I could have said a million things to that, I guess. Much later, I asked him what he expected me to answer, what he hoped I would answer, and he said he didn’t know. He said it was all in my hands, at that moment, which is a terrible burden for a girl to bear, though of course that was not his intention. What he meant was that the decision was mine, and mine alone. He placed himself in my hands, like a gift, only I didn’t realize this at the time. I didn’t recognize the gift. No one had ever given himself to me before. Always he expected it the other way around.

So I just clapped my hand over my mouth and said, “My purse!”

“Right here.” He lifted his left hand, from which my evening bag dangled, a little the worse for sand, large and lumpy with camera, lipstick, compact, lighter.

I said thanks and drew it from his fingers. I leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips.

He turned and left. Later I discovered a piece of paper folded inside the purse, on which he had written a telephone number and the single letter T.

For some reason, the sound of the motorcycle engine echoed inside my head long after the actual noise had faded into the night. I couldn’t go to sleep after that—of course not—so I sat on my patio of crushed shells and watched the moon set, listened to the sea and the gulls, felt the salty breath of the world on my cheek. I heard nothing else, saw nothing else, felt nothing else, which was why my heart stopped the next day at the Christmas service at St. George’s Church, when Mrs. Gudewill asked me if I’d heard the news. I said what news. She said it was the most awful thing. That dear Mr. Thorpe had been set upon at the docks last night by a pair of thugs, had been luckily discovered by the bartender of the Prince George and taken by ambulance to Nassau Hospital, and nobody knew whether he would live or die.

Part III

Lulu

December 1943

(London)