“When necessary, I will.”
In the back of the car, Edi sat straight up. Just this morning she’d again suggested to General Austin that she go alone to Dr. Jellicoe’s house. She said she could do her usual pretend of being a war widow and she could make her way around the country by herself. But the general’s answer had been a single word: “No.” He hadn’t shouted or explained, but there was something in the way he spoke that made her know for sure that there was more to the assignment than he was telling her. Again, she knew that if he wanted a man with her, then that meant there was danger involved. The general had casually told her, as though it didn’t matter, that under the backseat of the old car were half a dozen M1 rifles and enough ammo to hold off most of a battalion.
After that, General Austin handed her the magazine. It was a Time magazine, May 15, 1944, with Dr. Alexander Fleming’s portrait on the cover. It was a few weeks old but she hadn’t seen the issue.
“Get it to Jellie,” General Austin said, then handed her a packet of English money and a map. If she was going to find Dr. Jellicoe, a map was essential. The English roads had been laid out in medieval times by wagons and animals. If a tree was in the path, or a hill, or someone’s house, the wagon went around it. Property lines were based on waterways or rock outcroppings or whatever a person could use for identification.
In modern times, those roads were still used, and they rambled about as they twisted and turned around landmarks that had long ago disappeared. In peacetime, there were signs posted everywhere. If a person came to a meeting of eight roads, the signs were the only way to know what led where. But in wartime, as a precautionary measure, most of the signs around England had been removed. Without a map or a knowledgeable guide, no one could find anything.
Edi tried to study the map—and to keep her mind off Clare’s driving. However, today he seemed to be more cautious. He wasn’t speeding, wasn’t darting in and out of traffic, and, best of all, he wasn’t smart-mouthing about everything.
She spent an hour on the map and twice sketched it from memory. If it were lost, she didn’t want to not know where to go.
As for the magazine, she was almost afraid to open it. Treating it with the reverence she’d have used if she were holding a Gutenberg Bible, she went through it page by page, reading that Dr. Fleming’s penicillin was going to be made available to the public, and that an American, Kathleen Kennedy, had married a man who was going to become the duke of Devonshire.
What she was most interested in seeing was some mark made in the magazine, something in the text or in the margins, but as far as she would see, there was nothing.
“Interesting magazine?” he asked, looking at her in the rearview mirror, but Edi was silent.
“It’s going to be a long ride if nobody talks,” Sergeant Clare said from the front seat.
“I see no reason for idle conversation,” Edi said. She could see the side of his face, and he was frowning. Let him, she thought. Let him frown all he
wants. She just needed to get the magazine to Dr. Jellicoe, then on the ride back, the doctor would be with them. That would put a further barrier between her and the obnoxious David Clare.
They rode in silence, and at about 1 P.M. it began to sprinkle rain. Sergeant Clare pulled the car off the road and started down a gravel lane.
“What are you doing?” Edi asked, alarmed. Was something wrong?
He stopped the car in front of a little cottage that had a sign that said HOME COOKED LUNCHES AND TEAS. David put his arm across the back of the seat and turned to look at her. “Miss Harcourt, you may be so disciplined that you’ve trained yourself not to eat, but I’m human and I need food.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, but she didn’t meet his eyes. By her reckoning, they should reach Dr. Jellicoe’s by eight tonight. General Austin said the doctor didn’t know they were coming. “If he knows, he’ll hide,” the general said. “The element of surprise is important.” Even though she asked, he didn’t tell Edi how she was going to persuade Dr. Jellicoe to leave with her and Sergeant Clare—but then, wasn’t the magazine supposed to do that?
As they got out of the car, Edi could see that something was wrong with Sergeant Clare, but she wasn’t about to ask him why he was limping and seemed to be in pain. If he’d been injured in an action, she would have known about it through the general’s office, so if he was hurt, it was because he’d tripped over something, or, more likely, banged a vehicle into something.
She held on to her satchel and handbag as they entered the restaurant, which was actually the living room of a rose-covered cottage that was being used as a tearoom.
“Oh, dearie,” said a plump, pleasant-looking woman as soon as she saw Sergeant Clare limping. “You’ve been wounded. You just sit down here and let me get whatever you need. Here’s a menu, and I’m Mrs. Pettigrew, and you two just take your time with whatever you want.” She left the room, leaving Edi and David sitting at one of the four tables. They were the only customers.
Edi had a moment of feeling guilty. Perhaps the reason General Austin had sent Sergeant Clare with her was because the young man had been injured.
“You were wounded?” she asked from behind her menu.
“Yeah, by your damned general!” David muttered. “Think the potatoes are any good here?”
Since the menu was mostly dishes made with potatoes, Edi didn’t bother answering him. She looked for the woman to take their orders but she was nowhere to be seen. “I think I’ll…” Edi broke off, not wanting to say that she was going to the restroom.
“Go on, I’ll order for you,” he said in a way that was nearly a growl. “Unless you want something other than potatoes.”
Edi had been around General Austin enough to know when a man was looking for a rousing good argument, and if Sergeant Clare didn’t stop speaking to her in that tone, she was going to give it to him. It was enough that she was in charge of seeing that they got to their destination and that the magazine was delivered; she didn’t need to put up with a surly man. From her observation, if Sergeant Clare wasn’t dangerously cocky, he was angry. When she got back to General Austin, she planned to tell him in detail what she thought of this man he’d sent with her.
Edi got up from her chair, picked up her handbag, and started to reach for her satchel, but thought that carrying it to the restroom would draw too much attention to it. She didn’t think that Sergeant Clare had been told anything and she wanted it to stay that way.
She took a while in the restroom. It was a home bathroom, with rose-printed curtains and pretty little soaps in a glass jar. This room, so very lovely, was why she got away from London and the soldiers and everything that reminded her of war as often as she could. She took her time washing her face, applying fresh lipstick, then taking her hair down, recombing it, and pulling it back again.
When she got back to the table, the food was there, and it was delicious. There were huge, fluffy potatoes slathered in homemade butter, some beef that had been cooked for hours so it was tender, and some green beans that had probably been taken from the garden that morning.
Neither she nor the sergeant spoke much, just a couple of comments on the rain, which seemed to be about to stop.