Inexpressible Island. Paullina Simons

      “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?” Cupping her face, he tilts his head to her. They kiss again. They kiss full on, and they don’t stop.

      Tottering, she finally finds the strength to push him away. It’s impossible to talk above the roar of the crowd. Julian and the girl have given the embattled citizens something better than a play, something better than comedy. They have given them life masquerading as art, life real and poignant, an eerie revelry blooming in the dungeons below the blacked-out city.

      “Hey, you, why don’t you get off there,” a tall, unhappy-looking guy calls out, elbowing his way forward. “I mean—get off that door. Two people are not supposed to be on it. It’s not safe. Are you all right, my dove?”

      Julian’s arm is still around the dove’s waist. Dove pulls away, brushes Julian off her sweater.

      “I’m fine, Finch,” she says. “Finch, this is …”

      Julian stands. She knows his name. He’s not going to help her with it.

      “Julian?” she says uncertainly.

      “Yes. Julian.”

      Julian and Finch do not shake hands. Julian brings his right hand behind his back to hide his missing fingers. Before he can ask dove what her actual name is, or what her connection is to the gangly humorless fellow, Finch asks where Julian has come from. He simply might mean tonight, but Julian replies with “Wales!” as confidently as he would say Simi Valley.

      “Oh, my goodness,” the girl exclaims. “Finch, another Welshman! I’m gobsmacked. Finch is from a small city called Bangor. Where are you from, Julian?”

      But of course Finch would be from damned Bangor. The only place Julian knows besides Bangor and Cardiff, which is too big and easily disproven, is Rhossili, where Edgar Evans hailed from. So that’s what he tells them. Rhossili.

      Wouldn’t you know it, Finch’s entire family hailed from Rhossili! For some reason this pleases the girl tremendously, though it doesn’t please either Finch or Julian remotely.

      “I haven’t been back for years,” Julian says.

      “I should think not,” Finch says, “because you don’t sound at all like a Welshman.” Though Finch is probably thirty, he looks as if he shaves sporadically at best. His short hair is carefully parted to the side, and his triangular brown eyes are intense and hostile.

      “Yes, lost my accent—”

      “You sound almost American, frankly.”

      “Don’t know what that’s about. Have the Americans come to London …?”

      “Maria and I are getting married,” Finch blurts, “at Christmas.”

      Look how much information Julian has gathered from just one short sentence. All sentences should be so brief and informative. Her name is Maria. She is getting married. To the annoyed string bean named Finch. At Christmas.

      “Well, Finch,” Maria says, “let’s not count our chickens just yet. It’s almost two months away. There’s a war to get through between now and then. Plus, I’m still waiting for that ring you promised.”

      “I told you I’ll get it, dove. Now come,” Finch says, extending his hand. “Don’t stand on that thing with him. Look, it’s teetering. You will fall. Remember last week? You almost fell.”

      She takes his hand and jumps down, turning back to Julian. “Do you want to come meet our friends?”

      “Would love to.”

      Finch yanks her hand with irritation.

      “What, Finch?” she says. “We can’t be impolite.”

      “Why not? We don’t know him!”

      An older woman stops Julian, grabbing him by the elbows. “Young man, you were terrific,” she says, squeezing him approvingly. “You gave us all quite a stir—why, me and my friends was saying we haven’t felt so aquiver since the Great War when we was young women ourselves. Where did you learn to act like that?”

      “Who says I was acting?” Julian says. Both Finch and Maria spin around to stare at him in the tunneled darkness.

      “I don’t like that man,” Julian hears Finch say to her as they walk down the platform. “I don’t like him at all. I have a good mind to deck him.”

      “Finch, calm down. It’s in good fun. He’s just playing with you. Do you want him to continue trying to get under your skin? Keep this up.”

      “Kissing you like that was playing with me? Who does he think he is?”

      “That was acting, Finch.”

      “You heard him, he said it wasn’t. And I didn’t know that Oscar Wilde called for that sort of passionate … acting.”

      “What you don’t know is a lot, Finch.”

      “I have a good mind to deck him. Why are you laughing, dove?”

      “I wasn’t laughing. I was nodding.”

      “I could do it. You don’t think I could do it? I could. I played a fighter in Jack Dempsey’s Life last year, remember? I know the moves. And what’s he going to do? He’s crippled like Wild.”

      “Yes, Wild will love him.”

       5

       Wild

      ADJACENT TO THE MAIN PASSAGEWAY BETWEEN TWO SUBWAY platforms is a small secondary walkway, rarely used. There, Julian comes face to face with a group of vagabonds who have made themselves an abode in the Underground. A dozen people, women and men, young and old, in suits and dregs, sit on stools and benches or lie across the half dozen bunks that line the walls. A bony twentysomething woman sits in an armchair at a wooden table, doing a jigsaw puzzle. Four or five kerosene lamps hang off the bunks; there’s a bookshelf, a clothes line, a coat stand; boots on the floor, purses and bags; a large oval mirror propped up against a wall; scarves and hats draping the posts of the beds; and weary faces staring curiously at Julian.

      “Who the bloody hell are you, mate?” says a grinning blond man, stepping up to Julian. “You nearly gave our Finch a heart attack with your kissing. Well done!” The man is in his early thirties, floppy haired, good looking, but missing most of his right arm. The sweater hangs loose above his elbow. He gives Julian his left hand to shake. Gratefully Julian stretches out his own left hand.

      “I’m Wild,” the smiling man says. Julian is not sure if he is hearing a name or an adjective. The man doesn’t elaborate. He is fit and strong, able-bodied in every way except for the missing arm. “How do you know Folgate?”

      “Is that her last name?”

      “Wild, leave him alone,” Maria says. “Stop interrogating him. Let him meet the rest of the gang before the siren goes.”

      “Is the siren going?” Julian asks. He wishes for no sirens. He wishes for it to be 1942 or 1943, after the terrible beginning and before the terrible end, somewhere in the drudging middle. Please, no sirens.

      “Fine, Folgate,” Wild says, “but I’m going to introduce him, not you. You are atrociously long-winded, as if there isn’t a war on. Listen up, everybody!” he yells. “We have a new member …”

      Finch protests. “No, we don’t!”

      “Julian, gang. Gang, Julian.” Self-satisfied, Wild turns to Maria. “That’s how it’s done.”

      Rolling her eyes, she pushes him in the chest.