“I’m sure he loves you very much, Molly,” said Oliver.
“But he left without a word to me. No telegram, no letter. It’s... it’s inexcusable. And my poor mother’s in a sanatorium. I have no home. I have nothing, only the clothes on my back, literally.” She paused and glanced over at Charlie, who was watching her closely as he finished the last biscuit.
“I’m sorry, Charlie. I know that you have had to manage with far less than I have.”
“You lost your home tonight. And your nanny. You got good reason to be mad. I was mad when Gran died. I’m still bloody mad,” he added sharply.
She took some time finishing her tea. “If only I had an idea of where my father is.” Molly eyed Oliver. “Before the sirens started you were talking about my father and the men at the graveyard. But it has nothing to do with me, does it?”
“No, not directly.”
“It has to do with my father, you mean? You mentioned this Secrets Act. If he didn’t work for the Ministry of Food, where was my father working?”
Oliver slowly set down his cup of tea and rubbed his thigh where one of the burns he had suffered previously had begun to ache.
“The person I spoke with said he thought your father had also signed the Official Secrets Act.”
“And why would he do that?”
“There are many reasons. If he was involved in the war effort and was privy to confidential information would be one of them.”
“Could it be he was, I don’t know, a spy working against the Germans?” She glanced sharply at Charlie, who was watching Oliver closely. “I know he traveled to the Continent quite often before the war, but I was never told why.”
Oliver said uncertainly, “It’s possible, Molly.”
“Has he been captured by the Germans then? Has... has he been killed?”
“I really have no idea,” said Oliver. “I’m sorry.”
She persisted. “But can you find out more, considering what you used to do? And the men watching me? Maybe they would know something?”
Oliver looked at her uneasily. “I... I can try.”
“I would appreciate that very much, thank you.”
Oliver cleared his throat and said, “I did look up the Beneficial Institute. It’s on the coast near Falmouth in Cornwall.”
Molly said eagerly, “Is there a way to get there?”
“There is no bus service right now. The GWR has train service to Falmouth. But with wartime restrictions, it takes about ten hours, and the trains do not run regularly. The military takes precedence and all that. And the Germans routinely bomb the train tracks, so there is that impediment as well.”
“But can I still make the journey? I really need to see my mother. And she may know where my father is.”
“There is the question of the price of the tickets,” said Oliver slowly, once more glancing at the till. “And you’ll need food and clothing and money for lodging and other essentials.”
“I can earn money,” she said. “I... I can work in your shop.”
“Yes, you could. Though sometimes days go by without a customer coming in.”
“Well, I could tidy up the place.”
“Absolutely. Yes, you can.”
She looked at Charlie, who was intently watching the nervous expression on Oliver’s face. Unlike Molly, who was so focused on finding the means to reach her mother, he could evidently sense the man’s misgivings on the subject of paying wages for “tidying up.”
“And Charlie could work here, too,” said Molly brightly.
“For room and board,” said Charlie. “But I’ll work someplace else for pocket money.”
Molly looked confused by this and Oliver said, “Charlie, there’s really no need. I’m sure I can find the means with which to pay you both.”
Charlie shook his head. “You should only pay us, Mr. Oliver, if you need us to work for you. Otherwise, it’s just charity, and Gran never liked to take charity and she taught me the same. And you only got the one ration book for the three of us. Gran had both of ours, and it still weren’t enough food.”
Molly looked crestfallen. “I can find work elsewhere too, I’m sure.”
“But you’re just children,” protested Oliver.
Molly said briskly, “I’m no longer a child, Mr. Oliver. And there’s a chemist’s shop down the street. I did a great many prescription fillings at the hospital in Leiston. I can see if they need an assistant.”
“There are age requirements surely, Molly,” pointed out Oliver.
Her voice rose to a tremulous level. “I just saved a man’s life tonight, for God’s sake. And I can make inquiries, can’t I?”
“Of course you can,” conceded Oliver. “But for now, I think a good night’s rest is required after all the shocks you’ve endured. Things will look better in the morning.”
Neither Molly nor Charlie looked like they thought that was remotely possible.
And neither, really, did Ignatius Oliver.
The True Beginnings of Something
It was dawn and Oliver had barely slept. Wearing a tattered robe, he moved through the shop touching this book and straightening that one. He removed a bit of dust from a shelf, and a finger mark from the front window with his sleeve.
He then looked down and saw water coming in under the door as the poorly draining cobblestones flooded from all the rain and then sought a pathway into his shop. He hurried to the toilet, seized an old towel, and stuffed it against this gap.
He next walked down the flight of steps, moved over to the doorway, took out the key, unlocked his wife’s study, and went inside.
Some writers preferred early mornings to work their craft, others were inspired with the lateness of night. Still other ambitious scriveners wrote all the time.
Imogen had preferred the late afternoon or early evening to work on her novel, when a day’s other labor had been completed and the events during that time and her corresponding thoughts comingled into a stream of inventiveness that would make the prose resonate, the characters compel, and the story spark. This did not always happen, she had told him. Indeed, it often didn’t, but that did not defeat the logic of her approach.
Writing is often drudgery, she had told him. And no matter how long you did it, the process never became easier. It simply became more bewildering, as though you knew there was a secret to it all, and you’d come close to finding it at times, but right when you thought you had it, the bloody thing just skittered away into the dark recesses of your mind, like the remnants of a slippery dream. But, she had said, in that perplexity and frustration one could sometimes see growth, improvement, and a desire to keep going, which was more than ample reward. Though she had attended lectures where prominent writers claimed to always be in a “perfect” state of self-confidence, Imogen had noted, “such a foolish conviction is like a loaded gun to one’s head, and you are but a single false belief away from never placing credible thought to paper again.”
Overconfidence in his storytelling abilities was not something with which Oliver was the least bit concerned.
He sat down at the desk and stared at the blank page in the Crown typewriter, his longtime nemesis. Having the presence of two children with him now had no doubt added to his anxiety to produce something of worth.
He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, where directly overhead Molly and Charlie were hopefully in peaceful rest. It was quite ironic. Imogen had never wanted children, perhaps more out of insecurity than anything else. She had confided in him her utter disbelief that she could ever measure up to the standard her mother and father had set with her.
Oliver had wanted to be a father, but he wanted Imogen as his wife even more. And now he had a son and a daughter. At least for a bit.