Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(39)

“Consider him advised. But what shall we really do, if they come?”

Hilda dabbed at her ice cream. “It would have to be the river. Weigh ourselves down with stones and wade in.”

“Very well,” said Mary. “But nowhere downstream of Westminster.”

“Good god, no! One hopes for death, not mortification.”

Mary realized her class was looking up at her. She clapped her hands and smiled. “Come along, then! Shall we have another disc?”

Thomas started up the gramophone with a Charleston from the Piccadilly Players. It was Tom’s—one of the first discs he’d played her. Zachary went to the piano and played along. He found the key first time, showering playful notes on the off-beat. So long as a thing was not perfectly simple to learn, the boy was good at it. Searching for the key to him she had read his reports from the three years of schooling he’d had since arriving from America. In every one of them his teachers had written: Must try harder.

“Miss?” said Zachary, looking up from the keyboard. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For what happened to you.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“Yes, but . . . we did it.”

A shrug, a few chords. Then: “Miss, would you like to dance?” He grinned, fingers spritzing the keyboard.

She laughed. “Oh good lord, stop it!”

He held out his left hand while his right still played along. “Well?”

On the disc the band sang “Sunny Skies.” She said, “I shouldn’t.’

“Why?”

“I mean, I don’t know if . . . we . . . should.”

He gave a quick smile and looked back down at the keyboard. “All right.”

Mary’s chest ached, which was unfair of it, since of course she was only being sensible. One oughtn’t to dance with the children—of any stripe—and especially not a colored one. Word would reach all of the parents by sundown, and there would be no end of unpleasantness.

But the ache deepened as she watched him play. And she thought: But so what? There might be a sniffy letter, even an official reprimand. But perhaps one ought to set one’s own transgressions against the enemy’s, these days. When one considered that the Germans would establish air superiority before bringing in a spearhead of tanks backed up by infantry in phased echelons, and follow up with collective reprisals against civilian elements that continued to resist, to dance seemed quite inoffensive.

“On second thought, thank you,” she said. “I’d love to dance.”

She took his hands. The gramophone rang brassy through its horn. And there, at the point marked on the map in her original orders, in the small space of parquet floor she had scrubbed clean herself between the front row of desks and the blackboard, Mary danced the Charleston with Zachary and it seemed to her that both of them were rather good at it.





August, 1940





TOM SAID, “I HAD a letter from Alistair. His mob is due to ship out again and they’re giving them leave beforehand.”

Mary propped herself on the pillow and lit a cigarette. “He’s your friend, you should get him up to town.”

“You know I’ve tried. I wonder if we might go to see him instead.”

“To the provinces? Hay wains and bigotry? I can’t say I’m tempted.”

“You know it isn’t like that.”

“Unless one is colored or otherwise vulnerable, darling.”

“And since we are neither of those things?”

“ ‘Then of course the provincials would doff their caps to us, the lambs.”

“Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you.”

“You see?” said Mary, tapping ash. “You are brighter than you look.”

“I do miss Alistair, though. I worry something’s happened to his head.”

“Shell shock, do you mean?”

“Oh god,” said Tom, “not as bad as that. His letters are perfectly fine. For a start, they are letters. They’re not—oh, you know—poetry.”

“At least there is that.”

“I can see it might feel queer, though, coming back to town after battle.”

Mary frowned. “Is Alistair good-looking?”

“How should I know?”

“Well, is he tall?”

“I suppose so. Six-one, six-two?”

“Good. And his eyes?”

“I can’t say I’ve ever noticed them.”

“I despair. But he is a full captain? Own teeth, no visible Nazi insignia?”

“Confirmed on all counts.”

“Then he’ll do for my friend Hilda. Invite him for a double date. Tell him Hilda is pretty, and comfortably off, and disinclined to chastity. If that doesn’t prise the poor man out of the countryside then perhaps it’s best if he stays.”

“You really won’t come to visit him there?”

Mary stubbed out her cigarette. “Not till perdition congeals.”

“You shouldn’t damn the whole of England, you know, over what happened to one boy.”

“I shall damn as I please. What is the use of coming from a good family, if one cannot damn as the need arises?”