Chris Cleave - Everyone Brave is Forgiven

At the Lyceum, Bones was at the baby grand rehearsing “Hitler Has only Got One Ball”, reducing the piano part to the crudest single-piston pump and whining the vocals though his nose. After the first verse the lights snapped up on the stage and revealed a full big band and twenty-four minstrels who went straight into a colossal reprise of the song, with close harmonies and outrageous swing. The effect was magnificent, and Mary laughed with delight as she made her way down to the basement.

At the sound of her footsteps, three heads appeared over the counter of the bar. There was Zachary, Molly and a new boy of perhaps nine years, with puffy eyes and a green felt fedora.

“The hell are you?” said the new boy.

“Do you mind?” said Mary. “It is ‘Who the hell are you?’ Or more elegantly, ‘Who in hell’s name are you?’ I’m Mary. Glad to meet you.”

The heavenward glance he gave, as if she were too much. He exhaled a smoke ring. Mary realized that he had held out his hand for her cigarette as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and that she had passed it to him in an absence of mind while he had her so flustered.

“Give that back this second, you menace!”

He gave a superior look and exhaled through his nose. “I’m Charles.”

She snatched the cigarette back.

“You’re strung out, aren’t you?”

Mary smiled. “Don’t be silly.”

He widened his eyes. “You think I don’t see people high? We get big bands here. We get players.”

She started to protest, then gave it up and leaned on the bar top. “I was injured. It’s only until my wound is healed.”

“What is it, opium?”

“Morphine.”

“What even is that? Stronger or weaker?”

“Goodness, Charles, how would I know? My family favors sherry.”

“You can hardly see straight.”

“You also believe I should stop, I suppose.”

Charles shook his head. “I think you should share .”

“Certainly not.”

“Come on, just let me try a little.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then don’t you be ludicrous.”

“Then don’t be preposterous.”

He steepled his fingers. “Then don’t be… unreasonable.”

“Vocabulary: B-plus,” said Mary. “But your hat: D-minus.”

The perfect grin boys gave when victory was absolute.

“Sorry about Charles,” said Zachary.

“He doesn’t know better,” said Molly. “He never had parents.”

Charles shoved her. “You got none neither.”

Mary opened her mouth and closed it again. The children were laughing now as they pushed each other around. Here they were, driven underground and yet — so far as Mary could tell — still uncured of joy.

She taught them reading and composition until they began to tire, and then she said to Zachary, “How long since you saw daylight?”

They left the two younger children and walked up into an improving day. The smoke was lifting after the night’s conflagrations but the air was still blunt with haze. The sun was a flat white disc. Zachary and Mary walked with arms linked while the people they passed looked knives at them. Mary made sure to smile back brightly. It was simply a peculiarity of the British that they could be stoical about two hundred and fifty nights of bombing, while the sight of her with a Negro child offended their sensibilities unbearably.

“You’re better,” said Zachary, looking up at her.

“I’m happy to see you doing so well. You have your hands full, I suppose, with Charles and Molly.”

“Charles isn’t so bad. He just talks. Molly’s the worst.”

“What, little Molly?”

“She steals.”

“No! And here was me, about to check her shoulders for wings.”

“She steals my tips to buy buns.”

“And does she share?’

“Does she hell.”

“How come you’re so cheerful, then? Do you qualify for some kind of prize if London is finally destroyed?”

“I don’t know. I’m just happy.”

She put her arm around his shoulders. “Idiot.”

He leaned his head against her. “Fool.”

“Work on your vocabulary. You wouldn’t want Charles to get ahead.”

“No I wouldn’t, you bonehead.”

“Stop it!” she said, pinching his arm.

Both of them laughed, and then a woman passing in the opposite direction lifted a blue-gloved hand and slapped Mary full in the face. The shock put her on the ground, with bright points of light flashing.

Zachary was kneeling over her, one hand under her head to keep it off the flagstones, the other hand smoothing her hair away from her face.

“I’m quite all right,” she said. “I’m fine.”

His shock was too much. She collected herself and managed to sit upright. He looked as if he might cry.

“Don’t,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”

She looked around for the woman who had hit her, but it seemed she hadn’t stopped. There was only the city, in irreconcilable fragments.

“Help me up,” she said. “It’s nothing, you know.” She smiled, to show that it really was. “Let’s go to the river, shall we, and regroup?”

Down at the Thames, the water flowed as it always had and the soft breeze smelled of the sea. The tanned longshoremen worked their lines while the brown tide swelled beneath them. Mary thought that everything might be fine after all. But as they sat on the wall — now that her back was to the city — she began to sob. She couldn’t stop.

“It’s all right,” said Zachary. “It’s all right.”

“It is not all right.”

Her voice shocked her — shrill, brittle. The attack had knocked the last of the morphine out of her. Her face was hot where the woman had slapped it, but her body crawled with ice. Her bones froze and cracked. Her hands shook so hard that she had to ask Zachary to take the bottle of morphine from her bag. He held her head and managed to get a dozen drops into her mouth. She was beyond shame, not caring that Zachary knew what she had become.

After a few minutes the pain was chased from her bones by a warm and forgiving kindness.

Zachary’s eyes said it all.

“You’re right,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I’ll give it up.”

“Sorry,” said Zachary, and threw the brown bottle into the Thames.

“Oh,” said Mary. It didn’t matter yet. Morphine dulled any feelings of despair at its disappearance. The worst imaginable eventuality — that of the morphine being gone — was the event for which it was the only cure.

What a perfect trap it was. And all her own work, too. Even Hilda could not have sprung it better. Now the air-raid sirens began. They soared up, and she was amazed at the thrill in her chest as they started their downward swoop.

BACK AT THE THEATRE Mary taught the children all afternoon. She invented a game for Zachary: the letters on a page were enemy soldiers he’d captured, and he had to interrogate them individually. If he never gave the letters a chance to compare stories, they couldn’t conspire to swirl and change and confound him. She had him use his thumbs to isolate each letter and sound it out. In this way he made quick progress at reading the commoner words, and she saw again his expression of mild disappointment when there turned out to be less sorcery in reading than he had imagined. They enjoyed themselves so much that she lost track of time in the windowless basement, and when the air raid began she was stuck underground with the children.

It was the worst night of bombing so far. The earth lurched and liquefied. London seemed to bleed. Mary watched, astonished, as red fluid streamed down the walls of the Lyceum’s basement and puddled on the dance floor. It seemed impossible that anyone would survive, and when the all-clear sounded it was the most unlikely flourish. It was as if a conjurer had flipped a coin one thousand feet into the air and made it land on its edge.