habit, was a chair on which she kept her two most precious possessions: her fur coat; and her rubber hot-water bottle. Gold and silver came and went; but in this war, rubber, now that was valuable.
The fur coat and rubber hot-water bottle, she knew, would see her through all emergencies.
Outside her window, the world was an overcast gray, the sky the color of gunmetal and her beloved cherry tree a skeletal figure silhouetted against the sky like a surrendering prisoner. She had intended to sleep in, but once awake, she was awake….
She felt rather in a funk and did not care to dress straightaway, much less go down for breakfast in the little Lawn Road Flats restaurant. Even the most trivial passing conversation with a waitress or fellow resident of the Flats seemed quite more than she could bear to face. She was scheduled to work this evening at the hospital, in the pharmacy, and so the day stretched out endlessly before her. Slipping into the lovely powder-blue Jaeger dressing gown Max had given her as a farewell present, she padded downstairs.
She did not bathe—she was restricting herself to twice a week, due to the water shortage—but allowed herself a sponge bath, using soap sparingly, as the ration was one tablet per person per month. (When she did bathe, she used only the allowed five inches of hot water; it was the least she could do, since King George VI was having his valet measure five inches thereof for the royal bath.) She put on no makeup, briefly frowning at the face of the old woman who glanced at her from the mirror.
After poaching herself an egg and making toast and coffee, and barely touching any of it, she wandered into the library and sat herself down. She began to cry. She wept for perhaps five minutes. This had happened before, and she kept a handkerchief handy in a pocket of the robe.
She was not sure why she was blue (“depressed” would have overstated it). Missing Max was a constant in her life, but on certain days, his absence hit her like a physical blow; she hurt from not having him here—she ached with the possibility of any harm coming to him. True, he was as safe as any military man might be, in his posting; but this was, nonetheless, war. People died.
She might die. A bomb might strike the Flats and her pillow wouldn’t do a bit of good and she and Max would never see each other again. She cried a little more.
James was curled beside the chair, but the terrier ran for cover when she dried her face, blew her nose, cleared her throat, rose with resolve, moved to her desk and began typing—the machine’s chatter always frightened the animal, though on the last air raid, the dog had slept soundly through it, much as he did through thunderstorms.
She typed a letter to Max, not telling him anything of her true-crime research project with Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Max would probably have approved of the effort, had he been around; he was always supportive, and as a man whose calling in life was digging for truth, he would not likely echo Stephen Glanville’s rather chauvinistic concerns regarding a mere woman undertaking an endeavor at all dangerous.
But she did not want to burden Max with what she was up to, nor did she want to risk him reacting, well, like a normal husband… the distance between them, in these times already fraught with peril, might cause Max to revert to conventional male wisdom (if the latter two words weren’t a contradiction in terms).
Agatha did admit to her absent husband that she was “sad this morning, and had cried a bit.” She thanked him for his letters, his many loving letters, and admitted to him that receiving such tender missives “after all these years we have been married makes me feel that I have not been a failure in life—that at least I have succeeded as a wife.”
She paused, embarrassed. And then she said to herself: He is your husband. You need not hide from him.
And she went on: “What a change now, from the unhappy, forlorn person you met in Baghdad so many years ago. You have done everything for me, my love.”
She went on to tell him about the play, and how well rehearsals were going, and that she was dreading opening night, and yet there was something terribly brave of presenting a first night in Blitz-ravaged London.