The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  She was not.

  “I didn’t know they kicked you out of the army for malaria. Seems like they’d be down to scraps if that were the case.”

  “Suppose I’m special, then. The last bout in hospital nearly killed me. Doctors say it’s damaged my heart. I’ve been marked as medically unfit and sent home. Just as things started getting interesting too.”

  What had Yoon Hai said? The Japanese would invade. It was not a matter of if, but when. The thought iced her blood.

  “So, I’ve told you all about me. What’s your story?”

  “It’s less a story and more a cautionary tale.”

  Obviously waiting for her to continue, he lounged in his chair with a rangy confidence as if he owned the whole damn ship. He eyed her untouched lemonade. Called the steward over once more and this time ordered her a pink gin.

  That was more like it.

  “If you must know, I’m going to England to stay with an aunt until events blow over.”

  “As in the war?”

  “As in the gossip. My mother despises gossip—at least when it’s not about her.”

  He surprised her by not asking what salacious horrors she’d committed. Perhaps he already knew. Or perhaps—and wouldn’t this be a novel situation—he didn’t care. His eyes never took on the curious malicious gleam she was used to seeing among Singapore’s elite, nor did he take the opportunity to put her sordid reputation to the test with a leer and an unsavory suggestion. Instead, he studied her as he might a rather interesting equation.

  “Are you always so prickly?”

  “I don’t know. Are you always so tedious?” she volleyed, the pain in her ankle and the curiosity in his gaze making her waspish.

  Unfazed, he laughed and downed his lemonade, still making no move to leave, still watching her. The man was either dense or a glutton for punishment.

  “Not that I didn’t appreciate the assistance . . . and the drink, Corporal, but I’d really like to be alone.”

  He shrugged. “Keep it up, lass, and you will be.”

  The cloudless sultry days continued as the ship steamed toward the African coast. As if drawn like a lodestone on a string, Lucy found herself returning to the deck day after day to watch the men practicing on the ship’s big guns. She told herself it was merely a way to pass the time, certainly not an excuse to catch a glimpse of a blond head and a quick smile. Just as well. Corporal McKeegan never reappeared, and she was left with nothing but ringing ears and innards scrambled as the powdered eggs she’d been served for breakfast.

  “Do you suppose we’ll really need them . . . the guns, I mean?”

  Lucy turned at the question, before she realized she was not the one being addressed.

  A teenage girl of about fourteen stood in company with what must have been her mother, an older woman wearing a shabby tweed suit and a harried expression. A younger child of no more than three or four clung to the woman’s leg, a thumb corking her mouth. Her pink hair ribbon matched her frilled pink dress. All three watched soberly as the men exchanged good-natured boasts in between the rattle of gunfire.

  “I’m sure it’s only a precaution,” the woman replied, though she chewed her lip as she did so, leaving red stains on her teeth. “They have to be ready for anything.”

  “Daddy be?” the child asked around her thumb.

  “Daddy’s at home in Johore with Uncle Allan and Auntie Jenny, sweetie.”

  “Want Daddy.”

  The teen scowled through thick glasses. “Don’t be a baby, Iris.”

  “Not a baby.”

  “Sadie, please don’t antagonize your sister. You know she doesn’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.” Sadie leaned against the railing and looked out across the water. “I don’t want to go to school in England. I’ll miss my friends, and I was going to be number one in singles tennis this term.”

  “It’s only while things are so unsettled. Besides, you’ll love Gloucestershire. Your grandmother can’t wait to have us stay with her, and I’ll show you all my old haunts. You’ll go to the grammar school right in the village until we get you enrolled at Stonecase Academy. Won’t that be lovely?”

  “I suppose,” Sadie conceded, albeit grudgingly.

  “Of course it will. There’s a stream that runs across the bottom of the garden and a delicious little wood where the bluebells grow thick as a carpet in the spring.” Streams? Bluebells? Lucy cringed at the forced enthusiasm. “Daddy will write to us every day, letting us know how things are at home. And we’ll write to him, telling him how well we’re getting on.”

  Neither of the girls looked convinced. Lucy didn’t blame them.

  “Miss Daddy,” the child whimpered.

  “We all of us do, my love. But until we see him again, the important thing is that the three of us are together. As long as we’re together we’ll be fine. I promise.”

  The guns exploded in a flurry of sound that vibrated the plating beneath Lucy’s feet, hummed in the metal railing, shot her heart into her throat. The child burst into tears. The mother knelt to soothe her with a peppermint, so perhaps only Lucy heard Sadie mutter, “I don’t care how nice it is. It won’t be home.”

  Lucy couldn’t agree more.

  After a lengthy stopover, the ship finally left Cape Town in early November, joining a convoy as it rounded the southernmost tip of Africa to begin the slow dangerous journey up the coast. A blackout was imposed and lifeboat drills became an almost daily occurrence. To take their minds off the perils they faced from German U-boats and bombers out of Senegal, the passengers organized a steady stream of entertainments.

  Tonight’s activity was a dance in the upper dining room. Most of the ship’s sumptuous prewar furnishings had been removed, but the ceiling retained its elegant plasterwork and removable walls had been folded back to allow plenty of room for the couples swaying to a rather tone-challenged rendition of “Begin the Beguine.” Lucy found a table by herself in a far corner, ignoring the raucous crowd shouting at her to join their shipboard game of hunt the slipper. From her seat, she watched three young officers pass a bottle between them, their voices loud as they assessed a giggling group of military wives traveling sans husbands—a heavy whiff of adultery hanging thick in the air along with the scents of whiskey and Jicky perfume. A pair of Wrens glared at the makeshift orchestra as if offended at this display of frivolity—or perhaps they were offended at the caterwauling mess they were making of Cole Porter’s famous tune. It was rather bad, but what did one expect from two men from the Malayan Civil Service, a retired oil clerk, a businessman from Sumatra, and a soldier with three missing fingers?

  Lucy sipped at her sherry and tried to decide how drunk she would have to become to be able to sleep through Mrs. Martin’s eardrum-rupturing snores tonight. Probably somewhere between moderately cup-shot and out-and-out blind staggers.

  The crowd of hunt the slipper participants grew rowdy in their eagerness, like hounds straining at the leash. They shoved their way past her table, knocking her drink and her handbag to the floor as they headed off to the game.

  Her glass of sherry was a goner, but her silk clutch had her cigarettes, her traveling papers, and a few coveted Singaporean dollars tucked inside. She grabbed for it, but someone else got to it first, whisking it up before it was trampled. “Hello again, lass. Seems like I’m always swooping in to save the day, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re a veritable knight in shining armor, Corporal McKeegan.”

  “A couple of the lads heard the music and we thought we’d investigate. Pretty snazzy affair you have going on here.”

  She leveled him a quelling look, one that tended to send the less confident in search of an easier target. “It’s obvious you have a very narrow point of reference.”

  As she suspected, her acid remark bounced off his armor-plated good nature. He laughed as if she’d made the best of jokes. Sliding in opposite, he produced a bottle of King George IV from some hidden fold in his jacket, borrowed
two spare glasses from the table next to them, and before she knew how he’d done it, had poured a whiskey for her and one for him, and made himself at home. “Thought you might like something a bit stronger than lemonade.”

  The whiskey’s heat warmed her all the way to her toes. “Was I that obvious?”

  “Like a brick to the head, Miss Stanhope.” He hooked an arm over the back of his chair. “How’s your ankle?”

  “It’s better, thank you.” She pulled a Sobranie from her handbag. “I haven’t seen you about recently.”

  He offered her a light. “I’ve been in sick bay. Nothing too serious.”

  He did seem a bit gray around the gills, and despite having brought the whiskey he hadn’t actually drunk any of it. More for her. She poured herself a second glass.

  “I suppose your parents will be glad to have you safe at home.”

  “It’s just my mother, but yeah, she’s relieved. Lived through the first one, you see. Ambulance driver with the FANY. Met my dad over a gaping leg wound in Armentières.”

  “How romantic. A love story for the ages.”

  “Don’t know about that, but they were happy enough together.”

  “Are you glad to be going home?”

  He ground out his cigarette, his gaze sharpening, his lips thinning to a white slash in his pale face. “Don’t know how I feel really. Bloody waste of a lot of training, and I’ll miss my mates. But it’ll be nice to see the old place again. Haven’t been back in almost two years. Not that it’ll have changed all that much. Charbury never changes. One of my favorite things about it.” He leaned back, his expression softening. “How about you? Excited to see your aunt?”

  “Not the first word I would pick. I barely know my aunt. The last time I visited Nanreath Hall, I was nine. I hated every moment of it. As did my mother. Amelia never possessed much in the way of familial devotion, and I spent my visit being pointedly ignored by the nursemaid put in charge of me in favor of a rather dashing footman.”

  “You call your mother by her first name?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “Isn’t that a little strange?” Had she described his eyes as cloudless blue? That seemed to denote vacancy or naïveté. But Corporal McKeegan watched her with an unnerving shrewdness, those eyes of his like two blue spear points.

  She shook off her discomfort with another drink. “Amelia always said being called Mama or Mummy made her feel old and dowdy. Lady Amelia Fortescue was the elegant life of every party, not some drab housewife who boiled nappies and wiped faces.”

  “A lady is it?” he scoffed. “Should have known.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Instead of answering, he stood and offered her his hand. “Shall we dance, my lady?”

  “I am not a lady, so stop calling me that.”

  “You prefer ‘lass’?”

  “I prefer Lucy. And I can’t possibly dance with you.”

  “Of course you can. You said yourself your ankle is fine, the tune is one even this band can’t slaughter, and you look like you could use some fun. I’ve not seen a longer face on a horse.”

  “Is that supposed to fill me with giddiness at your request?”

  “No, it’s supposed to make you smile.” He cocked her an inquisitive glance that made him look like a ten-year-old with a bent for mischief. “You do know how to smile, don’t you—Lucy? I’m no Astaire, but I promise your toes are safe with me.”

  She was about to offer him a venomous set-down that would have sent him scuttling back to his hole when an enormous bang and a series of deep thuds rocked the ship. A klaxon sounded. The lights flickered and went out.

  They’d been torpedoed.

  Lucy’s teeth chattered, her shoulders and arms ached from endless hours of bailing, and her drenched skin was pebbled with more gooseflesh than a coop full of chickens. They’d been afloat for two days. The food was gone and the only fresh water had come from rain collected in a small tin pail. Last night’s storm had separated the lifeboats from the sinking ship and one another. Every tiny knot of survivors had been left to manage the best they could as gale-lashed waves threatened to swamp them and the cold rain cut like knives.

  A group seated near the back of the lifeboat kept up a steady stream of morale-rallying hymns. A thin, nervous-looking man vomited over the side. A party of Royal Navy Wrens huddled together in their heavy coats against the sapping cold that burrowed into one’s bones until it was impossible to remember what being warm felt like. Lucy would have added her moans to the chorus if she’d had the strength. Instead, she stared out over the gray emptiness stretching in every direction, straining to catch sight of a ship or a plane. Hell, at this point she’d have been just as happy to see a passing U-boat with a sympathetic captain at the helm. She was too exhausted to be overly particular about their politics.

  “Steady on,” a seaman piped up, his face chapped with wind and spray. “The navy won’t let us down. Betcha they’re looking for us even now.”

  “Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies,” the singers in the back bellowed.

  Forget a ship; Lucy prayed for eight simultaneous cases of laryngitis.

  “Your mother ain’t looking too good,” the seaman commented with a concerned nod. “She all right, you think?”

  “She’s not my mother.” Lucy glanced at the woman next to her. She seemed familiar, though so many did after three months living cheek by jowl. She wore a man’s wool cardigan over what had once been a sensible blouse and skirt but were now sodden and dirty. Her salt-rinsed brown hair frizzed around her white face, and her large eyes stared unseeing as she worried at something in her right hand, fingers rubbing it like a talisman. She muttered what sounded like prayers under her breath.

  “Here.” A man in three layers of sweaters pulled a couple of soggy digestive biscuits from his woolly trouser pocket. “Ain’t much, but it might help.”

  Lucy was tempted to snatch them for herself. She was ravenous. If she’d known she’d end up floating in a tin can on the open ocean, she’d have taken a second helping of dinner.

  The woman ignored the offering and continued her nonsensical murmurings through blue lips, the gray skin of her face stretched nearly translucent, the artery in her neck fluttering with every phlegmy breath.

  “Shut that bitch up already or I’m gonna go mad, I swear it,” snarled a woman behind them. Lucy definitely remembered her. One of the military wives last seen dancing with a young RAF captain who was most definitely not her husband.

  A rogue wave pushed them sideways, and the boat swung wildly as cold water poured in. Someone shouted, someone else screamed, the hymn singers trebled their volume. “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”

  Lucy caught the woman as she toppled, her soft body collapsing against her. “Girls,” she whispered. “Where are my girls?” Her breath barely warmed Lucy’s cheek, her features slack as a deflated bladder. A pink hair ribbon fell from her limp fingers into the swampy water swirling around the bottom of the boat.

  Of course. The gun battery. That’s where Lucy had seen her. But where were her daughters?

  “Christ all. What’s her problem now?” the military wife snarked.

  “Poor thing. Won’t last much longer.”

  “None of us will if they don’t find us soon.”

  “Keep bailing and your backs to the oars, lads. Stand strong.”

  “Who died and left you boss, eh?”

  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound . . .”

  The military wife’s anger turned to wailing. “We’re all gonna die. The old bat’s just the first.”

  It would have been funny if it all weren’t so horribly real.

  “Shut up and get hold of yourself,” Lucy snapped, her own courage hanging by a thread.

  “Who the hell do you think you are to talk to me like that?”

  “Someone who doesn’t want her last moments on earth to be filled with your caterwauling, that’s who.”
Lucy retrieved the ribbon, dingy and drenched, the pink now dull and waterlogged, before turning her attention back to the woman, who remained unresponsive. “Upsy-daisy, now. You lie here much longer they’re liable to toss you overboard—and me along with you.”

  The woman’s lashes fluttered. She looked up at Lucy with a bewildered expression. “Where are my girls?” Tears leaked from her eyes. “They’ll be scared. Need their mum to tell them it’s all right.”

  “I’m sure they’re safe on one of the other boats, and we’ll find them just as soon as we’re picked up.”

  “Iris is only three. She’ll be crying for me.”

  Lucy used to cry for her mother. Long ago when she’d been taken from the big house in Philadelphia and dumped in the care of a nurse, then later a governess, then finally a school headmistress. With each leave-taking, she’d wept and begged not to be left behind. Amelia told her she was being a spoiled, selfish baby. It didn’t take Lucy long to realize tears were worthless and that if her mother had ever loved her, that emotion had died along with her marriage to Lucy’s father.

  The military wife harrumphed her displeasure. “Knew I should have stayed in Cape Town. Had my own house with a maid and a car and driver, but no, Ralph wants me with him in Scotland. What’s in Scotland? Furry men in kilts, smelly sheep, and haggis. Dear God, I’d rather drown in this bloody ocean.”

  “And so you might, so shut your bloody gob,” the seaman growled. “Here, miss. Have my mac for the lady.”

  “I promised it would be all right. Iris will be scared, and none but Sadie to calm her.”

  Perhaps it was the way the woman clutched the ruined ribbon as if she clutched her small daughter’s hand. Or perhaps it was the memory of Sadie’s fiercely uttered words that so echoed Lucy’s own sentiments. Or just maybe—though Lucy would barely consider it—Amelia’s absence at Keppel Harbor as her daughter sailed away had something to do with what happened next. Perhaps it was all three. Lucy accepted the heavy oilskin mackintosh. “Let’s get you warm. This kind gentleman has offered you his mac and I’ve a coat you can borrow.”