The Apothecary

Chapter 28

Breaking and Entering



Across the Lower Thames Road from the Port of London’s gate, there was a narrow street, and down that narrow street was a row of terraced houses, all attached to each other. Pip eyed them, looking for one in which no one was home, and no one would be. Finally he stopped in front of a house with lace curtains and dark windows. “That’s the one,” he said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“How d’you ever know? It’s just a feeling you get.”

“Should we go around the back? It’s broad daylight.”

“Burglars go in the back,” Pip said. “Act like you’re doing nothing wrong. It’s our auntie’s house, and we’ve got our key. Sticks a bit, it does.”

So I tried to look as innocent as possible, chatting with Benjamin on the stoop, while Pip made picking the lock look convincingly like struggling with a sticky key. Then he pushed the door open, and we went inside.

“Auntie?” he called, but he was right that no one was home.

It was a narrow house, one room wide and two rooms deep on each floor. Pip locked the door behind us. A steep staircase led straight up from the front hallway, and we found a bathroom just off the second-floor landing. The bathtub was old but clean—much cleaner than a high school rubbish bin.

The pipes screeched as we turned on the water, then thundered as the water poured out, and I hoped the neighbours were away. Benjamin set the lever that stopped the drain, then poured the bottle of invisibility solution under the tap, like bath oil. I thought about the fact that Sarah Pennington’s necklace had been melted and ground into powder, and was now suspended in the water. Once, I would have teased Benjamin about taking a bath in it, but now it didn’t seem right. Sarah wasn’t Benjamin’s crush anymore; she was Pip’s—girlfriend? The thought was bizarre.

When the bath was full, we turned off the water, and the doorbell rang downstairs. “Mrs Jenkins?” a woman’s voice called, muffled by the glass in the front door. “Are you in there?”

We all froze.

“Mrs Jenkins?” the voice called again.

“Let’s find another house,” I whispered, in a panic.

“We can’t!” Benjamin said. “The bath is drawn!”

“I’ll go talk to ’er,” Pip said. “Get in the tub.” And he was gone.

Benjamin pulled his jacket off. “I know this is awkward,” he said. “You can turn around if you want. But you should undress, too. I won’t look. We need to move quickly.”

I turned to face the towel rack, which had a blue towel hanging from it, under a framed needlepoint of a basket of flowers. Each blossom was made of tiny cross-stitches. I felt frozen with shyness and indecision, and wished we still had the rolling blackboard as a screen.

“Hullo!” I heard Pip say downstairs. “Can I help you?”

I couldn’t hear the woman’s exact words, but she sounded surprised to have the door opened by a smallish boy. I heard Benjamin step into the water behind me, and imagined his lean body sliding into the tub. I took off my school blazer and dropped it to the floor. Then I slipped off my shoes.

“My auntie Jenkins isn’t home,” Pip said downstairs. I could tell he was making his voice a little sweeter and more childish than usual, and his accent more like Benjamin’s. “She’ll be here soon. I’m meant to have a bath. Is there a message?”

The woman stammered an uncertain apology.

I managed to roll my tights down under my skirt, and hopped on one foot to pull them off my toes. I pretended I was just slipping a swimsuit off under a towel, after junior lifesaving, with a bunch of other kids on the sand in Santa Monica. It was the same as that, I told myself—but of course it wasn’t.

The tub water sloshed, and I turned and saw wet, foot-shaped depressions form on the tufted blue bath mat. I stood there in my skirt with the cool air on my bare legs, knowing I had to unbutton my shirt next, and that Benjamin was standing naked—invisible, but still naked—in front of me. I could see one of his knees.

“I promise I won’t look,” Benjamin said. “But you should hurry.”

I fumbled with my shirt buttons, wondering if he really wouldn’t look, then slid the shirt off my arms and dropped the pleated skirt. As I moved towards the tub, my bare shoulder brushed Benjamin’s invisible one.

“Sorry!” we both said at once.

I stepped into the bath and sank down into its enveloping warmth, with my eyes closed and the world silent and sealed away. I left the tip of my nose out, and when I sat up and opened my eyes, the rest of me seemed to be gone.

A towel floated in the air as Benjamin held it up for me. I pushed myself up out of the bath and accidentally kicked the lever that controlled the drain plug, stubbing my toe.

“Ow!” I said.

“Janie!” Benjamin said.

The mechanism behind the wall of the tub had opened the drain, and the water was rushing out at an alarming rate.

“Oh, no!” I tried to push the lever down again to stop the drain, but it was stuck. I tried to close the drain itself, but it wasn’t one you could push into place.

I felt Benjamin’s arm slide wetly against mine as he tried to force the lever down, but he couldn’t do it either. I held my hands over the drain, but it wasn’t a small one, and the water went through my fingers. I put my foot over it, and that finally stopped the water, but by then there was only an inch or two left in the bath—not enough for Pip to get fully invisible in.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Downstairs, Pip’s voice said, “I’ll tell her you called round, then. It’s time for my bath. Ta!” We heard his footsteps on the stairs, and he came into the bathroom.

“You two in here?” he said, pulling off one boot. “I don’t think she believed me. She might come back.” Then he saw the bath, and heard the last of the bathwater draining away. “You didn’t save none for me?”

“I kicked the drain lever and it stuck,” I said. “I’m so sorry!”

He looked around the empty bathroom. “There’s no more potion?”

“We used it all,” Benjamin’s voice said.

Pip sighed. “All right, then. I’ll jus’ find another way onto the boat.”

I took the towel from Benjamin, thinking that if anyone could get on that boat visible, it was Pip. But I also thought that if Pip had gotten in the tub before me, he would never have kicked the lever. “I’m so sorry,” I said again.

“S’all right,” he said. “Dry your hair off. It’s cold out.”

There was another knock at the front door, downstairs. A stern male voice called, “Who’s in there?”

“Let’s go!” Pip said.

“What about our clothes?” They were scattered all over the floor, and they were traceable to St Beden’s.

“I’ll take ’em,” Pip said, and he bundled them under his arm. Then he turned the noisy water in the bathtub on again, and let it run.

We crept quietly downstairs, watching the doorknob rattle as the man outside tried to get in. Pip whispered to us to stay out of the way, and then stood close to the hinge side of the door. He unlocked it, and the man pushed, and the door swung open, hiding Pip with the bundle of clothes.

“Hello?” the man said, stepping into the house.

Upstairs, the bathtub water was rumbling. The man tiptoed up to catch the bathing boy-housebreaker, and as he did, the three of us slipped out onto the stoop. Pip stashed our clothes behind the first likely low wall, and we ran back towards Lower Thames Street. The cold pavement stung my bare feet, and I thought that if we were going to keep doing this invisibility thing, I had to find some invisible shoes.

“What time do you think it is?” I asked. The boat was leaving at three.

“Half past two,” Pip said.

I saw a new watch buckled on his wrist. “Where’d you get that?”

“From my auntie Jenkins,” he said. “Can’t be late.”

I was very cold, and all I could think about was getting onto the boat and burrowing into the enormous raccoon coat, but then I noticed a familiar car parked on our side of the street, just across from the Port of London’s gate.

“Look!” I said.

It was the green sedan with three men sitting in it: two in front and one in back.

“Go listen,” Pip said. “I’ll see that the boat don’t leave.”

He sauntered off across the street, and Benjamin and I moved invisibly closer to the green sedan. The passenger side window was open a few inches to let the smoke from Mr Danby’s cigarette out. The Scar was in the driver’s seat, so I assumed he had his vision back. And the man in the back was Leonid Shiskin, in a warm wool coat.

Mr Shiskin looked nervous, and twisted a fur hat in his lap. “The apothecary is very clever,” he was saying.

“I agree,” Danby said. “He’s a formidable opponent. I thought he’d blinded us for life.”

“He is also my friend.”

“That’s what makes you so valuable,” Danby said. “You can take him directly to the Soviet authorities, in his own chartered vessel, without unnecessary loss of life. You’re perfectly positioned. It’s a stroke of genius on Moscow’s part.”

“If I fail, please try to save my wife and daughter,” Mr Shiskin said.

“You won’t fail.”

“And please look after Sergei. He’s only a boy, and not a very bright one.”

“I will, of course.”

Mr Shiskin looked miserably at the hat in his lap. “You know that the ninth circle of hell is reserved for those who betray their friends.”

“Think of it another way, Leonid,” Danby said. “Russia is your country, and your family is your family. This isn’t a betrayal of the apothecary, but an act of loyalty. There comes a time when we must choose.”

“But Russia isn’t your country,” Mr Shiskin said.

“It’s the country of my heart.”

I tried to look to Benjamin in silent amazement at Danby’s claim and ran into the impossibility of eye contact again. You don’t know how much you rely on it until you’re invisible.

“But why is that?” Mr Shiskin asked. “What is Russia to you?”

Danby took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “What is Russia to me?” he said, exhaling. “A good question. There’s a literary answer, since we’re discussing Dante’s hell. I read Anna Karenina one summer in the country when I was fifteen, and it had such an effect on me, that book. I thought I had to marry a woman like Anna, with those round, soft arms, and dark eyes, and that passion.”

“But,” Mr Shiskin said, “no one sells out his country for Anna Karenina. And that Russia is gone, you know.”

“Yes, of course,” Danby said, tapping ash out the window. “There was also a very lovely ballerina named Natasha, when I was studying in Leningrad. Also with beautiful arms, though less round. That had some effect, too. But it was really the Russian soldiers I met as a prisoner of war, when I was shot down. They were kept on the other side of a great fence from us. We got packages of food and cigarettes from the Red Cross, but the Russians got nothing, and we used to throw them food, when we got it. But even starving and imprisoned, those Russian chaps were certain, in such a pure, strong way, that their country would be a great power after the war. Again, that passion. I admired them terribly. They were like the ardent young men in Tolstoy. I wanted to be like them, to believe like them, not always to be halfhearted, ambivalent, reticent, English. I didn’t want to be that.”

Mr Shiskin looked at him sadly. “You’ve been taken in,” he said. “Fooled by this Russian passion.”

“Perhaps,” Danby said. “But Moscow wants the apothecary, so that’s where he must go. If England discovers his secret, they’ll hand it over at once to the Americans, who will then have everything—both the power to destroy the world, which they have already, and the power to stop all other countries from protecting themselves. They will become even more monstrous than they already are. We mustn’t let that happen.”

“We,” Shiskin repeated bitterly. “There is no we here.”

“Of course there is,” Mr Danby said. “We’re all on the same side. Now you must be going. Don’t disable the boat until you’re positive you’re in Russian waters. We don’t want to start an international incident. And think of your family.”

Shiskin sighed, pulled his fur hat down over his great head, and got out of the car. He stood waiting for a break in the traffic, then crossed the street towards the port, carrying a small, heavy brown suitcase that bounced against his good leg.

The Scar said something in German.

“He’ll manage all right,” Danby said, flicking the rest of his burning cigarette out the window. I made a small, inadvertent noise as I jumped away from the hot ember, which made Danby look up, but he saw nothing.

Benjamin and I crossed the street, following Shiskin at a distance through the port’s gate and along the docks towards the Kong Olav. It was a long walk in bare feet.

“What do you think’s in his suitcase?” I whispered. “A gun?”

“Maybe a radio transmitter,” Benjamin said. “To signal the Soviets about the boat’s position.”

I thought about Benjamin’s fascination with espionage, and his old disdain for his father’s work. “Do you still want to be a spy?” I asked. “Or do you want to be an apothecary now?”

Benjamin thought about it for a second. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Right now there doesn’t seem like much difference.”

We had almost reached the Kong Olav, picking our way over rusted nails and bits of glass, when we heard the clang of a police car’s bell. We jumped out of the path of the car, and watched it screech to a halt in front of the boat. Mr Shiskin froze.

“Oh, no,” Benjamin said.

The wispy-haired detective who’d arrested us at school jumped out of the police car, ignoring Shiskin, and approached the guard on the dock. “I’m Detective Montclair, Scotland Yard,” he said. “This is Officer O’Nan. We’ve had a truancy report from port officials. Three children were spotted near this vessel, two boys and a girl.”

“They were here,” Ludvik said. “But they left.”

“I’ll search the boat then.”

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re just casting off.”

“I’m afraid I must insist,” Montclair said.

Count Vili came to the rail and leaned over. “Is there a problem, officer?” he asked, his voice full of courtesy and money.

Mr Shiskin seemed paralysed by indecision about whether to board the boat, which might be searched at any moment, or to stay where he was and risk not getting aboard at all.

“We’re looking for three children,” Detective Montclair said to the count. “They escaped from Turnbull Juvenile Hall yesterday.”

“Oh?” Count Vili said mildly, in his interesting accent. “Then they couldn’t have been the children who were here.”

“Why not?”

“Because I had them out on the boat fishing all day yesterday.”

“In the Thames?” Detective Montclair asked, disgusted.

“Just for perch and pike,” the count said. “The fish are there if you know where to look.”

“Didn’t the children have school?”

“A holiday. They’ve gone back to their studies now.”

Montclair frowned. “May I ask where you’re from, sir?”

“Certainly,” said the count. “I am from Luxembourg.”

The detective didn’t seem to know what to do with that information. He had no opinions about Luxembourg. “I really must search the boat,” he said, striding towards the gangway.

Count Vili’s face lost some of its composure. The descriptions of the apothecary and Jin Lo would have been circulated to the police by now. If Detective Montclair came aboard, he would take them all in, and the voyage would be over.

But then Pip appeared beside me with a bright look in his eyes. I don’t know how he spotted me, when I’d left only the tip of my nose out of the invisibility solution, but I was no longer surprised by anything Pip did. “Get ready,” he whispered.

Before I could ask, “Ready for what?” Pip strolled down the dock with his hands in his pockets, passing the policemen as if he hadn’t noticed them. He stood at the bottom of the Kong Olav’s guarded gangway.

“Hey, mister!” he called up to the count at the rail. “I left my cap on the boat! Throw it down, will you?”

Vili glanced at the detective on the dock. Pip followed his glance and jumped in surprise, as if noticing Montclair for the first time.

“Crikey!” he said stagily. “Coppers!”

He ran back up the dock, zigzagging between the two policemen. Detective Montclair tried to grab his sleeve, but missed and chased after him. Officer O’Nan hesitated, looking at the boat, then took off after Pip, too.

Grateful to Pip for the distraction, we followed Mr Shiskin invisibly up the gangway to the boat, our light footsteps masked by the clang of his wooden leg. I looked back to see if Pip was coming. He had a good lead on Detective Montclair and was running towards the Port of London’s gate, just out of the detective’s reach. He had given all of us the chance to get away.

On board, Benjamin and I avoided the crew and went straight through the saloon to the cabin full of empty suitcases where we’d seen our trunk. We closed the door while no one was looking, climbed into the pile of luggage, and dug into the trunk. I pulled on silk long underwear, wool trousers, a jumper, and the peacoat over my freezing invisible nakedness. The Kong Olav’s engines rumbled to life.

“Soon we’ll be at sea,” I said, feeling better and warmer already.

“Soon?” Benjamin said, his invisible head shrouded in the hood of Sarah’s brother’s ski coat, and his hands missing at the ends of the sleeves. “We’re in London, Janie. We’ve got forty miles to go before we get out of the Thames.”

“Forty miles?”

“Have you ever looked at a map of England?”

I had, of course, but not closely. I hadn’t realised there would be such a long stretch when the police could stop us or the apothecary could put us ashore with train fare home. We heard the calls of the crew casting off, and I pushed the blue curtain away from the cabin’s porthole, to look out at the busy port. The whole world, the boats and docks and cranes, seemed to be gliding past us as the boat began to move out into the Thames, with the sound of the churning engines reverberating through the hull. The effect made me a little queasy, and I let the curtain drop.

I pulled a blanket from the trunk and drew it over my legs. We just had to stay hidden for forty miles, that was all. And then we had to stop Shiskin from disabling the boat and turning us over to the Soviets. And then, presumably, we had to help the apothecary with his plan. And meanwhile my parents would be getting home from their location shoot to a tipsy Mrs Parrish, who would tell them that I’d spent the night with my friend Sarah (or Susan) No-last-name, at no given address, to do my Latin homework, and had never come back.