Chapter 17 Clara
CHAPTER 17? CLARA
London, England
The fog rolled in feathered wisps. Above us, chimneys chugged out more smoke, joining the haze in a dance that might have been beautiful if it weren’t green, thick, and pungent with poison. The pavement ran like a river next to the Thames as Wynnie and I followed the flickering lampposts.
We’d planned to take the walk back from Charlie’s house to our flat so we could stroll along the river, pass Victoria’s Gardens, and see the sights along the way, but Wynnie’s eyesight was even cloudier as the fog settled on her glasses. She wiped at her lenses with her mittens, and we walked slowly as I guided her away from obstacles.
It hadn’t been this dense on the taxi ride to Charlie’s. Now the fog was gathering forces near the river, thickening so we could see only five to ten feet in front of us as it rolled off the Thames. I held tight to Wynnie’s hand, but still she bumped into a lamppost. I pulled her closer so we could walk hip to hip, hand in hand, quiet.
I wondered what she was thinking as my mind circled around the letter in my purse instead of the danger. If the air hadn’t been so dense, I would have sat us on the first bench and read my mother’s letter. God, I wanted to read it now. How long had this satchel been in Mr. Jameson’s library? Had his father known he was dying and put it in there for Charlie to find? Questions bumped into one another.
Puzzle pieces felt scattered across a miles-long landscape, and a shiver of foreboding gave me a chill along my neck.
Wynnie coughed, and I stopped, jolted from my thoughts. “Are you all right?”
She smiled wanly and pointed ahead of us at the tower of Big Ben and the pinnacles of Parliament rising into the thick air, clouded but visible in their iconic shapes. Big Ben chimed the quarter hour with four notes from Handel’s Messiah , and we stopped to listen, gazing at the well-known landmark, where wisps of smoke curled around its face in a ballet of wind and moist air. Slowly closing in on the tower, the fog transformed into a dark veil, as if Big Ben were entering a period of mourning.
A bump from behind, and Wynnie and I found ourselves sprawled on the ground, my purse and the satchel flying from my hands as I reached to break my fall.
“Mama!”
A man’s voice emerged from the fog. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” A hand reached down to help me. But I didn’t want help; I was scrambling for the satchel, running my hands along the pavement, crawling to the place where it threatened to tip over the concrete edge into the roiling waters. I grabbed the leather handle and pulled it toward me.
“Mama!” Wynnie’s voice again twisted into the memory of my own voice as I cried out for my mommy while fire licked at my sleeve. Past and present blended, folded themselves into a fabric of confusion.
“Mama!”
The fog rising from the river clouded my sight; panic turned me around. I didn’t see her. I didn’t feel her. I crawled on my knees at the edge of the river, one hand clinging to the satchel. I screamed her name and scrambled to my feet. “Wynnie!”
I spun around and she was at my side, holding my purse in both hands. Her glasses fogged, her face streaked with soot, and a tear in her wool stockings where her knee had hit the pavement, a dab of blood soaking through. I pulled her close and bent over so my chin rested on her head. “Sweetie, are you all right?”
“I am.”
“Again, I’m sorry.” The man’s voice once more. Wynnie and I separated to see him standing there with his hands in the air as if surrendering. “This bloody fog—it will be the death of us. You mustn’t stop in the middle of the pavement. Keep moving or else you’ll be tipped into the river. Be mindful.”
I clung to the satchel as if it were alive and might run off. My hands were tightly bound: one clinging to Wynnie and the other to Mother’s language. The image of Wynnie falling into the river made me shudder. I moved us away from the edge.
“You could have knocked us into the water,” I said with a voice choked by the very image of it, the certain death of it.
“Then one might want to stay away from its edge.” The apology vanished, replaced with defensive anger. Then he hustled off, bundled beneath a dark trench coat, his hat low on his forehead.
“Are we lost?” Wynnie asked me, and a slight wheeze in her voice whistled in the air.
My heart rolled over and a spear of clarity pierced my confusion. Danger was with us now: we might not have fallen into the Thames, but now Wynnie’s lungs were clamping down. I took a breath and tried to sound calm. “We aren’t lost,” I told her. “We are facing Big Ben.” I pointed. “The top of Westminster is ahead and to the right, and the Victoria Gardens are right beside us on the other side of the road, even if we can’t see them.”
Wynnie moved closer, and I put my arm around her. “Yes,” she said.
Reviewing the London A to Z guidebook over the past three weeks, we’d memorized the map around our flat. We’d traced our routes and made our plans. In my mind’s eye, I saw it all and told her, “Only two blocks up and then we’ll turn right and into Covent, and soon we’ll be at our place with the big windows,” I said. “We’ll eat a snack. How does that sound?”
“Okay.” Her voice was tight, and then a coughing fit took hold of her. She fell against me to catch her breath. The wheezy whistle told me the truth: the tiny alveoli in her lungs were shrinking against the moist and damp air, clamping down in rebellion.
My chest tightened in fear; sweat prickled my neck. I took my purse from her and dug into its depths for what she needed.
A shot of panic—I gasped when I came up empty.
The adrenaline shots. The aminophylline pills. I needed them both, but I’d left them in the large tote in the bedroom at the flat. My God, I’d been careless. I’d been more worried about finding my mother’s lost satchel than I was cautious about my daughter’s health.
Guilt flooded my mouth with a metallic fear. No matter how I’d like to prove that I was not my mother’s daughter, here I was making mistakes that proved I cared more about other things than Wynnie.
“Let’s get across the street,” I said.
We made our way across the zebra crossway. “It burns.” Her voice tight and high.
On the other side of the street, I bent down and faced her. “We are only a few blocks away.” I picked her up and carried her on my hip, although she was too big for such things anymore.
She nodded but didn’t speak. She was conserving her air. If she was headed for a true attack, I didn’t have long. I stumbled the next blocks in a nearly blind panic.
Regret and fear burdened every step. I climbed the hill along the Savoy Theatre and across the street to Covent Garden. Away from the river, the fog was less dense, enough to find our way home.
Pouring sweat beneath the layers of wool sweaters and coats, we reached the front of the flat, where I set Wynnie down and she slumped to the ground, taking small sips of breath. Her face was pale, her lips colorless. For God’s sake, I didn’t even know where to find a doctor in this city.
I dug out the key and shoved open the door. “Just a few more steps, love. We are here.”
I half dragged her down the hallway and then shoved the key in the door of number seventeen, dropping my purse and the satchel at the entryway. I sat Wynnie on the couch and bolted into the bedroom. I dumped my tote on the bed and scattered its contents across the pale yellow quilt. Pens and lipstick, a book on London’s museums, and a packet of tissues. There was the brown wooden box Dad had packed for me. I opened it and grabbed the syringe from the silk lining, slipped the needle into the rubber stopper at the top of the bottle of adrenaline, and withdrew two milliliters. I slipped the pill bottle into my other hand and ran back to the couch where Wynnie still sat, her head leaning back, her lips bluish, and her eyes shut.
I lifted her skirt, and through her thick woolen tights, I stabbed her thigh with the needle and pushed in the medicine, all the while cooing over and over, “It’s okay; it’s okay; it’s okay. Breathe slowly, baby. Breathe all the way down. Now open your mouth.”
She did just as I said, because she knew the little pill that I would slide under her tongue would return her breath. Aminophylline, a bronchodilator, would work with the shot and her lungs would open.
I knew the dangers of her asthma; we all did, but still, here I was.
What a fool I’d been, leaving her meds at the flat.
Nat was right.
I was in over my head.
“Breathe,” I said, “breathe deep, my love. Breathe.”