Darwinia

The dock fires had been contained, but the east end burned freely; there was nothing to keep the fire from engulfing the whole of the city. The fire was massive now, moving at its own pace, dashing suddenly forward or hesitating with the pulse of the wind. The air stank of ashes and worse.

Colin spread a handkerchief on a side table and put a molasses-soaked wedge of bread in front of her. Caroline took a bite, then set it aside. “Where are we going to go?” They would have to go somewhere. Soon.

“West of the city,” Colin said calmly. “People are already sleeping in the high heather. There are tents. We’ll bring blankets.”

“And after that?”

“Well, it depends. Partly on the war, partly on us. I’ll have to keep shy of military police, you know, at least for a while. Eventually we’ll buy passage.”

“Passage where?”

“Anywhere, really.”

“Not the Continent.”

“Of course not—”

“And not America.”

“No? I thought you wanted to go back to Boston.”

She thought of introducing Colin to Liam Pierce. Liam had never cared for Guilford, but still, there would be questions, objections raised. At best, an old life to resume, with all its burdens. No, not Boston.

“In that case,” Colin said, “I’d thought of Australia.” He said it with a rehearsed modesty. Caroline suspected he’d thought of it often. “I have a cousin in Perth. He’ll put us up until we’re settled.”

“There are kangaroos in Australia,” Lily said.

The Lieutenant winked at her. “Plenty of kangaroos, my girl. Thick on the ground.”

Caroline was charmed but breathless. Australia? “What would we do in Australia?”

“Live,” Colin said simply.

The next morning a porter knocked at the door and told them they would have to leave at once or the hotel couldn’t guarantee their safety.

“Surely not so soon,” Caroline said. Colin and the porter ignored her. Probably it was true, they ought to leave. The air had grown unbearably foul overnight. Her lungs ached, and Lily had started to cough.

“Everybody east of Thames Street out,” the porter insisted, “that’s what the Mayor’s Office says.”

Strange how long it took a city to burn, even a city as small and primitive as London.

She gathered her bags together and helped Lily pack. Colin had no luggage — no possessions he seemed to care about — but he folded the hotel’s bedsheets and blankets together into a bundle. “The hotel won’t mind,” Colin said. “Not under the circumstances.”

What he meant, she thought, was that the hotel would be ashes by morning.

Caroline adjusted her hair in the bureau mirror. She couldn’t see at all well. The atmosphere outside was a perpetual twilight, and the gas had been off since the attack. She combed this spectral wraith of herself, then reached for her daughter’s hand. “All right,” she said. “We’ll go.”

Colin disguised himself during their trek into the vast tent city that had sprung up west of the city. He wore an oversized rain slicker and a slouch hat, both purchased at outrageous prices from a rag vendor working the crowd of refugees. Army and Navy personnel had been detailed to emergency relief. They circulated among the makeshift shelters distributing food and medicine. Colin didn’t want to be recognized.

Caroline knew he was afraid of being captured as a deserter. In the literal sense, of course, he was a deserter, and that must be difficult for him, though he refused to discuss it. “I was hardly more than an accounts clerk,” he said. “I won’t be missed.”

By their third day in the tent city, food had grown scarce but optimistic rumors spread wildly: a Red Cross steamer was coming up the Thames; the Americans had been defeated at sea. Caroline listened to the rumors indifferently. She’d heard rumors before. It was enough that the fire seemed at last to be burning itself out, with the help of a frigid spring rain. People talked about rebuilding, though privately Caroline thought the word ludicrous: to reconstruct the reconstruction of a vanished world, what folly.

She spent an afternoon wandering among the smoldering campfires and fetid trench latrines, searching for her aunt and uncle. She regretted having made so few friends in London, having lived such an insular existence. She would have liked to see a familiar face, but there were no familiar faces, not until she came across Mrs. de Koenig, the woman who had looked after Lily so often. Mrs. de Koenig was glum and alone, wrapped in a streaming tarpaulin, her hair knotted and wet; at first she failed to recognize Caroline.

But when Caroline asked about Alice and Jered, the older woman shook her head miserably. “They waited too long. The fire came down Market Street like a live thing.”

Caroline gasped. “They died?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you certain?”

“Certain as rain.” Her red-rimmed eyes were mournful. “I’m sorry, Miss.”