“Do you suppose I should call the whole thing off?”
“Oh, Tom, I understand that your brain is large and perpetually at war with itself, but I hope it’s not unkind to enquire why you don’t simply ask her to marry you and let her decide if you’re good enough?”
“Well . . .”
“Look, do you believe in the institution of marriage?”
“Of course.”
“And you accept that such beautiful lightning cannot strike you twice?”
“Well yes, I suppose—”
“Then shouldn’t you get a ring on her as soon as possible?”
“It’s just that I want to pick a moment when everything is going well.”
“Tom, there’s a Blitzkrieg on. Women’s hearts are being captured at astonishing speed. You can’t just let a girl like that walk around in the wild.”
Tom slumped. “As clear-cut as that, you think?”
Alistair slapped his old friend on the shoulder. The wine made him warm and loose, and there was comfort in falling into their old roles of the sophisticate and the tenderfoot. Drink made everything better. The eye no longer saw what bodies became: the snapped bones and those poor, weeping veins missing their familiar connections. Drink was the warm resin that enveloped living bodies, fixing them in the amber of the present.
“I’m happy for you,” Alistair said, and he meant it. “I don’t know how you’ve done it, but I can only humbly marvel.”
Tom sucked on his cigarette. The women came back to the table: Mary first, with fresh crimson lips and a faint air of soap; Hilda following, her hairdo reinforced with spray, smelling of Vol de Nuit.
“This dive still won’t get a gramophone,” Hilda said, tapping out a menthol cigarette. Alistair lit it for her. She cupped her hands around the lighter, holding his for a moment. It was not an unpleasant feeling. He watched her face as she drew against the flame. She was a warm, likable, undramatic girl. He had twenty-one hours left in the world.
“What kind of music do you like?” said Hilda, exhaling.
“Tell us about the war,” said Mary in the same moment, and then, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” said Hilda.
Alistair smiled from one to the other with modest neutrality. “I’m ashamed to admit I’m no expert on either. I’m afraid you’ll think me rather a bore.”
“Not at all,” said Hilda.
“Yes, rather,” said Mary at the same time.
She fixed Alistair with a look that was, he felt, principally comic. If there was a certain sharpness to it, the wine took the edge off. He took another sip.
“I like the big bands,” he said, struggling to name one. “Something with a bit of zip.”
“Oh, I adore the big bands,” said Hilda. “Bert Ambrose! Harry Roy!”
“Harry Roy,” said Alistair. “Now, there’s a man who knows music.”
He hoped Harry Roy was a bandleader and not a monkey mascot or a new kind of dance. Hilda seemed delighted, so it was probably all right. Her dimples were nice. He understood that he was seducing her, which it seemed would be achieved simply by remaining in the uniform of a captain in the Royal Artillery until such a time as it became appropriate to remove it.
“We only know what we read in the papers,” said Mary, lighting a cigarette.
Alistair’s nerves sparked when he looked at her. He hoped the jolt wasn’t visible in his eyes. How ordinary Hilda was, beside Mary—and how shabby his own need for warmth.
He took some more wine. “You probably all know more than I do, about the overall situation. I’m afraid they only tell us chaps what we need to know: come here, look lively, bunk up, dig in.”
“Tom tells me you fought the Germans in France,” said Mary.
He looked down at his glass. “Briefly, yes.”
“What was it like?”
In her face there was a simple anxiety that he could hardly bear. It made her so tender. He found he couldn’t speak.
“Darling . . .” said Tom, putting a hand on her arm.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Oh no, that’s quite all right,” Alistair said quickly.
She blushed, and he realized that perhaps she was a little drunk too. He was a swine for making the moment awkward. He wondered what he could say: show a temperate reply that her question had not been out of place, and also to answer her honestly.