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."

"A Day Once Dawned, And It Was Beautiful": North London, Present Day

As will become readily apparent quite quickly, I have a slightly imperfectly-wired brain. It functions quite well on the theoretical and anachronistic level, and it can achieve some pretty impressive things under pressure. However, in any given routine situation, it has a tendency to some rather bizarre reactions. Take the morning after that first class, for example. A normal person, on being awakened by a phone ringing in the dark of an autumn morning, would rise and answer said phone, with or without a due sense of impending catastrophe.

Not I. By the time I was actually aware of what had woken me, I was out of bed, across the room and furiously flipping away the light switch until the strobe-effect of the overhead light bulb finally forced me into consciousness. I turned off the light, stumbled back to the night table, and flipped open my mobile phone, which was blinking up at me indignantly.

"Hello?"

"Kipling? Are you alright?"

"Mitch?"

"Yes"

"Are you on fire?"

"Umm...no."

"Then why are you calling at 6:30 in the morning?"

"Oh. I, uh, I wanted to know if it would be alright if I practized for a bit. I didn't want to wake you."

I sat on the edge of the bed, resting my now pounding head in my free hand.

"You woke me up to make sure that playing the violin wouldn't wake me up."

"Right, I....oh. Sorry."

I couldn't help but chuckle, "It's ok. In the future, though, I can barely hear you anyway, so don't worry about it."

"Ok. When do you have to be in to work?"

"About 12:30. Why?"

"Good. I have to leave by 10, so get ready and put some coffee on and I'll be round with the toast at, say, 9?"

"Sounds good."

Mitch is my next-door neighbor, and fellow Economic Orphan. His aunt and uncle own the house, but are receiving a large stipend to move out of London for their work, and thus we are both squatters while our homes refuse to attract any attention on the market. He works as an usher some theater in the City and can usually be seen on dark days playing his violin either in tube stations or near Covent Garden. We had become friends about 6 weeks earlier, just after I moved in, when I had unwittingly let a pigeon into my kitchen and was too petrified to do anything outside of waiving a badminton net in its general direction and yell very loudly. It turns out that he has a passion for making toast (it might be the only thing he knows how to make, come to think of it, but at least he enjoys it), so we had most of our breakfasts together. This enterprise was rendered even easier by some sort of subterranean tunnel that connected our two basements, and if you had the courage to brave the clammy, spider-kingdom of my basement, and the labyrinth of discarded toys and gardening implements in his, it was actually incredibly convenient, especially as neither of us was very good with grocery shopping.

I took a shower and cobbled together an acceptable wardrobe out of the still-clean options in the drawers, and was just dumping coffee grounds into my inherited French press when I heard three sharp raps coming from under the floorboards at my feet.  Mitch and I both felt that the scraping and shuffling noises that accompanied our trans-domestic journeys were unnerving enough that we tied a broom to a hook in the ceiling between the to houses in order to alert the other of a friendly (and non-spectral) arrival.  Seconds later, there were shuffling footfalls on the stairs and the door creaked open, allowing the smell of warm toast to flood the kitchen, followed soon by Mitch and his tray.

The sight of Mitchell Berenson could inspire maternal instincts in a stone. He is small and impossibly thin--not rakish, not wiry--just about as lean as it would seem possible to be and still remain functioning.  In fact, he eats more than I do, but somehow it never seems to be enough to get him to cast a shadow.  He has wide blueish-gray eyes that always seem somewhere between giggling and weeping, a smile that makes him look positively angelic, and a head of blackish hair that has a personality unto itself and, at the current moment, was swarming over to the left side of his head in a damp, tangled mess.  He was wearing a pair of dark jeans that were held on by a belt with makeshift holes bored along its length and a bleu sweater that probably would have fit me well.  On him, it was engulfing.

"How did the practice go?"  I asked, snatching the topmost piece on the stack and going to work with the butter and jam.

"Amazing.  Well, I mean, I've still got ages to go, but the piece!  Aw Kip, it's incredible!"  He sat folded himself up at the table with a dancer's grace and began slathering.  "It was written for Kiesler's fiance and it--this sounds absurd, but--you can hear the love in it."  A shower of crumbs scattered on the table. 

"Sounds amazing," I said, putting the coffee pot in front of him and taking a stool opposite.

"It is.  I worked with a guy once--brilliant.  A total drunk, but brilliant all the same.  Anyway, he was convinced that love was like energy.  You know, in science, how, like, energy can never be decreased?  It's always there, just not always--in motion, like?"  I nodded, trying to keep up with the speed of his monologue.  "Anyways, he used to say that when a piece was written, the emotion that went into it, the love, the anger, the hate--well, you know what I mean.  Anyway, that whatever inspired the piece went into it and became part of it.  That it became the energy of the piece, like.  And when you play it, that energy is what drives it."

"That's beautiful."

"I know.  Unfortunately, he was completely out of his head on bourbon when he told me that, so I don't know how much stock to put in it, but it's a nice story all the same."

"I like it, bourbon or otherwise."

Possessions: North London, 1895

Emily--he always called her Emily, in his head, least ways.  If nothing else, they could both agree that she could never be 'Mother', but any other kind of formal title seemed equally ludicrous for someone so fundamentally weak, so frivolous and petty as to be already beneath his growing contempt.  Emily, then, was nestled in a rocking chair when he and Tabitha were ushered in by one of the housemaids.  She wore something shapeless and rosy-pink with frantic profusions of lace at her wrists and throat and was wrapped in the old quilt from Tabitha's linen cupboard, another crescendo of pink and rose and lace.  He looked sideways at Tabitha, herself an echo of her Mother--and here the title suited admirably--in her pink frock and frizzy halo of golden urls, her plump lips open in surprise and her gray-green eyes blinking rapidly.  She clasped her hands together under her pudgy little chin in a confused ecstasy of excitement.

"Oh Mamma!  Is this the new little baby for us?"  Emily looked up, her gaze warming at the sound of her child's voice.

"Yes, Darling.  A new little girl for you to play with and care for.  Would you like to see her?"

It was only then that he realized that the quilt was not for Emily, but was tucked around something in her arms.  The Baby.

Tabitha tripped lightly to her Mother's chair and peered over her arms into the swaddled thing that lay therein.

"Oh!  Mamma!"  There was a pause between the two words that made him look up quickly, "She's so--"   had he imagined it, or was there a flash of--what?  Panic?  In her cherubic face?  "--delicate!  She's lovely!  Just like a little doll!"  She looked up at her Mother, who smiled back in pleasure.  Tabitha flushed and smiled back, her eyes focused on nothing in particular.  Perhaps he was mistaken, but he was nearly certain that Tabitha had just told her first lie.

Emily raised her head, but did not turn.  "Would you like to see her--Lucifer?"  Her voice wasn't quite as harsh as usual.  More weary than resentful as she muttered through his name.  He stepped over to the other side of the chair, aware of Tabitha's wide-open eyes on his face, searching his expression for some kind of reaction, a clue as to what she should be doing next.  It really was a pity, he thought fleetingly, Tabitha wasn't as bad as the rest.  She had definite potential, but she also had that weakness, that blight she had contracted from her Mother that she would never escape.  He could see a kind of fear in her face that he couldn't understand, and knew that she needed him to tell her how to proceed, just as she needed him to hold her hand when they went for walks and guide her through all the situations that her natural beauty and grace couldn't confront for her.  Her gave her a little crooked grin and her face relaxed just a bit as she stepped back from the chair.

Careful not to touch Emily in the slightest way, he tilted his head over her elbow and peered down, right into the face of the new little human.

It was nothing of the slightest importance.  The baby might very well have been disturbed by the activity around her.  She might have been hungry.  She might have felt the breath nearer to her new skin.  Regardless, she chose that instant to open her eyes--already just a bit too large for her face.  They flitted about, unseeing, oblivious to the Mother's soft sigh and Tabitha's smothered gasp, before locking on the face above her.

He heard something snap.  Unable to look up for fear that Emily would whisk the little thing away to a place of safety or that Tabitha would cry, he couldn't understand how it was that no one moved, no one reacted at all, when his own ears were ringing with the echo of it and his breath was caught in his throat with fright.  Even the baby didn't react.  She stared up at him without blinking.  The room rang faintly, each surface vibrating softly with the still-tangible force that no one else had even noticed.  

After a time, his surprise over this universal deafness would wear off.  It would take years longer, however, before he would become accustomed to the shock of the sound in his own ears.

He was aware that Tabitha had said something, but his head hadn't yet cleared enough to make out what it was.  He didn't look up.  He didn't think he could bear to look at Tabitha just now, but he wasn't sure why.

"Alice," Emily's voice cut through, crashing against his already shaken nerves.

"It's lovely," Tabitha sighed.

"It was your father's mother's name," she said, as if by way of an apology.

"What do you think, Lucifer?"  Tabitha's voice carried a hint of hysteria, the same voice she used to ask if he was still awake after the lights had been put out.

"Yes, what do you--not so close!"  Emily tilted herself away from him, shielding the Baby from those eyes, and instantly felt ridiculous and humiliated for having done so.  Try as she would, though, she couldn't help feeling that The Child--she abhorred his name, one of Nathaniel's perverse jokes that she could never accept--would somehow contaminate her child.  Children, now.  He didn't move as she flinched back, keeping those horrid dark eyes fixed on little Alice--another of Nathaniel's abominable choices of names, but at least this one was merely mundane.  She sighed and tried again.

"What do you think of Tabitha's new little sister?"  She thought the point was subtle enough, but he suddenly looked directly at her, turning those eyes on her for the first time in as long as she could recall.  They were cold and composed and, in his eight-year-old face, were fierce enough to make her instinctively cling a little tighter to the seems of the quilt beneath her fingers.

"She's mine."  He said it in a chill whisper.  Emily opened her lips, but no reply came.

"Of course!"  chirped Tabitha, sensing something terrible, like a thunderstorm, suddenly in the air.  "Of course she's your sister, as well, Lucy!  She's our little baby sister--Alice."

"Of course."  Emily managed a small smile, which gave her the strength to meet his eyes.  But he had already turned his attention back to the Baby.  

"Take Tabitha downstairs and play 'til supper.  I need to rest."  

The Boy calmly walked over to Tabitha and took her hand--Emily shuddered at how eagerly her girl reached for this little stranger--and guided her from the room.  As he exited, he turned his head, fixing his eyes once again on the Mother with a look so fierce, so forceful, that Emily was left in no doubt what his bizarre statement had truly meant.

The Beginning: North London, Present Day

So, having decided that a stationary life of reasonable prosperity and routine was far too simple, I had recently left a job that afforded me not only mental stimulation and friendly interchange (as well as a few interesting little problems that may or may not have involved the Boston and Cambridge Police Departments), but also enough money to pay rent, sleep and buy books and take a stab at doing the job I had always wanted---becoming a professional student.  With my house and cats in good hands for the next year, I had managed to get accepted to a highly-accredited institution and took my leave of the western Atlantic shores. 

I had intended to rent some rooms from a family but, upon arrival, I learned that they had decided to move to the country "in order to raise the children in a proper environment".  I was willing to overlook their abandoning me in an apparently improper environment when I learned that I had full run of the house for the same rent--at least, until the property sold.  "Which could be weeks, dear, or it could be months, in this economy.  Heaven's knows we're stuck with it until we can shift it, so we'd be ever so happy to know that you're here, keeping the drunks away from the stoop."  And with these heart-warming wishes, I was left to my own devices.

A week after my arrival, I made the grand journey from Stoke Newington to school for the first time, and was directed to the History Department, which was on the top floor of the building.  "It's just been added on,"  said the woman at the information desk, batting her overly made-up lashes, "They've not got a lift up to there, yet, so take that lift up to the seventh floor, and then you'll have to walk up the last flight."  She neglected to mention that of the four elevators in the lobby, only on was working, and fitfully at that, so it was almost fifteen minutes before I arrived at the door to the History Department (luckily, in my first-day jitters, I'd arrived half an hour early).  

I sat down at one of the state-of-the-art portable plywood and cork desks and tried to appear invisible. There was an older man sitting a row away from me who was glowering at me over his shoulder, so I was fairly sure my plan wasn't working. Trying now for an air of intellectual indifference, I reached into my bag and pulled out my date planner, flipping to the date and trying to think of something worth writing. He man sighed and turned back to his book, while I rooted around for a pen. As I began doodling around the page of my next birthday, a small girl with curly dark hair and needlessly pointy-toed boots clattered into the room, the charms on her bag jingling in syncopation to her footfalls. The man gave her a similarly withering glare, and I couldn't help but smile, both at his mow comic anger and in relief that it was no longer directed at me. As he turned back, his eyes didn't even pick me out from the cork dividers around me. I had achieved invisibility. I turned the pages on my date book, looking for a day with enough significance to warrant a note. Alighting on my father's birthday, I bent over the page, only to find that there was no longer any ink flowing into the pen. Gritting my teeth in irritation, I gave the pen an overly-demonstrative shake that sent droplets of ink splattering across the page and the desk and the pen cap flying back over my head, where it hit the wall and skittered across the floor. Instinctively, I ducked from the gaze of the man, whose head was already turning back in my direction, trying at the same time to see where the damned cap had stopped.
"I think you dropped this." I turned, and found my eyes were on level with a hand, in which was resting my errant pen cap. I reached out, briefly noting that the hand was attached to an arm, which connected it to a torso, all of which was encased in a green sweater.
"Thanks," I mumbled, and looked at the head that was poking out of the top of the sweater. It had a mess of sunshine-brown hair that fell over a pale forehead, and deep brown eyes that were crinkled in a smile.
"Are you here for the imperialism and war seminar?" It was a nice face, with a disarmingly bright smile. As he straightened up, I realized he was fairly tall, almost lanky, wearing some kind of gray tweedy pants. He had a brown leather satchel that I immediately coveted and as he sat down at the desk beside me, I realized I had not yet answered.
"Umm, yeah. You?" I kept it short in order to keep from tripping over my own words.
"I am indeed. Are you in the history department?" He asked, as if to imply he wasn't. Which I could believe. Honestly, he was too good-looking to be an historian.
"I am as of today. Aren't you?" He shook his head, renewing the smile. I grinned back, more out of self-satisfaction than anything else.
"English Department, actually. This class is--well, useful for my dissertation."
"I see."
"I'm Ned, by the way."
"Nice to meet you. Is Ned short for Edward?" He ducked his head and grinned up at me through his lashes.
"Not quite. It's, uh...it's Damien, actually."
"Really? I like that."
"Most people think it's the strangest name they've ever heard."
"Oh, I don't know about that."
"Wait, are you here for the War and Imperialism course?" It was the small dark-haired girl, who was jingling and clacking back towards us. She had a thin voice and I could tell she was an up-talker, despite her question. Her face wrinkled up into a smile, but it wasn't wholly genuine, and therefore made me distinctly nervous.
"Apparently we are." He turned to smile at her as two more people, a man with graying hair and a girl about my age.
"Are you lot here for the War and Imperialism course?" the new girl asked. She was wide-eyed and slender with brown hair and wearing an enormous woolen hat despite the late September heat. She slumped into the chair on my other side and her book bag thumped to the floor. The older man let out an audible huff, rose to his feet and stomped out, letting the door slam behind him.
"Looks like we're already making friends here," the man with gray hair smiled with a slight air of smugness. As he spoke, the door to one of the offices opened and Professor Bryson, the course convener, in a green tweed suit and deafeningly loud green paisley shirt, ushered us inside. Once we had performed the awkward dance of assembling ourselves in the chairs that were crammed into what turned out to be Professor Bryson's office, we began to introduce ourselves. The wide-eyed girl was named Lydia, the man with the gray hair was named Sam, and he had just retired from a career in stock management. The up-talker was named Caroline, and then came Ned's turn. As each person mentioned their name, Professor Bryson ticked off their name on his list.
"Hi," said Ned, to no one in particular, "I'm Ned. I did my undergraduate work at Queen's College in Belfast, and I'm actually studying in the English department, working on the history of literature." Caroline had leaned forward while he spoke, her eyebrows traveling ever further skywards and her smile spreading eagerly across her face.
"Great, thanks, Ned." Said Prof. Bryson, adjusting his glasses and turning to me, "And you are..."
"Hi," I said, trying to find a place to look. "I'm Kip."
"Kim?" Bryson's forehead wrinkled and he squinted at the list in his lap.
"No--Kip. With a 'p'. My full name is Kipling." Why, after 25 years, I really still felt the need to blush over my name was utterly beyond me, but I felt my ears starting to burn.
"Ah yes..." Bryson made a tick on his list, and looked at me with mingled interest and..pity? I looked sideways and saw Ned's eyebrows arching. I made a stab at speech, figuring I had remarkably little to lose.
"I'm studying the First World War, actually. I've been working in archives back home in Boston for a few years and decided to come back to school."
"Well, thank you, Kipling."  Bryson smiled at me as if he had just performed some elaborate ritual in a foreign language and turned back to the group, launching into an explanation of the course.  

The meeting was mercifully brief, and after some brief chat over books and essays, we all began plodding down the endless flights of stairs down to the lobby.  I had started walking with Lydia and Caroline, but soon ended up trailing behind, as they began planning to go out to a club later that night.  

I heard an echo of footsteps behind me and leaned into the railing in the expectation of being passed.

"So, Kipling, eh?"  It was Ned, his satchel over his shoulder and an amused grin slung across his face.

"I told you you're name wasn't that strange."  I said, finding it impossible not to smile back.

"I guess not.  Where did, that is, how--"

"My dad has a killer sense of humor."

"Hmmm...there's a story there, I think."  We reached the lobby and crossed in front to hold the door to the street open for me.  "You free after class on Thursday?"

"Umm--yeah.  I don't see why not."

"Good.  Until then."  And with a final flashing grin, he waved and headed off to the tube station.  

I was still blushing when I got on the bus twenty minutes later.

Ashes to Ashes: North London, 1890

"Oh, honestly, Nathaniel! You can't be serious!"
Why not, my dear? The little fellow clearly needs a home."
"Children aren't like stray dogs, Nathaniel. You can't just take him in and let him eat table scraps. Think about what everyone will say when it all comes out!"
"Emily, the boy's parents are dead. Any life he may have had is gone, is burned. If not us, it's an orphanage, then most likely a workhouse and a short brutal little life that would mean nothing. With us, he has a chance. We can afford it, my dear. Even...even if there are more to come...We can certainly afford to keep him and raise him for some profession. You can't really want to send him away, can you?"
She stared at the small figure in the thin blanket for several silent moments.
"He's not my son."
"No, he isn't. But he was someone's son. He was Claridge's son, and out of respect for him, I think the least we can do is to make sure his only son is provided for."
"Oh, but Nathaniel, look at him."
"What about him?"
"Well, he's odd, isn't he? I didn't think baby's eyes were supposed to be so dark! Aren't all babies supposed to have blue eyes when they are that young?"
"Well now, you can't really blame him if his eyes are the way they are? I admit, they are a trifle strange, but I would already guess he's seen enough with them to turn them that dark. I don't know how he managed to survive that fire. In any case, it's nothing to signify." These last words were spoken more to the infant in his arms, who blinked up at him with those odd black eyes.
"Well, if you really feel that strongly about it..." She bit her lip in obvious disapproval.
"I do. The lad was clearly preserved for some sort of greatness. The least we can do is give him a chance to claim his destiny."

Introductions

I've been told that before we get started, it would be wise to introduce myself to you. 

 

I would rather read than eat.  

I have been forced to do so on more than one occasion when a spree left me with hardly enough for rent, let alone food money for the week.

I live near the beach in Beverly, because rose bushes and people fare better with sea breezes.  And I love the Cabot Street Cinema more than I probably should.

I have two cats, named Quentin and Flora, who I found in a shelter, batting at each other through the mesh of their separate pens and knew that we were destined to be together.

I also have a seagull named Dmetri, who crashed landed on my front lawn about a year ago with a mangled wing.  Once the MSPCA gave him a clean bill of health and tagged him as a Weather Bird (Bird DM3, hence the name), he found his way back, and now winters on my roof.  

I am a trained archivist and 'preservation specialist', which means, when all is boiled down and refined, that I preserve and repair books.  Which, considering that I like books far more than people, is a perfect job.  I trained with a blind bookmaker in Boston who taught me to detect mold and cheap bindings through smell and water damage and paper quality through touch.  It's just as effective, but does get you some pretty odd looks at antiques markets.  Which is second only to the looks I get when I tell people my name.

I should explain that, while it's on my mind.  I can't expect you to believe the rest of this if you spend half the time believing I've made up some kind of ridiculous pseudonym (which, if I wanted one, would be obscenely conventional).  My great uncle, Danny, lived near Rudyard and family in Devon until around the First World War.  He was devastated by the news of John Kipling's death and wrote home to my great-grandfather "How sad it is that the Kipling name will so soon now die away."  Fast forward some sixty eight years, with the birth of a new Philby, who, medical expertise, family convictions and some good old Irish superstition said should have been male.  When the next Patrick Thomas Philby turned out instead to be female, there ensued two days of panic, while the clan searched for a name for this unforeseen circumstance.  Then Mad Uncle Pat (not to be confused with Old Uncle Pat or Uncle Pat from Dundalk) remembered Danny's letter.  And in a fit of humor until then and as yet unparalleled, my father decided that, indeed, the Kipling name should live on.

And so it was, and so it is.  And now, on to what will be...which, I promise, will be far more interesting...