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Becky'd had quite enough of trains, when it was all said and done. The second class lounge at King's Cross was nice enough. The benches were sturdy, polished wood, and it was clean. She didn't remember her first journey all that well, fleeing Razkavia as a child, but this was a step down from the first journey she did remember, travelling in state with the Crown Prince. A step up from the voyage immediately following, fleeing for the second time. Yes, she'd had quite enough of trains.
She trailed her fingers over the wooden bench, tracing the line of the grain, sure she looked odd. A woman alone, no companions. No baggage. Only a large, shaggy dog resting at her feet.
Soupkettle had been a gift from Sally, when Becky'd first established herself in her own flat. "A woman living alone ought to have a dog," Sally said, and refused to hear any more on the subject. His name had been Adelaide's suggestion, of course. Adelaide came up with the most foolish names, but Becky didn't have it in her to argue. Although, as it happened, arguing was a new favorite past time.
Sometimes she thought she'd gone raving. The stories they'd brought back from Razkavia were like something out of the novels her mother illustrated. If she hadn't been found as she was, a corpse in her lap, they'd probably have committed her right then and there. Mad women disguised as nurses, princes kept in terrible dungeons, oh, yes, she knew how she sounded. She would do better to keep her mouth shut. But it seemed like every day there was a new article in the paper, some new charge to be refuted. Once upon a time, she had been the very model of modesty, but it seemed there was some new malady upon her. Not insanity, simply an inability to (Adelaide's words, not her own, but very apt:) keep her gob well shut. She simply could not let a challenge go unanswered. In fact, she was a little wild with it.
It happened at home first. Her mother cancelled the paper, and though she never said a word against Becky, there was something in her eyes when Becky spoke. Unease, and a little pity. It was why Becky'd moved out, though she'd found that wasn't quite enough. She'd stopped writing letters after the first one, because the papers made a joke out of it. But she interrupted conversations on the streets, and she gave her opinion frequently, asked for or not.
"Everyone thinks I'm mad," she said once to Sally, in a private moment.
"Well, you get used to that," Sally said.
Of course everyone coped in their own way. It was why they were here today, in a train station of all the places, where she'd sworn never to set foot again.
She didn't jump when the weight of another body settled next to her, because Soupkettle barely raised his head from his big paws. "That's some dog you've got," Jim said, reaching down to ruffle his ears. That did get the wolfhound's attention. He raised his head up and yawned, displaying a fine and very useless set of teeth. "Vicious."
"He's the laziest thing I've ever seen," Becky said promptly. It was an old argument, comfortable and familiar. Even Soupkettle knew what he was supposed to do. He moved from his sprawl to a sit, resting his jaw with great dignity on Jim's knee, and leaving a smear of drool there. "And a traitor, to boot."
Unlike her, Jim had a bag. It looked like an old Navy duffle to her. She didn't know where he'd gotten it, and she'd learned by now not to ask. Jim's connections were many and various, and he made peace with most people the way he did with Soupkettle: by slipping them bits of unsavory she was happy to pretend to know nothing about. Anyway, Jim had a bag, and it looked jammed full if she was any judge. She supposed he'd need all sorts of things besides the usual clothes and a razor. He'd need a pen and paper to take notes with at the very least, but she bet he'd forgotten it. Dan would have one. He usually did. She hoped he had a pistol, too. "I wish you weren't going," she said.
"Don't start all that again." Jim rolled off her protests the way he rolled off almost everything: with irrepressible good cheer and pint. "It's just Germany, and they're an ally."
"I read that in the papers, so you can take it to the bank." Her mother was right. These people really had been a terrible influence on her, and there was no getting around it. "Can't imagine you'll make many friends."
But Jim was Jim; he would never take her seriously. "I make friends everywhere," he said.
"He does." Sally said as she came up. She stood, rather than sat, wrapped up in a warm coat that muffled her to the nose. "It's Dan whose constantly getting kicked out of places, isn't it?" She looked to her husband for confirmation.
"Well, actually, I'm not sure I'm able to go to Germany at all!" He said it with nothing but good nature, but the truth of it hung underneath his words, like a weight. They both had answers they could only find in Germany. There was Bleichröder for Dan to chase after, and Jim had his book. He was as bad as her, but he didn't stop with conversations on the street. He'd shown up at her door three times since she'd got her own place, drunk, bleeding, or both. Sally worried, that was his excuse for why he didn't go to her, but privately Becky thought he just didn't want a proper scolding from Mrs. Goldberg. She hardly blamed him. She didn't, either.
She never asked why he didn't go to Adelaide's. She never talked to him about Adelaide at all.
They weren't going to be any more welcoming for him on the streets of Berlin, anyway, that much she was sure of. She didn't think Jim knew any other way to do things than to run straight in. She didn't know whether it was his head or his heart he lead with, just that both seemed to keep taking a few knocks. Might as well come from German steins as English bottles.
Jim said it for all of them, summarizing her thoughts nicely, when he said, "Well, we'll have some fun, sure enough."
There was another moment just for quiet when the nursemaid broke in on their circle, polite and unobtrusive, needing Sally. Something to do with Harriet. Dan and Jim were into it over something happening in Cairo, and Becky was able to do her favorite thing: watch.
Maybe it was only because she'd been doing it for so long, but she wondered how no one else saw the thread that ran from Jim to Adelaide. It was all over both of them, the moment Adelaide crossed into the room. Her face went all blank when she saw them, and then she was moving through the crowd the way she moved across the stage. As if she was a different person entirely.
And Jim, well, as far as Becky saw, he never looked up. Never saw her. But the very second she appeared in the doorway he went stiff all over, and then it bled away, and he was still having it out with Dan about the Middle East and colonialism like nothing'd happened at all.
Adelaide reached them and took the seat on Becky's other side. She was wearing a fur collar as warm and thick as Soupkettle's around her neck, with a muffler to match. Sally kissed her on the cheek as Becky fingered a corner of the scarf. "You've gone and done yourself up now," she said.
"Like a proper queen," Jim agreed. He looked at Adelaide right through Becky, and she really didn't know how the others couldn't see it.
Out of all of them, Adelaide was the one who wouldn't even talk about it. She turned her nose up at the papers when Becky brought them, said, "I couldn't read before and it never hurt me none," even when she demanded Becky's help on some new script or love letter. There were always love letters for her now, just like there were fur mufflers left at the stage door, from so and so with his sincerest compliments.
But no matter what was in those letters (Becky had read some of them, and she was sure it wasn't legal to write that way) they never put the look on Adelaide's face that was there now. She didn't blush. There was something much more intense about her gaze and the set of her lips, the same something Becky had seen between them that night on the train. It always came back to trains, didn't it?
Well, maybe because she'd been the only one there, that was why Sally and Dan didn't see it. But it made her want to squirm out from between them and get as far as she could, put some safe distance between her and the explosion that had to be coming.
And then, all at once, in just a breath, it was gone, and Jim was stretching back, fingers laced together so that his knuckles made the most disgusting popping sounds. "Good of you to come see us off, gal," he said, and Adelaide wrinkled up her nose.
"Well, I wish I hadn't, the smell of that sausage cart is making me sick." She stuck out her lip, a sure sign of an impending tantrum. Becky thought about stomping on her foot, but Jim beat her to it.
"Think I have enough sausage in my future anyway," he said. "How about a walk around the long way? I saw a man selling shaved ice over there."
At that, Adelaide brightened up, and Dan began making doubtful noises, he was sure he'd never seen a man selling shaved ice in the station of all places, but one firm look from his wife was enough to silence him. Jim and Adelaide moved off together, their shoulders a little closer than was really proper.
The anger Becky had been pushing down all seemed to roll up at once. "How's he just supposed to pack up and leave like that?" she demanded. "What about her?"
Sally took the seat Jim had left and set Harriet on the ground, by Soupkettle. The small girl and the large dog made for a charming sight. "What about her?" Sally repeated.
"He should stay," Becky said, though the argument sounded weak even to her own ears. Adelaide had made it more than clear she wanted no part of it. Not while Jim was writing his grand book. Mentioning it was the surest way to send her into one of her fits, and when they were together, Becky avoided the conversation entirely. Anyway, she had her career to think of. She was just getting known, and contracts were rolling in from all the playhouses.
"Stay for what?" Sally said, parallel to Becky's own thoughts. "Because he loves her?
Somehow, put like that, in Sally's plain, practical words, it did sound silly. Becky flushed high up to her ears. The only problem with Sally and Jim was that sometimes they made her feel young. She might be only seventeen and living on her own, but she'd been through as much as any of them, and she wasn't a child. She knew Sally didn't mean it like that, and maybe if she weren't so impressed by Mrs. Goldberg, she wouldn't care so much. But she did, so there it was.
Sally rested a hand on her shoulder for just a moment, and said, "She won't love him any less if he's in Germany, and the same for him. Sometimes people need a little bit more in their lives," Which Becky understood. She really did. Maybe it was just that she'd been looking out for Adelaide for so long. The habit was getting hard to break.
They made their way back slowly, weaving through the crowds as the lounge filled up. They made quite the pair -- Jim in his normal, worn out jacket, looking scruffy around the cuffs and hems, Adelaide done up like a fine actress. They didn't have any shaved ice, which figured, but as long as they were walking close together, neither seemed very upset. Sally turned to Dan.
"What time is your train, Dan?" she asked pointedly. The nice thing about Mr. Goldberg was that he could take a hint when he had to, and Sally had him pretty well trained. Just as Adelaide and Jim reached them, he consulted his watch.
"Just about now, I suppose. We'd better --" With a nod and some waving of his hands to convey his sentiment, he bent to kiss his wife on the cheek, then pressed his hand firmly to Becky and Adelaide's. Next, Becky found herself passed off into a warm hug from Jim, who'd just given the same to Sally. "Karl's doing some work in Germany, I heard, I'll send your regards to him," he said with a wink.
The men moved off toward the train, and Sally gathered Harriet up before she could turn Soupkettle into a horse, bundling her and passing her back to the nursemaid. "Well, I'm famished," she said, as if it was simply the next thing. Which, Becky supposed, it was. "Ladies, care to join me?"
Because she had nothing else to do, Becky said, "Sure. We can't go to the club, though, they don't like Soupkettle there." Sally nodded once, gravely.
And Adelaide made a great show of looking at the clock and fussing with her gloves, looking everywhere but at the train, which was busy pulling out from the platform. Finally, she said, "Suppose I've got time for it, my curtain ain't till eight."
"Then it's settled," Sally said, with great finality and satisfaction. Sally liked having things settled. She turned to leave, her entourage -- the other two women, the nursemaid, Harriet, and the dog -- trailing after her.
And because Becky knew to look for it, she saw the minute when Adelaide turned, just for a moment, to watch the back window of the train. And she saw Jim, his hands closed tight around the windowsill, leaning out the back as if he could reach all the way back to her.