Excerpts...

Days passed, as days have an irritating habit of doing, and before I wasproperly prepared, Thursday arrived once again. I took an extra twenty minutes to settle my hair and poked myself in the eye twice trying to even out my eye shadow, telling myself all the while that I was not trying to impress anyone. At all. I’m a terrible liar.

But Damien never showed up to class. No one had heard from him, so we muddled through a discussion on the importance of uniforms in building identity among national armies, and no one gave me a second look, except for when Sam and I got in a spat over the merits of wool uniforms for infantrymen in the First World War. As we were rising to leave, Professor Bryson made an announcement that next week our meeting would take place in the conference room down the hall, as a new staff member would be moving in and he didn’t want “this group to be disturbing…disturbed. You know. “ And with a wave of an arm encased in some deeply disturbing mauve paisley fabric, we were dismissed.

I spent the rest of the day at work, slogging through a photocopy request that had come through from a patron that no one else wanted to tackle. Which was understandable, considering the fact that it took me the rest of the day to get even halfway through with the order, and in the end I had to call maintenance to bring up more toner so I could finish the rest on Friday. As with all manner of technology, as soon as the machine learned that I was in need of its services, it collapsed in a steaming heap of plastic and inkblots, and it took the vast majority of my day to convince it to act like a man and get the copies in the post.

The thick autumn sunlight outside was warm and I decided a bit of a walk would do me good, so I alighted the bus at Angel and ducked into the Tinderbox in order to fortify myself for the journey. I was standing in line behind a tall, heavyset man and his German Shepherd when a low voice behind me murmured, right in my ear, “And here I was, just looking for a friendly face.”

Being me means being very jumpy in crowds, and thus reacting very badly to chance meetings. Having had no sense that there was anyone at all behind me to begin with, I spun around, far more startled than any normal person would ever be, and found myself staring into a pair of familiar blue-gray eyes.

“Ned! I…oh. Hi. How…uh…hi.”

“Did I startle you? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean...”

“No, no!” I tried again, wishing there was a way to discreetly kick myself. “I just…” I waved a hand and tried to look vaguely coordinated. And failed. “Didn’t expect to see you…here, I mean. Just surprised.”

“I’ll have to sneak up on you more often then.” He winked, his smile stretching as my face grew hot. He really was quite easy on the eyes, especially with that smile. Which made the whole situation ten times worse. It was difficult enough to talk with someone who was so socially at ease without becoming tongue-tied with jealousy. Being distracted by those eyes and that secret little smile was not in any way what the situation required.

“Spectacular,” I replied dryly.

“Can I help you?” The man behind the counter tapped his finger testily against the metal pitcher in his hand, making the milk thermometer clunk loudly in response.

“Large skinny latte,” I replied automatically.

“Make it two,” Damien interjected, and the man nodded briskly and set about steaming and brewing.

“So where were you yesterday?” I turned back, trying to slow my heartbeat, which was pounding in my ears so loudly that I could hardly hear his first few words.

“Uh…right.” He ducked his head. “I completely lost track of time and by the time I realized where I should be,” he shrugged and his eyes crinkled into a smile, “I figured showing up would just make things worse.”

“I see,” I replied, not entirely convinced.

He took an infinitesimal step closer.

“Miss me?”

My mouth opened, but before anything asinine could fall out, the man behind the counter set two cardboard cups before us. Damien paid for both and handed one to me. “The least I can do after stalking you.” He winked again and I followed him back onto the street, hoping the breeze would dampen the heat in my cheeks.

“Well, I can’t say it was the most stimulating class I’ve ever attended, so don’t feel bad,” I prevaricated. “I could get you my notes, if you think you’d like them.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” he said distantly, watching a few commuters hustle past the wall against which he had propped himself. When he turned back to me, his eyes stopped at the bag on my shoulder and his eyebrows lifted slowly.

I had visions of bird stains, of gaping holes; hell, at the rate this exchange was going, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn I was spontaneously combusting. With mounting trepidation, I looked to my left and saw my museum ID swinging from the strap of my bag.

“Sorry…didn’t mean to stare. I just had no idea you worked there.”

“No worries.”

“Sounds perfect for you.”

“Not far from it, at any rate,” I smiled.

“What do you do?”

“I catalogue new First World War acquisitions—letters, diaries, that kind of stuff.”

“Jesus, seriously, that sounds perfect.” He sipped his coffee and watched my smile intently. “Oh! Speaking of which,” he rolled his own bag from his shoulder to the ground and knelt beside it, ruffling through several bunches of loose paper before extracting a small pile of photocopied sheets stapled together. “I copied those stories I was telling you about. If—you’d still like to read them.”

For an instant, he looked unsure of himself; but I put out my hand and took the stack. His hand was cool and dry when it brushed my own.

The top of the page was headed with Early 20^th Century Fiction: An Anthology. The shadows on the photocopies suggested they were made from a hardcover book, and the traceries of cracks and folds made me fairly sure the book had not been a new one.

“There’s only two of them, but it’s a start.” I was saying, as I flipped through the pages. “I’d love to find some more—it would make the rest of the paper so much better.”

I started to tell him about my find at the museum, about the other Barnaby Rutledge stories I’d found, about the letters that might contain more information or further leads. Then, with a stab of guilt, I bit my lip. I had already started thinking of Rutledge as mine, and the idea of sharing him so soon was not one I was willing to tolerate.

“I’ll keep my eyes out for something,” I said instead.

“I’ve tried before,” he zipped his bag and settled it across his shoulder once again. “It’s like he just…I don’t know. Disappeared, or something.”

“How bizarre.”

“I know. Sometimes, I wonder—“

A cell phone began chirping urgently. With practiced ease, Damien shifted his cup to his other hand and extracted a phone from his pocket. It was sleek and chrome and looks incredibly efficient.

“Damn. I need to run,” he said, staring at the blinking screen. “But you’ll have to let me know what you think of those.” He nodded towards the stories and a lock of hair tumbled into his eyes. He shook it away and his eyes locked on mine. “Sometime next week, alright?”

I nodded, and felt heat tingle through my hand as I held my own cup tighter and tighter.

“Excellent.” He smiled that charmingly bemused smile at me. “I’ll try to be a better stalker and not scare you to death next time, ok?”

I laughed. “Fair enough.”

He jogged across the street and headed into the network of streets by St. Michael’s Church, while I sagged into the wall and grinned like an idiot.

That night, after Mitch got home and showered away the stale smoke and fug of other people’s colognes, we made Flingpot for dinner in his house. Flingpot, you see, involves collecting all the potentially perishable things in the refrigerator and flinging them in a pot. That night, our Flingpot consisted of basmati rice, red peppers, mushrooms, broccoli and cloves, and was remarkably edible. Especially considering the other combinations of Flingpot we’d tried in the past…

While cleaned up, I filled Mitch in on my run-in with Damien and the new Barnaby Rutledge stories he’d provided.

“Hmm,” Mitch tapped a spoon against the inside of the metal sink, clearly delighted by the hollow clunking sound it produced. “I’d keep an eye on him, Kip.” He grinned wickedly. “He’s clearly got his on you.”

I threw a sponge at him.

“We’re changing the subject.”

Mitch rolled his eyes and flicked an errant soap smudge from his sweater.

“Very well,” he sighed dramatically. “What about the Rutledge bloke’s stories?”

“No idea. Haven’t looked at them as yet.”

“Good. I’m too tired to watch a film. You can read to me.”

So we tramped across to my house, which had more furniture, and Mitch sprawled out on the divan, his bright eyes fixed on the photocopies in my hands.

“Go on then. What’s it say?”

“Well, the introductory stuff says that Rutledge was in the First World War…apparently saw action at Ypres in 1915, the Dardanelles, the Somme….Jesus, back to Ypres in 1917—how the hell did he manage all that? –And was taken prisoner in the winter of 1917-8. Treated for shell-shock—little surprise there—and began writing in order to “expunge the memories of the horrors from his mind.” Apparently, he suffered severe insomnia and most of his descriptions of the people in the hospitals were taken from real life, observed at night while they slept.”

“How awful,” Mitch breathed.

“I know. Let’s see… released from Queens Square National Hospital in 1926 and published continually until his death in 1941. No mention of any private life, though…hmm… Listen to this: ”His departure from our workaday world is a tragedy among tragedies. Alone, without family and with only the specters of his past for company, Mr. Rutledge’s works are terrifying, entrancing reminders of the darkness that is possessed in every human soul. His writing probes the secrets in all our hearts and sings a siren’s song of madness that every heart can, in some way, understand.”

“Well, if that wasn’t histrionic, I don’t know what is.”

I grinned distractedly. “Agreed. But did you hear that? ‘His departure from the world.’ Not ‘his death’.”

“Just a quaint little euphemism, isn’t it?”

“Is it? That Wikipedia entry said he might have faked his death.”

“Do you listen to yourself sometimes? A Wikipedia article?”

“I know, I know. But it is interesting.”

“No, I suppose you’re right. It is odd. And he had a family somewhere, too.”

“Good point.”

“So what stories are there?”

There were two. One was entitled “Down from the Mountain”, and was a retelling of a sorts of Rip Van Winkle. In this version, a soldier is released from a POW camp in Germany and finds himself in an utterly changed, utterly alien world: “Women walked about dressed as men and men sat is metal chairs with vacant eyes and useless limbs.” The man finds work at a restaurant where he plays the piano while the strange, unknowable people eat: “They consumed their food, they talked and they lived with a strange, frenzied haste, as if they knew everything before them could be obliterated. Life had to be lived at a pace that kept time with the scream of bombs and the march of boots. And in his corner, The Man tapped at his keys and marked their time for them, all the while wondering if the horrors he had escaped were not quite as frightening as the world into which he had been freed.”

In the end, The Man sees a woman he had loved from before the war. He tried to play a song for her that will make her remember him:

And whatever was left of his stained soul called out to whatever was left in her that could still be called human. And as he played, he heard the wind sigh in trees that had been burned to ashes years before, and the laughter of children long since dead, and felt the heat of the sun on skin, which, for an instant was smooth and young and nearly beautiful. And she turned her head and looked at him and he wished that he had died in the cold or in the flames or in the filth. For there was nothing in her eyes but vacant fear. The soul he had known was gone and she was one of Them.”

“My Lord,” Mitch huffed as he rolled over, his long fingers brushing at the fringe of the blanket over the back of the divan. “He can make anything sound like a nightmare, can’t he.”

I nodded, thinking of the Lost Angel from the last story and the song she had heard in the shadows of the ward. There was a odd feeling of continuation in the two stories that made my skin tingle.

“I mean,” Mitch propped himself up and pointed to the page. “How do you think like that? Are you born that…dark? That fucked up? Or…”

What had that other story said? That the fiancé was “lost in the great fire of 1917”. Not killed. Taken prisoner.

“Or did he become like this?” He looked up at me, the echo of my question on his face.

The other story had mentioned her eyes, too. Vacant eyes. And this woman was silent, too.

“Read the next one.” He said, rolling over onto his back once again and folding his arms around him. “Not like I can be any more disturbed, right?”

My mother would have called them “Famous last words”.

The italic introduction noted that the second story was taken from Rutledge’s 1940 book, The Many Deaths of Barnaby Rutledge. “Perhaps the most well-known of Rutledge’s works,” the introduction explained, “it has never been determined how much of the stories in this collection were taken from the author’s experience and how much was a product of imagination or hearsay. What is certainly true is that, of all of Rutledge’s stories, these are the most realistic and, perhaps, the most simplistic. In the following, Rutledge seeks not to trap the reader in a nightmare, but to lay before them the truth, which, under his pen, is equally as chilling and labyrinthine.”

The except was only five pages long…

"The Lost Angel"

As the day remained sunny and not entirely unsummery, I got off the 76 around Southgate Road and began the walk back home. I was eager to read the Rutledge manuscript, but if my inner six-year-old would sit still a lot longer if I tired her out a bit first. Like a true New Englander, I could feel rain in the wind, which would mean confinement to a fug-filled bus full of damp and grumpy Londoners, so I decided to enjoy the open air as long as possible.

My cell phone began buzzing in my backpack, rattling against my keys and causing a racket loud enough to make a passing jogger turn and regard me warily as I swung the bag over my shoulder and fumbled to extract the phone.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

“Nearly home. You?”

“Just finishing up here.”

“Where is here?”

“Covent Garden.” The blare of a truck horn bellowed down the line and I heard Mitch’s muttered curse before he continued. “Some American family gave me fifteen pounds!”

I giggled. “Someone didn’t read the exchange rate properly, me thinks.”

“I’m not complaining, but I don’t want to be around when they figure it out for themselves. Anyway, you want burritos for dinner?’

“Have I mentioned to you lately that I think you are wonderful?”

I could hear him snicker. “Not in the past few hours, ungrateful thing that you are.”

“How about I let you pick the movie, then?”

Neither of our families had seen it as worthwhile to pay for a TV license in a house in which they were no longer residing, and the two of us decided we’d be damned—or starving—if we forked over it. So we watched one hell of a lot of movies. And ate a great many burritos from this new place in Islington that had given out free food the day it opened and got us both hooked. In the seven or eight weeks we’d been—co-habitating, I guess is the best word—Mitch and I had watched nearly a hundred movies and I’m sure the mail-rental company was kicking themselves that we were getting charged a flat monthly rate to rob them blind.

“Whatever came in today is fine. Chicken for you?”

“Yuppers. No beans, extra cheese.”

“Sounds good. I’ll probably be back by seven—ok?”

“Perfect.”

“I think I’m about to be hit by a bus.”

And he hung up.

Thanks, Mitch.

I pushed open the door to the house and gathered up the mail that had accumulated on the floor, adding it to the trash bag hanging behind the kitchen door, tossing the next delivery of DVDs on the living room coffee table, and put the kettle on for tea. Ten minutes later saw me in my ratty black sweatpants and an enormous t-shirt I had inherited at some point in my wanderings, curled up on the sofa beside a large mug of tea and tucking into the photocopies of what looked to be Barnaby Rutledge’s last manuscript.

I should have known I was in for something strange as soon I read the author’s note on the second page:

Author’s Note:

These stories, like so many of the others, are all true, for there is no story written that is not in some way the confession of a truth. The face of the confessor is unimportant, for in revealing his tale, he ceases to become unique and instead joins the procession of human smoke that rises from the ashes of history and disappears without trace. It is only I, who am watching you now, as ever, who remains.

BR.

“Holy hell,” I muttered, laying the sheet face down on the coffee table before looking down at the one beneath it.

Dedication:

For the one who has never left me.

I pulled the blanket on the back of the couch over my legs and shimmied down beneath it, as if hiding.

The stories were all set in a ward in a national hospital somewhere in London. A nurse on the night watch was walking from bed to bed and checking on the men who slept—or didn’t—on each. As she looked at them, another story began, whether of their childhood, their wartime experience, or whatever specific memory defined them and defined the cause of their madness.

They were beautifully well-written, with long, elegant sentences that made you feel like there was someone, tall and thin and wasted, who was curled up beside you and whispering in your ear. And because it was so graceful, it was all the more frightening. The beauty of it transfixed you, and by the time you realized what this crazed man had done to his characters—or what they had done to him, since it seemed that it was their combined madness that had sent him to this imaginary hall lunacy—it was too late to look away. Despite the residual heat of the day, I was curled up under the blanket and the fringes of it were dusting my face by the time I was a third of the way through the stories.

The one that stuck with me the most was the one in the middle, a kind of intermission in this insane literary circus. It was the story of the nurse herself, who looked in at each of the men in the ward. Rutledge described her as “too tall for delicacy and eyes just a little too wide-set and wide for beauty, with a tide of dark hair curling behind her ears and small, childlike hands. Standing in the doorway, a man might be fooled into believing her an angel of mercy in that hall of tormented spirits. But one look at those eyes showed that she was nothing more than a ghost herself, a soul, like all the others, frozen in another time and forced forever to hide in the darkness of memory.”

The other stories told of violence, of angry death or shouted curses that had chased these men into this ward. The Nurse’s story (we never learn her name. She is only referred to as “The Nurse”, or “The Lost Angel”, which is also the title of the story) was different. She had grown up nearly mute, speaking only when there was no other way of communicating, and no one was nearby to speak for her. It wasn’t that she was afraid or unable to speak, it was that “words held no power over her”, which seemed utterly contradictory to me. That a woman created with words could refuse the power of them made her somehow disturbing, and yet, infinitely more real than the other characters. It was as if she had managed to break free of the author’s control and was wandering around the book of her own free will. Anyway, she was loved by a man (who also had no name) who had written her a tune on the piano, since she refused to hear any spoken declaration of his feelings for her. They had been engaged when the war broke out, and had both enlisted, he as a Captain and she as a nurse. He was lost in “the great fire of 1917”, which I could only assume was 3rd Ypres, more commonly known as the Battle of Passchendale.

The man who loved her had written her several letters from the battle, telling her of the horrors of the trenches and of the lunatic beauty of shells exploding at night and the “exquisite horror of treading the circles of the damned”. In truth, he sounded like the maddest of them all. When she had opened the letter, she had begun to hear his song playing on the air, and assumed him to be dead. When no telegram arrived, and no news of his injury or capture was forthcoming, she had burned the letter. The music had sounded from the flames. Now, wherever she went, “she was followed by the cadence of a melody she knew better than her own soul”. The reason she was in the ward, peering in at all these men, was in the hopes of finding her fiancé among them. But there was no recognition in any of the dull eyes before her. She never spoke—indeed, it was assumed by most of the men that she was unable to speak.

“But what use were words,” Rutledge asked at the end of the story, “crude, useless words that could speak only of mud and of death and of pain, when in her head played endlessly the promise of paradise and the lost wonder of eternity?”

It was melodramatic, yes, and perhaps a little more dated than the others because of the nature of its subject matter, but I was shivering when I had finished reading it. The room seemed filled with ghosts and with ghostly music and try as I might, I couldn’t help but hear the footsteps of that silent, haunted nurse, forever treading the halls, searching for something she would never…

“Do you want to eat in here or in the kitchen?”

I let out a yelp and tumbled off the couch.

“What the—are you alright?”

“When the hell did you come in?”

“Like, five minutes ago—didn’t you hear me say “Hi Kip, I have dinner?”

The smell of spiced chicken and peppers began to waft across the room and I sat up, disentangling myself from the blanket and blinking at Mitch.

“No, actually. Jesus, you scared me.”

“Sorry. What are you reading, then?”

I held up the book and gave him a brief explanation of the stories while we carried plates and glasses into the living room. I tucked Mr. Rutledge back into his folder, slid him back into my bag, and settled back down on the couch with Mitch’s laptop on the coffee table between us.

“My, my. Sounds like a charming subject matter. So—what’s come in, then?” He asked, tucking into his burrito with gusto.

“Umm…” I giggled. “My Fair Lady and The Green Mile. What the hell?”

“Mmm…My Fair Lady. Audrey Hepburn’s better looking than Tom Hanks.”

“Fair enough.”

We sat, chewing and singing along at intervals, and I expressed the wish that all lower-middle class workers in England really did burst into song at every opportunity. The group dances would make economic history much more interesting. Mitch snorted and turned up the volume to drown out my ruminations.

Do you know the scene where Higgins brings Eliza to the races and she goes on and on about how her aunt died of influenza—“fairly blue with it, she was”? If you do, take a look at the way Freddie looks at her while she’s giving that little speech. That, I realized belatedly, was the same way Ned had been looking at me while I was rambling on earlier that afternoon. And I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it, even as I felt a furious blush rising to my cheeks.

“So tell me,” Mitch said, as the ‘intermission’ played, “how did you manage to find this mad Mr. Rutledge?”

“I met a guy in one of my classes who is working on his as part of his dissertation. He said he’d loan me some, but we had this at the museum and I figured I’d—“

“Wait, wait, wait. You ‘met a guy’?” I thought Mitch’s eyebrows were going to raise themselves right off his forehead. “As in ‘met a guy’?”

“What?”

“You know what I mean!” He poked one absurdly strong finger into my arm.

“Ow, you maniac! No—I mean…well, we did go out for coffee.”

“Alright, do you want me to alert the media, or just your mother?”

I swatted at him. “It’s nothing! Just—“ and he burst out laughing.

“Whatever you say, Miss Philby.” The ‘intermission’ scene faded and Rex Harrison began stalking across the screen once more.

“Funny,” Mitch mumbled through the last few bites of burrito. “I would have assumed poetry or something to get a nice girl to notice you, not a bunch of awful madmen in a war hospital.” He sniggered. “This bloke must have you down to a tee.”

Meeting Mr. Rutledge

Since work was just up the street from the coffee shop, I managed to get to my desk just south of on time, and by the time Rich, the head archivist, came back from his stint in the reading room, I was hard at work on the next diary in my stack of pending documents.

When I say ‘hard at work’, I really mean ‘making a genuine effort at appearing interested at the words before me’—in order to hide the fact that I couldn’t get the idea of this Barnaby Rutledge character out of my mind. It wasn’t that the diary I had in front of me wasn’t interesting—on the contrary, actually. It had been written by a 19-year-old private who had been trying to make a career in journalism before the war, and saw his diary as the prototype for a series of articles, or possibly a biography, when he returned home. Consequently, his entries were full of exclamation points and underlined phrases and some delightedly lurid descriptions of rats and corpses, up until mid-September 1915, just after his battalion had been sent to Egypt with the that it would assist with the attack on the Dardanelles. Then came the entry:

Found the body of Lieutenant Allington outside the camp this morning. His clothes were singed and filthy and the skin below his nose and around his lips was black with soot. According to Captain Fitz., he had a leave pass last night and was going into Cairo. Final verdict is that he was killed by Arabs, dirty dark scoundrels. Though where he received the burns, no one could say.

It is odd that the sight of corpses by the stacks has had little effect, but the sight of one man who one has respected and regarded and who was kind to one and perhaps, in a different world, a man who one might call ‘Friend’—the sight of that can turn one completely cold and sick. That he should fall even before the battle seems like an injustice beyond measure. Such a brave man, too. The fellows were telling me of his work in the pyramids before the war and how he was to be married next year.

Am thoroughly sick of this whole business.

Shortly after this incident, the battalion was returned to France without seeing action at Gallipoli. After that, Pte. Sheldon really did seem to lose most of his fighting spirit, though his eye for detail made the rest of his experiences quite interesting reading. He never did get to publish them, if you’re wondering. He was killed during the German Spring Offensive, sometime after March 25, 1918, as that was the last entry. He had given his diary to his best friend to hold for him, and it was because of the friend that the diary was returned to the family. The author’s body was never recovered.

As much as I tried to give him the attention he deserved, with every turn of the page, every pause to decipher a scrawled phrase, my mind turned back to Damien and, more importantly, to the mysterious Barnaby Rutledge. Personally, I was intrigued. Professionally, I was furious. There were few things in this world that I can say for a fact that I know. Up until that day, the First World War was one of those things. To have this near-stranger upstage me was galling, to say the least.

Finally, I was forced to make my apologies to Private Sheldon and turn my attention to my cinder-block of a computer that was wheezing and grumbling on the corner of my desk. I opened the internet and something inside the massive monitor whirred angrily. Eventually, the homepage of the Museum wavered into view and I typed “Barnaby Rutledge” into the little search bar at the top.

And my embarrassment abated somewhat. Amid the almost humorously erroneous hits from Google (among them a law firm of Corliss, Whittemore and Rutledge, a Facebook listing for a Barbara Rutledge and a series of photos of someone’s one-eyed dog who was apparently named Barnaby), there was one Wikipedia entry headed ‘Barnaby Rutledge’. And I swallowed all my professional pride, and I clicked on the link.

I was met with two lines of information, with the disclaimer that the following information was a ‘stub’, but that I could help Wikipedia by expanding it with my own information. Muttering dark threats to whatever entity had conceived of truth by majority consensus, I read the following:

“Barnaby Rutledge (1892-1941?): Was a British writer and poet who wrote a number of short stories and novellas based on his experiences in the First World War, and later in several clinics where soldiers received treatment for shell-shock and neurasthenia. Though selectively popular in the inter-war period, Rutledge’s notoriety declined significantly following his presumed death during the Blitz in London. Though his death was reported, his body was never recovered and there were claims that he may have staged his own death.”

Below this was a list of anthologies of his works. There was one book that was published before the war entitled "Winds of Autumn", but no other information on it was availble. The rest had suitably ominous titles like “The Face in the Shadows” (1924) and “Whispers of the Dead” (1926).

“People don’t just disappear.” I snapped at the screen.

“What was that?” Rich’s coppery-blonde head leaned out from behind the stack of folders on his desk, and his eyes held a weary smile.

“Nothing,” I jumped slightly, forgetting there was someone else in the office. “Just looking for someone—say, have you ever heard of a writer named Barnaby Rutledge?”

“The crazy bloke?” And Rich’s face assumed that very solemn expression it always did when the conversation strayed to the First World writers. It was one of my favorite of his idiosyncrasies. “We have a few of his manuscripts, you know.”

“Am I the only person on this earth who has never heard of him?”

Rich laughed quietly. “Not at all. I don’t think they’ve ever been requested since…well, maybe once since I’ve been here, but that was at least—oh, a decade ago? Maybe?” He shook his head. “He was mad, that one.”

“How so?”

“Go get him off the shelf. Take a look for yourself.”

“I will. Do you know anything about what happened to him?”

“Oooh! What happened to who?”

Lily, the exhibition liaison, had bounced into the room, her auburn curls swirling around her ears, an enormous green mug of tea in her tiny hands.

“Did you ever hear of Barnaby Rutledge?” Rich leaned back in his chair so he could see both of us over the Babel of papers around him, and I knew that all work has ceased for the time being.

Lily shook her head and the eyes behind her glasses widened eagerly. “Nope. Don’t think so. Is it a good story?”

“Might just be at that.” Rich grinned. “He wrote these stories after the war, apparently from Maghull—“

“Oooh…that can’t have been fun.” She sipped her tea and tucked one leg beneath the other on her chair.

Lily is a master at the art of understatement. Maghull one of several national hospitals established to treat mental cases from the First World War. If you’ve heard of any of them, most likely you’ve heard of Craiglockhart, the immortal sanctuary of Siegfried Sassoon and WIlfred Owen and headed by the saintly William Rivers. But Craiglockhart was an exclusive hospital for officers that used what was considered at the time to be very avant-garde treatment methods (which included talking to the patient about his feelings and experiences). The vast majority of cases, mostly ordinary men of the ranks, were sent to places like Maghull—places that were overlooked by the authorities because of the nature of the patients who were treated there and disregarded by the press. Other hospitals could repair heroes, could give men back their arms and legs and heal their courageous bodies. Maghull, and Queens Square and others like then, by contrast, treated men whose minds were injured, and there is never a way to prove that a mind, once warped by trauma, could ever be healed—or that a man who had been sent home from war for nightmares and visions was not simply too cowardly to face reality. I remembered that Maghull had also gained attention because of its almost non-existent sanitation policies and that fact that patients were required to act as orderlies when the staff was struck by the influenza pandemic in the 1920’s.

“Not so much,” Rich’s voice broke across my thoughts. “I don’t know who the hell published them—or, for that matter, who read the things, but they were apparently quite popular up until the mid-thirties or so.”

“But you know what happened to him?” I pressed, and Lily leaned forward, sensing more gossip.

“How do you mean?”

“Well,” I nodded at the computer, which clicked and hummed and belched overheated air in response, “the only thing I could find on him said he disappeared in 1941.”

“Really?” Rich’s brow furrowed. “I thought he was killed in the Blitz.”

“According to the omnipotent Wikipedia,” I lectured drolly, “he was ‘said to have been killed’ in 1941,” I made liberal use of air quotes, “but that some think he faked his own death.”

“Maybe he went mad.” Lily whispered dramatically.

“I doubt it was a long trip,” Rich’s flicked a sardonic glance over and she giggled. “I also think someone on Wikipedia had one too many before writing that. I do know that we got those manuscripts in—maybe ’82? From his housekeeper, I think. They were up in an attic and she wanted them kept safe. He was definitely dead by then.”

“His housekeeper? No family, then?”

Rich raised his eyebrows. “You read those stories. Then tell me if you think anyone would be mad enough to marry him.” Footsteps sounded in the hall and he leaned forward, giving the appearance to any who might pass by that he was far too busy to be interrupted. “But don’t complain to me if you have nightmares afterwards.”

I turned back to my computer and politely tapped the space bar to awake it. It blinked to life with a heavy sigh. I requested the museum’s catalogue and twenty minutes or so later, the query window opened and I typed in ‘Rutledge, Barnaby’.

I blinked.

There were two entries.

The first was the one Rich had described: A collection of five short stories, typed, but with handwritten notations, written presumably between 1918 and 1926, when the author was receiving treatment for neurasthenia at Maghull and Queens Square Hospitals, dealing with his memories of his service in several different battalions during the First World War (including a battalion in the Manchester Regiment), that were published in 1941 as "Watches of the Night".

The other was a pending collection that was not yet available to the public. The only information in the database was that it was a series of correspondence addressed to a Lieutenant L.N. Thomas from 1914 to 1917, that included letters from his family, several musicians whose names I didn’t recognize, and a few writers, including a number from Barnaby Rutledge.

“Rich?” I said without turning.

“Hmmmmm?”

“Do you have the Thomas Correspondence Collection around there somewhere?”

“Umm…” He began flipping through the folders on his desk, and then moved to the filing cabinet behind his chair. “The one that came in a few months ago, right? Yeah,” he held up a fat blue folder that was swollen with letters still in their envelopes and the hairy ends of torn sheets of paper. “You want it?”

“I think so. There’s a Rutledge listing in there.” I tapped the diary before me. “When I finished with poor Sheldon here—yeah. I’ll take it.”

“Fine by me.”

With this added incentive, I finished reading Private Sheldon’s diary by 4:15, and by 4:30 had written a catalogue description that would be added to the database once he had been put in a proper folder and settled on a shelf in the stacks. I spent the next half hour rummaging around for the Rutledge Collection, which turned out to be about 75 pages of surprisingly good-quality paper that were clearly intended for a publisher. The stack was headed by a letter, typed on the same typewriter and dated 17 October 1941:

Dear Melvyn,

Here, as requested, is the next batch of tales. Do what you will with them.

I have one more here—not like these. This is longer and a bit less horrid, but infinitely more true. There is someone else who must approve it first, but if you think there’s a market, do let me know.

Best Always,

B.R.

At the bottom, in a quick, angular hand was “Would lunch on Friday suit?”

I was able to photocopy the stack before the museum security came to turn off the lights at 5:30pm (the number of times one of us in the Department had left the lights on overnight and necessitated a security check in the wee hours meant that we were quickly relieved of that task). Carefully, I tucked the folder back into its box and shoved the papers into my bookbag before heading off to my bus stop by Waterloo Station. On the way, I passed the coffee shop where Damien and I had sat just hours before, and smiled, suddenly unspeakably grateful to the mysterious Mr. Rutledge.

Marx, Damien and Barnaby Rutledge

Our class meeting for War and Imperialism that day was a lot of preliminary discussions the need of empires to expand, the nature of Capitalism and a great deal of Marxist, proto-Marxist, neo-Marxist and pseudo-Marxist theory that made me want to grind my teeth right out of my head. I respect the man’s ideas enormously, don’t get me wrong; but I hate the way he reduces all the humans in his philosophies to bees in a hive. Unfeeling, unthinking entities that exist, perform their role and die. There is no room for human greed (outside of the greed for money), lust, love, generosity—no room for all those quirky, irrational and spontaneous emotions and actions that make humans….well, human. And don’t even get me started on how many times people felt thing in the course of this discussion.

The two most overused words in the English language in this current age of individual expression are “I feel”. It is not simply enough anymore to “think” something, to “know” something, or to “doubt” something. According to Lydia, “I feel that Marx’s theories about slave labor do not take into account the dual dependencies of the slave and the master adequately.” Similarly, according to Caroline, “I feel that the concept of Capitalism as a finite entity is,” here she stopped, moved her hands around in large circles and never properly finished her thought. Or feeling, as the case may be.

“I know what you mean.” Sam jumped into the gap left in the conversation. “I feel that the progression from Capitalism to Communism isn’t thoroughly explored in any of the writings we were assigned.”

I jammed the nib of my fountain pen into the paper of my notebook so hard that the tip split and ink began to dribble out of the pen and down the page, a line of aqua-green blood that dried presently into a comet-shaped stain on the margin of my notes.

“Well,” said a low, measured voice from across the small room, “I think we might be missing the fact that this is a guideline—a hypothesis, if you will—more than it is a blueprint for the way of the future.”

I looked up and caught Ned staring directly at me, a small smile lifting the corner of his mouth. And I felt a great sense of relief knowing that there was someone else in the room with a suitable grasp of the English language. And I thought about his invitation for coffee after class and then I felt an enormous wave of trepidation hit me squarely in the solar plexus.

I don’t do coffee. I don’t do pleasant conversation. And dear God, I don’t flirt. I don’t understand the complex dance of body language and spoken words, or the rules of who calls whom and when and how one folds ones hand to express interest, or the way a blink can alert someone to another’s intentions…the whole thing is just some kind of over-elaborate mating dance that makes little, if any sense to me, and I wish fervently that we could all just evolve past it and move on. If he wanted to talk about tank formations at the Battle of Cambrai, or the proper method for removing oil stains from cloth-bound books, I’d be fine. But looking at that smile. I knew this wasn’t going to be a business meeting. And I knew that this couldn’t end well.

All too soon, our post-modern meeting about Marx, which by now had the air of a self-help group with the amount of feelings being thrown around, ended. I slid my notebook back into my bag, tucked by still-weeping pen into the side pocket and grabbed the shoulder strap, swinging the bag over my head as I stood up. And nearly collided with Ned who was standing next to my chair.

“Oh—hi!” I said, breathless for no good reason.

“Hello.” He did the grinning thing again. “You still up for that coffee?”

“Definitely. I have work at 2pm, but I’m free ‘til then.” I replied, wondering what rabbit had gained control of my speech and motor functions as we walked down the seven flights of stairs to the ground level and negotiated our way out of the building.

“Do you have a preference?” Ned slid his hands into his pockets and looked over to me.

“Not especially.” I figured shorter sentences were probably best for now.

“There’s a nice quiet place just behind the National…fancy a bit of a walk?’

“Sounds great.” I smiled genuinely. The view from Waterloo Bridge is one of my favorites in the whole city. From one side, you can see St. Paul’s, the lazy curves of 30 St. Mary’s Axe (more familiarly known as the Gherkin after some reporters squinted too hard and decided it looked more like a pickle than a massive lipstick, or, more accurately, a disturbingly-large Freudian slip plunked down in the middle of the City), and a scattering of cranes along the horizon, rising up like ghostly question marks over the city. On the other side, you have Parliament, the London Eye (which gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies just to watch) and the MI-6 Building, which frankly looks like an enormous Lego-creation squatting in front of the Thames. It’s beautiful view of all those lovely, odd things that make you realize quite definitely where you are, and how fiendishly small you are in comparison.

It’s also one of the most perversely windy parts of the City, a fact that escaped me until we were actually on and bridge and a blast of air grabbed all my hair and shoved it in my face. When I tried to sweep it back, it merely whipped back around my head, tangling and snarling together in a knot behind my right ear. I glanced surreptitiously at Ned, who was scanning the horizon over St. Paul’s. The fringes of his already unruly mob of hair fluttered and fell, framing his face and those sharp, dark eyes. The world is full of injustice.

By the time we reached the opposite bank, I was groping for the elastic band around my wrist and trying to rake my hair into some kind of knot at the back of my head to obscure the fact that it now looked like a bale of tumbleweed had somehow managed to fix itself to my scalp. Catching a quite half-reflection of the two of us in a bus-stop shed, I saw with grateful relief that I had managed to look human one again, and noticed Ned put a hand to his hair, ruffle it a few times and watched it settle perfectly. I don’t get it.

“So what did you think of class?” He asked as we descended the bridge to the South Bank.

“Umm…I’m sure it will be interesting soon.” I said diplomatically.

“Marx not really your thing? Just up here…”

We walked past the entrance to the National Theatre and crossed the road to a little coffee shop set into an overpass.

“Not so much. I respect him and all, but…I don’t know. It’s just too—clinical? Does that make sense?”

He tilted his head and squinted at me. “Maybe—tell me more. After you tell me what you’re having.”

“Oh…coffee’s fine. Black, please.” Two textured cardboard cups were soon pushed across the counter in our direction and Ned scooped them up with practiced ease and carried them to a table outside.

“So—Marx?”

“Oh, right.” I sat, and wrapped my hands around the cup to keep them from doing anything stupid, and took a deep breath of the caffeinated steam billowing up around my face. “I don’t know. It’s just…I have a hard time with people who think they can define human behavior. I think you were completely right to say that his stuff is just a hypothesis, but…it’s still so—formulaic….I don’t know.”

“You don’t think humans are predictable and definable?”

I grinned at the table. “I think individuals are ridiculously predictable. Or at least under most circumstances.” It had taken years to figure out, but everyone has something that makes them tick, and if you can find it, you can figure them out, at least on a basic level. It did, however, require a massive amount of energy to remember each person’s individual quirks and tailor my behavior around them. Which is one of the main reasons I hate crowds and am so terrible about meeting new people. I needed to get him to do some more talking if this little exchange had any hopes of survival.

“But….” He tilted his head again, “but more than irrational, people are selfish. They’re not going to consider their place in the Proletariat if they are starving. Don’t get me wrong, there are those who will. But there’s a reason that they get into history books. They’re few and far between.”

“Very high opinion of your species there, Miss Philby.” He grinned.

I shrugged. “I don’t think it makes any sense to put the essential element of historic study on a pedestal. If you’re going to study humans, you need to accept the fact that they are lazy and selfish and messy and generally do a lot of ugly and unpredictable things, or you’re going to get very jaded very quickly.”

I looked up. He was still smiling, but he had this look of confused amusement in his eyes, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of me yet. But he seemed to be enjoying himself, I thought, with a renewed sense of belief.

“So what is it that you study, specifically?” He asked before I could frame a question to force him to talk.

“Me? First World War.”

He snickered into his cup. “Doesn’t get much messier or uglier than that.”

“But it’s a prime example of my point. People under pressure don’t always react the way you assume they will. And very often, it’s those people who determine the way the story ends, not the people who toed the line.” I bit my lip, knowing I was tottering on the precipice. If the conversation wanders anywhere close to the First World War, and I become very seriously verbally incontinent. “But what about you?”

“Hmmm?”

“What are you studying?” It was an awkward transition, but my jaw was starting to hurt.

“History of literature.”

“You already said that.” Stellar, Philby. “Anything more specific?”

He gave me that look again. “I think I’m going to be working on the history of writing about battle-stress….if that makes any sense.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well,” set his cup down and leaned forward, settling his elbows on his knees and looking over at me through his eyelashes. “I was thinking of looking at the way people with battle-stress—shell-shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, whatever you want to call it—the way they write about their experience and how their mental state affects their writing.”

I unabashedly gaped. “That…sounds incredible.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“My undergraduate work was on shell-shock, actually, so—yeah.” He beamed. “What books are you looking at?” I put my hands back around the cup and told myself to sit still.

“Well, I was thinking of Tim O’Brien’s stuff, like The Things They Carried, and maybe Catch-22 or some of the Russian stuff from World War Two, and for the First World War,” he looked up at me to gauge my reactions, “I was thinking of doing Barnaby Rutledge.”

My heart flipped over. “Who?”

He burst out laughing. Even though I knew it was at me, it was a pretty nice sound. “Don’t worry—nobody’s ever heard of him.”

“So who was he?”

“He wrote these really, really messed up stories that were supposedly autobiographical, but I doubt that. They were published either privately or in really small numbers, but he had quite a devoted following up until the Second World War.” He took a final sip of coffee and set the cup down beside him. “So far as I know, there’s only been one article written about him since, like, the ‘60’s, but a few of his stories are still being printed in anthologies, so I figured it was time someone looked at him again.”

“That’s—that’s amazing.” I said, equally fascinated and annoyed that I hadn’t heard of this guy.

“I can bring one of his stories with me to class next week, if you like.”

“Really? “ My voice did some kind of squeaky thing that was far from pleasant in my ears. “I’d love it.” I tried, a little more sedately.

Ned chuckled. “Alright then. As long as you promise to tell me what you think.”

I risked a smile back. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Excellent.” He rubbed his hands together and looked at his watch. “Not that I’m not enjoying your company, but did you say you needed to be at work at two?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s ten to now.”

“Oh. Oh!” I stood up and slid my bag over my head. “Thanks for that.”

He stood up as well. Awkward, awkward, awkward…. “This was really nice.” I said, surprised at how genuine I sounded.

“It was,” he quirked a little grin. “We’ll have to do it again. Soon.”

“I’d like that.”

And I realized that I would.

The Devil's Trill

The building which Mitch and I mutually inhabit was built before the Second World War, and, not surprisingly, sustained a fair amount of structural damage during the Blitz. According to the man in the poorly-fitting suit who came to assess the property before the actual owners left said that the building was ‘bowed’, basically meaning that the two halves are slumped together and holding each other up. It’s a fairly common condition, especially in Stoke Newington, part of which got blasted out of existence one autumn evening. It will be a bitch if anyone ever decides to knock down any of the houses on the street, as the general opinion is that when one goes, quite literally, so goes the neighborhood, and if one house is removed, the whole thing will cave in like massive mortar dominoes.

The less-dramatic meaning of all of this is that there are places in our building where the walls are very thin. Not so much so that you can hear the other person making a cup of tea, but with a little effort, your neighbor can hear you. So it was probably a good thing that Mitch and I were both single, I guess. But it also explains why he felt the need to call when he was practicing. The first time he started tuning his violin when I’d first moved in, I thought the walls had mice and was ready to turn around and move back out.

That morning, however, I wish mice were the worst of my problems. I was up, had managed to open the window, run to the other side of the bedroom to turn on the lights, and was halfway down the first flight of stairs before I realized that I was awake and that Mitch was at it again (for the record, I have no idea why I thought opening the window would help. Very little that I do when startles awake makes any long-term rational sense). Since I was halfway there already, I clumped down to the kitchen, grabbed the phone off the wall and pounded Mitch’s number with a great display of excessive force.

I could hear the phone chirping on the other side of the wall, and its echo in my ear six times before he picked up.

“Umm…hello?”

“What the fuck are you playing?”

“Oh! Do you like it?”

“It sound like you are dueling with imps from the deepest pits of hell. What is it?”

“It’s a new Kreisler piece,” he said, sounding a little deflated.

“You do know that it’s not even seven, right?”

“Umm…”

“Mitch, in the name of Stephen King and all that is holy, I beg you to never, ever play that in the morning ever, ever again. Ok?”

“Umm….ok. Are you awake?”

“I am now, you evil man!”

“Oh. Good. Well, put on the kettle.”

And he hung up.

And it’s impossible to be angry with Mitchell for long. He’s just doesn’t have the kind of intellect that could be intentionally cruel or hurtful. If I can fault him for anything, it’s simply of not thinking all that frequently, but if that’s the worst I have to put up with, I think I’ve got it pretty good.

I heard the bang of the broomstick while I was pouring water over two teabags and presently, the cellar door opened, wafting the smell of toast through the house. Mitch’s hair led the rest of him into the kitchen. I don’t know what he had or hadn’t done with it in the past two days, but it looked like a lazy cartoonist had taken a black marker and scribbled it into place. He had stubble on his milky-pale skin and Panic at the Disco shirt on over his sweatpants.

“Is that mine?” I asked, nodding at the shirt.

“Maybe. It was in the dryer.”

“Fair enough.” He clattered the plate down on the table and wrapped both hands around the mug of tea, breathing in the caffeinated steam with near-religious zeal.

“So what the hell was that thing?”

“What—the piece?”

“Unless you really were torturing demons over there.”

He grinned and sucked a toast crumb off his thumb. “I found it at the British Library the other day. You know they have music manuscripts there?”

I nodded.

“Oh. So anyways, there’s this piece called “The Devil’s Trill”, and what he did was—“

“It’s called the what?”

“’The Devil’s Trill’,” he sighed and ran a hand through the riot of hair near his forehead. “Ok, so it was originally written by this chap Tartini in seventeen-whenever. He had this dream that the Devil came to him and asked him to be his servant. And in order to test him, Tartini hands the Devil his violin and he goes to town. And when he wakes up, Tartini tries to write down what he heard and, of course, fails utterly. Though the piece is an absolute monster to even try to play.” He leaned across the table and wiggled his eyebrows. “It’s said that whoever plays owes Satan their soul ever afterwards.”

“Charming.”

“Anyways, so it’s a nifty little thing. And time goes on, la la la. And then Kreisler joins the army during the First World War—you know this part, don’t you?”

“I knew he was in the Army for—what, like two months or something? I have his book about it around here somewhere…”

“Yes, yes, well, I found this letter by him that talked about this utter nut-job he met during his army career. The guy was British and they met at a hospital or who-knows-what. The point is, according to Kreisler, this British chap was the greatest musician he’d ever met. Ever. Said he’d never believed in diabolical talent ‘til he met this guy. So he arranges the Tartini piece for this chappie, and adds a movement. That’s what that was,” he flipped his head back, as if the sound were still resonating through the walls.” And sends it to this chappie’s address in London, but never heard word one from him ever again.”

“So how did it end up at the British Library?”

“Damned if I know. But you haven’t heard the best part yet.” He dropped his crust back onto the plate and it made a little ceramic ping. “This chappie’s name? Was Lucifer.”

“What?”

“Honest to God, I swear it. That’s why Kreisler went on and on about devils and demons—and that’s why he picked that piece to arrange for this British guy.”

“That’s…that’s just weird.”

“I know! Isn’t it great?”

“I don’t know about that…who names their kid Lucifer?”

Mitch shrugged. “I didn’t copy the letter. I was too busy trying to get all the notes down. But he said that he’s never seen elegant hands or such dark eyes in a human head.”

“Weird.”

Mitch grinned. “It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever seen.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a battered photocopy of some sheet music. The thing was, indeed, a riot of notes. Looking at it, I could follow the part I had heard Mitch play. Judging by the amount of ‘vibrato’ signs above the notes, the whole thing must sound like someone sobbing—or screaming.

“How can you play this with one violin? There are...these are four-note chords.”

I looked up and he was giving me the most manic grin I’d ever seen. “I have absolutely no idea. But I’m sure the Prince of Darkness will give me the aid I require.”

“Oh please, spare me.” I said, and swiped the last piece of toast. “With your luck, you’d get the ghost of some off-kilter First World War soldier with black eyes and skeletally beautiful hands menacing you in your sleep.”

“You are absolutely sick, you know that?”

I grinned back. “I have class this morning and work tonight. You off all day?”

He nodded and stretched in the chair, tilting it back until the headrest met the edge of the sink. “I love Mondays.”

“Bite me.” And I started sweeping the dishes and mugs into the dishwasher.

Exerpts

(Reproduced with the permission of Jeremy Bannerman and Susan T. Lynch)

[Postmarked Newington Green, addressed to L. Nathaniel Thomas, St. Dennis' School, East Sussex]
4 March 1903
Dear Nathaniel,
How strange to write that name now!
How are you? Miss Thorne has kindly given us thirty minutes to write to you so that you won’t think that, though you are gone from our schoolroom you have gone from our thought. So I am writing to you in the school room, and through the window, I can see the first of the robins searching from branch to branch of the thicket by the fence, looking for a good place to build his nest. I got a new pinafore yesterday. It is white and Mamma says I can help embroider it with primroses in the evening. Miss Thorne says that I am getting on in my penmanship beautifully. Alice’s new pinafore is blue. I think white looks better but Mamma says she can’t be trusted to keep it clean. She wants to embroider hers with water lilies, which is a charming little thought, but I think they look too much like callalilies at a funeral.
Are you enjoying school and learning a great deal? Are the other boys nice? Mrs. Chester’s son always brings his mates home from school for the holidays. You must be the one to come home, and bring lots of friends back to keep us all entertained.
Miss Thorne says I must get back to my sums. Until later, then,
I remain,
Your Loving Sister,
Tabitha

[Postmarked Newington Green, both in the same envelope, same address]
4 March 1903
Lucy,
Miss Thorne wants us to write to you. She says I can't call you Lucyfer anymore and we have to call you Nathanial. That is Poppa's name. No one calls me Cecilia.
Why do you get to go off to school and why did you leave me here? Are you coming home soon? Miss Thorne says you get a holiday in the summer.
Willie Chester pulled my hair yesterday after I told him he couldn’t walk with me to the park. So I hit him and he cried.
Alice
PS: Miss Thorne says this isn’t a nice letter and to write you one about cheerful things.

4 March 1903
Dear Nathaniel.
How are you? I am well. We had lemon tarts at tea and I had two.
Mr. Elliot The Gardener says I can help him prune the roses this weekend.
I like reading but not maths.
Yours truly,
Alice

[Postmarked East Sussex, addressed to Miss Tabitha Thomas, Newington Green, London]
7 March 1903
Dear Tabitha,
Thank you for your letter. I am well and enjoying school very much. I am afraid that I am still lagging behind in my mathematics, but the tutors are all very understanding. I have entered a competition to see which boy can remember best and deliver a passage from Virgil.
I am afraid I haven’t made too many close friends, so don’t pin your hopes on any company over the holidays, but I’m sure you won’t need too much help in filling your schedule. Good luck with the pinafore and tell Miss Thorne to stop talking like a pillow sampler.
Yours,
L.N. Thomas

[Postmarked East Sussex, same address to Miss Alice Thomas]
8 March 1903
Dear Alice,
I liked your first letter much better. Tell Willie Chester if he so much as looks at you, I’ll turn him inside out when I come home. The end of term here is 30 May, and I will be home two days later, on the first of June. Mark that on the calendar in the schoolroom so you will remember. I won’t forget you.
Until then,
Lucifer
PS: I hate maths, too.

[Postmarked Newington Green, addressed to St. Dennis' School]
10 March 1903
Dear Nathaniel,
Many thanks for your kind letter. It came just as we were sitting down to tea and was welcome indeed, as the Rector came to call on Miss Thorne and Alice was sulky. I hope your recitation goes well—I am sure that you will do brilliantly!
My pinafore is nearly finished. Mina Hatterly was over with her Mother the other day and Mrs. Hatterly says that it is some of the best work she has seen in someone of my years. Mina was jealous enough to spit. John Chester just called with his Mother and little brother. John is taller than me now, but I don’t think he is as yet as tall as you.
I should stop, as I am meant to be copying a passage of Mrs. Beeton before the end of lessons.
With affection,
Yours truly,
Tabitha
Later: Alice just came in covered in dirt and with thorns and twigs in her hair. Apparently she has been bothering the gardener all afternoon. Mamma is beside herself and Alice is perversely pleased with herself. Quite pandemonium.

[Postmarked Newington Green, same address]
12 March 1903
Dear Lucy,
Mr. Elliot says I am the best helper he has ever had and that I am welcome to come anytime and help with the roses. Mamma was mad when I came in muddy but Jacob The Footman laughed and Mamma sent him out of the room. Don’t worry about Willie. He won’t come near me since I hit him.
I put a big x on the calendar on 1 June. Come home.
Alice

[Postmarked East Sussex, addressed to Mrs. Nathaniel Thomas, Newington Green, London]
15 March 1903
Dear Mrs. Thomas,
I am sure you will forgive my writing to you directly, but we have had word of your husband's recent illness and, out of consideration for his recuperation, I thought it best to address my term assessment to you.
Nathaniel (I fully concur with your decision to use his second name in all public settings) seems to be settling in well here at St. Dennis'. He is a quiet young man with neat habits and very good manners both in his lessons and at table. I believe that Mr. Thomas has already noted that Nathaniel shows a natural talent for music, and we have arranged for him to continue his lessons here outside of schoolroom hours. According to Dr. Foster, our Latin Master, Nathaniel shows a unique proficiency for language which he is encouraging. Though not gifted in mathematics, I am proud to say that Nathaniel shows determination in his work, which will serve him well in the future.
I note one other memoranda in Nathaniel's file but, Mrs. Thomas, I worry about bringing it to your attention in such a cavalier fashion as through the post. If I had the ability to travel up to you, or Mr. Thomas was well enough to travel, I should say it could wait until such time as we can meet face to face, but since, regretfully, neither eventuality is likely in the near future, I must apologize in advance for what I am about to relate. Our school's physician, Dr. Francis, has noted that Lucifer suffers from a slight disruption of the heart. I believe the medical term is a 'heart murmur'. According to him, it means that the boy's heart does not carry on a regular rhythm, but skips a beat, or beats irregularly for a certain length of time. We are fortunate that he is otherwise perfectly healthy and strong, and thus it would seem that this condition does not pose a significant problem at the present time. However, it should be monitored, and, according to Dr. Francis, could be the cause of ill-health in later life. I am very sorry to trouble you with such news, my dear Mrs. Thomas, but I hope you know that I share it in good faith and in the hope that it will not add to your present worry.
If there is any other matter in which I can be of service, you have but to ask. As discussed, another letter will follow at the commencement of the summer term. Until then, Madam, I remain,
Yours Faithfully,
Deacon H Mather
Master of St. Dennis' School for Boys

[Postmarked East Sussex, addressed to Miss Alice Thomas, Newington Green, London]
22 May 1903
Dear Alice,
I haven't read that book yet but perhaps you can read it to me when I come home.  Tell Mrs. Bateman that I want treacle pudding for tea when I get there.  

Next week seems farther away than Mars today.
Soon, though I'll see you,
Lucifer

Words for Breakfast: In Which We Meet Another Supporting Character

Mitch scooped the last piece of toast, blew me a jam-sticky kiss and banged out the door about ten minutes later.  I took a few minutes to finish some unnecessary chores around the house, realizing there was plenty of time before I was actually due at work (I had managed to fall head-first into a freelance archival job at a museum in South London that needed First World War expertise, which was frankly far more fun than anyone deserved to have at their job). 

The day that waited for me on the other side of the door was warm and sunny, with a breeze that warned of colder days and shorter nights that were all too fast approaching.  Consequently, I resolved to walk at least to Angel Station before subjecting myself to the fetid air and inhumanely close quarters of the London underground and set off down the road with the slightly melancholy air that late summer mornings always bring.

Newington Green was full of children squawking and shrieking on the swings and tumbling across the grass as if determined to squeeze every instant of sunlight left in the sky and the earth.  I rounded the corner and was almost immediately collared by the smell of fresh-baked bread.  Suddenly, irrationally ravenous, I allowed myself to be led down the street to a aqua-fronted bakery by the smell that was strong enough to be like a physical force, pushing me to the door.  

The shop looked empty as I peered around the door frame, save for the paralyzingly delicious smells, now not only of bread, but of crumbly pastries and the snappy tinge of sugary frosting.

"Come in!  Come in!  How are you?"  The voice came from behind a cooling rack of small, crusty rolls and, heeding it, I saw a man--or, rather, his head, peering through the loaves at me.  He soon came around the racks to rest his elbows on the pale wooden counter before him, his floury fingers having left streaks up his arm when he rolled up his sleeves.

He wasn't exceptionally tall, but he had long limbs, and carried himself with enough grace that he seemed to be much taller.  He had dark hair that fell across his forehead and just brushed his eyebrows, which shaded some of the brightest eyes I'd ever seen.  He had a constant look of expectancy, as if the world was unfolding for his sole entertainment.  The skin around them was wrinkled with traces of past laughter and as I came into the shop, they folded up into a smile.  I had originally thought him around fifty, but the transformation that came over his face with that grin made me wonder if indeed I wasn't a little older than him.  You couldn't look at such an expression without feeling a reciprocal gladness from it, and I came up to the counter, eyeing the basket of croissants just behind him.

"You are new, yes?  Such a face I would remember."  My eyes jerked back onto his face, missing the compliment in my surprise.

"Govoritiye parussky?"  I said automatically.  His eyes widened and he snapped up to his full height, which was barely equal to my own.

"Of course I speak Russian!" He cried (in Russian), throwing his arms wide, "the surprise is that you do, as well!"

"I spent five years learning to read it, but I don't speak as well as I should." 

"Then your Russian is no better than my English.  We shall fumble together?"  He finished in English with a small wink.  "I am Sergey," he offered me a flour-dusted hand and squeezed my hand with a strength for which I wouldn't have previously given him credit.

"Kipling," I replied, smiling in spite of myself.

"Like the author?  Of the Phantom Rickshaw and the Jungle Books?"  

"The same," I said, relieved that there was one person who didn't need any further explanation.

"This is brilliant!  I have just finished the Just-So Stories, and they are for me quite wonderful."

He bent down as he spoke, pushing the release button on a battered microwave behind him.  The door sprang open and I saw that it was full of paperback novels, many with pastry-dribbles across the covers, and all dog-eared and well-loved.  He pulled out a volume from the far left, leaving a flour smudge across the spines of two nearby books, and set a 1960's Penguin edition of Kipling's Just So Stories on the counter between us.

"That is fantastic!"  I tried in Russian, "I need to start keeping books in my microwave!"  He laughed out loud at this, a sound of pure delight that made him look almost elfin.

"If my Sonya found me reading during working hours--well, there would be darkness and storms around here for days.  So I hide them away where she doesn't think to look and practice my English in between batches."  He winked conspiratorially, nodding sideways as if to indicate Sonya's relative position.  I could only smile back, marveling at the sheer energy of the person before me.  There ensued a few inevitable minutes of literary banter, mostly about my namesake, but it turned out that his microwave also held Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and, incongruously, a book of Wittgenstein's essays on mathematics.  

"Yes, yes.  My taste in books is...quixical?"

"Quixotic?"  I tried, unsure if his look of concern was over Wittgenstein or the word.

"Quixotic?"  he tried it slowly, as if trying it on for size, "Quixotic....this is it?"

"Yes, it's from Don Quixote, describing--"

"The windmill man!"  I jumped, but he didn't notice it, as he suddenly produced a notebook from his back pocket and began writing with the stub of a well-chewed golf pencil.  "I must..add...'Quixotic'...yes.  To my collection."  He smiled, sliding the notebook and pencil out of sight once again. 

"So, Miss Kipling,"  he began, clearly as comfortable in English as Russian, "if you don't mind me noticing, you are from far away, are you not?"  I nodded, not feeling the same sense of embarrassment that usually comes from being a transplant.  "Where is home for you, then, where they teach you to speak such good Russian?"  I laughed.

"Home is Boston,"  I said simply.

"No!  I have been to Boston!"  Sergey cried, slapping his side of the counter with an open hand, "it is where I first start learning English!" 

"Really?"  his excitement was infectious.

"Certainly.  My Sonya and I go to visit my niece and nephew in New York and our plane lands in Boston.  And it is while we are waiting for the train to New York that I buy my first English dictionary.  And I begin to learn English."  I smiled, already enchanted with this bizarre baker, but also feeling every mile between me and that train station he described.  He squinted ever so slightly at the expression he saw on my face and his eyes softened.

"You are a long way from home as well, aren't you?"  he said quietly.  I nodded, suddenly unable to speak.  This happened every once in a while.  I could talk about home for hours on end, or relish in my distance from the familiar for days, but every so often, something, often too subtle to even warrant mention, would inspire a melancholy homesickness to sneak up and sucker-punch me, causing my eyes to fill and my throat to contract before I had time to throw up my defenses.

"As am I."  Sergey said, still quiet, but with sunshine in his smile again.  "It's not easy, but think!  Think of the stories we have to tell!  No one believes me when I tell them the things I have seen!  And now," his linguistic shifts were making me dizzy, "I find this beautiful American who speaks Russian!  There are too many surprises left for me!"  I laughed in spite of myself, slightly confused by his real meaning but too charmed to let it bother me long.

"Come, come," he said, suddenly slightly flustered, "if Sonya sees tears here, she will never forgive me."  He passed a napkin over the counter to me and started staving off the mascara trails that were building in my lower lashes.  

"Thanks," I said, my voice steadier than I expected.  

"Not at all.  I am glad to have met someone with such--immaculate, yes?--taste in literature.  You are close by?"  I nodded.

"About twenty minutes that way," I pointed through the far wall.

"Excellent.  Then I expect to see you soon, yes?"   I nodded again, and he beamed.  "Brava!  Now, that I have taken up all this your time with talk of books, here,"  he slid one of the plump croissants into a thin paper bag and handed it over to me.  I took it eagerly and moved my hand to my sweater pocket for my wallet.  Before I could do any more than shift my weight, he had snatched the bag back and was glaring at me in mock severity.

"No, no!  Here is the bargain, my friend,"  he jerked his head to the microwave library, "I am in need of 'The Valley of Fear' still.  You have a copy of this?"

"Of course!"  

"Excellent!  You bring it for me tomorrow, then.  Words for breakfast, yes?"

"I think that sounds perfect."  I answered, wondering how I had made it through twenty-something years of existence without a croissant-dispensing bibliophile friend like this.

"Until then, my quixotic friend."