Page 26 of Strangers in Time

Like a hunter who expanded his range when game became scarce, one had to go to the part of the city that crowned kings and queens to get the good stuff. Chelsea was a long trip for him from Bethnal Green, but he had perched on the back of a late-night lorry, hopping off when it slowed to make a turn when he neared his destination. That had led him to Molly’s street, and yet he had ultimately come home mostly empty-handed. A lock had been too difficult, a window a bit too high, a pair of suspicious eyes a tad too watchful.

As he drifted off to sleep the rain started to bucket down. In the receding mists of consciousness, he thought that at least the Germans wouldn’t bomb them in such poor weather.

Charlie always prayed for the worst possible inclemency. Nothing terrified him and the rest of London more than a clear, windless night.

LONZO& EDDIE

THE KISS ON HISforehead told Charlie that Gran was off to work. A couple hours later he blinked himself awake and slowly sat up. As usual, he had slept in his clothes for the added warmth. He rose, washed his face at the tap, tamped down his hair, and ate his breakfast and the contents of his lunch tin for his first meal with no idea or prospects for his second. Later, he set off with the book tucked into his coat pocket.

He had no more reached the next street over when he heard the gleeful voice.

“Why, ’tis Charlie Matters, ain’it?”

Charlie turned to see the two boys heading his way.

Lonzo Rossi was a half foot taller than Charlie and nearly three years older. His face was long and narrow, but his nose was wide and short and held a pair of aggressive nostrils.

It was Lonzo who had spoken. He was always the first to speak of the pair.

Eddie Gray was shorter than the lanky Charlie, though he was much the same age as Lonzo. Charlie suspected that Eddie was tougher than his larger friend by half again.

Eddie also had the more interesting face: thick eyebrows and long,upturned lashes, deep-set brooding eyes, and a grim mouth. Eddie never said much, but one tended to listen when he did venture to speak.

Charlie got along fine with Eddie.

No one really got along with Lonzo.

“’aven’t seen you since you went lookin’ forshoes,” continued a smiling Lonzo as the pair came to a stop in front of Charlie.

Both were dressed as he was: hand-me-down pants, shirt, coat, cap, and shoes that were always too small. Yet while his gran kept Charlie reasonably clean—she required that he take a hot bath each Saturday night and regularly clipped his fingernails—no one in Lonzo’s or Eddie’s lives had ever seemed to do the same for them.

They, too, had been orphaned. Lonzo had eventually been heaved from his third family and Eddie his fourth. It wasn’t necessarily anything they did, Charlie knew. It was calledwar nerve. As boys got older and ate more and required fresh clothing as arms and legs grew, it got to be beyond the pocketbooks of most. They were then chucked out in favor of the legal offspring.

Both boys now lived in a burned-out shell of a building, hunting and scraping for what they needed to survive. And while doing so they had to stay one delicate step ahead of both the bobbies on the beat and the orphanage folks. The latter would dearly love to catch the pair both for the government pence and also for the perceived good deed of taking hooligans off the streets.

Lonzo gazed down at Charlie’s small slipshod shoes, his wide grin displaying nearly all of his irregularly placed and yellowed teeth.

“Well?” said Lonzo, as Eddie hovered next to him, his intense eyes threatening to swallow Charlie whole. “See you got them same shoes on your feet. So, what gives, eh?”

“I got the money,” said Charlie.

“Liar,” bellowed Lonzo. “And we know that door was double-locked and them windows barred, right, Eddie? See, Eddie alreadytried his pick on the second lock and it ain’t budged. And Eddie’s way better at pickin’ locks than you are. Right, Eddie?”

Smiling, he nudged Eddie’s arm, but his partner just kept peering at Charlie.

“Igotthe money,” said Charlie stubbornly. “And boughtthiswith it.”

He held up the journal.

“You spent shillin’s onthat,” Lonzo barked. “Are you daft or—”

Eddie interrupted. “What’s it a book of?”

Lonzo snatched it from Charlie’s grasp and flipped through the blank pages before tossing it back.

“Why there ain’t a single word in it.” He added spitefully, “You’re barkin’, you are. Does your gran know you wasted money on nothin’, you prat?”

Charlie put the book in his pocket and started to walk on until Lonzo halted him with a hand on his shoulder.

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