Work Text:
I was so happy
believe me, I
prayed that that
night might be
doubled for us.
—Sappho, trans. Mary Barnard
London, March 1941
Kate goes out dancing at night because that is what one does at the end of the world, stuck between the stasis of day in and day out. Better to go out dancing with the big bands, dressed in glass and pearls, than be stuck in the tube station with the crying mothers and children, or the community shelter with the handsy Mr. McGinnis from the corner shop, or—even worse—be pulled out of the wreckage of a demolished flat in nothing but her nightclothes.
So she dances at night and only sleeps in the daylight.
—
There is a woman in the dance hall with blood-red lipstick, hair neatly coiffed and wearing a garnet necklace with colour too deep to be paste. She would look like a deb, except she’s too sharp for that, seemingly as comfortable rubbing shoulders with the working girls and the rougher boys as she is with women in silk stockings and men in svelte suits. And, once, Kate swore she saw her with Prince George, Duke of Kent.
The woman is an inconsistent patron, unlike Kate who frequents the dance halls five or six times a week. And, also unlike Kate, she never dances. Chooses instead to pass the hours at her table, languid but alert, in the company of her guests, or coolly observing the evening's entertainment, or sometimes slipping away to a back room. Sometimes it’s nearly a week between visits; other weeks the woman is a nightly fixture.
Once she disappeared for over a fortnight. Kate was certain a bomb had got her, was ready to mourn in an inconsequential way, but then she returned without a scratch or a hair out of place, holding court at the corner table by the makeshift stage as though she had never left. And Kate always finds herself looking, night after night, for the table with the woman with the red-painted lips.
“Come now,” her partner says, hand on her waist. There’s a white band of skin around his ring finger, and Kate doesn’t ask because she doesn’t care. It’s the end of the world—a firefight to death, and anything goes.
—
Some nights she pays the shilling and rents a bunk for the night, but money is tight this week with barely enough in her pocketbook to cover room and board, and she has high, foolish hopes of being early enough in the queue for a cup of sugar on Wednesday.
And it’s always a shock, the transition from the warm stuffy air of the dance hall with its golden glow to the blackened dusty city streets.
The moon and stars are partially obscured by clouds and a fine mist, undecided between rain or fog. She feels her way, eyes adjusting to the dark, feet searching first, guiding her way along the kerb.
One street. Then another. Taking a long way around because the corner is still closed from yesterday's very blitzy night, a building half crumpled in the street. She’s halfway home now, hurrying past darkened buildings with covered windows and extinguished lamps that once used to guide her way.
“There she goes,” someone shouts down the street, and the low moan of the siren steadily rolling over the city blocks, a buzz felt through the teeth, soon jolted through by the ack-ack sputtering. The unsynchronized hum of the German engines above, and how funny to think that a year ago these would have been unfathomable noises.
Kate quickens her step, eyes the skies, and wonders if she can make it back to hers in time. There is a whisper of wind to her left; the heavy sound of metal on pavement as shrapnel falls from above.
“Come on, hurry up, there’s space here,” calls a male voice, a dark silhouette against a darker sky.
She hurries toward him. The man is younger than her, more of a boy, really. He’s in uniform, gas mask hanging from his wrist, hands rough and smelling of brick dust and petrol. She takes them, slipping through the shelter entrance. The heavy door pulls shut behind her.
Two torches light the small rectangular space: the soldier and his mates breaking out a deck of cards; a young couple snuggling in the corner; three girls too young to be out so late; an elderly man holding a bottle huddled in with a young mother and two children.
And there, in the back corner, watching it all with an amused tilt to her mouth, is the woman from the dance hall.
—
The woman looks even more untouchable up close, painted lips red and pointed, not a smudge out of place. Her skirt and coat pool around her, the delicate toe of a heel peeking out from under the hem. She gestures to the ground beside her, and Kate sits gingerly, the chill of metal seeping through her coat.
“I’ve seen you at the Palais.” The woman flicks a lighter. Unnatural shadows dance on the wall behind her before being extinguished.
Kate makes a noise in inquiry, settling in.
The woman studies her, and Kate gazes back steadily willing her cheeks not to blush even if it feels like she’s being stripped bare. “I’ve seen you dancing. You have discerning taste.”
“As do you,” Kate demurs. She doesn't let her eyes catch on the woman's open collar, the peek of cleavage between buttoned slits.
The woman's eyes sharpen. “Yes," she says after a moment. “As do I.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. The woman is unreadable, something exceedingly rare. Usually, the illusion dims the closer Kate gets, a life experience jotted with the tilt of a hat or a personality trait exposed with the twitch of a dimple. Mentally Kate checks her tells. Makes certain her expression is placid, eyes dull, trying to give away nothing in return. For the first time in a long while, Kate is intrigued.
“And how do you spend your days after nights spent swinging about the halls?”
“I’m a typist,” Kate answers.
“For BP?” Her tone is casual, as though inquiring after a mutual friend.
Kate sidesteps delicately. “I’m not a student or a deb.”
“Ah, so you know what I mean.” The woman is appraising her again. A glint in her eyes like Kate has won some sort of prize by recognizing a non-acknowledgement.
“I don’t know anything, miss.” The truth, technically. Something of national importance is going on up at Bletchley—there is general acknowledgement of that, with half the university students from Kate's old haunts being recruited, and the other half from landed families. But loose lips sink ships, and Kate could draw conclusions as well as the next person.
“An irregular, then? You seem the sort to have made an impression on the Holmes brothers.”
“I’m nothing, miss.”
The woman flicks the lighter again holding it up to Kate's face in the dim light. “I find that very difficult to believe. What occupation does your registration list?”
“I’m a typist, miss,” Kate says, keeping still. “One hundred ten words per minute, with no mistakes except on the part of the orator.”
“And nothing else?”
Kate lowers her gaze. Purposefully lets it rest on the woman's lips, her straining shirt, on the couple in the corner whose coats and shadows can't hide their rhythmic motion. “I sometimes dabble in what I believe they call light entertainment.”
There’s a distant rumble from outside. One of the soldiers glances up from the card game and notices Kate looking. He winks and she looks away.
“Don't we all,” the woman sounds amused. “Not a debutante or a student, but you wouldn’t look out of place as either. Who are you then?”
“My father was in service to a foreign minister,” Kate says. Like that explains it all. And it does in a way: postings with foreign officials and later mistresses. China. Ceylon. Madras. Paris. London. It's where she first learned how to observe, and how to never be impressed.
“Do you speak any languages?”
“Just English, miss.”
The woman looks at her, arches a brow. “I don’t believe you.”
“French,” Kate pauses. “Italian. A smattering of Cantonese and Burmese, and enough Tamil to find my way if I ever got lost.”
She relishes finally eliciting a reaction. The woman's eyes widen and her mouth purses, seemingly taken aback. “Did you mention this when registering?”
Kate shrugs. “They didn't ask.” The truth, since saying perhaps if the government wasn't in shambles is a statement near as treasonous these days. “And what does your registration say?” she dares ask, turning the game back on the woman.
A bark of laughter. “Oh, he'll be furious they missed you,” the woman says, instead of answering the question.
An answer in itself. Strengthening Kate’s burgeoning belief that the woman is someone of note: connected to Whitehall, or perhaps even the monarchy. There’s a perceptible intangibility about her, a commanding presence that is mesmerizing.
The woman cocks her head, then rolls to her knees and stands, brushing off her skirt. “Let’s go.”
Kate tilts her head, listening. “They haven’t issued the all-clear.”
“And yet,” says the woman, “I don’t care. Are you coming?”
Kate follows her up, stepping over the legs of sleeping occupants as they make for the door.
The air outside is brisk, a shock of cold after the stuffiness and closed air. The smell of cordite and smoke lingering in the air with dust so heavy it hangs like fog. The rain has let up, clouds moved to show a starlit sky, and Kate appreciates it now, with all the windows covered in blackout curtains and street lamps darkened, the incongruity of standing in the middle of the city with the night sky on display.
“Look,” the woman says. She wraps an arm around Kate and points. Dawn is just starting to break over the horizon. The incendiary glow in the distance lighting up the sky in concert with the sputtering gunners, and further off the muffled roar of a plane.
She kisses Kate’s cheek and presses a card into her hand. “Come find me this afternoon,” she says. “You’re too marvellous to be wasted on letters.”
She walks off, darkness swallowing her. Another burst of orange on the horizon, tendrils lighting up the sky. The all-clear siren starts to wail.
Kate looks down at the card. Irene Adler, it says in scripted calligraphy under a delicate monogram of a crown. 64 Baker Street. For King & Country.