Page 57 of Strangers in Time

T HE H IDING P LACE

C HARLIE BLEW ON HIS hands and ignored the ache in his stomach. He’d just missed the closing time of a nearby mobile canteen, although the lady there had taken pity on him and slipped him a wedge of National cheddar and a days-old ginger biscuit that tasted quite foul but he devoured, nonetheless.

He now lay on the cracked leather back seat of the Singer and huddled into his coat. He had thought about where to stay after leaving The Book Keep. There weren’t many choices, but he had settled upon the Singer. If he couldn’t drive the car, clearly the next best thing would be to sleep in it. Only he had thought it would be much warmer.

For a moment he fantasized about starting the car and turning on the heater, but that was no good, he realized. It would make too much noise.

Around about midnight—he knew by the ringing of a nearby church bell—he decided that lying here cold and hungry was not the best-laid of plans. He locked up the Singer and slipped out of the garage.

After a long, weary walk, he arrived at Gran’s old bakery shop, the one that had cut her wages in half and then failed to pay her what she was owed.

He nimbly picked the old lock on the back door, filled his pockets with all the rolls he could, and also swiped a jar of honey and one of jam. He had never thought of robbing this place while Gran worked there. Now he felt like he was doing it in her memory. But he really wasn’t, because Gran would never have approved of him stealing.

As he sat under an awning in an alley and devoured two large rolls with honey and jam smeared over them, his belly grew less annoyed with him.

Charlie decided he could not stay in the Singer night after night. He would have to find new digs. And now would be a good time to address that need. He dusted the crumbs off his britches and ran off into the rain.

Lonzo and Eddie’s old place was a bombed-out building in Stepney, near the docks. Or where the docks used to be. He turned the last corner as a bolt of lightning shattered the sky. The resulting rumble of thunder followed him as he ran along the darkened streets.

He crouched at a corner and warily eyed the half-destroyed building. It had just occurred to Charlie that the police might be watching the place. He waited there for half an hour, shooting glances all around. He also peered into the shadows looking for the silhouette of a burly bobby, or someone who looked like the stout copper at The Book Keep.

Finally, concluding there was no danger about, he slipped through the rear door, or where a door had once been before the Luftwaffe had come and forcibly removed it.

He knew that the space Eddie and Lonzo had used as their digs was at the very top of the building. Lonzo explained that the air was nicer up there, and the rats didn’t seem to want to venture that high. Charlie had been here many times before, when they had been out hunting together late at night. They would divvy up their spoils before Charlie had headed back to Dapleton Terrace.

Charlie looked down at the twin berths on the floor, no more than wads of filthy cloths, blankets Eddie and Lonzo had nicked, and two burlap sacks with balled-up newspapers in them for pillows. He sat next to one of the beddings and imagined Eddie by his side, starkly alive with his brooding eyes and quiet, resourceful manner.

Charlie eyed the other items lining the floor. A stub of candle, a matchbox, some pilfered magazines, stacks of newspapers—probably for a fire or to use as warming covers for sleeping—an iron pan with the stiffened remains of long-ago cooked food, an empty bottle of Highland Queen Scotch whisky, a foldable spoon and fork in a little leather pouch that Charlie knew Lonzo had stolen from a pub, and a belt with fresh holes punched in it as waists became slimmer from hunger. There were also empty cigarette packs, a pair of worn-out socks, a pile of empty tins and small boxes, and… Charlie could barely believe his eyes.

He slid across the floor and picked up the journal that Oliver had given him and that Lonzo had stolen from Charlie’s flat. As his fingers closed around the leather, he felt something cold grip him.

I just trod over a grave.

Eddie was dead. Was Lonzo? Had they already hanged him?

Charlie slid back over to where he’d been and sat there, his knees drawn up to his chest, the granular coolness of the journal’s cover slowly leaching into his hands.

He opened it and saw that Lonzo had written something on the fly leaf. The scrawl was childish—Lonzo had had very little formal schooling, he knew. But Charlie could easily read the two words.

Sawree, Edee.

Charlie mouthed these two words, not simply parroting what was written, but perhaps with the understanding that he was talking to his deceased mate.

Sorry, Eddie.

He put the journal down, rose, and went over to a window that had no glass in it. The cold swept in off the Thames, sending a raw, miserable chill through him, even as drops of rain invaded the inside of his new home.

Charlie looked over the city of his birth, and also likely the place of his death. It was a broad, complicated plain of buildings and people, most who were good, and some who were not. And some, like him, who had elements of both. But he knew that they were all fearful of what was to come.

Charlie could die by bombing tomorrow, or be hit by a bus that lunged out of the foggy darkness at him. Or he could be hanged for crimes during wartime. He knew that he had taken a father from his children, a husband from his wife.

And poor Eddie’s head had been crushed beneath that lorry’s dirty wheel.

It was awful, and terrible and far beyond his youthful ability to fully comprehend its magnitude. Yet firmly within the spectrum of the narrow moral compass he had set for himself, Charlie had done wrong. And this terrible wrong could never be righted. He could not simply return nicked things, or shrug off a lie or two to his grandmother.

His penance would be the life he must now lead. Even at war’s end, no matter the victor, he would be Charlie Matters, the killer.

He staggered over and fell on top of Eddie’s old bedding. He did not want to cry. But he did anyway, with the vision of his dead mother steadfastly in mind. When he’d done his fill of weeping and wiped his eyes and face with his dirty sleeve, he told himself:

You’re a man, Charlie Matters. No more time or use for tears, mate.