The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  That brought his amusement to a full stop. His arms dropped to his sides in obvious astonishment. “America?”

  She rather liked rendering him speechless. It made a nice change from being lectured or being quizzed. “Yes. California to be exact. Palm trees and movie stars, dinners at the Brown Derby and Hollywood parties that last all night. Doesn’t it sound dishy?”

  “I admit it wasn’t what I expected.” He turned away rather abruptly to pace the length of the room.

  “Nor I, but Mr. Oliver’s here looking for his next leading lady and I intend to be her.”

  “Oliver? The chap in Singapore. The one who interrupted your little tête-à-tête with the Chinaman?”

  Cocking a hip against an enormous draftsman’s desk, she ran a finger through the layer of dust. “I knew you were eavesdropping that day. Mason Oliver is my ticket to a perfect life of champagne and caviar dreams. What girl wouldn’t jump at the chance?”

  “None, I suppose.”

  “You bet your best set of wrenches. So will you take us to Yeovil or not?”

  “Are you certain it’s what you really want?”

  “It’s not a cottage complete with cowshed, but we can’t all be so lucky.”

  Michael released a small breath, as if coming to a decision. “Right, then,” he said with the flash of a distracted smile. “I suppose we’d better get cracking.” He headed toward the door. His back was straight as a pike, an odd unreadable expression on his face. “Wouldn’t want you to miss your big chance.”

  “Michael . . . ,” she called after him. She’d no idea what she planned to say, only that she didn’t want to leave things between them like this.

  “I’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.” He closed the door behind him.

  Why did she feel as if she’d disappointed him and somehow diminished herself? And why did she care what Michael McKeegan thought? She tried to laugh off his criticisms as she’d ignored so many previous lectures from well-meaning do-gooders, but the sting of his words remained like a splinter.

  Pulling a cigarette from her bag, she sank onto the creaky swivel Windsor pulled up before the desk. She fished for her lighter but came up empty. Odd. Had she left it at the farm? Had it fallen out in Michael’s car?

  Perhaps he had one squirreled away amid his stacks of accounts ledgers and piles of correspondence. She carefully moved the clutter aside as she searched—the man was a positive magpie. Just as she was about to give up, she moved a folder of receipts to discover a full ashtray with a lighter propped next to it, and more interesting still, a half-burned piece of paper wadded up amid the ash.

  He’d eavesdropped on her at Renee Ullman’s that day with Yoon Hai. Turnabout was fair play. See how he liked being spied upon.

  She smoothed the paper out to discover it was a piece of stationery. Expensive by the look and feel of the page, with a whimsical border of curlicue blue flowers. The top third had been burned, leaving a ragged singed edge. Below, the remnants of a note penned in a hasty scribble.

  . . . sorry if I hurt you, Michael. Come to London. I’m throwing a birthday party for Daddy at the Dorchester at the end of the month. There will be dancing and drinking and lots of dark corners where we can talk.

  We need to talk.

  Arabella

  From the bath, Bill’s voice was raised in a rather enthusiastic rendition of “Roll Out the Barrel” accompanied by the occasional groaning pipe.

  Who was Arabella? And what might she and Michael have to talk about?

  Perhaps the answer lay in one of the half-open file drawers beside the desk. Glancing over her shoulder, she dismissed her prick of conscience by telling herself if he meant his correspondence to be private, he’d have closed and locked his cabinet. It was weak reasoning, but enough to satisfy the worst of her guilty pangs.

  The top drawer yielded a few pads of lined paper, pencils, pens, nibs, a bottle of half-dried ink. The second was more interesting: a catalog from the British Empire Exhibition Scotland and sketchbooks filled with page after page of architectural details—windows, doors, rooflines, gables, brickwork, interiors. Modernist in influence, yet here was a touch of Oriental styling, there an old-fashioned cottage garden look. Halfway through the last book was a folded letter from his mother.

  The rest of the pages in the sketchbook were blank.

  All but for the final page, which was littered with hasty drawings done in dull pencil. A simple stone cottage exterior from the front, sides, and back. The margins littered with notes and measurements, a quick sketch of a gabled addition, a floor layout of a modern kitchen. She smiled to see a whimsical drawing of a cow in the upper corner of the page.

  She put all the books back in the drawer, but some obstruction kept her from closing it, no matter how hard she pushed. She slid her hand behind the sketchbooks, hoping to work the drawer free, only to catch her breath on a sharp stinging pain.

  “Damn!” Wincing, she snatched her hand free. A thin line of blood beaded the skin of her upper wrist. Not a deep gash, but enough to hurt like the devil. Pulling the drawer out farther, she moved the sketchbooks aside. There, stuffed at the very back, was a framed photograph, the glass smashed and jagged. It was a snapshot of Michael and a pretty, dark-haired young woman, both in uniform as they lounged on a blanket in the grass. He had his arm around her. They looked happy. Arabella?

  “I’m finished, Lucy. Even scrubbed my feet and behind my ears and put on an almost clean pair of socks.” Bill stood damp and pink in the bathroom doorway.

  Startled, she shoved the photograph back in the drawer. “Then enjoy your freedom, but don’t swindle anyone out of anything, no cadging a smoke, and stay out of the pub.”

  “Yes, miss.” He slammed out of the door and clattered down the stairs in a heedless gallop. Charbury had better brace itself.

  The tiny bathroom was as stark and charmless as the rest of the flat—and awash in at least three inches of water. It dripped in steamy rivulets off the small mirror, overflowed from the tiny corner sink, and soaked the shelf above the toilet containing a shaving kit, tooth powder and brush, and a pillbox containing a half dozen little yellow pills—Atabrine, the soggy label read. Every towel had been used and now lay in a drenched pile on the floor.

  It wasn’t possible. A mess of this magnitude couldn’t have been created in ten short minutes by one small boy.

  Where was a housemaid when you needed one?

  Wading through the shallows, she plucked the towels up as she went, wringing them out and hanging them up to dry. She found a washrag, surprisingly the one thing in the room to escape the deluge, and sopped up as much of the water as she could before it leaked into the garage below. She even rinsed out the sink, which bore a scum of tooth powder and soap. The place still didn’t sparkle, but at least it wasn’t the forty-day flood she’d found upon arrival.

  Her quick shower in lukewarm water quickly cooled to frigid and the sliver of soap for washing smelled like antiseptic, but by the time she was dressed in a clean blouse and skirt, coiffed, and dusted with powder she almost felt like herself again.

  Coming down the stairs to the garage, she heard a woman’s voice.

  “. . . can’t just rush off with a strange girl and not let me meet her, Michael. Invite her for dinner.”

  She peeked around the door to see Michael tossing tools into a metal chest, screwing lids onto jars of bolts and washers. He’d changed his shirt and combed his hair, and the clean scent of Yardley’s battled for dominance over the rather acrid odors of grease, brake fluid, and exhaust fumes.

  “She’s in a hurry, Mum. Besides, you two wouldn’t have anything in common to talk about.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She’s a fancy girl with grand relations. She’s not used to the way we do things.”

  “How do you know what she’s used to? You’ve only just met her.”

  “I know her type.”

  Ouch! Somehow Lucy didn’t think he referred to
her amazing brilliance and incredible beauty, but he didn’t have to sound so adamant.

  His mother either didn’t notice his tone or chose to ignore it. “You show me a body that turns up their nose at my plum charlotte and I’ll show you a body what’s soft in the head. Mrs. Moseby at the post office raves over it, and you know how grudging with her praise she is.”

  “It’s nothing to do with the food, Mum. Miss Stanhope . . . well . . . she can be . . . rude.” He quickly added, “I don’t think she means to be. It’s how she’s been raised.”

  “To be rude?”

  “To come out swinging.”

  Lucy’s face heated at the brutality of his statement, and a lump formed in her stomach, but she forced her shoulders back and lifted her chin. And if there was a quiver in her limbs, she refused to let it take hold.

  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been subjected to a verbal scything of her character. Merely the first time it had hurt.

  Ignoring the sting, she stepped off the bottom riser and into the garage. “Never let it be said I ignored an endorsement from Mrs. Moseby.”

  Fancy me, having a real American in my kitchen. The girls at the sewing circle won’t believe it when I tell them.”

  “I don’t know if I qualify as a real American, Mrs. McKeegan. My mother’s British.”

  “Is she now? Well, we’ll keep that to ourselves. Don’t want to disappoint the girls, do we, love?”

  Michael’s mother was a tall, robust woman with a snub freckled nose, brown hair threaded with gray pinned in a bun at the back of her head, and the same mild blue eyes and dimpled smile as her son. Her accent bore traces of an Irish childhood beneath the solidly middle-class English enunciation, and from the moment she’d welcomed Lucy into her cozy kitchen, she had bossed her about with well-meaning high-handedness. For some reason, this overbearing attitude didn’t lift Lucy’s hackles as it normally would have. Maybe because it was born out of kindness rather than censure.

  They sat in her kitchen, the table draped with a fine tatted lace cloth yellowed in places, but obviously laid out for Lucy’s benefit. The air smelled of baking and more faintly of carbolic soap. Morning light shone watery across the scrubbed flagstone floor and lit the copper pots hanging above the stove.

  She poured hot water from the kettle into a teapot. “You wouldn’t happen to have met William Powell, would you? He’s American.”

  “Mum . . . ,” Michael groaned.

  “Don’t Mum me. It doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?”

  “Afraid I haven’t had the pleasure, Mrs. McKeegan.”

  “Ah well, you never know. The girls and I saw him in Love Crazy. We do love a good comedy.”

  All through the visit, Michael had watched Lucy with a wary tightness in his face and an edge-of-his-seat nervousness. His uneasy strain would have been funny if not for the very real concern she caught in his gaze every time she opened her mouth. Did he really expect her to insult his mother at her own kitchen table? She might be a bit . . . sarcastic . . . at times, and on occasion she could be outright nasty, but she didn’t go about snarling at strangers unless given a good reason, and so far Mrs. McKeegan had been nothing but welcoming.

  In fact, she couldn’t have been more perfectly maternal if she’d been plucked from central casting for the part.

  “Can I have some more?” Bill asked, shoving the last bite of cottage pie into his mouth as he spoke.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Lucy instructed.

  “How’m I supposed to ask for more if I can’t talk?”

  “Wait until you’ve swallowed.”

  “She might change her mind if I do that.” He scratched his head. “Or some other bloke might get dibs ahead of me.”

  “What other bloke? There’s not exactly a queue,” Lucy pointed out. “Besides, you’ll get sick if you eat any more. That’s your third helping.”

  Bill stretched his neck out, pulled his shoulders back, lifted his head. “I’m going through a spurt. Ned Hollis says a bucket of beans and a pound of snuff is guaranteed to put hair on your chest.”

  “And what would you want with a hairy chest?”

  “It would keep me warm in the winter.”

  “He’s got you there,” Michael intervened.

  “You eat as much as you want, love. Makes me happy to see someone enjoying their food so much.” Mrs. McKeegan placed a plate of warm soda bread fresh from the oven on the table. “Should have seen Michael at that age. The boy had a hollow leg.”

  Bill examined his appendages with a careful eye.

  The brass clock on the sill chimed twelve. Lucy sidled toward the edge of her seat, trying not to look eager to escape.

  Mrs. McKeegan planted herself in a chair opposite, pouring a cup of tea, which she slurped comfortably. “A shame you have to run off so soon. The ladies at the WI have managed to get their hands on a few of the canning machines the Americans sent over, and it’s all hands on deck. Sure I can’t tempt you to help us try them out?”

  Michael looked as if he’d swallowed a fly.

  “We’re to meet at the village hall. Ethel Mortimer wanted it at her house, but her husband is laid up with the gout and a terrible grouch he is when he’s feeling poorly. You’d blush to hear some of the words what come out of that man’s mouth. I don’t know how poor Ethel stands it. I’d have booted him out on his backside years ago.”

  By now, Michael’s expression was one of silent and incomprehensible horror, as if witnessing a train wreck in progress with no possible way to stop the catastrophe unfolding in front of his eyes.

  “Have you ever made jam, Miss Stanhope?”

  Lucy actually saw Michael brace himself, awaiting what he must assume would be a crushing set-down from Lucy. Perversely, this made her want to deny him the satisfaction. “I’ve never made jam, Mrs. McKeegan, but I always seem to be in one.”

  Her face broadened in a cheerful smile. “Well now, don’t you have a little bite under all that sugar.”

  “I’ve the teeth marks to prove it,” Michael mumbled under his breath, his shoulders no longer up around his ears.

  The phone rang, sending Mrs. McKeegan scurrying into the hall to answer it.

  Alone together, Lucy kicked Michael under the table.

  Michael threw Lucy one of those irritating smirks.

  Bill helped himself to a chunk of soda bread.

  All felt right with the world.

  And then it didn’t.

  Michael shucked on a jacket as he headed out the kitchen door. “I won’t be long, but I have to repair Miss Maude and Miss Ruth’s radio before they come completely unglued.”

  “Are they directing bombers with it?”

  “Only slightly less crucial. Music While You Work comes on soon. It’s their favorite.”

  “Never let it be said I stood between two old ladies and Eric Winstone.”

  “Can I come, Michael?” Bill pleaded eagerly. “You’ll be faster with help.”

  “Take him.” Lucy shooed them both toward the door. “Anything to speed things up.”

  “Mum’s gone round to the vicarage, so make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “More like a hope,” he said on his way out the door. “But it’s the best I can do.”

  Alone, Lucy checked her watch. Paced the kitchen, glancing through the curtains at a neighbor repairing a gate, another hanging out her wash. Checked her watch again. Thumbed through a well-leafed copy of WI Life. If the bookmark was any indication, Michael’s mother was interested in keeping bees. Checked her watch. Counted the number of drips from a leaky tap. Seventeen in sixty seconds. She knew that because she’d checked her watch again.

  Having exhausted the kitchen’s cornucopia of delights, Lucy took Michael at his word. Make herself at home, he said. Very well. She would.

  Imagining herself the owner of this snug little house, she climbed the twisting crooked staircase to the upper floor. Three doors le
d off a narrow passage. The first opened into a large airy bedroom with an enormous cherry sleigh bed complete with quilted counterpane and a bank of frilly pillows. Two dormered windows curtained in dotted poplin looked out over the road and the garage just across the way. A dresser held an assortment of bottles and jars along with a framed photo of a proud young Michael in a university gown.

  The second room was smaller and looked out over the garden. Obviously Michael’s, it was a shrine to an idyllic boyhood. Ribbons; prizes; certificates; an old cricket bat propped in a corner; postcards from such exotic locales as Lyme Regis, Blackpool, and Scarborough stuffed in the edge of a mirror; lead soldiers lined up across a desk amid a clutter of family photographs. A shelf displayed a row of metal cars and trophies from various sporting events, and a few tattered books: Treasure Island, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Count of Monte Cristo.

  The third door opened into a bathroom painted a cheerful canary yellow. The ceilings sloped low to either side, meaning one had to hunch to see oneself in the mirror over the sink, while the elaborate claw-foot tub took up so much space one had to sidle past it to reach the loo.

  Back downstairs, she browsed a rather workaday study. Relics of the late Mr. McKeegan’s presence remained in the pipe stand on the desk and the fishing rods in the corner, though these had been incongruously augmented by bright floral cushions on the chairs and ruffled chintz curtains at the windows. The kitchen hadn’t changed since Michael and Bill had banged out the back door on their mission of mercy—she checked her watch—fifteen minutes ago.

  What was taking them so long? Marconi invented the blasted thing faster than they were fiddling with a few dials.