to stay for long. The room is full of books and scarves and stacked-heel shoes and pictures of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. “She was the love of Gable’s life. They were such a great couple once,” Julian says without thinking, and twitches with regret when she clams up and storms downstairs, him hurrying behind her. It’s only 1940. He forgot that Lombard died in 1942. Using the correct tense is so important in time travel. He never learns.
Downstairs, she complains they can’t hear the King’s Christmas radio broadcast, and Julian, who’s read up on many things, recites some of it from memory. “‘War brings, among other sorrows, the sadness of separation.’ To all his people, the King wishes every happiness that Christmas can bring. ‘I can say to them all on our dear island that they may be justly proud of their race and nation.’” And off her expression, says, “This is what the King might say. It’s just conjecture.”
“Sure it is,” she says.
From when she first woke up, they have barely three hours of daylight. By the time Julian performs for her the fragments of the King’s speech, it’s already dark. They have some bacon rashers and the rest of the eggs and sugar with their tea. Unhappy with him and quarrelsome, she tries to pick an argument, about the dumb things he says, has said, might say. It’s a one-sided business. He wants no part in it. That only makes her more bad-tempered.
“Mia, why would I fight with you on Christmas?” he says.
“It’s always something with you,” she says. “Christmas, a little bombing. Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me we’re not allowed to argue on Boxing Day.”
“No, we can have a good and proper fight on Boxing Day, if that’s what you want.”
In the firelight, they take turns reading from one of the plays they found in her room, William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life, and when the fire goes out, they recite parts of the plays they know from memory. Earnest. Midsummer Night. Othello.
“This is our first Christmas together,” he says when it’s late, and they’ve run out of other people’s words.
He regrets it instantly when she says, “Is that so? And how can it be any other way, dare I ask? We only met in November.”
In the dark they lie on their backs.
“Tell me, Julian, is tomorrow going to be our first Boxing Day?”
“Yes,” he says.
“And in a week, our first New Year’s?”
“Yes.”
“And in March, our first birthday celebration together?”
“Yes.”
“So, you were just stating the obvious?”
“Yes.”
She grinds her teeth. “Why are you holding your breath?”
“I’m not.” He makes a show of breathing.
“Tell me, is this our first war together?”
“Yes.”
“Is this our first fight?”
“No. It’s our second. The first one was yesterday.”
“Oh, you think you’re so clever. You think you’re Mr. Know-it-All.”
To cheer her up, he sings her a war song, hoping she’ll join in. Marlene Dietrich’s “Lili Marlene.” He wishes he had thought of something more chipper. I’ll always keep you in my heart, with me, Lili Marlene.
“War song, you say? Never heard of it.”
He doesn’t reply. Is 1940 too early for waiting for you the whole night through, for you, Lili Marlene?
“Tomorrow,” says Mia, “I’m going to walk to the pier and buy a newspaper and read the text of George’s holiday message to his Commonwealth. All I can say is, heaven help you if there is a single word in the actual speech the same as what you told me earlier.”
“What, not even Christmas?” says Julian.
“That’s right,” Mia retorts. “Not even Christmas.”
* * *
Early on Boxing Day morning when he comes back from getting her the newspaper and more eggs from the woman down the road with chickens in her yard, he finds Mia standing by the sink in the kitchen. Her back is to him.
Are you okay? he says. Here’s your newspaper.
Leave it on the table. I’ll look at it in a minute.
I have the eggs, too. Four of them.
That is egg-citing, she says. She doesn’t turn around.
What’s the matter?
Nothing, she says. I’m dizzy. I have a bad headache.
So sit down. You need food.
She turns around to face him. She is pale gray.
And he turns pale gray, too.
He pulls out a chair from the kitchen table and eases her into it. “What happened while I was out?” He was gone for barely twenty minutes! “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I bent to rebandage my ankle, and I sneezed. Does that count as doing something?”