Bedford Midland Station, England
May 5th, 1949
At present I stare up into blue skies, as blue as they come in England. Fragments of the stations' wrought iron skeleton obscure the block of blue, I follow them keenly as they poke out of the marble, brick and alabaster structure surrounding it. Four years ago, it once held a series of brilliant glass panes. As with many other things during the war, when the bombs fell it shattered the fragile beauty of it, rendering it empty and broken. Now the gaping whole which admits a bitter wind whipping about the middle of the thorough fare, resembles more a set of decayed ribs than the dazzling train station it once was.
At least the politicians had been good enough to fix the floor, I remarked scuffing my heel upon it. It was nothing but plain concrete now, but in a few years it may begin to look something like itself again. I shrugged, pulling my coat around me tighter as another gust fell by, rustling up bits of lost notebook pages, newspapers and ticket stubs as if they were leaves.
"Lundun! Lundun via St. Pancras. Nye O'clock! Lundun St. Pancras. Nye O'clock!"
A tight lipped conductor shouted from his office window, curdling up against the counter enough to sound the bell.
Glancing at my watch to see it was 8:50 already, I picked up my two trunks and made my way to the tracks where the train's engines began growling.
"Ticket young Miss? For St. Pancras?" A wiry young man with a troutish sort of purse to his lips stares down at me.
"Ah, yes." I fish into my pocket, taking out the ticket and a foreign slip of paper, which promptly fell from my hands clumsily. I picked it up, resolutely tucking it back in for later inspection.
"Right on, then, Miss."
Green and gray whiplash past my window, I gaze out only momentarily now that my car is empty and I've a suspicious note in my coat pocket. It is folded into quarters rather sloppily, I pull it apart and smooth it out.
"My Dove,"
My lips purse immediately.
"Do forgive me, I found myself rather cheeky last night. Anyways, couldn't see you off all pouty and such, so I've left you a present. I might act more Prince-like in the future if you'd only kissed me, you know. Well, maybe Francis and Rosemary can.
Cheers,
Your Freddie"
Well, that confirms all my suspicions that Freddie hasn't got two wits about him.
Still, he's never usually this cryptic. Yet again, this could be another one of Freddie's ploys to toy with my thoughts. I wondered if my own curiosity would outweigh my quest to be rid of him altogether.
~o0O0o~
We pulled into St. Pancras, London. Once I had my trunks, my jacket and my wits about me, I hailed a hackney and gave them our Grosvenor Square address. We passed through traffic, I scammed a book mother had given me last Christmas "The Language of the Book of the Dead". If I was to spend the summer (as I had many summers) in Libya and Egypt, I had to be proficient in my arabic, hieratic and hieroglyphics-which I will admit have become rather rusty, since I'd taken up French.
Before I could even brush the first chapter we were pulling into my neighborhood. Opulent houses in slabs of marble and granite, gray neoclassical pillars ominously framing cold cobalt doors with golden knockers pass by. We pulled to a stop in front of the most elegantly unobtrusive houses in the entire neighborhood.
Home.
It was four stories of whitewashed brick, speckled with large, coal black framed windows and a matching roof. On either side stood large, gas lampposts painted black. They had been installed before the Great War but the affluent community here had refused to replace them, even during the last war when they'd posed a great threat to the houses here. I shrugged and directed my attention toward the cabby, a gruff man in his forties with a permanent scowl plastered crookedly over his jowled face. He desperately needed a shave. I nodded and handed him his fare at which he grumbled and pulled away in a great hurry. I hoisted my bag over my shoulder, lying my suitcase over my trunk and tugging them with great exasperated effort down the set of stairs leading below ground level to the servant entrance.
"My, my Miss, what you doin' lugging such 'eavy things about you?"
I smiled and made a clumsy effort to scramble over my luggage to hug her.
"Tanner."
She was a tall and broad woman with a face that could rest in complete commanding fury and jovial lightheartedness, how she managed to switch between the two so easily-I could not comprehend.
When I had come bumping down the stairs, she had been sweeping out the kitchen. Although it was a rather chilly day, the kitchen could get stuffy and frequently warm after preparing a meal. After an entire morning of moving her five-foot-ten-inch, one hundred sixty pounds around in a hurry, she was sweating profusely. Her round, red face was flushed and her thin, chestnut hair was in complete disarray, scattering all over her shoulders while thin wisps remained plastered against her temples.
" 'ere, let me 'elp you." After thirty years in East London, some speech patterns were difficult to break, and Tanner had a rough time with her 'haches'. But what she lacked in refinement she made up for in shrewd character and a palatable common sense. With less effort than an ox would carrying a yoke, she heaved my trunk over the threshold along with my suitcase and I stepped into the kitchen after her.
It was spotless, you had to respect Tanner for her cleanliness which sometimes bordered on the neurotic.
"It smells gorgeous, Tanner. What's for dinner?" I asked slipping my bag over my shoulder and hanging my coat up on the rack by the door.
"Beef stew, potatoes, greenens'," or green beans, "sourdough bread...fresh from the oven. Now have a seat, luv." I took my seat on the stool, grinning at her as I stared into my glass of milk and her homemade sugar cookies. With eyes large as saucers I dunked and savored each bite.
After so long away from home, away from good meals and good people, enduring the same dishes every week, a plate of warm cookies were more than welcome.
"How have Mama and Papa been?" I asked in a mouthful at which Tanner scowled. I swallowed.
"Oh, yes, Miss. Your mother 'as been workin herself into the ground curating the new collection of Egyptian jewelry. And of course your father's been tucking around town securin' some more financing for this summer's new dig."
I smiled broadly imagining him. Father would be running around London causing trouble, racking up all the favors people owed him and calling all of his business partners. He was good at negotiating business with people, he was brash, blunt, even crass when the occasion called for it-but he was excused of these qualities among London society, being American and such.
"And will you be accompanying us this summer, Tanner?" I asked knowing full well she'd never leave England.
"Oh, 'eavens no! Go out in the bloody 'eat of things...no, dear me.." Tanner said, her cheeks ruddy and red as she tended to the stew. "..Someone's got to look after this place while your parents are off...they've got me working day and night...runnin' out to the country house and back, makin' sure that Matilda McAfferty..whatever'n-such name she calls herself, don't go runnin' the estate into the ground." Tanner said with pursed lips, her eyes showing with disdain. Tanner may have grown up on the poor side of town, and certainly the third or fourth generation of East-enders, but she had a good and proper British distaste of the Irish. Especially of Ms. McAfferty, a handsome thirty year old woman from Galway who'd never been married and who had recently gained the position of stewardess out in our country Estate. "..or worse, slip her 'and into the till."
Perhaps it was in Tanner's nature to be suspicious of everyone, she turned her dark brown eyes on me in a kind of studying way. "What you doin' 'ere anyhow?" She suddenly asked as if she'd come to her senses. She glanced on a paper tacked onto a cork board on the wall. "You only supposed to arrive 'ere Friday." She placed her hands on her hips and looked at me.
"Well," I said finishing my glass of milk and trying to think of my explanation. "You see, I bought my ticket in advance but somehow I messed the dates up...you know how harebrained I can be..and so when I said that I had bought my ticket early, they let me go home early, seeing how I'd already paid and it was already the end of the school year.."
Tanner smirked, an odd expression on her face, pervading neither in the furious british battle axe category, nor the jovial english clucking hen category either. "Is that 'ow you got them scratches on your neck, then?"
My hands flew to my neck-how had I forgotten? They were so small and were practically disappearing-I may have taken Frances by surprise but she had long nails-evidently.
"Now Miss if your parents..." Tanner began but was interrupted by a reverberation as the door above slammed shut.
"Evey!" I could hear my father call as he walked into the parlor.
"Papa!" I smiled, grabbing my last cookie and running out the kitchen door, waving at Tanner as I left.
"I've a letter ..from Alex." Mum snatched the letter from his hands and pried it open, giving Papa a playfully chiding look.
"You've read it without me..you cad." She said smacking his arm with the small manilla paper but then turned her gaze towards the letter.
"He's just left Istanbul-he says he's tracking a particular icon said to have had peculiar symbology into...Greece."
"Exotic." Papa quipped in his usual dry tone.
"Is there any mention of when he'll return home?" she asked, her voice piqued with hope.
Father shook his head.
I sighed. Since Alex had graduated Cambridge, he did a few digs with Mum and Papa and then promptly went off traveling, collecting some antiquities for wealthy benefactors. We hadn't so much as seen in him in over a year-and mother missed him. She was always so worried about the two of us.
I could hear the paper folded and put away, placed into the stack that mother collected in the telephone table.
"He needs to get away Evey, see the world...he's a young man." And father wrapped his arms around mother's smooth waist and pulled her close. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders and substantial build, he overshadowed mum who was lithe and quite shorter than he.
"You would've thought that after the incident he would've seen enough of it."
Mum and Papa had spoken often of the incident, always when I wasn't present or assumed I wasn't listening-but had never actually said anything about it. And it was usually centering around Alex. So much of my childhood seemed to be a picture out of focus, a rough film or veil disclosing the world from me. And only now, being sixteen and obdurate of my own independence did I feel the sickening churn of my stomach, the feeling that I had been lied to.
"The world is never big enough for a young man itching in his shoes."
Mother turned to face him, I knew so because I could see her delicate hands hook around his neck.
"I only hope he isn't as reckless and devious as his father was."
I rolled my eyes.
"Izzy always exaggerates." Father protests as Mum kisses him. We'd all heard from Uncle Izzy about the bank jobs in Marrakech and always getting "shot in the arse" but assumed that the truth lie somewhere between Izzy's exaggerations and Father's purported "innocence". They kiss for a while, in a way that makes any child feel wary of their parents
You'd think after more than twenty years and two children, they'd learn to get a room.
Then again, they didn't know I was here either.
"Miss Amelia, you know its quite rude to eavesdrop!" Tanner chided in a hoarse whisper, then overstepped me as she came up the stairs with a tray of tea and biscuits.
"Good to 'ave you back, Sir." Tanner said mustering as much cordiality as she could, "I've prepared your tea, Mrs."
I turned to creep back down the stairs.
"Also, Miss Amelia 'as arrived in from Sinpincras.." Tanner's way of saying St. Pancras.
"Amelia?" They asked incredulously
I shoved up the stairs and peeked around the corner with a guilty smile.
"Amelia, how long have you been home?" Mum said, her intelligent eyes scanning me.
"Oh Tanner! You spoiled my surprise!" I shot a look at Tanner, egging her to play along. "Just arrived in actually, was coming up the stairs to greet you. I didn't bother calling, I thought I'd just...surprise you."
Mother beamed, one of those gracious, proud smiles. "Well then, let's get tea settled-my little girl must be hungry."
"Yes." I beamed back.
"Aren't you supposed to be in school till Friday, Mia?" Father asked with a disbelieving half smile.
Beam gone.
He was always quickest to assume suspicion-which was right of him, half of the time Alex and I were trying to think of ways to get out of the trouble we'd plugged ourselves into.
Bullocks.
"Yes. Yes, well I ..."
Think. Think. Think.
"I talked to Ms. Brackley..."
Er...insert cookie!
I shoved the entire sugar cookie in my mouth, abhorring my mother's appeals to common decorum as I continued to explain in half mumbles as I chewed the cookie.
"..and she told me I could go home early, because I got the ticket two days before we leave and I'd been on such good behavior."
I nodded and swallowed.
"Well, if she was sent home early because of good behavior, I don't see why that's cause for alarm," Mother said dismissively to Papa and ushered me into the drawing room,"..and the sooner rather than later, Harlowe's seems to be educating her on everything except table manners."
I laughed and threw my arms around her. "Its good to be home, Mama." I admitted, which was not a falsehood-it really was. I missed busy London and even busier parents bustling in and out of the house at all hours of the day. For the next three weeks, I'd be accompanying mum and papa on their errands to help prepare for the upcoming dig-many of which I'd been going on since I was a child. I'd never been allowed to actually help unearth artifacts but I'd always stay on camp and play with the local kids, explore on my own. Last summer, I'd flown over to America (via New York) and the three of us had helped Uncle Daniel and Tom in Montana dig up dinosaur remnants. I'd done splendidly, according to Mum, and could now accompany her on this dig, handling thousand year old objects. I was dying to go.
Papa smirked shaking his head as if it were a joke, if not a disruption in the natural order of the universe, "Good behavior, huh?" and threw his coat over the divan, which Tanner promptly scooped up and hung on the coat rack, with marked exasperation. She always respected father (even though he was american irish) but he was far to unpolished in her opinion to suit Mama.
"I'm terribly excited for the dig. Is Alex coming with us?" I asked sitting down-hoping to keep up the illusion that I'd simply walked in after Tanner.
Mum sipped her tea. "No darling, he's gone off to Greece..I suppose he'll be there till he traps what he's looking for."
"Greece, how exciting-we've never been there." I commented offhandedly, feeling guilty for bringing it up again.
Mother nodded with a smile, one that was earnestly happy for her son but markedly disappointed.
"Well, perhaps we can visit him." Father said and patted Mum on the shoulder who seemed brighter at the thought. "But until then, you'll just have to make do with Egypt."
"Oh, I suppose it will have to do." I said drily and drank the rest of my tea.
It seemed like the best cup I'd ever had.
~o0O0o~
Dinner had been impressive and delightful. I hadn't meant to appear ravenous but the roasted rosemary potatoes and the stew had been a welcome change from salted pork chops and mash. When I had eaten for both myself and Alex, I made my way up to my room.
The stair case followed a square pattern where on any floor one could look straight down over the rail and see the parlor floor, rooms jutted off of the hallway and surrounded the parlor like an enclosed courtyard. The ground floor contained the parlor, the dinning room, the sitting room and the reading room. Then turning left from the front door, one could begin up the stair case to the first floor. Here, lining the hallways were various paintings and objects, an occasional book case, four doors appeared on either side. One led to a master suite space with a bathroom and walk-in closet, another led to a large linens closet, the other to a second story sitting room, and another to a quaint guest room, which Tanner occupied from time to time (especially during Summer where the bottom maid quarter was far too humid to tolerate). I wobbled up the steps, my eyes following the worn burgundy step lining, until I had reached the second floor. The second floor is where Mum and Papa slept, like the first floor, it contained a very large master suite, only with larger rooms since there was no guest rooms. It was complete with two walk-in closets, a sitting room and a library (a place I had spent all too much time in when it rained or was overcast-considering London, this was often). Hearing my parents clamoring up the stairs behind me, I bustled down the hallway and up another flight of stairs to the third floor.
This was our floor-Alex's and mine. We both had two large rooms, with two smaller guest rooms attached (for nannies presumably, which Mother never really used). It also had a sitting room and play room that overlooked the street below. I made a sharp right, past a large nordic battle axe (Alex's ten year birthday present-he'd been so insistent about getting it that he'd rattled on Papa's ear for nearly a year before he gave in) and made my way to my room. Since my sixteenth birthday, I was lucky enough to get a lock and key. I inserted the brass key, gave it a good jiggle and it swung open.
It had been dark when I walked in, I was quick to turn on a few lamps as I closed the door behind me and drew the curtains back. Water was strumming against the windows in a steady, London downpour, casting a familiar eery glow. I flipped on another light and made about my routine until I was lying in bed in my night shift surrounded by several books: "Ancient Egypt: The Upper Kingdom Vol. III" by Evelyn Carnaghan-O'Connell & Richard O'Connell; "Temples & Palaces of Egypt" by Nelson Bembridge & Arthur P. Bembridge; "Egypt, a Mythos" by Evelyn Carnaghan-O'Connell & Arthur P. Bembridge and "Rome & Her Empire" by H. G. Heimlisch.
This was my responsibility, mother had told me a thousand times. I couldn't simply set my sights on Cambridge and expect to be granted admittance, I needed experience and quite a lot to show for it as well. Despite all the opportunities our parents had given us, Alex and I never for one moment forgot that we had to work for these opportunities. Alex had attended digs as anyone else working for our parents, with the expectation to be as knowledgeable and hardworking. I had a note pad out and was scribbling down notes, dropping in and out of sleep when my father had knocked.
I wasn't psychic, but I understood his rhythm, it was polite but insistent, whereas mother took her liberty to simply open the door when she felt like it. I put my robe on and answered the door.
"Its pretty late, Mia, shouldn't you be getting to bed?" Dad stood at the door, he was wearing his dark blue wool shirt-pant pajamas.
I nodded sleepily, he eyed my bed around me and noted the books.
"You've plenty of time for that later." He said and cleared the books off my bed and onto my desk.
"Thanks Papa." I said and climbed into bed.
He looked down at me and grinned, and for a moment it turned into a questioning.
"Now, Mia-why did you really come home early?" He cocked his brow, a gesture signaling that he'd be willing to stand the test of time to wait for my answer.
No way getting around this...crap.
"Because I get the feeling that it wasn't for good behavior."
I shrugged, "...how did you know?"
He pulled the stuffed chair in front of my vanity next to my bed and sat down in it. His large form, his rough hands draped over his knees, making my girlish blue chair look ridiculously frail.
"Because..," He said and smoothed my hair back over my forehead, "you're my little girl, Mia-you're your mother's daughter. I can tell when you're lying...when you're angry...when you're sad..and when you're hiding something."
Sometimes I hated parents, they know you better than you know yourself, so just when you've thought you've got yourself all figured out and you plant your new founded identity into the ground, they pull the proverbial rug right out from underneath you. And tumbling over you go.
"Alright...I got in a fight.." I hoped I didn't look as deflated as I sounded.
"Another one?" Dad scanned me with his light blue eyes, even in the uneven lamp light they were arresting.
"Don't tell Mum, please don't tell her." I said hurriedly and buried my face into my hands as if I was ashamed. I hadn't been sorry when I popped Rosemary in the face.
In fact, it felt wonderful. It felt like a million electro-magnetic pulses swimming through my veins all at once. I was powerful stepping in on behalf of the weak, I felt important and untouchable-it was so clear how right I was and how wrong they were. Every time I thought about it, even now, I suddenly felt a disgusting wave of pleasure ripple over me.
And it was disgusting, that I had taken pleasure in beating Rosemary and tried my damnedest to do worse to Frances. My mother and father had brought me up better than that, that I was above relying on my fists to get what I wanted, even if it happened to be justice for my friend.
I felt Papa's hand at the back of my head, soothing me. I looked at him, almost too guilty to do so. A tear streamed down my face. Then another and another.
Papa looked momentarily panicked. "Its ok, Mia, I won't tell Mom." He reassured me.
"I couldn't help it," I said weakly, "..it was Sarah. They came in, in the middle of the night and they used...my lipstick and they...Papa, they wrote terrible things about her." I said. Even now, nearly two days later, I felt my hands ball into fists, clenching onto control with considerable strength.
"And Sarah was crying...shaking...she couldn't understand why, why they'd be so hateful. And I knew it was them..I knew it because Frances is the only who loops the "h" like that...and they didn't care when I asked them, they were laughing. Papa, so smug and...content...with their hate."
I cried some more, feeling like I was being pushed foot by foot closer to the edge of a cliff, in one or two more shoves I'd be going head first into complete fatigue.
"I just wanted to beat it out of them.." I confessed and looked at my hands because I had nowhere else I could put my eyes as he looked back at me.
"People are stupid, Mia."
It was one of those phrases that didn't seem to mean as much as it had.
"People live their entire lives in a cage, in a bubble. People are unforgiving at what they can not begin to understand. They do things, unspeakable things, to maintain what is important to them or what they hold sacred, in the name of self preservation."
I turned my gaze towards my father. His proud chin growing a graying stubble, his blue eyes marked with crows feet and a slight darkness that only age will paint. His light brown hair in discord, his rough pajamas seeming inelegant, I realized I had always seen my Father as a simple man. Now, in a moment where he was relating something important to me, I began to find that there was so much about my father that I did not know.
"I left America when I was eight-teen, Amelia, I left a family who loved me, a gal who couldn't get enough of me and some good fellas too. I left, Amelia, because I couldn't live my life not knowing what lay beyond state lines. I left because I hated the bigotry, the fear of adventure-of life...and," He smoothed his hand back over his hair, "I suppose I was running away from the idea that I may fall prey to it. So I ran, into Cuba, Mexico, then up to New York and over the pond. And into the French Foreign Legion and then everywhere else. I was chasing an adventure, a life unattached to a home, and to its people. And I thought I'd find it..but I didn't."
I stared back at him. "And what did you find?"
"I found a lot of trouble," he said with a smile, an expression I'd seen on mine and Alex's face, "found that people weren't as different as back home, weren't more or less open minded, didn't appreciate things any more or less than I thought they would. And after all of that, I found myself landed in a prison in Cairo facing a noose. And that's when the adventure began, Amelia."
I blinked. "Why? What changed?" I couldn't imagine why someone who'd found himself facing death would smile and welcome more of the same.
He hesitated a moment, then started, "Because that's when I met your mother. I never understood what true enterprise was, till I met her. When I returned to Illinois with your Mother, I found that everyone was unchanged and I realized that I didn't need to be running around the world to change it-I needed to live my life, experience freedom, find adventure my own way, on my own terms."
"But didn't you?" I asked, after all, it was through this journey he'd met Mama.
"Yes. Yes and No. I was chasing after someone else's idea of an adventure, trying to live my life like a dime novel-and I had a great time, but it had to always be dangerous, I always had to be at odds with things, brawling about bare fisted 'cause it felt good-I thought I'd find myself that way. And then I found your mom, someone who didn't need a grand ole' adventure to know who she was, didn't need the danger, the conflict-someone who hadn't been anywhere else but Cairo since she was twelve. Stuck up in a library with books and a decimal system. She was the adventure, Mia."
I smiled to myself.
"It changed with me, Mia. I didn't need to fight anyone anymore to feel like a man, to see the world as different, to feel empowered. And when I fought...it was for the important people, and them alone-not for a fight itself. You did right, little girl, to stand up for Sarah. But next time make sure its not for just the sake of the brawl."
I nodded silently and snuggled down into my bed. He put my chair back and opened the door, but stopped before he exited.
"Did you clip her good?" He asked with a crooked grin over his shoulder.
"A right hook, like you showed me." I said.
He laughed, I could see his eyes soften. He kissed my forehead and turned the light off, "Good girl." and left the door open as he went to bed.
I supposed if a sixteen year old girl was ever to allow her father to tuck her in again, that was one damn good occasion to. I let my eyes drift close and now that the rain had smoothed into a gentle pattering on my window pane. I drifted off into a warm dream.
So. Long chapter but hey, why not?
Commentary etc. is appreciated. Hope it was a good read.