Everyone Brave Is Forgiven Read Online Free PDF Page B

these.
    He lifted his eyes. Beyond his zone, London sprawled away to the rank marshes in the east and the white marble walls in the west. Along the line of the Thames they were testing a flock of miniature zeppelins. Tethered on cables, these were supposed to offer a variety of protection, albeit of a vague and unspecified stripe. The balloons’ snub noses swung left and right in the fickle breeze, giving them the anxious air of compasses abandoned by north.
    Tom took his hatful of blackberries with him down the hill, back into the furious city with its mushrooming recruitment posts. Strangers met his eye, anxious to nod the new solidarity. YOUR COURAGE, YOUR CHEERFULNESS, YOUR RESOLUTION , read the billboards that used to hawk soap.
    It was still only eight—too early for the office—so he went back to his garret. Home was a sitting room with two bedrooms attached, in the converted attic of a town house off the Prince of Wales Road. The attic had been converted—as his flatmate Alistair Heath put it—in the same way the Christians had converted the Moors. It seemed to have been done at the point of a sword, leaving the continual threat of reversion. Winter brought leaks and bitter drafts, summer a canicular heat from which slight relief could be obtained by running one’s head under the tap of the little corner kitchen.
    Tom found Alistair sitting on the bare floorboards in his pajama bottoms, smoking his pipe and stuffing shredded newspaper into the pelt of a ginger cat. The head and shoulders were done, the empty eye sockets bulging with newsprint.
    “My god,” said Tom, “is that Julius Caesar?”
    Alistair did not look up from his work. “Grim times, old man. The taxidermist sent him back unfinished. Tea’s in the pot, if you’re interested.”
    “Why didn’t they finish him?”
    “Perhaps he was incurable.”
    “Insatiable, more like. Remember how he used to strut back in here after a big night out?”
    Alistair grinned around his pipe stem. “I miss the randy old bugger. Came in the first post—landlady brought him up just now. Tanned and neatly folded and wrapped in brown paper. Not his usual entrance.”
    “Feeling a little flat.”
    “I’m stuffing him with editorials. He’ll be full of himself.”
    Tom offered his hatful of blackberries. “Going to make jam. Try one?”
    Alistair did. “Good god, forget jam. You could make claret.”
    Tom tipped the blackberries into a pan, stooped to retrieve the ones that had missed, and ran in a cupful of water. “Was there a note with Caesar?”
    “An apology. Shop closing down, regrets etcetera, we herewith return all materials. I can’t imagine there’ll be much call for taxidermy until the war is over.”
    “They should just call it off,” said Tom.
    He set the pan to simmer, and turned to watch Alistair sewing up the cat’s belly. He was handy at it, putting in a row of small, neat stitches that would disappear when the fur was brushed over them. Tom had always admired Alistair’s hands, strong and unfairly capable. Alistair could mend their gramophone, play piano—do all of the things that made Tom feel like a Chubb key in a Yale lock—and he did them without seeming to worry, as if the hands contained their own grace. Alistair rather overshadowed him, though Tom supposed his friend didn’t notice. Blond and robust, Alistair had the stoic’s gift for shrugging off war and broken plumbing with the same easy smile, as if these things were to be expected. He was good-looking not by being ostentatiously handsome but rather by accepting the gaze affably, meeting the eye. It was Tom’s experience of Alistair that women sometimes had to look twice, but something drew the second look.
    Alistair tapped out his pipe. “I shan’t be home tonight. I’m taking Lizzie Siddal to the countryside.”
    “Oh? Which painting?”
    “The ‘kiss me, I can’t swim’ one.”
    “ Ophelia ?” Tom mimed the gaze and the pious hands.
    “We’ve built a