Read Online Riptide (aka Bluffing Mr. Churchill) by John Lawton - Free Book Online

eastwards, and found himself an hour later upon one of the Thames bridges. The one by the
Houses of Parliament that led to the big hospital on the southern bank. He could not remember its name, if he ever knew it.
    Parliament had been hit. It was smouldering and smoking fiercely. He wondered what the English felt. How would he feel if the Capitol had been blasted, the White House burnt? An Englishman told
him. Just when he needed a native there was one ready to hand, drifting along the bridge from the opposite direction, pinstripe suit hastily pulled on over inch-stripe pyjamas – he could see
the red and white flannelette sticking out from the cuffs, draped over sockless shoes like ludicrous spats. He too had neither washed nor shaved, and maybe not slept, he was eye-bleary and
chin-fuzzy. He stared about him, another man in or out of the dream. He and Cal all but collided, back to back.
    This city now doth, like a garment, wear
    The beauty of the morning; silent, bare.
    Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples
    lie Open to the fields and to the sky.
    Cal took a stab at it. ‘Byron?’
    ‘Wordsworth. Upon Westminster Bridge . 1802. I don’t think he meant “open to the sky” to sound quite so vulnerable as it does today, what?’
    ‘I guess not,’ Cal replied.
    ‘You’re an American?’
    ‘I’m not wearing the uniform for fancy dress.’
    ‘Eh? What? No. I mean, yes. Of course not. Sorry, there are so many uniforms in London these days. ARP, Home Guard, Heavy Rescue, Free French, Free Poles . . .’
    ‘Free Americans?’
    ‘Are you?’
    ‘Just a joke,’ said Cal.
    ‘No but seriously, are you?’
    ‘Am I what?’
    ‘Here. I mean here to fight? “ Lafayette nous sommes ici ” and all that . . . whatever it was Pershing said?’
    Cal was astounded by the question. Did he think America had quietly and unobtrusively declared war on Germany? What answer did the man want? That he’d seen Gelbroaster unilaterally declare
war only last night? That the rest of the nation might take a while to catch up with an old lunatic from Arkansas? Who would believe him? Or was he, a sockless civilian in jimjams, giving Cal, a
man in uniform, the white feather? Was age – a man of fifty-five or so addressing a man of twenty-nine – was age the gulf between them, rather than nationality?
    ‘I’m with the embassy,’ he said, and knew it sounded like a cop-out, a truly lame remark.
    ‘The embassy?’
    He paused, looked about him.
    ‘I see,’ he said, with no sense arising in Cal that he saw anything but the devastation of the Mother of Parliaments that was bringing tears to the corner of each eye. He brushed
them away and without looking at Cal said, ‘You will excuse me, won’t you,’ and walked slowly back the way he had come, towards the great orange haze south of the Thames, the
false dawn of conflagration. London burning.

§ 12
    Reggie slept in on Sunday. He had no curiosity about the raid. Of course it had sounded like a big one, but when you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. He had
declined to take advantage of the Savoy’s bomb-proof shelter, had bunged wax ear-plugs into his ears, several shots of malt whisky down his throat, and slept the sleep of the brave, oblivious
to the booming guns and falling bombs. He awoke late, took breakfast in bed, soaked leisurely in his bath by cheating on the national bathwater limit and about noon felt ready for a stroll.
    He headed for Chester Street, as he did once in every while, to gaze at the ruins of his house. He had bought the house in 1927 with the last of his inheritance. It was, in a way, his dream
house, in that he had dreamt of such a house long before he was in a position to buy one – had dreamt about it when he was away from it, and dreamt about it now he had lost it. It fulfilled,
and simultaneously thwarted, a persistent adolescent fantasy – that he would one day find the perfect place and somehow lose it – a bit like the lost domain