Alistair understood that she was being less than serious. His irritation vanished. With her cotton he fixed the lighter to a bulb flex. His fingers did the work with their old skill. The shifting flame tossed their shadows back and forth, as if they were not fixtures in society but only tricks of the light.
“It was good of you to invite us down here,” said Mary.
Zachary’s father smiled. “It was nice of you to come and see our show.”
“You must come and see ours. We’ll have a nativity near Christmas.”
“Do you have enough children for all the parts?”
“I think so. One really only needs a holy couple, an angel and a narrator. Some wise men would be nice, but then isn’t that just like life?”
Alistair winked at Tom. “You’re not going to let that stand?”
But Tom only gripped the bench and flinched at the bangs. In the guttering light Alistair saw the slow look Mary gave him.
“You’re good with this,” said Hilda, her head back on Alistair’s shoulder.
“Well I grew up in a mine, you see.”
She snuggled closer. “I don’t suppose you’d mind putting your arm around me?”
Soon the lighter flame burned out and all of them waited in the dark. More bombs fell, and with each one Hilda pressed closer. Once or twice at a particularly loud explosion she gave a shriek. When she was halfway into his lap, Alistair eased her off and stood up.
“Would you all excuse me? I ought to contact my regiment.”
“Will you come back?” said Hilda.
“Don’t worry,” said Alistair.
“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t go.”
Her voice was such a porridge of fright that it made him glad to leave.
Here and there the basement was lit by the glow of cigarettes, and a little farther along someone had set up a candle. Alistair made his way to the staircase and up to the theater. Upstairs, the sound of the anti-aircraft guns was loud and close. The backstage area was lit up by flashes entering through an open stage door. Alistair made for that, tripping over props and drapes, and then he was outside in the narrow alley beside the theater.
It was half dark and the hot air was sharp with smoke. Alistair scanned the sky, listening to the bombers and the anti-aircraft guns. Searchlights cut the crimson base of what might have been smoke or might have been cloud. From the noise and the angle of the beams, the main body of the attack was a fair way off: a mile, maybe two. Underground, with that awful resonance, it had seemed closer.
He went back into the theater and nosed around by the light of the flashes until he found wine on one of the tables. He leaned back into the scoop of the baby grand, took a long drink and stared up at the theater. The gun flashes glinted on the gold columns and the high proscenium arch.
“I’m to tell you to come back down immediately.”
He turned. Mary had come from the basement and now stood watching him. The occulting light lit her up, her cigarette smoke flashing silver.
“You probably ought to go back down yourself,” he said.
She said nothing, only stood with her arms crossed.
“Did the others send you to fetch me?’
“Hilda is a wonderful girl. We’ve been friends since we were six. She is mischievous and loyal, and very funny until a man walks into the room, whereupon her IQ immediately halves. But it is only shyness, you see. I’m sure the phenomenon would vanish as you got to know her.”
He filled his pipe in the stuttering light. “Would you like some wine? I’m afraid I was drinking from the bottle.”
“Ugh. You see, this is why I prefer civilians.”
“Do you have a lighter?”
She came to the other side of the baby grand and slid him the lighter while he slid her the bottle. She took a short drink. Outside, the anti-aircraft guns let off a salvo, making them both flinch.
“You really should go back down,” he said.
“I shall be glad to. Right behind you.”
“Look, Hilda is lovely. It’s me. I am really not myself at the moment.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, who is? You’re an army officer. I’m a schoolteacher. The whole world is in fancy dress.”
“I just need a bit of time.”
“Fine,” said Mary, “I shall wait here with you.”
“I meant . . . Oh, never mind.”
“I know what you meant,” said Mary. “But Hilda is a hoot. She likes parties, and big bands, and subterfuge. You shan’t tell me you don’t like such things? She plays tricks on me, and runs rings around my mother, and she once set fire to a baronet’s motor car because he lent it to Oswald Mosley.”
“Forget romance. We ought to parachute her behind enemy lines.”
Mary sighed. “I wish you would kiss her, first.”
Alistair drank some wine. The flashes through the open stage door left green afterimages of the bottle glass. He said, “Tom is a good man, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I hope you didn’t read too much into—”
“It’s just that the two of you seemed a little—”
“ ‘Well, it’s the war, isn’t it? It’s one thing for you, being out there in the action. Cooped up in town, we get snippy.”