The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings Page A

this movie, that meal, this man or that, they gathered to listen to the BBC. The strange names of the cities the Nazis had overrun lent the news an operatic quality. The fall of Norway. In Denmark, something rotten. The names erupted like fantasies through the wireless – a huge mahogany box which took pride of place in the room.
    One early evening, as Kathleen sat listening to the radio, breathing in the heady acetone of the other girls’ nail polish, there was a knock on the door, and it was for her.
    â€˜Remember me?’ he boomed, and laughed.
    There on the stoop was Dick Jinks, the powerful, squat, red-faced sailor, much older than her, who had walked her home the week before.
    Kathleen blinked at him, surprised. She had imagined him in deep Atlantic, shepherding the convoys or whatever it was he did.
    â€˜Surprised to see me, baby?’ His words, glib and saucy, sat ill with the anxiety in his eyes. He raised his hand towards her – a wave? a handshake? – and stopped mid-gesture. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hand. It trembled. ‘Ho, ho,’ he sang. ‘You’re the port in my storm!’
    London sunsets were a marvel, since the bombing had begun in earnest: cities of vapour taking leave of a city of stone.
    â€˜Dick?’
    He sang, ‘Yo, ho, ho.’
    â€˜Where’s your friend?’
    Blood darkened Dick Jinks’s face; in the sunset, his flushed face appeared polished and hard. ‘That poofter? That nancy? That queen? Fuck him, darling.’ He blinked. ‘Ha, ha,’ he added, in mitigation.
    â€˜Dick?’
    â€˜Will you take a turn with me?’ The words struck his funny bone immediately. ‘A turn! A turn, Ho!’
    â€˜Dick?’
    â€˜Will you? I’ll stand you a Watney’s.’ He winked. ‘Say you will.’
    She looked at him. He was no more ready for a night on the town than she was. He was in uniform of a sort, but so threadbare it looked more like labourer’s clothes. Lines of braid hung off the sleeves of his jacket in tatters. The material where the braid had been was crusted white. His bell-bottoms, uncreased and shapeless like a cowboy’s chaps, scuffed the steps as she led him inside.
    He came forward, flinging a leg out in front of him, then falling onto it. Flinging, falling. As he passed her, she smelled something clean but unappealing, like disinfectant.
    She showed him into the sitting room and ran upstairs to dress. She was as quick as she could be. She was nervous of him, afraid of what he might say to the other girls. Every so often his ‘Yo, ho, ho!’ would shiver the floor under her feet, as though he were directly beneath her, calling to her, his red, wet mouth pressed like a sucker to the ceiling.
    When she came downstairs she found him sitting in the armchair by the radio. His grin was fixed and ghastly, his lips as white as his clenched knuckles. ‘Dick?’ she said, in a small voice. He turned to her. His smile grew more terrible. ‘Ah! Ha ha!’ It was not laughter so much as a struggle for breath. He sprang open from the waist like a flick knife and rocked upright on heavy, scuffed shoes. He led her outside.
    A cab passed them; Dick hailed it. ‘Let’s paint the town red!’
    In the taxi, he tried to relax.
    â€˜Oof,’ he said.
    â€˜Aah.’
    â€˜What you been up to, then, baby?’ he said.
    â€˜A bomb came through Lyons’ roof last week,’ she told him. ‘The ovens were out of action all day.’
    â€˜Ha,’ he said.
    The week before, walking back from the pub, when he asked her what she did for a living, Kathleen had bit her tongue against the disappointment – she had so been looking forward to meeting Sage again – and told the truth. She was training to be a waitress.
    â€˜A fireman came to defuse it, then a soldier.’
    â€˜Ho—’ He opened his mouth to laugh, and there was