The Last Balcony

The Last Balcony

By [Ghani]

London, 1944.

The city held its breath again. You could feel it in the air — thick, damp, electric. The streets were dimmed for blackout, but even without the lights, London pulsed with tension. Somewhere in the fog, searchlights combed the sky with long silver fingers. The rumble of planes had become part of the city’s rhythm now — a heartbeat of war.

Aunt Margot leaned over the fourth-floor balcony railing, the wrought iron cold through her coat sleeves. The sky was a strange kind of empty — too quiet, too full. You could almost believe the war had paused for breath. Below her, the cobblestone street was lined with shadow and silence. The usual foot traffic had vanished into basements and bunkers.

Inside the flat, Clara fiddled with the radio dial. All that came through was static and the occasional distant burst of classical music, half-eaten by the airwaves.

“Aunt Margot, they said on the broadcast you should come inside,” Clara called from the doorway.

Margot didn’t move. She raised a cigarette to her lips — filtered, perfectly rolled — and lit it with the grace of an old cabaret performer. Smoke coiled up into the night, dancing with the mist. Her silver hair was pulled back in an elegant twist, though a few strands had rebelled against the pins. She looked regal, even in a worn wool coat that had once been navy.

“Do you know what I remember?” she said, not turning around. “The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Victoria, not Elizabeth. 1897. I was sixteen, fresh off the boat from New York. That’s when I saw real fireworks for the first time.”

Clara stepped onto the balcony beside her. “You’ve lived here that long?”

“Forty-seven years in this flat,” Margot said. “I married Henry on that piano you sit at. Lost him in the influenza. Lost my son in the last war. And here I am, still in this same spot. I watched the skies burn then, too.”

Clara didn’t know what to say. Her aunt often spoke like that — in riddles and remembrances. But tonight, her voice was softer. Not haunted, just... distant. Like someone already halfway to another place.

“There’s talk the war will end soon,” Clara offered. “They say the Germans are retreating.”

Margot gave a hollow chuckle. “Wars don’t end, my love. They shift. Change names. Trade uniforms for suits.”

A plane groaned overhead. Clara tensed.

Margot didn't blink.

“I used to come out here and sing,” she said. “For the boys marching off in ‘14. I'd wear red lipstick and pretend I was some kind of star. Sometimes they'd toss me flowers. Other times... handkerchiefs with names embroidered. They thought they’d come back and find me here waiting. Most didn’t.”

“Why did you stop singing?” Clara asked.

Margot exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Because silence is more honest.”

Below, a cat darted between alley shadows. In the distance, Big Ben struck the hour — ten o’clock. Somewhere beyond the skyline, a low boom rolled through the fog. No one flinched anymore.

“I met someone once,” Margot said. “Before Henry. Before the war. He was French. Played harmonica and smelled like lemon soap. We danced on a Paris rooftop, just weeks before the armistice. We made promises, the kind you only mean in the dark.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We parted with laughter. I never saw him again. Sometimes I think he’s still playing that harmonica in some other sky.”

Clara stared out at the hazy orange glow creeping over the rooftops. “Do you think we’ll survive this?”

Margot turned to look at her, eyes clear and sharp.

“We always do,” she said. “Not as we were. But we go on.”

The waltz from across the street began again. Old Mrs. Penrose’s gramophone, always skipping on the third beat. Margot smiled.

“That was our wedding song,” she said.

“You and Henry?”

Margot shook her head. “No, dear. Before that.”

Clara took her aunt’s hand. The skin was cool and soft, like worn silk. They stood together, a child and a woman made of time, watching a sky too quiet to trust.

When the first flash came, it wasn’t fear Clara felt. Just awe. The skyline erupted in light — whether from bombs or distant flares, she couldn’t tell. But the glow turned her aunt’s profile golden. For a moment, Margot looked like the girl she must have been, standing on a different balcony in another century, waiting for someone who never came.

“I used to think the sky was a promise,” Margot whispered. “Now I think it’s a memory.”

And they stood there, not because they were brave, but because memory demanded witnesses.