The Fire by Night

by Teresa Messineo

  “That big family in 12 wants some more beach towels.” The woman itched furiously at her outer thigh, the thick fabric of her robe getting in the way.

  Jo looked down at the table, her knuckles showing white where they still clasped the cup.

  “I see you’ve got the sheets done,” Mrs. Greerson remarked absently, turning to leave and yawning again. “Better get them out of here before the maids come down, you know how they bitch about their space.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” and Jo took a gulp of cold coffee.

  Thank you, Lord.

  THE WAR ENDED. America dropped two bombs, and the war ended. Far away in St. Bees, there was no way to understand, no way to gauge, the destruction, the devastation: two cities leveled in a second, 160,000 dead, twice that number dead a month later from injury and radiation poisoning. It all seemed so simple, people said. Why didn’t the Americans do it earlier? It would have saved my Petie’s . . . my Danny’s . . . my Billy’s . . . life. The pubs were crowded. People danced in the streets. Atheists waited with everyone else in the line that wrapped around the Priory to take off their hats and thank God, thank God, it was over.

  August ripened into thick, full summer and still there was no word about David. Jo walked the long way to Egremont on the old North Road to check the postal box she had taken there, but no message arrived. She could have taken a box in St. Bees, in the little village post office that also sold candy and postcards, but each time she walked home from Egremont holding letters from David’s family, she was glad she hadn’t, glad they didn’t know how to find her. She had given them the mailing address in case they heard anything, had any news, but she hadn’t been able to explain to them why she couldn’t be a part of their lives without David. Duncan had apologized, back when she had still been in London; he had been careless, foolish, he hadn’t known how much his brother had meant to her, he had been a cad. But his invitations to dinner, to plays, to punting and picnics had fallen on deaf ears. Jo would not fall in love with a facsimile of David, with someone who lacked his soul. She felt sorry for his sister Kit, sorry for his mother; their letters were clinging—they wanted her, wanted to take care of her. Please stay with us, child, here in London with my brother, back home in Scotland when the repairs are done. We love you, we want you, we need you. But Jo couldn’t do it, couldn’t stay with these kindhearted people who would mean no harm but would slowly bleed her to death, remembering. What did he do? What did he look like? Then what did he say? Over and over again until she would be just a conjurer at a séance, bringing David back for them, bringing back the dead.

  Jo kept to the back of the hotel, never interacting with guests. All she knew of the vacationers were their preferences for extra towels, for fresh linen every day, whether they smoked or drank coffee in bed. The young girls working at the hotel were thrilled with peacetime, with the boys coming home, any boys coming home. They’d run into the laundry room and Jo was saying yes before they were done asking, Can you cover for me? I’m dishes tonight . . . I’m pots . . . I’m pans . . . I’ll cover for you sometime, miss, don’t worry, thank you so much. But they knew they’d never have to return the favor because the solemn laundress never went out, never socialized. She doesn’t wear a black armband, but I think she must have lost someone, don’t you? Then they’d giggle, laughing out loud as soon as they stepped onto the street, skipping the short way down to Paddy’s where the sound of music and laughter already reached their ears. Why shouldn’t we have a little fun? It’s been a long, long time.

  ONE DAY MRS. GREERSON stepped into the laundry room, looking more disheveled than usual. She surveyed Jo’s modest, almost clinical appearance severely—hair pulled back, starched white apron over her monotonous gray dress.

  “It’s four o’clock, McMahon,” she said sternly.

  “Yes, ma’am, I just have these linens here to—”

  “I said four o’clock and I meant four o’clock.” Mrs. Greerson was scowling. “We had an agreement. Done by four.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jo said reluctantly, putting down the tablecloths with difficultly, forcing herself to turn away from them.

  “You’re putting in ten-hour days as it is,” her employer continued. “And we’re not nearly so busy as when you first came here—by next month, the season will be over. You’ve kept up your side of the bargain—you’ve done your work and then some, I’ll say. But I don’t know that I have.”

  Jo looked up at the woman, anxiously.

  “I wouldn’t want you to think that. I’ve been very happy, ma’am, very thankful you’ve given me this position.”

  “Happy and grateful are not exactly the same thing.” The woman frowned again. “What I mean is, yes, I was giving you a job, but I was supposed to—well, I got so busy with the hotel, and my boy—but what I meant to do was also give you a chance to rest.”

  “I’m getting plenty of sleep—”

  “Well, maybe not ‘rest’ exactly. Oh, blast,” and it was funny for Jo to see the English woman stamp her foot vexedly and curse. “I’ve grown to care for you, and—and when I say ‘rest’ I mean relax . . . heal maybe.” Mrs. Greerson looked flustered, then embarrassed, then she thrust something into Jo’s hands. “Here. And if you’re not down there every afternoon until the summer’s out— you’re—you’re fired.” With that, she stomped clumsily from the room.

  JO STARTED SWIMMING every afternoon, every evening, until the long warm summer days melted effortlessly into night. She wore the black Jantzen bathing suit Mrs. Greerson had given her—smooth and sleek and fitted with darts. She had learned to swim as a child because Sister had said they must, raised funds, and taken the poor city kids out to a camp, a convent or motherhouse somewhere in the country. With the same precision and authority with which she taught them spelling and grammar, she had taught them front crawl, backstroke, dead man’s float.

  Now Jo luxuriated in floating effortlessly, swimming a few strokes, and then turning lazily onto her back, like a drowsy seal. She hadn’t been in the water since North Africa, since their amphibious landing, and that had been all shrapnel and fire and death. She floated peacefully now in the water, the strong rays of late summer baking her brown. When she could swim no longer, she picked her way across the pebbly beach until she found a particularly isolated spot. The beaches were nearly empty, the long line of coast curving smoothly from end to end with no one on it but the occasional cleric, the tired governess, the child too young for school or swimming who would run into the waves and scream and run back out and do it over and over again. Jo found a place to nestle in the sun, the heat baking the tiny stones beneath her. She curled up in the old blanket, in the thick towel she had brought from the laundry room and closed her eyes and felt the warmth against her eyelids.

  It was over.

  Not all her pain, not all the injury, but the war—it was over.

  She let that reality sink in—sink in like the rays of the sun.

  And I forgive myself.

  The thought came to her out of nowhere, and it was so startling that it made her open her eyes and sit up. But she lay back down, forcing herself to relax, to ask herself what she was seeking, what she was granting herself forgiveness for.

  For being alive.

  For being alive when everyone else was dead, when 5 percent of the world was now dead—the strangers she had tried to save and the friends she had failed to save and her mother and her father and her brother and her—

  She couldn’t think of David as dead. In the dormitory back in London, in her pristine room on the third floor, she could imagine it, imagine him dead and buried a thousand times over. But not here. Lying on the shore—or floating, surrounded by the undulating waters that seemed to cradle her and soothe her and buoy her up—she couldn’t think him dead, not for a moment. She could imagine him at sea, far away. But it was as if they touched—across the vast ocean, she touching its edge here, he touching it half a world away—but touching nonetheless. Even after she had climbed the
long way back to the hotel, there was something deep inside. It felt real and warm and alive inside her. He felt alive.

  JO WALKED OUTSIDE with the plumber, past the kitchen garden with its herbs already starting to go to seed.

  “Just where’s it backed up, miss?”

  The two of them looked for the drainage pipe that ran from the laundry, underground, through the garden.

  “Here it is—it comes out here.”

  And they looked at the pipe, tilting their heads, poking at it with the toes of their shoes.

  “Looks all right to me, miss. Water’s coming out. How long you say it’s been not draining proper?”

  Just then there was a crack of thunder in the clear sky, the heat lightning exploding without rain, without light. A second later it was over, the birds flying across the lawn, perching in the old copper gutters, and twittering contentedly to themselves.

  Jo and the plumber lay flat on their faces on the muddy ground, hands crossed protectively behind their heads. The man looked up sheepishly, grinning at Jo.

  “Been in the war too, miss?”

  JO SWAM OUT past the breakers. The waves weren’t much—she dove through them more for fun than necessity—then she was past them, out in the swelling sea moving and breathing like a living thing. She turned around and looked at the beach, slender and curving in the sun, at the small village set behind it, at the headland to her left, jutting out into the sea, its high emerald cliffs dropping off into the surf below. Jo turned on her back and squinted up into the sky—great cloud masses played above her, leaving her in light, in shadow, in light again. She was all alone in the glittering water, shining with sun—little fish jumped up out of the water escaping some predator, flashing silver, flashing white for a second before disappearing again. She closed her eyes and time slipped past.

  It was September. The days were getting shorter—she could still swim, but only when the sun was out; when it set, it was too cold to be wet and she would huddle on the beach. All around her, life was returning to normal, to its set routine. Jo thought of June brides, already counting the days, checking and rechecking their calendars; of reluctant students sweltering in their school uniforms, starting a new term, looking longingly out of windows. Jo thought of the hotel, of its dwindling guest list—of the letter she had received from Mrs. MacPherson: their home in Scotland was repaired, they were going back, back to the farm—so even David’s family would be leaving soon, would migrate North with the cooler weather, would be gone.

  She thought of her letters to Kay that had come back as undeliverable and the other letters that had disappeared, never coming back at all. She hoped that some of them had gotten through somehow. She wondered where Kay was, and if Kay was, and breathed a prayer she was safe, she was whole, she was found. Jo realized that even the pain of what they had gone through in New York was beginning to lessen. She never thought that it would, but it was. She had survived that, she had survived the war. Had one prepared her for the other? Had the horror of one hardened her against the violence that would be unleashed on her, on the whole world? But both were behind her now, she was healing from both. If that could happen—if that searing, burning rage inside her could diminish with each passing day, if being surrounded by a gentle sea, by an ageless strength, could ease that—if even that could heal, well then, given enough time, given enough peace, maybe anything could.

  Jo opened her eyes for a second to gauge how far she had drifted. She was out a little bit—she judged how far she had gone by the buildings, by their rooftops; she counted the chimneys. She’d be fine, she’d start swimming back in a moment, there was plenty of time yet. Jo closed her eyes again, and the water filled her ears and covered her belly, and she felt surrounded by goodness and smoothness and warmth. The power of the ocean, of the silky water around her, filled her and she floated on it effortlessly. The nightmares were fewer, both waking and sleeping. It’d been a week—no, two weeks now that she had slept all night without dreaming, without waking at all. Her body relaxed and her mind relaxed, and she knew she was mending. She was almost well.

  JO MARCHED ALONG the dreary road to Egremont in the drizzling rain. She pulled the borrowed rain jacket closer around her, turning up its collar. She glanced at her wristwatch, wiping the water from the dial. She’d make it to mass yet; she’d done it every Sunday this summer, but never in the rain—it was miserable in the rain. She looked back at the village far behind her—she could still see the Priory, standing tall and proud over St. Bees—and silently cursed King Henry. It seemed ridiculous, all these years later, that a monarch of old England should be inconveniencing her, a modern Yankee, like this, but there it was. She was Catholic, the Priory was Church of England. So she walked the long way to Egremont, to the mission there—where they congregated in the old dance hall, using the grand piano as an altar—just because of an argument four hundred years old. Jo’s foot stepped into a puddle, and she cursed him again. Even the king himself, she reasoned, on his better days must have admitted, on some level, that what he wanted was human—a male heir, a better lover—understandably human even, but not divine. Not divinely appointed. Not worth all the bother and bloodshed and division; not worth the long walk to Egremont. Christianity should reunite. God would be pleased. It would help conserve her shoe leather too.

  A noisy delivery truck came along the road and pulled up beside her.

  “Mademoiselle,” the man inside called out to her; it was Luc, the French baker in town, and his wife, Ellie. They had escaped with their children before the war, ending up in provincial St. Bees of all places, where they stuck out as foreigners even before you factored in their faith. “We take you along the path to mass Catholique. We cannot accept you in the”—here he lost his train of thought in English and gesticulated wildly to himself, his wife, the tiny cab—“but if you return to the rear, you permit to ride with our children.”

  “Thank you,” Jo called, smiling. “I will return to the rear.”

  She hopped onto the flat bed of the truck, sitting alongside six children who dangled their tiny legs over the tailgate with her.

  “Bonjour,” they said politely, their eyes big, the girls’ blond curls dripping in the wet.

  “Bonjour.”

  Jo thought of when she had first gotten to France, how she and everyone in her medical corps had put on armbands with American flags on them and worn them all the time; how they had not wanted to be mistaken for British officers. The FFI were not above taking potshots at the English, at their enemy from another war, from countless other wars. The Channel wasn’t big enough to separate England and France—it never had been.

  After mass (“We say to you she is sorry, but the family does not return to Sint Beez at this time”), Jo started back on foot; the rain had let up, puddles dotting the long road back.

  “Oh, miss, miss.” The postmaster trotted out after her as she passed his house; his dinner napkin was still tucked into his collar, spread over his enormous belly. Jo turned curiously. The post office was not open on Sundays; this couldn’t be official business.

  “Miss, I saw you out the window and just had to mention it. A man stopped in this week, asking for you.”

  Jo stiffened. “A man?”

  “Yes.” The postmaster was clearly delighted. He gossiped like an old lady and knew everything that happened in town. “Came in right after you had left on Tuesday, couldn’t have been more than a quarter-hour. Told me your name, described you perfectly, said his family was looking for you, trying to trace your whereabouts.”

  “Did he leave his name?”

  “Yes, he did . . . now let me see . . . what was it? Something with a ‘Mac’ in it . . . MacDonald? No, no, MacPherson,” he said decisively. “It was MacPherson.”

  “Duncan?”

  “Yes, that’s it, I’m sure of it. Said he wanted to reach you. Wanted to know what day, what time, you usually checked your box. An—an admirer of yours, miss?”

  “What did you tell him?”


  The man looked taken aback, fluttering his hands in front of him. “What do you take me for, miss? I didn’t know him from Adam. Told him where to get off, I did. I said I didn’t know anything about you other than you pay your rent on time and are entitled to your privacy, same as anyone else. He asked where you were staying, if you were here in town . . .” The man left that dangling, like a question, waiting. “I never see you, miss, other than when you come in for your mail. Do you live in town? Or do you come over from some neighboring parts perhaps?”

  His wife was in the doorway now, calling him to come back to his supper, to stop standing there in the street in his shirtfronts. He gestured impatiently in her general direction.

  “If he stops back, you can tell him I’ve left. I was staying in the country with some friends, but I’ve left—gone home. Tell him he knows where to reach me.”

  “Oh, he does—a great friend of yours then?” he asked hopefully.

  “Just someone I know. Thank you for telling me. Enjoy the rest of your dinner.”

  All the long trudge home, Jo scowled. Duncan had no right. She had made it clear she was not interested in him, in his attentions; she hadn’t answered his letters, even her correspondence with his mother had been terse, to the point. She was not pursuing them, and the thought that he would track her down like a maid absconding with the silverware irked her to no end. Luckily, the postmaster had had little to tell him—she could only imagine his running after her like that was the result of Duncan offering some sort of remuneration. Duncan was clever, no doubt. But two could play at this game. She’d just be more cautious—maybe send Luc’s son over with his bicycle to get her mail for her; he’d do that for a bob. And even if Duncan had tracked her that far, she hoped the false lead she had left would only strengthen his assumption that she was a guest somewhere, in a home or hotel surely, but certainly not the hired help. No, he was too proud himself to ever look for her there.