Mary took a second envelope from the tray. “God help the poor man.”
“God will take my side,” said Hilda. “He is only human, after all.”
“Oh!” said Mary, blushing slightly. “This one’s from Tom.”
“Come on, read it out.”
Mary drew Tom’s letter closer. “I think I might rather . . .”
“Oh, go on! Don’t be such a prude!”
“It’s just that I’d . . .”
A cough came from the end of the breakfast room, by the double doors, which had swung open soundlessly. Palmer’s cough had the twin qualities of apology and watershed. Mary thought him the very best.
“Miss Hilda?” he said.
“Yes?”
“I have taken the opportunity to stop a cab for you.”
Hilda blinked. “Oh. Yes. Well, thank you, Palmer.”
The imperceptible nod. The dispassionate eyes, already fading from memory. Palmer’s face had the property of oneness with the crockery and the dado rails, while his structuring of the day had the feature of seeming contiguous with one’s own desires—so that Hilda, even as she stood, must already be convinced that she had somehow wanted the taxi. Mary supposed that an asset like Palmer would be a supreme unguent in these times of heightened stress at the ministries. She felt a twinge of apprehension at the thought that he might be requisitioned.
She kissed Hilda on both cheeks, waved her off down the steps into the drizzling morning, and opened Tom’s letter in the hallway.
Dear Miss North,
So: Tom was ‘Miss North’ing her, on headed notepaper from the Education Authority. Mary thought she might fall down. She leaned against the hall stand with its cut-glass jar of peonies. She hadn’t thrown wine over Tom at their last dinner. Nor had she gone the other way, undressing over dessert. All she had done—and this hardly seemed to merit the official stationery treatment—was to have drunk slightly too much and to have asked him, quite politely, if he wouldn’t mind kissing her.
Dear Miss North,
From the records of this office I see that following your release from your posting to Hawley Street School you have no current role with the Authority.
Mary felt that she might cry. It wasn’t as if she had hidden it.
I note also your several requests to this office to be allowed to resume your war service in teaching.
Oh—perhaps she had slightly nagged him. But she had been quite fun about the whole thing—or at least she had tried to be—and the awkward truth of it was that she really did want to teach, and she really did like him. Perhaps she had been clumsy in asking to have both. She read Tom’s next line through splayed fingers, in case it was too awful for words.
I am therefore pleased to inform you of your selection by this office for a new position that has been created at Hawley Street School. You are to report to—
Mary read no further until she was already in a cab.
You are to report to these offices to collect keys and then make the building ready. You are to prepare one classroom of robust construction with access to basement or cellar in case of air raid. You are to make arrangements in anticipation of a class of mixed ages and abilities.
If Tom’s intention had been to avoid any appearance of impropriety by keeping the communication official, then she rather subverted it by rushing to his office, dragging him out to the café over the road, and drinking only three sips of tea before kissing him on the cheek. He touched his face as if her lips might have left a tangible remainder: a smoking impact crater, or an epistolary X with the ink still wet below the signature.
Later, when she was alone in the raw wet wind, strangers smiled at her in the street. It was eerie. The raindrops were champagne bubbles bursting on her skin. The iridescent spills of fuel oil on the wet tarmac of the road were tiny proofs of the covenant.
She supposed she must be in love. That Tom was slightly infuriating, and that she didn’t mind in the slightest, might be proof of it. And of course it would be nice if he were more daring about the whole thing, but she could be patient. Soon Tom would realize that there was nothing more important than Mary North—that it was only her sorcery causing the planets to stay aligned and preventing the milk from curdling.