“Good lord,” said Mary, “you smoke as if the world might tell you not to.”
“I smoke like a man,” said the child, affecting weariness.
“Well then. Unless one counts the three Rs, I don’t suppose I have anything to teach you.”
She took his arm and they walked together—he wondering whether the lions would be dropped on Berlin by day or by night and she replying that she supposed by night, since the creatures were mostly nocturnal, although in wartime, who knew?
They rotated through the exit turnstile. Mary made the boy to go first, since it would be too funny if he were to abscond again, with her already through to the wrong side of the one-way ratchet. If their roles had been reversed, then she would certainly have found the possibility too cheerful to resist.
On the grass they found the school drawn up into ranks, three by three. She kept Zachary’s arm companionably until the headmistress shot her a look. Mary adjusted her grip to be more suggestive of restraint.
“I shall deal with you later, Zachary,” said Miss Vine. “As soon as I am issued with a building in which to detain you, expect to get detention.”
Zachary smiled infuriatingly. Mary hurried him along the ranks until they came to her own class. There she took plain, sensible Fay George from her row and had her form a new row with the recaptured escapee, instructing her to hold his hand good and firmly. This Fay did, first taking her gloves from the pocket of her duffel coat and putting them on. Zachary accepted this without comment, looking directly ahead.
The headmistress came to where Mary stood, twitched her nose at the smell of cigarette smoke, and glanced pointedly heavenward. As if there might be a roaring squadron of bombers up there that Mary had somehow missed. Miss Vine took Zachary by the shoulders. She shook him, absentmindedly and not without affection. It was as if to ask: Oh, and what are we to do with you?
She said, “You young ones have no idea of the difficulties.”
Mary supposed that she was the one being admonished, although it could equally have been the child, or—since her headmistress was still looking skyward—it might have been the youthful pilots of the Luftwaffe, or the insouciant cherubim.
Mary bit her cheek to keep from smiling. She liked Miss Vine—the woman was not made entirely of vipers and crinoline. And yet she was so boringly wary, as if life couldn’t be trusted. “I am sorry, Miss Vine.”
“Miss North, have you spent much time in the country?”
“Oh yes. We have weekends in my father’s constituency.”
It was exactly the sort of thing she tried not to say.
Miss Vine let go of Zachary’s shoulders. “May I borrow you for a moment, Miss North?”
“Please,” said Mary.
They took themselves off a little way.
“What inspired you to volunteer as a schoolmistress, Mary?”
Pride would not let her reply that she had not volunteered for anything in particular—that she had simply volunteered, assuming the issue would be decided favourably, as it always had been until now, by influences unseen.
“I thought I might be good at teaching,” she said.
“I’m sorry. It is just that young women of your background usually wouldn’t consider the profession.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t necessarily see it like that. Surely if one had to pick a fault with women of my background, it might be that they don’t consider work very much at all.”
“And, dear, why did you?”
“I hoped it might be less exhausting than the constant rest.”
“But is there no war work that seems to you more glamorous?”
“You do not have much faith in me, Miss Vine.”
“But you are impossible, don’t you see? My other teachers are dazzled by you, or disheartened. And you are overconfident. You befriend the children, when it is not a friend that they need.”
“I suppose I just like children.”
The headmistress gave her a look of undisguised pity. “You cannot be a friend to thirty-one children, all with needs greater than you imagine.”
“I think I understand what is needed.”
“You have been doing the job for four days, and you think you understand. The error is a common one, and harder to correct in young women who have no urgent use for the two pounds and seventeen shillings per week.”
Mary bristled, and with an effort said nothing.
“All the trouble this week has come from your class, Mary. The tantrums, the mishaps, the abscondments. The children feel they can take liberties with you.”
“But I feel for them, Miss Vine. Saying goodbye to their parents for who knows how long? The state they are in, I thought perhaps a little license—”
“Could kill them. I have no idea what these next few weeks or months will bring, but I am certain that if there is violence then we shall need to have every child accounted for at all times, ready to be taken to shelter at a moment’s notice. They mustn’t be who-knows-where.”
“I am sorry. I will improve.”
“I fear I cannot risk giving you the time.”
“Excuse me?”
“At noon, Mary, we are to proceed on foot to Marylebone, to board a train at one. They have not given me the destination, although I imagine it must be Oxfordshire or the Midlands.”
“Well, then . . .”
“Well, I am afraid I shan’t be taking you along.”
“But Miss Vine!”
The headmistress put a hand on her arm. “I like you, Mary. Enough to tell you that you will never be any good as a teacher. Find something more suited to your many gifts.”
“But my class . . .”
“I will take them myself. Oh, don’t look so sick. I have done a little teaching in my time.”
But their names, thought Mary. I have learned every one of their names.
She stood for a moment, concentrating—as her mother had taught her—on keeping her face unmoved. “ ‘Very well.”’
“You are a credit to your family.”
“Not at all,” said Mary, since that was what one said.
Noon came too quickly. She retrieved her suitcase from the trolley where the rest of the staff had theirs, and watched the school evacuate in rows of three down the Outer Circle Road. Kestrels went last: her thirty-one children with their names inscribed on brown baggage tags. Enid Platt, Edna Glover and Margaret Eccleston made up the front row, always together, always whispering. For four days now their gossip had seemed so thrilling that Mary had never known whether to shush them or beg to be included.
Margaret Lambie, Audrey Shepherd and Nellie Gould made up the next row: Audrey with her gas-mask box decorated with poster paint, Nellie with her doll who was called Pinkie, and Margaret who spoke a little French.
Mary was left behind. The green sward of grass beside the abandoned zoo became quiet and still. George Woodall, Jack Taylor and Graham Brown marched with high-swinging arms in the infantry style. John Cumberland, Harry Rogers and Carl Richardson mocked them with chimpanzee grunts from the row behind. Henriette Wisby, Elaine Newland and Beryl Waldorf, the beauties of the class, sashayed with their arms linked, frowning at the rowdy boys. Then Eileen Robbins, Norma Reeve and Rose Montiel, pale with apprehension.
Next went Patricia Fawcett, Margaret Taylor and June Knight, whose mothers knew one another socially and whose own eventual daughters and granddaughters seemed sure to prolong the acquaintance for so long as the wars of men permitted society to convene over sponge cake and tea. Then Patrick Joseph, Gordon Abbott and James Wright, giggling and with backward glances at Peter Carter, Peter Hall and John Clark, who were up to some mischief that Mary felt sure would involve either a fainting episode, or ink.
Finally came kind Rita Glenister supporting tiny, tearful James Roffey, and then, in the last row of all, Fay George and Zachary.
The colored boy dismissed Mary by taking one last puff of his imaginary cigarette and flicking away the butt. He turned his back and walked away with all the others, singing, toward a place that did not yet have a name. Mary watched him go. It was the first time she had broken a promise.
—
At dinner, at her parents’ house in Pimlico, Mary sat across from her friend Hilda while her mother served slices of cold meatloaf from a salver that she had fetched from the kitchen herself. With Mary’s father off at the House and no callers expected, her mother had given everyone but Cook the night off.
“So when are you to be evacuated?” said her mother. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”
“Oh,” said Mary, “I’m to follow presently. They wanted one good teacher to help with any stragglers.”
“Extraordinary. We didn’t think you’d be good, did we, Hilda?”
Hilda looked up. She had been cutting her slice of meatloaf into thirds, sidelining one third according to the slimming plan she was following. Two Thirds Curves had been recommended in that month’s Silver Screen. It was how Ann Sheridan had found her figure for Angels with Dirty Faces.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. North?”
“We didn’t suppose Mary would be any use at teaching, did we, dear?”
Hilda favored Mary with an innocent look. “And she was so stoical about the assignment.”
Hilda knew perfectly well that she had neither volunteered accepted the role particularly graciously nor survived in it for a week. Mary managed a smile that she judged to have the right inflection of modesty. “Teaching helps the war effort by freeing up able men to serve.”
“I had you down for freeing up some admiral.”
“Hilda! Any more talk like that and your severed head on the gate will serve as a warning to others.’
“I’m sorry, Mrs. North. But a pretty thing like Mary is hardly cut out for something so plain as teaching, is she?”
Hilda knew perfectly well that Mary was already suspected by her mother of dalliances. This was typical her: baiting the most exquisite trap and then springing it, while all the while seeming to have most of her mind on her meatloaf.
“I’m just jolly impressed that she’s sticking with it,” said Hilda. “I can’t even stick to a diet.”
With unbearable ponderousness, she was using her knife and fork to reduce the length of each of the runner beans on her plate by one third. With perfect diligence she lined up each short length beside the surplus meatloaf.
Mary rose to it. “Why on earth are you cutting them all like that?”
Hilda’s round face was guileless. “Are my thirds not right?”
“Just put aside one bean in three, for heaven’s sake. It’s dieting, not dissection.”
Hilda slumped. “I’m not as bright as you.”
Mary threw her a furious look. Hilda’s dark eyes glittered.
“We have different gifts,” said Mary’s mother. “You are faithful and kind.”
“But I think Mary is so brave to be a teacher, don’t you? While the rest of us only careen from parlor to salon.”
Mary’s mother patted her hand. “We also serve who live with grace.”
“But to do something for the war,” said Hilda. “To really do something.”
“I suppose I am proud of my daughter. And only this summer we were worried she might be a socialist.”
And finally all three of them laughed. Because really.
—
After dinner, on the roof terrace that topped the six stories of creamy stucco, with the two of them in white dresses flaming red as the sun set over Pimlico, Hilda was weak with laughter while Mary seethed.
“You perfect wasp’s udder,” said Mary, lighting a cigarette. “Now I shall have to pretend forever that I haven’t been sacked. Was all that about Geoffrey St John?”
“Why would you imagine it was about Geoffrey St John?”
“Well, I admit I might have slightly . . .”
“Go on. Have slightly what?”
“Have slightly kissed him.”
“At the . . . ?”
“At the Queen Charlotte’s Ball.”
“Where he was there as . . .”
“As your escort for the night. Fine.”
“Interesting.’
“Isn’t it?” said Mary. “Because apparently you are still jolly furious.”
“So it would seem.”
Mary leaned her elbows on the balcony rail and gave London a weary look. “It’s because you’re not relaxed about these things.”
“I’m very traditional,” said Hilda. “Still, look on the bright side. Now you have a full-time teaching job.”
“You played Mother like a cheap pianola.”
“And now you will have to get your job back, or at least pretend. Either way you’ll be out of my hair for the Michaelmas Ball.”
“The ball, you genius, is to be held after school hours.”
“But you will have to be in the countryside, won’t you? Even your mother will realize that there’s nobody here to teach.”
Mary considered it. “I will get you back for this.”
“Eventually I shall forgive you, of course. I might even let you come to my wedding to Geoffrey St John. You can be a bridesmaid.”
They leaned shoulders sociably and watched the darkening city.
“What was it like?” said Hilda finally.
Mary sighed. “The worst thing is that I loved it.”
“But I did see him first, you know,” said Hilda.
“Oh, I don’t mean kissing Geoffrey. I mean I loved the teaching.”
“What are you cooking up now?”
“No, really! I had thirty-one children, bright as the devil’s cuff links. Now they’re gone it feels rather dull.”
The blacked-out city lay inverted. Until now it had answered the evening stars with a million points of light, drowning them in extroversion.
“Why not the kiss?” said Hilda after a while. “What was wrong with Geoffrey’s kiss anyway?”
October, 1939
WHEN WAR WAS DECLARED, Tom Shaw decided to give it a miss. It wouldn’t last in any case—the belligerents on both sides would pull back from the brink, as children did when encircled in the playground by a mob calling for a fight.
It took skill, at twenty-three, to be sad. The trouble was, he noticed things that made one melancholy. He noticed the way the West End players didn’t bother to remove their stage paint if the matinée was close to the evening show—so that when one went out in Soho one might see Rosencrantz drinking a half-pint, in a corner, in the indifferent afternoon light. He noticed the neat cropped circle achieved in grass whenever a horse was tethered on common land by a fixed length of chain—the circle being of invariant geometrical perfection notwithstanding the temperament of the beast: whether skittish or placid, obstinate or obliging.
His colleagues at the Education Authority had all left to join the Army, and his supervisor had ascended to the Ministry to help coordinate the evacuation. Tom seemed to be the only man in London who did not think the war an unmissable parade lap, and so he’d been given a school district to run instead. A man might celebrate the promotion if he didn’t have the gift for noticing that the schools were empty.
He took a walk at dawn. High up on Parliament Hill the blackberries were in season, bursting with the bright sweetness they gave only in the best years. In any other October, children would have got to these bushes first. Tom took off his hat and filled it.
He looked down on his new district as it awoke: the scholastic subdivision of Kentish Town and Chalk Farm. Marking his fiefdom’s northerly limit was the railway, steam rising even now as the day’s first batch of evacuees went west. The Regent’s Canal was his southern border, busy with barges lugging goods from the docks. Within th
ese bounds no child would learn its letters, no teacher would receive her wages in a manila envelope with its tie closure sealed in red wax, no chalk would be brought forth from its Cretaceous slumber to be milled into rods and applied to blackboards, unless he himself ordained it. Glancing left and right to make sure he was alone, he raised an imperious arm.
“Learn, little people! I command it!”
His mouth was full of blackberries, the effect rather undermined. He let his arm drop and wondered what he ought to do with the day. The only school-age children who remained were the frankly unappealing: the crippled and the congenitally strange, those the country folk wouldn’t accommodate. The Negro children, too, of course—only a few had been evacuated, and those were already staring to trickle back. The evacuation was a beauty contest in which the little ones were lined up in church halls and the yokels allowed to pick the blonds.
Tom was left with twenty mothballed schools and a light scattering of the children who were either too complicated to educate, or too simple. To cheer himself up he practised the trick of flipping a blackberry from his hand to strike his elbow and bounce into his mouth. He was no good at it at all—he didn’t get it once in six attempts—but he was sure he would improve with time. It was the great folly of war that it measured nations against each other without reckoning talents like these.
He lifted his eyes. Beyond his zone, London sprawled away to the rank marshes in the east and the white marble walls in the west. Along the line of the Thames they were testing a flock of miniature zeppelins. Tethered on cables, these were supposed to offer a variety of protection, albeit of a vague and unspecified stripe. The balloons’ snub noses swung left and right in the fickle breeze, giving them the anxious air of compasses abandoned by north.
Tom took his hatful of blackberries with him down the hill, back into the furious city with its mushrooming recruitment posts. Strangers met his eye, anxious to nod the new solidarity. YOUR COURAGE, YOUR CHEERFULNESS, YOUR RESOLUTION, read the billboards that used to hawk soap.
It was still only eight—too early for the office—so he went back to his garret. Home was a sitting room with two bedrooms attached, in the converted attic of a town house off the Prince of Wales Road. The attic had been converted—as his flatmate Alistair Heath put it—in the same way the Christians had converted the Moors. It seemed to have been done at the point of a sword, leaving the continual threat of reversion. Winter brought leaks and bitter drafts, summer a canicular heat from which slight relief could be obtained by running one’s head under the tap of the little corner kitchen.