Chapter 21 Clara
CHAPTER 21? CLARA
London, England
At six p.m., it was so dark outside that the flicker of the gas flame was barely visible. The evening carried weight, pressing in on us. It was hard to believe that only this morning the ocean liner had glided into Southampton, and we’d boarded a train to London.
Charlie was gone, off to his gig, and his song echoed through the small flat as if he’d left us a gift. When Wynnie asked him about the lyrics, he’d smiled and said, “Do they matter?”
“Maybe not,” I told him.
“I’ll bring them to you tomorrow,” he said. “It’s an ancient Celtic song, and it won’t do any good at all if I just ramble off the exact translation. It will lose its power.”
I thought about that sentiment all evening, about how discovering the exact meaning of a word might remove the energy of it, of how this might apply to my mother’s sequel.
By six thirty, Wynnie and I had used the dictionary of Mother’s words to decode the handwritten note on the first page. The dictionary wasn’t in alphabetical order, so we sifted through the mismatched papers, trying to find each word used in the sentence.
The papers were stained in some places, crumpled in others. There were no numbers, no way to know which order Mother once wrote them. These “lost words” were not created all at once. I was sure no language ever had been. Some pages were notebook-lined, like they’d been ripped from a child’s composition book. Others were smaller, made of fine cotton stationery, and still others were blank pages of linen paper, the ripples of torn dots at the top revealing an art notebook as the source.
Eventually I would have to put the words in alphabetical order in order to read the sequel.
Each of Mother’s words had more than one meaning: some defined images, others a feeling, so the translation of her opening sentence could say many things. Most of her words were visual; I imagined many of them as illustrations.
Then Wynnie called out: “Look what I found!”
She points:
Enchantia: wild world, experienced as bright birdsong on a windswept morning.
She’d found one of the words we needed, but she was asleep by the time I finally untangled the sentence on the cover page of Mother’s dictionary.
This wild world holds more than you can see; believe in make-believe.
I wrote this on a large piece of white notebook paper and left it on the coffee table before I carried Wynnie to bed. I tucked her in and then returned to the small living room and lit a candle.
Hours slipped out from under me as I read and reread her lost words, with definitions like:
Loneliness at the heart of things. Believing you will find what will quench the longing, but there is nothing, not of this world.
I attempted to find a rhythm and order to the words. With the heater hissing now and again, I created a list of categories:
The natural and unseen world.
Escape and fear; fairies and demons.
Longing and loss.
Love and people/family.
Forgiveness and regret, and a loneliness that sang of melancholy.
This progression from number one to number five happened over many changes in pen and paper.
My eyes stinging with fatigue, I finally found my way to bed. I didn’t think I’d sleep, what with Mother’s language rattling around in my mind, her words that described the world in such dreamy, eerie language. I finally fell into a dreamless sleep, only to awake in what I believed to be the middle of the night.
When I looked at the black clock on the bedside table, it read 7:45 a.m. The urine-colored fog was worse now, pressing against the window, threatening to enter the bedroom. It was dense and eerie, a glowing specter. Disgusting.
Wynnie slept next to me, breathing quietly and evenly, a sound that made me feel a hot rush of gratitude. I kissed her cheek softly and snuck out of bed. I laid one more blanket over her.
The frigid kitchen slept under a hazy light; I buttoned the sweater that I’d slipped over my flannel pajamas and lit the gas burner, clicking on the heater beneath the kettle. The water boiled and I brewed myself a cup of tea, wishing for Dad’s strong coffee. I clicked on the radio.
“Good morning. It’s eight a.m., and this is your news. The fog has enveloped London today.”
I listened to the broadcaster go on in a thick accent about the new queen’s stamp, about Churchill’s opposition, and then about the fog:
“Prepare for train delays and clogged traffic. The Richmond bridge is closed.”
Charlie had suggested this was normal, but there was no one around to check this with. All the photos I’d seen of London were bright and cheery—Big Ben glowing against the blue sky; red double-decker buses traveling along lantern-dotted streets; London Tower looming, with a British flag waving in the breeze.
I would not allow this weather to keep me from taking Wynnie to the museum. She was counting on it. I carried my tea to the living room and spied Mother’s language where I’d left it on the coffee table. I read the sentence again, the one I’d deciphered as best I could.
This wild world holds more than you can see; believe in make-believe.
It summed up her life, of how often the unseen world seemed more real to her than the seen world. It was possible that this idea was what took her from us.
I reached for her letter to me and read it again, the fourth time now, as if I might find hints between the lines, discover the one word that told me where she was or if she was alive. Her sentiment—“I have sewed myself into my secrets”—vibrated in my chest. Tears filled my eyes, and I set the letter aside.
Today would be about Wynnie, not Mother and her puzzles and mysteries and pages and pages of created words.
I would be a mother instead of searching for one.
“Mama?” Wynnie’s sweet voice interrupted my reverie.
“In here,” I called.
Wynnie appeared in her flannel pajamas decorated with tiny bunnies. “Is it night still?”
“No.” I patted the couch. “Come sit. It’s just the fog that makes it look that way. It’s already after eight.”
“Is it like this all the time?”
A tendril of fog seeped under the windowsill and slithered toward the ceiling.
“I don’t know, baby. But it’s not gonna hold us down. After breakfast, off to the museum we go.”
As soon as we stepped outside my eyes stung, the air seeming to be made of fire sparks. The smudged shapes of buildings appeared, no lines or edges to delineate form, as if someone had erased the surety of the structures.
Wynnie’s face was burrowed into her scarf. “Are you okay, little love?” I asked.
“I am!” She lifted her face and smiled. “I am.”
“We’ll walk through Covent Garden,” I told her, “and cut up to Orange Street. The map says it’s only point-three miles to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square.” I patted my purse. “I have everything we need in case this fog bothers you again.”
We moved slowly; it was the only way. The smog wasn’t better today, it was worse—thicker, coarser, and I could see only a few feet ahead. The Christmas lights on houses and trees floated like fallen stars. Women adorned in fancier frocks wore chiffon scarfs over their mouths, and men in suits pressed white handkerchiefs over theirs. They were accustomed to this air, I assumed. They soldiered on, and so would we.
Covent Garden’s courtyard melted into the earth, and it reminded me of the horizon behind our house in South Carolina, the way the line between earth and sky folded into each other during a storm. People-shaped forms wandered through the maze of vendors. Inside the stores, lights flickered on one by one. The wooden carts sold baby spruce trees for Christmas, while flower and bakery vendors dotted the courtyard.
We made our way to a pastry cart, and I paid a few shillings for almond croissants, flaky and warm. We nibbled them while we walked toward the museum. From a side alley, a man moving too fast ran into us, knocking Wynnie to the ground. “Careful!” I yelled at him.
“So sorry, excuse me,” he mumbled, and reached down to help her up, but I swatted his hand away.
Then he was gone, and Wynnie stood to brush off her coat. “I’m fine, Mama.”
“I think we should go back. I don’t like this.”
“We’re almost there. We can’t turn around! You promised we’d see a real Monet painting.” She stamped her foot in a feigned tantrum, and I shook my head. What child cared to see Monet? Wynnie.
Fog slithered up the lamplight poles, and a policeman holding a firelit torch ran past us toward the sound of breaking glass. Wynnie moved closer to me.
A symphony of coughing surrounded us.
This could not be normal no matter how many people were out and about.
We rounded a corner, and I pulled Wynnie along. “I see the Trafalgar lions,” I said. “Almost there.” But doubt surrounded me as slowly as the fog, winding up and around me, squeezing my heart. We skirted a bombed-out hole with a shaky bridge of wooden slats over it.
“Look out for those,” I said. “They’re dangerous—caverns exist below. They’re left over from the war’s bombings.”
“Like the sea caves in Grandma’s book?”
“No, nothing like that. Nothing at all like that.”
We reached the edge of the square, where the massive Barbary lions crouched on a marble platform, staring across London. Pigeons squatted on their blurry heads.
“Mama, I read all about these lions in that tourist book.”
“And?” We stopped at the bottom of the column, looking up at one of the four.
“They are made with the bronze of French and Spanish ships defeated in the Battle of Trafalgar.”
“Whoa,” I said. “I didn’t read that part.”
“Mama, you have to read all of it!”
I laughed at my daughter, at her awareness of small details, at this miracle of who she was becoming. “And,” she added, “only the manes are different.”
“Fascinating.” I took her hand and we made our way across the plaza to the bottom of the museum steps, looking up at a columned building with a domed top. The railing was worn smooth by decades of hands running along its carved way, and we climbed. We reached the top, where another policeman with a flashlight stood at the front door. He waved the light toward us. His tall, cone-shaped hat sat atop his head, and a mask that looked like a dog muzzle covered his nose and mouth. Wynnie slid behind me.
He held the flashlight to light his face and shook his head. “Sorry. It’s closed today, ma’am. Most workers couldn’t get in.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“Ma’am, the streets are clogged. Trains wrecked or delayed. Bridges are closed. It is best for both you and”—he looked down at Wynnie—“your daughter to head back to where you came from and stay inside unless you absolutely must leave.”
I crouched down next to Wynnie, and she wiped at her glasses. “Oh, Mama, this is so sad.”
“I’m sorry, baby. Maybe it will burn off like Mr. Jameson told us.”
“It always does,” the policeman said as he waved his flashlight toward the fog. “It’s just a particular London day.”
I checked my watch. What should have been a seven-minute walk had turned into a thirty-minute sojourn.
We turned around and began the trek back to the flat. If we needed to stay in there for four days, we might as well head back to South Carolina. Disappointment flooded me. I had been so resolute, so sure about this trip and what it meant for me and Wynnie.
I held Wynnie’s hand at the corner and hesitated in the eerie green light. The man next to us took two steps, inched forward, and then hurriedly rushed across the zebra crossing. We lost sight of him in the fog.
I squinted, feeling helpless, when devastating sounds filled the air—a thump and a whack, the sickening sound of a moving vehicle hitting a body, a shattering of glass. A scream. Headlights desperate against the impenetrable fog.
“Mama? A car just hit someone!”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move. I needed to help this man. I needed to protect my daughter. I needed to find my way to the flat. These combating needs pushed and shoved inside me, but by instinct I moved toward the sound of screaming, where a crowd was gathering. A man hollered that he’d run and call an ambulance.
There was nothing for me to do.
“We need to get to the flat,” I told Wynnie.
I gripped her hand and then bent down to press my forehead to hers. “The traffic is stopped right now. We will make our way across and then down two blocks.” My mind was scrambling through landmarks, through corners and parks and by rushing rivers.
“Mama, I think he’s—”
“Wynnie. Come.”
We inched across the street, past the gathering crowd standing over a body strewn across the pavement. Even in the dank and heavy air, I saw the cherry-red stain grow in the street below the shape of a man. I shielded Wynnie from the sight with my body and reached the other side with relief.
“You’re crushing my hand,” Wynnie said.
“I’m sorry, baby. I can’t let go of you.”
She coughed, a tight sound that was a portent to a graver sound that would follow— the wheeze.
As we hustled through those streets, I made my deal with God—I would never again care about finding Mother if Wynnie would be okay. I should have allowed the satchel to fall into the River Thames when that man knocked into us yesterday. I should have stayed in Bluffton with Dad. I should have—
A woman, small and slight, appeared near me now. “You best be moving along. This fog is a bandit’s pleasure.”
One thing at a time , I heard Mother’s voice say, the soft inflection of it coming to me in a memory of us building a house of twigs and moss over a month’s time.
I reached into my purse and fished out a pill, bent down to Wynnie. “Put it under your tongue just in case. I don’t like that cough.”
“I hate the way it tastes.” She pulled a face and then opened her mouth. I slipped the pill under her tongue, took her hand.
We must do only one thing at a time.
Mother’s voice was clearer and closer than it had been in years. Her language was bringing her back to me.