The Reckoning

by Chonghaile, Clár Ní;

  “Maybe,” Sarah said. She shook her head.

  “Anyway, you’ll come? With Robert?”

  I said I would although part of me was reluctant to share the final precious hours of his leave. But maybe we could do with some company. All too often, we locked ourselves away. That intensity could be suffocating. A night out would help us see each other differently, as a normal couple with normal fears and normal desires.

  Robert must have felt the same.

  “Let’s do it,” he said when I arrived home and told him. “I want to go out. I want to drink and eat and forget everything. I want it to be how it was before. We need to seize the moment because you never know.”

  I must’ve looked concerned because he lifted my chin and gave me a long look.

  “Don’t worry, darling. I’m not saying goodbye. We’re just going out.”

  He suddenly slammed his hands onto the table, rattling the cups and making me jump.

  “God, I just want to live a life that isn’t so bloody dramatic all the time,” he breathed.

  So off we went to Portobello, fumbling our way through the dark with our torches. We had both tied white handkerchiefs around our necks so that we wouldn’t bump into other people. I joked that this was the only surrender Churchill would ever accept – surrender to the demands of the dark.

  The restaurant was small and muggy with flickering candles reflected in varnished dark tables and a jazz band playing on a raised platform in one corner. The menu was classic wartime haute cuisine – a bland pie made with some kind of Spam, stodgy green pease pudding and baked potatoes that seemed to have been plucked from the ground before they were fully grown. But there was red and white wine and even a little champagne. Sarah had brought her sister Denise, who was home on leave from Egypt where she was serving as a WAAF administrator, but she had also invited almost the whole team from the Ministry. I hadn’t realised Penrose would be there.

  I never had any contact with him when Robert was home on leave. Even in the office, we steered clear of each other by mutual unspoken agreement. It was an untenable situation but we never spoke of ‘what next’ either. Robert and Penrose had met once or twice – it could not be avoided as Robert had insisted on meeting the people I worked with, saying it would help him picture me in my London reality when he was far away. The two men seemed to like each other, which did not surprise me. They were similar in many ways. You’re wondering perhaps how I dealt with the guilt, Diane, when Robert was home. I wish I could say it was terribly complicated but it wasn’t. I simply ignored it. I lived in the moment, each moment separate from the next. When I was with Robert, I did not allow myself to think of Penrose and vice versa. It sounds callous and maybe it was but we were living in the cruellest of times. My deceptions bothered me but only as much as a headache might trouble a person whose skin is on fire.

  When we walked into the restaurant, Sarah stood up and waved us over.

  “Lina, Lina, come and sit here,” she cried. “How lovely to see you, Robert. You look wonderful. Shove up, boys. Robert gets the comfy chair. No, don’t sulk. He just does.”

  Normally, Sarah was the quietest person in any crowd, and certainly not one to stir up resentments, but her flushed cheeks and glittering eyes suggested she had started celebrating early, if celebrating is the right word.

  Penrose was sitting at the other end of the long table, sipping a glass of red wine. His face was in shadow so that I could not read his expression. He leaned into the light to give me the briefest of smiles. He’d had time to prepare at least.

  Robert slipped into the chair nearest Sarah. I sat opposite him, next to Denise.

  “Hello darling,” Sarah said, bending towards Robert and hiccupping loudly. She burst out laughing and pretended to hide her face against Robert’s chest. He raised his eyebrows and smiled at me, feigning apology. I rolled my eyes and found myself grinning back, pathetically delighted by this normal nonsense. Sarah deserved Robert’s company tonight. And he could probably do with her adoration too. We could have been normal people in that moment.

  I dared another glance at Penrose. He lifted his glass to me and smiled again. It was a sad smile, Diane, but ours was just one tiny tragedy.

  We ordered the food just to get it out of the way and then we drank quickly and very deliberately, as was our habit. Soon our laughter was too loud, our arms waved around too wildly, a bottle smashed on the floor, napkins were flung across the table. We were just children really, apart from Penrose who maintained a dignified otherness at the end of the table, like an indulgent but watchful parent.

  “So you’re in the WAAF too?” Denise asked, leaning closer. She looked like Sarah except that where Sarah’s features were soft and childlike, hers had a harder edge. Her skin was tanned and she had an angry red scar on the left side of her neck.

  “Yes, for my sins,” I said. “Sarah says you’ve been in Egypt for a year. What are you doing there?”

  “Oh, you know, pushing endless bits of paper from pillar to post,” she said. “And partying in Cairo, singing in the mess, the usual.”

  “We all have to do our bit,” I said, tipsily raising my glass.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “That’s the rallying cry: We’re all in it together. Of course, it’s utter rot. I’m having a wonderful war, apart from one unfortunate incident with an overfriendly piece of shrapnel.”

  She pointed to her neck.

  “It looks worse than it is. I was lucky. But take poor Sarah. She’s lost her man and who knows if she’ll ever recover, while I’ve had more men than I can count. And look at us here now, all having a jolly good night, while somewhere someone is stuck in a hole, wondering if he’ll ever taste wine again.”

  “It’s a funny old war, alright,” I said, looking down the table at Penrose.

  “Do you think it will be over soon?” she said. “I mean, really over?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it all depends on how things go in France when we finally get over there.”

  “Is your man going?”

  For a moment, because of where I was looking, I thought she was talking about Penrose, who was chatting to one of the young chaps from the Ministry. The boy, who ran our messages, a skinny, big-eared lad of about 16, was hanging on his every word. With a start, I realised Denise was talking about Robert, whose flushed face was close to Sarah’s as they sang along with the band.

  “Yes, he leaves for the south the day after tomorrow.”

  “Are you scared?”

  I giggled. The wine was taking its toll and really, what a question.

  “No, I’m over the moon that he’ll be able to give Jerry what for,” I said, making my eyes as big as I could and drumming the words on the tabletop. Denise burst out laughing.

  “I’m sorry, what a stupid question. What a bloody ridiculous question. Oh my, oh my. The wine has clearly gone to my head. Hopefully, it’ll stay there because it’ll strip my stomach if it gets anywhere near it.”

  I took a cigarette from my pack and offered it to Denise. She took it, placed it between her lips and I flicked my lighter. The flame ignited and at the very same moment, air raid sirens began to wail, as though I had called them forth by striking the flint.

  “Bugger,” Denise said, the cigarette falling from her lips. She fumbled to pick it up. “I was hoping we’d get away with it tonight. For Sarah’s sake.”

  She stood up but Sarah rose to her feet and shouted her down.

  “Denise, where are you going? Don’t leave. It’s probably just a false alarm again. Let’s stay and have another drink and if it keeps going, we can leave then. What do you think, boys and girls? Shall we stay?”

  There was something mesmerising about Sarah at that moment, stumbling slightly and sloshing wine over the top of her glass and yet a symbol par excellence of the defiance that was supposed to carry us through. Penrose was standing too.

  “Come on, Sarah,” he said. “I think we should go to the shelter. They’ve been doin
g a lot of damage these last weeks. Let’s not chance it. Come on, old girl. We can take some wine with us if you like.”

  “No, I’m not going.”

  Sarah fell heavily into her seat.

  “I refuse to spend my birthday evening in a damp, disgusting hole with a bunch of strangers, singing and pretending to be cheerful. Not again.”

  A few of the other guests in the restaurant cheered. Penrose sighed, put down his glass and started to move towards Sarah.

  That’s when the bomb that had been falling on us forever finally found us. A noise beyond description, dull and loud as though all our screams had been distilled into one roar, a flash of light and a rush of air, in and out, like a giant’s hot, dusty breath.

  When I came to, I could not understand where I was. My ears were ringing, my eyes were watering and I could taste metal in the back of my throat. I could see clouds of smoke, wafting almost lazily above me. Flames were crackling somewhere, lighting the underside of the smoke clouds that seemed to be drifting across a starry sky. I realised it was the sky. The roof was gone. As my hearing returned, I heard the silver sound of tinkling glass, the creaking of wood, and then cries, small and strangled and very far away.

  “Lina, Lina!”

  Hands were on my shoulders, pulling. I wanted to tell them to stop. I was quite happy in my strangely whistling, dust-filled world, gazing up at stars that shouldn’t have been there. I wanted nothing else right then. I suppose part of me knew what was coming and I wanted to put it off as long as I could, even when it was clear there was no changing what had happened. Robert finally managed to pull me out from under the table legs and other bits of rubble that had exploded onto me when the bomb rearranged our world. We stood swaying together.

  “Come on, we have to get out. Those fires could spread and then the gas… Come on, Lina. Please try to walk, darling.”

  I looked into his face. He had a cut on his cheek and his hair was covered with dust and plaster but otherwise, he seemed unhurt.

  “You are untouchable,” I breathed groggily.

  “And you, my darling. And you. Together we are doubly untouchable. I told you when this started, our story cannot end. Not like this.”

  I leaned into him, becoming aware of other shapes rising from the ground, of the bells of fire engines ringing, the crunch of wheels in the street, which seemed to have drifted into the restaurant. The front wall, the façade that made us believe we were stepping out of the war for a few hours, was gone. I could smell gas and mud, the sharp stench of cordite and the bitter ferrous smell of blood. Survivors were switching on their torches. For a moment, I thought I was staring at the stars again but this time, they were all around me.

  “Where are the others?” I asked Robert as he tried to steer me outside. “Where’s Sarah?”

  “I’ll go back and find them. I promise. I just need to get you out of here so the rescue people can have a look at you, make sure you’re okay.”

  I couldn’t move. I kept looking frantically around me but it was as though some important connection between my eyes and my brain had been sundered. Remember what I said about the inadequacy of our measurements of time, Diane? How could one possibly fathom that such radical change could take place in just one second? We struggle when the sun gives way to rain, fussing for our umbrellas, buttoning our coats, grappling with the new reality even though the looming clouds had told us what was coming. When the car stalls, we try to get to grips with our new status as stationary on the hard shoulder. But eventually we adapt because that is what we do. My brain recalibrated and I started to understand the roofless, formless reality before me.

  Sarah was lying on the floor. But something was not quite right. It was Sarah, yes. She was on the floor, which was odd but yes, it was definitely her, on the floor. But her body ended at the red hem of her lilac dress. It could not be, my brain said. It is, it is what I am showing you, my eyes replied.

  Sarah’s legs were gone. I squinted but the image didn’t change. Denise was on her knees now. She had seen Sarah too and was trying to crawl towards her but all that used to be the restaurant was on the floor and blocking her way. Denise was screaming Sarah’s name. I wanted to tell her that Sarah could not hear. She was clearly dead, my brain now said. My mouth would not move. I saw the big-eared boy stumble past me, eyes blinking sticky blood from a deep wound on his head.

  “I think I’ll go home now,” he muttered as he went past. “Time to go home, sonny boy. Time to go to bed, Timmy.”

  Robert was still trying to drag me out.

  “Can you see Penrose?” I said.

  “No, but he’s probably out already,” Robert said. “Look, there are people in the street now. I remember those men, you see, those ones there, they were at a table in the corner. He’s probably out there somewhere with them. Look at them, Lina. Let’s go and let the rescue services do their work. We can tell them about Penrose.”

  But I still couldn’t move. Suddenly, light washed over us. Firemen had arrived and had set up a floodlight. It made things so much worse. At one table, a couple sat bolt upright, frozen forever in that moment before their world ended.

  My eyes followed one fireman as he moved closer to us. He fell to his knees and I saw his mouth open as if he was going to shout something but he closed it again, too quickly. I knew it was Penrose. We all had a sixth sense for tragedy by then. Or maybe it was just that we always expected the worst and inevitably sometimes we were right and then we remembered the foreboding we had felt and invested it with a false significance. It gave us a sense of control, I suppose.

  I broke from Robert’s arms and stumbled across to the fireman, falling on my knees beside him.

  “A friend of yours?” he asked.

  I nodded, then realised he couldn’t see me in this dark corner and said slowly, “Yes.”

  That too was a lie though.

  The fireman shone his light on Penrose’s face.

  His eyes were open and his mouth gaped darkly as if death had taken his breath mid-shout. There was blood pooling under his hair. I put my hand in it before I realised. I was looking at his chest, where a jagged piece of metal was softly steaming. The fireman ran his light over the rest of Penrose’s body, slowly, respectfully. I became aware of Robert standing behind me but there was no need to dissemble. I had no untoward grief to show. I was numb. I could have been looking at anyone.

  “He won’t have felt a thing, darlin’. I fancy he was gone as soon as that metal hit him. With the shock ‘n all, he likely never knew what happened,” the fireman said.

  I nodded again. I felt Robert’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I doubt it’s true but it’s nice of you to say so.”

  I got up then and let Robert lead me into the street.

  Two days later, Robert was gone too. And as we waited for the invasion, I lost my mind for a little while but there were so many of us walking around with minds and hearts and other pieces missing that nobody really noticed.

  Penrose was swiftly buried in the City of London cemetery in Manor Park, alongside Sarah and the other people who died that night. I went to his funeral with some colleagues from the Ministry. We stood at the back, an awkward group of official doom-fighters brought face-to-face with the reality of a war we had reduced to snappy, saccharine mottos.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sometimes, Diane, I try to imagine where you are reading these letters, if indeed you are reading them. This exercise requires a double-dose of what my literature professor used to call the willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe you have a special routine. Perhaps you read my letters over breakfast. Or maybe you read them late at night in your bed. Do you discuss them with Paul or keep them for yourself? Perhaps you take the pale yellow envelopes to your favourite café before you go to work. Maybe you don’t work any more. Do other people run the gallery now that you’ve done the hard work of putting it on the map? Oh yes, I have followed your career, darling. I am a very British stalke
r. Very polite, very unassuming and very passive-aggressive. You never even knew I was there, did you?

  I visited the gallery once. It must have been five or six years ago. I pretended to myself that I might as well pop in as I happened to be in the neighbourhood. Of course, there was no other reason for me to be on that street in Mayfair. Nothing other than an old woman’s penchant for poking her nose into things that are none of her business. Fooling myself again.

  I love the name: Silent Poetry. You are a clever girl. I had to look it up when I got home. I’m afraid I hardly remember what was on the walls. I was so nervous and I know so little about art anyway despite my experience with wartime posters. I have a vague memory of vibrant colours, strong asymmetrical shapes. There were also twisted, disturbing sculptures, little wooden nightmares, on plinths in the centre of the room. I liked those.

  I approached a slender, austerely pretty brunette with the most beautiful knee-high leather boots. She was behind the desk but she could have been one of the exhibits. Boots On The Ground, perhaps.

  “Hello, could I speak to Diane Spencer please?”

  She raised her perfect eyebrows.

  “Do you mean Maria Spencer? The owner?” she asked.

  I ignored her tone. I’ve been hearing it a lot since I hit old age; a mixture of annoyance and slightly contemptuous pity. I just nodded.

  “She’s out this afternoon, I’m afraid. Can I take a message for her?”

  I said no. I was already regretting my fake spontaneity. I left as hastily as a 70-year-old woman can, feeling her eyes on my back as I tottered out. She probably feared I might stumble into the sculptures or careen into one of the pictures. She was not entirely wrong to be concerned.

  It was February, a depressing nowhere month, neither winter nor spring. It was cold and the skies were low and leaden. I’d had a bout of pneumonia over Christmas and I suppose I was feeling feeble and lonely and that drove me to seek you out. My only excuse for such appalling behaviour is that rational thought becomes more and more of a luxury as we age, Diane. Increasingly, I find I am ruled by my emotions. This susceptibility angers me. I thought I had turned my back on those bastards long ago.