At sunrise, with the rain blown over and the wet pavements gleaming, they went for a walk. They wore the clothes they had worn to the dance the night before, since Mary had no others and Tom saw no need to let her be the only one. They strolled easily together, holding hands and swinging their arms and making no strenuous effort to avoid the puddles, being both of them protected by love against discomforts of any kind.
The streets were still nearly empty—London was theirs alone—and if from time to time it pleased the lovers that a bread van should drive past on its rounds, or a policeman walk by on his beat, or the last fox of the night nose for scraps in an alley, then they caused it to be so. They strolled until the sidewalks grew busy around them and the traffic began to clot in the streets. They walked and they did not need anything at all, until very suddenly they needed everything. They understood that they were famished and so they ran into a café and ate like wolves. They drank dark stewed tea that made their teeth buzz in their sockets. Afterward he decided that he must absolutely buy her a book, and she decided that she must absolutely buy him a paper knife, and they went in and out of shops until these things were done, and then they were calm again.
They sat together on a bench in Trafalgar Square, holding the new things in their hands and being delighted with them, while Tom also felt solemn in a way that had no limiting degree. They watched the grubby pigeons flock.
She yawned and laid her head on his shoulder.
“Are you tired?” he said. “Shall we go back to the flat and sleep?”
“I ought to get home. Palmer will fret.”
“Your dog?”
“Yes,” she said, and wondered why she had. The distance between them was nothing—and simultaneously it was so huge that, in the moment, she had not found the heart to speak of it. She felt a heavy sadness.
“What are you thinking?” he said.
“How glad I am. What are you thinking?”
He was considering the idea of her having a home, a pet, two parents. He had not given any thought at all to the concept that she hadn’t simply materialized in the world, at eighteen, in perfect crimson lipstick, laughing, at the exact spatial coordinates and the exact time at which he had first met her. She was so perfectly unique that the idea of her being made ordinary by friends—oh, and worse, by family—made his chest sink unbearably.
He said, “The same. So glad.”
She kissed him. “I should go.”
“Oh . . . yes. Yes, of course.” He gave her an anxious look. “What do you suppose you should tell your family?”
She stroked his cheek. “I shall tell Father I stayed overnight with my friend Hilda. I shall tell Mother you are lovely.”
“You will tell her?”
“Women share everything. It’s the blessing we received when we turned down muscles and mustaches.”
He squeezed her hand. “I’ll walk you to the Tube.”
She did not tell him that she never caught the Tube. (She wondered whether one bought a ticket beforehand, or whether there was an inspector who came through the carriage.). They got up from the bench and walked back across Trafalgar Square, breaking into a run to scare the pigeons. They ran, breathless and laughing and desperately sad, with their hands clasped tight and the pigeons clattering up before them. The pigeons flocked and swirled and ascended through the city’s blanketing cloud, emerging into the sky. A life unmoored from the embattled earth, a thing begun again, looping and wheeling in the pacific air.
Mary, looking up at the pigeons, held tight to Tom’s hand and thought it heartless that the two of them had to stay below, in London.
She said, “I’ll be fine from here.”
“I wish you hadn’t to go.”
“Just until Monday. Come and pick me up after work.”
“But will you be all right?”
She said, “Why would I not be all right?”
He thought about her question. In fact there were so many reasons. Of course there was the war, which he increasingly believed might bring death from the sky at any time despite his own insistence that the thing would fizzle out. Then there were orders which could come quite arbitrarily, posting either of them to another city, or another country, where distance would begin to work its curse of transforming a lover’s hand into handwriting.