Page 8 of Strangers in Time

The fellow—It must be I. Oliver, thought Charlie—rapped on the door and then waited before knocking again. When no one answered, he took something from his pocket and, using a thumbtack also taken from his pocket, stuck it to the door. Then Oliver turned and slowly left the way he had come.

Charlie had glimpsed the man’s features and noted that he looked both upset and sad.

He ran to the door and saw what Oliver had tacked to the wood. Charlie lifted up his jacket and examined the lining. He saw the ends of broken thread there. What Oliver had returned was the name-and-address tag Gran had sewn into all of Charlie’s few pieces of clothing. The tag had obviously fallen off in the man’s shop; that was how he knew where Charlie lived. He stuck it in his pocket, his spirits sinking through his sore feet.

He knows who I am. What if he goes to the bobby on the beat?

Moments later he was out of the building and fleeing down the alley. From there it was only a short distance to a tradesman’s street-level rear entrance into one of Bethnal Green’s many bombed-out buildings. On the side of the partially collapsed brick wall was an advert for Chesterfield cigarettes. Charlie knew it had been put up prewar, because the elegantly dressed man in it looked too jolly.

He flung up the metal flaps of the door level with the street, then skittered down the steps after closing the metal wing flaps behind him. He pulled on the string of a solitary light bulb and his prayer was granted, for the light somehow crackled on. He sat onan old vegetable crate, with miniature spud remnants growing in its crevices.

From his pocket he slipped out the identification tag.

THE HONORABLE CHARLES ELIAS MATTERS

FLAT 4A, 13 DAPLETON TERRACE

BETHNAL GREEN LONDON E2

He always smiled at the word “Honorable.” Foremost, he was not “Honorable,” either by title or nature. And he was simply Charlie, not Charles, though he knew Charles was his full given name. That was a formality, and surely everyone knew formalities had no place left in a world at war. And he was a common thief. There was nothing remotely honorable about that. Yet Gran apparently had a far higher expectation for her only grandson than Charlie had for himself.

He felt for the money in his pocket. It seemed far heavier now than when he had taken it.

With a sigh Charlie rose from his crate seat and headed back to daylight.

Though Charlie was not above thievery when necessary, he had a set of principles to which he adhered. In that spirit, there was something he needed to find out. And he set off to do just that.

THESHADOW OFI. OLIVER

THOUGH HIS SCHOOLING HADended prematurely, Charlie’s reading and writing skills were acceptable, even if his spelling wasn’t the best. And despite their poverty, Charlie’s mother had always managed to have a few books in the flat. And after she got off from work she would often take Charlie to the small library near their home, where they would sit and read together, if only to have a place with some warmth, quiet, and comfortable chairs. Afterward, when the twilight was commencing, they would occasionally venture to a café near the library, where Charlie would have a small cup of steaming cocoa while his mother would indulge in a pot of tea. And they would split a thick buttery scone when buttery scones were still possible.

He passed where that library and café had once stood. All that was left was a pile of bricks, twisted metal, charred timbers, and the mingled smells of doused plaster and bomb particles, along with a lingering melancholy.

Charlie spotted a milkman, wearing a cream-colored jacket and carrying his metal rack of full bottles, scampering nimbly over the wreckage with a practiced artistry. Charlie and many others felt,however improbably, that so long as the milk kept being delivered, the world was not going to end.

Across the street a woman sat on a three-legged stool painting on a large canvas the scene of destruction in front of her. Charlie learned that these folks had been hired by the government to capture the devastation for “posterity,” whatever that meant. But he had to admit the artists he’d seen were quite good, even if the grim objects they painted made him quite ill.

As he kept walking, Charlie passed motorcars that jerkily dodged obstacles in their path, their tailpipes emitting smoky breaths. On the side of one bus was an advert for Doctor Carrot, a campaign devised by the Ministry of Food that was meant to remind folks, particularly children, to not only eat their carrots, but like them. The only time Charlie had ever heard his gran use a foul word was when they had been out walking and she had seen a sign for Doctor Carrot. She told Charlie that while she liked carrots and theyweregood for you, she didn’t like the “wily” Ministry of Food trying to pull the wool over the eyes of its citizens.

“They want us to eat carrots and the like because they’ve muddled up the food supplies so badly, Charlie. Bungled the whole thing, so to speak. See, they don’t have to bring the carrots in from somewhere else. Now, I don’t mind sacrificing and we’ve all done our share of that, but don’t lie to me. Don’t treat me like I’m a damn fool. Tell me the truth, even if it does makeyoulook the fool. Otherwise, we’re all thinking one thing: What else are they keeping from us? Trying to make us believe everything’s tickety-boo, when we all can see it’s not. Do they think we’re all bloody doolally? Right, Charlie?”

“Right, Gran,” he had said back, as he always did after one of her little tirades against the government, particularly the Ministry of Food, a popular target of hers.

Even short journeys in the city involved detours, traffic blocks, rubble piles, and cratered streets. The walkers bested the motorspretty much every time. Up ahead he saw Oliver gliding along the pavement, as he passed a soldier guarding the personal inventory of a bombed building that had been piled on the street.

Charlie fell in behind Oliver and followed the man down one street and then another on the long walk back to Covent Garden. When Oliver turned into a narrow lane, Charlie became puzzled, because this was taking the man in a different direction from The Book Keep. Perhaps he was just combining another errand with his visit to Charlie’s digs. Oliver stopped at a ragged doorway, rapped on the wood, and was admitted.

Charlie waited in hiding, and when Oliver came out, he was putting some papers in his pocket. In the opening stood the same short, squat man who had been at The Book Keep the night before.

I wonder what all that’s about, thought Charlie.

As Oliver reached the main street again and turned back in the direction of Covent Garden, Charlie decided to take a shortcut, quickly making it back to the mouth of the alley where The Book Keep was located. This was possible only because the last quarter of the journey he nimbly hung on to the back of a blustery, fast-moving double-decker Covent Garden–bound bus while evading the eye and grip of the conductor, as well as other passengers, who didn’t much care for those who took advantage when they had to pay the full fare.

Charlie sprinted down the alley and then stopped as he saw a slender woman, whose gray hair was curled into a bun, wielding her broom at the curb of the shop across from The Book Keep. Over the top of her head and bolted to the wall was a sign that readTHE SECRET GARDEN. Displayed in the window were teas and cakes and other things that Charlie dearly loved but could not afford.

He doffed his cap. “Hello, Miss.”

She turned and eyed him with an unfriendly look. “Hello, boy.”

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