Page 45 of A Thousand Painted Hours

She made a sharp move, as if stabbed, and cried out softly. I leapt to my feet, but she waved me down. “A stitch,” she said, pressing her hand to the spot. “Nothing more.”

“Would you like some tea?”

“No, just read to me a little more, will you?”

I picked up the book to do just that when a clatter came from below, and then leaping footsteps on the stairs. Peter appeared in the doorway, looking cheerful and flushed, carrying a bag. “I bring gifts! A beef rump roast big enough for an army, and”—he drew out a flat dish I could smell five feet away—“an apple pie. An actual apple pie, not a mock one.”

“Oh, Peter, how miraculous!” my mother cried.

“How on earth . . . ?” I asked.

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies, my dear.”

“Ah.”

“I must return to headquarters, so I’ll take this down to Betty, shall I?”

“Surely, you’ll be back to share it with us?” Mother asked. She’d always been very fond of Peter.

I rose. “I’ll come down with you.”

On the landing, I paused. “Are you well?”

“Yes, wife, I am. It’s a tonic to try to thwart the bastards. I think we might have turned a corner at last. They lost so many planes on the fifteenth.”

I nodded, not quite convinced. He could be mercurial, but I saw that his eyes were clear, and he smelled of aftershave rather than gin.

A new love interest perhaps? He’d ever been given to crushes on beautiful young women, mostly to worship from afar, as he had done with me until we married. “All right, then. Thank you for the roast. Mother has not been at all well.”

“I know.” He started down the stairs, then turned. “Jonathan said to remind you of the party on Friday evening. Seven p.m.”

“Ah.” That was where the black-market goods had come from. “I shall have to see how Mother is doing.”

“Surely she’ll be all right with Betty for the evening? You know she’d want you to get out.”

“I worry there will be a raid, and they’ll be here alone.”

He rested a hand on the banister. “We cannot allow the Nazis to keep us from living our lives, Elsie. Otherwise, we’re already dead.”

The thought of a party did lift my spirits. “All right. Will you meet me there?”

“Let’s go together, shall we? Will you wear the blue dress?”

His mood was so much improved that, for a moment, I searched his face, feeling a sense of warning. He had at times been dangerously unstable, but to be fair, that was a long time in the past.

Perhaps his nerves were adjusting to the reality of the bombings, just as we all were.

“Of course,” I said finally. “I’ll ring Nina and find out what I might bring.” Wartime shortages made it acceptable to ask. At any other time she would never have tolerated such a question. She had been known for her talents as a hostess, and she’d been quite clever about bringing together our circle of bohemians and eccentrics.

Without her, I would never have found Rocky.

A Summer Weekend

Summer 1913

Kent, England

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