The Explosionist (6 page)

T
HE
G
IRLS
’ R
IFLE
C
LUB
met that Thursday in the school gymnasium. Standing in a row of girls facing the targets opposite, Sophie bit the paper off a cartridge and poured the powder down the rifle bore, then put the greased bullet in the bore and rammed it down on top of the powder.

An hour of shooting left Sophie filthy and exhausted but much happier than before. (Funny the way firing a gun always put her in a good mood.) She and Nan walked back to their room and changed into their dressing gowns before going to take the extra bath allotted to members of the Rifle Club.

The bathroom had a row of cubicles, each with its own tub and taps, and the two girls ran hot baths, a luxury
unknown at the National High School for Boys down the road (Sophie was glad of the hot water but sorry boys and girls should be treated so differently).

“My dad visited on Sunday afternoon,” Nan said as they soaked in painfully hot water. “He says that this time it really looks like war.”

Sophie admitted that her great-aunt had been saying something very similar.

“Sophie, what will you do if war breaks out? How will you serve, I mean?”

Sophie smiled at Nan’s phrasing, but the question demanded serious thought.

“Oh, it’s impossible,” she said, feeling the back and shoulder muscles that the hot water had loosened snap back into tight bands. “It’s easy for you. Your family’s been army as far back as anyone can remember.”

“Yes,” said Nan, the affirmation echoing off the tiles of the cavernous bathroom. Sophie envied her certainty. “I know I’ll join the women’s army auxiliaries—there’s never been any doubt, and a declaration of war will simply speed things up a bit. All three of my brothers are in the army already, of course, and there’s no reason for me not to follow them. But what will Jean do, and Priscilla? What will you do, Sophie?”

“If it were fifteen years ago, and war not even on the horizon,” Sophie said, thinking out loud, “I suppose it’d be a
pretty sure thing that I’d go to university. Miss Chatterjee told me that when she first began teaching here, almost all the girls stayed on for sixth-form work, and quite a few of those went to university as well. Now most of us leave after the fifth form.”

“That sixth-form group this year is like a ghost ship,” Nan agreed, splashing for emphasis. “There are so many empty seats, it must be terribly discouraging. And last year not a single girl went on to university. All the really academic girls go now to IRYLNS instead. Is that what you’ll do, do you think?”

Sophie sighed. “I don’t know. You’d think Great-aunt Tabitha would like the idea of me going to IRYLNS, but when I suggested it this weekend, she practically bit my head off. I think she’s going to pull strings and try to get me admitted to university.”

“Do you think she’s got that kind of influence?” Nan sounded impressed.

“I hope so,” Sophie said, only realizing as she said it how very much she wanted it to be true. “The auxiliaries would be absolutely dire! Seriously, can you see me in a khaki uniform saluting my superior officer?”

“No, it’s true,” Nan said, “I can’t picture that at all.”

“Imagine how poorly I’d do in the PT testing,” Sophie added. “I couldn’t do a single press-up last time they made us in gym! They’d probably ship me off to some awful farm in
the middle of nowhere. Even a factory job would be better than having to work as a Land Girl.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Nan said thoughtfully. Nan liked the outdoors more than Sophie did. “Farming wouldn’t be so bad. But I think you should hold out for university.”

“The horrible thing,” Sophie said to Nan as they hurriedly dried themselves and put on their pajamas, “is that we’re being forced to choose now about things that really should be able to wait till we’re older. It’s hard to say what’s worse, the suddenness of having to choose or the chance that if we don’t make up our minds soon, the choice will be taken away from us altogether.”

In spite of this disturbing conversation, the evening’s exercise and the warm bath had relaxed Sophie, and she lay in bed in a pleasant haze, looking forward to double-period chemistry the next morning. She was asleep before she knew it, a rare thing this far into the summer term, when dusk fell long after even the oldest girls’ bedtime.

A few hours later, though, she found herself standing spread-eagled, back against the bedroom door, her throat raw from the shout she’d just unleashed.

A light went on by one of the beds. Priscilla’s sleepy face turned toward her.

“What on earth just happened?” she asked Sophie.

By now Jean and Nan were both sitting up.

“Yes, what’s the matter, Sophie?” said Nan.

“I don’t know,” Sophie said, her voice rough. She cleared her throat and cast her mind back. She couldn’t remember a thing. Something moved in the shadows, and Sophie thought her heart might actually explode with terror.

“Sophie screamed,” said Jean. “That was what woke us, I think.”

Sophie spread her hand flat across her neck and collarbone and took another deep breath. Her hands were freezing, the skin of her chest hot and feverish, and she could feel her heart pumping at twice the usual speed.

“You must have had a nightmare,” Nan said. “What was it, Sophie? My brother Sam always says that when you have a bad dream, the best thing to do is talk about it.”

“But I can’t
remember
,” Sophie said, deeply shaken. “I might have been in a factory. And someone was having an argument.”

“What kind of a factory? Who was there? What were they arguing about? What were you doing there?”

But Sophie could answer none of Nan’s questions.

“Go back to bed!” Priscilla finally said. “We’re perfectly safe here. A bad dream isn’t going to kill you, horrible though it may be.”

In bed again, Sophie’s feet were freezing cold and she folded her left foot behind her right knee to warm it up, then
switched sides to warm the other foot. It took longer for her heart to stop hammering in her rib cage. If this was
perfectly safe
, what must
grave danger
feel like?

In the morning Sophie hardly remembered the interruption to the night’s sleep, though she felt irritable and poorly rested. The others didn’t let her off lightly, though. They pestered her right up until they got to chemistry and discovered, not Mr. Petersen, but the biology mistress, Miss Hopkins.

“Mr. Petersen can’t be with you today,” the teacher told the class. “You may use this time to catch up on work for your other classes, and lessons will resume on Monday.”

The sound of scratching pens and the rustle of pages soon filled the classroom. Sophie couldn’t concentrate, which was most alarming. She was used to being able to work even under the most adverse conditions. It was a great disappointment not to see Mr. Petersen, of course, but there was no reason missing him should make her so uneasy.

At twenty-five past nine, a first-form girl crept into the room to deliver a note to Miss Hopkins.

“Girls,” said the biology mistress, speaking abruptly as she ran her eyes over the note, “I must leave you. You may speak with one another while I am away, so long as you moderate your voices. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes; Nan, I authorize you in the meantime to discipline any
girl who creates a disturbance.”

After she left, the girls looked at each other. Sophie tried to get on with her English essay. Many of the others took out the bundles of knitting that had been all the rage that term and began to click away with their needles.

The low murmur of conversation couldn’t cover up the noise of Priscilla poking Jean in the side and snickering.

“Sophie,” Priscilla called out softly.

Sophie looked around.

“Where do you think Mr. Petersen’s gone?” Priscilla said.

Sophie decided to ignore her and turned back to her work.

“If Miss Hopkins comes back and tells us there’s been another bombing,” Priscilla persisted, “will you admit the odds just got much better on Mr. Petersen being one of the bombers?”

“Yes,” said Jean, whose father gambled, “from ten-to-one outsider to four-to-six odds-on favorite.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Sophie, glaring at them both. She went resolutely back to the essay.

Miss Hopkins returned just as Nan threatened to single out two particularly loud girls for punishment.

“Girls,” Miss Hopkins said, taking her place before the class, “there’s no need to panic—”

Several girls uttered small screams.

“—but I’m sorry to have to tell you that another bomb went off this morning, this time right in the heart of Princes Street.”

She looked like someone trying not to weep.

“How many people were killed?” Nan asked, her voice quite calm.

“More than a hundred,” said Miss Hopkins. She took off her glasses and wiped them on the cuff of her blouse.

Some of the girls began crying.

Sophie didn’t dare look at Jean and Priscilla.

Of course Mr. Petersen wasn’t the bomber. He couldn’t be. On the other hand, where was he?

Sophie walked in a daze through the rest of the day’s classes, earning a reprimand from the maths teacher and an extra essay assignment from the lady who taught spiritualist instruction, an old crony of Great-aunt Tabitha’s.

Though she still felt sad and angry and worried and confused—feelings were
awful
—Sophie’s spirits lifted just a little when the bell rang to mark the end of the last class. Mikael would be able to help her, she told herself as she ran upstairs to pack for the weekend.

She decided to cram everything into her satchel so that she wouldn’t have to carry more than one bag. It was a tight fit. She said good-bye to the others and ran downstairs, earning a reproof from a prefect in the hallway. She would have to hurry
if she didn’t want to be late.

Lord Nelson’s Column—shaped like a telescope and visible from almost everywhere in Edinburgh—was surrounded by a secluded park, an overgrown brick path weaving through the hilly garden thick with rough grass. The tower had five stories all together, each with a few narrow windows. After climbing a hundred and forty-three stairs to reach the small circular chamber at the top, Sophie passed through the tiny doorway, barely a foot and a half wide, and out onto the little balcony, its sturdy low parapet just hip height.

Still panting from the climb, she dumped her satchel on the flagstones and used it as a seat, then leaned her elbows on the parapet to look out. It was so clear that she could see all the way down the coast to North Berwick, where Sophie had spent many summer afternoons paddling in the rock pools while Great-aunt Tabitha played eighteen holes on the links.

Where was Mikael? The trouble with waiting for someone was that it was like not being able to go to sleep, Sophie thought. It gave one altogether too much time to think about things.

She couldn’t stop worrying about what it would mean if Scotland and the Hanseatic League went to war with Europe. Even worse, what if Scotland
lost
? Would the streets of Edinburgh be renamed after French and German war heroes? Would troops patrol Calton Hill? Would French become
Scotland’s official language, and would a permit from the local prefecture be needed to take the train to North Berwick?

How much longer would the Hanseatic League hold fast?

By the time Mikael got there, Sophie was cold and bored and more than a little hungry. Her delight at seeing him warred with her feeling of grievance at his lateness, but when he smiled, her irritation washed away like a bloodstain under cold running water.

“So which day did you get to Edinburgh?” she asked as Mikael took a seat beside her. The satchel was fine for one person to sit on but small for two, and she shivered at the pressure of his leg against hers.

“On Sunday,” Mikael said. “My mum kicked up such a fuss, I reckoned I’d better stay away for a few weeks.”

“You’d think your mother would be used to you by now!” Sophie said.

“Yes, it’s strange, isn’t it? I can never see why she’s so upset. It’s not like I’ve ever actually killed anybody, or even put anyone in hospital—”

“You sound sorry for that!”

Mikael laughed. “Actually,” he said, “though the car episode was entirely my fault, it’s not what’s got her so riled up. For once it’s my brother, not me, who’s in really hot water.”

“Your brother? But I thought he was a kind of saint.”

Mikael’s brother was ten years older and had left home to go to university when Mikael was still quite young. Sophie had never met him, but he was by all accounts (and to Mikael’s chagrin) a complete paragon of all the virtues.

“This time my perfect older brother seems to have done something heinous beyond belief. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but he hasn’t written home for months, and I think my mum’s convinced she’s lost him permanently.”

“How odd,” Sophie said, her own worries receding a little as the puzzle claimed her attention. It was hard to think what Mikael’s brother could have done to upset their mother so much.

“At any rate,” Mikael continued, “when the police telephoned her about my little escapade, she well and truly flew off the handle.”

“What do you think your brother did, then?” Sophie asked.

“Yes, it’s quite a mystery, isn’t it?” Mikael said blithely, sounding not at all disturbed by his brother’s departure from the straight and narrow. “I’ll see if I can winkle the real story out of Aunt Solvej. It’s probably nothing much, and Mum’s simply making a mountain out of a molehill.”

They gazed out over the city, Sophie uncomfortably aware of how close they were sitting to each other.

“Sophie, what about you?” Mikael asked, putting his hand on her knee in a way that made her jump. “How are
you? I have to say, you looked terribly worried the other day. Everything all right?”

After a pause, a string of incoherent phrases poured out of Sophie: the horror of the bombings, the sense they all had at school of waiting passively for their future to be decided, the impossibility of getting along with the others, her dread of war.