Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave Read Free Book Online Page B

you are a blazing creature despite being an absolute knave, and that I slightly miss teaching you. I trust things are going well for you, but just in case they are not—and if you can bear to hold your nose and make a promise to a silly woman who has already broken her promise to you—then please guarantee me that you will write to let me know.
    She signed the letter “Miss North,” tucked it into its envelope, and went out into the rain for a postbox.
    She was home at five, as dusk fell. The front door swung open when her foot fell on the first of the steps that rose to it.
    “Thank you, Palmer,” she said, giving him her raincoat to hang.
    “How was teaching?” called her mother from the drawing room.
    “Well,” said Mary, “you know children.”
    “I only know you, darling, and I daresay they aren’t all so maddening.”
    Mary popped her head through the drawing room door. “I am fond of you too, Mother.”
    “Fortunately I had Nanny whenever it got too realistic.”
    “Where’s Hilda? I saw her coat in the hall.”
    “I made her go through to the scullery. I don’t care how much good these cigarettes do your chests, they are ruinous for the curtains.”
    “They are slimming.”
    Her mother lowered her voice. “They are slimming you, darling. They must do the opposite to Hilda.”
    “Perhaps she lights the wrong end.”
    “Her life is a carousel of torpid men and toffee éclairs. I tell her she should volunteer for war work, like you, or at least find a man who will.”
    “She is fond of Geoffrey St. John.”
    “As tripe is fond of onions, darling, but what a fright they look together in the pan.”
    “Don’t be mean about Geoffrey, Mother—he kisses rather well.”
    Her mother treated her to a knowing expression that Mary felt sure was pure bluff. It was how mothers carried on, after all, with a glint in the eye that implied a sure clairvoyance and also that it was your turn to talk. This was the velvet rope mothers offered: enough silence to make a noose with.
    Mary breezed from the drawing room, blowing a kiss on the way out.
    In the hallway the familiar air of the house closed around her—the beeswax on the banisters and the Brasso that burnished the stair rods. A hint of laundry on the boil. Somewhere far within, crockery clacked as a maid addressed the detritus of afternoon tea. Coal rumbled as it was decanted from scuttle to purdonium. That evening, it seemed, the fires would be lit for the first time since March.
    In the scullery Hilda was smoking by the small window.
    “And what of wild intrigue?”
    Mary grinned. “I’m working on Tom. I shall telephone him again today. I’m sure he’ll find me a post. I keep reminding him there are scads of children who haven’t been evacuated.”
    Hilda mimed a hunchback with the twisted face of a lunatic.
    “Oh stop it,” said Mary. “I see no reason why they shouldn’t all be given a chance to learn. I just need to persuade Tom.”
    “He seems a drip, if you ask me. You go for dinners, you practically beg him to kiss you, yet he offers you neither his lips nor his patronage. I should move on, if I were you.”
    “Yes but he is a man though, don’t you see? You could knit one quicker than you can make one fit off-the-shelf.’
    “Move on, darling, before the drip-drip leaves you soaked.”
    “All it is, is that Tom is rather shy. When I’m with him . . . well, it’s nice.”
    Hilda offered an eyebrow.
    “No, really! Tom is lovely.”
    “What’s he like?”
    “Thoughtful. Interesting. Compassionate.”
    “These are English words for ugly.”
    “Not at all. He’s tall with soft brown eyes. He’s quite gorgeous and I don’t think he has any idea, which is sweet.”
    “Don’t forget you only care because he can offer you a job.”
    “Which I need, thanks to you dropping me in it.”
    “Well it’s your own fault if you won’t tell the truth to your mother.”
    “Oh, but who does? You punish me too hard over one little