The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  So much for feather pillows. His words struck her like a slap to the face. She’d poked the sleeping bear once too often. And he’d made her pay dearly.

  Shame heated her cheeks. Perhaps once his words might have been true—all right, they were all too damningly true—but not now. She clamped her hands in her lap to keep herself from slugging the bastard. “If you’ll remember, I was on the Strathleven when it was torpedoed. A woman died in my arms. Amelia . . .” She turned away, throat burning.

  “What about Amelia?”

  “Nothing. Forget it. Forget this whole horrid conversation.”

  “I’d love to.” He gave a disgusted snort, eyes pinned to the road, anger thrumming in the space between them.

  “Lucy, I need to stop,” Bill said more loudly.

  “What’s wrong?” She turned to look into the rear seat, where Bill was curled in a ball.

  “I’m gonna be sick.” He clutched his stomach.

  “Pull over, Michael.”

  He drove onto the grass and cut the engine. Lucy opened the door and helped Bill out. She felt his forehead. It was cool to the touch but clammy, and his face was a sickly green. “What did you eat?”

  “Nothing.”

  She lifted a brow.

  “Well, there was these . . . these uh . . . mushrooms. I found ’em by the side of the stream.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” She bundled him back into the wagon. “Get us to a doctor as quickly as you can, Michael. Bill’s gone and poisoned himself.”

  Chapter 15

  The doctor’s office was in his home, a great brick behemoth just a few streets off West Hendford in Yeovil with a shiny brass plate by the front door. Michael carried Bill up the porch stairs swaddled in the car rug, Lucy a step behind. “Careful with him. You’re joggling him. Watch the door there. You’re joggling him again.”

  “You try holding him. He’s heavier than he looks. Five stone, easy.”

  What had once been the house’s double parlor had been transformed into a small waiting area with an exam room behind. A few bored-looking patients sat in a row of wooden chairs while an elderly woman worked at a desk by the door. She looked up, her horn-rimmed spectacles taped at the bridge slipping down her nose. “What’s this, then?”

  “An emergency,” Lucy said, trying to keep the panic from her voice. “Where’s the doctor? Michael, stop for God’s sake, you’re joggling him.”

  “Please, miss,” the secretary scolded. “If you would just settle down.”

  “How can I settle down when he could be dead within minutes and you’re just sitting there doing nothing?”

  The patients stirred in their seats, looking much less bored. Bill’s arm fell from the blanket swaddling him to dangle uselessly.

  “Oh my God!” Lucy cried. “He’s dead.”

  “He’s not dead,” Michael responded patiently. “He’s alive and looks as if he plans to stay that way.”

  “Are you the boy’s mother?” the secretary asked, clearly disapproving of this chaotic intrusion into her well-ordered office.

  “No, I’m not his mother,” Lucy snapped. “I’d have had to be nine years old when I had him, wouldn’t I?”

  “She’s just clarifying matters, Lucy,” Michael soothed. “Take a deep breath and relax.”

  “Don’t tell me to relax. This is all your fault.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “He’d not have had a chance to eat those mushrooms if your car hadn’t broken down.”

  “Well, you’re the one who let him wander off.”

  “I didn’t let him wander, thank you very much.”

  “My belly hurts, Lucy,” Bill sobbed.

  “I know, Bill.” She threw Michael a final glare as she smoothed the hair back from Bill’s forehead. His cheeks were flushed, and he shivered as if he was cold. “We’re going to get you fixed up quick as a wink.” She turned her attention to the secretary. “Where’s the doctor? Why isn’t he here already?”

  The secretary drew herself up in agitated dignity. “Dr. Ellison is just across the hall finishing his tea. Bring the boy back to the surgery, and I’ll send the doctor through to you.”

  Michael carried Bill through to a spotless room equipped with a cot, a long glass-fronted cabinet stocked with medical supplies, and a shelf of dusty medical books. The lino floor had been softened by the addition of a small rug, and there were framed watercolors of noble stags on craggy mountaintops and rugged-looking men in beards and kilts hanging on the wall. Insipid and amateurish, but supposedly there to take one’s mind off the worst.

  It didn’t work. The worst was all she could think about.

  Michael laid Bill on the cot still bundled in the old blanket. His lashes fluttered now and again but his eyes never opened.

  “Is he breathing?” she asked.

  “Yes, he’s breathing.”

  “His skin is flushed. Does his skin look flushed to you?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “What’s all this, then?” Dr. Ellison was a whippet-thin white-haired man in a suit dusted with crumbs. He paused sharp eyed in front of Michael. “Miss Pursley says we have a very sick boy in here.”

  “Not him,” Lucy griped. “Him.” She pointed to Bill, who rolled over, face to the wall, his arm curled over his head.

  “Don’t feel good,” he mumbled.

  “He’s eaten some mushrooms,” Lucy explained. “He’s barely breathing and his skin has gone splotchy and red and he’s complaining of a stomachache.”

  The doctor cocked a last surmising stare at Michael before settling his glasses on his nose and turning his attention to Bill. “Let’s have a look, young man. Tell us where it hurts.”

  “It hurts real bad right”—Bill twisted around suddenly, his small body spasming as vomit splashed onto the doctor’s coat and down one sleeve—“here,” he ended weakly.

  The doctor never flinched, just wiped himself off with an enormous handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. “Yes, I begin to see the problem.”

  “Lucy?” Bill’s voice was weak and shaky. “Are you and Michael mates again?”

  “Of course.”

  The doctor studied Bill’s skin, his eyes, palpated his stomach. “Did you see him eat these mushrooms?”

  “If I’d seen him, I’d have stopped him,” Lucy replied. “I’m not completely daft.”

  “Will he be all right, sir?” Michael cut in politely before Lucy could say anything more.

  “Why don’t you two wait out in the parlor while I complete my exam?”

  “I can’t leave Bill,” Lucy said. “He needs me.”

  Dr. Ellison drew himself up. “He needs some peace and quiet. I’ll come find you as soon as I know what’s what.” He ushered them out and closed the door firmly behind them.

  By now, almost every wooden chair in the waiting room was full. Miss Pursley was trying to simultaneously soothe a crying child, calm an agitated mother, and broker a peace between octogenarians debating the merits of cricket over football. By the harassed look in her eye and the shrill tone to her voice, she was losing the battle for order on all fronts.

  Lucy and Michael took the last two remaining seats, he beside a pretty young mother with a little girl of about three on her lap, and she next to an old man smelling of peppermint and mothballs with a cough straight out of a tubercular ward.

  “That doctor didn’t look like he knew one end of a stethoscope from the other,” Lucy grumbled. “And did you see how thick his glasses were? Probably blind as a mole. No wonder he mistook you for the patient.”

  “Is that your doll? It’s a lovely doll.” Michael turned to Lucy. “I’m sure Dr. Ellison is more than qualified.”

  “If Bill dies, it’s all my fault.”

  “It’s no one’s fault. It was a stupid accident, that’s all.” He smiled at the little girl. “Her name is Nettie? I had an old auntie whose name was Netitia, but we called her Aunt Nettie.”

  Lucy punched him in the
arm. “Are you even listening to me? Oh God, I would kill for a gin and soda right now.” Catching herself, she waited for Michael’s I-told-you-so, but he was busy sweet-talking the child. Thank God. If he wanted to scold her about her bad habits, he needed to stand at the end of a very long queue. She reached into her handbag for a Sobranie, but the pack was empty. She snapped the bag closed with a sigh and an oath before dropping her head in her hands in complete surrender. “What am I going to do?”

  “There’s a newsagent’s down the street. You could buy a pack there.”

  “I’m talking about Bill. I didn’t mean for him to get hurt.”

  The little girl giggled at something Michael said. “You got her for your birthday? Many happy returns of the day. Lucy, you did what you thought was right.”

  “Did I?” She pushed herself to her feet.

  “Where are you going? Wait, listen . . .” By now, the little girl had oozed her way onto Michael’s lap and her pretty mother was looking at him as if he’d hung the moon. “I should have told you, but . . . well . . . you’re going to think it’s funny . . . I know I do . . .” The little girl’s chubby arms flung themselves around his neck and latched on in a python hold. The pretty mother looked as if she wanted to do the same.

  How the hell did he do it? How did he manage to charm his way into people’s affections until they all but flung themselves at him in needless adoration? He was one of those irritating individuals who skated through life untouched, comfortable in his own skin and thus able to make others comfortable as well. People like that made her sick.

  She’d never had that facility for friendship. Instead, she hung on the fringes of others’ relationships, not quite able to break through, not quite sure she wanted to. Laying oneself bare came with risks. Safety was found behind walls; one couldn’t be hurt if one couldn’t be touched.

  Still, she felt a pang of something nearly like jealousy when she watched Michael’s easy savoir faire.

  By now, the young woman was well into some sob story that had Michael nodding his head in sympathy. He broke off to wave her over once more. “Lucy—wait.”

  “Be right back,” she replied, hurrying away before jealousy at his easiness with people became jealousy of a different and far more personal sort.

  A telephone sat on a stand beside a large draping fern. A directory was tucked in a drawer beside a pencil and a pad of paper. Should she? Would it make any difference?

  Lucy’s stomach fluttered as the call was put through by the operator, but she fought it back until her breathing was even and her hands were steady as they gripped the receiver.

  There was a click at the other end of the line. “Nanreath Hall. This is Lady Boxley speaking.”

  As if Lucy needed to be told. She’d recognize that stiff disappointed tone anywhere.

  “Aunt Cynthia?”

  “Good heavens, child. Where are you?”

  “I’m somewhere in Somerset.”

  “Somerset? Do you know how—”

  “Stop! What are you doing?” A hand smashed down on the phone, cutting the connection.

  Lucy swung around to confront four and a half feet of quivering child.

  “Bill?” His hair stuck up at odd angles, strands of it plastered to his damp forehead, and his shirt was buttoned up wrong so that one side hung low on his narrow hips. He was an absolute mess. She wanted to kiss him.

  “He made it up.” Michael’s blue eyes danced with silent laughter. “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, replacing the receiver in its cradle. The fluttering in her stomach had become a knotted weight quickly sinking into her toes.

  “He wasn’t poisoned by any mushrooms.”

  “But he threw up. He was flushed and his hands were clammy.”

  “He held his breath, licked his palms, then stuck his finger down his throat,” Michael explained. “The boy’s a con artist of the first degree.”

  She stared at Bill. “Why on earth would you pretend to be sick?”

  He stuck out his chin, his face screwed into an expression of defiant bravado. “You and Michael were fighting, and I thought if you were worried about me, you’d stop yelling at each other. Wasn’t that a dashed clever rig?”

  The pair of them awaited her answer with identical expressions of sad-eyed contrition. She could have sworn Bill braced himself. Michael definitely possessed a slight nervous twitch. She tried summoning a white-hot rage that would leave both of them wishing they’d never been born. It should have been easy. She should be furious at them for wasting her time and making her look like a fool. Yet, what boiled up through her was laughter. Catching her breath against a further attack of the giggles, she shook her head. “Now I know how the Artful Dodger’s mother must have felt.”

  Miss Pursley shut the door on them with something akin to relief.

  “You’re really not angry, Lucy?” Bill asked, still looking a bit shamefaced. “I wasn’t meaning to frighten you.”

  “No, I’m not angry. Not even a little bit. I’m too happy that you’re all right.”

  “Are we still going to London?”

  “Why? Have you changed your mind?”

  “No. I was worrit you might have.”

  She gave him a reassuring smile. “Not a chance.” She dug into her purse. “Now, here’s a shilling. Run up the street to the newsagent’s and fetch me a pack of cigarettes.”

  A picture of blooming health, he snatched the coin and dashed off, only pausing to press his nose and dirty hands against a five-and-dime store window.

  “And I expect change back.”

  Her smile drained away as she leaned against the porch railing, checking her face and hair in her compact mirror, touching up her lipstick. She felt Michael’s eyes upon her; he was almost as shamefaced as Bill had been. “How did you know he was faking it?” she asked.

  “I guessed. He’s good, but I was a boy once. I know all the tricks.” He paused. “Will your aunt come looking for you?”

  She gave a grim little laugh. “The oh-so-dutiful Lady Boxley is too busy running the estate and everyone on it to spare a bother for one wayward niece. Maybe I’ll drop her a postcard when I reach Hollywood. She can say she knew me when.”

  “Look.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry for losing my temper. I didn’t mean what I said back there . . . about you not caring.”

  “Didn’t you? I’ve found that the truest words are born in anger or alcohol.” Satisfied she was, if not impeccable, at least presentable, Lucy snapped her handbag shut and checked her watch—half three. God, it seemed years since she’d been startled awake in the old grain shed on Mr. Ennis’s farm. If she was lucky, they’d bypassed the damaged tracks and from here on out, the trains would be running on schedule. But she and luck hadn’t been particularly cozy the last few days. It was more likely she’d be hoofing it all the way to Trafalgar Square. “While we’re exchanging mea culpas I will concede that maybe—just maybe, mind you—I might have been wrong to read your letter.”

  “Might have been?”

  “I don’t see why you’re making such a big to-do over the teensiest of indiscretions. You’d think I’d absconded with government secrets or something.” A provocative smile played over her mouth as she shoved off the porch rail and came down the two steps to the sidewalk. “Unless ‘Arabella’ is the code name for a German spy and her invitation to London is really a cover for your nefarious doings.”

  He closed his eyes as if asking for patience. “Can we forget Arabella?”

  “Of course,” she replied sweetly. “She’s none of my business.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “I couldn’t care less if you spend the rest of your life miserable and alone.”

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  “Bent and wrinkly with a cane and an ear trumpet and all the while pondering what if—what if I had listened to Lucy? What if I made that trip to the city all those decades ago? How
different my life might have turned out.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” The slightest hint of a smile broke through his somber gaze. “What about you? What if you get to Hollywood and find out it’s not all bright lights and big parties? What if Mr. Oliver turns out not to be the key to your happiness? Will you keep running? Or will you finally trust someone enough to take a chance?”

  Lucy felt suddenly awkward. Unsure of how to behave, what to say, who she was. A sensation she’d only ever experienced while in Amelia’s presence. She’d hated it then. She didn’t understand it now.

  Before she had to answer, he took her hand. “Come on,” he said with a fond if exasperated look on his face. “If you’re ever going to make your train, we’d best find Bill before he uses that shilling to buy himself a tin of snuff.”

  Hoping to return to familiar ground, she answered with a beguiling half smile and a toss of her head. “Dipping tobacco? He’d better not. A gasper now and again is one thing, but I do have standards.”

  Sorry, luv. Not a single seat to be had. Damaged rails. Overcrowded troop trains. Maybe the six fifty-three this evening. Next, please.”

  Yeovil.

  Marston Magna.

  Sparkford.

  Castle Cary.

  It was the same tired answer at every ticket window up the line.

  But desperate times called for desperate measures.

  “Are you certain you want to take the bus?”

  The three of them relaxed under the trees above the village, sated and sleepy after a picnic of Spam sandwiches and a thermos of cold milky tea. Lucy reclined on the car rug while Bill and Michael played cards.

  “Do I look as if I can’t handle a few hours on a smelly bus with a bunch of farmwives and factory workers?”

  He and Bill exchanged dubious looks.

  “I’ve made it this far, haven’t I? Besides, you heard that last chap. It’s hopeless to try and find a seat on the train until tomorrow morning at the earliest. We haven’t time to wait.”