Surveying the mess, she let out a long sigh. The more they drank, the worse the slobs they became. Empty and almost empty pints everywhere, ashtrays overflowing with butts, cigarettes stubbed out on tabletops, potato-crisp and meat-pie wrappers tossed to the floor…At least no one tonight had thrown up before he could get to the toilets. She hated that.
Daisy sighed again. She wanted to go to bed herself. It had been another long day. But she had to clean up first. That was one of the rules. You couldn’t sleep till things were tidy. If you didn’t take care of it, the elves wouldn’t, either. You just couldn’t get good elves these days.
She lit a cigarette. After she’d done it, she wondered why she’d bothered. The smoke already in the pub left the air as thick and gray and curdled as a bad London fog. Just breathing had to give her as much nicotine as the Navy Cut between her index and middle fingers. But there it was, so she finished it.
Then she got to work. First she emptied the ashtrays and wiped the tables and the long bars clean. Then she swept the garbage off the floor. After she put away the broom and the dustpan, she got the carpet sweeper out of the closet to pick up what they couldn’t. She’d deal with the squadrons of mugs after she took care of that.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Oh, bloody hell!” Daisy exclaimed. She could swear if she felt like it-who was going to hear her and be shocked? And feel like it she did. Every so often, one of the flyers, Yank or British, would decide he had to have one more pint no matter what, and bugger the laws that said he couldn’t till tomorrow. That she’d lose her license for drawing him the pint never bothered him a farthing’s worth. Why should it? It wasn’t his license.
Sometimes, if she quietly went about her business and pretended the tipsy fool outside wasn’t there, he would give up and go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t, and then she’d have to deal with him. That was almost as much fun as visiting the dentist.
The one tonight wasn’t going away, damn him. He knocked, paused, knocked some more. Another pause. Some more knocks. He was as regular and persistent as a woodpecker. He had to have a head just as hard as a woodpecker’s, too.
Daisy muttered something she’d heard once from a liquored-up, belligerent ordnance sergeant. It should have made the tables and chairs catch fire. Muttering some more, she pushed out through the blackout curtains to the door.
She didn’t open it. Through the wood and the tiny windows-useless now, with no lights on the street-she said, “It’s past closing time. I can’t serve you.” She didn’t say So sod off! but her voice was full of the suggestion.
She waited for the angry, beery insistence. She’d been down this road too many times. She was sick of it. Right this second, she was sick of everything that had to do with running a pub.
But the American voice on the other side of the door didn’t sound beery at alclass="underline" “I don’t want a pint. I just want to talk to you.”
She still had to finish cleaning the floor. She had to wash and dry the glass mugs. She found herself opening the door anyhow. “Well, then, you’d better come in, hadn’t you?”
“Thanks.” Bruce McNulty stepped over the threshold. A little light leaked under the bottom of the blackout curtains: enough to make him seem to have suddenly materialized there. It was also enough to make Daisy shut the door behind him before the wandering air-raid warden walked by and started shouting at her.
When she pulled the curtains back to let him into the smoky snug, she saw that he was carrying a bouquet of roses. “What in blazes are those?” she demanded, pointing.
“They’re something to help me say I’m sorry,” McNulty answered. “I was out of line when I stomped out of here the last time I came. I was a jerk, but at least I know I was a jerk.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Daisy said. No one had brought her flowers since Tom, just before he had to go back to the Continent from leave, before he went off on the attack he didn’t come back from. It hadn’t been like him to do such a thing; he’d surprised her-startled her, really. Maybe he’d guessed something. Or maybe all the talk like that was just moonshine.
“I didn’t do it because I had to. I did it because I wanted to.” McNulty shifted from foot to foot like a nervous schoolboy. “Now I’d better get back to base, huh? I know you’ve got work to do here. You don’t need me hanging around wasting your time.”
“You’re not wasting my time,” Daisy said. “And thank you very much! I didn’t say that before, did I? They’re-they’re lovely. There was no need-I did say that.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so flustered.
“My pleasure, believe me. Anyway, I’m gone. But is it okay if I come back as long as the Russians let me?”
“Of course it is! D’you think I want to see a good customer get away?” But Daisy realized flipness wouldn’t do. When he joked about the Russians, he was trying not to think about flying through the valley of the shadow of death. She had no excuse like that. Quickly, she added, “I didn’t want you to leave to begin with. I lost my temper, that’s all. Believe me, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he said, which didn’t come within miles of being true. Had he tried to kiss her then, she would have let him. She might have let him do more than that, too, which she hadn’t come close to doing in all the years since Tom’s tank brewed up.
He didn’t, though. He only touched the patent-leather brim of his cap in that way he had, nodded, and walked back out into the quiet night. The door closed. He was gone. Daisy stared at the place where he’d been, then at the roses in her arms. They were sweet. She could smell them through the clouds of tobacco smoke.
She took them upstairs, to the rooms where she’d never invited any of the men who drank at the Owl and Unicorn. If she left them down in the pub, everybody would wonder who’d given them to her and what she’d done to make him give them. Or rather, they wouldn’t wonder what she’d done. They’d be sure. What else could she have done?
And then they’d start talking. Somebody would start lying. And her reputation would wind up as flat as the center of Norwich.
That wouldn’t happen now, anyway. Out of sight, out of mind. A lot of the flyers might well have been out of their minds. Considering what they did to earn what their countries paid them, who could blame them?
Daisy’d seen only the outskirts of Norwich before the soldiers chased her home. She was no saint even if she didn’t sleep with pilots. She wanted revenge for the city close to home. The men flying out of Sculthorpe were the ones who gave it to her. Good for them, too!
In the meantime, she still had the mugs to deal with. She set about that, then cleaned out the toilets. Afterwards, she scrubbed her hands with the strongest soap and the hottest water she could stand. They still felt filthy afterwards. They always felt that way after the toilets, no matter how clean she got them. She knew it was in her mind. Knowing didn’t help her change.
At last, she went upstairs again. Her nose twitched-the roses perfumed her rooms. She smiled. Bruce McNulty knew how to do an apology up brown: no doubt of that. How much that meant, what she ought to do about it…She’d worry about such things some other time. She set the alarm clock, snuggled under the covers, and slept.
Whenever a motorcar came to the collective farm, Ihor Shevchenko worried. Motorcars meant the authorities. The authorities meant trouble. Ihor’s ancestors-serfs for generations uncounted-would have understood exactly how he felt. The symbols that panicked them might have been different from that black Gaz, but the panic would have been the same.