Page 20 of Strangers in Time
S ATAN D WELLERS
A S C HARLIE WALKED DOWN the street the city slowly awoke. The rain had stopped, but the blackened, scudding clouds and screaming wind threatened more inclemency.
Charlie muddled through in his mind what Lonzo had said. They know I was lying? They know what I really did that night?
He had no idea what Lonzo meant by that.
Charlie refocused on the task at hand. He had never really tried to sell anything before. He nicked things he or his gran needed; he didn’t part with things. But he’d told Lonzo and Eddie he was going to sell the book, so he had no choice.
He passed through one distinctive part of the city and then another. Charlie had found that London was like a large puzzle where every piece was completely different from its neighbors, at least in some ways. The farther he ventured west the more affluent and posh the surroundings became. He gazed at shop windows as he went by. Some were closed; others were just opening for business. Windows were being cleaned, doorways swept, awnings wiped down. Deliveries were occurring, though even here the supplies he saw coming off the trucks were meager. Yet he appreciated that folks were trying their best to keep things as normal as possible when life was anything but that.
There was a mobile canteen usually set up on the next street over, he knew. They came to bombed-out areas and set up shop at regular mealtimes. They fed both citizens and rescue workers.
Charlie made this detour, helped the women to pass out food, did a bit of sweeping and wiping up, and was rewarded with a cup of powdered milk, brown toast with a smear of marmalade, and Spam masquerading as sausage. Charlie didn’t mind. He actually quite liked Spam.
“Now don’t drop none ’a that on the pavement, boy,” the canteen lady had warned him. “If a bird comes along and steals it away a constable could put you in the clink for feeding a poor animal human food.”
“Is that really true?” asked a clearly disbelieving Charlie.
“I’d like to say it’s just a bad joke, lad, but ’tis the law all right.”
Careful to not drop even a crumb while he ate, Charlie returned to his journey. His book would make a fine ledger. Perhaps at a counting house of some kind. Charlie had heard his gran use that term. What they “counted” there Charlie did not know.
A column of uniformed schoolchildren passed him with their tall, officious teacher leading the pack. Charlie eyed the students, who were not much younger than he was. When Charlie noted the teacher staring suspiciously at him, he tugged his cap down, tried to appear taller and bigger than he was, and hurried on. You could leave school at fourteen, but Charlie wasn’t quite there yet. And Gran would probably need to sign something and he doubted she would because education was important to her. But schooling could come in many different ways, he believed. And living by your wits and skills was one of them.
At Trafalgar Square, in the center of London, he passed a monument on a long pillar of stone with a man in archaic garb at the very top, and four huge lion statues at the bottom. The stone chap was an old war hero in His Majesty’s Navy or some such, Charlie recalled hearing. Like St. Saviour’s and St. Paul’s, how the bombs had missed him, Charlie didn’t know.
As he stepped gingerly over and around rubble that lay in piles throughout the city, Charlie heard the clang of a fire engine bell and the accompanying screech of tires. It was coming closer, its sound painfully loud. It would have been terrifying had Charlie not heard it so many times before. Indeed, he was sometimes startled when he didn’t hear it. At least the air raid sirens weren’t bellowing. Those still scared him.
He came to an abrupt stop as a tall, burly constable stepped in his way, arms spread wide, blocking Charlie and several people behind him from proceeding on the pavement.
“What’s the trouble, Constable?” asked a man in a wrinkled suit and bowler hat and carrying a battered leather satchel.
“Just stay where you are till I says otherwise,” replied the officer dutifully, his helmet strap wedged under his pointy chin.
Charlie peered past the bobby to see the fire engine navigate the corner just up ahead. He turned to go back the other way and had gone about twenty paces when he heard it.
“It’s probably ’nother ’a them UXBs .”
Charlie looked down to see a bedraggled man sitting on the pavement against a crumbling wall of brick. In front of him was a small glass cup of matchsticks set next to a tin cup with a few coins in it. He was wild-eyed and bushy-haired with a long, unruly beard.
Charlie knew that the man was a person of the pavements. There were many of them, and Charlie also knew he was perilously close to becoming one himself.
“A what?” said Charlie.
“UXBs, boy. An unexploded bomb ,” said the creature in a hoarse whisper.
Charlie nodded. There were many of those around here, he knew, half sunk in the streets or in the sides of buildings, or, even more dangerous, hidden entirely from view.
“You know how far down Satan dwells, lad?” he said.
Charlie blinked, shook his head, and slowly edged away from the man.
“Sixty-four feet, six inches.”
“How’s that?” said a startled Charlie.
“Jerry bomb named Satan. Thirteen and a half feet long, ’tis. Damn thing burrows down sixty-four feet, six inches. Makes a crater big enough to fit two bloody double-decker buses, it does. We got it out, though, yes we did.”
“ You did?”
The creature looked past Charlie, perhaps all the way back to the Blitz. In a calmer voice he said, “Was with the Royal Engineers, back then. Bomb disposal. Tricky business. Delayed fuses, photoelectric cells, booby traps. Most bombs go in at an eighty-degree angle. Burrows down only twelve feet or so, but not the Satan. It goes down over five times deeper. Then you dig, that’s the hardest part ’cause digging can make vibrations and that can make the bomb go off. Can’t think about it too much. Dead before you know it anyways, so what’s the bother? The Jerries, they were cunning, give ’em that. But we outsmarted ’em.” He paused and patted his upper thighs.
Charlie could then see that there were no legs below them. He next noted the square board and attached wheels the man was sitting on.
“Till a bomb hit East Ham but didn’t go off,” the man continued in a more subdued tone. “Sent us in to defuse it. But it blew up while we was working on it. Jerry got three of us that day. And half ’a me. Only reason I’m still here is I went to get some water for my mates. Blew when I was coming back.”
Charlie mumbled, “I’m sorry,” but the man waved this off.
“No rules to war, though they lie and say there is.” He looked Charlie up and down. “I bet your dad is fighting, eh, lad?”
“Dunkirk” was all Charlie said.
The man’s expression dimmed with this response. “Aye.” He looked at the journal in Charlie’s hand. “Is that a proper book, with words in it and all?” he said in wonder.
Charlie shook his head. He opened it so the man could see. “I’m lookin’ to sell it,” he said, eyeing the few coins in the cup.
The man stroked his filthy beard. “Got no use for it, then?”
“Got more use for money,” replied Charlie, still staring at the coins in the cup.
“Don’t we all,” said the man. “But don’t look at me cup of coins. Got none to spare. But they use quite a lot of paper.”
“Who does?”
The man pointed across the street. “ Them. ”
Charlie looked that way. It was a brick building stained dark with time and war. There was one wooden front door painted the red of the telephone boxes. Next to it were windows with black shutters. There was a brass plate set on the brick next to the door. Charlie couldn’t make it out from here.
“King & Chauncey, Solicitors,” said the pavement man helpfully.
“What’s a so-lis-tor?” asked Charlie.
“For His Majesty’s fine court ’a law,” said the man. “Barristers do the talking in court. But the solicitors, well, they write all legal things up, see? Wills and deeds and the like. Paper , lad. Loads of it, they need. You go there to sell your book and a fine price you should name, too. Pen and paper over bombs and bullets.”
Charlie thanked the man and rushed across the street, dodging a motorcar, a jerky bus, and finally a dray horse pulling a cart of milk cans along with a sleepy driver.