3.
~ William emerged later smelling of soap. His hair was smoothed back and his face cleanly shaven. His face still looked too rough and sharp in the dim lights of the flat.
"Dinner's almost ready." Eliza said happily as Anna set the table.
She noticed how terribly thin her American was. His pants had to be held up by thick suspenders, and were too lose around his hips. He looked as though he hadn't eaten properly in a long time and Anna felt ashamed for her comment about eating cold meals because the gas was off. How these young men must have gone without in the war. It was silly and selfish to complain about no hot water.
"Smells nice." was all her American said.
"I found a chicken at market today." Anna said. She had taken his time in the bath to clean a bit more. Howard, ever male, sat at the table, cleaned his shoes and made no comment or offered to help.
William's face lightened and he gave her what might have been a smile.
"Eggs to." Anna offered.
"Well, let us contribute." William said and gave Howard a slap on the shoulder. "The oranges."
"What? Oh yeah." Howard said and finally stood to retrieve his ruck sack.
Eliza peered out of the kitchen curiously as their guest pulled free a flour sack and handed it to Anna.
She could smell the citrus scent through the cloth.
"How?" she croaked as she removed four perfect oranges from the sack.
"I have my ways." William said.
"Has his ways." Howard mimicked with a low chuckle. "There was a monastery in France with roof damage. We helped repair it and they let us stay in the barn and gave us those oranges as payment. You can keep the lot of them, ladies. We've been living off them for a week now and I'm sick of them. Wouldn't mind fried eggs though."
Eliza grinned at her soldier and went back to cooking. Anna's hen smelling wonderful in the oven.
"Well, this is a treat." she whispered. "Fresh fruit."
"I thought it might be." William agreed. "I wish we had more to pay you back."
"This is plenty." Anna said. The bright color of the orange looked so inviting as she placed them in the large decorative bowl on the book case. They seemed to bring life to the entire war weary flat.
"I wish we had onions." Eliza sighed. "Or garlic even."
Anna wanted to say something about Eliza's sudden love of cooking, but caught William looking at her and felt her cheeks heat up.
"I think we have some garlic powder in the cupboard." she said. A perfect time to excuse herself to the little kitchen.
"Hope you won't get into trouble, but I removed the regulator off the tap." William called out.
"The what?" Anna asked as she took out flatware.
"The hot water regulator?" he said. His brows lifted. She looked at him as if he spoke another language.
"Before the bombings the government made you ration your hot water usage." William explained. "They put these devices on the taps to limit how much hot water you could use. I took it off for my bath."
"Oh!" Anna exclaimed.
"I can put it back on if you like." he said quickly.
"Don't you dare!" Eliza snapped. "Oh Annie! Hot baths again! Think of it!"
"I notice you didn't do it before my bath." Howard said.
"Sorry, Howard, I hardly worry about the comfort of your baths." William said quickly.
Anna sensed the two men were used to such arguments. They seemed more like brothers just now, sitting at the little table. Howard finishing his shoes. William pulling on some heavy woolen socks.
"We had an innkeeper's wife do our wash the other day." William explained. "You have no idea how good it feels to wear clean clothes again."
Anna felt that same odd sense of shame as she helped Eliza prepare the bird.
~ The four of them finally ate a meal of chicken, roasted potatoes and carrots and even some of the wine Anna had bought.
The women feasting on the oranges as the men talked about their wanderings.
"We were in Germany when we heard the war ended." Howard explained. "I expected Hitler's strong hold to be blown apart like London was. Berlin was a disaster but Germany was beautiful. It had mountains and clear lakes everywhere. If there wasn't a war on, I'd have taken a holiday there."
Eliza seemed to think this was funny.
"Oh Charles, you can't be serious. Holiday with the Germans?" she laughed.
"What about you, Captain?" Anna asked. Her American had been mostly silent for their meal and she felt she should say something to cut the tension.
"Oh. I found Germany alright. The Russians were coming in strong by then, so we didn't see much." he explained.
"How long have you been away from home?" she asked.
"Three years." he said in a robotic voice.
Anna was a little stunned.
"Such a long time." she said sadly. "Your family?"
"Last I heard, they were well." he said coldly and looked away.
The questioning called to an abrupt halt by the uncomfortable silence.
"Annie, will you please put on something a little more lively? I can't stand this music." Eliza said.
The four of them had been dinning to the sounds of violins. It was easy to pretend they were in a fancy restaurant this way. A fire in the hearth, good looking soldiers at their table, a good meal spread out on a clean, white table cloth.
Anna rolled her eyes and excused herself to change records. The gramophone would always be her most prized possession and she was the only one allowed to ever use it.
She had only three records from the jazz age and one from Billie Holiday. She liked the rambunctious music the lady sang, but it didn't suit the mood of war. It seemed so unpatriotic to have happy music when there was such suffering.
When horns and base rhythm picked up, Billie's unique voice taking stage, Eliza jumped from her chair.
"That's more like it. Dance with me, Mr. Howard!" she ordered.
Her soldier seemed ready to comply and allowed the vivacious red head girl to pull him into the sitting room. There was little space for dancing. Anna's bed, her reading chair and other furniture didn't give the couple much room. Still, like all Londoners, Eliza made do.
She pressed her body so close to her soldier's that they didn't seem to need more space on their dance floor.
"So, you were bombed?" William asked and Anna, her attention having been focused on the couple, was taken by surprise.
She looked at him with shock, as if he had asked her something dirty.
"I don't mean to pry." he said.
"No, no, it's alright." she whispered. Billie was singing and Eliza was giggling. The blitz seemed very far away now.
"We were all bombed, weren't we? I…" Anna started and decided to keep the story simple. "I was in bed asleep. Didn't hear the siren go off. Didn't go to the basement. The bomb fell on our building and didn't go off right away. I really don't remember it. The blast I mean. All the people in my building were killed. They were in the basement."
Anna remembered waking up in that basement. She always said she didn't remember. But the smell of the building falling apart; the burning, the smoke. The stench of raw sewage and gas. She had opened her eyes to find the whole world had gone mad. Her neighbors dressing gown hanging on a coat rack next to another bed. Only her bed was now in the basement, she was buried alive and there were people moaning and crying for help.
For hours and hours it went on, till Anna, too exhausted from the shock and fear of what happened. Passed out.
"I woke up in the hospital. In the hallway of the hospital, they didn't have room enough. I had to stay in a shelter till a place could be located. I moved in with Eliza here." she nodded at the couple.
"Must have been terrifying." William commented.
"Well, we didn't have the enemy shooting at us like you did." Anna told him.
"Yes, but we could go home. You lost your home." he said. "Was your family lost during the bombing?" he asked.
She shook her head and refused to look at him.
"I'm sorry. The war is over, lets talk of more pleasant things." he said apologetically. "What will you do now?"
"Now?" she said in surprise. To be honest, she hadn't given thought to what she might do after the war. The worries of day to day survival had always left her exhausted. Too tired to even worry about tomorrow, let alone next year or the year after that.
"I don't know." she admitted sadly. "What will you do?"
"Aside from going home?" a ghost of a smile lifted his lips. "Live as boring a life as possible. Tend a garden, raise some horses maybe. Die a very old man in my sleep."
"With lots of grandchildren around you I expect." Anna said with a laugh.
She meant it as a compliment, but his face turned suddenly sad.
"I'm sorry, if I…" she apologized.
"No. It's fine." he said and looked as his rough, hands longingly. "My wife wrote to me about a year ago. She wanted a divorce. She had meet a doctor and wanted to marry him. I signed the papers before going into Berlin."
He looked at his fingers, where a wedding ring should have been. As if still mourning the loss.
"She divorced you before you marched into Berlin?" Anna gasped in horror.
He nodded and managed to look happy.
"I think it would have been neater for everyone if I had died there." he said with a self pitting laugh.
"Captain, you mustn't think that." she said sadly.
He was still looking at his hands when Eliza started to laugh.
"Well, if you're really that tired." she cooed at Howard who was snuggling in her hair.
William and Anna looked up from the little kitchen table to see the pair of them making a spectacle. Kissing and standing much to0 close as the music played on.
Her flatmate glanced back at the wallflowers.
"I think Howard and I will retire early tonight." she said happily.
Anna only nodded and watched her flatmate, her easy ways with men, take her latest prize to her private bedroom.
Eliza was still giggling as the door shut, leaving them alone. The silence spinning out like the flurries of snow through the window.