The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings

them.
    â€˜â€œDo you know Hayling”!’ The elder sailor’s laughter boomed around the lounge. Heads turned. Donald blushed. He was really very young. Margaret laid her hand on his arm. ‘Go on, love.’ But Dick wanted his turn. ‘Pissing their pants they was!’ He didn’t have much of a story, though his description of the strafings was vivid. ‘Pissing their pants!’ He laughed. Kathleen saw right down his throat.
    Dick and Donald walked them home. It was impossibly dark. Kathleen staggered. The paving stones were treacherous in the shoes Margaret had lent her. Dick offered her his arm, and she hung off it,gratefully. It surprised her to notice how short he was: he was barely taller than her. His young friend dawdled, or Margaret was holding him back; she seemed to be having trouble with her heel. Kathleen and Dick got to the door of the hostel first. He took off his cap and braced himself as though for inspection. ‘Maybe I can call on you. We can have a drink again sometime,’ he said.
    â€˜Sometime,’ she said.
    â€˜You knows what I drink,’ he said, and laughed his great red booming laugh. Even his eyes were red.
    â€˜Wallop,’ she said.
    â€˜That’s the ticket,’ he said, stepping forward, as though she had uttered a password. He took her hands in his. An odd look spread over his face. It was bloated and empty, all at once. No one had looked at Kathleen with need before. She did not understand. ‘Spare us a kiss, love – a little kiss.’
    The impossibility of it was suddenly, liberatingly funny. She laughed. Surprised, he let her go. She coughed to cover her laughter. ‘Frog in my throat,’ she said. It was as good a catchphrase as any of the sailor’s, but he did not smile. An experiment: she pecked him on the corner of his mouth. He tasted of beer and cigarettes. He ran his hand around her waist, squeezed, and kissed her cheek. She experienced a moment’s revulsion towards his flushed face, his too-red lips, as though the lips might leave a mark on her. Then he let go, and she found herself wanting to repeat the kiss.
    â€˜Goodnight, then,’ Dick said.
    That was all.
    She went inside and waited for Margaret. The sitting room was empty. She slipped Margaret’s shoes off her feet – they had been too big for her, and far too high.
    Weary of waiting, she went up to her room in her stockinged feet, carrying Margaret’s shoes. She took off Margaret’s slip. She unclipped Margaret’s stockings and eased them off, ever so carefully.
    Margaret was still not back.
    Kathleen went to bed.
    She lay still, wondering what else there was. What else she did not know.
    Margaret knew, but Margaret wasn’t telling. She had vanished again.
    A week passed, and Kathleen didn’t see Margaret once.
    She was not worried or put out. She was growing used to Margaret’s rhythms. Margaret’s men overrode the girls’ friendship for only a little while. So this time, while she waited for Margaret’s man to depart, Kathleen tried to shake off her loneliness. She braved the sitting room.
    The other residents were stenographers from Shepherd’s Bush, WAFS from Tottenham, fellow nippies from the Lyons corner houses on the Strand and Oxford Street. They intimidated Kathleen: great iconic hulks of girls. By now, though, she knew how to smile, what to say when she entered or left the room, the gestures she should make. She loved to listen to them. The girls spoke a different language, a Margaret sort of language.
    â€˜So I said to her…’
    â€˜And he said to me…’
    At night, bits of their conversation swirled about her, punctuating her dreams, a sort of verbal shrapnel, highly coloured, piecemeal and surreal. Billy drops leaflets over Berlin and Becky does firemen two at a time. David wants me to do it with him. James bought me a ring.
    Each evening, as they got ready for