Finn no longer crosses the Continent every other year, for it is gruelling, and as glamorous as a drunk at a christening. He rests his head on flat pillows in bad hotels and eats cheap food with the locals. The luxury itself is in being far away from London and the house on Magdalen Street. Travelling gives him perspective when he is tempted to forgo his drops and die a painful death, which he contemplates periodically. He plans his journeys around his long sleeps, departing a few weeks after he wakes. The profit proves so great that Clovis curbs her envy of his time away.
Low on stock this year, by June he relaxes in the Dover ferry’s roomy saloon. He blinks at the vision striding towards him and then almost empties his bowels when he’s sure of it.
‘What in holy hell are you doing? You can’t be here.’
‘Calm down. I’ve left them a note. My sleep was a month ago, I wasn’t followed, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t come along.’
Rafe is unusually determined.
Finn almost lets it drop. He’s near allowing the whole prolonged lie to unravel at last. What a bloody relief it would be to confess, ‘I’m not your father. Go home.’
But it’s too late for that, and too late to disembark.
The railway line between Paris and Marseilles travels smoothly. By the time they approach the southern port, Finn’s anger subsides. There are small, awkward efforts of politeness: ‘You take this bed, it’s firmer.’ ‘No, you have it, I’m all right here.’
The wind of Marseilles is in Finn’s favour and the whiff of it leads him to the enamelled pottery of the widow Perrin. The bargaining journey of 1914 begins.
In Stamboul they sample a few draws of cheroots and accept lemonade from a new dealer. The air is different here, warm and fragrant with mint and sweet dust. Finn’s challenge is to haunt the old places while making new contacts. He buys a beauty of a gilded pipe bowl. The smell of it makes him dizzy.
Like a shadow, Rafe follows Finn each day, through the souk and to each appointment, every coffee house. He’s disquieted and doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Finn assumed Rafe would take advantage of his freedom and explore, go a little wild, but he soon recognizes the mask of disorientation on his face.
‘I know how you’re feeling,’ Finn offers. ‘I felt the same way on my first trip abroad since … since we lost our freedom.’
Finn quickly picks up on Rafe’s sigh.
‘Our situation. It’s not your fault, Rafe.’
‘Of course it is.’
On the train to St Petersburg they sink into comfortable seats and sip strong, sweet tea. Their silences, made less awkward by their days together, are now filled with nods of acknowledgement of the sweeping Russian landscape.
The train rattles on for hours without offering a view of a single settlement, followed by frequent station stops, where hawkers wait on the platforms selling smoked fish the size of a large man’s thigh. Having once sampled the chicken drowned in soured cream and cheese, Finn has since shunned the restaurant car. Today he buys fish and sausages from a kerchiefed woman on the platform who hunches with a bundle of birch twigs on her back. In their compartment Rafe mentions the pungent odour, but it is nothing compared to the fish paste the Mongolians have smuggled on board.
Their salty meal soon has Rafe searching for water and more tea. While he’s away Finn picks up the sketchbook left lying on Rafe’s seat.
‘Bloody hell,’ he says under his breath.
He flips through, not quite believing what he sees. Each dealer is perfectly captured; not only the likeness, but the very essence of the person. The Turk’s possessive glare cast over his domain, and also his eagerness. The knitting grandmothers in the next compartment, their heads almost touching, assembled as they gossip. The Mongolian traders and their stash of alcohol, clothing and tobacco. All in remarkable detail, and so quickly drawn.
Finn turns another page. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Well, well.’
He had always wondered what keeps Rafe going – who or what does he love. He knew it wasn’t him – a surprising flush of shame – and sure as hell not Clovis. He thought perhaps Rafe nursed a lusty love for Willa. But Willa had changed and bathed him, dressed and fed him, the memory of which never faded. Whatever Rafe may have felt for her went unrequited.
Finn turns page after page of drawings of the sisters Fitzgerald. There’s no mistaking their distinguished and elegant faces. The punch comes out of the blue, out of the rolling sky flying by his window. Gutted, he is. A baby first parted from his mother, then a little boy made miserable by being snatched away from the doting sisters. And Finn had done nothing. He’d done bugger all to turn a kinder hand to ease the boy’s wretchedness. In fact, he admits, he has always been intimidated by him. Rafe had received more education by nine years of age than Finn had in his entire lifetime. And now, here in his hands is an extraordinary gift that he has failed to notice before; a hard-wrought, earthly talent to accompany that strange and otherworldly gift that Rafe has possessed since birth.
Regret constricts his throat as he reflects. I could have offered a soft word here and there instead of my cold indifference. It’s no wonder he does not call me ‘Father’. They’ve already lived a lifetime together. He feels like a grandfather who reminiscences with shame, for his memory is sharp and it cuts him.
It’s appallingly late, and not nearly enough recompense, but a spark of an idea forms, something that calms him.
Finn returns the sketch book to the seat when the heavy compartment door rolls back. Rafe juggles glasses and a basket of sugary pastries, followed by a woman who expertly manages a tray of tea and water.
I wonder that you’re not full of hate. He offers Rafe a smile.
The train rattles on. Finn is pensive for the rest of the evening. He watches Rafe sleep; his broad chest gently rises and collapses. The light comes and goes whenever they pass through the remaining stations. When it falls on Rafe he turns in his sleep, and it’s then that Finn recognizes the unmistakeably strong resemblance. How he missed it all these years is beyond him. Rafe’s hands, folded above his waist, are Elísabet’s hands. Her son dreams as the train rocks him to St. Petersburg.
They reach Berlin at the end of July and plan to scour the capital for two days before visiting Finn’s most prudent dealer in Dresden. Jostled through the streets of Berlin by swarms of exuberant Germans, within an hour of their arrival they are consumed with panic. Young men sing patriotic songs in the cafés, and the popular Piccadilly Café is promptly renamed Kaffeehaus Vaterland; the city is rife with patriotic ardour. War with Britain is all but painted on their tongues.
‘Thank Christ I shipped the goods I’ve bought so far. We’re going home, Rafe.’
Zamovars, historical swords, silk and cashmere shawls and Venetian glass have been packed and shipped to England from St Petersburg. Finn wonders if he’ll ever see his investment again. There will be no buying in Dresden, nor Madrid, nor Paris.
As they make their way back to the station to board the first available train to France, they are crushed in the onslaught. Finn grabs Rafe’s wrist and directs his hand to Finn’s shoulder.
‘Don’t let go,’ Finn says.
Rafe swallows an unexpected knot of emotion. He offers a grateful nod to Finn, who for the first time in eighty years doesn’t seem annoyed by his presence.
* * *
Never before was there such a sight. They stand in Victoria Station slack-jawed. It is impossible to take it all in. Great swirls of men, but also women – more women than they had ever seen in one place. Worry is written on their faces in a thousand different ways on only the third day since war has been declared.
‘London is already changed,’ Rafe whispers.
Sorely aware of their dark, three-piece suits amongst the great waves of khaki, their unease grows, as does the realization of their predicament. Rafe entertains images of being shot over and over again, of rising from the dust, the snow, the mud and the sea, like the great immortal monster he bel
ieves he is.
Finn’s first thoughts are of equal alarm; one word, one scenario in their survival they have never before had to consider. Bombs.
They feel an urgency to be in their own home, another foreign notion neither had before experienced. A further surprise meets them outside the station. It seems travellers are forgoing motor taxis and one sporting the Union Jack on its bonnet coasts to the kerb in an instant to cart them home – never before so quickly. They sit on the edge of their seats to view the transformed city, in which there are flags everywhere – in shop windows, above entries, on hats, and in small versions pinned onto torsos. The pointing fingers of placards and recruitment posters flash by. Rafe elbows Finn and points back at the appeals for enlistments.
There is no visible pall of gloom over the house in Magdalen Street, yet they face their return with girded loins and dread. Rafe expects Clovis’s wild anger, and an accusation of abandonment from Willa and Jonesy.
Clovis and Willa sit in the front room pouring over the newspapers when they hear the hum of the motor taxi idling in front of the house. Clovis nearly upsets the tea tray in a nervous jump from her seat. A flush of deep pink crawls up Willa’s neck and face and she is unable to calm it. Jonesy bounds down the stairs.
When the door opens and the bags are set on the floor, Finn lifts his eyes to Clovis, anxious to face her wrath and be done with it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘There was no time to send a telegram. Germany was …’
Clovis places her hand over her husband’s mouth and there, in front of them all confesses, ‘I thought I would never see you again, Finn Fowler.’
Later that night when they are fed, and when only a few swallows of wine make them woozy, Clovis climbs on top of Finn and drapes her naked body over him, like a snug, silk wrap. She takes him in her mouth until he shudders and takes him again and again during the night in a variety of ways and positions until he lays motionless, his legs spread, his manhood limp with exhaustion.
Finn awakens the following morning to the sound of boots on pavement that echo all the way from Tooley Street, the vibrations of which will be a constant for the next four years. Clovis stirs. Although he was surprised by her generosity last night, for weeks he’d noticed small indications that she was softening. Nothing monumental, but like a stiff shot of liquor, the slightest conversion took the edge off. No better time than the present to test her genuineness.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he begins. ‘Rafe needs a studio … outside the house. Somewhere in the neighbourhood.’
‘I agree. We might buy cheaply now with all the chaos. Iceland may help.’
Finn’s back straightens. She makes no argument? There’s no dismissal or bargaining?
‘Good. I’ll see to it.’ He waits for her to change her mind; he expects it, as if their agreement were nothing but a hateful joke. Instead, she hums a tune he doesn’t recognize.
‘What’s that?’ He nods to the wooden figure of a man resting against the mirror over the fireplace in their bedroom.
‘Jonesy. He’s carving puppets. I’m encouraging him.’
Finn won’t mention the phials today. One step at a time.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
1916
It began two years ago, on the third day after war was declared, when the sisters Fitzgerald, along with thousands of Londoners, traipsed to Victoria Station to view the spectacle. It was an event, and they must see it, for they were drawn to it just as forcibly as others were. None remained unmoved. It grabbed Constance first, a sense that she and Verity were no longer alone in their grief; that they stood with a whole nation of women who were forced to say farewell to those they love and may never see again. That this act was repeated in train stations all over the country sent a tremble through her limbs.
Now, two years later, on a rather cold, dull and wet June morning at Charing Cross Station, the worst but inevitable fears are realized as a constant flow of men return disabled, wounded, their faces ghostly and harrowed. People search in silence from shock and out of respect for the disfigured – a scene so tragically different from the cheers of excitement during the brave beginning. The news of a terrible battle at sea brings increasing numbers who besiege the stations.
Constance lets her gaze roam the whole of Charing Cross Station, and she acknowledges that another predominant colour joins the khaki uniforms – the black of mourning.
‘Verity.’ She turns to her sister.
‘Why, Constance, you’re as pale as death. What is it?’
‘We must let him go.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Rafe. We mustn’t search for him any more. It’s time to rejoin the world as best we can. It’s time to work.’
‘What foreign thoughts. I don’t know if I can do that.’
Constance grips her sister by her shoulders.
‘Look around you, Verity. We’ve avoided this for two years. It’s wrong and selfish.’
‘What will we do?’
‘I don’t know yet. Come. Rafe is not here. Let’s go home.’
Outside the station an additional crowd of people stand by the kerbs to watch the ambulances carry the wounded to Charing Cross Hospital. A long, white banner across the road flies a request: ‘Quiet For The Wounded’.
A young, dark-skinned man walks briskly past the sisters with his head down, his cap sits low over his eyes. Verity stops short.
‘How odd.’ She removes her dark glasses.
‘What is it?’
‘That young man …’ Verity gestures back towards the station entrance with the stem of her glasses. ‘No, he’s disappeared.’
‘Was it Benedikt?’
‘No … I had the strangest sense of … Never mind. I am shaken by this awful scene.’
That night, behind heavily-screened windows, Constance and Verity sit on the floor of the Tower Room packing Rafe’s toys and books. All but the moon-faced man automaton and the mechanical bird will be donated to children who have lost their fathers. Yes, the toys may be old-fashioned, Constance surmises, but she hopes children in pain and fear will not mind. The sisters exchange few words, each lost in their memories of the boy. Finally, they come to his clothes; they stroke the little velveteen skeleton suits left behind after his hasty departure, and there lie his painting smocks and a pair of boots. How long ago.
‘We’ll keep and treasure his paintings, of course.’ Constance says.
‘Of course.’
‘And we shall continue our visits to St Martin’s every 17th of December, in his honour.’
‘I agree.’
‘Good.’
The next morning the sisters launch out before breakfast for a mind-clearing walk. They have become accustomed to the striking military landscape of The Regent’s Park. They stroll on a muddied road past the Home Depot, a large wooden building where the post vans are being loaded with an astounding number of mail bags and Fortnum’s hampers. Continuing on the edge of the military camp, they observe that the new recruits training on the drilling grounds are not as fresh-faced as the young men of two years ago, who were virginal in their knowledge of war. Fear and dread is in the air and the new recruits are both younger and older. The acrid odour of the anti-aircraft gun station and the experimental bombing ground persists this morning.
The sisters negotiate the route to the boating lake, where the juxtaposed calm water and lazily hanging tree branches is a welcome balm.
‘Constance, look here.’
The sisters are joined lakeside by a queue of blind soldiers. Led by a seeing officer, they stand one behind the other, holding the shoulder of the blind man in front of them. Efficiently they board the rowing boats that await them, one for each soldier and their guiding companions.
Verity drops her umbrella where she stands and looks back, seeking the soldiers’ place of origin. Without a word to Constance, she troops off on the path that leads to the gardens of a low handsome building adjoining the park, the hostel for n
ewly blinded servicemen. Walking towards her is a man led by the hand of a young girl, whose head does not reach his waist. Verity later learns the girl is the gardener’s daughter whose kindness is a fixture here. The soldier wears the same dark lenses as Verity, even their frames are similar.
‘Do you need my other hand?’ The young girl asks.
An idea strikes Verity like a thunderbolt. It comes so clearly that she wonders at the dullness of her intellect.
The sisters had dabbled in philanthropy, like birds testing seed. Their unsparing giving occupied the previous years in which their failure to find Rafe slowly withered their spirits. Percy had warned them, ‘Do something. Find an additional purpose.’ They studied charities and donated anonymously with Percy’s guidance. Their hands were always in their purses, but they never really did anything.
‘No, my darling girl,’ Verity says to the child. ‘I am here to give my hand.’
Jonesy knows what risks he takes in coming to Charing Cross Station. Although Britain is beginning to open its arms to the Chinese to fill the acute labour shortage, there are malevolent opposers to all foreigners. Already twice today the Specials have requested him to produce his medical exemption certificate, and he isn’t entirely certain if it’s technically their remit to do so.
He bears the harassment so that he may search the faces of returning servicemen. There’s a word, a place, on everyone’s lips that he doesn’t understand. Jutland. Where is it? What is it? He longs to ask a stranger in the gathering throng. Since that word was first uttered the crowds have increased. He hears someone say, ‘There is no reason to wait here. They’re sewn up in hammocks and tossed over the side.’ People speak in riddles, he thinks.
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