Page 100 of The Unknown Birds

Chapter 29

London, July 1939

The rain is on our lips,

We do not run for prize.

But the storm the water whips

And the wave howls to the skies.

The winds arise and strike it

And scatter it like sand,

And we run because we like it

Through the broad bright land.

—Charles Hamilton Sorley

The Song of the Ungirt Runners

Returning to the real world was every bit as hard a crash landing as Ash had been afraid it would be, and she sank lower into her anxiety-laden blue devils. Without Rook in her bed she hardly slept, haunted day and night by the specter of the gas mask in the corner and now the pair of rubber-soled running shoes she’d bought but never worn.

She should have attended the service at Temple Church the day after their return, but she’d stayed away, mired in feelings, clinging to memories of their sojourn in the country until holding on felt harder than throwing herself full force back into the everyday.

True to her word, Susan had tended the classroom garden, and even after Ashley’s return, she kept coming. Soon the other children began turning up to help, but they lacked their usual light-heartedness, sensitive to the clouds of war drifting ever closer.

Ash tried to tease them out of it and get them singing silly songs, until, reflecting on her earliest days in France, she came up with a plan to lift their spirits. She wore those wretched canvas shoes to school the very next day.

“Right. Now listen up. There are sixteen of you. How would you divide that evenly?”

“Four fours, Miss,” Walter told her.

“Very good. Why don’t you choose the sets of four?”

She was pleased with the way he grouped the other children—older and younger, boys and girls—as even as any four sets could ever be.

They spent the rest of the day running foot races and three-legged races, jumping rope, and playing tug-of-war until they were all laughing and breathless and muddy from their exertions, not a trace of glum spirits lingering upon their smiling faces.

It may not have made everything better, but for a moment it had helped.

Instead of returning home, Ash found herself meandering towards the river and across London Bridge. She wandered just to wander, sorting out the feelings that threatened to drown her, the fear of having something good in her life lest it all be taken away.

When she saw a tram to Battersea Park, she stepped aboard as though it might carry her back in time and not just down the banks of the muddy Thames.

Despite the workers on their dinner breaks and the children playing ball, when she reached the park, she took off running in her old brown skirt. She ran until she didn’t see heads turning to discern what monster chased her. She ran until her mind was clear of worries, until the only thing tightening her chest was the breath pushing through her tired lungs. She ran until her ghosts stopped running with her. She ran and ran and ran and ran and ran.

When she couldn’t take another step, she flopped down in the grass, chest heaving, staring up into the pink-streaked sunset sky.

It didn’t make everything better. But for a moment, it certainly helped.

Too spent to face the walk back home, she caught a bus outside the park, changing to the Underground when she reached Sloane Square.

As the car slowed at Temple Station, she stared, exhausted, out the window. This was Rook’s stop, and it felt wrong not to go to him despite being a rumpled, perspiring heap, as though not getting off the train proved she’d been avoiding him since their trip.

And then she saw him, like a specter, staring back at her from the opposite platform after the departing westbound train. His eyes looked haunted and hollow, his posture stooped in defeat.