“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing much,” I said. “Only that you’ve saddled us with a visit from one of the most obnoxious human beings on the face of the planet. Once he moves in, we’ll never get rid of him. Oh, God,” I groaned, “he’ll probably try to read his paper to us.”
Bill had the grace to hang his head. “I thought he was a bit of a pill, but—”
“I know. You also thought he was my friend.” I sighed and took his arm. “Oh, come on. I’ll tell you all about him while we look at William Blake’s visions of hell. After a brush with Evan, they’ll seem soothing.”
*
Bill redeemed himself by showing up at my suite the next day with enough of the finest Scottish wool to keep Meg’s knitting needles flying for a good long time. Impressed, I had to admit that he noticed far more than I gave him credit for.
I bought a few things I couldn’t resist—a couple of sweaters, a book or two—and others I didn’t even try to resist. A flashlight, for instance. From Harrod’s, of all places. And I made sure to have a brand-new brolly handy when I went to the zoo. Even when I was caught up in shopping, Dimity and my mother were never far from my thoughts.
I kept seeing them in my mind’s eye, sharing a bag of chips, riding bicycles, running for shelter during an air raid. I touched the shrapnel-gouged walls of buildings along the Embankment and tried to imagine what it had been like to hear the rumble of German aircraft overhead, to feel the sidewalk shake as the bombs struck home. There was one moment, driving past Hyde Park, when I thought I saw the greensward scarred with trenches, sandbags piled high, conical canvas tents staked out in rows across the fields. The image was startlingly vivid. I called out for Paul to stop the car, but before he could pull over to the curb, the vision was gone, the helmeted Tommies replaced by the usual lunchtime throng of trench-coated Londoners. When Bill started to question me, I only shook my head and asked Paul to drive on.
Because the zoo had gained an almost mythic status since I’d read the letters—I guess I subconsciously expected to find a brass plaque commemorating the day Beth Shepherd met Dimity Westwood—I’d saved it for last. Needless to say, it was a bit of a letdown to see it bathed in sunlight and crowded with noisy families.
Bill had arranged for me to speak with one of the keepers who’d been there during the war, a pink-faced, elderly man named Ian Bramble. We sat with him by the Grand Union Canal, and he sighed when I asked him what the zoo had been like in those days.
“A sad place,” he said. “Terribly sad. Hated to come to work, myself. No children around, and the place all boarded up.” He pulled a handful of corn from his pocket and tossed it to some passing ducks. “It was a strange time. People were afraid there’d be lions in the streets if a bomb fell in the wrong place, and they had enough to worry about without lions. So we put them down, the lions, and others as well. Perfectly healthy they were, too. It’s not something we tell the kiddies, you understand, but perhaps we should. I sometimes think they’d be better off knowing it’s not all crisps and candy floss during wartime.”
11
Paul had been too young to enlist. “Not that I didn’t try, mind you,” he told us. “Lied like a rug, I did; used boot-blacking to give myself whiskers. Board told me to go home and wash my face.” We were speeding along a narrow, twisting lane, on our way to the cottage. We had left London very late in the afternoon the day after our visit to the zoo. I had wanted to leave earlier, but Bill had gone off to make some more of his mysterious arrangements and hadn’t surfaced again until after tea.
“That’s why I went to the Flamborough,” Paul continued. “The bartender there was a chum of mine, and I liked to listen to the lads. We were taking such a pasting in London that it was good to hear the Jerries were getting some of their own back. Finch should be coming up shortly, miss.” I had tried to break him of the “Miss Shepherd” habit, but he had been trained at the Old Servant’s School of Etiquette and “miss” was as far as he would unbend. “The cottage lies about two miles beyond the village.”
It was too dark and we passed through Finch too quickly for me to see much of it, but as we pulled into the drive, I could see that lights had been lit in every window of the cottage. It was exactly as I had pictured it. And it seemed to be waiting for me.
“Here we are,” said Paul, switching off the engine. An absolute silence settled over us. We climbed out of the limo to stand on the gravel drive and I shivered as the cold night air hit me.
“Touch of frost tonight, I’d say.” Bill blew on his hands and I could see his breath.