that only one fighter squadron could operate from it.” Churchill paused, then continued. “Your Majesty, we have lost—lost the Battle of Britain.”
“Lost?”
“Yes. But we shall win—win the War of London.”
“How?”
“By our incessant retaliation of last night’s mistake. And, in doing so, by goading Hitler and his strutting Air Marshal Goering into changing their plan of attack from England’s military targets—our air defense targets, our precious and heavily damaged air fields—change their attacks from those targets to—to England herself.”
The king thought for a second. The cigarette in his hand emitted a soft undulating crimp of smoke and turning to the window he crushed it in the ashtray. He took a moment then faced Churchill.
“You mean London?” he said with no unmarked gravity. “The City itself?”
Churchill nodded.
“The people themselves?”
Churchill remained silent, motionless.
“Good God,” the king said.
Four
“Irony,” Miss Reddish repeated. “Susan?”
“Sorry—oh, sorry, Miss.” She was standing in the classroom aisle by her desk—her Reader lesson book was open on it—and she glanced quickly down at it then back at Miss Reddish, who stood at the side of the class, the windows behind her. In the far distance beyond the windows was the dying hum of an airplane. “It was the sound of the plane, Miss Reddish,” she told her. “Its engines.”
“I can assure you, Miss McEwan, that after our bombing of Berlin this fortnight past, it is not an unfriendly plane.”
“Of course, Miss.”
“So. Continue.”
“With irony?”
“If you can do so without being overly ironic,” Miss Reddish said.
Early autumn. The classroom windows were open and they rendered forth the scent and slow decay of all the trees just beyond them. It had been raining but now the rain had ceased and as the grind of the plane’s engines withered she could hear the drip-drip of the drops as they relinquished their grip on the leaves. Miss Reddish wore a midlength black scholar’s gown and she took off her glasses and held them in both her hands and she walked from the window and stood in front of the clean, almost-polished chalkboard.
“Irony,” she said.
Susan cleared her throat. “Do you mean poetic irony, Miss, or the irony of fate?”
Miss Reddish raised an eyebrow and for an instant considered Susan from beneath it. “You have read your Fowler,” she said, “haven’t you?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Quite. It seems you’re well on your way to being our beloved isle’s next great poet.”
“Miss?”
“The irony of fate, Susan. The irony of fate.”
Susan collected her thoughts. The class was extraordinarily quiet—these thirty or so thirteen-year-old uniformed boys and girls. They seemed expectant as if seeking some revelation from Susan, hopefully spiced with mild scandal. She did not disappoint:
“Well, my brother, Phillip—my older brother—he’s, well, he hates water.”
“A hydrophobe.”
“Sorry, Miss, but doesn’t that mean he’s scared of water?”
“There’s no shame in fearing something, Susan.”
“Of course not, Miss.”
“When you fear something, you cede it its due respect.”
“Yes, Miss. Well, he hates water, Phillip does, and so when the war broke out he refused to join the navy and instead signed on with the RAF.”
“Does he fly Spitfires?” the boy sitting beside her blurted out.
“Stuart!” Miss Reddish snapped.
“Sorry,” the boy muttered.
“Proceed, Susan.”
“So, he hates water, shuns the Royal Navy, and signs on with the RAF—and here’s the irony—they’re supposed to assign him to fly Sunderlands.”
“Flying boats,” Miss Reddish said.
“Yes, Miss.”
Miss Reddish considered this. She wore very high heels and their noohk-noohk was the only sound as she walked from in front of the blackboard towards the open windows. There, she stopped and turned to the class. “So he hasn’t won his wings yet,” she said.
“Oh, yes. A few days since. And he’s earned leave.”
“You’ll get to see our heroic flier?”
“He arrives today, Miss.”
“Ahh.”
“And tomorrow he’ll take me to the bathing pool. For my birthday.”
“And how do you know he will?”
“He does every year, Miss.”
“Takes you swimming? This heroic and hydrophobic flier of ours?” Miss Reddish said. “He also has a grand sense of the ironic, doesn’t he, class?”
“Yes, Miss,” they all but Susan choired back.
“Then I should think he deserves a tribute.” She turned and gazed out the window, pensive. Through the distant cloud cover, like a once-withdrawing wave returning to the shore, the plane’s engine began to become audible again. A breeze shivered the leaves of the trees and more captured raindrops were released to fall and splatter on the pavement. Miss Reddish faced the class again.
“Yes, a tribute. Assuring each and every one of you completes his or her sums correctly, an early dismissal.”
The boys and girls all stared at their neighbors, disbelief widening all their eyes.
“Indeed, a tribute,” Miss Reddish announced. “Well, class, shut your Reader lesson books and get out your sums books. Apparently, one or two of you have a war to salvage and a birthday to celebrate.”
Five
It had to be Phillip’s, the motorbike—an Ariel—that was parked by the curb as she came up the walk from school. It was bullet-colored, that dull flat deathly gray, and it had a stubby sidecar and the other traffic on this side of the street that passed by—a black taxi, a tiny Morris Minor, a tilting
