London Calling (20 page)
We joined up with an official tour led by one of the volunteer ladies. We learned all about the cathedral’s history, and its carvings, and its stained glass. Dad must have been thinking about the Mehans and the Lowerys when he whispered to me, “Some families are impressed that a guy worked at a desk job for thirty years, or that a rich guy gave some money to a school. But think about this: Nine generations of a family worked their entire lives, gave everything they had, to build this cathedral.
That’s
impressive. That’s astounding.”
After the tour, we sat in the back row of chairs for a long time, taking in the awesome power of the cathedral, until I heard “Hello, Martin” from behind us.
It was Helen.
I stood up. “Hello, ma’am.” She looked at Dad, so I added, “This is my father, Jack Conway.”
Dad stood, too, and shook her hand. She said, “Helen Mills. Nice to meet you.” Then she turned to me. “A sad business about Mr. Harker. Old as he was, it’s still a shock. Did you get to complete your interview with him?”
“Oh yes, ma’am. I completed it.”
“Good.”
Dad asked, “Is there anyone left to make his funeral arrangements?”
“I am Mr. Harker’s executor. He had no one else, you know. I’ll be arranging for a service here at the Minster, and then a burial.”
“When will that be?” Dad asked her.
“I expect on Monday.”
Dad looked at me. “We’ll stay for that, Martin, if you want.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Helen seemed touched. “That would be lovely, Martin. Now, tell me, are there are any items of Mr. Harker’s, historical items, that you’d like for your encyclopedia article?”
I answered immediately. “Yes. There are, ma’am. Unless they belong to you now.”
“I suppose they might, technically, but they’re not really mine. What would you like?”
I looked at Dad. To my surprise, he spoke up first. “I would like the
Illustrated Bible Stories.
I was looking at it the other day, and I’d like to continue looking at it.”
Helen nodded. “All right. I’m sure that would be fine.”
Dad added, “And I’d hate to think of that guy stealing Mr. Harker’s medals and pawning them, or selling them on eBay.”
She looked alarmed. “What guy?”
“The landlord. We caught him in the flat after Mr. Harker died. He was helping himself.”
“Oh no! No. I’ll put the police on to him straightaway. Mr. Harker had no use for that man, I can tell you.” She assured us, “Those medals will find a proper home. Perhaps at the Duke’s Museum.” She turned to me. “How about you, Martin?”
I told her the truth. “Ma’am, anything I take would not be for the encyclopedia, it would be for me.”
“Oh? Well, I think that would be fine, too.”
“Then I’d like to take the photo collage. And the Arsenal program. And the ‘Very Well Then, Alone!’ poster. I have a room at home with bare walls. I can put them up there.”
“That would be lovely.”
“And I have room for that chair, too.”
“A chair?”
“The Queen Anne wing chair.”
“That old one? With the sheet over it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Helen looked troubled. “I don’t know how you’d manage a big thing like that, all the way back to America. It would be terribly expensive.”
Dad told her, “I’ll call my brother Bob. He’ll take care of it.”
Helen cocked her head momentarily, but then she just said, “Well, then. That’s done. I’m glad we’ve found those items a happy home.”
After Helen left us, we sat for a while longer. Then Dad made a curious comment: “Life is complicated.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I was thinking about that radio. And all of its travels.”
“Yeah. It’s really gotten around.”
“And now it’s going back to you.”
“Right.”
Dad stood up, so I followed. “Will you always keep it?”
“Always. Definitely. Always.”
He exhaled into the vastness of the cathedral. “That’s reassuring to me.”
My smile turned into a look of puzzlement. “Why?”
“I might need it.” He looked up to the ornate ceiling. “I might need to contact you someday for some help.”
I nodded emphatically. “Absolutely. I’ll be there. And I’ll be totally receptive. I
will
hear you.”
“Yes. I believe you will.”
We walked together to the back of the nave. As soon as we pushed open the cathedral door, we saw a portentous sight—the man in black with the high black hat. He was collecting coins for the evening ghost tour. Dad made a surprising suggestion. “Martin? What do you say we take this tour again?”
I shrugged and fell in line with him.
Soon we were part of a pack of a dozen tourists, walking briskly through the darkening streets of York. This time around, the mortician’s stories fascinated us, and they touched us. There was a story about a lost child boarded up in a basement and left there to die all alone. And there was one about an orphan who was worked to death by a heartless employer because the child was thought to be worthless. There was a story about a drunken, foolish husband who set fire to his own house, killing his wife and children. And one about another drunken husband who stumbled in the snow on a Christmas Eve and drowned in the river Ouse.
At one point Dad turned to me, with tears in his eyes, and said, “Please, Martin. I don’t want my life to be a story about a fool. I don’t want my life to be just a joke told by a guy in a funny hat.”
I replied with all my heart. “It won’t be. I know that for sure. It won’t be.”
“And I don’t want my son’s life to be some stupid cliché where’s he’s nothing but the son of a son of an alcoholic.”
“It won’t be that. I swear. It won’t.”
“It had better not. Because I’ll know about it, and I’ll haunt you.”
We stayed with the tour until the very end. At that point, the mortician’s assistant appeared and offered to take Polaroid photos of people for one pound. Dad and I each ordered one. We waited our turn and then posed on either side of the mortician.
The quality of my photo has faded over the years, but our expressions remain the same. The mortician looks lifeless, and goofy, and so comical an embodiment of death that no one could possibly fear him. Dad and I, however, both look very much alive. We are shining with an inner wisdom, and with hope, and we are filled with an unshakable purpose.
EPILOGUE
Back when I registered at Garden State Middle School, I reclaimed my first name. Only Aunt Elizabeth resisted the change, and only she continues to call me Martin. Margaret, Mom, and Dad respected my wishes; they never called me that again.
After college, I went to work for the United States Foreign Service, doing the same job my grandfather once did, in the same city. I like to think I do it better, though, with more personal integrity, and with a unique sense of history.
Margaret married the IT guy, Steve, and had a son named Stevie. She has since risen to a position right below Mr. Wissler’s at the Millennium Encyclopedia.
Mom still manages her money well enough to live a comfortable life. She forgave Dad for all his broken promises. They had a cordial relationship, but they did not get back together.
Dad did stop drinking, and he did turn his life around. He quit the restaurant business and got a job at a Catholic high school in West Orange, New Jersey, where he taught history. He just didn’t do it for very long.
His body, burdened by so many years of alcoholism, broke down while I was at the Walsh School. Mom called me on a rainy Sunday night and gave me the sad news. I took the train up from Union Station in Washington. Mom, Margaret, and her family got on at Princeton Junction.
The funeral director showed us one special request in my father’s burial plan. He wanted an envelope placed in his suit pocket. The director let me examine the envelope before the viewing. It contained two items: the other photo of Dad and me in York, with the mortician standing between us; and my folded-up computer paper, listing everything I had learned during my time travels with Jimmy Harker. I smiled to see my own teenage handwriting again:
Right, Right, Right.
After a small, dignified service, we buried my father near a marble wall inscribed with the Twenty-third Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .” An elderly priest articulated what I already knew—that the temporal body dies, but the spirit lives on.
Nowadays I pass through Newark Airport often, on my way to London, and I always take a side trip to see my father’s grave. I talk to him on those visits. But it’s funny, I don’t talk to him like one adult would to another. I talk to him like he was a lost boy. Which he was. Which I was. Which Jimmy Harker was.
I truly believe my father was at peace with God when he died. I know he had at least one answer to the question
What did you do to help?
Because he did help me to do something astounding. However, just in case, I always kneel beside his temporal remains, and I always say a prayer for his everlasting soul.
John Martin Conway
United States Embassy
Grosvenor Square, London
January 2, 2019
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Edward Bloor
“We’ll Meet Again”
Words and music by Hughie Charles and Ross Parker.
Copyright © 1939 (Renewed) by Irwin Dash Music Co., Ltd.
All rights for the Western Hemisphere controlled by Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP).
International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS,
and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloor, Edward.
London calling / Edward Bloor.
p. cm.
SUMMARY
: Seventh-grader Martin Conway believes that his life is monotonous and dull until the night the antique radio he uses as a night-light transports him to the bombing of London in 1940.
[1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. London (England)—History—Bombardment, 1940–1941—Fiction. 3. Catholics—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.
5. World War, 1939–1945—Great Britain—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B6236Lo 2006
[Fic]—dc22 2005033330
eISBN: 978-0-375-84947-3
v3.0