As Bill rode buses to all the usual tourist points in London, he noticed a shy church building nestled between what appeared to be warehouses. He found himself wanting to discover the people, the real soul of the city, so he resolved to attend the sacred dwelling and see what sort of people frequented it. He hoped his phrasing sounded English enough.
Sunday morning turned out to be the perfect advertisement for London fog. He had the doorman at his hotel hail a cab and gave the driver the name of the street where he had seen the church.
The driver gave him an odd look. "That's a rather long street. Any particular portion?"
Bill didn't know the address, the name of the church or any of the cross streets. He tried to describe the church and its neighbor buildings, but the driver maintained a blank stare. Finally Bill said, "Look. Just start at one end and go until I tell you to stop."
The driver mumbled something about Colonists and drove off. Despite the fog, the air was mild and refreshing. bill kept watch for his destination while he watered his lungs with cloud and dirty oxygen.
When he spotted the drab facade he directed the driver to pull in front of it. The driver checked his meter and said, "That's a fiver and two."
Bill hesitated. "Two what?"
"C'mon, guv, I ain't got all day." He held out his hand in a gesture of frustration.
Bill heard sounds from inside that told him the service was starting. Rather than try to dig out his cheat sheet and figure out what the driver meant, he handed the man a $20 traveler's check and asked, "Is this enough?"
The driver snatched the lavender paper like a frog catching a fly and sped away. Bill couldn't escape the feeling that he had overpaid a bit, but then he remembered he hadn't countersigned the check. That made him feel a little better.
He stepped to the door where an ancient pipe organ reproduced the hesitant strains of an even more ancient processional. While the building appeared modest from the outside, it could have held about 500 people. The group of 150 that sat in it made it look somewhat empty. He snuck into a pew near the back and found himself next to a lady of about 40, who smiled a friendly greeting.
Glancing about, he picked up the idea that the Order of Service lay hidden somewhere in the Book of Common Prayer in the rack before him. Uncertainly, he removed the volume and tried to steal a peek at someone else's book to find out where he should turn.
The friendly-looking lady saw his bewilderment and offered her book. Caught off guard, he declined with a smile, but did accept the page number from her.
The celebrant followed the material for about half the page, then skipped to something else. Bill heard a collective "flip" as seasoned parishioners worked their well-trained manuals. He sat and stared for a second, then began paging through the book hoping to land in the right place.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the lady smile again. It was a warm, can-I-help-you smile, not at all mocking or insincere. He smiled back and shrugged his shoulders.
She scooted closer to him and held out her book. While she straightened her modestly flowery dress, which had been washed too many times with harsh detergent, Bill took several unsuccessful stabs at the end of the book nearest him. When he finally caught it he held it lightly and kept his fingers clear so the lady could trip knowledgeably through the various parts of the service.
The organ whined out the final notes of the recessional half an hour later and Bill turned to the lady. "Thanks for your help," he said as he offered his hand.
She received the handshake and said, "Think nothing of it. Worship is always more interesting and effective when you know what's going on."
"I've never been in a service with a--a--what's the word for a preplanned program like that?"
"Liturgy?"
"Yeah, that's it. I've never been in a liturgy service before."
She acted surprised. "Really? Not even as a child?"
Bill laughed. "My parents were heathens. They both drank a lot and 'church' was a dirty word. When I became a Christian at 17 they disowned me."
"Disowned you?"
"Threw me out of the house. I lived for six months in the office of the auto mechanic shop where I work. Then, when I finished school and could work full time, I got my own place. I have a bunk and a boob tube and have it pretty good now."
She nodded. "And what of your parents now?"
"I never saw them again, and they never tried to contact me."
"That sounds awfully final."
"It is. They went out one night and got drunk and tried to drive home. Slammed right into a tree." He paused and looked away. "At least they had the decency only to kill themselves. That's more than a lot of drunk drivers do. The poor tree was never the same, though."
"What a thing to say!"
Bill smiled. "Hey, look. I'm only kidding. But I do have to admit I didn't do much mourning."
"Are you still bitter towards them?"
He shrugged. "I never really was bitter. I guess it's just a fact of life."
She patted him on the shoulder. "Be thankful, friend. A lot of people never escape such hurts."
Her use of the word "friend" triggered something in his mind. "By the way, now that you know my life story, I'm Bill Hall from Fort Wayne, Indiana."
She smiled. "Molly Sanders of London. Would you care for a bit of lunch?"
"I'd be delighted."
They found a small cafe not far from the church. Molly drove the back streets of London as if she had paved them herself, Bill noticed. She pulled the car up to the curb before he realized they had gone any distance.
The meal was hot and tasty. Bill registered some surprise when she ordered a glass of ale for each of them.
"It's not evil," she replied. "If we were setting out to get drunk and go on a shooting spree or something there might be reason to doubt. but this is just to wet our whistles."
Bill sipped his glass lightly. "I thought that was an American expression."
"Hardly. It occurs in The Canterbury Tales, in the Reeve's tale: 'So was hir joly whistle wel y-wet.' Vintage English poetry."
"Oh."
"You Americans didn't invent everything, you know."
Bill laughed. "I guess not." In a more serious tone he said, "Then maybe my occasional beer at home isn't sinful after all, eh?"
"Show me a biblical injunction against it. You Americans tend to be such extremists. Your ministers take a perfectly sensible command such as 'Don't get drunk' and translate it into 'You're a reprobate if you drink a drop.' That's improper. It fails to do justice to the spirit of Scripture that suggests that we may enjoy our lives here on Earth as long as we don't exceed certain sensible limits, most of which the Bible defines itself. Why are you looking so stunned?"
Bill blinked. "You sound like a scholar. Besides, I can't believe you got all that into one breath."
The afternoon passed quickly, and before Bill knew it Molly was depositing him in front of his hotel. As he opened the door he showered thanks on her for the fourth time.
"The pleasure is all mine, Bill," she said. "It's so nice to dialogue with a new friend and discover the common bonds that you have. You've rescued me from an afternoon of lethargy and boredom and helped me expand my mind. When--"
"Wait a minute," Bill said. "Listen." He reached over and turned up the car radio, which had been mumbling to itself all this time. A distinguished-sounding British baritone said,
". . . Masters, in his most scathing denunciation of the Russian Federation yet recorded, called them a--quote--cunning, cretinous convocation of cutthroats and cowards--end quote--then smiled broadly, apparently pleased by his own attempt at alliteration. The Russian news agencies reported that the president has called an emergency meeting of his cabinet to discuss Mr. Masters' continued attacks on Russia. Here in Britain, the price of oil. . ."
Bill turned the radio down again. He was ashen. Molly searched for a good euphemism to break the awkward silence. "Your President certainly is-- volatile, isn't he?"
"He's a fruitcake. That maniac is going to start a war."
"Why did your country elect him?"
Bill thought. "I guess they were tired of the same old nonsense, and decided that a return to 'traditional values' was a good idea. He was the candidate that carried on most about that stuff. I didn't vote for him, even if he was a Christian. Something about him bugged me." He paused for breath. "The values thing was a good idea, but it sure got lost in his head somewhere along the line. As soon as he got the job he started this stuff and forgot about all the other things he had run on."
"Well, let's hope the Russians take his rantings with a grain of salt, shall we?"
"Yeah, I hope so."
Obviously, either Masters had pushed the Russians too far or he himself fired the first shot. Bill blinked several times and looked again at the TV screen in the store window. "They did it. I don't believe it. They actually did it." His mind staggered as the little flashes passed each other over the deformed splotch that represented Greenland. He pointed, through a haze of disbelief, toward the left side of the map. "See those little blue spots toward the top of the U.S.? That's the Great Lakes."
"I know," Molly said.
Bill didn't hear. "And the one that points down? Lake Michigan. Just a sliver to the right of the bottom of that is where I live. That's Fort Wayne."
Molly took his arm and patted it, but morbid fascination kept her eyes on the screen. Bill stared and mumbled something about hits on Chicago and Detroit that would probably take out Fort Wayne and cure his laundry problem. Molly kept patting his arm.
The minutes crawled by and the little dots skipped across the screen. When the ETA clock reached one minute, the map faded and a young, black-haired commentator in what looked to Bill like a funeral suit appeared. He talked for several seconds, but the people outside couldn't hear what he said. The picture switched to a different map. The legend at the top of this one read, "BRITISH THERMAL DETECTION SATELLITES-- LIVE." The map, all in green, had tiny red pinpoints all over it. One of the red specks on the east coast of the United States grew into a dot, and a spot, and a crimson circle.
Bill grunted. "There goes Washington." As other flecks blossomed into circles, he named them. "L.A.-- New York--Chicago, probably Fort Wayne with it--don't know that one--that'd be San Francisco--Denver?--don't know that one--that one's in Texas, so it probably thinks it's bigger than the others--" Similar circles were growing all over the Russia at the same time, but he didn't try to identify them. In 20 minutes, both countries had turned solid red. The newsman returned, babbled his mute comments for a few seconds and vanished under yet another map. This map showed only the United States, and its message was clear.
An "x" on the map represented the impact, and the circle around it the blast area. Bill found the approximate location of Fort Wayne and discovered that three circles overlapped it. As he widened his search, the whole country seemed to be a mass of circled x's. A map of Russia appeared, also covered with x's and circles. Bill's mind retreated into unreality. If the maps were accurate, both nations now slept under a blanket of thermonuclear extinction.