Chris Cleave - Everyone Brave is Forgiven

He made them both tea, in the jam jars they used for cups, and climbed back into bed. They sat against the headboard and leaned shoulders. They were tired, their eyes cast inward. They forgot to sip the pale tea. The steam condensed on the inner rims of the jars.

He said, “Have you ever been… you know. In bed with anyone before?”

She blinked. “Oh yes.”

As if it were nothing. Tom’s fear returned. He supposed he had been perfectly prepared for her answer to be yes or no, but this third possibility had not even slightly occurred to him: that perhaps it really was nothing. It had seemed the most important thing that had ever happened to him. But of course he had been a fool. He felt as if he could easily cry.

He wouldn’t let himself. He would set his face just like this: in this worldly grin. And when their conversation naturally picked up again he would engage in the new topic with all levity. As if yes, this were nothing, and that therefore this feeling he had — that he had been struck through like the clumsy first draft of a letter — were nothing, too. And still… and still.

He realized that he did not mind if she had slept with five men or even a dozen: he just wanted Mary — who had trembled in his arms and crushed her face into his neck — to speak about what had happened as if it were something . Tears threatened again and he stopped them.

She was digging him in the ribs.

“Darling?” he said, keeping his tone light.

She prodded him again and he turned to look. She was watching him strangely and he didn’t understand. There was so much, he now realized, that he did not understand. He had lost his virginity — sailed to a place where land had been marked on the chart — and yet here was just more open sea.

He could not decipher her eyes. An anxiety came over him that she wanted them to make love again. He didn’t know if he could. Then he worried that perhaps making love was not what she wanted at all, and that maybe this strange and terrible look she was giving him was something else, a prelude to the sort of conversation where in which she would be serious and kind. She would speak softly, noticing the lateness of the hour, and saying that perhaps they should sleep after all. And then, as soon as the time was decent for young women to take to the streets, she would excuse herself and leave.

He stroked her cheek. How pathetic he was. She had seen his reaction, and she must think him ridiculous. Now that she was certain to leave, he understood that he did not even care if she felt nothing for him, or for any of the men she had slept with. What he could not bear was to be without her. How dreadful the days would be from now on. How empty.

She smiled.

“What is it?” he said.

“I haven’t slept with anyone else.”

“So why…?”

She took his hand. “I wanted to see if it counted for you.”

Above them the dawn sounded with engines. Tom drew the blanket around them. He held Mary close in the improvised darkness. How bedclothes would protect them, he didn’t know. The engine noise drew nearer and increased in volume until it was directly overhead, rattling the windows. Then it faded away to the east. Aircraft were being delivered, or pilots trained — that was all — and afterward they laughed at their own fear.

At sunrise, with the rain blown over and the wet pavements gleaming, they went for a walk. They wore the clothes they had worn to the dance the night before, since Mary had no others and Tom saw no need to let her be the only one. They strolled easily together, holding hands and swinging their arms and making no strenuous effort to avoid the puddles, being both of them protected by love against discomforts of any kind.

The streets were still nearly empty — London was theirs alone — and if from time to time it pleased the lovers that a bread van should drive past on its rounds, or a policeman walk by on his beat, or the last fox of the night nose for scraps in an alley, then they caused it to be so. They strolled until the sidewalks grew busy around them and the traffic began to clot in the streets. They walked and they did not need anything at all, until very suddenly they needed everything. They understood that they were famished and so they ran into a café and ate like wolves. They drank dark stewed tea that made their teeth buzz in their sockets. Afterward he decided that he must absolutely buy her a book, and she decided that she must absolutely buy him a paper knife, and they went in and out of shops until these things were done, and then they were calm again.

They sat together on a bench in Trafalgar Square, holding the new things in their hands and being delighted with them, while Tom also felt solemn in a way that had no limiting degree. They watched the grubby pigeons flock.

She yawned and laid her head on his shoulder.

“Are you tired?” he said. “Shall we go back to the flat and sleep?”

“I ought to get home. Palmer will fret.”

“Your dog?”

“Yes,” she said, and wondered why she had. The distance between them was nothing — and simultaneously it was so huge that, in the moment, she had not found the heart to speak of it. She felt a heavy sadness.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“How glad I am. What are you thinking?”

He was considering the idea of her having a home, a pet, two parents. He had not given any thought at all to the concept that she hadn’t simply materialized in the world, at eighteen, in perfect crimson lipstick, laughing, at the exact spatial coordinates and the exact time at which he had first met her. She was so perfectly unique that the idea of her being made ordinary by friends — oh, and worse, by family — made his chest sink unbearably.

He said, “The same. So glad.”

She kissed him. “I should go.”

“Oh… yes. Yes, of course.” He gave her an anxious look. “What do you suppose you should tell your family?”

She stroked his cheek. “I shall tell Father I stayed overnight with my friend Hilda. I shall tell Mother you are lovely.”

“You will tell her?”

“Women share everything. It’s the blessing we received when we turned down muscles and mustaches.”

He squeezed her hand. “I’ll walk you to the Tube.”

She did not tell him that she never caught the Tube. (She wondered whether one bought a ticket beforehand, or whether there was an inspector who came through the carriage.). They got up from the bench and walked back across Trafalgar Square, breaking into a run to scare the pigeons. They ran, breathless and laughing and desperately sad, with their hands clasped tight and the pigeons clattering up before them. The pigeons flocked and swirled and ascended through the city’s blanketing cloud, emerging into the sky. A life unmoored from the embattled earth, a thing begun again, looping and wheeling in the pacific air.

Mary, looking up at the pigeons, held tight to Tom’s hand and thought it heartless that the two of them had to stay below, in London.

She said, “I’ll be fine from here.”

“I wish you hadn’t to go.”

“Just until Monday. Come and pick me up after work.”

“But will you be all right?”

She said, “Why would I not be all right?”

He thought about her question. In fact there were so many reasons. Of course there was the war, which he increasingly believed might bring death from the sky at any time despite his own insistence that the thing would fizzle out. Then there were orders which could come quite arbitrarily, posting either of them to another city, or another country, where distance would begin to work its curse of transforming a lover’s hand into handwriting.

There were mechanical accidents: machinery was well known to be full of spite for slim bodies such as the one he now clung to. Bearings lived to seize, axles to shear, cables to snap. Accidents of the heart were a worry, too. She was beautiful: other men could see this as well as he. She was bright and unconventional and her faithfulness could not be assumed. There would come suitors who were taller, or richer, or — most dreadful of all — who could make her laugh. How he feared men who could make her laugh.