He didn’t go there, to London, to sleep with Bea. He had wanted, only, to be with her. But that’s what happened. They stumbled home from the pub, having drunk too much wine, talked too much about the past, shared too many memories. The present was somehow washed away and forgotten. The past loomed up and overtook them. Rose didn’t exist. His father was still alive. They became who they were then. Teenagers, eager to explore and be explored. He fumbled with her bra, she tugged impatiently at the knot in his tie. He felt frantic, then, desperate, wanting only to get inside her, and then, when he was, he wanted to stay there, to go to sleep on top of her. But Bea kissed him on the cheek and wriggled out from under him, squeezing his hand, an apology of sorts. She fell asleep soon after, and he lay there and watched her breathe, the streetlights illuminating her naked body.
When he woke in the morning, her side of the bed was a mess of sheets, and it took him a moment to realize where he was. The bedroom was only large enough for the bed and a small dresser. The tiny window now let in bright, too bright, morning sun. He heard a noise and rolled over to see Bea standing in the doorway, dressed, with a piece of paper in her hand. She looked nervous, somehow, as though she was the one in a strange apartment.
“What’s that,” he asked, pulling the sheets up to cover his chest, suddenly feeling exposed. Had they actually had sex? Or did he just imagine it?
“Our plan for the day,” she said. “I’m going to show you London. My London.”
They had talked the night before about how difficult it is to know someone else’s past. She had tried, back then, to tell him about her life in London but he’d never been able to see it, and over time, he knew, she had let her past slip away. She had, instead, become part of his world, of the Gregory world. And now, here he was, in her apartment, in her world. The roles had been reversed.
She’d already made coffee, and she poured him a cup before they went out. He watched her, sitting at the small table in the kitchen, as she got the cream and sugar, as she put a few slices of bread into the toaster, as she cut the buttered toast into triangles. He reached his arm out and grabbed her around the waist, squeezing him to her. She kissed the top of his head and then moved out of his arm before he was ready. She moved so lightly through the tiny space.
Outside, it was a cloudy Tuesday morning. The streets were busy with people heading to work and running errands, the men looking uncomfortable in their suits, their foreheads shiny with sweat. Children ran by, laughing. Women pushed enormous baby carriages. It must have rained hard at some point during the night, and puddles littered the streets and sidewalks.
Bea and her mother had moved back to the old neighborhood after the divorce, and she took William first to the site where her school had been. It was razed by a bomb not too long after she left, and a new school was now standing proudly in its place. On the wall facing the playground, she pointed out the bricks they had recovered from the original and used in the new building, a memorial of sorts. He remembered her story of the boys with their gas masks on, running around the playground, oinking.
They moved on to her local market, the same one she’d been going to since she was a child, to pick up a bottle of wine. “Morning, Trixie,” the woman behind the counter said with a smile, and with a long glance at William. “Where’s that lovely mother of yours?”
Bea explained that she was off on holiday. “She’ll be back at the end of the week,” she said, her hand on his elbow, pushing him deeper into the store.
“Trixie,” he said once they were surrounded by flour and sugar, the name uncomfortable in his mouth. “Trixie?”
She blushed, something he’d rarely seen her do. “That’s what I’m called here. Mummy never liked the name Bea. A bee stings, she would say. Better not to be a Bea.”
“But that’s what we called you. All of us. Everyone.”
“Not at the start. You all called me Beatrix and then it got shortened. I don’t remember when or by whom. But I liked it. It felt right, somehow, to have a different name there. To be a different kind of person. But when I got back, everyone here knew me as Beatrix and then Trix was what they called me in school, and so here I am. Trixie.”
“What do you want me to call you?” he said. He was annoyed; he felt oddly deceived.
“Bea.” She looked at him as if he was half-witted. “That’s my name. To you. That’s what you call me.” She gestured toward the door. “You leave, okay, and wait for me on the street. I don’t want to have to explain to the busybody up there who you are.”
He shrugged and left, the ringing bell announcing his departure, and he lit a cigarette as he leaned his back against the building across the way, waiting for her to appear. He couldn’t see into the shop; he could only see his reflection. Who was he? He could think of so many things for her to say to the clerk:
This is William, I lived with his family during the war.
Remember when I lived in America? The older boy I told you about? This is him!
For five years this boy was like my brother. And then, at the end, he was more.
Oh, and last night, I had sex with him.
Here they were, together for the first time in public. He wanted to hold her hand. He wanted the world to know they were together. Instead, she was treating him like a second-class citizen, a servant, someone to wait on her in the street. When she finally emerged, running across the street to avoid a car, her smile disappeared when she saw his face.
“What,” she said, walking briskly down the sidewalk, forcing him to catch up. “What is your problem?”
He waited until some people passed, walking the other direction. “You,” he said. “You’re the problem.”
She rounded a corner and then stopped abruptly and turned to face him. He bumped into her. “What do you want me to do? Tell every nosy so-and-so my business? She knows my mother, William; she knew me as a child.” The tops of her ears were bright red. He’d forgotten about that.
“I would have thought you could do more than just kick me out onto the street.”
“What should I have said to her? This here is William and I lived with his family in America and, oh, we shagged last night.”
He had no words with which to respond. She’d always been tough. It was one of the things he’d loved about her, how she stood up for herself. But there was an edge to her now that surprised him. It seemed ridiculous, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard a girl speak like that. Even Rose, who was plenty rough around the edges, always said “making love,” a phrase he hated. Sex, he would think. Just call it what it is. We’re going to fuck. And while he was taken aback by Bea, it also excited him. He loved that she said exactly what he had been thinking. It had so often been like that with them, as though they shared their thoughts with each other without speaking. He’d never had that with anyone else. Not even with Rose. He pushed Bea against the wall and kissed her. Slow-like, not rushed. They were sober now, and all he wanted to do was kiss her. She struggled at first and then relented, kissing him back. “Yes, we did,” he said in her ear. “And I hope we will again, tonight.”