train may be more dangerous, but it’s blackout in the countryside, and the train is still a few degrees warmer than out there.
Julian asks the conductor for some blankets. The man doesn’t have enough blankets for everyone and can’t be seen favoring Julian. He’ll have a mutiny on his hands. But for ten pounds, the conductor takes pity on them, and allows them to sneak into the luggage car, away from prying eyes. He brings them some blankets, a candle, and even some bandages. “Her head gash needs to be cleaned,” the conductor says, handing them a bucket of snow. “I’ll lock you in here but don’t get so drunk that you burn the place down.”
“We make no promises,” says Mia.
Julian washes out Mia’s scalp wound with the melted snow water and whiskey and then rebandages her. He takes off his coat and vest and shirt, and shivers in the cold while she cleans his back and rebandages him with the gauze that’s left.
“Look at us fussing over each other like monkeys at Regent’s Zoo,” she says. “And we’re locked in a cage like monkeys, too.”
Before she helps him put on his shirt, she holds out his left arm and studies the tattoos upside down. She sits next to him on a steamer trunk and reads the inky names to herself, running her finger over each one, from his wrist to the crook of his elbow, as her mouth forms the words.
“How have I not noticed these before?” she says.
“How hard were you looking?”
“At the Savoy I didn’t see them.”
“How hard were you looking at the Savoy?”
They glance at each other ruefully. “Time for a drink,” she says, helping him with his shirt and vest.
“Just one?”
They drink; they count their days. It’s the 14th of December. What should we drink to?
They’re not for want of things to drink to. Soon they’ll be for want of drink.
To London!
To Blackpool!
To Churchill!
To Christmas!
To Bank!
To the stage!
To Finch!
To their friends!
God bless them, Mia says. Finch was a good guy. You would’ve liked him.
I already liked him, Julian says. He was funny.
Not on purpose, Mia says.
That’s why he was funny.
They drink to their wounds, she drinks to his missing fingers. She kisses the nubs, one, two, three, and drinks to them again. This is how you know we can’t get married for real, she says. You’re missing your ring finger.
He raises his left hand—with all the fingers.
Oh, yeah. She giggles.
They wonder if they’ve had enough to drink.
Heartily they conclude they haven’t.
Because they forgot to sing.
They sing, “God Save the King.” Julian keeps singing “God Save the Queen” instead. His daughter is going to be queen when he dies, he explains.
Yes, all sorts of things will happen in the far-away future, Mia says. But the King is still a young man. Victoria lived until she was ninety.
And because he’s had too much to drink, Julian says, the King won’t live until ninety. He smokes too much. He’s going to get lung cancer.
Mia puts down her shaky cigarette. You can be a real pill sometimes, she says.
I said the King, not you. Julian flinches from his own words. Terrible ignorance is better than terrible knowledge. Yet no one can protect us if we are not ready. Sometimes they can’t protect us even when we are. Not because they won’t. Because they can’t. I carry oil in my lamp. And yet the day of your death is near. I am your grave. As you are mine. You are my grace. But am I yours?
What else, weepy Nostradamus? What else do you know, Mr. Seer of Seers, Mr. Smarty Pants? Will Hitler win?
No.
Will he invade England?
No.
Will the bombing stop?
Yes. In the spring.
Really, spring? The war will be over in the spring?
No. Only the bombing. Will pause, not end.
Where is Wild?
I don’t know.
What’s going to happen to you and me?
I don’t know.
Will Liz and Nick make it?
I don’t know.
So, when will the war be over?
I told you. 1945.
But you know nothing personal that could help us?
Yes, I know nothing that can help us, Julian says. I’m a font of useless information no good to fucking anyone. Let’s drink and sing.
They sing “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” Except Julian sings it with garbled lyrics Mia says she’s never heard. Her sword is girded on her side, the helmet on her head, and all around her are lying the dying and the dead.
Either I’ve had too much to drink or you are crap at knowing things, Mia says.