It is that then we have her with us here,
As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
Its tresses wrapped about her side for years…
I USED TO HATE sunlight,” remarked Johanna as she and Crawford and McKee hurried across Tottenham Court Road at the junction of Oxford Street on Thursday, dodging the horses pulling cabs and carriages. Now she had taken off her bonnet and shaken back her hair to let the afternoon sun shine on her face. “Now it’s like strong beer.”
Crawford gave McKee a worried glance. Johanna had had a glass of Mieux stout with her steak-and-ale pie, and he was hoping she wasn’t fated to be a drunkard — especially since they had decided to flee to France. Crawford had the idea that the French drank wine all day long.
Yesterday he had approached another London veterinary surgeon to negotiate selling his practice to the man, and they had agreed on a deal that involved the man taking over Crawford’s office and caring for the cats, and this morning Crawford had gone to Barclay’s Bank to arrange for a draft of all his savings and operating capital to be transferable to a bank in Paris.
Last night the three of them had slept in the basement, in shifts, with mirrors, silver, garlic, and iron knives ready to hand, and he was anxious to get to Newhaven, where British tourists commonly took a boat across the English Channel to Dieppe.
But this errand was important.
“A church, around here?” he asked now as they stepped up the curb in front of a long five-story building that narrowed Tottenham Court Road. He wasn’t aware of any church very close by here — the only vaguely communal institution he knew of locally was the Oxford Music Hall under the big clock that projected out over the pavement traffic ahead.
But McKee turned to the right before they got that far, into the narrow lane that was Bozier’s Court, known as Boozer’s Alley because of the public house on the corner.
“Yes,” McKee said, sounding defensive, “a church. Both of you behave yourselves now, we need a big favor from the priest.”
Crawford and Johanna exchanged a mystified look but followed McKee. In the narrow court the rattle and clop of the traffic behind them was muted, and their own footsteps echoed back at them from the close brick walls.
McKee led them to a pair of tall wooden doors under a pointed arch in the tall street-side building, and before pulling one of them open, she dug a couple of lacy handkerchiefs out of her handbag and tied one over her head and gave the other to Johanna.
“And you take off your hat,” she told Crawford.
When they had stepped into the cool dimness and pulled the door closed behind them, Crawford could at first see only the high mottled-gray disk of a stained-glass window in the far wall of the narrow, high-ceilinged room; then after a few moments he saw ranks of glass-dimmed candle flames, and finally he was able to make out rows of pews and an altar at the far end. The cool air carried the scents of old wood and incense. A few huddled figures sat in the pews, and a tall man in a robe was striding down the side aisle on the right.
“Confessions?” the man said in a quiet but carrying voice. “Thursdays aren’t generally — why it’s Adelaide!” The priest was close enough now for Crawford to see the man’s thin, deeply lined face. “I’m sorry — you just looked like a particularly sinful trio.”
Johanna nodded solemnly.
“No,” said McKee. “We need a pretty substantial favor.” She pointed at Crawford and herself. “He and I want to get married. Uh, Father Cyprian, this is John Crawford, and this is our daughter, Johanna.”
The priest nodded sympathetically. “One does tend to keep putting these things off, doesn’t one? But that’s not so substantial — we do weddings with some frequency here.”
“But we want to be married soon — tomorrow or Saturday. There’s no time for banns to be posted.”
Father Cyprian raised his eyebrows. “Why the haste?” He glanced at Johanna, as if to note that the child was already, long since, born out of wedlock.
Then he crouched beside her. “Who’s been pounding on you, child? Not one of these two, I hope?”
“It happened in a dream,” Johanna told him.
“Oh?” The priest stood up and turned to McKee. “Why the haste?” he asked again.
“We may,” McKee began, then paused and looked up at the beams in the ceiling. “We may all three of us be dead soon, or worse, and—”
The priest nodded. “Let’s start with ‘or worse,’” he said. “What’s worse?”
“Do you remember,” McKee asked him, “why I originally came to
Father Cyprian frowned. “Sister Christina sent you, as I recall, yes. Yes.” He squinted at the old tiles of the floor. “There’s apparently been some turbulence among the local devils just in this last week — one up, the other down. Your troubles have something to do with that?”
“The newly up one has particular designs on Johanna here,” said McKee.
Johanna nodded and touched her throat. “I used to be one of his. Not all the way to death and resurrection, but …
“And he wants her back,” said McKee. “Her more than the others, it seems. We plan to cross the Channel to France in the next couple of days, and travel and lodging and financial arrangements will apparently be easier if we can show that we’re legally married.”
“It’d be nice to have the lines,” said Johanna, using the coster term for a marriage certificate.
Father Cyprian nodded thoughtfully, then looked up at McKee. “John here says he loves you. Do you love him?”
“I — wouldn’t marry just for expediency.”
“But,” said the priest, “travel plans and legal protocols are what you advanced as your reasons.”
Johanna and Crawford were both looking at McKee.
“Yes, I love him,” she said, exhaling. “I have for seven years.”
“For seven years?” said the priest. “Unfair to that spoons man, in that case, even on a common-law basis … with no ‘lines.’ Terry?”
“Tom. Yes, I suppose it was.” McKee leaned against one of the pews and rubbed her forehead. “I should apologize to him, before we go.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Father Cyprian. “He’s been in here once or twice, looking for you.” This visibly surprised and dismayed McKee. The priest went on, “I would let sleeping mad dogs lie. And I trust,” he added, looking Crawford up and down, “that you’ve chosen a different sort of man this time.”
“She has, she has,” said Johanna.
Crawford didn’t look at her but squeezed her hand.
The priest turned toward the pews that filed away toward the altar. “Christabel!” he called softly.
An old woman halfway up the aisle looked around, then laboriously got to her feet when the priest beckoned and began shuffling toward the back of the church.
“Tomorrow,” said the priest quietly to McKee.
When old Christabel had made her way back to where they stood, Father Cyprian asked her, “Christabel, did you hear it these last three Sundays when I announced the banns for John Crawford and Adelaide McKee?”
“Of course I did,” the old woman wheezed. “I hear everything you say.”
“Do you recall the names?”
“A Crawford, it was, and our dear Adelaide.” She touched McKee’s shoulder. “Haven’t seen you here this past week or two, my dear. You’ve not been ill, I trust?”
