She taught them reading and composition until they began to tire, and then she said to Zachary,

“How long since you saw daylight?”

 He wasn’t sure, so they left the two younger children and walked up into an improving day. The smoke was lifting after the night’s conflagrations but the air was still blunt with haze. The sun was a flat white disc. Zachary and Mary walked with arms linked while the people they passed looked knives at them. Mary made sure to smile back brightly. It was simply a peculiarity of the British that they could be stoical about two hundred and fifty nights of bombing, while the sight of her with a Negro child offended their sensibilities unbearably.

“You’re better,” said Zachary, looking up at her.

“I’m happy to see you doing so well. You have your hands full, I suppose, with Charles and Molly.” “Charles isn’t so bad. He just talks. Molly’s the worst.”

“What, little Molly?” “She steals.” “No! And here was me, about to check her shoulders for wings.”

“She steals my tips to buy buns.”

“And does she share?”

“Does she hell.”

“How come you’re so cheerful, then? Do you qualify for some kind of prize if London is finally destroyed?”

“I don’t know. I’m just happy.”

She put her arm around his shoulders.

“Idiot.”

 He leaned his head against her.

 “Fool.”

“Work on your vocabulary. You wouldn’t want Charles to get ahead.”

“No I wouldn’t, you bonehead.”

“Stop it!” she said, pinching his arm.

 Both of them laughed, and then a woman passing in the opposite direction lifted a blue-gloved hand and slapped Mary full in the face. The shock put her on the ground, with bright points of light flashing. Zachary was kneeling over her, one hand under her head to keep it off the flagstones, the other hand smoothing her hair away from her face.

“I’m quite all right,” she said.

“I’m fine.”

His shock was too much. She collected herself and managed to sit upright. He looked as if he might cry.

“Don’t,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”

 From “Everyone Brave is Forgiven” by Chris Cleave

This well-written novel brings to life London’s bombardments in the Second World War. These horrors have earlier appeared in quite a few literary works.  In this book, the racism of the English struck me as a grave stain, “Zachary and Mary walked with arms linked while the people they passed looked knives at them. Mary made sure to smile back brightly. It was simply a peculiarity of the British that they could be stoical about two hundred and fifty nights of bombing, while the sight of her with a Negro child offended their sensibilities unbearably.”

I am sure that back then, not everyone was a racist.  When I lived in London for three months in 1966, I did not observe any instance of this terrible evil.  I resided in Swiss Cottage, which was a white area.  Being a Spaniard, I mixed well with my neighbors. But a fellow medical student from Haiti—who was black—spent the same period in London in a different area.  We met a few times in Piccadilly Circus. He never mentioned any incident of racism. By then, I hope England—which I love very much—had exorcised those demons that degraded humanity.