Yiddish.
"They're Jewish refugees," she said slowly. "But from what? Hitler...has he even been born yet?"
"Hitler was not the first madman to order pogroms against the Jewish communities of Europe. Just the most sweepingly brutal. Stalin was almost as bad, of course. The bloody pogroms going on all across Europe started about eight years ago, in 1880. Jews are being murdered, driven out of their homes, out of their own countries."
"Then ...what went on during World War II was a ...a sort of continuation of this? Only much worse? I never realized that." Margo looked up and down the street, where kosher slaughterhouses and butcher shops fought for space with tailors' establishments and bakeshops. In that moment, echoing down empty places in her mind she hadn't even known existed, Margo saw connections, running forward into the future from this moment and backward from it. In an instant, her narrow Minnesota universe expanded with dizzying explosiveness into an infinitely larger place with more intricately bound pieces of the human puzzle to try and understand than she had ever thought possible.
She understood, in a flash, why Malcolm Moore was willing to endure grueling poverty and the humiliation of a freelance guide's life, just to step through one more gate.
He wanted to understand.
Margo gazed down those infinite corridors in her mind, filled with endless blank gaps, and knew that she had to fill them in-or at least as many of them as she could before she died trying.
When she came up for air, Malcolm was staring at her in the oddest fashion, as though she'd just suffered a stroke and hadn't yet found the wit to fall down. The only thing she could think to say was, "They must have been ...I can't even imagine what they must have thought when Hitler started bombing London."
Something far back in his eyes changed, in response to what must have been visible in her own. For a moment, Margo knew he understood exactly what was shining inside her. Sudden, unexpected tears filled his eyes. He turned aside and blew out his breath and cleared his throat. A steaming vapor cloud dissipated in the freezing February air.
"It's half my own fault," he mumbled, "if not more. You were already badly upset and I should have made certain you knew how to operate a top-break revolver before we even set foot through the gate. It's just there's so much to remember, sometimes even experienced guides forget little things like checking up on what your partner knows." A crook of his lips and an embarrassed flush surprised her. "And, well, I'm not really used to halving a partner along."
Margo found it sudden y impossible to swallow properly "I'm starting to understand, Malcolm. Really, I am. I'm studying every minute we're here. I'm trying to learn how to learn, not just what to learn."
Malcolm touched her chin. "That's a good beginning, Margo. We'll give it another go, shall we?"
Her eyes filled in turn. Scouting was about so much more than just adventure and money, that for the first time, Margo wasn't sure she had what it took. She dashed knuckles across her eyes and sniffed hugely. "Thanks, Malcolm. Ever so."
He tousled her short hair. "Well spoken, young Smythe. It's barely gone noon. You have a good stretch of London left to study." His grin took any possible sting out of the words.
Wordlessly, Margo set herself the task of trying to understand what she saw around her, rather than just staring at it like a sun-struck tourist.
Margo studied hard for the duration of their stay. She learned-slowly and painfully-but she learned, nonetheless. Malcolm grilled her endlessly in the evenings with help from John, who was amassing quite a wealth of notes for his own research. Margo recorded observations in her personal log each evening, while they were still fresh in her mind. Even she was surprised by the detail she could recall when she put out the effort.
Then Malcolm told her he'd been in touch with some friends who were in town for the Season. An invitation for dinner had been received and duly accepted. She panicked. "What should I do? What should I say?"
"As little as possible," Malcolm said dryly.
She managed a smile. Don't screw this up was the message, loud and clear. Of course; a scout wouldn't have to worry about things like formal social evenings with the British peerage very often .... She dreaded returning to the book work she knew would be waiting for her on the time terminal. Learning by doing was so much more interesting. But she clearly needed some of that tedious cultural and historical reading. She held back a shudder. Margo had learned more about Victorian England in three days than she would have in three years cooped up in some stuffy classroom.
"Well," she said philosophically, "everyone keeps telling me charity girls are supposed to be demure and silent. I can always blush and stammer out something silly and let you rescue me."
"That's one solution. In this case, actually not a bad one, since socially you are not yet `out.' Have you been reading the newspapers as I suggested?"
"They're weird."
"And the magazines?"
"No photographs. Just those dull black-and-white etchings."
"You're supposed to be reading the articles," he said, brows twitching down in exasperation.
"Well, I can't make sense of half of them."
"Ah," was all the comment he made.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. I have a lot to learn."
"Yes," he said, looking down that extremely British nose of his, "you do."
"Well, you don't have to rub it in."
"Mmm, yes, I think I do. We very nearly died in St. Giles and ...Well, the less said about your first riding lesson, the better. An unprepared scout has a very short career.
If he was aware of the pun, he wasn't smiling.
Margo sighed. "Okay. I'm trying. Really, I am."
"I know. Now, about dinner. Let me explain cutlery...: '
Margo's last three days in London were as glorious as the first four had been miserable and terrifying. She mastered the knack of fluttering her eyelashes and deferring questions with naive requests of her own.
"Oh, but I'm so dull, you don't want to hear about an orphan. Please, tell me about riding to hounds. I don't understand anything about it and it seems so exciting ...."
In her school-girl mob cap and pinafore, she wasn't taken seriously by anyone. Even the ladies thought she was adorable.
"Mr. Moore, what an absolutely delightful child. Your ward is a charm."
"You really must bring her out in a year or two."
"Oh, no, not back to that dreadful tropical backwater, surely?"
And so the evening went, in a wonderful haze of wine, sparkling conversation, and more food than she could possibly eat, course after course of it, with delicate little desserts between. She floated to bed that night and dreamed of long formal gowns, bright laughter, and an endless round of parties and dinners with Malcolm at her side ....
The next day they went riding again, this time in Hyde Park, with Margo sidesaddle in a long riding habit and Malcolm in immaculate morning attire. Some of the women they'd seen last night at dinner smiled and greeted Malcolm, then smiled at her. Margo returned the greetings with what she hoped was a properly humble air, but inside she was bubbling.
Hyde Park was glorious in the early morning sunlight, so glorious she could almost forget the horror of disease, squalor, and violent death such a short distance east. Because she was not yet "out" socially, none of the gentlemen they had dined with noticed her, but that was all right. It meant Margo had been accepted as a temporal native. She'd passed a difficult test with flying colors, as difficult in its way as that lethal little confrontation in St. Giles.
They spent the afternoon window shopping beneath the glass roof of the Royal Arcade on Old Bond Street, which linked the fashionable Brown Hotel to Bond John trailed along as chaperon. Margo gawked through the windows into Bretell's at #12 where Queen Victoria herself bestowed her considerable patronage. Margo left the Arcade utterly dazzled.