Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(43)
He realized that he was standing quite still, eyes moist, halfway across Hyde Park. His pipe had gone out. He was standing by a tree. No, apparently he had taken cover by its trunk. He sweated cold. Dear god: without any fuss, and by some instinct he had picked up in France, he had found a concealed position. While his mind strayed, his body—unpiloted—had taken cover on a Saturday afternoon, as the chimes of ice cream vans sounded. Pigeons paired. Squirrels did their mummery for sandwich crumbs and nuts. The Serpentine quivered as couples in rudderless love cooled their awkward oars in it. Alistair collected himself and walked on.
A crowd was out in the park. Men in uniform nodded to him in nonchalant fraternity. Pretty things swished by in dresses, giving him warm looks from under the brims of their hats. A girl smiled at him, a knockout girl in a WAAF uniform, and it was such a companionable smile that he grinned back, and just as he was thinking of some nice way to introduce himself, her skin took on the uneasy suggestion of bubbling and scorching and her hand—reaching up to touch her hair—seemed for a moment to be splintered bones that made jagged egress through the white cotton fingers of her gloves.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, and hurried on.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, long after she was too far away to hear.
It happened from time to time. It was just a maddening tic, like getting a popular jingle stuck in one’s head. How one wished that all the gore had never got in there. Still, in this as in all other things, he felt certain that he would recover. The psyche, after all, could catch its breath again, as one recovered on the landing before tackling the next flight of stairs. In the meantime one could cheer oneself up, as he did now, by shooting one’s cuffs and whistling “Sleepy Lagoon.” He was still sweating cold, though, and the feeling took several minutes to pass and wasn’t entirely gone even at lunch.
The place Tom had booked was at Lancaster Gate, and it was busy. Waiters addressed corks in a good-humored frenzy and banged down the dish of the day with no more ceremony than it merited: it smelled brown, looked brown, cost one and six with a choice of dessert, and wasn’t on the ration.
Tom rose and waved from a spot by the back wall. Alistair waved back and got so involved with piloting himself and his duffel bag through the tight press of diners that he didn’t notice his friend’s companions until he reached the table. Alistair smiled his introduction to them, then nodded politely at his friend.
“Excuse me, chum,” he said. “You wouldn’t have seen a bright-looking chap, about your height, only with a sorry excuse for a beard?”
Tom stroked his jaw. “It has grown in rather obligingly, don’t you think? And look at you! You look . . .”
“I know!” said Alistair. “At least twenty years younger. It’s the fresh air.”
They shook hands, and Alistair snatched another look at the women while he hung his jacket on the back of his seat. He had been right about Mary: she was a little slimmer than he had guessed, but there were the glasses—round, just as he had pictured them—and here was the button nose in the pretty round face that smiled at him now, under nice black hair in a modish pompadour that was fun if a bit over the top. She seemed a charming girl, and he was delighted for Tom.
The other woman was a knockout, a redhead with peppy green eyes and a reckless, puckish stamp. Her hands fussed with her napkin. This must be Hilda. She smiled at him gaily, and he realized with a kick of nerves that he didn’t entirely mind it. He saw now how it would all happen: after lunch someone would casually suggest the theater, and naturally he and she would be seated together, and then afterward they would all go to the dances.
She held his eye, nicely and without flirtation, and yet he felt that an acknowledgment was passing between them.
But now his stomach fell. He could not explain to himself the awful ache of melancholy that her simple, chummy smile provoked in him. A man ought to be glad. But her freckled face burned to bones before his eyes. Even when he blinked and her beauty was restored, his morale was left in ashes. In twenty-one hours he would be gone, and he guessed now—by the leaden sadness that her beauty provoked—that he would never return. He broke off the glance, steadied himself, and looked to Tom.
“I’d like you to meet Mary,” Tom said, putting his arm around the woman Alistair had just been felled by.
Alistair smiled gamely while the universe splintered and re-formed itself into this different configuration with a concussion that none of the other diners seemed to feel.
“How do you do?” said Mary.
“How do you do?” said Alistair, since that was what one said.
“And this is Hilda,” said Tom, nodding to the girl with the pompadour.
“Delighted,” said Alistair.
“I hope you don’t mind a gate-crasher,” said Hilda, managing to smile effervescently and look perfectly worried both at once. It was a feat that in another time Alistair knew he would have found endearing.
“Tell me if a gate-crasher turns up, and I’ll tell you if I mind.”
Hilda laughed, and they shook hands. “Tom said you were funny.”
“Did he also mention that I’m rich and a world-renowned dancer?”
“Behave!” said Tom, and Alistair clicked heels and gave him a deferential salute that set both women giggling.
White wine came, and Tom filled their glasses. “This stuff is actually Champagne,” he said, “only the bubbles have been requisitioned to give buoyancy to our submarine fleet. You will see that there have been a lot of changes while you’ve been away playing soldiers.”