Winter Love by Suyin Han

Author:Suyin Han
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McNally Editions
Published: 2022-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Then it was suddenly spring, warm, the 8th of May and VE Day, with an enormous exhilaration which began rather artificially with the radio and the newspapers making it distant instead of near, and suddenly real and intense and joyful when one went out into the mad, shouting streets, with its delirious joys and exuberant displays.

It was with Andy, Andy who had bothered to look me up at the Horsham and knew where I now lived, and a mob of students from St Thomas’s and Bart’s, that I danced in Piccadilly Circus, blew whistles and cheered buses and sang myself hoarse, and finally got dragged into an all-night pub-crawl and came home with a terrible headache, beating back Andy at the end and locking myself in—Andy, who was saying lots of things about the end of the war, and asking me not to be a spoil-sport and a medieval prig. And the room was empty of Mara, and I threw myself on her bed, breathing in the smell of her hair on her pillow, and cried myself into a drunken sleep.

Mara was not there because Karl was back. She wasn’t there that day, or the next, or the next.

The next afternoon Andy came up and apologized, and we had a cup of coffee together. We went to the Everyman to see Anton Walbrook. We had some sandwiches after the film, then I rushed home because I was afraid that Mara might have returned. But she wasn’t there, and I was so overwhelmed with loneliness my legs were weak beneath me. Then I went to Nancy’s place, and there was Nancy wiping the lino on the table, and the cat walking among the dirty plates and cups and saucers, and Edward with his pipe, and Andy, who gave a shout as he thought I’d come to see him. But I hadn’t, I was just lonely for Mara. We sat round and had tea, and Nancy opened a tin of peaches in syrup she’d been hoarding ever since 1942. And later we all had beer, and Nancy got very drunk and began to utter little shrieks as Edward put his hand down her blouse. Soon they’d gone off together. Then somehow Andy was with me in his room, and calling me old thing and using words which were dirty but also exciting in a way; and I was trying to push him away but I had no strength left, and, while he was heaving himself over me and afterwards, my heart kept crying Mara, Mara, Mara, and I didn’t feel anything, not a thing.

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