Hilda fixed her in the mirror. “Just so long as you stay out of mine.”
“Careful, Hilda—remember who has the hairpins.”
“Well don’t come crying when you grow out of your little pauper.”
“Tom is hardly poor.”
“He lives in an attic, for pity’s sake. You told me so yourself.”
“Yes, but—”
“An attic, Mary. I’m sure you don’t love him at all. You only love the idea of your mother’s face when she meets him.”
Mary ignored her. She layered the bands of aerated hair, starting at the back and working toward the forehead to make a gratifying mound.
“It’s the same reason you write to that Negro,” said Hilda. “It’s to say to your mother, ‘Look at me!’ If I were you I would simply go to her lunches and dinners. Smash the teacups if you must. Kiss the Minister of Aircraft Production. But at least do it when your mother is jolly well watching.”
Mary fixed her with a pitying look. “I write to Zachary because he is a human being.”
“Is that what you told his father? He must have been impressed.”
Mary turned Hilda’s head left and right in the mirror, a little more sharply than was absolutely necessary. “I told him that he might consider bringing his child home. And that I could assure him of a school place, with a shelter in the event of any raid.”
“Did he look at you like this?” said Hilda, making a rubbery grimace and widening her eyes to make saucers of incomprehension.
“He wore a coat and tie like any man, and received me very civilly.”
“Did you make him presents of colored glass beads?”
“He told me about his life in America.”
“And counted the spoons when you left.”
Mary gave Hilda’s hair a last blast of spray to set it. “Your attitude is just like society’s.”
“Oh good,” said Hilda.
Mary lifted the hand mirror so Hilda could see herself from the back.
“Interesting,” said Hilda.
“What is?” said Mary.
“Nothing,” said Hilda, supposing that it would have to do until she could get to the salon.
May, 1940
IN THE GARRET TOM lay back against the bolster and drew on the cigarette Mary put to his lips. The cigarette’s pull lit them up, flaring and fading again.
Outside, wardens policed the blackout. Light, which had always united the city in a universal glow, had shrunk back into points. It was its old self again: a privateer, a dweller in nooks. People sheltered flames from drafts. Shadows grew by accretion, thickening nightly, as if the day wouldn’t rinse off the dark.
Tom blew smoke at the ceiling. Mary curled her foot around his. He held back a laugh.
“What?” said Mary.
“Nothing.”
“Tell or be sorry.” She plucked at the hairs on his chest.
“Ow! I was just thinking how different it feels.”
She looked wistful as she tapped ash from her cigarette. “You won’t love me anymore, now that we’ve done it.”
“It isn’t that.”
“What, then?”
“Actually,” he said, “I was thinking how much more I love you.”
In truth, this is what he had been thinking: that from now on—at work, on the bus, in the park—he would have more fellow feeling with dogs who were sexually experienced than with men who were still virgins.
“And what are you thinking?” he said.
Mary was thinking how much she was enjoying the war. The passions, which had been confused against the general glare, could flicker in the blackout. With love, one could glow. One did not need the intense flame after all. Now she could feel as she did—happy—as the ancients evidently had and her mother probably hadn’t. The capital’s heart had moved from Pimlico to Piccadilly, where the loud circus of electric bulbs was silenced and Eros, unsighted and teetering on his pedestal, now loosed his arrows into the dark. London lit her up from the inside. The great diurnal city learned the language of the night.
She said, “I was thinking I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“But you’re a man. You’ll move on, to plunder the next settlement.”
He nodded. “Primrose Hill.”
“Or Hampstead.”
“Can’t I plunder you a bit more first?”
She inspected her nails. “From time to time, I daresay. If I have nothing on.”
“I like you best when you’ve nothing on.”
She flicked his thigh. “Dirty old man.”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Yes. It’s indecent.”
He worried that it was. “I do love you, you know.”
“But do you really?”
“Yes.”
“But do you really, Tom?”
“Absolutely. I’d show you the readings on my dials, but we would have to open the inspection hatch in my chest.”
“Could we? I should like to be sure.”
“I didn’t bring the right tools.”
She rolled onto her back and blew smoke in a slow blue jet. “I hate you.”
He frowned. “You can’t prove it.”
“I haven’t got dressed for you. I won’t even get out of bed for you.’
“Not even if I do . . . this?”