“The Germans bombed people?”
They entered the kitchen. She looked up. Her mother, full-figured in her Sunday-best suede with her brown hair drawn back and pinned. Her father, in the gray weskit and pants of his pinstripe suit with starched collar and tie.
“Morning, love,” her father said to her.
“Morning, Mac.”
“Susan,” her mother scolded her, “would you please stop calling him ‘Mac.’”
“Phillip does,” she said, referring to her older brother.
“Phillip’s in the RAF,” her mother said. “And will you for God’s sake get some clothes on!”
“What’s wrong with this slip?” she said.
“You’re thirteen,” her mother said. “That’s what’s wrong with it.”
“Oh, Cless,” her father countered, “thirteen by only a day or two.” He crossed the few steps to her. “She’s still a child.” He kissed her on the cheek. “How’s me spoon?” he asked her.
“I’m wearing it away,” she said.
“Like the Cliffs of Dover,” her father said.
“Mac, you—you said five schools?” her mother asked her father.
Just above the sink was a window that gave out to the house of their neighbors—the Tranters—and in that windowglass Susan caught the palest of her own reflections: large dark eyes—almost chocolate—a classic English nose, and ample lips so thick and lush they might have bestowed a kiss on Providence itself. On her head, a beautiful entanglement of blackening hair. Shoulder-length. Beside her reflection in the windowglass, a white linen towel hung from a wall hook and Susan whipped the towel off the hook and gave the spoon a quick once-over.
“Five schools?” her mother repeated. “But that’s, what, fifteen hundred children?”
“Fifty buses,” her father corrected. She handed her father his spoon. “Ta,” he whispered and gave her another quick peck on the cheek. “How’s the tea coming along?” he asked her.
“Tar sands,” she said.
“Grand,” he said. He paused, mock frowning. “At least I think so,” he said. He turned to her mother. “Anyroad, let’s have a cup, Cless,” he said. “And any biscuits?”
Susan had minutes before cobbled out the teacups and the saucers on the kitchen table, all arrayed around the cozied teapot. Now, her mother unhooded the cozy and one-handed hoisted the pot and tipped it and spooled the dark amber into her father’s cup and then she set the cozy back atop the teapot and did so with the reverence of one performing the investiture of a raj. Done, her mother stepped to the pantry and clicked on the light.
“And any cheese, Cless?” her father said.
“So they bombed people?” her mother said.
“I already told you. And you can rest assured the Old Lion will give them back a taste of their own. Tonight, if I’m not surprised.”
“Maybe it’ll be Phillip,” Susan suggested.
“Phillip doesn’t fly bombers,” her father said.
“Phillip doesn’t fly anything yet,” her mother said.
“A week or two away from his wings,” her father said. He sipped his tea. “So, any cheese, Cless?”
“There’s Stilton.”
“Oh, Christ, no,” her father said. “It’ll give me gas.”
“You’ve always got gas,” her mother said. She ducked out of the pantry and clicked off the light and closed the pantry door. She handed the cake-tin of biscuits to her husband.
“Angels,” Susan said, not quite to herself.
“Angels don’t get gas,” her mother said.
“They would if they ate Stilton,” her father said.
“Mac,” her mother scolded. “Don’t be impious. It’s Sunday.”
With his two thumbs her father popped the lid of the biscuit tin and peered inside—seriously so, as if the individual biscuits therein might be of widely varying quality.
“It may indeed be bloody Sunday,” her father said, “but it’s not my bloody day of rest, is it?” He snapped shut the biscuit tin without making any particular decision. Thoughtful for a moment. Her father looked at her. “Angels?” he repeated to her. “Don’t you get religious on me too. One’s enough.”
“No. What you said about Phillip getting his wings. The way angels supposedly earn theirs.”
“Indeed,” he said, “indeed,” a wave of worry now quickening his face. He frowned at some distant space.
“What, Dad?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“Susan,” her mother said. “Go upstairs, please.”
“Let—let her stay, Cless.”
“Susan!”
“For God’s sake—”
“Susan!”
“Cless, let her stay. It’s—it’s about Phillip and his wings.”
“What—what about them? About Phillip, I mean.”
“If he gets them—when he gets them . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, he—he earns leave.”
Her mother trembled for a moment then made a fist and stood it on the hip of her skirt. “Leave?” she said. “Leave? And you kept this from me?”
“He kept it from you.”
“But he’d never.”
“Yes, Cless. He did. In case there’s a snag and, well, you’re disappointed.”
“But when?” Susan asked.
“Susan!” her mother said. “Know your place.”
“He gets leave somewhere over the next fortnight,” her father told her mother, “if—if he gets his—” her father glanced at her then returned his attention to her mother, “—the chance.”
“Leave,” her mother repeated softly. She shook her head in disbelief. She kept a small handkerchief stowed under the sleeve of her Sunday jacket and she plicked it out and dabbed the corner of each of her eyes. “Let’s pray he gets the chance,” she said.
“Finally,” her father said, “one prayer I’m all in favor for.”
Three
Through this second-story window, you could see the tall iron palings of the palace’s fence and then the twin columns of the North-End gate. Beyond the gate a double-decker bus, freighted and tippy with waving youngsters and belongings, tacked like a high red dory around the stone of the Victoria Memorial and headed northeast, leaving the Mall. A man stood at the window watching the bus. He was stocky, his facial features at once blunt and fierce, and watching the bus’s departure he frowned, then after a moment reconsidered and smiled. Behind him a door opened and he turned to find a servant—his head bowed—holding it open as a slim man with weary eyes entered. The slim man was attired in the olive-cloth uniform of a British Army officer and he began to speak—or rather attempted to do so, for the words seemed elusive to him like a rainbow in an aviary.
“Puh—Prime Minister,” the uniformed man finally managed.
“Your Majesty,” the man at the window—Winston