“And I’m sure I’ll be delighted for you. Let me know if you need a bridesmaid.”
They stood without speaking, while the last of the soldiers lugged bags toward the train and steam began to hiss from the locomotive.
Mary set down his duffel bag on the platform between them.
“Thanks,” said Alistair.
“Hilda was furious.”
“That’s what you came to tell me?”
She closed her eyes. “I came to make sure you were all right.”
“ ‘Well, now you can tell Hilda I’m all right.”
“Must you be so . . . ?”
“I’m sorry,” said Alistair.
“No, I am. I’m just very tired.”
“We’ll both feel better after a night’s sleep.”
She managed a smile. “Yes, I’m sure we shall.”
The locomotive’s boiler hissed louder. Alistair watched the last of the men boarding. He nodded to the officers who stood on the platform, watching this presumed lovers’ parting with theatrical amusement.
He turned back to Mary. “Look, yesterday was—”
“Wasn’t it? Maybe I was wrong to bring Hilda. I hope you didn’t feel too set up?”
“It was sweet of you and Tom to do the up-setting.”
“I just didn’t think you’d be so . . .”
Alistair waved it away. “Hilda is lovely. I’m sure if there’d been more than twenty-four hours . . .”
“If there had been more time, or less, it all would have been easier. If it’s an hour, one can say what one likes. If it’s a year, one can be what one is like. A day is exactly the wrong length of time to be oneself in, don’t you think?”
She looked at him desperately. He took a step toward her but the locomotive blew its whistle.
She said, “You should go.”
He held her eyes. “Yes. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
He picked up his duffel bag and turned to go.
Mary said, “I hope you’ll be all right.”
Alistair turned back. “You’ll be very happy. Tom is the best man I know.”
She paused.
“Tom always told me you were funny. I hadn’t for a minute imagined you would be so terribly sad.”
Alistair set down his bag, put his hands in his pockets, and stared at his shoes for a moment.
“I’m hopeful,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Hopeful that what?”
“That this war does as much good as harm.”
“You sound like the government posters.”
He smiled. “After the war there’ll be less distance between us all.”
“Is that your theory?”
“I can prove it. Last night the men and I were on the back streets, to see if we could make ourselves useful. There was an old man we helped, in the wreck of his house in a bathtub he’d been sheltering in. It was half full of water from the hoses and when we got to the man, he scrubbed his back with a loofah to make us laugh. The whole street torn to shreds, and all of us in stitches. Don’t you see? It makes me think there’s hope.”
“Promise me you’ll hold on to that.”
“Oh good lord, yes. Rather that than a loofah.”
She laughed then, brightly and without complication, and he laughed too, and for a moment the war with its lachrymose smoke was blown away on a bright, clean wind. Alistair marveled that she could do such a thing with the tiniest inflection of her mouth and the lightest look in her eye: even exhausted, in yesterday’s dress with her hair disheveled, she could make the distance between them disappear.
The whistle screamed again and an officer yelled from the platform for Alistair to board.
“Well, goodbye,” said Mary. “Don’t let the Germans take all the best seats.”
“Goodbye, Mary. Good luck.”
He shouldered his duffel bag and walked away down the platform. This was the end of it, he knew—they could give each other nothing more. There was a perfect sadness to it, but as the train took him back to the war and its hard hours issued singly, it wouldn’t do to think of her. He left her where she was: fragile but intact beneath the hot black smoke that rose a mile above the wounded city.
PART TWO
ATTRITION
September, 1940
HILDA PICKED HER UP at noon and they took a cab east to look at the damage. Hilda wore black: melodramatic, Mary thought. With a handkerchief to press to her face in case of smoke and dust. And knee-high lace-up boots, since one couldn’t anticipate the conditions underfoot. It seemed to Mary that Hilda was dressed for something between a funeral and Passchendaele. Mary had opted for pumps and a light blue day dress.