The Explosionist (7 page)

When Sophie fell quiet, Mikael rooted around in his pockets and dug out a waxed-paper packet of sandwiches.

“Cheese-and-tomato or fish paste?” he asked.

“Cheese-and-tomato, please,” Sophie said.

In silence they ate the sandwiches, which were squashed and soggy but extremely satisfying.

“Sophie,” Mikael said, when they had folded up the wrappers and tucked them into Sophie’s bag for later disposal, “you’re obviously leaving something out, something big. All that stuff you’ve been talking about, none of it’s much good, but it’s not enough by itself to have put you into such a state. No, not even the bombings,” he added.

Sophie squirmed on her seat, the words lodged like lumps of suet in her throat.

“It was a séance,” she said, steeling herself. “There was this awful medium and she had a peculiar message for me—for me personally, I mean, a sort of warning—and before that, I saw something that looked like a ghost in the mirror—”

“Hold on a minute,” Mikael said, putting up his hands.

Sophie braced herself for ridicule.

“Slow down, can’t you? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Start from the beginning and tell me the whole story.”

Sophie told him everything that had happened, her voice growing stronger as she saw his intent expression.

By the time she finished, he looked quite worried.

“Those mediums are really wicked,” he said, “preying on people’s weak side like that. It should be illegal to pretend to be able to contact the dead. Outright frauds, the whole lot of them.”

“It was the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen,” Sophie said. She would like to have believed the medium was a fraud, but if Mikael had been there, surely his skepticism would have been shaken. “Of course it’s ludicrous—great danger and a voyage over water and all that. But the way the medium asked for me beforehand so that I’d be sure she didn’t have any tricks up her sleeve—”

“What was her name again?”

“Mrs. Tansy: Euphemia Tansy, I think it was.”

“All right,” Mikael said. He jumped to his feet and pulled Sophie up after him. “We’ve got to look into this. It sounds to me as though someone may have put the wretched woman up to this business, and if that’s so, we should be able to find out who it was and what they wanted.”

“I’ve got her address,” Sophie said suddenly. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it sooner. Having an ally must be good for the brain. She dug through the bits of paper at the bottom of her satchel until she found the medium’s card, and handed it over to Mikael. Her hand brushed against that funny little metal iron in the process, but it seemed hardly worth mentioning.

“Excellent,” said Mikael, examining the address on the card. “I’ll go there right now, and you and I can meet on Sunday afternoon at the library so I can tell you what I’ve found out.”

He must have been able to tell Sophie was frightened, or he would have suggested she come with him. Though she supposed it was what she’d hoped for, she wasn’t sure how she felt about Mikael taking charge like this. What if Sophie lost all her self-reliance?

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” she said.

Mikael shrugged away her concern. “I’ll be fine,” he said in an untroubled way. “It’s good practice in case I turn out to be a detective when I’m older.”

“Do you want to be a detective?” Sophie asked. In December, it had been a fighter pilot, and the summer before, an engineer in the oil fields of Baku.

Mikael blushed and didn’t say anything, which made Sophie think he might really mean it this time. How interesting!
And how convenient for Sophie!

She told Mikael as much more as she could remember about the medium and what she had said, then noticed it was almost six o’clock. Peggy would be frantic.

“Oh dear, I must go,” she said, brushing off her skirt and settling the satchel back over her shoulders.

“I’ll see you on Sunday,” said Mikael.

They made their way down from the tower, then parted, Sophie hurrying downhill to the closest tram stop. If Mikael could find out more about the medium, she would be greatly in his debt.

As soon as she got home, Sophie remembered that Great-aunt Tabitha was out for supper, a regular engagement at the Women’s Spiritualism Club, and in the kitchen she found a note from Peggy saying she wouldn’t be back from the dentist until seven. A few months earlier Peggy’s metal fillings had begun picking up spirit voices, and when a long-dead servant from the Stevenson house down the road settled in and began to comment rudely on Peggy’s cooking, Peggy had hauled her life’s savings out from her mattress and gone to have all the old fillings replaced with the new plastic emulsion ones, which couldn’t act as receivers.

In other words, Sophie might have stayed out as long as she liked. She couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or offended by this evidence of her own insignificance.

A
FTER LUNCH ON
S
ATURDAY
Peggy sent Sophie out with instructions to get a bit of sun and fresh air and not show her face at home a minute before teatime. As Sophie was about to let herself out the front door, Peggy appeared in the hall, marched over, and motioned for Sophie to hand over her satchel. She opened it up and took out the detective novel tucked into the front pocket.

“Reading’s all very well in its place,” she said, holding the book beyond Sophie’s reach, “but it’s out and about I want you this afternoon, not sitting somewhere cramming your head full of rubbish. I’ll keep this for you in the kitchen, and you can have it again after tea.”

Sophie begged shamelessly, but Peggy wouldn’t relent,
though she did give Sophie a shilling before shooing her away from the house.

“And stay out of crowds!” Peggy called after Sophie, who waved to show she’d heard. Peggy was sure that as long as one was sensible, one would never find oneself on the spot when a bomb went off.

Sophie didn’t actively dislike spending time outdoors, but it was hard to know what to do once she was there. In the end she wandered along Heriot Row toward Broughton Street Lane, where she gravitated to the used bookseller in the appealingly seedy row of shops that included a secondhand wig retailer and a little photography studio whose windows advertised the services of Daguerreotype Mediums and Photographic Sitters. She browsed for a while in the bookshop and finally exchanged her shilling for two novels by Ibsen and Strindberg.

On her way out, Sophie stopped to give her last penny to the Veteran, whose injury didn’t stop him from wheeling himself all over town on his little cart. Sophie often saw him away from his usual post in front of the school, though she didn’t remember ever seeing him so close to her house before.

With no particular destination in mind, she crossed Leith Walk into London Road and entered the Terrace Gardens through the north gate, formerly wrought iron but now naked wood because the government had stripped the parks of metal
for the war-preparedness effort.

Sophie strolled along the yellow gravel path in search of a suitable bench, one colonized by neither the terrifying uniformed nannies with their grand perambulators nor the vagrants who slept in the park during the daytime and hung around the main railway station at night.

A sharp piece of stone lodged between Sophie’s heel and the inside of her shoe, and at the next bench she propped her foot on the seat and unbuckled the strap of her sandal. As she shook it out over the walk, she heard someone calling her name.

She looked up and saw Jean. It wasn’t surprising that Jean should be here—the gardens were only ten minutes’ walk from school, and fifth-and sixth-form girls often spent their free afternoons in the park when the weather was fine. The only surprise was to see her without Priscilla. Sophie said as much, and Jean flushed.

“Priscilla was supposed to come with me,” she admitted, “but we had a falling-out last night and she’s still furious.”

Though Sophie nodded, Jean seemed to feel further explanation was needed.

“It was all my fault,” she said, sounding guilty and miserable. “Priscilla had a letter from a boy she met over the Easter holidays, and I got upset when she said she wouldn’t show it to me. And then I said lots of awful things, and then she told
me I’d better find a new best friend if I couldn’t stop being such a jealous monster.”

Sophie reached across and patted the other girl’s hand. It was impossible not to feel for Jean; the unhappiness in her voice was palpable.

“I expect she didn’t mean it,” she told Jean. Priscilla wasn’t the type to bear a grudge.

“Yes, I know,” Jean said, gulping and swallowing, “but meanwhile I’m completely wretched, and the worst is knowing I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”

They sat in silence for a minute, Sophie wishing she were brave enough to invite Jean to do something with her instead. Something about the bond between Jean and Priscilla was so strong as to repel outsiders.

She sneaked a look at Jean and was intimidated afresh by the scowl on her face. Then she told herself not to be such a coward.

“What had you planned to do this afternoon?” she asked, trying to sound noncommittal.

Jean’s face lit up.

“We were going to go and look at the electric kitchen in Princes Street,” she said.

Sophie felt hopeful. Perhaps Jean would ask her to come along!

Then Jean slumped back down on the park bench.

“It won’t be much fun by myself,” she said, chucking a pebble at one of the pigeons. The birds flew up and away in a flurry of cries and feathers.

“I could come with you, if you’d like,” Sophie said, choosing her words carefully so as not to put Jean under any obligation.

Jean took Sophie’s hand in her own and squeezed it gratefully.

“I’d love you to come, Sophie,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to go for ages; it’s supposed to be lovely. I’d have asked you before, but I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

Even if one didn’t care about kitchens one way or the other (Sophie didn’t), it was certainly nice to feel wanted.

They left the park by the east gate and walked past the grand row of embassies along Regent Terrace until they passed the school, then wound their way through the monuments on the hill and down by way of Waterloo Place into Princes Street.

They stopped outside the showroom, Jean gazing into the windows while Sophie looked up and down the street. This was where the most recent bomb had gone off, but there were hardly any signs of damage. All the plate-glass windows had been replaced, and only the heap of flowers on the pavement in front of the Army and Navy Store told one that people had died here. Following some impulse she didn’t understand,
Sophie leaned down and picked up one of the flowers, which she tucked into the pocket of her satchel.

Next to Sophie, Jean’s breath was misting up the shop window.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” she said to Sophie.

Sophie reached for her pocket handkerchief to wipe away the mist.

“I’d like that for my mam,” Jean continued, pointing to an enormous electric cooker.

Everybody at school knew that Jean’s mother was a slave to housework as well as to Jean’s father, who was an awful miser. Jean’s godmother paid her school fees. The really monstrous thing was that Mr. Roberts refused to electrify the flat despite his being an electrical engineer who dined out every second Tuesday evening at the electricity lovers’ Dynamicables Club.

Suddenly Sophie thought of how unhappy Peggy would be to learn that she was right in the middle of the city’s most crowded shopping district. She shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

“Come on, then!” Jean cried, grabbing Sophie’s hand. They pushed open the door and made their way into the crowded shop. Two girls in black maid’s uniforms and spotless white caps and aprons walked around the room with trays of savories cooked in the electric oven, and Jean and Sophie sam
pled prunes wrapped in bacon and pigs-in-blankets before wandering to the back of the showroom, where an elegant woman had just taken a beautifully golden sponge cake out of the oven and was inviting members of the audience to lay their fingers on the cake’s perfect surface.

There was no doubt it looked a lovely cake, but it soon became clear that the woman wasn’t going to cut it up and distribute the pieces—perhaps it was needed for another electric cookery demonstration later that afternoon?—and the girls drifted to the only part of the showroom they had not yet explored, the Electric Arbor at the back of the shop. Here fronds of synthetic greenery had been draped over the really expensive appliances.

“But you said it could be delivered later this week,” cried a large lady in a fur jacket that made her look like a walrus. She didn’t notice Sophie and Jean gazing at her from the other side of a massive freezer chest.

“That was the ordinary model,” the shop assistant said. “With the special features you’ve requested, madam, it will be a month or more before the manufacturer can ship it.”

“I don’t want to wait a month!” the lady snapped. “I want it right now!”

“Isn’t she awful?” Sophie whispered to Jean. It was curiously enjoyable to see a grown-up person behaving so badly in public.

“Yes,” Jean said, “but Sophie, isn’t there something familiar about her?”

Meanwhile the lady continued to harangue the helpless assistant. “Without the self-cleaning oven and the automatic timer with its on-off feature,” she complained, “I really might as well buy an ordinary model at the Co-Op!”

“I’m very sorry, madam,” said the shop assistant, flustered. “I can promise you—”

“Sophie?” Jean said, her voice wavering between horror and laughter.

“Yes?”

“I think that woman’s Miss Rawlins!”

Sophie frowned. There had certainly been something familiar about the shopper’s face and figure. But how could their old chemistry teacher—the one Mr. Petersen had replaced in March when she left to be married—have turned into this fur-clad monstrosity?

“She must have married a millionaire!” Jean exclaimed.

“Let’s wait for her to come back out,” Sophie said, almost certain that Jean was mistaken. “It might just be, oh, I don’t know, her evil twin or something like that.”

They hung around looking at the vacuum cleaners and electric hair dryers until the lady emerged from the manager’s office, still hanging on his arm but now clutching her checkbook.

Then they edged closer to the counter, where the lady, still oblivious to their surveillance, brandished a massive gold-and-onyx reservoir pen over her checkbook. They could see the gold bangles on her wrists and a pair of diamond earrings hanging from her ears, earrings that Sophie’s great-aunt would certainly have called unsuitable.

They saw the name on the checkbook: Miss Ailsa Rawlins.

“It’s her,” Sophie said under her breath.

At that moment their former teacher looked up and saw the two girls. She drew her coat more tightly around her and sniffed. “Jean Roberts and Sophie Hunter,” she said repressively.

It wasn’t exactly a warm greeting.

“Good afternoon, Miss Rawlins,” Jean said politely.

“Good afternoon,” Sophie echoed, barely suppressing a fit of giggles.

“What are the two of you doing inside on such a fine day?” Miss Rawlins asked them. “Have you already had your constitutional?”

Jean and Sophie looked at each other, then shook their heads. Sophie dragged Jean away before they could disgrace themselves by collapsing into outright laughter. They broke into a run outside, ending up breathless in the grass below the monument to Walter Scott.

“Our constitutional!” Sophie said, once they’d caught their breath.

Just the word itself was enough to send them both into fits of laughter.

“Strange, though,” Sophie added thoughtfully. “What exactly do you think she was doing in that shop?”

“Well, obviously, buying an electric cooker! It’s natural to get everything fitted out new when you’re married, isn’t it?”

“She left school to be married, you’re quite right. But why is she still writing checks in her maiden name?” Sophie sat up and brushed the grass off her hair. “Don’t most married women change their names and share a bank account with their husbands?”

Jean shrugged. “Perhaps she kept the account she had before they were married,” she said, not very interested in this line of speculation. Then she perked up. “Perhaps the cooker’s a wedding present for her new husband!”

Sophie shook her head. “I don’t think she’s married yet,” she said firmly. Something was nagging at her, but she couldn’t think what. “She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring just now. Bangles, yes, and earrings and some sort of necklace, but the ring finger was bare.”

Jean stared at Sophie.

“It couldn’t—”

“She couldn’t—”

They both spoke at once. Then Sophie succumbed to an uncontrollable fit of giggles.

“I don’t like to say it,” she said, almost choking with laughter, “but I think Miss Rawlins may have become a kept woman!”

“No!” said Jean, her eyes going wide with surprise. “How completely extraordinary…”

“Yes, people do the strangest things,” Sophie said, suddenly grave.

“It’s romantic, though, isn’t it?” said Jean, sounding as if she wanted reassurance.

“Oh, it’s not strange that Miss Rawlins would prefer being someone’s kept mistress to teaching chemistry,” Sophie said, fighting another attack of laughter. “But it’s most peculiar that a millionaire should choose someone like Miss Rawlins to put in his love nest, isn’t it?”

The two girls shrieked. For an instant Sophie felt that all was right with the world, what with the warm sun and the smell of grass and roses and the delicious prospect of spreading such an excellent piece of gossip back at school. Then a cloud passed over the sun and she shivered.

“We’d best get a move on,” Jean said, struck by the same solemnity that had just come over Sophie.

Jean had to pick up a few things at the shops for her mother, who had telephoned school in the morning to say that she was stuck in the flat with the baby on account of colic.

“Do you want to come with me?” she asked Sophie. “I
must be back at school by five o’clock; Miss Bagshawe wouldn’t give me a longer furlough, but she saw I couldn’t leave my mother in the lurch.”

Peggy wouldn’t expect Sophie home for another hour. It was strange how nice it felt to be invited to do something quite ordinary; the shivery distress of a minute ago was gone, and she welcomed the prospect of more companionship.

First they picked up a cottage loaf at the bakery, lingering to peer at the fresh floury baps and iced buns and Sally Lunns bursting with currants.

“Have you any extra money?” Jean was often hungry, but she had to pay for the shopping with her own pocket money, which left nothing over for indulgences.

“No,” Sophie said, not quite sorry enough to regret the Ibsen and Strindberg in her satchel. If she hadn’t run into Jean, she could have begun one of them this afternoon…. Shecast a guilty look at Jean as if the other girl could read her mind.