by Winona Kent
Another immense BANG and a THUD shook the shelter’s walls, floor, and ceiling. And then something—a beam or a supporting pillar—gave way with a horrible creak and a deafening crash. And Charlie was thrown across the floor, as the lights arced and went out, and the room was plunged into utter darkness.
• • •
Someone—perhaps it was the well-heeled gentleman—was singing. Something by Vera Lynn, brave and full of optimistic fortitude.
Others in the darkness joined in, their voices tinged with weary humour.
Quickly, torches were located and switched on, and the room was illuminated once more, if only in small round patches. People were lifting pieces of ceiling off themselves and organizing improvised first aid stations. The air was filled with dust. The man who had been singing checked on Charlie.
“You all right? Everything intact? Nothing broken?”
Charlie sat up. She tested her arms and legs, wrists and ankles.
“Nothing’s broken,” she said. She looked around. “Where’s Mr. Deeley?”
“There’s nobody else here.”
“But he was underneath the table, beside me. There.”
The table they’d been sitting at was in pieces on the floor, demolished by a large slab of concrete which had crashed down from the ceiling. The slab of concrete was also in pieces.
The man shone his torch on the wreckage. And then all around the debris that had scattered nearby.
Mr. Deeley was not there.
“Anyone here called Deeley?” he shouted into the darkness.
His question was met with silence.
“Let’s have a little walk around the room,” he suggested. “Perhaps he’s been injured and they’ve got him bandaged up somewhere.”
But the search proved fruitless.
Mr. Deeley was not there.
And neither, it seemed, was the fair-haired gentleman.
Chapter Twelve
The All Clear had sounded. The air raid was over.
There were more torches now, and more rescuers—men from the ARP, in arm-bands and tin hats—helping the hotel guests, the chambermaids, the front desk clerks, and the customers from the restaurant climb out of the devastated cellar.
Charlie blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden daylight at the top of the stairs.
There was an immense hole in the front of the hotel. Its outer wall had been blasted away, and part of the floor had collapsed into the cellar. People were being herded around a gigantic crater in the middle of Bloomsbury Street, to the safety of the pavement beyond.
“All right, my love? Can I just have a look to make sure you’re not hurt?”
It was another volunteer with an armband and a tin hat, a woman. Charlie allowed herself to be superficially examined. She wasn’t badly injured, aside from some scrapes and a bruised knee. But her clothes were covered in the dust from fallen bricks and masonry, and the shoulder strap of her leather handbag had been torn away at one end.
Something was digging into the back of her neck. Her hand went instinctively to the little silver chain belonging to the necklace she never took off. At the bottom the chain hung a name, also fashioned in silver: MRS. COLLINS. It had been a surprise birthday present from Mr. Deeley. She felt for the clasp. It was bent, nearly broken.
She pressed the fragile ends of the clasp back together as she searched around her. Where was Mr. Deeley?
“What’s your name, my love?”
“Charlie. Charlotte. Collins. Lowe. Duran.”
She realized she sounded confused. She was confused.
“And can you tell me what the date is?”
“1940. It’s October the 12th, 1940.”
“And when’s your birthday?”
“Thirteenth of September.”
“What year were you born?”
“1979,” Charlie said.
The woman in the tin hat turned to have a word with one of the rescuers. “Possible concussion,” Charlie heard her say.
And then, she saw the stretcher party.
They were carrying casualties to an awaiting ambulance.
And there was Mr. Deeley. On one of the stretchers.
The two men carrying Mr. Deeley placed his stretcher on the pavement, out of the way, and then abandoned him to go back inside the hotel.
Charlie pushed past the woman in the tin hat and ran to where Mr. Deeley lay, covered in dust.
“Mr. Deeley,” she said, kneeling on the ground beside him. “Shaun.”
He wasn’t moving.
He wasn’t breathing.
Charlie touched his hand. It was cold, limp, unresponsive.
She’d taken a lifesaving course. She knew how to look for vital signs, how to do rescue breathing and CPR. She’d once saved someone’s life after they’d been overcome by smoke in a fire.
She couldn’t feel Mr. Deeley’s pulse.
She touched his face, lightly, lovingly.
Cold.
It was almost as if he was asleep.
He wasn’t breathing.
This couldn’t be.
The steps for CPR raced through her mind. If the victim is not breathing begin chest compressions. Push down…how many times? She couldn’t remember. Push hard and fast.
She started to pump, trying to recall what came next. This was ridiculous. She knew this. She knew this. Why couldn’t she remember?
She stopped the chest compressions, then tilted Mr. Deeley’s head back and lifted his chin. She pinched his nose. She covered his mouth with her own until she saw his chest rise. Two breaths, one second each. Then back to the chest compressions.
“There, my lovely. Nothing more you can do for him now.”
It was another ARP volunteer, another man, another armband, another tin hat. And he was pulling her off Mr. Deeley.
“No!” she shouted. “No! Let me do this! I know what I’m doing!”
But they didn’t know about CPR in wartime London. They didn’t know about rescue breathing. Charlie struggled to free herself from the man, but he was holding onto her, and then another man appeared, to make sure she couldn’t go back to Mr. Deeley.
“He’s not dead!” she cried. “I can save him! Please let me try!”
But the men wouldn’t listen. And they refused to let go of her. They forced her sit down on another part of the pavement, where she couldn’t see him.
“Can you tell me his name, lovely? He doesn’t have any identification.”
The second man had a little notebook and a pencil.
“Shaun Deeley,” Charlie said miserably. “Shaun Patrick Deeley. Please let me go back to him!” She stood up again, but was caught by the first volunteer as she fell back down to the pavement, dizzy and disoriented.
“Date of birth?”
“November. The twelfth.”
“Do you know the year?”
“1791,” Charlie said vacantly.
The woman volunteer had come back, this time with a cup of tea.
“She’s a little bit confused,” the man with the notebook said. “She’s had a bad knock to her head. Have a cuppa till you’re feeling better, love.”
Charlie drank the tea. This couldn’t be. This could not be. Mr. Deeley couldn’t die. They were meant to be together in time. Not separated. Not like this.
The first man knelt down in front of Charlie. “How are you related, my love? Is he your husband?”
“No,” Charlie said, fighting back the tears. “No… we are… we were going to be married… he kept on asking me to…and I kept on saying no….”
“Never mind, my love. It’s wartime. We don’t any of us know whether we’ll be here tomorrow. Remember the good times you spent together, eh? You loved him and he loved you and that’s all that matters. If he’s watching from afar, he’s smiling. He knows. I’ll have to arrange to have him taken away, my love, but if you leave me your details, I’ll make sure someone’s in touch about certificates and burial. Are you on the ’phone?”
Cha
rlie nodded.
“Can you just give us your address and number, then?”
The second man was waiting, his pencil poised over his little notebook.
“Number Twelve, Harris Road,” Charlie said. “Balham. I’m staying with Betty Singleton.”
“And the telephone?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t remember. Look it up in the directory. Bert Singleton. On Harris Road. In Balham.”
“I’ll do that,” the man with the notebook said, writing Betty’s father’s name next to the notation. “Here we are then, love. They’ve come to take him away now.”
They helped her to her feet, and allowed her to watch as the stretcher party lifted Mr. Deeley up from the pavement and carried him to the back of a waiting ambulance.
“Wait!” Charlie shouted, running over to them.
They waited.
Both looked away as Charlie kissed Mr. Deeley, tenderly, touching his fingers and his lips, his forehead, his cheek. Was it her imagination? Was there warmth there?
“Goodbye, Mr. Deeley,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. This wasn’t meant to happen. It’s a horrible trick of history.”
She watched, in tears, as they closed the door at the back of the ambulance, and drove away.
It was Mr. Deeley’s body, but it was not him. The part of him that had inhabited his body had already left. She had kissed an empty shell, the physical thing that had housed his soul. And his soul had gone somewhere else.
She turned away from the ambulance and began to walk.
• • •
It seemed she had been walking for a very long time. But then, she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious in the cellar, nor how long it was before she’d been rescued. And it seemed like only minutes that she’d spent sitting on the pavement…but, in fact, it must have been more like hours.
And now it was getting dark.
In spite of broken windows and shattered bricks, the other buildings she passed were largely intact. But there was a fire burning somewhere; its smoke billowed into a grey and hazy sky. And there was a fresh and acrid smell of detonated explosives.
It seemed as if she was walking west. Yes, it was west. She’d passed Tottenham Court Road and found her way to Oxford Street. She was surrounded by broken brick and stone, and pockmarked cornices and chipped columns and boarded-up windows. She crossed the road and walked down the long grand avenue that she recognized as Regent Street.
But then it was necessary to stop walking, because the road in front of her was blocked. The Portland stone columns and facades of the buildings on either side of the street were freshly scarred by flying shrapnel. All of the glass in all of the windows had been blown out, their frames twisted and torn. Regent Street itself was fractured. Water cascaded from a broken water pipe into a river that flowed down towards Piccadilly Circus, swamping an abandoned taxi and several cars. Broken bits of wood and stone were strewn everywhere, and men in tin hats wielded large brooms, sweeping glittering crystals of glass off the pavement and into the gutter. Charlie could see evidence of yet another fire, now out, with every window and doorway blackened.
She negotiated her way down to Piccadilly Circus, as darkness fell at last, and the blackout took effect.
In the present that she’d come from, Piccadilly Circus was a riot of electric lights, huge LED advertisements flashing on the sides of buildings, traffic humming, the famous fountain a gathering spot for sightseers and Londoners alike.
Here, in 1940, the giant ads had been switched off. She could still see them in the moonlight: a huge clock proclaiming Guinness is Good for You; giant letters spelling out Bovril and Schweppes. On another corner, Wrigley gum was the prescription for Vim and Vigour, while Brylcreem was The Perfect Hair Dressing. Charlie could also see where the famous fountain was. But it had disappeared beneath protective hoardings advertising National War Bonds.
The shiny black taxis were still there, too, and private motorcars, their running boards and bumpers painted white and their headlamps dimmed. And she could see any number of red and white double-decker buses. And instead of sightseers, there were soldiers in uniform, and men and women dressed up for a night on the town.
Charlie ached, watching their determination to get on with life in spite of the war. After Jeff had died, she’d purposely isolated herself, shutting herself off from anything that even hinted at being a couple. Because she was no longer one half of a whole. She was the lopped-off bit, the fragile part that was left standing, propped up with timbers, after the other part was destroyed. And she had lived that way for five years, in mourning, the grief never very far away, the calendar on her kitchen wall permanently marking the day that Jeff had ceased to be.
And then, that July, Mr. Deeley had come into her life. Impetuously, madly, completely unexpectedly. He had banished her grief and put an end to her mourning. She was part of a whole again, one half of two, and filled up with an emotion that had been too long absent from those long, dark days.
She had been happy.
Had it only been since July?
Had it only been three months?
Three months filled with surprise cups of tea in bed, near disasters in the kitchen, constant avowals of love, endless proposals of marriage.
Endless.
And each time, she’d said no. Never directly, never in any way intended to hurt his feelings. Never in any way dismissive.
In truth, she hadn’t wanted him to stop proposing. She adored his earnest entreaties—as much as she knew he adored presenting them to her. But something always stopped her from saying “yes.” Perhaps it was fear. She and Jeff had loved one another so completely, so deeply and passionately… and then he’d been killed… and a part of herself had died as well.
And now, in spite of all her caution, in spite of everything, she’d lost Mr. Deeley too.
None of what had just happened to him made any sense. Their first meeting in 1825 had seemed almost predetermined. It was meant to be. As was their journey together from 1825 to her present, and a short one after that, to 1848. Was this, their third excursion together, also meant to have happened? Was his life meant to have been extinguished in a random act of savagery from the skies? How could he be dead, when he didn’t even belong in this time and place?
Charlie abandoned the gaiety of the Saturday night couples, forcing herself to continue walking. Using the white-painted bottoms of lampposts and the curbs cloaked in zebra stripes, she was able to navigate her way along Haymarket and Cockspur Street, all the way down to Trafalgar Square.
Three months of happiness.
It wasn’t fair.
She remembered Mr. Deeley’s outrageous foreign accent as he’d negotiated their release from the Underground. And standing on the platform at Balham station, imagining what was going to happen in three days’ time, debating the ethics of saving Thaddeus.
And his kiss, last night, on the upstairs landing… lost in his arms….
And then, she heard the sound. The unmistakable moan of the siren.
Another bloody air raid.
She could see the entrance to Trafalgar Square tube station. There were no exterior buildings—just a set of stairs disappearing down into the ground, with the Underground roundel above them, lit by a low-watt bulb. Charlie raced towards it, the broken shoulder strap of her bag flapping against her legs.
“Come along, my dear, don’t dawdle, this way to the platforms.” Someone from London Transport was directing her down the steps to the booking hall just under the road.
People were appearing from nowhere, materializing out of the darkness, rushing past her, jostling her out of the way. But something was telling her not to go. Something was niggling her memory…
She stopped.
It was Saturday, the 12th of October, 1940. The night a high-explosive bomb had dropped on the National Gallery, on the north side of Trafalgar Square. She knew this. But she couldn’t remember why… her brain was too foggy. And then… yes
. The bomb had destroyed the room where Raphael’s paintings had hung before they were evacuated to an old slate mine in Wales at the start of the war. On her desk at the museum in Stoneford was her favourite mug, featuring the two quizzical-looking cherubs from Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. She’d bought it after visiting the National Gallery, where she’d learned about the wartime damage to the building.
She remembered that same night another bomb had fallen on the roadway, immediately above where the station was. It had penetrated the pavement and exploded at the head of the escalators. The blast wave had travelled downwards, collapsing concrete and steel. And the subsequent avalanche of wet earth and gravel and mud and water from a broken main had killed seven people and injured more than thirty others.
Charlie turned around and ran back up to the surface. Over the moan of the sirens she could hear the rhythmic rise and fall throb of approaching German planes. She could see the bright beams of the searchlights on the ground, criss-crossing the dark sky. And now she could hear the THUD of a bomb dropping, and then another and another and another.
Racing across the road, she fled east, along Strand, reaching Craven Street just as the first 500-pound explosive fell onto the National Gallery.
The blast deafened her. She felt it as much as she heard it, thundering through her body, shaking the pavement and the buildings on either side of the street, filling the road with smoke and the acrid smell of detonation.
She heard the whistle of the second 500-pound bomb as it was let loose from the overhead Heinkel, soaring earthward. And as it slammed into the roadway above Trafalgar Square, she tumbled to the ground, hitting her head on the zebra-striped curb, and remembering nothing more.
Chapter Thirteen
It was not immediately apparent to Shaun what had happened. His last clear memory was of the cellar of the hotel, and huddling beneath a table with Mrs. Collins and the gentleman with the fair hair who claimed to be Thaddeus. And then there had been a massive explosion, the lights were extinguished, and the better part of the ceiling had collapsed on top of them. He remembered being thrown out from under the table by the blast, and then, it seemed, that for a few moments, he had lost awareness of what was going on around him.