Chris Cleave - Everyone Brave is Forgiven

She took his hands. The gramophone rang brassy through its horn. And there, at the point marked on the map in her original orders, in the small space of parquet floor she had scrubbed clean herself between the front row of desks and the blackboard, Mary danced the Charleston with Zachary and it seemed to her that both of them were rather good at it.

TOM SAID, “I HAD a letter from Alistair. His mob is due to ship out again and they’re giving them leave beforehand.”

Mary propped herself on the pillow and lit a cigarette. “He’s your friend, you should get him up to town.”

“You know I’ve tried. I wonder if we might go to see him instead.”

“To the provinces? Hay wains and bigotry? I can’t say I’m tempted.”

“You know it isn’t like that.”

“Unless one is colored or otherwise vulnerable, darling.”

“And since we are neither of those things?”

“ ‘Then of course the provincials would doff their caps to us, the lambs.”

“Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you.”

“You see?” said Mary, tapping ash. “You are brighter than you look.”

“I do miss Alistair, though. I worry something’s happened to his head.”

“Shell shock, do you mean?”

“Oh god,” said Tom, “not as bad as that. His letters are perfectly fine. For a start, they are letters. They’re not — oh, you know — poetry.”

“At least there is that.”

“I can see it might feel queer, though, coming back to town after battle.”

Mary frowned. “Is Alistair good-looking?”

“How should I know?”

“Well, is he tall?”

“I suppose so. Six-one, six-two?”

“Good. And his eyes?”

“I can’t say I’ve ever noticed them.”

“I despair. But he is a full captain? Own teeth, no visible Nazi insignia?”

“Confirmed on all counts.”

“Then he’ll do for my friend Hilda. Invite him for a double date. Tell him Hilda is pretty, and comfortably off, and disinclined to chastity. If that doesn’t prise the poor man out of the countryside then perhaps it’s best if he stays.”

“You really won’t come to visit him there?”

Mary stubbed out her cigarette. “Not till perdition congeals.”

“You shouldn’t damn the whole of England, you know, over what happened to one boy.”

“I shall damn as I please. What is the use of coming from a good family, if one cannot damn as the need arises?”

“It’s just that you seem rather soft on Zachary.”

“No softer than on any of my other children.”

“But last month — don’t you see? Don’t you think one crosses a line, slightly, when one actually dances with a nigger?”

“Must you bring it up again? And don’t use that word. It’s cheap.”

“It’s only an endearment, isn’t it? Like ‘Taffy’ or ‘Jock.’ If the child were Welsh and I called him ‘Taffy,’ you wouldn’t blink.”

“But the child is American. His father moved them here ages ago. Call him a Yank if you must.”

“And that would be better because?”

“Because ‘Yank’ is a proper noun and it takes a capital and it has a capital too, whereas ‘nigger’ has neither. The day we allow the child his own country and lodge our ambassador in its principal city is the day I shall let you call him ‘Nigger,’ and even then I shall jolly well expect to hear the capital N when you enunciate.”

Tom held up his hands. “I didn’t know he was American.”

“Half the black entertainers are. Where did you think they were from?”

“I assumed they were supplied by some ministry, in support of morale.”

Mary softened. “You see! My Tom is still in there somewhere.”

“I suppose I’m just jealous.”

She kissed his cheek. “He’s eleven years old, darling.”

“Just… you know. Try not to dance with him again.”

She drew away under the covers. “I shall dance as it pleases me.”

He grinned. “But you don’t want to make waves, do you?”

“We make pressed flowers. We make decorations with poster paint and glue. Waves don’t come into it.”

“But you must see what I’m telling you.”

“I’m not entirely sure I do.”

“Please, Mary. Must we talk about work?”

“Oh, are we talking about work?”

“I suppose we are, now.”

“Fine, then I suppose I shall get out of your bed, now.”

She stalked across the garret, put on his discarded dressing gown, sat at the piano and struck an ironic discord.

He groaned. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, please, never apologize for being professional.”

He said nothing.

Mary sighed. “What?”

“Well, you don’t seem to see the trouble you could make.”

“For my teaching career? It could hardly get worse. I am on half-pay and I have half a class of retards, cripples and pariahs. If I were to be sacked I might consider it a promotion.”

“You wanted that job.”

“So what would you have me do? Bow to you in gratitude?”

“Look, you know I’m in a spot. I want the schools open as much as you do, and yet the policy is to maintain the evacuation. I have a little leeway but I’m walking a tightrope. You do understand the delicacy?”

“No, Tom, it never once occurred to me. I suppose it is because you are a man with weighty responsibilities and I am just a foolish young girl.”

Tom held his head and was silent for a minute. “All right. Fine. Please may I have Mary back now?”

She went to ruffle his hair. “Not until you’ve apologized to Miss North.”

Tom took her hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I am. It’s just that keeping the school open is harder than you know, and it’s only really doable at all so long as no one, you know… notices.”

“Do give me some credit. I’m running a school, not a jive club. The children worked all week, and this was half an hour on a Friday afternoon.”

“Friday, Saturday or Judgment Day. You dance with a n… with a Negro boy, and people will talk.”

Mary pulled her hand away and lit a cigarette. “Don’t you suppose they have bigger things to listen to? You know, what with the Germans being so vocal?”

“But you know how people gossip. It’s a comfort, isn’t it, to fall back on the old prejudices when everything else is in flux.”

“Are we talking about other people’s prejudices, darling, or yours?”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s just that no one else has complained, have they? I might have expected a note from a parent or some busybody. But hardly from you.”

“Mary, please.”

“Don’t Mary me.”

“Sorry. But it isn’t for us to change how things are. I’m just an administrator. You’re just a teacher.’

“Oh, I hope I don’t teach. Because look what we did: we saved the zoo animals and the nice children, and we damned the afflicted and the blacks. You know what I do every day in that classroom? I do everything in my power to make sure those poor souls won’t learn the obvious lesson.”

He stared at her as if he had only just noticed she was real. She was angry, she supposed, at more than just him. Even as she railed, a hollow feeling grew that perhaps life would turn out to be like this. Not, after all, the effortful ascent to grace that she had imagined, but rather a gradual accretion of weight and complexity — and not in one great mass that could be shouldered as Atlas had, but in many mundane and antiheroic fragments with a collective tendency to drag one down to the mean. Perhaps life just turned a person who tried harder into a person who felt they must write it on someone else’s report.

Tom was unsmiling. “If I were you, I should stick to reading, writing and arithmetic.”