“It’s your neck,” said the driver.
Molly put her head on Zachary’s shoulder and fell asleep. He looked out at the city. The driver watched them in the rearview mirror with an expression of perfect disgust. When it became tedious, Mary gave the man a bright smile and said, “They are from Timbuktu, you know. I got them for six strings of colored beads and a daguerreotype of the King. Didn’t I do well?”
The driver reddened. “I would of kept the beads.”
“I would have kept the beads,” said Mary, and now the man made them get out and walk the last half mile.
“I thought I was the stupid one,” said Zachary.
Mary gave him a wounded look. “Yes, but it is absolutely your fault for being as black as pitch, don’t you see?”
He smiled, for the first time that day. “Why did you come?”
She nodded in the direction of Molly, who was skipping ahead. “I was jealous of the attention you were getting.”
“But really?”
“I thought you might be lonely.”
“I’ve got Molly to look after.”
Fine, she thought, but would you mind awfully if I stuck around anyway?
At the Ritz her father’s name was good enough for a table, despite the unconcealed anguish of the staff from the headwaiter down. Mary and the children were seated for lunch as far from the other guests as the great dining room permitted, but even so a couple objected and required to be moved to a more distant table. Mary gave them a wave.
“They’re mine,” she explained loudly. “From different fathers, I think—one loses track.”
“Madam,” said the waiter, “I must ask you to consider our guests.”
“Waiter,” said Mary, “I must ask you to bring us Tamworth ham, cheeses of the mild sort, bread rolls, diced avocado pears with lemon so they don’t go brown, Cumberland sausages, hard-boiled eggs thinly sliced, scones with and without currants, fruit jams but please not peach, cocoa but not too hot, two large oranges, and two large apples in not too big slices.”
“Cox’s or Granny Smith, madam?” asked the waiter, recovering.
“As they come. Oh, and coffee. Oh, and an ashtray.”
“Very good. Will there be anything else?”
“That will depend,” said Mary, “on whether anyone is sick.”
“Very good, madam.”
The children watched with wide eyes as the waiter receded.
“Are we even allowed in here?” said Zachary.
“It’s this place that shouldn’t be allowed. Your only crime is hunger.”
Mary drank coffee, geeing up her third cup with a dozen drops of morphine. She managed half a scone. Her stomach was tight from sleeplessness, and the drug queered her appetite anyway. Across the dining room, a pianist was playing the “Blue Danube.” Mary watched the children eat everything on the table, beginning with what was nearest to them and finishing—when there was no more bread to spread it on—by licking the last of the butter from its dish. They passed it between them, without ceremony but with no imperfection of manners that Mary could detect. Zachary left a little extra for Molly, who was very small and frail. The girl laid her head on the perfect white tablecloth and fell asleep again, with her mouth open and her arms hanging vertically.
From their tables the other guests watched, over the tops of ironed newspapers. It would be minutes rather than hours, Mary realized, until the scene was relayed to Pimlico. With the morphine, it was possible to know that this was unfair on her mother, and also not to mind.
Zachary wiped his face on the tablecloth. “May I have a cigarette?”
“Not until you are thirteen. Tell me, do you like looking after Molly?”
“It’s all right.”
“You’re good with her.”
“I’m no good at anything.”
“Nonsense. You’re a fine musician and a champion paste eater.”
“Everyone should be able to read and write. You said it yourself.”
“I was wrong,” she said. “I have buried a man who could read, you see, killed by people who can write.”
She tried to light a cigarette, but the flame and the end of the cigarette wouldn’t converge. Zachary had to guide her wrist.
“Thank you,” he said.
“What for?”
“For coming to find me.”
She supposed she must have. And here she was, apparently, in the Ritz, with Negro orphans. Diners stared back at her, stiff with condemnation. And here she was—oh, here she still was, yes—even now, with no clear idea, just for the moment, of how one might have got here.
May, 1941