Chris Cleave: Everyone Brave is Forgiven

He screwed the lid back on the jam and replaced it on top of the stack of paperwork. One found new uses for the equipment one had. He would tell Hamilton the truth and finish the war as a sergeant, yelling at buttons and shoes.

At dawn he shaved, combed his hair and went down to the ops room.

“Sir,” he said to Hamilton, “Heath knew nothing. He’d recently lost his arm, he’d lost Briggs who was his friend, and he was in no state to make judgments. I ordered Heath to take the painting back to the church, and the loss of Briggs and the truck was my responsibility. I ordered Heath onto the evacuation flight. He had no agency in any of it, and nor did Med Command. I told them it was orders from top brass.”

Hamilton came out from behind his desk to shake Simonson’s hand.

“You understand, Douglas, that I really shall have to write this report? That the entire thing falls on you?”

“I understand, Fraser. And I’m sorry to ask you to do it.”

“You shall have a rest now, at least.”

Simonson tried for a smile. “Well, that’s something.”

Hamilton sighed, sat back down and nodded at the wall map of Malta. “Now we can speak freely, what would you do, if you were in charge of the show? With the strength we have, and the provisions remaining, and the enemy able to parachute in to any location?”

Simonson studied the map. “I think I might ask the men, sir.”

Hamilton blinked. “I certainly never had you as a democrat.”

“I mean I might ask for volunteers. There are some who will surrender, when the chance comes, and it seems useless to require them to fight if they can bear a life in captivity. And there are others who will prefer to resist, even though the outcome is clear. I think we have all been here long enough to know our minds by now.”

“So you would split our force?”

“Into two camps, yes. One to yield, another to hold.”

“And in which of the two camps are you?”

Simonson smiled. “Who knows which takes more courage — to die in battle, or to live in vain? It cuts all of us in two, I suppose.”

Hamilton frowned at the map. “And yet, you see, we are only issued with one island.”

IN THE FIRST BIG southwesterly of the year the Americans arrived in London. They came with the storm at their backs, up from Southampton in trucks. They ran a muscular breed of convoy, widening the roads where they had to, shrugging off the bombed-out houses with big-chested bulldozers they had shipped with them from Maine. When they reached the capital, though the officers were too good to mention it, they were amazed at how tiny it was. The landmarks were bigger in their photographs. The British themselves were quite small.

“Say that again in your accent,” said a lieutenant who had asked Mary for directions. She did, and it made both of them laugh. To discover that one had an accent was quite unexpected and wonderful.

Mary had seen the column rolling along the Strand, on her way to the Lyceum. The children had already been out watching it, and it was hopeless to imagine that she could teach them on a day like this. She had joined them instead as they stood in a neat line on the pavement, oldest to youngest, waving American flags they had made.

“What’s with all the Negroes, ma’am?” said the lieutenant.

“Oh,” said Mary, “you’ll find that almost everyone in Britain is colored. Didn’t they tell you in your briefing?”

The lieutenant looked at her in perfect bafflement. “No ma’am.”

“Well, I’m surprised. As far as the Scotch border we are as dark as pitch. It’s only north of there that the race is diluted.”

“And you, ma’am?”

“I’m an albino. Oh, don’t look so worried. It’s fine, really it is, once one gets used to the persecution.”

She had the class salute him as he climbed back into the cab of his truck, laughing and shaking his head.

Mary turned to Zachary. “Did you think they’d be like this?”

“I thought they’d be like my father.”

His tender expression, his nonchalance briefly overwhelmed. Mary tried not to smile. Men were empty hats after all, from which rabbits popped only by a learned effort of conjuring.

“Did you think they’d come in white gloves, playing the baby grand?”

“I thought there’d be some black people.”

“Hitler will only fight them in separate units. He’s a snob.”

“Look at all this. Look how many soldiers there are.”

“And all come to save us. I can tell you now how worried I was.”

“We’ll win now, won’t we?” said Zachary.

“All I know is that it’s good not to stand alone anymore. I don’t suppose we could have held out much longer, on our own.”

“And what about you?”

“Oh, I’m hardly alone. I have my friends and my family.” She looked at him. “And I have…”

He touched her arm. “If you ever need me, I can come and help. Wherever I am, if you start at the theatre, they can find me.”

She smiled, thinking how sweet it was at his age. “Thank you,” she said, “but I’ll manage. I’m ever so…”

She tailed off, noticing how steadily he held her eye. The convoy rolled on. When the next gap in it came, the children would cross back to the theater side of the street and she would stay on her own. She realized this was understood now. The convoy would continue and she would not. The true moments of one’s life were sadder for the fact that they must always be synchronized with the ordinary: with rail timetables, with breaks in the traffic.

“Well,” she said. “Thank you.”

It came after a few minutes: a letup in the flow. One heard other people’s conversations again, over the engine noise. One looked up and there was the opportunity. There was no time to fuss over it: the children crossed the street while they could. And now the soldiers came again, on and on in their two-ton trucks, blocking her view of her class. The Americans came in a ceaseless river to end the lease of evil on earth. What loads this would impose on the heart everyone was curious to discover, but it was said they carried fuel oil and provisions for two years. Their bulldozers bellowed, and red sparks roared from their stacks. The convoy came without end. The asphalt shrieked and the children cheered. London’s long siege was broken.

The soldiers stood with their feet wide apart in the truck beds, saluting the children smartly. They raised eyebrows at the great mounds of rubble in the streets that the locals were too weary to arrange back into buildings. The Americans were tall men on full rations and it clearly made no sense to them that exhaustion should have the last word in the common language of English. “How come?” Mary heard them yelling to each other, over the noise of the engines. “How come they just left it broken like this?”

AT THE PUBLIC RECORDS office, on the fourth day of trying, Zachary had found his father’s name. He hadn’t asked for help and he hadn’t wanted it.

Now the rain came in with the wind. There was an avenue of chestnut trees and he found the broadest for shelter. There was bright sun between the showers, and the light fell green through the leaves. Jackdaws pecked at the edges of the walkways. They hopped among the headstones, finding the worms the rain had brought up and helping them into the light.

Next to his father’s name, which he had recognized from long familiarity, had been: EHZT NOLNOD CMETYRE. He had frowned at the words in the register: sometimes they could be made compliant. He had tried looking from the corner of his eye, then surprising them. EZTA NALDON MCFETRY.

The rain would soon blow through. On the graves the jackdaws fussed at the moss that grew through the gravel. Zachary lit a cigarette. He had waited for a rainy day, to be here alone.