“Looks like some kids have been playing about up here,” Guy commented. “Probably building some kind of castle or whatever it is kids play at here. We used to build forts and play cowboys and Indians when I was growing up, but I guess over here that’s not really so popular.”
“No,” Molly said. “And it’s not a game, either, I’m afraid. Although, you’re right about the castle building. We used to play capture the castle, but we really only had good knights and bad knights, and that was purely dependent on your point of view. Were the good knights holding the castle or storming it? It could be a matter of bitter controversy, I assure you. However, whatever these children, if they were children, might have been playing, they wouldn’t have had to use much of their imagination. I suspect they were building some kind of surveillance shed and really thought they’d be contributing to the war effort. And it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to think so. The boy scouts, for example, are a very necessary component of the home defence team. I assure you.”
“What do they do?” Guy was curious.
“Mostly run errands and deliver messages. It frees up a lot of time for the rest of us. Some of my most reliable volunteers are much too young to shave.”
“A real team of Baker Street Irregulars, or should I say Regulars.” Guy laughed before abruptly sobering as the meaning behind it all hit home. “What about that little girl downstairs? Angela. I hope she doesn’t have a role to play in all this.”
“No more than having to endure what others are doing all around her. I expect when the war started she was evacuated to the country, with or without her mother, depending on what kind of work her mum’s involved in. But people crave the comfort of the familiar. Even though they’ve been told it’s much safer to get the children out of the city they’ve been bringing them back. I guess it’s instinct to believe that you can protect your own children best, even if it isn’t true.”
“I hope she’ll be all right.”
“I expect if the sirens go her mum will get her into a shelter quick enough. And if she elects to stay home, I’m betting they have a pretty sturdy Morrison shelter in the kitchen they can huddle under.”
“What’s that?”
“A Morrison shelter? It’s a very strong steel table that’s designed to protect you if the house caves in around you.”
“The entire Luftwaffe is dropping bombs on the roof, and they’re going to hide under a kitchen table?” Guy was incredulous.
Molly’s voice, which had been pleasantly explanatory, hardened, and it had nothing to do with chill in the air. His words were making her cold. “Yes, Guy, they’re going to hide under a table. Do you know how many bombs have fallen around them? Thousands. Probably thousands of thousands. Sometimes night after night for weeks. And so far, no matter how close they’ve come, not one of those bombs has hit Angela and her mother. So by now they’re feeling pretty invincible. And they’re not the only ones. Every single person left in London has lost someone, maybe more than someone. Maybe everyone they care about. Their entire family. But they’re still alive. Somehow.”
“It didn’t have their name on it,” Guy said.
“You’ve heard that expression, have you?” Molly asked. “Yes, people have developed a certain degree of fatalism. If a bomb has their name on it, then nothing they can do will stop it from killing them. But if it doesn’t, they can dance in the streets in the middle of an attack. Most don’t take it quite that far—the shelters are still packed every night, and despite your scorn, many have safely ridden out an attack while huddled under a Morrison shelter or in a backyard Anderson shelter—but everyone knows someone who had a miraculous escape and someone else who should have lived and inexplicably didn’t.”
“Who did you lose?” Guy asked softly.
Molly wasn’t sure at first if she could answer. An unexpected feeling of rage swept over her. It wasn’t about who she’d lost or who she hadn’t lost. It wasn’t about her at all. It was about her city and her people and the sacrifices they all made, not just once, but over and over again. It was about the coping mechanisms they all developed to stay sane. It was about hanging on to the end, in whatever way it took to make that possible. He had no right, this stranger, to turn up asking prying questions and judging them.
But, then, he didn’t know any better. This was all new to him. Twenty-four hours ago, he’d probably been sitting in a coffee shop in New York City surrounded by bustling people with normal jobs and safe homes, his only connection to what was happening over here the headlines in the newspaper he’d been reading and the airline ticket in his pocket.
He might have no right to ask, but she had no right to take her anger out on him.
“My husband,” was all she could manage.
Chapter Four
Such a simple declaration. Yet Guy was sure he felt the world literally rock beneath his feet. She was married? Worse. She had been married, and her husband had died. He tried to imagine what that must have been like and failed miserably.
She was so young, still in her twenties, surely. And yet, they were young, weren’t they? All the widows that were made by war. It wasn’t the old men who were sent to the front. Not even the middle-aged ones. It was the young ones. And when they didn’t return, it was young wives and girlfriends they left behind to grieve.
Molly was a widow. Beautiful Molly, who could make her way around London in the dark and joke about the men on the moon, had gone through the pain of losing a husband. A man she had planned to spend her life with, to have children with and grow old with.
The clouds were definitely clearing. The outline of the ramshackle fort at their feet was easy to discern. Looking around, Guy could see the outlines of other buildings beyond the one on which they stood, standing out against the paler cast of the night sky.
And beside him Molly stood tense. He could see her hands jammed hard into her coat pockets, elbows straight and shoulders hunched. Her chin was up, the outline of her metal helmet pitched defiantly skyward above her shadowed face.
Waiting.
Somehow he knew she was sorry she had spoken, wished she could call back the words. Because it simply wasn’t done, he realized. By her lights, one didn’t just blurt that kind of information out. As she had already said, everyone had lost someone. Lost someone and carried on. And they carried on calmly. With their chins up. An unwritten pact of silence. Not asking. Assuming everyone was in the same boat. Angela’s mother had spoken of the loss of her husband almost casually, explaining the child’s behavior in the same way one would mention a recent illness or some other cause for concern. Molly certainly hadn’t inquired. Would never have done so, he realized.
Guy had unwittingly broken the rules by asking about her personal sorrow. And she had dropped her guard and told him.
He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’m sorry,” he finally managed.
It was woefully inadequate. He wasn’t even sure if he was apologising for asking or expressing his condolences. He meant so much more than those simple words could possibly convey. But he didn’t have any other words to add.
“There’s no need to be.” Molly’s voice in the dark was deliberately light and her stance relaxed. “You had no way of knowing. What’s done is done. C’est la guerre, as our friends across the channel say—although they’re probably saying it in German now, of course.”
She turned away from him, stepped lightly over the scattered boards and walked to the edge of the roof where a raised parapet protected her from the drop to the ground below. She stood with her back to him for a few moments, looking east.
“This is the direction we can expect the enemy aircraft to appear from,” she finally said. “Straight across the channel from Calais and loaded with trouble. If none appears, we’ll have an easy night of it. If any do, then you can expect all hell to break loose in no short order.”
Guy followed her lead, getting down to business and leaving the personal behind. He walked over to stand b
eside her. “I’ve read about the attacks in the newspaper, of course, and heard about it on the radio, but it wasn’t really brought home to me until I actually walked down a bombed out street. God knows how you’ve managed.” It slipped out before he could stop himself, and he cursed inwardly. That sounded like it was hitting too close to home again.
However, Molly didn’t seem to notice. She continued to stare into the east, chin tucked into her collar against the cold.
“My father insists that we’re just too bloody stupid to know when we’re beaten.” She laughed. “A sensible nation would have long since surrendered. But don’t repeat that. I expect it’s probably treason or something.”
“He may be on to something,” Guy agreed. “From what I’ve managed to pick up here and there from my indiscreet friends in the diplomatic corps, Hitler’s getting increasingly frustrated by your irrational refusal to give up. Although I’m not sure I’d call it stupidity, exactly.”
“I should hope not! How we refer to ourselves is one thing. How others refer to us is something completely different.”
“I’ll remember that before I stick my size tens in my mouth again.”
Molly laughed again. “Don’t worry about it. Americans aren’t known for their tact. You’re automatically given a degree of licence that no Englishman would be allowed.”
“Hey, watch it!” Guy feigned indignation. “We might call ourselves blundering idiots, but nobody else can!”
With the tension broken, they stood side by side watching and listening to the dark. There were few street noises. Most people in the heart of the city walked to their destinations. Petrol rationing meant that the majority of vehicles on the road were official ones. When a lowly member of the general public wanted to travel any distance, there were still buses and taxis available, their headlamps carefully dimmed and covered to allow them a pinprick of light on the street in front of them, but giving little hint of their presence from above. But tonight they seemed to be few and far between. From Molly and Guy’s perspective at the top of the building, it was as if no one moved below them at all.
The cold winter air meant that those who still had glass in their windows kept them tightly closed against the night’s cutting temperature. And, of course, they all had blackout curtains up whether their casements were filled with glass or wood hammered across the shattered openings. So no sound of the radio, hints of light, or other indications that the city was alive and inhabited travelled upward toward the two watchers.
It was almost eerie. The silence and the stillness. As if they were the only people left in the entire world.
Guy tried to imagine New York with Times Square dark the way Piccadilly Circus now was. He tried to imagine it even half as quiet as London on this winter night and failed. The lights and racket of Broadway were as much a part of the city as pastrami sandwiches and belligerent taxi drivers.
But then, perhaps Londoners had once felt the same way. They must have done. London in peacetime was as raucous as any city in the world, if that made any sense. And it couldn’t be as dead still as this all the time. He wondered whether in the brief respite when they were allowed to forget about the war there were still barrow boys down there in the streets hawking everything from lettuce to iron frypans. Whether people still dressed in their finest and dined at the Savoy before attending a West End show.
Did they still laugh? Did they still make love?
Suddenly out of the darkness, reaching decibels no radio could hope to attain, a baby’s cry rang out. Somewhere a very small person who didn’t give a damn about bombs or blackouts or mom’s exhaustion wanted attention and wanted it now.
Guy was immediately cheered. Of course they still make love. There was the proof, demanding its dinner and the undivided attention of the person to whom it meant the world. Life went on.
“Wow,” he said. “Air raid sirens must have nothing on that little fellow. What a set of pipes.”
Even as he spoke, the sound stopped. They were too far away to hear the voice of the child’s mother or whoever had care of it, but the baby was clearly being tended to.
“If that doesn’t draw every fighter pilot for miles around we’re probably safe for tonight,” he added.
“Babies have absolutely no sense of social responsibility, do they?” Molly chuckled. “But that one at least seems to have settled down quite easily. As you say, I think we’re safe, at least for the moment.”
She continued to watch the sky, but her stance remained relaxed. If she did think there was any danger, she wasn’t letting herself tense up in anticipation. But then, Guy realized, this was probably pretty old hat for her by now. How many night watches had she stood through? How many attacks had she monitored from just such an exposed rooftop position? He was willing to bet the answer was quite a few. Yet not one of the bombs that had fallen around her ‘had her name on it’. No wonders Londoners developed such a fatalistic attitude. It was either that or go mad.
“It’s hard to tell because of the clouds, but if I recall correctly, it’s a full moon tonight, isn’t it?” Guy asked. “Doesn’t that make it more likely there’ll be an attack?”
“It depends on how thick the cloud cover remains. If it clears, the chances of a raid increase. That’s why a full moon is called a bomber’s moon. We’re actually a couple of days off the full moon, but it’s near enough to make no difference. But things have been quiet in London lately—at least compared to the last few months. I’m starting to hold out hope that the reports of shortages in the Luftwaffe are true and the worst of it is over.”
“Touch wood,” Guy said automatically. He grabbed her hand, which had been resting on the parapet, and knocked it against his head. “No sense in taking chances.”
“Thank you, I’m sure that without your intervention the entire course of the war would have been thrown off kilter by my unthinking words.”
“Well, you can be sure if you want to, of course. I wouldn’t have thought so, personally, but then I’m not superstitious.”
“Which is why you told me to knock on wood.”
“Hey, it never hurts to make sure you’ve got all the bases covered.”
He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thick, and there wasn’t a star to be seen anywhere. It was hard to believe that any air force worth its salt would risk an attack under these conditions and he said so.
“That’s true enough now,” Molly agreed. “But the moon won’t rise for several more hours, and if the sky has cleared by then, the entire situation may well change.”
“Hence your presence.”
“Exactly.”
A thought suddenly struck Guy. “You don’t believe there’s going to be an air raid tonight, do you?” he asked, his voice heavy with suspicion.
“I really have no idea whether there will be one or not,” was the calm reply. “How could I?”
“But, based on your previous experience and best guesses, you don’t think there’s going to be one.” Her response had been equivocal. He was sure he was right.
“Why do you think that?” Again, she didn’t give a straight answer.
“Because I’m here.”
It was so obvious.
“Oh? Do you have some kind of magic power that will prevent the planes from taking off? Or perhaps an enchanted shield that will stop them from entering British airspace?” Molly asked in that cool, superior voice of hers. “Because if you do I think it would have been jolly nice of you to mention it a few months ago when thousands of bombs a night were raining down on us.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” Guy’s response was quick and confident. “You said this is your bailiwick. You make sure everyone in the entire neighborhood is as safe and sheltered as possible. You were willing to make yourself late for your watch and go some distance out of your way to ensure that I got where I was going—to make sure I was ‘under cover’ as you said yourself. And yet, once you got me to that place of safety, you completely reversed your sta
nce and let me tag along after you, up here in the open air without even the dubious protection of that piece of tin you’re sporting so fetchingly on your coconut. Ergo, you must think there isn’t really any danger.” Guy tried to keep the triumph out of his voice as he concluded, but it was pretty difficult.
“That’s what you think, is it?”
“Can there possibly be some other explanation?”
“Maybe I couldn’t resist your charm,” Molly suggested.
It was the last answer Guy had expected.
“Don’t I wish that were true,” he exclaimed. “But I seem to have been given nothing but my comeuppance ever since I met you. I think it’s more likely you’re hoping I’ll tumble off the edge and be out of your hair for good.”
“Nonsense. You’ve already commented on my sense of responsibility. I wouldn’t feel right just leaving you there for the dustmen in the morning. Besides, what if some children found you first? What a nasty experience that would be for them. No, if you fell off I’d have to climb all the way downstairs, ring for an ambulance—or worse!—and then hang around until you’d been collected. Not to mention sorting all the gawkers back into their respective nests and notifying your people. I assure you, it’s much easier to keep you up here.”
“I can’t figure out whether I should be blushing or storming off in a huff,” Guy admitted after he thought it over for a while. “Maybe both.”
He sat down on the sturdy stones that covered the top of the parapet and stretched his legs out, crossed at the ankles, in front of him. He tucked his hands into his pockets and his chin into the collar of his overcoat. “At least now that I know you won’t push me off I can sit down and relax a bit while I figure it out.”
“Or maybe you can just enjoy the peace and quiet of a beautiful night under an aircraft free sky.”
“That might be the best thing,” Guy agreed. “I guess you take what comfort you can and find beauty wherever it shows its face. A minute ago I was trying to imagine New York like this, dark and silent, and I have to admit I couldn’t do it. But there’s nothing special about it that would preclude it from ending up exactly like London. It’s a scary thought. What if we couldn’t take it? What if we caved in? A stiff upper lip is a British tradition, not an American one.”
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