“I don’t, but thanks all the same.” The nuns had been quick to cane any girl who came home smelling of smoke, and then once she was working, it had seemed silly to take up a habit that was expensive and would leave her with a cough and bad breath.
“I was wondering . . . I mean, how long have you been a photographer?” She held her breath, hoping that Mary wouldn’t decide to close her eyes and feign sleep, or, even worse, just stare at her as she’d done to poor Mr. Renfrew.
“Fifteen years? Yes, that’s about right. I started as a writer like you, but I wasn’t much good at it.” Mary paused to remove a strand of tobacco from her upper lip. “Was much better behind a camera. I worked at a woman’s magazine for a while. Hated it. Then a daily paper—hated that, too. Men there were vile. Not that the men at PW can’t be idiots, but Kaz keeps them in line. Don’t have to worry about getting my bottom pinched or anyone cornering me in the darkroom.”
Ruby nodded, privately thinking that any man who tried to corner Mary would have to be crazy. “It was a bit like that in New York. Not the bottom-pinching, thank goodness, but some of the men were disgusting. The jokes they’d tell . . . and they honestly expected me to laugh along.”
“Did you?”
“No. I always found an excuse to get away.” They sat in silence until Ruby worked up the nerve to ask another question. At least it was good practice for reluctant interview subjects.
“I guess you’re from Scotland,” she stated, praying that she’d correctly guessed the origin of Mary’s accent.
“Aye, tha’ I am. From Dumbarton, no’ far from Glasgow,” Mary answered, exaggerating her brogue before abandoning the act with a wink. “It was beautiful there, but I couldn’t wait to leave. Soon as I finished school I was off to Glasgow. Did a course in typing—hated it, of course—then came down to London to find my fortune.”
“Do you miss Scotland?”
“Not really. I was never much for the outdoors. A city lass at heart, I suppose. London’s my home now.”
Mary had been looking out the window, but now she turned her head and looked Ruby in the eye. “I’ve been meaning to warn you. Peter and Frank are decent fellows, but try not to step on their toes. Like all men, they fight dirty, and I promise they’ll get in your way if you get in theirs. D’you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Most of all, watch out for Nigel Vernon. He’s a good enough editor, but he didn’t want you here in the first place. He may be over it, but be wary of him all the same. I don’t trust him one bit, and I’ve known him for years.”
“Why didn’t he want me here? Is it because I’m an American?”
“Could be. Could be he didn’t fancy having another woman on staff. Or he might’ve had a bee in his bonnet for some reason that has nothing to do with you. I wouldn’t waste your time worrying about it. And Kaz will always have your back, no matter what. He’s as different from Nigel as chalk and cheese.”
It was disappointing, and more than a little disheartening, to learn the assistant editor had been set against her before she’d even set foot in England. It would be an uphill battle to prove herself, but at least she’d be prepared if things did get worse. And it was good to know that Kaz could be relied upon to defend her.
“Thank you, Mary. I’m very grateful for your advice.”
“You’re welcome. Now I’m going to have another wee nap. Wake me when we get to London.”
Dispatches from London
by Miss Ruby Sutton
July 9, 1940
. . . While visiting Brighton on England’s south coast last week, a group of adults overheard some words of wisdom from Johnny, age 6. “It’s better to be safe than sorry,” he told his mother, and it’s hard to disagree with him right now. The beaches there have been outfitted with enough defenses to make anyone think twice about setting a toe on their sands. It makes for a dismal sight for those in the mood for a sunny holiday, but they’re a grand thing for anyone looking to sleep well at night . . .
CHAPTER SIX
September 7, 1940
It had been such a nice day.
At work that morning, she’d helped Peter with a story he was writing on Vic Oliver. The comedian had been the top act in a series of sold-out shows at the Hippodrome, and despite the disruption of near nightly air-raid sirens, he hadn’t yet canceled or cut short any of the shows. He was also the prime minister’s son-in-law, although he had refused to talk about his ties with the Churchill family during the brief interview he’d given Peter.
Ruby had done the background research for the story, and with Mr. Dunleavy’s help had managed to put together a fairly comprehensive biography of Mr. Oliver. He was Austrian by birth, although he had no accent to speak of, and he was also Jewish. According to more than one recent story she had dug up, he was on a list of prominent British Jews who were marked for arrest when Germany invaded. All the braver, then, for him to remain in the spotlight.
At one o’clock, the start of their weekend, everyone had trooped downstairs to the Old Bell for lunch. Encouraged by Peter and Nell, Ruby had ordered a half-pint of cider with her cheese sandwich. She’d liked the taste of it well enough, but it had made her sleepy, and there was no way she was going to waste a half day off by napping.
As they were putting on their coats, Peter had asked her to the pictures. She’d almost said yes, for it had been ages since she’d seen a movie, but the way his face had reddened when he stammered out his invitation had led her, ever so gently, to decline. Best not to encourage any romantic feelings on his part, for she had neither the inclination nor the energy for anything beyond work. And it was true, as she’d told him, that she was tired and was planning on an early night.
She’d also been wondering if Captain Bennett might reappear at some point. She hadn’t heard a word from him since their dinner together, though she hadn’t expected to; he had, after all, just been doing his friend a favor. All the same, the memory of the man, so certain and sure and quietly strong, when set against the insignificant reality of Peter’s timid presence, did the latter no favors.
“Perhaps, um, another time? When you’re not so tired? We could go to dinner after work, and then the pictures?” her colleague persisted, his gaze fixed on a point past her shoulder.
“Perhaps,” she said, praying that he didn’t interpret her response as a guarantee of any kind. To her relief, he simply nodded, shook her hand suddenly, and bolted for the door.
Rather than walk straight home, she had lingered in the churchyard outside St. Paul’s, letting the afternoon sun warm her face while she admired the stern simplicity of the cathedral’s exterior. She hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to venture inside. It had been years since she’d willingly gone to church, any sort of church, and even her curiosity wasn’t enough, today at least, to propel her any further.
Eventually she wandered back to the hotel and, rather than take up the book she’d begun the night before, decided to type up the notes she’d made that morning. Would she ever tire of the sound and rhythm of her Underwood? The keys made such a pleasing noise as they struck the paper, and it was immensely satisfying to see the loops and dashes of her shorthand transformed into crisp, clean words. Secretarial college had been a long-drawn-out ordeal, but the skills she’d acquired had proved their worth many times over since then. Apart from Evelyn, she was the only person at PW who knew how to type properly—everyone else just picked away with their index fingers.
After an hour, perhaps more, she got up to open her window, for the room was becoming uncomfortably warm. She returned to her desk, her fingers poised above the typewriter keys, and that’s when she noticed the noise. A rumble in the air, insistent and growing, unlike anything she’d ever heard. She went back to the window, leaned out as far as she dared, and craned her neck to see the sky above, though the neighboring buildings obscured all but a narrow strip of blue.
Where, a moment before, there had been nothing but empty sky, there was now movement.
The strip of blue became a pattern, speckled with black dots that swam in and out of focus, and the pattern was moving, the shapes above advancing in perfect formation.
Airplanes, flying high above London.
She checked her wristwatch: a few minutes past five o’clock. It wouldn’t hurt to go outside and get a better look at what was happening. Perhaps she would be able to tell which sort of planes they were—or, more likely, rely on someone else to tell her. If only she had read and committed to memory the articles on identifying enemy warplanes that all the papers had been running, or had thought to cut one out for future reference.
She had just started to lace up her shoes when the air-raid siren began to howl. The sound didn’t startle her, for the siren had become a backdrop to everyday life in recent weeks. A few times over the course of the past month, an enemy bomber had made it past the RAF and dropped a payload of bombs on outlying suburbs, but casualties and damage had been slight so far.
There was no time to spare. She put on her coat, stuffed her notebook and pencil into her bag, and ran down the stairs to the hotel’s basement. Her camp bed in the corner was waiting for her, and the same familiar faces of the other boarding guests were there, and nothing felt very different. Except she could tell that it was different. They all could.
She ought to be making notes—the sounds she could hear from outside, the demeanor of the other people in the basement, her thoughts as she waited for the all clear—but she couldn’t bring herself to take out her notebook. Not yet. Not until she had a better idea of what was going on.
The sounds from outside were indistinct and impossible to interpret, muffled as they were by the basement’s thick stone foundations. Of course that was a good thing, for whatever was happening must be far away, but it did make the waiting a much more fearful experience.
The rising drone of the all clear sounded after an hour, and rather than return to her room, Ruby went straight outside, as did most of the people who had been in the basement shelter with her. Nothing seemed all that different, not at first glance, but then she turned to the horizon, toward the roseate glow of the setting sun. And it dawned on her that she was facing east, not west.
She dug in her bag for the A to Z that Captain Bennett had given her, but even with its help she couldn’t pinpoint the source of the fire, or fires, that were staining the sky red. Was it Whitechapel or Stepney? Rotherhithe or the Isle of Dogs? Had the docks and warehouses been hit? There was no way to tell, not without a bird’s-eye view of the city.
It seemed a bit pointless to just stand on the sidewalk, so she went back inside and ate her share of the meager supper—bread and margarine, jam and tea—the hotel’s kitchen staff had been able to produce.
“No water coming in from the mains,” Maggie explained, “and the gas has been switched off, too.”
“I don’t mind. I wasn’t all that hungry, anyway.”
“Best eat up, all the same. Never know when they’ll be back.”
At eight o’clock the sirens sounded again, so down they all trooped to the basement, guests and hotel staff sitting cheek by jowl in the dim and faintly damp shelter. A few stalwart souls tried to start up conversations with their neighbors, but earned only disapproving glares for their efforts. Instead, everyone seemed intent on charting the noises filtering through from outside. The rumbling hum of the bombers, the dull crump of falling bombs, the ineffectual bark of too few antiaircraft guns. Whatever was happening in the East End was still an abstraction, a calamity that felt palpably distant.
And yet, Ruby reflected, the simple fact that she could hear the bombs meant that she wasn’t anywhere near distant enough. In that moment, the opposite side of the ocean felt very much like the right place to be.
The all clear sounded just shy of dawn. Desperate for some fresh air, she stumbled up the stairs and straight outside, but there was no relief to be found. Smoke hung heavy in the air, overlaid by a terrible stench that clawed at her nose and throat. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief, desperate to dull the smell, and held it over her face.
“From the docks.” One of the hotel cooks, still wearing his cap and apron, came forward to stand next to her. “Whatever was in the warehouses down on the docks is on fire now. Lumber, paraffin, sugar, tar, spirits. It’s all on fire. That’s what you smell.”
Ruby nodded, her throat too dry to speak.
“I’ve got family down Stepney way,” he said. “I hope . . .” he began, his words trailing off. He turned away, shaking his head, and went back inside.
Her eyes gritty from lack of sleep, or perhaps just from the smoky air, Ruby started walking. She didn’t have a destination in mind, but anything would be better than returning to her room. She didn’t have a radio, and the morning papers wouldn’t have any news of what happened. She had to see for herself.
Fifteen minutes later she was at the Thames, a few yards from the northern end of Southwark Bridge. Others had gathered at its railings, likely feeling just as restless and bewildered, and she went to join them. Tower Bridge was due east, nearly a mile distant, its distinctive silhouette still intact, but every landmark beyond had been blotted out by spiraling towers of oily black smoke and a dawn sky painted crimson by fire.
She turned her attention to the people around her, and her heart seized with sympathy. Haggard, disheveled, they were carelessly dressed in whatever garments had been at hand when the raid began. One man had belted a raincoat over his pajamas. All bore the same expression: exhausted, frightened, wary of what was to come, and yet grimly determined to endure.
THE BOMBERS RETURNED the next night, and the next, and the next, until it was hard to recall what life had been like before sirens and shelters and scattered moments of agitated, restive sleep. Only the unfailing routine of work kept her sane, or so she convinced herself; and she was needed at work, day in and day out, for the hours they spent in the shelters almost every day meant they were hard-pressed to get the magazine out on time.
Kaz never left the office, or when he did he only went home to bathe and change. He was there when she arrived at the crack of dawn, and there when she left in the late afternoon, for he insisted they all finish early in order to be home before the sirens began their nightly clamor.
Life settled into a wearying routine that was marked by four or five siren warnings over the course of the morning and afternoon, only one of which ever seemed to turn into an actual raid, and then the exercise in endurance of the nightly raids, which might easily last seven or eight hours. Day after day, week after week, until Ruby felt as flat and fragile as a scrap of tissue paper.
Little had changed outwardly at the office, although after a building across the lane had been hit, Kaz had enlisted everyone’s help to move Mr. Dunleavy’s library into the basement. There his precious store of back issues and reference books would be safer from the bombs, though not from flooding if a nearby water main were hit. This last thought Ruby kept to herself.
Stories of the Blitz, as people had begun to call it, became her and Mary’s bread and butter, and much of what she contributed was sent on to New York for use in The American as well. The world was watching London, it seemed, and was avid for any insight into the wellspring of courage that had arisen to sustain the city’s people.
Less than a week into the bombings, Ruby and Mary traveled east to Silvertown, a working-class enclave sandwiched between the Royal Albert Docks and the Thames, and ringed round with petroleum depots, a chemical works, a sugar refinery, a gas plant, and scores of warehouses packed full of flammable goods. A single spark would have been enough to set off a powerful blaze in Silvertown; a sustained assault by the Luftwaffe had been enough to level nearly all of it.
“It seems opportunistic,” Ruby had protested when Nigel had assigned the story earlier that week. “We could end up doing more harm than good.”
“Every other paper and magazine in the country is going there,” he’d insisted. “But you want us to miss the story because you’
re worried about hurting some dockworker’s delicate feelings?”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant,” Kaz interrupted. “The thing is, we do need the story. That’s a given. But you can get it without upsetting anyone. Ask as few questions as possible. Let people talk—that’s what you need to remember. Just let them talk.”
So they had gone to Silvertown and walked along its ruined streets and spoken with anyone who was in the mood to answer questions. Some turned away when they saw Ruby with her notebook and Mary with her camera. A few had broken down, unable to speak. But most had willingly, if not cheerfully, submitted to her questions.
The best interview, the one Ruby would remember for the rest of her life, was with the first man they met there. He was sitting on a block of rubble, his face and clothing coated in a layer of fine gray dust, a figurine of a Staffordshire dog clutched to his chest. Behind him were the smoldering ruins of a row of modest houses.
“Good morning,” she said, her mouth dry with nerves. “My name is Ruby Sutton and I’m from Picture Weekly. This is my colleague, Mary Buchanan. I apologize for bothering you, but would you mind speaking with us?” She held her breath, certain that he would refuse.
“Pretty girls like you? ’Course I don’t mind. Come round to see the pasting we got from Jerry?”
“I, ah . . .”
“Our boys chucked it back at them last night, though. Air raid warden was telling me so just this morning. Sent them limping back home to lick their wounds.”
“They certainly did. Was . . . was this your house?”
“It was. The one on the end. Not much of it left now.”
“But you rescued your dog.”
He looked down, surprised by what she’d said, and realized she was talking about the figurine he held. “Oh, right. Only half the pair. Was my mum’s. She’d be mad as a wet hen if she saw I’d let one of ’em get broken.”
“Do you feel up to telling me what happened?”
“I was at the pub when the siren started. Near soon as we heard it go, the bombs started falling thick and fast. So we hid out in their cellar, tight as sardines, till the all clear sounded. There was so much smoke that morning. Could hardly see my hand in front of my face. My house . . . it was gone when I got home, and most of the street with it.”
Goodnight from London Page 6