Between Times-
Chapter Seven - Part Four...
In the conclusion of chapter seven, Benjamin Drum can’t quite connect. To begin at the Beginning, Click here.
BETWEEN TIMES
CHAPTER SEVEN - PART FOUR
When the transport lifted away from Gander in a flurry of light snow, Drum and a young aircraft mechanic from Ohio were the only passengers. Drum tried to sleep as the ocean spread out below and stars blossomed from the clearing sky ahead. Far and away on the horizon the barest brightening of a coming dawn. The plane bucked and shuddered in the contrary air and Drum dreamed briefly of jolting up a mountain road in Walt Coggins’ wagon, before he woke again feeling vaguely sick. He was cold. He had friends who might have need of him and he was headed in the opposite direction at two hundred miles an hour. The story of my life, he thought.
Drum had ample time to consider his lonely life before they finally set down at Prestwick, where Richard Holford met him to begin the long rail ride down to London.
“I met someone over here the other day who knows you,” Richard said as Scottish hills slid by the window, brown and somber under the overcast.
“Who could that be? It’s been awhile since I was in this end of the world.”
“Liza Charon. She sings sometimes at a pub just up the street from my lodging. She says she remembers you.”
“Liza?”
“Yes, striking woman. Black hair with streaks of silver gray. Eyes that kill. You recall?”
“Oh, yes, I remember her, but I’m surprised she remembers me.”
“You must have made an impression, Drum.”
Drum didn’t answer. He had fallen asleep. Richard let him dream his way into England.
Over breakfast next morning at the Thorn and Ivy, Richard laid out their drill, “We’ll just muck about today, get your bearings, gather a few street shots. I’m out of here in two more days, but they’ll keep you up in my place until you’re finished. The only rule is that when there’s a raid, get to shelter. Nobody wants to see you killed trying to picture an explosion. Aftermath is impressive enough for our readers. This is as good a place to eat as any you’ll find. The food is relatively cheap, consistently edible, and once they know you here, they’ll look after you. Here comes somebody you know.”
Drum looked up to see Liza Charon coming through a door behind the bar. She stepped around it and headed for their booth as if she were keeping an appointment. Liza leaned over their table, patted Richard’s hand while fixing Drum with her fiery smile. “Well, if it isn’t good old Drum, keeping company with some disreputable character as usual. Why aren’t you with people who love you?”
Something in Liza’s devastating smile warned Drum that nothing short of absolute honesty would suffice, “Because all my life I’ve had a talent for being in places I’d rather not be, but it’s mighty good to see you again, Liza.”
Liza’s smile evaporated. She regarded Drum silently for a long moment with an expression of somber concern, “Come back here tonight and I’ll sing to you.” Her laugh drifted back to them from the open door as she hurried off into the street.
“She still likes you,” Richard said.
“She’s just bored,” replied Drum, pleased that he registered with her on any account.
After they disappeared their breakfast, Richard led Drum on an amble through the neighborhood. London remained London after all, hurt and battered as she was. There was hardly a block without boarded up windows and shattered roofs and toppled walls. As Richard pointed out the city’s wounds and recited the tales they bore, Drum made photographs, getting used to his new camera. It occurred to him suddenly that it was exactly like Bear’s.
Between photographs, they talked to people walking on the street or clearing rubble or laying new brick. After lunch at another pub that looked to Drum very like the first one, Richard went off on an assignment of his own. “Get your feet under you this afternoon and meet me at the Thorn and Ivy around eight. We’ll eat something and then go see what goes on at an anti-aircraft station. With any luck we might have a raid while we’re at it.”
It wasn’t the first time somebody had reminded Drum that as a photographer he was often the guilty bystander who made his living from the misfortune of innocents. A decision that had been building in his mind since the previous summer began to clarify considerably over the next couple of hours as he made more photographs of destruction and resurrection.
Finally, he returned to Richard’s flat and took a long nap. If he had dreams, he forgot them on waking. He washed and changed, and as darkness fell down across the city, he stepped out under a sunset that looked like a great fire burning across the town. He started toward the Thorn and Ivy as dusk settled in the streets. There were few lights, and when air raid sirens began their strident wailing, most of those lights promptly extinguished. Drum stopped by an Underground entrance and saw the pub just across the street. A cigarette glowed faintly through the open door, then all was dark inside.
An elderly man wearing a helmet and an armband reached out and touched his shoulder,
“Down here, Sir.”
“What?”
The man pointed to the sign beside the door, “Shelter, sir. Best come along.” Drum could see people filing down the steps behind the warden, gestured toward the pub, “I’m meeting someone over there.”
“You’re more likely to meet them down here tonight, sir. Please.” Drum obeyed, felt the warden’s hand firmly at his back as he started down the dim stair. He could hear explosions from somewhere just beyond the Thames.
#
When his eyes accustomed to the dim light in the Tube, Drum beheld as surreal a scene as he had ever photographed. Even had he brought his camera along, he thought it would be unseemly to photograph such anonymous and vulnerable intimacy. A double set of rails emerged from the dark and passed by the lighted platform to fade into an opposite blackness. Along the curved walls whole families were huddled together or rolled in blankets, apparently prepared to settle for the night. A very few young children. Some old people. Young couples obviously diverted from parties or concerts. The life of the city hid in the earth like corn at planting while bombs destroyed the structures left behind above ground. Occasionally the muffled detonation of a distant bomb echoed along the tracks.
Drum walked along the rows of recumbent figures feeling like a tourist in Sheol. A middle aged man sat on a bench scribbling in a pad. There was a space beside him. Drum stopped. “May I?” he asked, gesturing at the empty seat.
“Certainly,” the man answered pleasantly, looking up and smiling as he patted the bench beside him and closed his pad. Drum glimpsed a drawing of rows of human forms, sleeping or dead. The man had a kindly inquiring face that made Drum think of a neighborhood druggist.
Drum sat as another bomb fell, this one nearer than the others. People looked up as dust and grit filtered down through the garish light.
“Are you an artist?” Drum hoped his voice didn’t betray his nervousness.
“Guilty. Officially, I’m a war artist. They’ve assigned me the task of recording how life goes on in our city, buried but unbowed.” The man held out his hand, “I’m Moore, and you’re obviously American. I hope the German show doesn’t spoil your visit with us.”
Drum shook Moore’s hand, noted the firm grasp and the calloused palm, like a laborer. He guessed that Moore might be a sculptor.
“Drum here, also guilty and found out. I’m a photographer for an American magazine. Actually I’m here to catch the German show, get some photographs to convince my countrymen that this war is worth getting into.”
“And what about you, Drum. Do you believe our little fight is worth getting into?”
“I don’t believe in letting someone beat up on your friends without lending a hand.”
“My studio has been pretty much wrecked by a bomb. I’m looking at a little place out at Much Hadham. Perhaps when this is over and I’m settled, you’ll come out to see me and we’ll drink to friendship.”
“I’d like that.” Drum would have said more but at that instant the earth throbbed around them with an enormous concussion and darkness followed instantaneously. A woman screamed softly. A baby cried. The lights flickered and came on again as flakes and chips of masonry fell audibly onto the tracks. Dust swirled along the tube like fog. Drum could feel the acrid grains and motes in his throat and suppressed an urge to run for the exit.
Everyone waited silently then until the sirens sounded an all-clear and the warden granted absolution. Most stayed where they were, including Moore. Drum and a few others emerged to the surface. When he stepped out onto the street, the pub was no longer there. The three-storey building that housed it had collapsed into a flaming pyre. Firemen were training hoses on the fire. The water pressure seemed insufficient to make much headway. A policeman was trying to herd pedestrians toward safety. Drum asked him, “Did anyone survive this?”
The policeman stared at him blankly, “I don’t see how, Sir.”
To be continued-
Next week as Chapter Eight begins, Drum catches another south-bound train…
Walk in hope-
henry