Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave

  He spent a brisk twenty minutes with the men, made a joke of their minor gripes and a note of their major ones, and reached the officers’ mess in time for grace. Army and Navy together, they were sixty seated at two long tables with Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton presiding. Alistair was last to arrive and he hurried to his place, nodding his apology. Hamilton returned an affable nod, then bowed his head in prayer.

  “Lord,” he said, “on this holiest of days, we thank you for food and ammunition. May our ships get through and the enemy’s get lost.”

  They all said “Amen” and then the orderlies brought in something that the cook had made out of bread crumbs and canned malevolence.

  Alistair lifted the corner of his with a fork. “I don’t know whether to put mustard on it or marmalade.”

  “Or whether to eat it or give it a Christian burial,” said Simonson. “Did Santa bring you any post?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Maybe you weren’t nice. Cheery bastard keeps a list, you know.”

  “Whereas you . . . ?”

  Simonson twirled his knife like a swagger stick. “I had three letters from two girls. They both think they’re the only one, of course.”

  “I’m sure you’re the only millionaire they write to.”

  “You don’t know the right sort of girl, is your problem. When we go on leave, I’ll introduce you around town.”

  “I fear that your sort of girls would cut my poor body to ribbons, simply by using their accents.”

  Simonson ignored him. “ ‘Of course if I can just make major before we go back, then my damned brother shan’t have the last laugh after all. When one is a major dear god the women one can have! I shall bag a gorgeous debutante and parade her in silks before dear Randolph’s hag of a wife.”

  “I suppose it’s lucky the Germans started all this for you.”

  Simonson frowned. “Is everything quite all right? You seem out of sorts.”

  “I’m weary from all the excitement.”

  “Damn it, Alistair, if you get all out of shape over a brass band, wait until you see some real action.”

  “Do remind me to tell you about my trip to France, one day.”

  “Exchange visit, was it?”

  “We exchanged withering fire, if that counts.”

  “And do you still keep in touch?”

  “Oh yes. You see, I’m hoping to go back one day.”

  “But in all seriousness, what’s wrong?”

  For a moment Alistair considered telling him. But of course, it wasn’t the right thing. The war, after all, was a legal riot and a bright pageant and a marvel of near-misses. It was a perfect adventure until proved otherwise, and so it would hardly be a kindness, on Christmas Day, to produce evidence. One pulled crackers for the snap of their mild detonation.

  Simonson patted him on the back and told him to buck up, and they ate with the chatter of their brother officers around them. For dessert the cook had turned up tinned apricots. They had them in the smallest bowls, but the fruit still looked lost. Each officer had exactly two and a half little apricot halves in a quarter-inch of clear syrup. They drank water from the fort’s well, which tasted of its own yellow limestone sides and whatever Turks and Moors had been thrown down there over the centuries.

  Hamilton stood and tapped his glass for silence. “The King.”

  They all rose. “The King.”

  They drank his health in well water and left in ones and twos, hungry.

  Alone, Alistair set Tom’s jar of blackberry jam in the arrow loop window and stared at it until a thin moon rose over the sea.

  January, 1941

  IN THE PLACE THEY had made for him in the chorus at the Lyceum, with twelve singers to his left and eleven to his right, Zachary stood in the red glow of lights that cast fire over a great painted backdrop of London. Its monuments were shattered, its walls breached.

  In front of him, at center stage, the new Interlocutor spoke to the audience in a deep voice modeled on Zachary’s father’s. Staring at the man’s back, seeing him silhouetted in the red light, Zachary believed that it really could be his father. He tried to make it true by force of will. He did not want to imagine it was impossible. His father had vanished and left no body behind, like an illusionist or a saint.

  But every time the new Interlocutor spoke, Zachary knew his father was gone. “And so, ladies and gentlemen, for this our final number tonight, we remember all those who have perished in this beloved city of ours, the city of mankind. And we remember that there is another city, both identical to ours and superordinate to it, where death has no dominion.”

  The chorus began the hymn, and Zachary joined in as best he could. As they sang, the floodlights brightened, and in their soft glow a new backdrop was revealed: London, rebuilt and restored—but more than that. Every spire was taller, every bridge broader, each old familiar landmark improved. As the red floods brightened they were no longer flames but the glow of the sunrise. Yellow and white lights joined the red, until eternal London shone in the full light of day. As the singers threw back their heads to raise the final chorus, the audience rose to its feet. Zachary felt nothing, except perhaps a dull surprise that they bought it.

  When the curtain came down, the manager took him aside. They stood in the wings while from the auditorium came the muttering, shuffling sound of the audience departing.

  “You winning, big man?” said the manager.

  Zachary smiled. “Sure.”

  “Because from where I stood, I had twenty-three souls in my chorus, and then I had you.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”

  “You do that. Happy Negroes, that’s what we serve here. One sad coon in my chorus, it’s a hole in my bucket. All the magic leaks away, you know?”

  Zachary shrugged. “Maybe I can take a break.”

  “And do what? So long as you’re for sleeping in my basement, I’m for getting some work in return.”

  “I could play piano in the interval.”

  “With that long face? I’d sooner give the gig to a German.”

  “I could bus the tables, then.”

  The manager gave a weary look. “I’ve got forty kids queuing up for that chorus. I’d just as soon take you off it, but all my players would say ‘Give the boy a slot, you owe it to his father.’ And before I know it I’ve traded one sad face for nine. So come on, why won’t you sing?”

  Zachary shrugged again and said nothing.

  “You shy? Because you’ve got a nice voice. I wouldn’t march you down to Parlophone to cut a disc, but I wouldn’t pour lead in my ears either.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “What, then? This is your break. You’d rather the street?”

  Zachary hung his head. “I’d rather something.”

  The manager laughed. “Think if you hold out long enough I’ll open up my other box of jobs for Negroes who can’t write their name? What is it you’re holding out for? Pope, or prime minister?”

  Zachary said nothing, and finally the manager sighed. “All right, bus my tables, then. Collect the tips and good luck to you, but the job doesn’t pay. Sleep in my basement, but if you want a wage then you’ll damn well sing in my show. Got that?”

  Zachary nodded.

  Afterward, when the players were gone, Zachary lit a candle and went down alone to the basement. He sat with a metal basin between his knees and a mirror propped against the wall at the end of the bench. With a cloth and cold water he scrubbed off the white greasepaint lips and the white rings around his eyes.

  He clasped his hands. “Sorry, Dad.”

  There was no answer, though he listened for one in the silence.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Nothing. The darkness in the basement was frightening. It scuttled and knocked. A month had not cured him
of the fear of it. He curled up under drapes in the corner, but sleep would not come.

  “Are you there?” he said in the lowest voice he could.

  He waited. His candle seemed to flicker, and perhaps this meant that his father was there.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  In the silence, in the endless underground night, the candle flame seemed to be steadier. Perhaps his father meant that he ought to be steady too. Zachary squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the drapes tight against the dark.

  January, 1941

  MARY SAT WITH HILDA on the train back from Tom’s funeral. His had been the only body available to be buried—to each of the other families she had made do with sending flowers. Even this had been made difficult by the war, the Dutch blooms no longer considered essential cargo and the English hothouses having been given over to food production. She had turned up a few early snowdrops, some forced hyacinths. She had hesitated to send them, uncertain if they would be a comfort.

  In their compartment Hilda smoked, and jabbed at the Times crossword with a self-propelling pencil. She was likelier, Mary felt, to infuriate the puzzle than to solve it.

  “It was kind of you to come,” said Mary.

  “I could hardly let you go with Palmer.”

  Mary managed a smile. “Palmer might have brought brandy.”

  “Palmer might have exchanged places with the deceased. Is that not among his duties?”

  The train shrieked steam into the plunging clouds. It didn’t lighten them.

  It had been an impossible way to meet Tom’s parents for the first time. In the church, Mary hadn’t known her place. It had seemed presumptuous to sit with the family so she and Hilda had gone to the back. Tom’s mother had fetched them and brought them wordlessly to the first pew. All through the service Mary had looked straight ahead, at Tom’s coffin beneath its lilies, wondering where they were from.

  “They are lovely flowers,” Mary had said at the end.

  “I went over to Cheltenham for them,” said Tom’s mother.

  Tom was dead, and lilies were available, and to Mary these things were equally incomprehensible.

  They had walked out into flurries of snow. Four men, too old or infirm for the war, had lowered Tom’s coffin into the ground on short ropes reserved for the purpose. The vicar had said, “Death, where is thy sting?” There was a consensus that one couldn’t feel a thing.

  Three hours later, on the train, her body was still taut with the cold and the unreleased emotion. Yawing on warped rails, their train approached London Bridge. On either side of the line a thousand buildings were blown out.

  “What do you suppose you’ll do?” said Hilda.

  “I must find Zachary, first of all.”

  “And then what? Take him home to your mother? She’d be thrilled.”

  “I’ve a responsibility to him.”

  “You’ve nothing of the sort!”

  “He was in my class and—”

  “And nothing. You were ordered to teach that class grammar, not to adopt any survivors.”

  “Now you’re just being horrid.”

  “Only because you’re being ridiculous. Where would it end, if you went after him? You’re not his family, or even his species. You can’t give him a home—that’s his people’s job. And you shan’t tell me he doesn’t have people, because there were dozens and dozens at that theater, conveniently color-coded.”

  “The Negroes aren’t all related, you know.”

  Hilda paused, the idea seeming to strike her for the first time. “Oh, they might be different tribes, but I daresay they put down the spears in times like these.”

  “At least I should check that someone is taking him in.”

  “Then make your inquiries if you must. But swear you won’t promise that boy something you could never make good on. I know what a mule you can be when you get a notion in your head. You’d make the boy an exile from his people, and you a pariah among yours. It would be miserable for both of you.”

  “You’re right, of course. And yet—”

  “And yet nothing. You must think only of yourself, and what you want to do. If you don’t get on with your own life, you’ll be no use to others at all.”

  “I think I’d like to teach again.”

  Hilda gave an exasperated groan.

  “It would make Tom glad,” said Mary.

  “You shan’t live your life to make Tom glad.”

  Mary lit a cigarette and watched the devastation roll by. These had been the city: these clubs and churches, these ordered landmarks. London had fitted her so perfectly that she had mistaken its shape for her own. Now each bomb was a breach in the carapace, laying bare the living nerve.

  She said, “It’s easy to say.”

  “Because it’s true,” said Hilda. “You must live on your terms.”

  The loosened rails rattled as the train crept along the Embankment. Steam billowed over the gray river. On both banks, facades were down and buildings gaped. Mary had always supposed that she could endure if London could, but here the great old nautilus lay gasping and cracked at the throat of the Thames, at the place where sweet water met salt.

  “Let’s go for lunch at Claridge’s,” said Hilda. “You need a good feed.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “But you really must eat. You’re thin as a harlot’s excuse.”

  “I think I shall go for a walk.”

  “Then at least take me along. You’re in no state to be on your own.”

  Mary took her hand. “You’ve done more than enough. You’ve always been good to me, and I know I don’t make it easy.”

  Hilda nodded. “You’re like a bad gundog. One can either put it down or make it the family pet.”

  “I’m only pleased you’ve found a use for me.”

  “Just don’t pee on my rugs. And promise you’ll consult me before you even think about teaching again.”

  As the train came in to the platform they took their bags from the rack and disembarked. They embraced, and Hilda dissolved into steam. Once she was gone, Mary leaned into a corner for a while. No one interrupted her. Half the city wept into walls now.

  Afterward, she stood for a while on the empty platform. She pulled her gloves on and herself together, and walked out into the streets.

  Everywhere there was rubble. Bathtubs lay exposed, their yellow ducks icebound. Beds in which women had been conceived and born and then conceived in and labored in themselves—those brass theaters of involuntary dialogue—lay silent and bent, seesawing on bisected floors, weeping duck down into the street. The feathers swirled with the snow. It was too much for her—how easily she was discouraged now!—and she fled into a café and drank straw-colored tea. She wrote to the manager at the Lyceum, asking if Zachary’s whereabouts were known. When it was done and folded, the flat taste of the sealing gum lingered.

  In the maps in the newspaper they brought her, the enemy’s swastikas were pressed up against the neighboring coasts—so close that one could look up from the page and almost smell the diesel and the sweat. In the Atlantic the U-boats completed the encirclement. On the inside pages of the paper were endless notices. London’s districts had been divided and subdivided as the lines of communication shrank. There were ten new rules if one lived here; twelve if one lived there. This was the place she had grown up in, whose singular law had recently applied from Bombay to Belize. Her great extrovertive city was besieged. Slowly the feeling returned that had come over her when she first took charge of her school. What one felt toward the enemy, finally, was fury.

  She pushed the cold tea away and walked through the snow to Tom’s old office at the Education Authority. In the lobby she knocked the snow off her boots and told the receptionist that she wouldn’t leave until she was seen.

  They let her up to see the new man, who
was called Cooper. As he rose to greet her, he seemed to become blocked between his chair and the desk. He straightened ineffectually.

  “Please,” said Mary. “No need to get up.”

  He sank back down, apologizing with a vague gesture for what Mary took to be a bad back, or limited physical grace, or apathy.

  Cooper was older than Tom—she put him in his mid-thirties. He was fair and slightly overweight. He had a mustache growing in. Behind him on the wall of the office was a small watercolor of Hampstead Heath that she had given to Tom in the summer. She had laughed until she gasped for breath as she watched Tom hang it there, one evening when his colleagues had all gone home. He had needed three nails and seven profanities. Afterward they had been quite indiscreet, and a great deal of paperwork had fallen from the desk to the floor. Tom had always kept his desk in such a mess.

  Cooper saw her looking at the picture. “It’s Hampstead Heath.”

  “Is it?” Mary caught herself saying, quite automatically.

  How soon one became diminished. The man made a gesture that was imprecisely dismissive—whether of her or the heath or the watercolor, she couldn’t judge. “Dreadful, I’m afraid,” he said.

  Mary felt a sadness as weary as his manner. Of course the poor man dismissed the painting. Such was the past, after all: it left the present cluttered with objects the survivors were immune to. She sat, folded her gloves in her lap, and lit a cigarette. He clasped his hands on the immaculate desk and looked down at his cuffs, as though she might have asked his permission. There was an ashtray—Tom’s, the heavy blue glass with the ambiguous inclusion in the heart of it that Mary had always rather hoped was an eyeball. Since Cooper made a point of not sliding the ashtray across the desk toward her, she made a point of using the carpet.

  She said, “I should like to be assigned a new school. My preference is for primary, but if the only vacancies are at secondary then I can teach French, Latin and composition, as it says in my file. I am available immediately.”

  “Do you not think,” said Cooper after a moment, “that under the circumstances it might be better to wait a while before you go back to work?”