1941
On Regent Street, Livy had been walking for ten minutes, stumbling along in the darkness, Jonathan at her heels.
‘Livy, the raid,’ Jonathan said, taking her arm and pulling her to a stop. ‘We have to take shelter.’
‘Leave me if you want,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go underground.’ She thought of Christian. I’d rather be in the open air, even with bombs falling.
In one hand he held his hat; his other hand curled and uncurled, the only sign of agitation – except that his grey winter coat was undone, where he had fled after her. The flush in his face, against his pale skin and dark hair, made him look older and a little feverish. His uncertainty woke her affection for him. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said.
‘Come with me,’ he said, and he took her hand. She was about to protest when she realized that he was leading her away from the Tube. They walked for five minutes before he led her down a side alley to a metal door. He banged on it. No one came. He swore under his breath and putting his hand into his coat pocket, fished for and pulled out a bunch of keys. He struggled to find the right one, but at length he unlocked the door, and they went in together.
There was post on a small table with a telephone, and an ancient staircase. Livy followed Jonathan up one flight, then two flights more. Another key produced entrance to an office, which was in an ornamental turret of the building.
‘We’ll go to James’s office,’ said Jonathan, as if she would know who that was. ‘It’s the most comfortable.’
James’s office had a vast desk, a small bookcase, and a leather buttoned sofa against the furthest wall from the window. There was also a drinks trolley. Jonathan poured them each a glass of whisky. ‘I’m sorry there’s no ice,’ he said. ‘It’s cold enough. Perhaps we don’t need it.’
Up here, there was no wire mesh on the windows, and the blackout paper applied to the panes had been torn. ‘We won’t turn the lights on,’ said Jonathan, as though to himself. Livy took a gulp of the whisky, and nodded. Jonathan turned from the window and came to sit by her on the sofa.
‘Why do you have the keys?’ she said, and took another mouthful, as though it were medicine.
‘Stevie’s family has a controlling interest in the business,’ he said. ‘Not that it’s worth much, these days. I used to work here one day a week. I’m a working man too, you see.’
She looked at him, and couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘Hardly.’ She drained her whisky glass and put it down.
He gazed into her face in the shadows; at the uncompromising shine of her eyes. ‘You’re an innocent,’ he said. ‘You talk about your darkness, your urge to destroy. I don’t buy it, Livy. There are some types of innocence which can never be destroyed, or driven away. They are not a matter of decision; they are in the very grain of you.’
He thought of Stevie then, walking in her garden. He thought of her with a twinge of guilt, at the jewellery he had just despatched to an antique dealer. On her white shape, he could pin purity, but not innocence. No matter how hard he tried. He thought of the empty doorway at Redlands, as he trundled away to London.
He needed to forget. He put his glass down. Then he reached towards Livy, and raked his fingers through her hair; held the back of her head in his hands as one would a precious thing, then leaned forwards and pressed his face to the side of her neck.
The gesture changed everything. The pure relief of his physical touch took her breath. She drew back, and saw it in his eyes, saw the choice in that moment, although it had the quality of the inevitable about it. The danger. The edge of the roof, the light shining on bones in the earth. All these things pulled her towards them, had their own magnetism, as he did – as he had, from the first moment she had seen him. She closed her eyes, and kissed him.
When she opened her eyes she saw that in his face was that mixture of tiredness, and honesty, and perplexity, that chink of openness, which unlocked her desire for him. One kiss led to another, and another, a seamless process set in motion. They could only both yield to it, in its immensity. A silent agreement not to think about the past, or the future. Equal in desire, they lived in the moment. One touch for another, an exchange, equal and opposite. Through the moments, through the hours; through the crisis, the ragged peak of pleasure, and then another.
The night poured in through the windows. A darkness as dense as the London earth in the moat.
*
They woke at the same moment, as a bomb passed the open office door, down the stairway, rattling its way through the building like a rat in a drainpipe. Jonathan’s eyes widened in shock, and he silently folded his body around Livy’s. She pressed her face to his shoulder, pale and clammy in the moonlight.
The explosion rocked the building, but, though they waited, curled around each other, the ceiling did not fall. Broken glass glittered on the floor. They lay there for several minutes, as though hesitant about whether they still lived.
Jonathan sat up, and turned, groped for his shoes in the darkness so that he could navigate the room. He walked across the room with their glasses, rinsed them out with soda to rid them of any fragments or dust, and filled them with whisky again. As he stood doing it, Livy sat up too, and reached for his jacket to cover her nakedness. She looked at his pale back in the moonlight, his shoulders slightly hunched. She felt stiff, a little sore, the impression of his fingers on her back, where he had gripped her. She stared ahead of her, at the shapes in the darkness. There were so many different shades of darkness.
She took the glass from him, and drank. He looked at her, without drinking.
‘I didn’t hurt you?’
She shook her head, but didn’t meet his gaze with her own. The moment of deepest pleasure had traded one memory for another. Lit the fuse. She could not speak: she could not say what was unfurling in her mind. Memories, page after page of them, as though she flicked through a book.
One minute per page. Speed reading. As she had in the architect’s office.
He smiled like a boy. She watched him drink. She felt strangely detached from him, as though their lovemaking had delivered her from his spell. His power was gone. For a man who was meant to be important, he was strangely unobtrusive. He wished both to be benevolent and to impose his will on the world. It was impossible, she thought, to live such a contradiction with any clarity or real happiness.
‘You’re shaking,’ she said. She had noticed it before, on long evenings in the shelter, but never spoken of it.
The smile faded. ‘Yes. Can’t help it sometimes. All of this. Reminds me of the past. Not that the last war wasn’t great fun, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Why are you not afraid? Not visibly afraid, anyway.’
‘The whisky, mainly.’ She looked at him, finally took a sip, and gave a sigh of surrender. ‘I am afraid.’
‘Who taught you how to take pleasure like that?’ he said.
She said nothing.
He kissed her passionately, until she pulled away and told him that she was exhausted. He nodded. ‘Lie down then, and we’ll get some rest.’
They lay entwined, and covered by his jacket. It was strange to her, how he stroked her, as though he could not keep from touching her; this taciturn man.
‘Am I your first?’ he said.
She knew then what he expected: to be flattered. As the other women who had gained brooches had perhaps flattered him.
‘No.’
He stopped stroking her, took a breath. ‘I suppose I deserved that.’
‘I didn’t say it to wound you. It’s simply the truth.’
He nodded. He no longer stroked her, but nor did he remove his arm.
‘What do you want? After this?’
She turned her head, and looked up at him. ‘Peace, of course. And tea and buttered crumpets with lots of jam.’ Her voice wavered. ‘And a strong shoulder to lie my head upon.’
He thought of Redlands and its empty nursery. ‘What about children?’
She shook her head. ‘Go to sleep, while we have the chance.’
But he hardly slept, shifting in the darkness, stirring, and waking every so often. As Livy lay, one hand behind her head, staring at the ceiling, her eyes wide open.