On reaching her destination she was pale and the taxi driver asked her, ‘”Are you all right, my love?” and she smiled brightly and said, “Yes, thank you.”
When she let herself in to the garret it still smelled faintly of Tom. She switched on the electric heater, took off her shoes and lay down on his bed. When she opened her eyes again, Tom had made her tea in one of his stock of jam jars that resisted all her attempts at improvement. She sat up to kiss him, since she tried hard to show him that everything was all right, and as she kissed him she woke up and it was noon.
She washed her face in the corner basin, with cold water and a small gray fossil of soap. Everything remaining in the garret was Alistair’s. She had boxed Tom’s possessions weeks ago, and sent them to his mother. When everything he had owned was packed and labeled, with Caesar in the last box and the tip of his tail just sticking out, Tom’s things had filled six cardboard boxes, each eighteen inches square by nine inches deep. The volume a man left was ten cubic feet.
Mary went to Alistair’s room, opened the wardrobe door, and stood looking at his empty clothes. She pressed his shirts to her face. She noticed a cuff that was beginning to fray, found a needle and thread and sat down to mend it. She was not at all good at needlework. At home the rule was that the maid did anything fiddlier than dealing cards, while Palmer lifted anything heavier than a gramophone arm.
She forced herself to be patient; to keep her stitches small and neat. It was something to do. If she could bring little to the war, nor bear to side with her mother in avoiding the whole thing entirely, then at least she could fix these frayed edges.
When the shirt was mended, Mary hung it back in Alistair’s cupboard. And then, because she needed to live for the new hour at least, and because a pen and paper were available, she sat down at Alistair’s rickety table and wrote to him again.
March, 1941
FOR A WHOLE MONTH the northwest wind blew cold and imperious. The siege drew taut around the island. The enemy’s capital ships, black hearted and lupine, circled just below the horizon where the coastal artillery could not reach them. Their warplanes wound white ropes of vapor around the blue dome of the sky, weaving the island a net to starve in.
Alistair, alone, was happy.
Alistair,
I mended a shirt of yours, even though it is an awful shirt that ought properly to be torn into strips, plaited into rope and used to hang your tailor. I have not mended a shirt for anyone before, so you must count yourself lucky.
In any case, whether or not you wish me to proceed to the rest of your wardrobe (and perhaps you had better let me know), your dreadful blue shirt is mended.
Affectionately,
Mary
Since Mary’s letter had got through the blockade, Alistair had not minded at all about the millions of tons of material that hadn’t. The island was without fuel oil, electric bulbs, aspirin and margarine. His regiment was without new barrels for the artillery pieces. The magazines were down to five days’ worth of shells at the present rate of usage. Islanders and soldiers alike were beginning to eat dogs, starting with the kind without collars.
Alistair cared little. He roared with laughter when Simonson read out his own letters from his duplicitous girlfriends. The two captains aped the Knightsbridge voices together. The stews grew leaner, the meat giving way to bones that were used and reused until the marrow was gone and they leached more good than they gave.
Alistair didn’t mind. The bread became one eighth sawdust and then three sixteenths and then one fifth. He took it with a shrug. He felt a solidarity with the wood-boring insects, and cheered his men by performing impressions of the bugs. Soon they were all eating insects in any case. Alistair organized beetle hunts and commissioned an engraved trophy—the Cup of Plenty—for the man who collected the most bugs each day. Fruit could not be found at all. Men’s teeth worked loose. The local children in their black church trousers with their knees yellow from dust began to have the restless eyes of cardsharps or poets. Alistair sneaked them crackers in his pockets.
Mary,
I do not know what you have against my shirt. It will be fashionable again, one must simply take the long view.
It is inconvenient that I cannot rush home to London to thank you in person, but the oddest thing has happened. The Axis, who disapprove of sentimentality, have encircled Malta with the greatest concentration of warplanes and shipping ever seen, in order to prevent me from coming to see you. I expect they are doing the same sort of thing at your end? I suppose we must be flattered.
Please do your worst with my wardrobe. In return I shall make good such treasures as you may condemn to my care. As a conservator I am trained to repair all kinds of damage invisibly. Expect me at around five past the end of the war. My shirt will have come in to its own by then, I assure you.
Warmly,