Free A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman Page B

Charming chap, frightfully good looking, half his luck. Made a killing on the stock market. Toward the end of the war, he devised an ingenious scheme. Something to do with mapping troop movements in the major theaters of war, deducing military tactics. He’d pour over newspapers while the ticker tape spewed from his machine. He was a refugee. Imagine. Arrived in England with nothing but the shirt on his back. A stowaway—that was the rumor. Sociable fellow, but get him on the subject of his background and he was tight as a clam. You’d never have suspected from the look of him, from the way he spoke, that he was anything but an Englishman. Thoroughbred.
    “That fellow—can’t think of his name now. There’ll be no thickets for him, come middle life. More like this—at the helm of a yacht on the Riviera. He’ll fill his chest with fresh, salty air, thinking, The past was the past; this is now. He decided upon his scheme and then saw it to its inevitable conclusion. Quite a project, really. To take that grimy war machine—how many thousands mown down at Normandy? Derelict buildings, bombed and deserted and crawling with rats—and make it grind out cold hard cash.”
    Archibald paused. “Come to think of it, Barnaby, where did you spend the war? I’ve heard so many of your stories but I can’t say I’ve ever heard you talk about your army days. You did have army days, how could you not? A strapping chap like yourself.”
    Barnaby sipped his drink but said nothing. It was just like Archibald to find the raw spot and put his finger on it. Did he sense Barnaby’s shame? At not having seen action, stuck, as he’d been throughout the war, on home soil, an officer in charge of supplies and requisitions shipped to the real fighting men at the front.
    “Let’s come back to that later; you must remind me.” Archibald chuckled. “Hats off to him. A refugee translating the war into the trappings of a good English life. A town house in London, a country estate, a full staff to manage it all. In the end, that’s the task: take what we’re given and turn it into a reflection of our own True Self.”
    Archibald stared distractedly forward. “I was still a young man, about your age, when I fashioned my own compass, for better or worse.” He cupped his elongated fingers as though now holding that very compass in his hand. “I pointed it straight ahead of me, and lo and behold! It guided me here, straight to the seething heart of the matter!”
    Barnaby set down his drink. He was beginning to find Archibald exasperating. “Archibald, I must ask you. As a friend. Do you have any idea where Christine is? Or how I could go about tracking her down?”
    Archibald shook his head sadly. “Christine has seized her destiny, my boy, whatever you or I might think of her journey.”
    “Then you do know where she is?”
    “Barnaby, I do not believe you’ve heard a single word I’ve said. It’s not for us to interfere. I’m afraid I can’t be budged on that point. I am a man of principle, and that happens to be one of the principles I prize most.”

    Ma Ling settled in immediately. I had a small calendar, printed on handmade paper, that Han Shu gave me; I marked with a star the day I found Ma Ling. One month to that day, I placed another star. And upon rising one morning, I realized with surprise that it was already time to mark a third. How quickly two months had passed. I descended for our usual late breakfast; looking from girl to girl, I saw it again, the stamp of a kind of knowledge not entirely at home with such youth, and for the first time, I told myself explicitly what it was they knew.
    That night, after my customary long evening of solitude, I felt restless. With no more secrets to keep from myself, I left my small room, taking care to remain unnoticed, which was not difficult given the layout of the house, the two sections, front and back, being almost completely self-contained. I avoided the main passageway