Poinsettias. Right before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy’d intercepted a phone call from a Tokyo newspaper to a Japanese dentist in Honolulu: “Presently the flowers in bloom are fewest out of the whole year. However, the hibiscus and the poinsettias are in bloom.” It had been a coded message telling Japan that the battleships and destroyers were all in port, but not the aircraft carriers. And the retrieval team would know he was scheduled to go to Pearl Harbor next.
But the address in the ad was in Shropshire, and there was no phone number. And five ads below it was a nearly identical one for “dahlias and gladiolas.” All the other ads were standard Found and For Sale’s. No Wishes to Contact or Anyone having information regarding the whereabouts of messages. But this was only the Herald. They might have put a message in the Times or the Evening Standard. Tomorrow he’d have to talk Mrs. Ives into getting him the other papers. And find out how to go about putting a personal ad of his own in: Dunworthy, contact Mike, War Emergency Hospital, Orpington. Time is of the essence, or maybe just R. T., contact M. D.
He scanned the Herald to see how much an ad cost, and then remembered his money was in his jacket. The jacket he’d left on the deck of the Lady Jane. And if he asked Mrs. Ives to help him, she’d ask all kinds of questions. He’d better wait till he was out of the hospital.
But he couldn’t get out till he could walk. Which meant his first priority was to get back on his feet. He wangled a postcard from Mrs. Ives-it took him fifteen minutes to talk her out of writing it for him-and wrote to the poinsettias address, requesting more information and giving the hospital’s address, just in case it was a message, and then tried to talk his nurses into letting him up.
They refused to consider it, even with crutches. “You’re still mending,” they said and handed him the Times. He combed it for messages, but the only Please Contact was Will the young lady in the red polka-dotted frock at the dance at Tangmere Airfield last Saturday please contact Flt. Lt. Les Grubman.
There were several more garden sets ads, and on Friday a letter arrived from the poinsettias address, with an attached price list and seed catalog.
Mike decided to take matters into his own hands and get up on his own, but Sister Carmody caught him before he was even out of bed. “You know you mustn’t put any weight on that foot till it’s completely healed,” she told him.
“I can’t stand to stay in this bed another minute,” he said. “I’m going crazy.”
“I know just what you need-”
“A nice crossword puzzle?” he asked sarcastically.
“Yes,” she said, handing him the Herald and a pencil. “And some fresh air and sunlight.” She went out and returned in a few minutes with a cane-backed wheelchair and took him and his Herald up to the sun-room, though it wasn’t very sunny. It had tall windows, but there were black Xes of tape on the panes, sandbags were piled against them, and their green net curtains gave an underwater look to the room. The high-backed chairs were wicker, but they’d been painted dark brown and had darker green velvet cushions. In one of them sat a red-faced man with a neck brace, reading the Guardian.
In between the chairs were massive oak tables and bookcases and curio cabinets and equally massive and dark potted plants. There was barely room for Mike’s wheelchair as Sister Carmody pushed him over to the sandbagged windows. She parked him next to a massive table and opened the window. “There, some nice fresh air for you,” she said.
The red-faced man cleared his throat irritably and rattled his newspaper.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she whispered.
“No,” Mike said, looking speculatively at the heavy furniture. If he were alone in here, he might be able to lean on it and-
“Would you like me to stay and read to you?” Sister Carmody asked.
“No, I want to work on my crossword.”
She nodded and took a bell from her pocket and set it on the table with only a slight ringing, but the newspaper rattled irritably again.
“Matron’s just outside the door,” she whispered. “Ring if you need anything. If your pencil falls to the floor, you’re not to try to pick it up. You’re to ring for Matron. You’re not to get out of that chair. I’ll be back for you in time for lunch,” she said and tiptoed out.
It would take Red Face at least till lunch to read the Guardian. Mike would have to hurry him along. He opened the Herald, folded it noisily in half and then in quarters so the crossword was on top. “One across,” he said loudly. “‘Likely to make waves.’” He tapped his pencil on the table. “Make waves… betides?… no, it’s eight letters. Hurricane?”
Throat clearing and ominous rattlings.
“Sorry,” Mike called to him. “You wouldn’t know what ‘likely to make waves’ is, would you? Or ‘serving task with no end in sight’? Seven letters?”
Red Face snapped his Guardian shut, stood up, and stalked out. Mike bent intently over the crossword again for a few minutes, in case the matron came in, then rolled his wheelchair over closer to a potted palm and grabbed the trunk with one hand, testing to see if it was as sturdy as it looked.
It was. When he put his other hand around the trunk and raised himself slowly to standing, the fronds didn’t even move. He cautiously transferred some of his weight to his bad foot. So far, so good. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought it might be. He reached for the nearest bookcase, still holding on to the palm tree, and took a careful step toward it.
Oh, Christ. His nails dug into the wood of the bookcase. He balanced there, breathing out in hisses through his clenched teeth, trying to get the courage to take another step, praying the matron didn’t choose this moment to come in.
All right, next step. It’ll never get any better if you don’t do this, he told himself. He repositioned his hand on the bookcase, unclenched his teeth, and took another step. Jesus.
It took him half an hour to get two chairs’, another bookcase’s, and a curio cabinet’s length from his wheelchair, by which time he was drenched in sweat.
I shouldn’t have come this far, he thought. If he heard the matron coming, there’d be no way he could make it back to his wheelchair in time.
He began working his way back, incredibly grateful for the Victorians’ penchant for teeter-proof furniture. Bookcase, potted palm, wheelchair. He sank gratefully into it and sat there, panting for several minutes, then tackled the crossword, looking for something, anything, he could fill in quickly. “Island creature Peter Pan author shot”? What the hell could that be? “Doctor’s warning Hitler would ignore”?
He gave up and scrawled in some words. Just in time. Sister Carmody came in smiling. “Did you make progress?” she asked.
“Yes.” He tried to fold the puzzle to the inside before she could look at it, but she’d already snatched it from him. “Actually, no. I fell asleep. The fresh air made me drowsy.”
“And it’s given you a good color,” she said, pleased. “If it’s fine tomorrow, I’ll bring you up here again.” She handed him back the newspaper. “You’ve got eighteen down wrong, by the way. It’s not ‘deception.’”
That’s what you think, he said silently, but if he was going to pull this off, he couldn’t afford to have her get suspicious, so he spent the rest of the day figuring out crossword clues for the next time she took him up.
Saturday the Blitz began with the bombing of the docks and the East End, and for the next two days everyone was too busy with incoming casualties to take him up. But on Tuesday, Sister Carmody wheeled him up again, and he immediately filled in the answers he’d prepared in advance and then got out of his chair. This time he made it farther, though he still couldn’t walk more than a few steps without the furniture’s support, and every step hurt like hell.