Alistair’s clothes were still sharp with brine—he sucked his shirt cuffs and shivered at the wonder of it. They had foundered in the bay where St. Paul had almost drowned. They were taking the same coast road that Paul must have taken to Valletta. The horse’s shoes rang out, and to left and right the people in their black clothes merged with the deepening shadows. Below the road, all around the points and crenulations of the bay, the waves bled black ink into the twilight.
He would reply to Hilda’s letter, and he supposed it would be the start of things between them. Perhaps this was what love was like after all—not the lurch of going over a humpback bridge, and not the incandescence of fireworks, just the quiet understanding that one should take a kind hand when it was offered, before all light was gone from the sky.
First, though, he would write to Tom. If he had been a prig to Hilda then he had been an inexcusable ass to his oldest friend. As soon as they got back to the fort he would write. He would apologize for the way he had been, and he wouldn’t blame the war. He would ask Tom to forgive him, and when Tom did then he could reply to Hilda with an untroubled mind.
He felt better now, as the calash bounced along the rocky track and they wound through the stone walls older than Christ. He felt himself made new by the war, while the cool salt breeze blew in off the sea and the first star rose in the east.
December, 1940
MARY SAT AT THE piano and smiled at Tom in the front row. All the children had managed to field at least one parent, which was good work at three in the afternoon on a working day reduced to six hours by the bombing. They all deserved “A” for effort.
In the front row Zachary’s father sat with Poppy’s mother, and next to them were Kenneth’s mother and both of Thomas’s parents. In the back row Maud’s mother was making a point, it seemed to Mary, of sitting as far from Zachary’s father as she could—but at least she had come. There was something about the star, rising above the stable, that still pulled a crowd in from the fields.
She pressed out the last chords of the hymn, let her hands fall to her lap and nodded for the play to begin. Betty stepped forward into the improvised spotlight that George’s father had made from an electric fitting and an empty baked-bean can.
Betty froze until Mary whispered: “Long ago . . .”
“Long ago,” said Betty, “in the city of Nazareth, an angel—”
“Behold!” yelled Kenneth. “A! Virgin! Shall! Be! With! Child! And!”
“Shh, not yet!” hissed Mary.
The boy clamped both hands over his mouth, eyes bulging.
Betty said, “An angel came to Joseph and Mary. And the angel said . . .”
Mary willed Kenneth to say his line. “Behold . . .” she whispered.
Nothing. In the front row the parents were agitated, and looking to her. Kenneth was staring up at the ceiling.
“Behold . . .” she said again, and still nothing happened.
Tom widened his eyes at her and pointed to his ear. Now she heard it, a low rumbling. The air-raid sirens began. Mary felt the familiar punch of fear, followed immediately by fury at the enemy. Today of all days, they had chosen to start the raid early.
She stood from the piano. “We will go down into the basement. Children first please, calmly and quietly, holding hands in twos as we practised.”
She issued candles, one to each pair of children, as they went down the basement stairs. Poppy went with George, Maud with Kenneth, Zachary with Betty, then Beryl on her own since she would not let anyone touch her, and finally Thomas in his father’s arms, his wheelchair parked in the corridor.
Mary had Tom see everyone down the stairs while she went to the boiler room and shut off the electricity, the gas and the water. Back in the classroom she checked that no one remained. She tucked the Christ doll under her arm, closed the piano lid and walked down into the basement.
There was a confusion of places and a nervous laughter among the adults. The children squabbled for seats on the two long gymnasium benches that Mary had set up when she cleared the basement.
Mary clapped her hands twice. “Right. Grown-ups, please move those benches as close to that back wall as you can, and sit on them. Leave this space in front clear—this will be our stage. It’s less room than we’ve practised in, so shepherds, I need you to keep your flocks close, and angel—where are you, Kenneth?—angel, I need you to watch where you flap your wings. Betty and Maud, more candles, please, in those jars, and put them on the floor along the walls. Yes, anywhere there is good. And now, children, places as you were, please, and George, please can you bring that stool for Thomas to sit on? Very good. All right, then, we shall go from ‘And the angel said . . .’ ”
“Behold!” said Kenneth. “Behold!”
In the candlelight, the audience cheered. The children made no more mistakes and Mary sat to watch them, while the distant concussions of the raid sounded through the underground walls. The candle flames shone on the ancient shelves that lined the basement. The yellow light glinted on the dented globes. It glowed on the musty needlework. It made the laid-down maypoles into long bones, white in the darkness.