and why not? Only twenty more miles until Blackpool! But in Preston they learn there are no more civilian trains. It’s too close to Christmas, there are not enough engineers, and the military trains get priority. “Maybe in 1941, there’ll be a train for you,” says the station master in Preston. “Come back then. Happy New Year.”
“Come on, Jules, we can walk twenty miles, what do you say?”
With his one eye he appraises her, her still-bandaged head wound, busted ankle, swollen knees, cracked clavicle. He doesn’t bother to appraise himself, his injuries too numerous to count.
“Don’t give me your evil eye, Long John Silver.” She smiles. “It will take us three days. Four if we dog it.”
“Christmas Eve is tomorrow,” Julian says. What he doesn’t add is, it’s the 47th day. He tries not to even think it. Whether or not he thinks it, the fact of it doesn’t change. Tomorrow is the 47th day.
“I know. Do you have a better plan? Or are your plans only about fooling around with susceptible women?” She is always smiling.
He stares at her, at his own reflection in the station window, chews his lip. He is about to go talk to the station agent, to beg him for mercy. He is about to offer the man what he offers everyone who has something he wants. A barter. An Elizabethan coin that will feed the man’s family for a year in exchange for opening the doors of a cargo hold on a military train. But before he can do that, Mia nods to someone behind him. It’s the station agent.
“There’s a train coming through on its way to Blackpool North in about an hour,” the man says. “If you’re quiet, and ready, and standing where I tell you, I will open the hold. The train will be at the station for ten minutes. So if you’re not on the platform, you aren’t getting on.”
“Thank you,” Mia says, because all other words are inadequate.
Julian asks her to wait and follows the agent.
“What?” the man snaps, grim and overworked.
“I want to give you something,” Julian says. In the palm of his left hand, he holds out one of the gold coins.
“What’s this?” the agent says with suspicion.
“It’s a present for your family,” Julian says. “Don’t lose it. Find a coin dealer as soon as you can and sell it. Don’t accept anything less than four hundred pounds. Shop around. Auction it if you have to. If you’re patient, you may be able to get six hundred for it.”
“How much did you say?”
“You heard me.”
The station agent looks disbelievingly at the coin in his hand. “Well, crikey, thanks a million,” he says gruffly. “It’s really not necessary.”
“I know.”
“Not necessary,” the agent adds with the body tremor of a man having encountered a miracle, “but deeply appreciated.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Yes, Happy Christmas to you, too.”
The agent opens the hold for them, gives them two blankets, half a bottle of cheap whiskey and a Brodie hat full of bread and potato stew. “Left over from me dinner earlier,” he says. “The wife made it. Cooking is not her strong suit, but the hungrier you are, the better it’ll taste.”
It tastes like bouillabaisse at the Savoy. By the time the train terminates at Blackpool North an hour later, Julian and Mia have never been so full or so drunk.
It’s still three miles to her house.
They stumble in the dark like vagrants, their arms around their sore bodies, holding each other up, hobbling down the streets, slurring the words to “The Land of Hope and Glory.”
God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!
“We ain’t so mighty,” Julian says.
“Are you joking?” she says. “Half-blind, you brought me home for Christmas. With two working arms between us, one working leg, three ears and three eyes, we traveled across a war-torn country and lived to tell about it. We are invisible, Jules. Alone, not so great maybe, but together, we’re fucking invisible.”
“You mean invincible?”
“That’s what I said. Invisible.”
He wishes he could marry her and carry her in his arms.
26
Dream Machine
THE HOUSE IS A PINK-PAINTED, TINY, SEMI-DETACHED COTTAGE with an iron gate and a narrow walk. It stands on a street called Babbacombe, near Pleasure Beach. “How can you not love that,” Mia says. “Babbacombe, near Pleasure Beach.”
“There’s no way I can not love it,” says Julian. “It’s a pink palace. But I thought you grew up in London?”
“I did. We lived here when I was young. We keep it as a summer place. Wilma and