a moment to wipe her feet—no point in transferring more moisture to said floors—and then let them take her on the familiar path. Four steps to the stairs. Up nineteen, pivot on the landing. Up nineteen, pivot on the landing. Again. Again. Her right hand trailed along the banister, counting in time to her feet. A knot in the wood on step sixteen, between the first and second floor. A nick at step three on the next span. The missing rung on the eleventh step of the final stretch of the banister, which did change the pitch of her hand running along it, despite Lukas the Pitch Expert swearing it didn’t.

  Of course it did. It must. Her ears might not be able to hear it, but her mind could.

  Then, finally, the corridor that would lead t
o the familiar door with the familiar number hanging from it in tin: 3E.

  She fumbled in her pocket for her key. Until this flat, she’d never lived in anything but a house, with a number all its own. No letters had ever been required by the number. It was a variable, she’d claimed to her mother when they first moved in. Not just 3E, but 3(e)—three of E—with any number of possibilities for what the value really was. Some days she let it be a mere three of one—three times one, a simple three. Some days she enjoyed the chance to let larger numbers swell, and it became 37,518—three of 12,506.

  Today, exhaustion and sore throats and keys that would not fit right in the lock inspired a simpler number. Three of six would do, since it took her six attempts to fit the blasted metal into the blasted hole correctly. Eighteen.

  Eighteen. That meant something, but she was too startled by opening the door and finding darkness within to think what. “Maman?” Darkness implied her mother wasn’t there, though that couldn’t be, could it? She’d not passed her on the way.

  She shoved her wet umbrella into the stand, beside the faulty one that still stood in its usual spot, no evidence of it having been growled over and declared impossible. Pushed the door shut. Switched on the electric lights that they were only allowed to use in the daytime, when they wouldn’t shine out the windows and give away their location to any unfriendlies flying overhead.

  “Maman?” She must still be in bed. Perhaps the cold had kept her up half the night, and then she’d overslept once she finally found slumber.

  But . . . no. A faint light shone from under her mother’s bedroom door. She could have fallen asleep with the gaslight on, she supposed, but it wasn’t likely. Margot hastened to the door, rapped lightly. “Maman?” No answer came. Was she in the toilet? No light shone from under that door though.

  She cracked the door open, frowning when she realized it wasn’t the low gas lamp at all, but the brighter electric one. Maman never turned that on until morning. She’d obviously gotten up to get ready, as usual, this morning.

  The door stuck at half-open, bumping into something and going no farther.

  That was when panic sank its fangs into her throat. This tiny little cupboard of a room fit only a narrow bed and a minuscule chest of drawers. There was no space for anything else, anything that could fall over and impede the swing of the creaking door. No furniture. And Maman was meticulous about picking up her few possessions.

  Which meant it wasn’t furniture. Wasn’t a possession.

  Margot edged through the opening as quickly as she could, braced herself, and yet still felt punched in the stomach at the sight of the white nightgown draping the legs on the floor. “Maman!”

  She lay on her side on the rug, her hair a mass of silver-threaded midnight over her arm—unbraided, wavy. Proving she’d risen as she always had, already reaching to undo her hair so she could brush it and pin it up. “Maman.”

  Margot fell to her knees beside her mother, easing her gently onto her back. It was just a cold. Flu, maybe. Dehydration. She’d fainted. Passed out. Perhaps even bumped her head, but it was nothing that serious.

  Her hands shaking, Margot pressed her fingers to Maman’s wrist. Where was her pulse, where? “No. No, Maman. Come on. Wake up. Wake up!”

  Her hands—her hands were shaking too badly, that was all. Shaking too much to detect the pulse in her wrist. She reached for her throat instead, where it ought to be more easily found, even if it were weak. Thready, wasn’t that what they called it? She could handle weak and thready. Weak and thready left room for hope. For intervention.

  But her fingers couldn’t find any thumping in her mother’s throat either. “God! Sixty-two!” That was Maman’s usual resting heart rate. “Fifty-one.” Her mother’s age. “Nine thousand four.” The times she could remember Maman saying she loved her—the times she’d said it back. Je t’aime, Maman.

  “Mon Dieu, s’il vous plaît. S’il vous plaît, pas ma maman.”

  She shook her a bit, but Maman didn’t stir. Margot screamed out her prayer, but Maman didn’t budge.

  Telephone. She had to call for assistance.

  Lukas. 1532. He would know what to do.

  Hospital. They could help.

  DID. The admiral always had answers.

  Eighteen.

  She pushed to her feet, knocked her knee against the chest of drawers, slid out the door, hit her elbow against the frame.

  Telephone.

  Lukas.

  Hospital.

  DID.

  Eighteen.

  She lifted the receiver, listened for the operator. Telephone.

  “This is the operator. How may I direct your call?”

  Lukas. “Kensington–1532.” Hospital. DID. Eighteen.

  “One moment, please.”

  One moment. All it took for a pulse to disappear. For a heart to give up. For the whole world to change. Margot stood rooted to the spot, her eyes scarcely even blinking. They remained fixed on the window, where morning’s light was grey and heavy and soaked with autumn rains that distorted the world outside.

  Distorted the world inside.

  Telephone. Lukas. Hospital. DID. Eighteen.

  “Hello?”

  “Lukas. Hospital. DID. Eighteen.”

  “What? Margot, is that you?”

  She couldn’t blink. She could only stare at the rain-soaked world beyond the rain-spattered window through her rain-soaked eyes. “C’est Maman.” No other words would come.

  Telephone.

  Lukas.

  Hospital.

  DID.

  Eighteen.

  Maman. . . .

  “Margot. Margot, come away from the window.” Lukas’s hand rested on her shoulder. Gentle. Firm. Both at once, in different respects.

  “Margot, come away from the window.” How many times had Maman said that to her, trying to draw her back into the world of which she wanted her to be a part? Eighty-one. Eighty-one times. But not lately. Because lately Margot hadn’t had much time to stare out windows. To calculate the number of bricks in the buildings across the street. To wonder. She’d been too busy. Always busy.

  The rain had slowed, though it hadn’t stopped. The pedestrians were splashing through puddles as they hurried about in search of their midday repast. Every time Margot breathed out, a cloud of vapor settled on the cold pane of glass and then shrank again as she drew in new breath. She could calculate the rate at which it disappeared if she wanted.

  But what did it matter?

  “Margot.” The hand on her shoulder squeezed. “Come, ma sœur. You need not stay here. Come home with me—we have canceled the concert tonight. You can let Willa fuss over you.”

  “No.” Droplets still clung to the windowpane. Not racing along their tracks now and joining with other drops in a mad dash for down, but just clinging there. Stubborn and small and sure to evaporate into the air if ever the sun decided to break through the clouds.

  “Margot.” Lukas wrapped his arms around her and, despite her inability to move even a muscle to accommodate him, held on tight. His breath rasped, and his chest heaved. This was how her brother mourned. How he had mourned when their father died, when the world had crumbled even before war had shattered what was left.

  It was how he mourned now, when their mother joined Papa in heaven. When the last vestiges of normal turned to dust.

  She managed to lift a hand, to rest it against his arm. The movement hurt, deep inside. Stillness was her natural state in moments like this. But Lukas needed a touch, so she dug down, despite the pain, and forced one.

  She loved him. He knew it. It would be enough for him. Just as his arms around her, though she didn’t need the touch, was his love for her. She knew it. It was enough.

  His tears wet her hair where his face rested against her head. It was only the second time she had ever seen her brother cry. For their father. For their mother.

  Then, when one ambitious drop on the windowpane decided to use the wind as an engine
and slide a slow, painful inch, he pulled away. “Come. You cannot stay here alone.”

  Cannot? “No.” More like must. This was home. This was where she and Maman had made a fresh start. She couldn’t just leave.

  “Margot.” Mournful. Not for Maman now, but for her.

  Didn’t he understand? “No.”

  He sighed. And he moved away.

  The clouds raced over the city. Slate to grey to white. Lightening, turning to fluff, and finally breaking apart enough for a sliver of sunlight to shine through. She ought to move. Help. Make preparations. But her head was foggy and her throat was on fire and that stillness wouldn’t let her go.

  “Margot?”

  She hadn’t seen Dot coming along the street below, but then, she’d been looking at the clouds. One particularly swift one tumbled over the sky now, its edges shifting and changing and losing bits of itself to the vast expanse of air around it.

  Mutters from behind her. Two voices. Three. Dot, Lukas, the landlady. Three. Three of . . . what had it been? Six.

  Eighteen.

  Only three, when it should have been four. Maman should be standing there with them. Worrying over something with them. Planning something with them.

  The racing cloud covered the sun, plunging the street back into midday shadows. The muttering stopped. Silence, then the soft padding of light footsteps. Too light for Lukas. Too light for the landlady, who was as wide as she was tall, within an inch and a half. Dot.

  Scraping, scuffing behind her. Beside her. “There.” Dot settled into the chair she’d just pulled over. One of them. “If you need to sit.”

  Her legs did ache. So did her back and her neck and her throat and her eyes and her head. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t make them move. Couldn’t tell her knees to bend.

  Dot said nothing else. She drew a book from the bag hooked over her arm and started reading. With her eyes still locked on the window, Margot couldn’t make out the title.

  It didn’t matter. She was there, and she wasn’t talking. This was Dot’s love.

  The sun emerged again, and it did valiant battle as it tracked across the sky, struggling to fend off the clouds and set the puddles to steaming.