Page 71 of A Thousand Painted Hours

But he couldn’t touch me now. We had not been intimate since those days in Cairo and never would be again.

Nina said, “Welcome to all! We’re so glad to have you.”

Despite the reality of rationing, the meal was quite delicious. Jonathan must have been the source of the black-market beef, or perhaps Nina had found a contact through her father in the country. Either way, we feasted on a rich, deep stew, fragrant with herbs, shiny with fat. No butter for the bread, but the rolls were light and fluffy, a masterpiece of clever baking, and for dessert, an actual pie, just like the one Peter had brought home.

“Where in the world did you get this?” Trudy asked.

“One doesn’t ask such questions in the modern world, darling,” Nina drawled, sipping a sidecar.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Her pale face showed her embarrassment, and also her extreme youth. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty.

“You’ve been out of the country,” Peter said. “I’m sure you didn’t realize.”

Nina was in fine form, recounting her best stories to make us laugh. The phonograph played a symphony by Sibelius. I no longer partook of spirits and hadn’t for more than a decade, but my mood was lifted by the good company. Peter was his charming best, eyes flashing.

The sirens went off just as we were finishing the first course. Nina stood up with her cocktail. “Right, everyone, under the table.”

Titters met her suggestion. Jonathan said, “She is quite serious. Everyone under the table. Take the pillows from your chairs.”

I glanced around, startled and amused, and then the guns started rat-a-tat-tatting overhead, and I dived with everyone else into the space beneath the ancient, broad table. Snatching the pillow from my chair, I sat, but couldn’t quite get settled until I tugged the dress up over my knees. “Sorry for my lack of modesty, but the skirt is tight.”

A boom made the silver on the table clatter, and someone made a little shriek.

“I tell myself it’s a thunderstorm,” I said.

Nina sipped her cocktail. “Remember the weekend the maharaja came to my humble country house? That was one of the most dramatic storms I ever remember.”

“He wasn’t maharaja then,” I said. “Only prince.”

“Right.” She gestured toward invisible guests. “Rocky was quite smitten, as I recall.”

“Goodness, I miss him,” Jonathan exclaimed. “Was there ever a man as exuberant as he? Such a zest for life.”

Rocky’s face rose in memory, the thick curls, his dancing blue eyes. “Everyone fell in love with him.”

“Not the prince,” Peter said from the other end of the space. “As I recallheonly had eyes for Elsie.”

That had been the entire reason for the gathering—for us, Tanveer, and me. Peter had been there, too, and Rocky and Grayson.

A whistling bomb sounded nearby, and we all winced, bending over ourselves as it fell, bracing for impact. A trio of small snapping sounds came one, two, three.

“Incendiaries,” one of the men said at the other end of the table. “Sounded close. I’ll go check.”

“I sometimes wish the one that was going to get me would just get it over with,” said Mary. “It’s so exhausting, never sleeping, never knowing. I’m so tired, it would be easier to just die.”

“Bite your tongue,” said Trudy in a whispery, baby voice. “Think of all the poor lads out there fighting, taking bullets.” She made a sharp noise, and bit her finger, like a movie heroine. I tried not to show that I was rolling my eyes.

“All hands on deck,” Gregory cried from the doorway. “Fire in the garden.”

“What do we do?” squeaked the sturdy girl.

I pushed a chair out of my way. “Stay here. Not all of us need to fight the fire.”

“Peter,” Jonathan said, “stay with the women.”

A knot of us hurried behind him, and quickly formed a bucket brigade to contain the fire in the garden. It was the first time I’d done it in real time, although we all had been instructed. I was the body just beyond the doorway, and it was the first time I’d been outside during a nighttime raid. I had little time to think about it, passing buckets back and forth, but there was something liberating about not hiding, about standing in the garden beneath the night sky, daring the Nazis to kill us.

We didn’t die. The fire was halted, and we trooped back inside. “I say that calls for a drink,” Jonathan said in a jolly voice.