Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(101)
“Do you miss it?”
“Badly. Not the food, though. God, yes, even the food.”
“I’ll look the place up for you when I get home, then.”
Simonson looked up sharply. “So you will let us take off the arm?”
“Just make sure they leave the good one attached, will you?”
“Oh, there’s every chance. Fifty-fifty, at least. I shall alert the Navy immediately and have them sober up their best surgeon.”
May, 1941
WHEN HER MOTHER ORDERED Palmer not to give her any more morphine, Mary moved into the garret and took the last two brown glass bottles with her. She would give her mother a little space in which to become reasonable.
East of Pimlico, London was broken beyond hope in a way that was perfectly obvious, but which caused Mary no distress whatsoever. The impossible realism of the opiate shunned the impossible reality of the war. The two were oil and water. Even when something happened to shake one up, the day and the drug only separated into a million busy droplets, flowing around each other to rejoin their own kind. And then there one was again, on top of things, buoyant on the hour.
At the Lyceum, Bones was at the baby grand rehearsing “Hitler Has only Got One Ball”, reducing the piano part to the crudest single-piston pump and whining the vocals though his nose. After the first verse the lights snapped up on the stage and revealed a full big band and twenty-four minstrels who went straight into a colossal reprise of the song, with close harmonies and outrageous swing. The effect was magnificent, and Mary laughed with delight as she made her way down to the basement.
At the sound of her footsteps, three heads appeared over the counter of the bar. There was Zachary, Molly and a new boy of perhaps nine years, with puffy eyes and a green felt fedora.
“The hell are you?” said the new boy.
“Do you mind?” said Mary. “It is ‘Who the hell are you?’ Or more elegantly, ‘Who in hell’s name are you?’ I’m Mary. Glad to meet you.”
The heavenward glance he gave, as if she were too much. He exhaled a smoke ring. Mary realized that he had held out his hand for her cigarette as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and that she had passed it to him in an absence of mind while he had her so flustered.
“Give that back this second, you menace!”
He gave a superior look and exhaled through his nose. “I’m Charles.”
She snatched the cigarette back.
“You’re strung out, aren’t you?”
Mary smiled. “Don’t be silly.”
He widened his eyes. “You think I don’t see people high? We get big bands here. We get players.”
She started to protest, then gave it up and leaned on the bar top. “I was injured. It’s only until my wound is healed.”
“What is it, opium?”
“Morphine.”
“What even is that? Stronger or weaker?”
“Goodness, Charles, how would I know? My family favors sherry.”
“You can hardly see straight.”
“You also believe I should stop, I suppose.”
Charles shook his head. “I think you should share.”
“Certainly not.”
“Come on, just let me try a little.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then don’t you be ludicrous.”
“Then don’t be preposterous.”
He steepled his fingers. “Then don’t be . . . unreasonable.”
“Vocabulary: B-plus,” said Mary. “But your hat: D-minus.”
The perfect grin boys gave when victory was absolute.
“Sorry about Charles,” said Zachary.
“He doesn’t know better,” said Molly. “He never had parents.”
Charles shoved her. “You got none neither.”
Mary opened her mouth and closed it again. The children were laughing now as they pushed each other around. Here they were, driven underground and yet—so far as Mary could tell—still uncured of joy.
She taught them reading and composition until they began to tire, and then she said to Zachary, “How long since you saw daylight?”
They left the two younger children and walked up into an improving day. The smoke was lifting after the night’s conflagrations but the air was still blunt with haze. The sun was a flat white disc. Zachary and Mary walked with arms linked while the people they passed looked knives at them. Mary made sure to smile back brightly. It was simply a peculiarity of the British that they could be stoical about two hundred and fifty nights of bombing, while the sight of her with a Negro child offended their sensibilities unbearably.
“You’re better,” said Zachary, looking up at her.
“I’m happy to see you doing so well. You have your hands full, I suppose, with Charles and Molly.”
“Charles isn’t so bad. He just talks. Molly’s the worst.”
“What, little Molly?”
“She steals.”
“No! And here was me, about to check her shoulders for wings.”
“She steals my tips to buy buns.”
“And does she share?’
“Does she hell.”
“How come you’re so cheerful, then? Do you qualify for some kind of prize if London is finally destroyed?”