Read Online The Postmistress by Sarah Blake - Free Book Online Page B

flagpole, Iris told herself, a little hotly. Why else would he still be standing there at her window? Best to serve him and be done with it.
    “Need a box for that, Harry?”
    He went a little pale and glanced down at the mug on the counter between them.
    “A box?”
    “Yes,” she answered. He was very pale, indeed. “To mail,” she added.
    “I—”
    She pointed at the mug. “Shall I measure it?”
    And she pulled the tape measure off her waist, to take its height and width. “Just a small box will do you,” she decided, and disappeared behind the sorting boxes into the back of the mailroom where the parcel supplies were kept.
    “I brought some tissue, too. A nice mug like this needs care.”
    “Right.” He leaned his elbows upon the counter. Deftly she folded the thick cardboard along the creases and pulled the sides up into the shape of a box. She fluffed the tissue paper up and carefully settled the mug into that nest. He seemed fixed upon her hands, which only made her work the faster to get them out of the way. At last, the box was sealed up tight.
    She looked up at him. “Where to?”
    “You,” he said.
    Iris blinked and reached for the sleeve of her cardigan slipping off her shoulder. “I beg your pardon?”
    Harry put his hands on either side of the box and slid it forward toward the postmaster. “It’s for you.”
    Iris regarded Harry for several seconds. Then she smiled very slowly. “Shall I open it?”
    He grinned then, and leaned his elbows upon the counter. “Go ahead.”
    Carefully, she slit the tape covering the opening with the blade of the scissors hanging from the window and slid her finger in to pop up the top. The mug lay snug in there and she peeled off the paper she had just wrapped it in, aware of Harry watching her, helpless and in a kind of thrall.
    “It’s grand,” she pronounced, setting the blue ceramic mug between them. “Thank you.”
    “I thought you probably like your coffee.”
    She smiled at him. “I do.”
    “Good.” He patted the counter in lieu of good-bye, turned around without another word, and headed for the door. She flushed and looked down. He passed through the door without closing it, and a small breeze reached where she stood.

4.
    A STEADY, COLD RAIN blew more and more people into the crowded Savoy Hotel bar, bringing the smell of damp wool and hot bodies with them. One hundred and twenty-one nights they’d all lived through, one hundred and twenty-one, night after night, and the people who remained, the people who climbed back up into the light every morning, could be forgiven the extravagant gestures, the brave huzzahs, the fists in the air. Though the bombers might come in the next hour or two, and everyone knew it, no one was going down into the funk holes just now. London was out in the streets. For now, people hurried along calling out to each other even on this miserable wet night, strangers calling— Good night! Good night —sending voices into the streets, not sirens, not whistles, not bombs.
    Frankie sat at a table at the back of the bar, between Jim Dowell, an AP reporter just returned from Paris, Harriet, and Dusty Pankhurst, another one of Murrow’s boys. There was nothing to report tonight but the lack of bombs. Not that there could have been anyway, Frankie thought, watching the scene in the room in front of her—the newsroom was in here.
    “Who dat?” Pankhurst tipped his head idly in the direction of a trio of women just arrived on the threshold, shaking out their umbrellas and laughing, sending a bright heat into the crowded room.
    Dowell turned to look. “More glamour girl reporters,” he drawled, turning back to the table, “come over to be where the action is.”
    “Present company excepted, of course.” Pankhurst was magnanimous.
    “We’re not glamorous?”
    “You’re not girls,” Pankhurst parried.
    “In that sense,” Dowell finished with a smile at Harriet.
    Frankie’s eyes flicked to Harriet, who stuck out