Inside the enormous Empire, they find good seats right in the center. At first, Finch plants himself on the other side of Mia and acts all surprised when he gets hollered at by the boys. “What? Why can’t I sit here? He’s sitting next to her, as agreed.”
After Duncan and Wild threaten to forcibly remove him if he doesn’t remove himself, Finch sneaks off to a seat next to Frankie, a row behind. After a few minutes of Finch literally breathing down his neck, Julian motions for Mia to get up. They move a few rows behind Finch and Frankie. “Sorry to play musical chairs,” Julian says, “but the film is four hours long. He’s going to put a curse on me. Throw me off my game. What if I want to hold your hand?” He smiles. “Or kiss you?”
“Oh, I don’t think he’d like that,” Mia says.
“I’m not going to be kissing him, am I?”
She blushes. “Never mind him,” she says. “He’s just shocked he lost. That’s why he’s acting like this.”
“Is that why.”
“Why do you think?”
“Why do I think what? Why is he acting like an idiot or why did he lose?”
“Heh. Why did he lose?”
“He just didn’t want it bad enough,” Julian says.
Mia chortles. “Unlike you?”
“Yes. Unlike me.”
They get comfortable in their plush red seats. Their coats stay buttoned and the gloves stay on because it’s cold in the mammoth theatre. But she does take off her headscarf. She has brushed out her fine brown hair, scrubbed her face, put on mascara, a little lipstick, even some perfume. Julian can smell the floral delicate something every time she moves her head.
“How did Finch put it?” Julian says. “This is almost like a romantic outing.”
“Yes, almost,” she says, bubbling. “Movies are so great, aren’t they? You know what must be romantic? To be in one. Oh, Miss Delacourt, Clark Gable is here to see you. Oh, Miss Delacourt, would you like your caviar and champagne now or after you have your hair done?” Mia sighs happily. “Vivien Leigh is such a star. I wonder if she and Clark Gable had a fling. Who could resist him?”
“Um, maybe someone who’s married to Laurence Olivier?”
Mia looks doubtful. “The picture is supposed to be amazing. I can’t wait. How long before it starts?”
“Another hour.”
She tuts. “So long.”
“To sit next to you for an hour? Doesn’t seem long at all.”
She smiles into her lap. “Want to play a game?”
“Sure, what kind of game are you thinking? Or would you like me to pick?”
“Julian!”
Finch hears their chatter, their laughter, and spins around to glare at them.
“What, Finch?” says Julian. “Are we not allowed to talk?”
“The deal was to sit next to her.”
“In silence?”
“That was the deal.”
Duncan slaps Finch upside the head, and so does Shona.
“Shut up and face front, Finch,” Wild says. “You should’ve fought harder if you wanted to sit next to Folgate in silence. We all would be happier, frankly. We’d be at the Savoy, drinking from a champagne fountain and eating caviar out of crystal goblets.”
Wild has found a seat between Finch and Liz. Mia leans to Julian. “It doesn’t seem like it, watching them from behind,” she says, “but this is the best day of Lizzie’s life, sitting next to Wild.”
“I know how she feels,” says Julian.
“Why, you want to sit next to Wild, too?” Mia says, but she removes her glove, leaving her white right hand lying uncovered on the armrest, close to Julian’s fully-fingered rough and square left.
It’s almost time. The theatre quietens.
The red curtain opens. The lights go out. “Tara’s Theme” plays. Gone with the Wind begins.
Right before the intermission, the air raid siren goes off. The auditorium groans in collective displeasure. The film stops playing, but no one moves. Miraculously, it’s only a warning, and the all clear blares a few minutes later.
An hour before the end, the siren goes off again, and this time there is no all clear. Above the soundtrack, the drone of the German planes is heard and distant explosions. The movie stops rolling, and the PA comes on, telling everyone to head for shelter. “Walk, ladies and gentlemen, don’t run, there’s no need for that. Walk, don’t panic. Remember, you are British.”
Half the auditorium stays behind, including the Ten Bells gang, everyone but Liz. She leaves Gone with the Wind, leaves Wild! and runs for shelter. “Truly, she is hopeless,” Mia says. “Her last name, Hope, is merely ironic.”
There’s whistling outside. The explosions get nearer, thud thud thud. Mia chews her fingers. “Let’s wait a few more minutes,” she says to Julian, glancing around. “See, we’re not the only fools in the theatre. But how can we leave? I can’t! It was just getting to the good part.”
“Oh?” Julian says. “And what part is that?”
“Rhett and Scarlett have been fighting and fighting,” Mia says. “Which means that the scene where they make up is coming up.”
“Yes, that’s true, it’s coming up.”
“How do you know, you’ve read the book?”
“Something like that. If you like, I can tell you what happens. Just in case the movie doesn’t restart.”
Mia turns to him. She is sitting so close. Her limpid face, her huge brown eyes, her full glossy mouth is a breath away. “You want me,” she says incredulously, “to miss a scene where Clark Gable is going to make up with Vivien Leigh? You’re going to tell me about it instead?” She boos. “Honestly, Jules. What words do you think you could ever use that would be a substitute for my own two eyes?”
While they slink down in their seats, hoping the projectionist returns to his post, Julian thinks of some words to substitute for Mia’s own two eyes.
“Rhett Butler comes home late and drunk,” he says, leaning to her and lowering his voice. “He’s all hunky and hulky and reeking of alcohol. His hair is disheveled. His white shirt is open at the collar. Scarlett is sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for him in a little bathrobe, and underneath it she’s naked.”
“How do you know she’s naked?”
“I just do.”
“The book said?”
“Yeah. The book said.”
“Okay, go on.”
“Scarlett sits at the table in her red silk robe, and she’s acting all mad.”
“So mad,” Mia says.
“She’s mad, but underneath the robe, she is naked,” Julian says. “And Rhett knows this.”
“How does he know?”
“He’s a man. Men know these things.”
“All men?”
“Most men. Rhett Butler certainly.”
“Okay, go on.”
“Rhett is angry, too, but for different reasons. He is so tired of all this Ashley talk. So damn tired. Ashley is milquetoast to a man like Rhett Butler. He can’t believe the woman he has loved all these years, the woman he has married, keeps telling him, him! that she loves another.” Julian pauses. Mia’s head is tilted so far over, it’s touching his own. “Do you want me to stop using my words? Or would you like me to continue?”
“No, don’t stop,” she says in a breathy whisper. “Continue.”
Julian takes her soft hand into his paw.
“They’re in the kitchen, and Scarlett is acting so nonchalant, as if she doesn’t even notice how hot he looks.”
“Hot?”
“Hot, like superman-sexy. And Rhett is fed up with her nonsense, with her not paying attention to him. Fed up with her not wanting to be loved by him. So he spins her chair around and looms over her, and she can see him now, and smell him, and she says, you’re drunk, and he says yeah.” Julian’s thumb caresses the inside of Mia’s palm.
“What happens next?”
“Rhett leans down and kisses Scarlett so hard, the chair tips back and nearly falls. Scarlett’s
hands are up in the air like she’s surrendering. And he says to her, tell me, would your Ashley kiss you like that? But Scarlett can’t speak after being kissed so forcefully.”
Julian stops talking. Mia’s flushed face—her parted, barely breathing mouth, her blinkless gaze, her intense focus so she doesn’t miss a word—disrupts him.
“No, no, no,” she whispers, “don’t stop. Please.”
Julian says nothing. He is turned to her, leaning in, his head pressing against her head, his forehead touching her hair, his fingers kneading her hand. “You don’t want me to stop, Mia?” His voice is low.
“I don’t want you to stop. Go on. Go on.”
Julian speaks into her ear. “Scarlett looks up at him and sees the way he’s looking down at her. He’s not waiting another moment, and he’s not going to ask if it’s okay. He is going to take what he wants. That’s the drunken lusty look Rhett gives Scarlett, though he doesn’t say anything. It’s all in his eyes.” Julian takes a breath. “Do you want to know what he actually says, Mia?”
“Oh yes!”
“That’s it, Rhett says. That’s it. And he picks up Scarlett, and in his arms carries her up their long enormous staircase to their bedroom and with his foot kickslams the door shut behind them.”
Mia nearly groans. Julian leans back.
“What happens next?” she cries, raising her impassioned eyes to him.
“Well, it’s a movie,” Julian says, “made in 1939. So what happens next in the movie is morning. But would you like me to tell you what would happen next in real life?”
They stare at each other, both dilated and blinkless. Yes, she inaudibly whispers.
The projectionist returns. Everyone applauds.
Everyone but Mia.
15
The Great Fire
WITH THE BOMBS STILL FALLING, THE LIGHTS ARE LOWERED, and Gone with the Wind resumes. She sits by his side, pressed into his coat, her warm hand in his. She faces the screen, watches the love scene, and the others that follow. After it’s over, on the way out of the theatre, everyone chats about the film, everyone but Mia. Finch asks her opinion, and pensively she replies that she loved it and doesn’t say any more. For some reason, this makes Finch give Julian a dirty look. He tries to draw Mia away. Disengaging from Finch, she remains at Julian’s elbow.
They’re barely out of the theatre, having just turned the corner on the Strand when the siren sounds for the third time. Above their heads, in the illuminated clouds, Julian sees the pencil-thin fuselage and the elliptical wing silhouettes of the Spitfires, and a shadowy bulky formation of the much larger Hurricanes.
They hurry down the Strand, but they can’t get to Temple fast enough. The incendiaries fall by the dozens, lighting up the thoroughfare from end to end. The gang runs for cover and disperses.
Seeing the Strand on fire, Julian knows. The world will not end in ice.
“You know I really did love the movie, even though I didn’t want to talk about it,” Mia says to Julian while they hide out in a doorway arch off the Strand. It was cold before and slushy, but the searing heat makes everything melt, even their faces. The hot air is heavy; the flames too near. They got separated from the others, peeled away, ran in confusion, and are now by themselves, waiting out the bombing, the gruesome noise of the enemy and RAF planes above them, the stone buildings crackling.
“I know you did,” Julian says.
“But I liked your words even more.” Beat. “Do you know why?”
Julian waits for her to speak. How familiar this is, their faces hot, their hearts aflame, speaking of difficult things while London burns around them. Mia, he keeps wanting to ask. Don’t you remember me? Don’t you know who I am?
“The scene on the screen ended so quickly,” she continues, quietly adding, “even the real thing ends rather quickly, to be perfectly honest.”
“Sorry to hear that,” says Julian.
“But your words I will relive over and over. Every time I hear them, I will feel what you made me feel in that theatre.”
“And what was that?”
“I don’t know if I can explain,” Mia says. “Alive? Or maybe that I wished I were Scarlett.”
Julian says nothing.
“Or maybe,” she says, “that I wished it was me.”
His eyes pour himself into her eyes.
Looking away, as if she can’t take the way he’s staring at her, Mia pulls out her pack of cigarettes and tries to light one, but her hands are trembling. “Can I ask you a question? The first time we met and you . . . you know, you . . .”
“I what?” says Julian. “What did I do?”
“Well, you know.”
“I kissed you?”
“Yes.” Her eyes shy away.
“What’s your question?”
She cocks her head. “That thing you described between Rhett and Scarlett, that wasn’t what was in your kiss.”
“No?” He shifts from foot to foot, glancing out onto the Strand. How are they going to get out of here before they burn?
Are they going to get out?
“Something else was in yours,” she says.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Try. Use your words, Mia.” He takes a step toward her in the small space. “What was in my kiss?”
“It was . . .” She can’t look at him. “Like it wasn’t about that. Oh, some of that was in there, too, for sure, but mostly it was other things. It wasn’t a first kiss is what I’m saying.” Mia inhales, exhales. “It wasn’t tentative and it wasn’t questioning, and it wasn’t purely amorous.”
Julian is silent.
“Are you not going to help me?”
“You’re using your words quite nicely,” he says. “Keep going.”
“But do you know what I mean?”
“Keep going.”
“It was an open kiss of a mighty and well-worn heart,” Mia says. “It wasn’t the kiss of love . . .”
“Mine wasn’t the kiss of love?”
Mia doesn’t know where to look. “What I mean is—it was how Rhett might’ve kissed Scarlett if she hadn’t been pretending that she loved dumb Ashley.”
Or dumb Finch.
“If they had stayed together for years, and he went off to war, and when he came back, their house had burned down, and she was gone, and he searched for her across the scorched South, and when he finally found her, he took her in his arms and pressed her to his lips.” Mia’s face is aglow, breathless, shimmering, as if she is imagining real love instead of Rhett’s love. “And he said to her, Scarlett, I have searched for you for a thousand years.”
“He might say, I have searched behind the sun for you, at the bottom of the earth for you,” says Julian, taking her into his arms, one arm over her shoulder, one through her waist. “He might say, my love, I found you again.”
“Yes, something like that . . .”
Bending his head, he kisses her, first softly, then openly, his arms wrapped around her coat, a papa bear embracing his mama bear.
“And there it is again,” whispers Mia.
* * *
When Mia and Julian return to Bank, they overhear the Ten Bells gang ladling out to Finch some deeply unwanted advice.
“Break it off with her, Finch. It’s inevitable.”
“I don’t want to break it off with her!”
“Do you know what the word inevitable means?” Wild says. “You can’t stop it. Don’t take it so personally.”
“Don’t take another guy making a play for my girl personally?”
“That’s right, Finch,” says Duncan. “This shit happens.”
“I’m not going to let it happen.”
“Come now, mate. You can’t stop the real thing when it comes.”
“What real thing? Only yesterday you told me it was nothing but acting!”
“That was yesterday.”
“So what changed?”
“Well, today cam
e, for one.”
“She promised she’d marry me. Me!”
“Don’t feel bad,” Wild says. “Nick ended it with his girl.”
“Fuck off!” says Nick.
“Sheila ended it with her fella.”
“He ended it with me, you mean,” says Sheila.
“And Frankie over there told me last week she liked you. Didn’t you, Frankie?”
“Yeah,” Frankie says, busy with her jigsaw puzzle. “I like you, Finch.”
“Frankie, do you like Duncan, too?” Finch asks.
“Yeah, I like him.”
“What about Wild?”
“Yeah, him, too.”
“What about Kate?”
“Yeah, I like her.”
“I don’t know what your point is, Finch,” Duncan says, “but my point is that there are other fish in the sea.”
“I don’t want other fish,” says Finch. “I want the fish that was promised me.”
“Yeah, but, mate, your fish has found another fish to swim with.”
“And soon there will be a school of them.” Wild grins.
“Where are they? He doesn’t know this town, doesn’t know which way to go. He took her the wrong way, straight down the burning Strand, they probably ran right into an incendiary,” Finch says.
“Are you hoping for that, mate?”
“We’re all right, Finch.” Mia steps into the passageway, letting go of Julian’s hand. “No incendiaries.”
Finch jumps up. “It’s not true what they’re saying, dove. Tell me it’s not true!”
“I’m very sorry, Finch. It’s true.” She tries to touch him. “Let’s go talk over there. Just you and me.”
He recoils. “No! How can you do that? We’re engaged!”
“Well, okay, engaged, but I don’t see a ring on my finger.”
“Is that what it’s all about? I said I’d get you one for Christmas.”
“Now you don’t have to.”
Finch swirls to his friends, laid out on the blanketed concrete and the bunks, looking up at him with sympathy and affection. “I told you Gone with the Wind was a terrible idea,” he shouts. “You mocked me when I said it’s not just sitting next to her. Well, who’s laughing now?”
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