Man and Wife

"But they didn't call off the wedding.”

The world needed more love anyway, she reasoned, and she was not easy to argue with. He agreed with her because she was not easy to argue with; besides, she was right. The priest was happy to be of some use after all. The wedding was a rather tense affair, with ears on standby for the characteristic sounds that precede a bombing, and the guests had a visibly muted appetite. But you could see on her face that she thought she was doing God's work. It glowed with the piety only possessed by soup kitchen cooks and wartime doctors.

I saw them look into each other's eyes, now man and wife, and kiss, all their hopes and fears gleaming in their eyes, and I swear that even if we were bombed to bits that evening, we knew we had won already. The dance might as well have been a victory parade at the town hall. Of course it was a stupid thing to do. But between war and getting married during war, it was the more sensible of the two.