There was the spot. Right there, upon his cheek. He ran a finger over it.
He passed by a couple that had taken advantage of a deep, dark doorway for some kissing of the type Lois Prentiss would certainly veto. It reminded him of that one smile, lighting up Hazel’s lips, making him wonder how kissing them would feel.
What was the matter with him?
The war, he decided. The war had addled his senses. The war had driven the whole world to the brink of insanity. Hasty war weddings and fatherless war babies and last-minute love. The whole cheap, flimsy spectacle of it.
But he closed his eyes and remembered, once more, the feeling of holding the piano girl in his arms.
He could still see her father holding her coat for her, and steering her out through the throng. Wild horses couldn’t persuade James to shadow their footsteps home. It would be indecent.
Her address. Would she have shared it if she thought of him in a strictly friendly way?
When he’d passed the kissing couple three times, he headed home. He crossed East India Dock Road and came to Kerbey Street, which led to his uncle’s flat. He glanced at theatrical playbills and navy recruitment banners. When signposts revealed that Kerbey Street had met Grundy, he stopped.
The corner of Grundy and Bygrove, Hazel had said. Second floor, above the barbershop.
Surely she’d be home by now. Asleep in bed, no doubt. What harm was a little detour? He’d merely note the location. He ought to get a haircut anyway. Perhaps tomorrow he could return for a trim, and while he was there, he might . . . what? Knock on her door?
The utter impossibility of it all hit him.
He could take a look. His motives were pure. He wasn’t spying. He only wanted to see the kind of curtains behind which the piano girl lived her luminous life. He would innocently imagine her asleep on a soft pillow, her lashes delicately tangled together, her long hair spread about her, her slim hands playing Chopin in her dreams.
APHRODITE
Sleepless—November 23, 1917
HAZEL WAS FAR from asleep. She’d changed into her nightgown and unpinned her hair. She sat on a low divan beneath her bedroom window, wrapped her arms about her knees, and looked out upon the street. In the upstairs flat, the two spinster Misses Ford played their gramophone recording of “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice.” It was much too late for opera. Hazel didn’t mind.
James Alderidge. A nice name. One could certainly do worse.
Had she danced two dances with a stranger, and kissed him on the cheek?
She pressed her own burning cheek against the cool, damp windowpane.
Who would’ve thought, on this utterly normal day, that before bedtime her brain would be scrambled like an egg? She’d only gone to play as a reluctant favor to Mrs. Prentiss, just as she’d gone that afternoon to the Poplar Hospital for Accidents to play for the recuperating soldiers.
James Alderidge. He was heading off to the war. Training, then trenches. That would be an end, not only of their acquaintance, but, very possibly, of his life.
Or, the end of his life as he knew it. Already there were honorably discharged men to be seen, coming and going, in wheelchairs, missing legs. With sleeves tucked into jackets to hide missing hands. With hideous, disfiguring scars where shrapnel had torn their faces.
She knew this, of course. All of Britain knew what a terrible price young men paid each day to stop the wretched Kaiser. That evil, stupid, horrid man who’d unleashed his army like a dark flood across Europe.
The thought of that fearful price carved into the face of the boy with the dark brown eyes filled her own eyes with tears. So she failed to notice the figure on the street corner, gazing up at her bedroom window.
APHRODITE
The King’s Whiskers—November 23, 1917
THERE IT WAS. The barbershop. The King’s Whiskers. James smiled. Hazel Windicott lived right above the King’s Whiskers. Did that make her, perhaps, a nose?
The joke was so bad, it made him snicker.
The dark windows of the second-story flat mirrored, dully, the orb of a streetlamp on the corner. A light on the third floor silhouetted a gramophone. He heard strains of a plaintive opera song. Mezzo-soprano. Very romantic.
But there was no hint of Hazel Windicott. Had she told him the wrong address?
He rounded the corner and stopped. The piano girl leaned against her window, lost in thought. James saw long hair spilling down her back, and the neckline of a white nightgown.
Her reverie rooted his feet to the ground.
By day, this corner would ring with the sound of Hazel’s piano playing. That lucky barber, Mr. King’s Whiskers, got to hear it all day long, over the sound of mechanical clippers.
James Alderidge, he warned himself, you only met her once. You don’t know her at all. And you’re a fool.
DECEMBER 1942
An Interruption
“HE’S RIGHT ABOUT that,” Ares says. “This tale is dull is dirt. Boy meets girl, they dance a bit, and moon about each other. So what? Nothing’s happened.”
Aphrodite’s eyes narrow. “Everything has happened.”
Ares rolls his eyes. “Get to the real doings,” he says. “Get to the Front. The killing fields. That’s where war stories happen.”
“Who asked you?” inquires Hephaestus, diplomat.
“I’m not telling a war story,” says Aphrodite. “This is what I do, and how I do it.”
“Go on,” Hephaestus says. “I’m curious.”
“Then you’re a sap,” the god of war replies. “Here. I know this story. Two sheltered souls meet, boom—they get the hots for each other. They think they’ve invented romance. They gad about for a few days, then he heads off to war. It’s terrible, boo-hoo, he misses his girl, she misses him. They write letters at first, until the trenches turn him from Loverboy into Kid Trying to Keep the Rats from Eating His Face Off. She does some volunteer work”—Ares affects a sneer—“in a brave attempt to be like the boys abroad and do her measly bit. She cries into her pillow, wondering why the letters have stopped. Time passes. They both change. Tragedies pop up like boils. They blame me for their problems. Et cetera.”
If Ares were mortal, the look Aphrodite aims his way would char the flesh off his bones.
“Are you finished?” asks the goddess of love.
Ares doesn’t bother to answer.
“Thirsty, my dear?” asks Hephaestus. He conjures a martini glass filled with ambrosia and causes it to appear in Aphrodite’s open hand. She seems surprised, but she takes a sip.