Page 70 of A Thousand Painted Hours

—36—

I very nearly did not go to a planned dinner at Nina’s. A huge battle took place overhead in the afternoon, rattling all of us, and the blitzkrieg followed all night. Mother slept through the night somehow, bless her, and I’d grown rather adept myself at catching a little sleep even with gunfire and incendiaries falling for hours.

But when everyone had gone to their daily tasks, Mother to her embroidery, Peter to the ministry, I found myself unsettled again. Restless. I returned to my studio, and rather than paint, I found myself organizing my brushes by size, sorting the various pencils and charcoals into tidy piles, tossing scraps of paper and old sketches into the trash. Beyond the windows, rain fell against the glass relentlessly. I had the sense that I’d forgotten something.

Mother had suggested, “Drink some chamomile to settle your nerves, darling. Who wouldn’t be rattled in such a din?”

She wasn’t, I noticed, but I knew that was her illness coupled with a hefty dosing of morphine. She’d rallied with the infusion of apple pie and a beef stew made with the rump roast Peter had come by somehow. She had not eaten a lot, but it was cheering, and I feasted myself, hungry in a way I hadn’t been for years.

Perhaps it was the good food that eventually lifted my spirits. On Friday afternoon, I took a bath and washed my hair, which I’d had trimmed only a couple of weeks before, so it sprang into good order with only a little coaxing, and I took the time to put on a full round ofmakeup, powder, lipstick, rouge. It was remarkable how much strain it obscured.

Peter was in good spirits, picking me up after work so we could walk together the scant mile to Nina’s townhome, a safer choice than driving, even if bombs were falling later.

The rain had stopped, leaving the air cleansed and fresh, all the more noticeable after days of smoky aftertaste. Twilight lingered, turning the sky a soft purple that felt somehow hopeful, and I dared to wish no planes would come tonight. “A night without bombs would be such a luxury,” I said. I had not worn high heels in quite some time, and felt myself teetering, clinging to his elbow.

“Indeed.” He eyed the sky. “One can always hope.”

Peter spoke mildly, about the weather, a friend he’d seen at Paddington Station, and a new secretary in the pool at the foreign office. “She’s quite good. Her husband has shipped out to Africa.”

I glanced at him, alerted by something in his tone, but his face showed nothing. “She must welcome the work to distract her.”

“I would imagine.” He patted the pocket of his overcoat for a lighter, and instead pulled out a tiny vial and showed it to me. The cyanide. I’d forgotten about it again. I touched the inner pocket of my own coat and felt the rigid shape. Oddly comforting.

He lit his cigarette. “We’ve been coordinating troops from any number of directions. Australians.” A pause. “Quite a lot of Indians, actually.”

“I don’t know why they would bother. This is hardly their war.” Any more than the last one had been.

“Patriotism prevails.”

Patriotism for what land?I wanted to ask, but it would only start an argument, and nothing I said would shift his opinion. “Mmm,” I said.

“It’s a chance for young men of no means to discover a better life.”

Or die,I thought. “Let’s not, Peter.” We turned the corner, and suddenly, there was a half block in ruins. Both of us halted. I couldn’t quite make sense of the rubble, tumbles of gray stone and beams sticking uplike broken bones. On an upper floor, a wall had fallen away to reveal a bedroom, the bed still made, a curtain floating in an unseen breeze.

“Good God,” Peter said. “Isn’t this the building where George and Catherine lived?”

They were acquaintances, a woman my mother had played whist with on Monday afternoons. “It is. I wonder where they are. Will you look into it tomorrow?”

“Of course.” He took my elbow. “Are you all right?”

I sighed. “I am, honestly. What does that say about me?”

“That these are trying days for all of us.” He looked upward, shook his head. “Good God,” he repeated.

At Nina’s, she took my coat, kissed my cheek, and gave me a look I couldn’t quite interpret. “What?”

She shook her head, drawing us into the room. The usual suspects mingled in the salon, cocktails in hand—a handful of couples who worked with the government and war offices. We’d known them for decades.

Added to the mix were three young women. “We’ve taken in some refugees,” Nina announced. “Everyone, this is Adelaide, Mary, and Gertrude.”

“Trudy,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

Adelaide was a sturdy girl, about twenty, with freckles from head to toe. She’d been bombed out of Kensington, and worked in the canteen. Mary was a plain girl, brown hair, who worked in the library.

Gertrude—Trudy—was remarkably small and delicate, built like a bird, with big eyes and red hair, proved to be Peter’s new secretary. A redheaded woman had made a great deal of trouble in my life, once upon a time in Cairo, and I suddenly realized why Peter seemed so much more chipper recently.

A sudden flash of him back then, wild with drink and fury and the unpredictable violence that overtook him, gave me a sense of remembered dread. I fingered a scar I bore across the side of one arm.