Chapter 27 Clara
CHAPTER 27? CLARA
Leaving London
“Stop!” I hollered again through the open passenger door.
The leather of the satchel glowed in the evening light, bouncing against the woman’s hip as she ran. The blue fabric purse that I’d bought just for this trip, when I’d had great hope, hung from her left hand as she faded into the mist.
I was the first out of the car; Moira hollering, “No!” but frozen in the front seat, Wynnie fumbling with the right passenger door and Charlie looking over his shoulder at me with a question on his face. “She took my things!” I cried out.
The field stretched toward a future I couldn’t see, and from left and right, there was nothing but frosted fields.
In one breath I summed up the situation—even though the most important things, Wynnie’s meds, were in the trunk of the car, the woman carried my passports, my money, and Mother’s papers. Now Moira was out of the car and I hollered over my shoulder, “Stay with Wynnie.”
I bolted after my purse and my papers. Pure instinct—the choice to run after her was as instantaneous as the flame of the match that had set our life on fire, the spark that had brought us here to this very moment.
I ran after her fading figure, her daffodil-colored skirt a wing in the air as the only way to track her. She receded into the mist with papers that would do her no good. “There is nothing in there for you,” I hollered, pumping my legs, feeling the singe of soot damage in my lungs, sensing the fatigue of the past days and my trek along the foggy roads as I carried the lantern. My body disobeyed the urge to run faster. Now, Charlie behind me, calling out, “Clara!”
The woman was moving from my sight. These papers, the translation I came for, and the desire to protect Wynnie as the woman disappeared with our tickets, money, and passports surged through me with a swell of energy. Within a few steps, I reached her and tossed my body onto hers as Charlie caught up to us.
The ground was wet and spongy. My ears pulsed with the rush of adrenaline and blood, the sound of a river over rocks. All around us, in the dusk, white pages fluttered, rectangles rose and flew across the field of icy-tinged grass. My mother’s lost words let loose.
I saw then—the sound of the river was not in my ears but came from a very real surge of water cutting through the field. The woman, Charlie, and I were at the river’s edge on the marshy ground. The sharp reeds and the nettles stung my hands and arms.
I jumped off the woman to save the pages that fluttered from the empty satchel, releasing her.
She took that chance and again she ran off, leaving the now-empty satchel and taking my purse, muttering in a language I’d never heard, but still I felt she was cursing at us. Charlie first checked on me: “Are you all right?”
“Get her!” I said, and we both chased after her as she splashed across the river, jumping from rock to rock in a manner that suggested she’d done this many times before. She knew her way.
Charlie jumped into the river, his shoes being sucked into the dark mud.
From the other side, now free, the woman turned to us and held up my purse, uttering a curse I didn’t understand, or maybe it was a victory call.
Then other voices joined hers, along with the backfiring of what I assumed was her getaway car beyond the river.
Charlie yanked his feet from the sucking black mud, leaving his shoes behind. In his gray wool socks, he waded through the river, sliding and slipping. “Stop!” I hollered to him from the banks, my own feet sinking.
He turned. “Your purse!”
“You won’t catch her. She’s gone. Help me with these pages.”
He turned back but looked longingly over his shoulder. He wanted to save us from the loss, I knew that, but there was nothing now but to grab what pages we might. The thief was gone.
I slipped off my shoes and, in my stockings, I made my way into the rushing river. The icy water shocked my body, stealing my breath and stabbing my skin with painful needles of cold. My feet slid along the pebbled bottom as the waters reached my knees. I had no time to waste—I grabbed at pages floating by, pages that sank, and then there were those just beyond my reach as I tried to wade toward them, slogging and slow in the moving current.
“Clara!” Charlie’s voice reached out to me. “No! Let them go!”
But I was past myself now, above my body and outside of the normal concepts of time and place. The words of my mother were disappearing, and it felt as if I were losing her again and again. The pages fluttered across the water, lit by a setting sun.
Charlie screamed from the banks. “Get out of the water, Clara! It’s dangerous. There’s a current. Get out.”
I couldn’t hear his commands as anything to obey; I was not leaving the river until I retrieved every page I could. Some made their way down the river, and others sank beyond my reach. But the ones I could grab, I did. One by one, I nestled them beneath my jacket and sweater, placing their remains against my skin. Even as I knew I was freezing, I barely felt it. It was more of an idea than an actual sense.
“Clara!”
With that call of my name, my stockinged feet lost hold of a mossy rock and slipped out from beneath me. I dropped into the water, finding myself under a frigid, flowing rush that was oblivious to my plight, merely doing what rivers did and flowing to its destination with little regard for what might be in its wake: my mother’s words and me.
I held my breath, opened my eyes beneath the water, and tried to find purchase, but could not until I felt a yank on my shoulder and searing pain in my arm.
Then there was air.
“My God, Clara. Stop!”
I gasped. Charlie held fast to me, and he was up to his waist in the water, his coat shed on the riverbank.
My body shivered so violently that my teeth slammed on top of each other uncontrollably. “Wynnie,” I cried out, and clambered out of that river, sliding and crawling to solid ground.
Charlie held the empty satchel in his hand, and I forced myself into a run across the field, away from my mother’s words, and toward my daughter.
I reached the fence line, and there Wynnie and Moira stood at the side of the car, watching us. Wynnie’s arms were crossed, and her head was tilted in that adorable way, her glasses crooked. Her curls were loose from their braids, and in the misty moisture they sprung wild about her face.
I threw my arms around her.
“You’re wet!” She pushed me away and shivered. “Mama, what did you do ?”
“I fell into the river trying to save the pages. I-I was chasing that woman. She took our purse.”
“I knew that lady wasn’t good,” Wynnie said.
“You did?” I bent my forehead to hers, my body shaking as if the earth trembled beneath me.
“I told you I saw her dark edges. She was about to do a bad thing.” Wynnie looked past me.
“Yes,” Charlie said, now at our sides. He looked at me with such fear, and I wondered what he saw. “Take off your jersey and pants,” he said as he shrugged off his coat. “Now.”
I shuddered so violently that I couldn’t do as he asked. The icy water seeped deeper than my skin; it was moving into my bones. I was freezing from the outside in, and all to gather a few pages. There was something innately and deeply wrong with me, something broken, and I knew it even as I felt the pain.
Sacrificing my body for Mother’s words was irrational, and I felt fiery shame even as Moira lifted my soaked sweater over my head and pages fell to the ground. Moira unbuttoned my pants and helped me step out. My hands trembled without control. I stood in my underwear in front of Charlie, unembarrassed and too cold to care about anything but warmth.
He ran to the trunk of the car and pulled out his brown suitcase, unbuckled it, and grabbed a sweater from its depths. He came to me and slipped the itchy wool over my head, guiding my arms through the sleeves; the sweater fell to just above my knees. Finally, he placed his large coat around me like a blanket.
“Clara, we have hours to travel. You must get warm. Now climb into the car, all of you.” His words were adamant, but his tone was gentle. I heard a tremble of fear.
Moira took the pages that had fallen from my body when she removed my clothes, and she gathered them into a pile as Wynnie and I climbed into the back seat.
Once I was inside the car, wrapped in his sweater and coat, Wynnie sat next to me, and Moira handed me a kitchen towel from the picnic basket. “Dry some of your hair, Miss Clara.”
I was quaking too violently to do much of anything, so Wynnie rubbed the towel on my hair, squeezed the river from the strands as best she could.
“I’m sorry.” I let out a sob.
“I should have never given her a ride,” Charlie said. “I had a very bad feeling, but I was desperate for directions. Now we need petrol and it’s getting dark.”
Wynnie set her hand on the back of his arm as he faced forward. “It was still good of you to give her a ride. You can’t stop being good because someone else is not.”
Then I saw in my mind’s eye my purse hanging off her shoulder. “Our passports,” I said. “Our tickets and money.” My voice was as cold as my body, and it quivered as I spoke.
“We will get you new passports and tickets,” Charlie said. “But you should not have gone into that river. That was dangerous.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
There I was, freezing, my child watching me with shocked eyes, and all because I wanted pages and words to describe a world I’d lost years ago?
There went my hope to translate her sequel and discover if there were secrets and hints waiting for me in its pages. There went the chance to get back the money I’d siphoned from my savings. There went all of it—hope and money—disappeared into a river, across a field, and into the hands of a stranger.
Even as I trembled with the chill and the ice of remorse, I wanted Moira to tell me— how many pages did we save?