by Chris Cleave
Under the waves there were still the lights, cold and holy, cutting the surface above. Simonson was sinking with him. They watched the lights together. Mary was there too, and Tom, and the enemy airman, and Briggs, and all the men Alistair had lost. Everyone was restored. As the lights and the roaring noise faded, they all sank together through the warm and ageless sea.
Duggan took his hand. “Come on Huh . . . Heath. Let’s get you huh . . . home.”
September, 1941
IT WAS SIX WEEKS since Mary had finally written to Alistair again, and a month since she had received a reply from his commanding officer, a Major Simonson. Alistair was missing in action over the sea, presumed killed. The major conveyed his regrets and wished her to know that Captain Heath had been a courageous officer who had spoken of her in the gladdest terms.
Morphine helped. It threw sorrow over the wall, into London where everyone’s tragedies multiplied. One could leave it out there for the time being, in the city of stopped clocks, pending the day when.
Mary took to walking. Her leg was improving, though the limp returned if she went too far. She liked to rest on the steps of the National Gallery and look down on Trafalgar Square. It had been months now since the last serious air raid. The square was full of courting couples. How they laughed! As if the blackened world were new already. Every sight was agreeable to them, every diversion gay. Mary had not remembered that there was so much entertainment in watching pigeons squabble in the fountains.
She still thought that Alistair might have survived. The authorities might presume a man killed, but that was the authorities for you. To presume was always vulgar, while life was sometimes gracious. In the meantime she watched the lovers in Trafalgar Square, so as not to forget how it was done. In the bright square the couples clung, continually adjusting their grip. Now their fingers entwined, now their arms encircled the other’s waist as if life was not at all on their side, as if it might place the tip of its lever into any distance they allowed to open up between them. Watching them, Mary supposed the odds were against her. It was lovers who trusted luck least.
She marveled at the ease with which the young women moved. She watched them laugh and flush. They were all hope and helium, lovely to watch. Two years ago it had been her.
When it got too much, she walked down to the Embankment and sat on the granite wall. She ran her fingers over the iron dolphins that swam around the lampposts. Beneath her the brown water churned with all that was lost, and today she had no more morphine. It had been harder and harder to come by, and now it was gone. As the last of it wore off, she realized that she had no idea how to get more.
One often saw bodies at low tide, on the mud spits by the pontoons of Waterloo Bridge. Whether they were long dead and only now surrendered by the mud, or whether they were the newly despairing, Mary couldn’t tell. Bodies didn’t lie cleanly on the ground, the way they did in the cinema. In real life they appeared not to have been strewn, but sown. The dead were filthy, half buried, sometimes barely distinguishable from the mud or the rubble they lay in. One didn’t understand, until one had seen a great many bodies, the unconscious effort that one must be making every minute simply to keep one’s hands and face and clothes clean. The world’s surfaces were so filthy that the living touched them only with the tips of their fingers and the soles of their shoes. How grubby it was to die, to give up making that effort.
Above the mud spits, the lovers never looked down at the dead. Mary watched them clinging tight, their gaze on the horizon. It was a rule that lovers looked east toward the sea. She made herself look that way too.
A boat was unloading onto the Embankment steps—for Parliament, the longshoremen were saying. A case broke open and there were oranges, the first she had seen in months. They rolled across the gray granite and bounced down the mud-brown steps. They splashed into the brown river and sank from sight and bobbed up again, so vivid that she gasped. Tears came to her eyes because she understood how drab the world had become, how gray-brown, how close to fading entirely. She put her hands to her mouth and watched the oranges floating upstream on the tide. They were so . . . so . . . orange.
A confusion crept up on her. The waves rose and fell. The oranges were lost from sight. Was Alistair dead, while life continued? It was too startling. She could not remember whether she had received the letter from Major Simonson, or whether she had dreamed it. One dreamed so many things. Morphine was utterly convincing, that was the trouble—while life carried on blithely as if it had no competition in the business of conviction, and in consequence seemed less real. And meanwhile here were all these lovers, legions of them, strolling on Waterloo Bridge in the hot September sun. Was it possible that she was not numbered among them? The confusion grew worse until it was terror. Mary covered her eyes.
A golden retriever put its paws on the wall where she sat, and licked her face. Mary looked up to find it nose to nose with her. The dog was hopelessly high on life, as if it had taken forty-five times the recommended dose. It inclined its head, blinked at her, and trembled with unguarded joy.
“Hello you,” said Mary.
A man appeared—tall, uniformed, RAF. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why, what have you done?” said Mary, producing by instinct a small grin.
The man laughed. “The dog, silly. Oh look here, are you all right?”
“It’s nothing. Please don’t worry. I’ll be fine in just a moment.”
“But you’re upset. Can I do anything? Can I stand you a cup of tea?”
Mary stared up at the man. Of course he was ablaze with consolations. But when she opened her mouth to say something in her usual vein, Mary simply couldn’t. His looks made her ache, his kindness left her miserable. She felt his negative image, the absence a man left.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please, just go.”
“But you’re upset,” he said again, his head inclined to the same angle the dog had adopted, as if all degrees of upset might very simply be cured—perhaps by throwing a stick.
How nice it would be to link arms with him—to go to a café. If only I weren’t dead, she thought.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and fled.
Her limp was worse, and pains shot through her body. Several times she became confused once more and had to stop. It had started raining without her noticing, and now the blacked-out night crept up on her too. Music rose from the dancing cellars. The swing beat boomed and a hot steam of exhaled smoke and body vapors rose through the air vents and grilles, as if the city were formed from the magma of such rhythms, cooled to a provisional solidity by the sober English rain.
She felt alternately distraught and euphoric. Sometimes she stumbled, and at other moments it seemed to her that she moved with no effort, gliding left and right to let the umbrellas pass, one-two-three, waltzing on the pavement while the cellars swung beneath her. London had always had this trick of living in two time signatures at once—the urgent and the always—each in earshot of the other.
She realized, with a cold sweat, that she probably ought not to go back to the garret alone and without the benefit of morphine. It was the same feeling she’d had by the river: not that she might harm herself, but that she might not know the difference if she did.
It was queer the way things crept: the night, and these feelings. One was brought up to scorn the tendency to despair. But it seemed that the darkness knew this, and found a way to reach one nevertheless. It was patient and subtle, gauging the heart’s output of light. Her confusion grew, the heart lucent and the mind lucifugous, the great clash of music in an endlessly accelerating rush: on and on and on.
She came to, the steam from the nightclubs rising around her, surprised to find her cigarette only half smoked. She felt a fear that was close to panic and hurried off again. She didn’t stop until she reached the Lyceum. The minstrel show was going on in the auditorium and she went in through the sta
ge door from the alleyway.
In the basement it was quiet except for the laughter and applause from above. The children were sitting on the low raised stage where the band had played during the worst months of the bombing. The nightclub had gone back above ground now. Zachary was at an upright piano while Molly and Charles argued and Ruth, a new arrival, moped in a corner.
When Zachary saw her, he stopped playing. “What happened?”
“I’m quite all right,” she said, giving the children a bright smile. “I think I might just sit down for a moment.”
She woke hours later, wrapped in blankets. Her body was wet with sweat and wracked with unsparing pain. Molly was holding her hand. Zachary was kneeling beside her, laying a cloth on her forehead.
“You fainted,” Molly said.
She sat and looked around. Her joints were packed with hot glass.
“Oh . . .” she said. “Oh . . .”
Zachary turned to Molly. “Go off and play.”
After she did, Mary collected herself. “Zachary,” she said in her teaching voice, “would you find whoever handles these things among the players, and fetch me just one dose of morphine?” Then she added with perfect cunning: “Say it isn’t for me.”
But his face! As though she had asked him to murder someone. It was too bad that she had taught him geometry but no sense of proportion.
“Do go, won’t you? There must be some around here.”
“I can’t.”
“But it is perfectly simple. Just put your shoes on, and go!”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Have a cigarette instead.”
He took them from her bag and lit one for each of them. She didn’t try to forbid him and so, without fuss, he passed from her power. She almost laughed. He watched the glowing end as if it contained lost summers, then stubbed out the cigarette half smoked—not crushing it but rolling the point until it was extinguished, to keep for later. Mary smoked hers till it blistered her lip.
“Please?” she said again.
He lifted a strand of hair from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. His “no” the louder for going unspoken. Her mood—which had cooled to a pale despair—now boiling over again into furious irritation.
“After everything I have done for you! You act the man but you are an ungrateful child. I might have known your sort would never come right.”
He shrugged.
“But you are incorrigible!” she said, unable to stop a miserable grin curling at the corners of her mouth. “You are a lazy, unappreciative nigger who will not lift a finger to help.”
He said nothing.
She raised a warning hand. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m from a good family and if it weren’t for you I’d be with them now. I wish I’d never come looking for you. I wish I’d never come to this nasty jigaboo club.”
Zachary didn’t change his expression at all. The light seemed to be dimming and she did not know if they had any candles. She did not know if candles were still available. She was not convinced that light was still manufactured.
Her anger was gone. She did not remember ever being angry. There was only a feeling of dread: of the darkness finding its way. And here was the boy. She shivered in her blankets as his eyes became Alistair’s. She moaned and turned away.
Now, finally, the full gaze of the war came upon her. Her mind was fragments, each loud with its voices. She fought to keep one image of herself alive at the center. She was rushing across town with a willing heart, to a point marked with an X. She was wearing her alpine sweater. Yes, that was it. But war had been declared, and it was thrilling and then it was terrible. Life was all the heavier for starting with a lightness of heart.
“You mustn’t have any more morphine,” said Zachary.
Her eyes snapped open and she stared at him, wondering how it was possible that he was still here, unchanged, when she had gripped the blankets and shut her eyes tight through the terror of eternity.
“What?” she whispered.
“No more.”
“Just a little, don’t you see? Just to take the edge off.”
“No.”
“Please . . .”
“No.”
“You’re cruel because you don’t yet understand,” she said, and closed her eyes.
She slept, and when she woke her mind was clear. Alistair had arrived. She sat up, her heart soaring. He was just as she had last seen him, on the platform at Waterloo. He cupped her face in his hands and she let herself be kissed. Orange sparks floated on the night. The cold air of the basement made her shiver, and she held him for his warmth. Oh, the slow dances they used to play, back when needles could still be found for the gramophones. His eyes were electric bulbs, and as she stared back into them she realized that she was awake, and sitting alone.
“Oh . . .” she whispered, disintegrating again.
When she awoke she was in her blankets, shaking monotonously in the dim light of the bulbs. Zachary was at her side.
“Thank you for coming back. I’m so very sorry for what I said.”
Zachary produced something from his pocket. “I didn’t have the money. The manager says you can owe him.”
Just looking at the syrette of morphine flooded her with relief. She had forgotten how to be alive, that was all, and now she remembered the trick of it. She stretched out her hand. “Thank you.”
Zachary held out the syrette, balled in his fist. She watched his hand with rapt attention, the smooth brown skin and pink quicks. “Please . . .”
“Remember how you always said no, when I asked for a cigarette?”
“Don’t be like that. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”
“This isn’t appropriate for you.”
She made herself smile. “No, darling. It’s only medicine. Like aspirin.”
“Aspirin didn’t call me a nigger.”
She looked from his hand to his face. “Please . . .”
“You can have it if you want. But if you do, then don’t come back here. It’s not like we can’t live without you.”
“It’s not as if.”
‘It’s not as if we can’t live without you telling us it’s ‘as if.’ ”
He held his hand out, his grip seeming to loosen. She gasped. She needed the syrette more than she had ever needed anything.
“Do you want it?” said Zachary.
“No, thank you,” said Mary, and tried to smile, and burst into tears.
—
All through that day and night Zachary watched as she lay between wakefulness and sleep. Once she sat up and told Poppy Brown not to eat the blackboard chalk. She shouted at Kenneth Cox for never sitting still. Around noon she spoke in French, then fell asleep. Later there was a long, muttered conversation. She whispered that she was sorry, over and over. Zachary left her bedside and went to see what was the matter with the other children. Ruth was tearful, and Charles and Molly weren’t helping. Zachary got her to come and sit with Mary. He warmed water on a primus stove and had Ruth wash Mary’s face and hands while she lay, half conscious. Ruth still wept.
“What’s wrong?” said Zachary. “Is it because the others pick on you?”
She shook her head, her braids flailing.
“Are you hungry?”
Ruth shook her head again. He took her hand but she pushed him away. A roar of laughter came from the theater overhead. It must be the matinee already. He squeezed his temples to push away the exhaustion. He lit a cigarette and wished he knew what to say. He wished an older child would come to the Lyceum, so he wouldn’t have to be in charge. He wished someone would come who didn’t need looking after.
“You like sweets?” he said. “I could get you some.”
Ruth shrugged and said nothing.
“What about that doll you had? You want me to fetch your dolly?”<
br />
Ruth only crumpled again. Zachary supposed he ought to know what to say, but he could find no comfort in himself to transmit to her. It was just as the players said: it was a war, and they were Negroes, and even their side wasn’t on their side. All they had was themselves: nineteen minstrels, nine musicians and four stray children, besieged in a city besieged. If he’d still had his father he might have felt strong about it—proud, even. The players were kind to him, but however close they drew, he felt that he didn’t belong.
His father had wanted more for him than minstrelsy, and now that his father was gone he felt no ties to it. Life held him in this place, that was all, like a scream trapped in a jar. There wasn’t even a grave he could visit, a fixed place to start his own life from. So long as his father was lost, he was lost with him. All he could do was hug Ruth and tell her everything would be all right. It was the same thing the government posters were claiming.
When he went back to Mary, she was awake.
“Zachary . . . can you get me something?”
His chest went tight. He knew she was going to want morphine.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so hungry.”
He brought her coffee, bread and margarine. He played piano for her. In the evening the fever came again and she talked for hours to a man named Alistair. She argued with her mother, sometimes angrily, sometimes tearful and pleading. When her fever finally broke, she slept. He brought the other children over, and they took turns to watch her through the night.
When morning came and Mary still slept peacefully, Zachary smoothed her hair on the pillow. He stood and stretched away the night’s cramps. Then he ate all the biscuits he could find, played some piano, injected the syrette of morphine into his shoulder out of pure curiosity, and went up from the basement into the Strand. He laughed out loud while the great rebuildable city glowed in the sunrise, and the old London stones in the rubble piles breathed in and out with a slow rhythm that seemed, without question, to swing.
