When they got to Bow she saw that Hilda had been right. Every window was out. In the bright sun, glass lay everywhere, so that if one half closed one’s eyes the streets bejeweled. Pavements were undulant, walls bowed, streetlamps wilted by heat. The city’s perpendiculars were defeated: it was as if the bombs had reserved a particular spite for right angles. The pipes were cracked too, and marshy water pooled in every new depression. Children splashed. The pigeons spritzed their wings in it.
Their road was blocked by rubble, and the driver pulled up. Hilda opened the door and hot air rolled in, heavy with soot and sewage. Everything smoked or steamed, as if one had crossed into a tropic of disaster. From the gaping fronts of bombed-out houses, the dazed locals stared. Mary stepped out of the cab into a puddle that leached foul-smelling mud through her shoe and into her stocking.
“Don’t you think we should go straight back?” she said.
“Don’t be wet,” said Hilda. “These poor people have been through hell.”
“But I feel such a ghoul for gawping.”
“We’re observing. And I’m damned if we’ll be the only ones who haven’t. It’s all anyone will be talking about.”
Mary gave in. They linked arms, going around gas flares that rose from cracked mains. They gave a wide berth to sewage bubbling up.
“You see?” said Hilda. “This is why I prefer the West End.”
“This isn’t funny at all.”
Hilda looked as if she might cry. “Did you kiss him?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Did you and Alistair kiss?”
Mary hesitated. “Shall we talk about it at home?”
“There’s no privacy there. If Palmer isn’t hovering then your mother is materializing over one’s shoulder. It isn’t a home, it’s a haunting.”
Mary looked away down the shattered alley. “At your flat, then.”
“ ‘But it’s never the right moment, with you. You think you can do what you like, and we never mention it. But what about Tom? What about me?”
“I didn’t kiss Alistair, if you must know.”
“I don’t believe you for a moment.”
Mary shrugged. “Fine.”
Hilda’s hands shook. “You can tell me. I won’t say anything to Tom.”
“Gosh. Well. That’s big of you.”
“Please don’t be cross,” said Hilda, chewing her lip. ‘I saw how you looked at Alistair.’
Mary softened. “ ‘Well one does look, doesn’t one? The eye may be an obligate scout but the heart is not an incurable follower. Anyway, I saw how you looked at Alistair too.”
“But I was there to look, and you weren’t. We feign dispassion, don’t we? It is called manners.”
“Have it your way. But I didn’t kiss him.”
“Then what were you doing all that time?”
“We were talking. You should try it. It’s hardly my fault if you pack your wits into a hatbox whenever a gentleman calls.”
“But you’ve no right always to poach the man I like, just since you can.”
“I didn’t poach. I took him his bag. I told you to do it but you wouldn’t.”
“I was furious with him, don’t you see? For going off without saying goodbye. I could hardly show it by running after him with his luggage.”
“ ‘Well, you must tell me how fury is turning out for you.”
Hilda scowled at the ground. “You’d be the same, if it happened to you.”
“You should have followed him out of the basement. You didn’t have to send me.”
“I was scared!”
“And you suppose I wasn’t?”
Hilda only raised her hands and let them fall to her sides.
Mary closed her eyes for a moment. “I promise I didn’t do anything with Alistair. I’m in love with Tom and I try extremely hard to show it.”
Hilda gave her a bitter look. “And did trying work, last night?”
“Yes. All that happened was that Alistair went away on a train, with his bag, to who-knows-where he’s to be deployed. So if you’ve anything to say to him I suggest you jolly well write. I shan’t think of him again. I have a man I love, and a class to teach, and for me the matter is closed.”
“And yet you are always, incorrigibly, you.”
“All I can tell you is how you seem to me now. This rubble was people’s homes only yesterday. And here’s you, standing on it and bleating. Sometimes, Hilda, though I try not to, I think you impossibly spoiled.”
The color bled from Hilda’s face.
“Oh no,” said Mary, reaching out. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Hilda pushed her arm away. “I’m glad you did. Because although I’ve tried for years not to, I think you impossibly selfish. I know you kissed Alistair. I’m exhausted from always forgiving you, and I simply won’t do so anymore.”
“Please—” said Mary.
“No. Goodbye. I’ll go home on my own.”
Glass cracked under her boots as she went. Mary slumped against a steaming wall and looked up at the sky. The blue was stained by updrafts of smoke as the air drifted toward the fires in the docks. How sad one could feel. She wondered how it had happened that Tom was so distant, and Hilda so bitter, and the world so thoroughly shattered.