She looked around at the perpetrator. “Stuart!” she exclaimed.
It was the boy from her class. “Sorry, Susan,” he said, “sorry! It was an accident, honest.” He was treading water and doing so inefficiently, his neck arched back so that he barely kept it above water. He sniffed.
“Stuart,” she said, “you are so—so unironic.”
“I know,” he said. “Is that your boyfriend, then?” he asked, his arms and legs pedaling away in the water.
“My brother,” she answered.
Phillip approached the pool’s edge, bending swift and lean to scoop up his towel.
“The one who’s scared of water?” Stuart asked.
“Stuart!” Susan shouted.
“It’s all right, love,” Phillip said.
“Well, you did tell us in class,” Stuart blundered on.
“One more,” Susan warned him, “and I’m in the water and wringing your miserable neck.”
Stuart poked his tongue out at her.
“Now you’ve copped it,” she said.
“Don’t, love,” Phillip said. He yoked his towel around his neck and tugged her arm. “Here,” he said, “I’ve something to show you.”
She peeled her bathing cap from her head and tossed out her hair. “Oh, all right,” she said, and she and Phillip wove hopscotching through the bodies lying on towels that littered the pool’s deck.
“DO THEY ALL FANCY YOU?” Phillip asked her outside by the motorcycle. Though there were clouds, they were high and intermittent, and the sun shone warmly on them. He handed her the leather helmet and goggles she was to wear and he unfastened and peeled back the black canvas tonneau of the sidecar. Streaming past in the road was a steady river of traffic and once they’d both threaded their heads into the helmets and donned the channel-swimmer-like goggles, Phillip mounted the Ariel, and she slid snuggly into the sidecar and did so as effortlessly as if descending a playground slide.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To see my battlefield,” he answered.
The Ariel started on first kick, loud and rabbling, and Phillip pushed it off by its handgrips and danced the big machine into the traffic. Susan adjusted her goggles on the bridge of her nose then said above the engine’s roar:
“And you can tell Roger that even my goggles are cross-eyed.”
FROM NORTH CHEAM THEY RAN the Ariel due east across the north lip of the City, and once beyond central London they curved south, catching up with the Thames near the East End docks. Then, running parallel to the great river’s voltas, they headed east through Rainham and Erith and Grays. The Thames here was as wide as a sea—indeed, it had miles earlier become tidal—and past the town of Grays, Phillip shouted, “Hungry?” and she answered, “Yes, famished,” and he carried on through Coryton and South Benfleet and she shouted at him, “Phillip, I thought we were stopping!” and he shouted back, “We are! We are!” but he didn’t stop, didn’t stop until, with the engine beneath them pawing at the air, he double-clutched and machine-gun downshifted and into the lovely village of Canvey they did sweep.
It was not quite three o’clock and though the shops were closed he found a caffey—as the English pronounced and spelled “café” in doughboy French—and pulled up in front.
The street was quiet. There were shops on one side, and on the other was the sea wall and then the beveled slope of the white sand that rippled down to the edge of the river. Disentangling themselves from the Ariel’s viscera they stood on the sidewalk and peeled back their headgear and with deep breaths they smelled the warm yet somehow always cold air of the sea—that lonely almost leathery fragrance—and Phillip pulled open the caffey door. As he did so a small bell tingled above them and they entered.
There were three wooden tables without tablecloths, the wooden chairs around each of the tables tipped forward so that the chairs leaned on their front legs against the tables’ edges. A Camp’s Coffee advert hung on one sidewall and beside it was the menu chalkboard. On the caffey’s other side was a serving counter and behind it, his back to them, a man in an apron was employing a washcloth to brush the crumbs from the preparation countertop into his cupped other hand.
“We’re closed,” the man said without turning.
“Oh,” Phillip said to the man, “sorry,” then to Susan, “Sorry, love.” Phillip pulled open the door—the bell tingling again—and they reentered the sunshine and sea air.
“Well?” Phillip asked. He pushed the fingernails of both hands through his thick black hair and frowned, his dark brows almost touching above his handsome nose. Behind them the door shut; then they heard the bell ring, and puzzled at this reversal of order the two of them turned.
The shopkeep’s apron was white and stained around the midsection. He had thin gray hair combed across the top of his head, and still holding the washcloth he gestured at Phillip and said, “Sorry. Didn’t see you were in the service.”
“That’s all right,” Phillip said, “it’s just a uniform. Doesn’t give us carte blanche to be a bother.”
“Oh, you’re not, young man, you’re not. Please,” he said, “come in, come in.”
Susan told the man:
“We were just looking for a cup of tea and a sandwich. I’m sure we can wait till we get back.”
The caffey owner looked at her for a long moment then at Phillip. “You’ve a right catch there, young officer.”
“She’s—”
The man held up a hand of discretion. “Tell you what, it’s lovely and all, the day is. I’ll fetch out a pair of chairs and set them on the sidewalk, Parisian-like, and I’ll make you both a quick cup of and see if there’s a cucumber sandwich or two.”
“Really?” Phillip asked.
The man nodded, and in an instant he was back at the door with the two chairs. She and Phillip were smiling and Phillip held open the door as the man waggled the chairs past and stood them up so they faced the street. “You’ll have to balance your cup and saucers on your legs, mind you,” he said, “so careful you don’t scald yourselves.”
“Yes,” they said, “thanks.”
“My pleasure,” he said. “Lucky there’s no licensing laws for caffeys. Marmite?” he asked them.
They looked at each other.
“On your sandwiches,” the man explained.
“Yes,” Phillip said eagerly, “if you’ve some.”
“I’ve still the jar I had before the war,” the man told them.
And on the sidewalk by the quiet street in this ever so quiet Saturday village they sat side by side on the wooden caffey chairs, sat in the sun, watching the Thames shoulder its way into the channel while the man inside prepared their tea and sandwiches.
“What did you mean,” she asked her brother, “by his line?”
“Whose?”
“Roger’s!”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that.”
He looked at her. “Well, it’s his method.”
“Thought it was his line?”
“His way. His theory: belittle them in public, girls