by Chris Cleave
He had cleaned every part of the painting now, making good around twenty square inches a day. The Madonna, now that she was freed from her soot, was a catch. She made Alistair forget the hunger and the nausea of his infection. He had long ceased to make any distinction between his own Mary and the one who was restored, inch by inch, as he worked. Bombs hammered down, falling all around the fort, cratering its great courtyard. Alistair ignored them. He hardly worked, simply looked back at Mary. The poison from his arm slowed his mind.
He had started with the hem of her dress, working up the lines of the obscurest folds, perfecting the mix of the thinners and learning the minimum pressure required to shift the grime and soot. Next he had moved on to the dress’s salients, revealing profane shifts of red. Her hair came next, imperfect, tangled here and there, swept back from the face but otherwise scarcely tamed. After two months he had trusted his technique sufficiently to expose her hands, and finally her face.
He looked from Mary to the Christ child, for whom he had developed a fraternal affection. The painter clearly hadn’t liked the boy—Alistair supposed no artist had ever much cared for the child whose presence was only an excuse to frequent the model. So here was Christ the awkward, Christ the inconvenient, Christ the pint-size chaperone. Sooty, pug-faced Jesus, wanting a feed. Alistair had worked on the painting for days before he noticed that while Mary had been provided with a halo, the child had only the benefit of a pot on a table in the background, its rim catching the incidental light. The table was in such deep shade and the pot so very nearly matched to its background that one would have to be the painter, or the painting’s restorer, to see the trick. Alistair’s heart went out to the boy. Maybe that was the point.
The bombing tailed off and Alistair dragged himself back to watch the enemy bombers departing. He was glad when they got away now. He raised his glasses and watched them fleeing above the waves, the tail-enders yawing desperately and trailing long streaks of soot. Well, it had been a long war, and everyone was trailing smoke. He was surprised at how easy it was to excuse the enemy. They had never promised fraternity, only bombs. What Alistair had done to Tom was worse. Mary must have come to feel the same for her part in it. He supposed it was why she didn’t write.
Now that the raid was over the men mustered in the courtyard. Alistair watched them harvest the seedy grasses that grew in the cracks between the flagstones. They chewed, slow-jawed. Gun drills had been abandoned weeks ago, physical training prohibited. When not specifically told to do something, the men had orders to do nothing.
Alistair watched though the glasses while the local children emerged from the rubble beyond the fort’s walls. They kindled tiny fires with splintered furniture, and roasted snails on sticks. In the alleys, men stood between the poles to drag their traps and carts. Their horses were long gone for stewing. Dogs were extinct. This was the worst thing now: the silence in the aftermath of a raid. There had always been the raucous indignation of dogs, but the island no longer barked.
His head throbbed. He retched, but nothing came up.
Later, Simonson brought Alistair’s ration. There was a two-ounce block of a thing they were calling bread, and a half-tin of paste. He watched with indifference as Simonson put the food down, pushing aside the bottles of thinners to make a place. Simonson sat heavily, threw off his cap and rubbed dust from the inside of his collar.
“Aren’t you going to eat the food?”
“You have it,” said Alistair.
“Don’t tempt me.”
“I’ll have it later, then.”
“Suit yourself. Good view of the raid from up here?”
“It was lovely.”
Alistair took the jar of blackberry jam from its safe place on the floor and placed it back in the arrow loop. Simonson swallowed. Alistair enjoyed the effort it cost his friend to take his eyes off the jar.
“Why won’t you eat that stuff?”
“I prefer strawberry. How did the raid go?’
“We lost two local gunners. Zammit and Sillato. Another breech explosion. Zammit’s children came to the main gate and howled. Two boys and a little girl the wind could lift like thistledown.”
“Those guns aren’t safe to use.”
“But the poor men make such elementary mistakes. Apparently Zammit had the breech half closed and Sillato called it ready to fire.”
“Have trigger guards made and run chains to them from the breech door, on the far side from the hinge. Make them just the right length and the trigger won’t clear until the gun is properly closed up.”
Simonson frowned. “You think?”
“We did it in France when we had to use French gunners.”
Simonson looked over at the picture. “Aren’t you going to fix the frame?”
“I like it with the marks of the fire on it. It carries its own story.”
“Suit yourself. It will end up hanging in Berlin, in any case.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Simonson sighed. “The men never made these mistakes under you.”
“They weren’t so hungry, back then.”
“You flatter me.”
“But it’s true. You’re not absolutely the worst major in the Army.”
Simonson snorted. “Now I know you’re dying.”
Alistair screwed the tops back on the bottles of thinners. It was hard to get the tops on with one hand. Simonson, who could have helped, only looked at him doing it.
“Don’t make me beg. Will you let them take the arm off?”
“Why do you insist?’ ”
“Because I want you evacuated before the enemy parachutes in. You know very well we’ll be killed, and I would feel less awful if you were companionable enough to let me die alone.”
“Self-centered of you.’
“Isn’t it? Still, I would consider it a favor.”
“When we first met, you considered me too common to live.”
“Perhaps I have come to see some low merit in the lower orders.”
“This helpful war. It makes us better people and then it tries to kill us.”
Simonson grinned.
“What?” said Alistair.
“ ‘Well you make it sound just like Harrow.”
“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?”
“I don’t know. I’m just happy.”
She put her arm around his shoulders. “Idiot.”
He leaned his head against her. “Fool.”
“Work on your vocabulary. You wouldn’t want Charles to get ahead.”
“No I wouldn’t, you bonehead.”
“Stop it!” she said, pinching his arm.
Both of them laughed, and then a woman passing in the opposite direction lifted a blue-gloved hand and slapped Mary full in the face. The shock put her on the ground, with bright points of light flashing.
Zachary was kneeling over her, one hand under her head to keep it off the flagstones, the other hand smoothing her hair away from her face.
“I’m quite all right,” she said. “I’m fine.”
His shock was too much. She collected herself and managed to sit upright. He looked as if he might cry.
“Don’t,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”
She looked around for the woman who had hit her, but it seemed she hadn’t stopped. There was only the city, in irreconcilable fragments.
“Help me up,” she said. “It’s nothing, you know.” She smiled, to show that it really was. “Let’s go to the river, shall we, and regroup?”
Down at the Thames, the water flowed as it always had and the soft breeze smelled of the sea. The tanned longshoremen worked their lines while the brown tide swelled beneath them. Mary thought that everything might be fine after all. But as they sat on the wall—now that her back was to the city—she began to sob. She couldn’t stop.
“It’s all right,” said Zachary. “It’s all right.”
“It is not all right.”
Her voice shocked her—shrill, brittle. The attack had knocked the last of the morphine out of her. Her face was hot where the woman had slapped it, but her body crawled with ice. Her bones froze and cracked. Her hands shook so hard that she had to ask Zachary to take the bottle of morphine from her bag. He held her head and managed to get a dozen drops into her mouth. She was beyond shame, not caring that Zachary knew what she had become.
After a few minutes the pain was chased from her bones by a warm and forgiving kindness.
Zachary’s eyes said it all.
“You’re right,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I’ll give it up.”
“Sorry,” said Zachary, and threw the brown bottle into the Thames.
“Oh,” said Mary. It didn’t matter yet. Morphine dulled any feelings of despair at its disappearance. The worst imaginable eventuality—that of the morphine being gone—was the event for which it was the only cure.
What a perfect trap it was. And all her own work, too. Even Hilda could not have sprung it better. Now the air-raid sirens began. They soared up, and she was amazed at the thrill in her chest as they started their downward swoop.
May, 1941
BACK AT THE THEATRE Mary taught the children all afternoon. She invented a game for Zachary: the letters on a page were enemy soldiers he’d captured, and he had to interrogate them individually. If he never gave the letters a chance to compare stories, they couldn’t conspire to swirl and change and confound him. She had him use his thumbs to isolate each letter and sound it out. In this way he made quick progress at reading the commoner words, and she saw again his expression of mild disappointment when there turned out to be less sorcery in reading than he had imagined. They enjoyed themselves so much that she lost track of time in the windowless basement, and when the air raid began she was stuck underground with the children.
It was the worst night of bombing so far. The earth lurched and liquefied. London seemed to bleed. Mary watched, astonished, as red fluid streamed down the walls of the Lyceum’s basement and puddled on the dance floor. It seemed impossible that anyone would survive, and when the all-clear sounded it was the most unlikely flourish. It was as if a conjurer had flipped a coin one thousand feet into the air and made it land on its edge.
She left the children to sleep, and went to see if the garret was still there. It was, though its windows were blown in. She didn’t mind. What was important was that when she fished in the dustbin for the last discarded bottle of morphine, there were
still a few drops in it. She took them, then ran water into the bottle, rinsed it around, and drank it. When she began to feel more domestic, she swept up. The window glass sounded lovely as it surrendered itself to the dustpan. This was what the best composers would write from now on: orchestral scores for broken glass and brooms. She threw the morphine bottle in with the shards. She smiled because this was so ingenious. By tossing it in with all the other spent glass, without ceremony, one would move on from the whole episode.
Withdrawal from morphine would be perfectly manageable. She placed it in that category of hardships over which the fainthearted made a terrific fuss but which could actually be borne quite readily by a person who had been brought up to put on a sweater, rather than complain of the cold. The withdrawal would be more of a melancholy than a suffering—like taking the train home after a holiday in Devon.
The May morning blew in unimpeded. It was a tonic after the stale air in the Lyceum basement, even if there was smoke. Mary couldn’t find the makings of tea. She looked out over London, but the city didn’t seem likely to furnish her with tea, either. It stood in stunned silence, with white ash upon it in a shroud. Flames crackled here and there in the ruins. The morning cast a directionless shade through the smoke.
She hoped she might find a café open somewhere. She put on an overcoat of Alistair’s, rolling up the sleeves. In the Strand the ancient sundial of St. Clements made no shadow. Nothing was open. She wandered to the river. The waves were anxious and pale. Tea, she thought, half remembering why she had come. The word sounded in her head without finding meaning—tea, eee—unrequited, like the bleating of herds in thick fog.
Mary sat on the wall of the Embankment, her back to the disheartening river. In the silence of the morning no traffic moved in the streets. Women with ash faces and charcoal eyes swept neat piles of glass and mortar, neat heaps of splinters and flint, neat barrows for all that was lost. Now Mary began to feel uneasy. The music no longer seemed delightful. The hissing of the brooms carried a whisper: that life was cracked and gone. That any life left behind was not the good kind, which stubbornly built on rubble.