The First of July(20)

Finally Theo looked up and mouthed “Next stop.” But even as he felt relief and prepared to get off, Benedict realized that the man’s knuckles were against his hip, moving his fingers gently and watching his face for any reaction. The bus stopped, Benedict pushed past, burning with shame, and yet, despite himself, excited. He felt almost sick with it as he stood on the pavement waiting urgently for Theo, who jumped off the step to join him. He watched in dread, in case the stranger stepped down too.

“You all right?” Theo asked.

The bus was pulling away and Benedict thought he could see the man, watching him still. He pulled down the brim of his hat, as much to hide his shame from Theo as his face from the stranger. He turned away, walking so briskly that Theo, laughing, reached out and took his arm, saying “Slow down, old chap. No hurry,” but Benedict pulled away and felt Theo’s puzzlement at his silence.

Piccadilly Circus was all movement: the uneven bobbing of straw hats, a few parasols riding above the crowd and the traffic circling around Eros, the burnished statue forever poised on one foot, his arrow ready to fly. Two policemen passed through the crowd, a small path opening before them. It was something of a human rookery: the flurries and shouts, a car’s horn, the rumble of hansom-cab wheels and the percussion of horses’ hooves.

It was already very warm. Benedict scratched his head surreptitiously under his hat. Two brightly dressed girls came toward them, smiling and swaying arm in arm, looking as if they thought they knew them, but Theo shook his head and grinned before they reached him. The girls swerved past, one looking back and winking.

“Just what Dr. Brewer warned us about, I think,” Theo said, looking pleased. “On the whole, any warning from Brewer could be seen as a recommendation, but it doesn’t seem quite the thing when we’re off to find a present for Agnes.” He stopped, pulled out his small map, and traced a finger down it.

Benedict’s eyes followed the girls as they turned down by the Lyons Corner House and toward a group of laughing soldiers. Household Cavalry, he thought. The slightly frantic, purple bursts of a hurdy-gurdy came from his left. Just yards away, his eye caught sight of three young men cast into the shade of a building, one of them scarcely more than a boy and another lounging back against the shop front, one knee raised. They stood at a distance from each other, unspeaking, looking at the crowd, simultaneously vigilant yet indifferent. Something about them spoke of threat and possibility: the essence of the whole city, he thought.

“Got it,” Theo said. “Up here.” He raised his head and specks of light filtered through the brim of his straw hat, scattering on his face like freckles. A light sheen of sweat covered his smooth cheeks. He looked wonderfully happy. Wonderfully young and fine and, for once, with no shadow of dissatisfaction.

They crossed the road, Theo stopping him to watch a shiny black beast of a car grumble by.

“My father has a car,” Theo said. “Although not one like that. Unfortunately. But popular with young ladies. As is my father. Now—here we are, Regent Street. The center of the purchasing world.”

A newspaper seller was shouting over the crowd: “Tensions rise in the Balkans! The prime minister in talks! Read all about it!”

The broad street curved away in a gentle arc. Dark green awnings shaded pale gray stone, with window displays unlike anything Benedict had ever seen. Caves of draped sea-green and carmine silks; exuberant osprey-feathered and flowered hats. Every building was decorated with festoons of red, white, and blue bunting.

“Where do you actually want to go?” Benedict, unsettled, had already decided there was a limit to how long he wanted to traipse up and down.

“Debenhams,” Theo said. “It has everything, Novello says. But I need to hit the right note—not too intimate, or Mrs. B will have the vapors. Not too flashy, but not something a chap might give his maiden aunt.”

“Handkerchiefs? With lace? Or her initial?”

“For heaven’s sake, Ben, I want to transport her to another world—one she might share with me; one far from the Close and the incontinent seagulls and the smell of halibut on the air—not make her think about blowing her nose.”

Benedict laughed. Was Theo serious about Agnes? Was Agnes at all serious about him?

“A parasol,” Theo said. “A beautiful French parasol for a beautiful girl born in July. That way she’ll always associate me with the sun.”

“Or the eternal shades.”

“What do you think they’ll cost?” Theo said, a little anxiously.

They were outside Debenhams now, and the doors were opened solemnly by a commissionaire as stiff and gold-edged as any general.