by Chris Cleave
“It was good of you to invite us down here,” said Mary.
Zachary’s father smiled. “It was nice of you to come and see our show.”
“You must come and see ours. We’ll have a nativity near Christmas.”
“Do you have enough children for all the parts?”
“I think so. One really only needs a holy couple, an angel and a narrator. Some wise men would be nice, but then isn’t that just like life?”
Alistair winked at Tom. “You’re not going to let that stand?”
But Tom only gripped the bench and flinched at the bangs. In the guttering light Alistair saw the slow look Mary gave him.
“You’re good with this,” said Hilda, her head back on Alistair’s shoulder.
“Well I grew up in a mine, you see.”
She snuggled closer. “I don’t suppose you’d mind putting your arm around me?”
Soon the lighter flame burned out and all of them waited in the dark. More bombs fell, and with each one Hilda pressed closer. Once or twice at a particularly loud explosion she gave a shriek. When she was halfway into his lap, Alistair eased her off and stood up.
“Would you all excuse me? I ought to contact my regiment.”
“Will you come back?” said Hilda.
“Don’t worry,” said Alistair.
“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t go.”
Her voice was such a porridge of fright that it made him glad to leave.
Here and there the basement was lit by the glow of cigarettes, and a little farther along someone had set up a candle. Alistair made his way to the staircase and up to the theater. Upstairs, the sound of the anti-aircraft guns was loud and close. The backstage area was lit up by flashes entering through an open stage door. Alistair made for that, tripping over props and drapes, and then he was outside in the narrow alley beside the theater.
It was half dark and the hot air was sharp with smoke. Alistair scanned the sky, listening to the bombers and the anti-aircraft guns. Searchlights cut the crimson base of what might have been smoke or might have been cloud. From the noise and the angle of the beams, the main body of the attack was a fair way off: a mile, maybe two. Underground, with that awful resonance, it had seemed closer.
He went back into the theater and nosed around by the light of the flashes until he found wine on one of the tables. He leaned back into the scoop of the baby grand, took a long drink and stared up at the theater. The gun flashes glinted on the gold columns and the high proscenium arch.
“I’m to tell you to come back down immediately.”
He turned. Mary had come from the basement and now stood watching him. The occulting light lit her up, her cigarette smoke flashing silver.
“You probably ought to go back down yourself,” he said.
She said nothing, only stood with her arms crossed.
“Did the others send you to fetch me?’
“Hilda is a wonderful girl. We’ve been friends since we were six. She is mischievous and loyal, and very funny until a man walks into the room, whereupon her IQ immediately halves. But it is only shyness, you see. I’m sure the phenomenon would vanish as you got to know her.”
He filled his pipe in the stuttering light. “Would you like some wine? I’m afraid I was drinking from the bottle.”
“Ugh. You see, this is why I prefer civilians.”
“Do you have a lighter?”
She came to the other side of the baby grand and slid him the lighter while he slid her the bottle. She took a short drink. Outside, the anti-aircraft guns let off a salvo, making them both flinch.
“You really should go back down,” he said.
“I shall be glad to. Right behind you.”
“Look, Hilda is lovely. It’s me. I am really not myself at the moment.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, who is? You’re an army officer. I’m a schoolteacher. The whole world is in fancy dress.”
“I just need a bit of time.”
“Fine,” said Mary, “I shall wait here with you.”
“I meant . . . Oh, never mind.”
“I know what you meant,” said Mary. “But Hilda is a hoot. She likes parties, and big bands, and subterfuge. You shan’t tell me you don’t like such things? She plays tricks on me, and runs rings around my mother, and she once set fire to a baronet’s motor car because he lent it to Oswald Mosley.”
“Forget romance. We ought to parachute her behind enemy lines.”
Mary sighed. “I wish you would kiss her, first.”
Alistair drank some wine. The flashes through the open stage door left green afterimages of the bottle glass. He said, “Tom is a good man, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I hope you didn’t read too much into—”
“It’s just that the two of you seemed a little—”
“ ‘Well, it’s the war, isn’t it? It’s one thing for you, being out there in the action. Cooped up in town, we get snippy.”
“Tom really believes in teaching, that’s the thing. I suppose he can’t bear to have it all interrupted.”
“I liked it about him straight away. Men usually bleat about one’s looks, but Tom had to know exactly what I thought about the new Education Act.”
Alistair smiled. “And he is a useful cook, of course. He can take thoroughly demoralized ingredients and give them back their will to live.”
“And he has taken great risks for me. It does his career no good to let me have my school.”
“But that is just like Tom, isn’t it? Thoroughly unselfish.”
“Yes, thoroughly.”
“I rather resent having to surrender him to you.”
“Blame Hitler,” said Mary.
“Oh, I do. I will seduce his flatmate the moment we capture Berlin.”
“I hope you and Hitler’s flatmate will be jolly happy together.”
“Well I’m glad that you and Tom are.”
“Oh, we are.”
“Well, that’s fine,” said Alistair.
“And look, Hilda is terrific. You shouldn’t judge her just because she—”
“Oh, of course not. Nobody is brave, the first time in an air raid.”
Mary took a longer drink of the wine. “It’s much better up here, isn’t it? The bombs aren’t nearly so close as one imagines when one is down below.”
“I expect they’re attacking the docks.”
Mary slid the bottle back to him. “Should we go and look? I mean, there mightn’t be another air raid. I’d hate to think I missed the one chance.”
Alistair said nothing.
“What?” said Mary.
“You make it sound like the jubilee fireworks.”
“Are you scared?”
“Yes, and so should you be.”
“I’m a grown-up.”
“Still, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Let’s not get hurt then. Let’s just go a little way.”
He hesitated. ‘All right.”
“As close as we can, just to see what it looks like.”
Outside, the sky was lurid. The sound of the bombs seemed distant, and it was hard to make out the direction while the echoes rolled up the white marble canyon of the Strand. Light came in all colors and from all directions. Smoke, or cloud, hung at a few thousand feet, looming blue-white when searchlights cut in on it from below, flashing yellow when exploding anti-aircraft shells lit it from above. It was seven-thirty in the evening and the sun seemed to be setting in the west and the east simultaneously. Alistair stood a yard from Mary and they looked from one sunset to the other.
“What is that in the east?”
“I don’t know,” said Alistair. “Some new kind of searchlight.”
“So red?”
“Could it be lithium? I didn’t know we had anything t
hat bright.”
“I wish we could see over those buildings.”
“Come on,” said Alistair. “We should go back.”
Mary craned her neck. “But we haven’t seen anything. Let’s at least go as far as the river.”
“The wardens won’t like it.”
“So? They can give us a good telling-off. You won’t cry, will you?”
He grinned. “All right. Just as far as the river, and then we’ll go back.”
They reached the Thames and walked out onto Waterloo Bridge. Now, near the center of the bridge while the sun set over the water behind them, they had a clear view to the east. They stopped. Where the bombing was concentrated, flames rose hundreds of feet into the air. From time to time high above, the pale underside of an aircraft would glow for a moment as it twisted through the light. The whole scene was inverted in the river, bent and shattered in the oily wavelets. As they watched the fires reaching down into the black depths, they felt the breeze on their backs as the distant flames drew air in. They stood gripping the parapet, an arm’s length apart. They listened to the roaring of the distant fires.
“Good god,” said Alistair at last.
Mary said nothing, only stared at the conflagration.
“Mary, are you all right?” He moved a foot closer and then stopped, dropping the hand he had been about to put on her arm.
She looked up at him, took half a step forward, then hesitated. “We shouldn’t go any farther.”
He smiled. “No.”
She gave him a grateful look. “We ought to go back. To be safe.”
“Yes. We really should.”
They stood at the center of the bridge and she said, “I’m glad we went as far as we could.”
They walked back. The lacerated sky faded in the west and brightened in the east. When they reached the Lyceum they stopped at the stage door.
Mary said, “You aren’t coming in, are you?”
“I should find my regiment. The men get in a state without orders.”
She looked away. “You must do the right thing, of course.”
“Would you say something to Hilda from me? And to Tom?”
“If you like. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“You’re a rock.”
She looked up at him sharply. “Alistair, are we cowards?”
Their faces flashed in the frank light of the guns, and he was silent.
—
Back down in the basement someone had lit more candles.
Tom rose when Mary returned. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“He had to go to his regiment. He said to let you know how sorry he is.”
Hilda slumped. “But what took so long?”
“He couldn’t leave until there was a gap in the bombing.”
“He’s mad,” said Tom.
“It isn’t as close as it seems down here. They’re bombing the docks.”
“Perhaps we should all go up,” said Hilda. “One would hate to miss out on the action.”
Mary said nothing.
“I was worried sick,” said Tom. “I’m sorry. I know it’s silly.”
Mary sat down with him. “I was only upstairs.”
“I should have come up, I know. I was just—”
Mary took his hand to show that it didn’t matter. Now that she was back in the basement she began to shake. They waited, down in the dark.
After an hour Mary said, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a song?”
Zachary’s father cupped his hands. “Any of my boys awake over there?” Some answering calls came. “Well how about a tune?” he asked them.
There was nothing for a moment, while the sounds of explosions rumbled on. Then a lone, low voice came.
The Lord He thought He’d make a man
These bones going to rise again
More voices joined.
Made him from mud and grains of sand
These bones going to rise again
Zachary’s father joined in, with his eyes closed, and now Zachary too.
The Lord He spoke with monstrous voice
These bones going to rise again
Shook the world down to its joists
These bones going to rise again
The voices rang in the basement. On the bench beside Alistair’s empty place, Hilda glowered at Mary. The city shook. Mary held Tom close and ran her fingers through his hair.
“It will be all right,” she said. “You and I, we will be fine.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And tomorrow we’ll all fix the mess, and on Monday everyone will go to work as usual.”
“I suppose so,” he said.
“What’s the first thing you’ll do on Monday morning?”
“I don’t know,” said Tom. “Inspect all the schools. Check for damage.”
She squeezed his hand. “Good.”
“Then I suppose I will organize repairs as necessary, and check again that the open schools have adequate provision of shelters.”
“That’s good, darling.”
Eve took the needle, Adam took the plow
These bones going to rise again
That’s how we’re all working now
These bones going to rise again
“And what will you do on Monday morning?” said Tom.
“I shall stand in front of my class and tell them none of this palaver is an excuse for not having done one’s homework.”
“You could say that to Zachary now. He might use this time.”
She lowered her voice. “I go easier on him than the others. I think he might have something wrong with him, you know.”
“Beside being the wrong color, you mean?”
She stared until she was sure he was only teasing her, and when he grinned she jabbed him in the ribs. “You dog!”
“So what do you suppose is wrong with him?”
“You’ll scoff, but I’ve researched it and I think he has word blindness.”
Tom groaned. “No such thing.”
“But really. I’ve read papers on it.”
“By crackpots, I’m afraid. Oh, I know you mean well but just think about it. How can one be blind to something that is right there on the page?”
She let her hands fall from his, and sighed. “I don’t know, darling.”
“Right there in front of one,” he said, picking up her hands again and opening her palms like a book. “No farther away than this.”
“They say the eye sees, but there’s a blind place in the mind.”
“And I say it is lack of effort. You must hold him to the same standard as everyone else. Because where should it stop, this fashionable clemency, once we allow that there are things we can see and yet be blind to?”
The singing voices swelled in the cellar and the bombs gave the percussion, and the great injured city went farther into night.
“Oh, I don’t know, darling. I don’t know where it will stop.”
—
Alistair woke in the gray hours. The all-clear was sounding a huge C-sharp across the city. His body found coffee on its own. London created itself in concentric ripples widening from the warm white cup.
Around him were some men of his regiment. Most were in uniform; all were filthy and drawn. A brownish little café. A defeated sort of smell, of wet charcoal and bonfire smoke. No biscuits or buns available. Everyone’s eyes downcast, faces blackened with soot. His watch was in his pocket, inexplicably. Seven in the morning. He put it back on his wrist. His wallet was gone. He thought: They’ve stolen my leave.
He had found his men and stood them drinks in the bars behind Waterloo. Then bombs had fallen near the station and he had organized the men into teams to help the rescue crews. They had used their
hands on the piles of brick and timber, digging out civilians and parts of civilians. There had been some competition to see which teams could clear houses the quickest. There had been a grown hand holding an infant hand, with neither attached to anything. There had been an accordion with the Bakelite case blistered and charred. It had helped to be drunk.
Now he made his way to Waterloo Station, where the stationmaster gave him more coffee and let him scrub in the staff washroom. Alistair stripped to the waist and ran a slow trickle of brown water into the basin. The mains pipes were cracked, or the fire pumps were taking all the pressure. He cleaned up as well as he could, combed his hair with his fingers, and accepted a clean shirt that the stationmaster offered. He needed the man’s help to do up the buttons—his fingers were blistered and cut.
He closed his mind to all thoughts of the previous night. This was what he had learned in France: that one could continue to operate quite adequately, so long as one stayed in the hour.
At eight-thirty his men began to arrive back at the station, singly and in lurching groups. Alistair slapped each man on the back and got him roughly corralled at one end of the concourse. It was a relief to be back in charge of something simpler than himself. Though his head was hammering with the hangover, it amused him to discover that the men were worse off. After the rescue work was done it seemed that the majority had simply returned to the public houses, where normal service had continued in the cellars below the bars. It was impressive to see what the regiment had done to itself in twenty-four hours, with only indirect help from the enemy.
“Big night?” he said to a man who was bleeding from a cut above the eye.
“Yes but we’ll give it back to them double, won’t we, sir?”
“The Germans?”
“Well the Navy was fortunate, sir, that the Germans interrupted.”
Alistair docked him two shillings of pay for fighting, wrote him a personal IOU for two shillings, and carried on.
A private was complaining, “If the Luftwaffe had let me have one more hour, I’d have got her in the sack.”
“Look on the bright side,” said Alistair. “If you’d had one more minute after that, you’d have got her in the family way.”
