Petty blew out smoke. “If that’s true, what did you come here for? To see how miserable we all are, and have a good old laugh about it?”
“I came here by accident. I was trying to find another London, but not this one.”
“So what are you going to do? Listen to me! I’m talking like I really believe you.”
“I’m going to try to get back to the London I started from, and have another crack at finding the right one.”
Petty didn’t say anything for a while, but she didn’t take her eyes away from him, either. She started to gnaw at the side of her thumbnail. At last she said, “You’re having me on toast, aren’t you?”
“Why should I do that? If it’s a joke, it’s a pretty goddamned stupid one, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps you’re expecting to have your wicked way with me, without paying for it.”
“I don’t want my way with you, wicked or otherwise. I’m involved with somebody else.”
“What, engaged, are you?”
“Kind of.”
“Would she mind if you took me back with you?”
“Say what?”
“Your fiancée or whatever she is. Would she mind if you took me back with you? To your London, with the restaurants and the nightclubs and everything?”
“So you do believe me?”
“I don’t know. Either you’re completely bonkers or else you’re telling the truth. But you don’t talk like you’re bonkers. You meet loads of people with shell-shock and that, and they talk about their families like they’re still alive, and stuff like that, and then you find out that they all got bombed. I had one bloke who thought he was an angel. But you don’t talk like one of them.”
Josh checked his watch. It was a quarter after three in the morning, and he was exhausted. “Do you mind if I get some sleep?” he asked. “I have to wait a full twenty-four hours before I can go back to my own London. Otherwise I’ll end up in another London like this. Or worse.”
“Couldn’t be worse, darling,” said Petty, finishing her gin. “Why don’t you and me lie down for a while?”
“I’ll take the couch. No problem at all.”
“Oh, rubbish. Let’s go to bed. I’m too knackered to rape you anyway.”
She stood up and tugged her satin dress over her head. Underneath, she was wearing nothing but a grubby white bra. Josh had thought that she was wearing pantyhose, but she had simply colored her legs with foundation cream, which ended just above her hemline, where she was startlingly white. She was plump and full-breasted, with a rounded tummy, and she wasn’t unattractive, but there were bruises all over her – finger-bruises mostly, where men had gripped her thighs and her buttocks and her breasts. Josh felt powerless and sad, and he cursed all men for everything they do, their wars and their religions.
He watched her as she cleaned her teeth with an old, splayed toothbrush. She drew back the blanket that separated the “bedroom” from the rest of the cellar, and climbed into bed. Josh waited for a few minutes, but tiredness was overwhelming him, and eventually he stood up, took off his coat, and stripped down to his shorts. He climbed into bed next to Petty and lay there staring at the lime washed ceiling.
She turned over and touched some of the reddened scabs from the Holy Harp. “Are you all right?” she asked him. “Who did those?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I don’t mind. Everybody says that I’m a very good listener. You have to be, when you’re on the game. That’s what they come for, you know. The listening, more than the sex.”
She kept on stroking him, but the effect was more soporific than erotic. She played with his nipples, and then ran her fingertips down his sides. His eyes closed. He wasn’t quite asleep, but he was very close to it. Her fingers trailed lightly across his stomach muscles, almost as lightly as butterflies. He saw darkness and thought that he was back in bed in Mill Valley, in the middle of the night. He was sure that he could hear cicadas, and the wind-chimes jangling out on his verandah.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was another world?” said Petty, as she inserted her finger into his navel. “No war, no bombing. Everybody being nice to each other. Imagine.”
Josh slept. He was very far away. He was sitting in the bookstore coffee house in Mill Valley, trying to discourage a little mongrel called Duchovny from jumping up and annoying people. Nancy was there, and she was laughing. He could see her eyes sparkling and the sun shining through the feathers in her hair. He reached out to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let him, even though she was still laughing. Somehow her laughter began to sound tinny, and false.
“They’re coming,” she said. “Can’t you hear them drumming?”
Twenty-One
He opened his eyes. The cellar was shaking. The whole world was shaking. It sounded as if thousands of airplanes were flying overhead, thousands of them. Their droning made the door rattle and the brickwork crack and the cheap aluminum saucepans drop off their shelves. Josh looked at Petty: she was fast asleep, lying on her back with her mouth open. He shook her and shouted, “Petty! Petty, wake up!”
She opened her eyes and blinked at him. “What’s the matter? I was having a good dream then. I was dancing, and all these blokes were clapping and throwing me money.” She looked around, almost as if she expected to find the bedspread strewn with five-pound notes.
“It’s another raid!” Josh shouted at her.
The roaring of aero-engines was enormous now. It seemed to blot out everything: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and any sense of logic. Josh felt as if he were drowning in it.
“There’s nothing we can do!” Petty screamed at him. “This is as safe as anywhere else!”
They heard whistling, not far away. That dreadful, triumphant wheeeeeeee! Then the sticks of bombs began to land, fifteen or sixteen at a time, running up St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross Road in a series of minor earthquakes. They heard a gas main explode. They heard tons of masonry falling into the road. They heard bells, and bells, and more bells.
“Oh Mary Mother of God protect us,” prayed Petty.
“Are you a Catholic?” asked Josh.
She frowned at him. She was still naked, and there were red wrinkled marks from the sheets on the side of her left breast, where she had been sleeping.
“Yes, I’m a Catholic. What difference does it make?”
“It doesn’t.”
A huge explosion at the lower end of Drury Lane made the whole house shake. Josh heard windows bursting and bricks collapsing, and it sounded as if a whole truckload of bricks had been unloaded on the floor right above their heads.
“Oh please God don’t let us be buried alive,” begged Petty.
Josh didn’t say anything, but was thinking the exact same thought. Of all the deaths that he could imagine, being buried alive was the one that filled him with the greatest dread.
Another bomb hit Drury Lane, much closer this time. The impact made Josh’s ears sing, and almost threw them out of bed. Josh lay on top of Petty and pulled the blankets over his head, while even more masonry dropped on to the floor above them, and brick dust sifted down from every crevice in the ceiling.
Under the blankets, they clung to each other, sweaty and hot, but both of them praying to survive. They heard another whistle, much louder this time, and growing louder, as if a train were hurtling toward them, and Petty held him so tight that she almost suffocated him. “Whatever happens,” she breathed in his ear, “remember that I love you.”
“How can you love me? You don’t even know who I am.”
“I know. But you’re going to be holding me tight when I die. I can’t ask any more than that, can I?”
She lifted her head and kissed him. Her mouth tasted of gin and cigarettes, but all the same it was warm and soft and she obviously wanted him. At the same instant the world seemed to come to a stop. Josh felt an enormous compression in his ears, and the next thing he knew he was flung out of bed across the cellar, hitting his head on one o
f the armchairs and landing upside down in the kitchen, scattering cans and cartons and cutlery. Petty was hurled against the cellar steps and lay hunched up with her head in the corner as if she were playing turtles.
Tons of rubble dropped on top of the cellar. The lights went out, and they were left in choking darkness. Josh stayed where he was for a while, his feet up in the air, trying to get his breath back. Then he called out, “Petty?”
Petty didn’t answer. Josh managed to roll himself sideways, bringing down another clatter of pots and pans, and crawled on his hands and knees across the grit-strewn floor. “Petty, can you hear me, is everything OK?”
He caught his hand on a protruding nail, and he could feel the blood running down his forearm. “Petty?” he called. “Petty, for God’s sake, talk to me.”
Groping sideways, he managed to find the bottom of the stairs, and then Petty’s right foot. He felt his way up her body until he reached her head. Her hair was thick with dust and thousands of tiny fragments of glass. She might have been bleeding, but it was impossible for him to tell because his own hand was bleeding, too, and everything felt sticky and wet.
“Petty,” he urged her, turning her over on to her back. “Petty, for God’s sake say something.”
She remained floppy and cold and unresponsive. Josh could feel a pulse, but it was very thready. He felt for her mouth and stuck his finger into it, to make sure that it wasn’t obstructed. Then he leaned over and gave her mouth-to-mouth. A huge explosion like that could have compressed her lungs, or filled them with dust.
“Petty,” he said, between breaths. “Listen to me, Petty, you’re going to be fine. The worst of it’s over. They won’t be coming back. Not tonight, anyhow. Come on, Petty, you have to breathe here, baby. You have to use your lungs. There’s one thing for sure, I’m not going to let you die, whatever it takes.”
He kept up mouth-to-mouth for nearly twenty minutes. He massaged her heart, too. The cellar remained totally dark and he couldn’t see her at all.
“Petty, you’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine. If you don’t die, I’ll take you with me when I go back to London. I promise. And you’ll have all the food you want and all the dancing you want and enough clean knickers to stretch from here to Sausalito.”
There was still no response. Josh leaned over her and gave her one last kiss of life – and then gave her a kiss. “I’m sorry, baby. I did what I could. Take care of yourself, wherever you’re going. I love you.”
He stood up, reaching for the handrail to steady himself. As he did so, he thought he heard movement. A slight shifting, nothing more.
“I was waiting for you to say that,” said Petty, her voice clogged with dust. “Those are the magic words.”
Feeling around in the darkness, Josh managed to find her arm, and then her shoulders, and lift her on to her feet. “I’m OK,” she said. “I was knocked out, that’s all. That was a bloody close one, wasn’t it? Must have hit the building next door.”
“We need some light,” said Josh.
“That’s all right. I’ve got loads of candles. Under the basin, there’s a whole box of them. Christ, my head. I feel like somebody’s been sitting on it.”
Josh groped his way around the room until he located the sink. Underneath it, he found a brown-paper package filled with candles. He took out two to light up the cellar, but he also took another six, cramming them into his coat pockets, just in case he needed to cross through any of the doors, looking for the London he had left behind. In the darkness, he damned Nancy’s independent spirit. He loved her, and he was proud of her, but where had it got them both? He didn’t even like to think what she was doing right now, while he was trapped in this bombed-out cellar with Petty.
He flicked his butane lighter and lit one of the candles. Petty looked like a ghost, a voodoo duppy, her face white and her eyes black and her lips blood-red where Josh had been kissing them. Her hair had turned into dreadlocks, crammed with dust and debris, but glittering with glass. She had a crimson lump on her forehead, and superficial cuts and bruises, but no serious injuries. The blood that was criss-crossed all over her naked body was Josh’s.
Josh looked down at his own hand. The cut was L-shaped, deep in the muscle just below his thumb. He picked up a tea-towel from the kitchen floor, snapped it in the air to shake off the dust, and wrapped it tightly around his wound.
Petty managed to climb to her feet. Josh helped her across to the bedroom area and sat her on the bed. She coughed and spat dust, and sat with her shoulders hunched, wheezing like an asthmatic, trying to get her breath back. But at last she reached for her bra and her dress, and painfully began to dress herself.
Josh heard an ominous lurching sound from the ceiling. “We have to get out of here, Petty. It sounds like the whole goddamn house is coming down.”
Petty nodded, but she was too choked up with dust to say anything. Holding the candle high, Josh led her back across to the stairs, and the two of them climbed up together, until they reached the door. Josh took hold of the door handle and tugged it, but the door was jammed solid.
Not only that, they could both hear the deep droning noise of another wave of approaching bombers.
“Oh shit,” said Petty. “They’re really going to give us a pasting tonight.”
Josh gave the door another tug. It might be more dangerous outside, with fires raging all across London’s West End, but he couldn’t stay buried in this cellar any longer. He was beginning to hyperventilate already.
“We’ll be safer here,” said Petty, but he shook his head. He didn’t want to admit to his rising panic.
He heard more bombs falling, only a few streets away, and that gave him the strength to wrench at the door again and again, until he had pulled it half-open. Outside, the hallway was blocked with debris. The staircase had collapsed, and the banisters covered the cellar like a fence. Huge blocks of broken brick were piled on top of each other, some of them still plastered and wallpapered.
“We’re going to have to move some of this stuff if we’re going to get out,” said Josh. “Come on up here and give me a hand.”
He managed to twist three uprights out of the banisters, backward and forward, until they eventually came free, and toss them out of the way. Crouching down like Quasimodo, he climbed out of the cellar, underneath the banister rail, and into the hallway itself. His shoes slid down a heap of pulverized dust and glass and broken china. He saw half a willow-pattern teacup and a doll’s face with staring blue eyes, as well as a vegetable-strainer and a diary with all of its pages singed at the edges.
“Come on, Petty,” he insisted. “You too.”
Awkwardly, she climbed out after him. “God, look what the bastards have done to my house!” she wept. “This is my house, this is where I live! What right have they got to come and smash it all to pieces? What right? I don’t care if they’re part of the bloody Empire or not!”
Outside, the sky was growing lighter.
They looked around, in that gray hallucinatory light just before the sun comes over the horizon, and they could have been standing in a stage set, meant to depict the end of the world. Drury Lane was nothing more than two parallel heaps of bricks, with fires burning everywhere. It wasn’t even recognizable as the same street that Josh had been walking up earlier this morning. The theaters had gone, the shops had gone, the houses had gone. There was nothing but rubble and slates and broken chimney pots and twisted fire escapes and skeletal roof timbers. And fires everywhere, and acrid smoke.
“Are you OK?” he asked Petty.
Petty was shivering, but she nodded. “I’m all right. I wish it was over, that’s all.”
Josh put his arm around her. “Cocks and chocolate?”
She managed a smile. “That’s right. Cocks and chocolate.”
“I guess we’d better find ourselves someplace to hole up.”
“What about your friend? The one you came here to find?”
“John Farbelow? I’m not sur
e that he even exists in this London. Even if he does, he may not even be the same guy.”
“Well, we’ve got to do something. Can’t we go back to your London?”
“We can. Well, I hope we can. But not yet. We have to wait until one o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, wonderful. And what do we do in the meantime?”
Josh stopped, and listened. “Do you hear something?” he asked her.
She wrinkled up her nose. “Like what?”
“Like a sort of drumming noise.”
“Don’t ask me. I can’t hardly hear nothing after that last bomb went off.”
Josh listened even harder, gripping Petty’s wrist so that she was sure to stand still. They could hear fire engines racing around London, their bells frantically ringing. They could hear the diminishing drone of scores of heavy bombers, circling around East London on their way back to their bases in Normandy. But they could hear something else, too. They could hear drumming. Ratta-tat-tatt! Ratta-tat-tatt! And they could hear barking, and the piercing whistles of dog-handlers.
“Oh God,” said Josh. “I don’t believe it. It’s the Hooded Men.”
“The Hooded Men? Who the hell are the Hooded Men?”
“Ask me later. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
He grasped Petty’s hand and started to jog northward, up toward High Holborn, where automobiles were burning. But Petty said, “I can’t, Josh. I can’t go any further.”
“You have to. Don’t you realize what these people can do to you?”
She slowed down to a walk. “I don’t care what they do to me. I’m not going to run any further. I can’t.”
Josh stood beside her. The drumming sounded louder, and sharper. The dogs began to bark more enthusiastically, because they had obviously picked up the scent.
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