to my one surviving aunt, but out of respect for my mother, he left my father’s name on me. He hoped I’d have a son to pass my own name to, and my son would have a son, and so on.”
“Yes, and so on,” Julian said, willing his mind a blank, trying to erase every single thing about the dead end of that shabby dream.
“I can’t believe you forgot Ashton’s stories,” Bennett said. “How could you? The stuff about Wild was the stuff of legend. Ashton grew up on tales about Wild. I don’t know, maybe he forgot, too. He was so young when I left. How Wild and his friend Swedish found me in a fiery blaze that took my mum and my aunt.” Michael Bennett smiled, his eyes wet. “It always seemed so implausible, like Wild had made the whole thing up. He said I fell out of the sky while the house burst into flames around me. There wasn’t a scratch on me. He said I fell with grace from God into his one arm. My mother died, but he pulled me out. He told me I changed his life. He was supposed to deliver me to an orphanage. But he said he would kill anyone who tried to separate me from him. He asked Swedish to tie me to him with ropes so he wouldn’t lose me; he hid me in his coat and fled London. It seems so far-fetched. I was an infant, and he had one arm and had never even touched a baby.”
Julian couldn’t speak. There was silence in the cemetery on a balmy Sunday afternoon.
“Where did he take you?”
“Somewhere in Wales,” Ashton’s father said, “to a tiny village in the middle of some unknown forest. He said Swedish had told him about such a place. Away from coal mines, trains, anything that could be bombed.”
“What happened to him? 1952, he was still so young . . .” About the age Julian was now.
“Lung cancer. Like the King. He died a month after George, in March.” Bennett’s eyes welled up. “When God couldn’t save the King, I knew he’d never be able to save my Wild. Why are you staring at me like that? What did Ashton tell you?” Bennett studied Julian with suspicion and misgiving. “I don’t know why you’re so interested in Wild. What’s he to you?”
“Ashton was in my life because Wild had saved you. So, everything.”
“I suppose.” The man sighed.
“You two returned to London after the war?”
Bennett nodded. “Wild’s mother wasn’t well. We lived with her up in Camden and when she died, moved down here. Not far from this church actually, a few blocks away, on Folgate. The area was rebuilt after the war. For the first few years we searched for Wild’s friends, especially for Swedish, and then gave up. When Wild died, I became a ward of the council. They found my aunt, eventually. I lived with her for a while.”
Julian forced himself to stop shivering. When Ashton’s mother died, he, too, became a ward of the council. He, too, was twelve. Except Ashton still had a father.
“The name Ashton was Wild’s idea,” Michael Bennett said. “If he ever had another boy, he always wanted to name him Ashton.”
“But he died before he got a chance to,” Julian said. “So you did.” He took a breath. “How did Ashton end up with the red beret?”
Bennett considered Julian with anxiety and unhappiness. “What could you possibly know about that? I left it with him when his mother and I split up, if you really must know. What happened to it, I have no idea.”
“He gave it to me,” Julian said.
“What did you do with it?”
“And I gave it to you. Folgate and I put it on your head.”
The old man whirled to Julian. “What did you say?” he croaked. “How did you know what he called that girl . . .”
Julian put his palm on his heart. “Because I’m Swedish,” he whispered.
Terror and disbelief was on the old man’s face.
But more of the former than the latter.
Bennett’s wife came rushing back. “Oh, you’ve upset him!” she said, glaring at Julian. “Look at the state he is in. He’s cold and sweating. Well done.” She gave Bennett her arm to lift him off the bench. “Come on, luv, let’s go home. No use hanging around here. I’ll make you lunch and a nice cup of tea. You can sit in the garden.”