Several times while they were wrapping themselves in their outer clothes, she had to clutch his arm as a louder thump or smash came, shaking the window frames.
They emerged on to Deanery Road to see a sky lit by intersecting beams, light made visible by falling on clouds rising from the burning city and on puffs of flak from exploding shells. Balloons blazed, easy targets for air-gunners, the flames acting like flares, helping illuminate the city for enemy bombers. One had slipped its moorings and floated in flames across the night sky, now lit by fires below.
“God Almighty!” she said.
“I better walk you home.”
“No. You go on. Your parents will be worried sick.”
“D’you reckon they’ll be running buses in this?”
Shrapnel clattered on the pavement nearby.
“Perhaps we’d better go back in?” he said.
“No. That warden doesn’t want us here. He’s closed the doors. My place isn’t far. Halfway up Park Street. Come on.”
There was a lull after the last bomber of that wave had dropped its load and left. Anti-aircraft guns on hills all around the city were reloading for the next run. Hazel sprinted across to the ornamental pool, more like a moat, that ran along the arc of the half-finished brick Council House that Dolly Grey had told them was mock-Georgian. A hot piece of metal from a stray shell fell into the water with a hiss of steam.
The excitement they’d both felt as the boy touched her leg above the knee had become the new thrill of battle. At last they were in it. They could see the university tower at the top by the light of flaming upper storeys of Park Street shops. Already firemen were up high ladders. Hoses curled across the road through spilt pools. She’d never realised there’d be so much exploding glass, thrown out when windows got too big for their frames. Shattered panes crunched underfoot as they climbed. A sudden burst from some excited battery made her seize him and bury her face in his chest. He grasped and held her and together they fell into the doorway of the Mauretania cocktail bar as metal rained on the road.
This street had always been the city’s smartest, a steep two hundred yards of jewellers, booksellers and cafés, rising from Baker-Baker to Bright’s department store, with London names between like Moss Bros, Jaeger and Aquascutum. Now half a dozen shops were blazing.
“They must have dropped a stick of incendiaries,” Theo said. Even he shared the general theoretical expertise about all this. The Penguin best-seller of the time was ‘Aircraft Recognition’, with its silhouettes of enemy planes. People carried their copy in a pocket and in daylight raids peered from sky to page like bird-watchers, identifying Focker-Wolfs and Messerschmitts.
Nearly at the top, she led him by the hand into Charlotte Street, climbing still towards Brandon Hill and Cabot Tower. Halfway along, she turned up a few steps to her front door.
“You’ll be all right now?” he asked her, from the pavement.
“Don’t be silly. I can’t let you go home in this. Is there a phone at home?”
“Yeah. We got it just before war started.”
“So ring her and tell her you’re all right.”
He followed her, feeling his way by the banisters up several flights of stairs to the top floor. It was more like a tower than any house he’d ever been in.
“It’s the first actual flat I’ve seen,” he said.” My Gran’s got a front room upstairs but it’s only an ordinary house, nothing like this. This is more like that French film.”
She found her way to a door on the top landing and switched on a couple of low-level lamps. How does she manage to see to do anything, he thought, without one hanging in the centre of the room?
He gazed about at the sloped ceilings and dormers.
“Those windows are like the tops of sentry boxes I saw once at Horseguards Parade in London.”
But it looked smarter, like the rooms in L.A. where private eyes kept their hats on indoors. The shades cast a warm pink glow on the mixture of queer furniture and one or two huge pictures of flowers and one that wasn’t of anything, just a sort-of pattern. A piece of cloth that in most rooms would be lying on the floor was hung on one wall. There were more books than he’d ever seen outside a library, at least five shelves full, a mixture of the cloth-covered sort he got for holiday reading, a few Penguins in red, green, blue and purple, and a huge load of political ones by people like G.B. Shaw and other authors with initials for names. On a pretty check-patterned tablecloth were piles of school exercise books. The walls weren’t papered but painted white. It was how he thought houses might be in Spain or Italy. He’d seen such rooms through the windows of restaurants with foreign names like Casa Bianca.
“Now ring your people. They’ll be worried sick.”
The phone wasn’t out on the stairs or landing where you’d expect, but on the floor beside a double-bed. He sat there and dialled. Kay answered, sounding as breathless as Miss Hampton.
“What’s it like out there?” he asked.
“There’s a great brou-ha-ha,” she said, “from the ARP men in the orphanage.”
Fred was out, she went on, hunting fires with his stirrup pump, though so far only a few incendiaries had fallen on the allotments and there was a joke going round that the wardens would have baked potatoes for supper. Rose and she were in the cupboard under the stairs, which Fred had fitted up as a shelter. From next door, Shirley Temple was being wearisome, knocking code messages through the wall about whether that last bang or plane was one of ours or theirs but she couldn’t get the hang of it. Then, what could you expect of a boy with curls from eating up his crusts? Anyway she couldn’t hear a lot because Rose kept bursting into tears, talking about the last and wondering how Tilda was coping. Being Sunday, their gran was in her own place and it looked as though the poorer parts were getting it worst, just like in London. Kay had been to the front bedroom window and seen the city ablaze. Theo said yeah, mostly towards Old Market Street but a helluva lot of Park Street was burning too.
“It’s like Atlanta!” she said, doing her Vivien Leigh.
“The Nell Gwynn Café’s caught one,” he told her.
“Oh, say not so! One of my regular haunts. What’s killing is those old duffers are still shouting at people to put lights out. As though little chinks in the black-out matter in all this! As though Luftwaffe pilots can see our windows from the Lord knows how many thousand feet. But it gives them an excuse to blow their whistles.”
“Yeah. Bet you anything, if Hitler ever comes, they’ll be in charge.”
“Yet another good reason to win the war.”
“Anyway I’m okay, tell them.”
“You absolutely sure, dear boy?”
“I’m with this teacher lady. Too much falling outside. I’ll be home soon as I can after the all-clear.”
“Okay… Whoops! That was a big one.”
“Probably a gun on Purdown. You better get back under the stairs.”
During this, he’d been studying the bedroom, not much bigger than the sizeable bed which didn’t have a board standing up at the bottom end like normal ones but just left off. The quilt and cover weren’t nice and shiny like those at home but rough like a dog’s fur. On a little box thing by the bed was a framed picture of a soldier in tropical uniform frowning into the sun in front of one of The Pyramids. The lamp was on the floor and threw these really super weird shadows on to the ceiling.
“Are they alright?” she asked, appearing in the door.
“Yeah. Not much going on up there except ack-ack. I’m glad I’m here to see it all. Been long enough coming.”
“So am I. Glad you’re here, I mean. I’d be afraid alone.”
She came towards him with two full tumblers.” There’s no gas. So probably a mains was hit.”
“We don’t need it” he said, standing and taking a glass, “plenty of fires outside.”
“No, you’re right, it’s not a bit cold, is it?”
She’d taken off her cardigan.” I decided against a warm drink anyhow. I expect that smoke’s dried your throat too.”
“What is it?” he asked, taking the glass of greenish liquid.
“Dutch courage.”
He didn’t know it but Kay would at least recognise the name from her book of cocktails.
“Don’t think I’ve ever tasted it.”
She explained the phrase meant alcohol that made you feel braver than you were. This was a tiny tot of gin filled up with Rose’s lime juice. He’d tasted his father’s whisky one Christmas and said it was like cough medicine.
“Try again. When you’re used to it, you’ll like the feeling.”
“Being drunk?”
“Certainly not. But a little drop makes you more cheerful. Come on, keep me company. It’s mostly juice. It’ll hardly set you on the primrose path of dalliance.”
He sipped, making a sour face.
“Oh, yeah. It’s okay. Lime juice is wizard. This your husband?”
She nodded.
“He looks dead brown. I suppose he would be in – where is it?”
“Cairo, yes.”
A violent barrage shook the house, then a few more distant explosions pushed against the windows. He remembered the big bad wolf.
“We’ll be safer with the dormers open,” she said.” Turn the light out.”
She drew the black-out and opened the panes like doors. In Villa Borghese all the windows slid up and down. Her head was black against the orange of the night sky. He hadn’t realised quite how thirsty the smoke had left him. He drained the glass and went to stand beside her at the window. There was only just room for them both in the narrow sentry-box. Together they stared across the city, smelling the woodsmoke, hearing the crackle of fires, the hiss of hoses and someone in the street shouting “‘Bloody bastards!”
“I’m going to open the other too. Safer, they say, than having them all blown in. We’re alright in the dark, aren’t we?”
“Dark?” he said, staring over the roofs of houses down the hill.
She took the glasses to the other room, poured more, turned out the light and opened the window.
“Looks to me as if they’ve got Castle Street,” he said, “I hope the Regent’s alright.”
“Where we met,” she said.
“They’re going to do Sunday showings from next week. It would have been packed if they’d started tonight.”
They both thought of the raid warning that afternoon they’d been there and how no-one had moved.
“So tonight it’s empty? Lucky.”
They felt a breeze on their cheeks and hair and a moment later heard the bomb fall nearby. They grabbed each other, flinching from the blast.
“That was close.”
Windows shudderd, tiles slid and shattered far below.” We ought to go downstairs,” she said, moving a step away, “all the tenants are meant to be in the cellar. A fire could come up the stairs and we’d be trapped.”
“D’you want to?” he asked, looking down on the fires.
“Aren’t you scared?” she said.
“Yeah, sort of. But sort-of excited too.”
He drew her back into an embrace and kissed her hair. As if to borrow his strength, she held his head and put her mouth to his. The tip of her tongue pressed against his closed lips, forcing them open.
Any moment could be their last. Who cared?
He relaxed his lips and she pushed her tongue right into his mouth. His horn rose against her belly. He’d tried French kissing once or twice with girls at parties when they played Sardines and felt nothing much. But now he realised why bods talked about it so much.
When the next barrage came, they dropped out of danger behind the window.
Reaching the bed again, they took off each other’s clothes. She made it easy for him, unbuttoning her blouse and undoing her bra at the back when he fumbled, freeing her breasts so that they held the open blouse apart. By the faint light from outside, he saw how beautiful her body was without the frumpish clothes. As he ran his hands up her leg, feeling the change of texture to something softer and moist, his jack was huge and bursting. He moved apart and started towards his abandoned trousers.
“Where are you going?”
How could he say it?
“Something I’ve got to get.”
“What?”
“You know –…”
“Oh, my dear. No need… come back …”
Afterwards he’d remember only how easy she made his first time. What was all the fuss about? And it was very soon over. He’d expected pain but, of course, that was what the woman felt, – and only if they hadn’t done it before, which Mrs. Hampton must have, loads of times with that man in the photo beside the bed.
She hardly had time to feel him inside her when he jerked and made an amazed sound, rolled over and lay facing away. She lifted herself by one elbow and watched him as he slept. Like a baby? A boy? No, that’s cultural, a conditioned European attitude. He was more than capable, a young male. Indians his age already had child-brides and children of their own.
More débris was falling outside and more planes came, bringing more damage.
“Anyone there?” a man shouted from a landing somewhere below their floor. Theo woke and she stopped his mouth with her hand. They lay in silence and heard retreating footsteps.
Theo turned back to her, touching her breast with his lips, licking the nipple. He pushed her back and rolled on to her. “No hurry,” she said, “we’ve got until the all-clear.”
This time she helped him take longer. He was able to wait till she was ready, startled at her gasping and whimpering, inclined to stop till he heard her quiet appeal to “‘go on, for Chrissake… oh, that’s it!”
She agreed how easy it was if you wanted each other as much as they had. After some moments she said: “It’s what comes later that’s not so easy.”
“Babies, you mean? D’you think you might? That’s why I was going to get the… you know… from my wallet.”
“Real little boy scout.”
“No, I was a cub but never took to it… What d’you mean?”
“Being prepared.”
He must not tell her he’d actually been prepared for Margo Carpenter. In the half-dark, he blushed at the memory, then smiled. He was pretty sure she was still a virgin. Next time he’d ask for a half fare in a loud clear voice and give her a knowing grin. Silly kid.
There seemed to be no after-effects of this momentous event, only a slight odour like mushrooms and a stickiness down there.
“Have you got a baby?”
“Can you see one?”
“I thought it might be somewhere else. Such as with your parents?”
She shook her head.
“How long does it take to have one?”
“Don’t teach you much at that expensive school, do they? Not about the Slave Trade, no, and not about babies.”
He knew the answer was roughly a year but had thought this a polite way of asking how long Geoff had been away. About eight months, she said, since his embarkation leave. In other words, she’d have known some months ago if she was expecting.
He crawled on all-fours to his sports coat and returned with the crumpled Gold Flake packet. They shared the last, sitting with backs against the wall while a new fall of fire-bombs was signalled by the ack-ack that was trying to see the bombers off.
He tried Kay’s trick with the smoke she’d done in the Regent café but it went the wrong way and brought on a bout of coughing. Gin, sex and tobacco. Not to mention all that going on outside. He wished he’d kept up the diary he’d dropped in February, like he did every year from having nothing to write down.
A five-star day by any standards.
*
Part of the time they talked. Or she did and he listened. Starting with Free Love, she explained that only when life’s resources were shared could a decent world be achieved. And people were the most valuable resource of all. Love must be freed from the false values that had in the past turned so much marriage into legalised prostitution. She took Geoff’s photo and kissed it, telling Theo how much he’d taught her. His clear vision of the future was of a world without class, a society where the wealthy had to be saved from their own cruelty, by force if necessary. Apart from being unfair, inequality was stupid and wasteful. But the people who had the least to lose and most to gain were still scared to change things. Working people got the smallest share of what their labour created. Theo said it sounded a helluva lot like Capra except that the people in his films mostly didn’t work and were all pretty crazy. But no, she told him, that was only democratic anarchism based on economic privilege. Heaven on earth could only be achieved through Communism, ultimate liberty only through initial discipline, such as this war was now imposing even on the better-off. Or at any rate those who hadn’t bolted to America. Hollywood, she said, offered an illusion of liberty. It was Bakunin to the real promise of Marx. Theo inevitably gabbled some dialogue from Groucho and she patiently waited and smiled and explained about Karl, who was the greatest mind of modern times, along with Freud who had freed us from the sexual fetters of the past. And they were both Jews and so was Groucho and that was reason enough for this war, even though Churchill didn’t care about that and was probably an anti-Semite himself. So what exactly, Theo wanted to know, was an anti-Semite?