For a moment Alistair thought to go after her, but he was afraid that he could not have understood the situation. There must be something monstrous about him that had made her run. He was even more ruined than he had thought.
He sat in his uniform at the empty table while a waiter righted the overturned chair without irritation or comment. The pianist played without interruption. Mary’s place was cleared: the glass and its coaster removed on an electroplate tray, the tablecloth swept of ash until there was no sign she had ever been there. How abruptly people were taken. His body grieved, while his thoughts struggled to recall how he had got there. He had carried her body all the way back to barracks, and collapsed unconscious in the guardhouse. No, that wasn’t it. He had not opened the jar she had given him, carrying it instead to war’s end.
No, that wasn’t it at all. He had loved her.
—
It had been the tiniest chance that he would still be sitting there, and when Mary saw him she cut corners between the other tables, not minding the diners’ indignation. When she appeared by Alistair, out of breath, it seemed to startle him. He looked up from a drink that couldn’t still have been his first.
“Mary?”
“This place,” she said. “It isn’t me. Think what you like of me, but I wanted to tell you that.”
He stood, needing the table for balance. “What place is more you?”
“I don’t have a place anymore.”
“Is there somewhere you might feel better, at least?”
“I like the river,” she said. “I went there, sometimes, when you were missing.”
“Should we go there now?”
“I don’t know. It’s late.”
He checked his watch. “What time do they switch the Thames off?”
“Are you furious at me?”
“No. I thought you were disappointed.”
A waiter had been hovering, uncertain whether to bring cognac or coats.
“What would you like to do?” Mary asked Alistair.
“I’ll walk, if you’d like to. We don’t have to go anywhere in particular.”
“I’m slow on my leg, I should warn you.”
“I’ll do the sprinting, then, if you’ll do the handstands.”
Outside, an unused moon was rising. It shone along the axis of Piccadilly and sent their shadows west. As they walked down to the Embankment, Mary’s mood—which had lifted for a moment—began to sink again. Alistair could take her arm only with his left, and since her left side was the one needing support, they tended to separate. The awkwardness leached into the silence between them. The Thames, when they reached it, was no help. With its silvered crests in the soft night air it should have seemed dear, but she saw the slick blackness of the troughs, and felt on her skin the sobering drop in temperature.
They walked south along the river. Parliament seemed indigo in the light. The plane trees of Millbank had limbs splintered here and there by the bombing. They spoke of these small things, grateful when they presented themselves.
When they reached the Tate they saw that the bombing had blown its roofs off. Alistair was shaken and wanted to look. Inside, the mosaic floors were wrecked and the rain had washed their tiles out. Ten thousand colored marble chips, blued by the moonlight, lay in a mound at the foot of the stairs.
Alistair went ahead into the galleries and Mary hung back, poking at the mess with her toe. It seemed redundant to follow him, now that he had seen her as she was. She had only ever been an imprint in the London clay, of inherited money and looks. How pleased she had been with the impression she made, thinking it her own. But there were thousands of her stamp, and thousands more would come, each imagining they escaped the pattern. There would be countless small rebellions, numberless mothers defied. After the war these tiles would all be picked up and stuck back where they’d fallen.
She stood beneath the shattered central dome of the gallery. Above, between the bare iron hoops, a halo had formed around the moon. She lit a cigarette. The sound of the lighter rang in the empty space and sent pigeons clacking up through the dome.
What good was she to him? And yet days still came, and had to be faced. Perhaps she should go back home. As soon as an occasion presented, her mother would invite the Hunter-Halls. Mary would seat herself as instructed, which she supposed would decide everything else. Society was not complicated, after all. One had only to follow one’s name from table plan to wedding banns and all the way through to the headstone.