There are no desperate situations, there are only desperate people.
Heinz Guderian
Previously on The Space Between:
When Jonathan promises he will find her, Annabelle is torn between the hope of seeing him again and the fear of what it could cost him.
Now, as Juliette helps her recover from what her husband has done to her, old memories resurface. Annabelle knows all too well that love can bring both joy and unbearable pain. But with Jonathan searching for her, she can no longer deny the truth her heart already knows…
Chapter Eight
Danny set the portrait on the counter, in front of the man.
“Have you ever seen this girl?”
He looked down at it, then smiled, showing yellowed teeth.
Danny said it again. “This girl. You seen her?”
“I might’ve seen her, sir.” His voice carried the filth of the place. “She a whore?”
My jaw tightened.
Annabelle came into my mind. Her way of moving. Her hands. The blue of veins beneath her pale skin. The copper catching in her hair. Her laugh, her voice.
“Let’s say she works this area,” Danny pressed. “Have you seen her?”
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Wait.” Danny set some coins on the counter.
The man raised his arm slowly and laid his hand on it. He was missing his index finger and his ring finger. What was left curled like a crab’s claw, the stumps ended in poorly stitched skin, and with that hand he brushed the money.
“Can I keep this?” He nodded at the portrait of Annabelle.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” said Danny. “But I’ll need word from you by tomorrow. I know where to find you.”
“Done.” He turned the portrait toward himself with his good hand. “If she works the streets I’ll find her. A face like that does good business.”
I grabbed him by the collar of his filthy shirt and pulled him toward me, then slammed him against the counter. I bent close, my mouth almost touching his ear.
“If you ever call her that again, I’ll break every finger you got left.”
Danny’s hand came down on my arm. I let go. The man stumbled back, gasping.
“I beg your pardon, sir. Didn’t know she meant something to you.”
“She does.”
Danny looked at him, then at me. And I knew right then I’d stepped in it.
***
We walked along the street, all the way to the Thames. We stopped there. I leaned against the railing and Danny stood beside me.
The river carried a slick of coal dust on its surface, and the boats slid through it slow. Evening light bent low over the water and caught the greasy patches, sores breaking open on the skin of the river. The stink that rose off the black water climbed with the creak of their timbers. The men on the boats moved without a sound, their faces all alike to me, almost erased.
“You came to me to find that girl,” said Danny. “You said you’d let me handle it. Then you nearly broke his jaw.”
“That man was unbearable.”
“As useful as he is unbearable.”
“He runs a filthy tavern.”
“He’s a police informant.”
I looked at him.
“You know someone in the police?”
“I know a lot of people.”
“So, that’s where Annabelle’s portrait came from.”
“You gave me enough to work with.”
“Feels like we’re hunting a criminal.”
“What makes you think you can rule that out, Joe?”
“Christ, Danny.”
“What do you know about her?”
“I know she’s not a criminal.”
“You sure?”
“Careful... I mean it.”
“Or what, boy? You’ll put me against a counter too? I’m not the one who needs to be careful. Find her in your dreams tonight, and next time bring me something I can use.”
I turned back to the river.
“She didn’t come last night.”
I felt Danny shift beside me. “What d’you mean?”
His voice carried urgency. I took it for worry.
“Jonathan,” he pressed.
“I didn’t dream of her last night.”
“What did you dream?”
“Not her.”
“What, then?”
London was dirty with fog, but here and there small flowers of light bloomed.
“I woke up several times. There were noises. I was restless. I waited for her, but she didn’t come.”
“What kind of noises?” Danny cut in.
“I don’t know. Footsteps, maybe. The rustle of clothes.”
“Maybe it was her. A kind of dream perception. Do you remember what Mrs. Galbraith said? The strength of those dreams. You cross a threshold and...”
“It wasn’t her.”
“How can you be sure?”
“And how can you be sure I haven’t lost my mind?”
“Oh, you’re no madder than me or anyone else in this world. Napoleon, now there was a madman, and yet we’re in his debt somehow.”
“I should stop listening to you.”
“Tell me about her, Joe. Give me more detail.”
“I’ve already told you everything I know.”
“Not the physical description. What she says. The way she speaks.”
“She’s different…I mean she’s different from anyone I’ve ever met.”
“How so?”
“I don’t have the words for it.”
“Try anyway.”
I gripped the railing, hanging my head low, letting out my breath…
I was with my father on his ship and we were in Lisbon and I was about fifteen and the only life I knew was the one aboard that ship. Lisbon burned white under the sun and the houses climbed up above the quay one against the other, their walls lime-washed and gone chalky in the light.
It was simple then. The sway of the ship and the wind in the sails and the salt drying on my skin and me standing at the bow with the wind running through my hair and nothing before me but that blue going on and on. My father was aboard. I trusted him then. That was before I knew the truth.
When he gave me leave I went down the gangway and walked for hours not caring where I went until I came upon a square where the streets ran narrow. A fountain stood in the center and around it a knot of girls. I did not see them.
I saw her. Her eyes found mine and held there and something in me caught fire that had never burned before.
That month in Lisbon I saw her near every day. We traded words, mine in English and hers in Portuguese, only what was needed and no more. The rest of it passed between our hands and our eyes.
Each day I closed the distance a little more. It was not poetry and it was not honor. I was chasing a thing I did not understand and I chased it through her. I wanted to touch her. I had never touched a girl in my life and the nearer I came to her the less my own body would answer to me.
The nights were a torment to me. I fought against myself and against the want in my own hands, and lost more nights than I won, alone in the dark with her face behind my eyes.
The days I spent out on the white rocks where the sea came in and broke, and that was where she always led me. Something burned low in me all that while and would not go out. There was nothing in the world but her and me with her.
Then my father said we would be leaving. She knew it before I told her. She had always known. She was a daughter of sailors, born in a port, and she had watched ships come and go her whole life. Knowing what she knew she chose to live inside the hour anyway.
She said little to me that day. She had me take off my boots and led me back into a hidden fold of the rocks where the water climbed over the stone with a hiss and drew back and climbed again to our knees.
She looked at me a long moment. Then she smiled and undid her shirt and opened it to the sun and stood there bare to the waist with her hands raised toward me. I could not move. My body had locked itself against me and the blood beat in my ears like something trying to get out. The sun hung low over the water and laid a road of red clean across it to where she stood.
She came to me then and reached up and touched my mouth with her fingers. Then she kissed me. My hands were on her hips before I knew I had moved them.
We made no promises to each other. She asked for none. She stayed in me after, and it did not fade for a long while. That was the first crack in me. The missing thing came into my life, and stayed.
Danny said nothing for a while. Then he looked at me.
“So, Annabelle is your missing thing.”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“And after Lisbon?”
I turned to look at him. He looked back at me, a sort of smile on his face.
“You stopped talking exactly where things get interesting, Joe.”
“What are you after, Danny?”
“Tell me about Beatrice.”
I lost my breath.
“Who told you about her?”
“You did. The photograph on your nightstand. Down in the corner, there’s a dedication. Beatrice... an Italian name. Quite something.”
“Now I know you’re a snoop.”
He laughed. “Who isn’t, in England?”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re a man who swore off love. And I know you don’t end up that way over a Portuguese girl you met on a voyage, however beautiful she was.”
I looked at the river and didn’t see it. Grey light, men, boats, all of it going shapeless as the night came up, and none of it reaching me.
“Joe, the greatest mistake a man can make is to call something love when it wasn’t. Tell me what’s really missing.”
I took a deep breath. It didn’t help.
“All I knew is that Beatrice was my father’s close friend,” I said at last.
Danny’s eyes stayed on my face. I felt them there.
“She’d taken me in when my father decided it was time I learned to live on land. I was eighteen. She was twice my age.”
“And you fell in love.”
It wasn’t a question. I didn’t answer.
“Raised among men, and then a woman like her comes along. It’s not hard to understand.”
“I’m not asking you to understand.”
“I know.”
“I asked her to marry me. My father showed up, we had it out, and he told me the truth.” I stopped. “God, I was out of my mind.”
“And that’s where you found the missing thing, isn’t it?”
“Beatrice was my mother,” I said. “My father had kept it from me.”
Distant voices. Someone laughing in the street. Danny might as well not have been there.
“I ran away. Three years across Europe. When I came back… God, when I came back she had taken her own life.”
“I know,” said Danny.
I searched his face.
“You do?”
“I mean that it makes sense,” he said, “from what you’re telling me.”
I was about to answer, but he spoke before I could.
“Look, Joe, our friend is coming. That was faster than I expected.”
It was the barkeep, making his way toward us.
“Well?” Danny said.
The man handed the portrait back to me. His eyes met mine.
“I found her, sir.”
To be continued…
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Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven
This is beautiful. Deciding which quote to share was really hard. I may have to come back to it and share another! The artwork is lovely as always.