Goodnight from London

by Jennifer Robson

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “The couple that lived next door, they were nice, they were. Kept to themselves but still friendly. She needed a cane to walk, and he always said he’d never leave her behind. Warden said . . . he said they tried to hide under the stairs. But the house fell on them, and then the fire . . .”

  He turned his head away, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve, and Ruby found herself blinking back tears as well.

  “I felt bad, you know,” he went on, “going down to the pub so early on a Saturday. My missus would’ve given me holy hell for it. But if I’d been home I’d have gone to the shelter on Oriental Road, since it’s the nearest. And it got a direct hit that night. Everyone was killed.”

  “Your wife . . . ?” she asked gently, fearing the worst.

  “She died a few years back. Would’ve done her in to see the house like this.”

  Ruby knelt in the dirt next to him, not caring if she ruined her stockings. “Do you have anywhere to go?”

  He didn’t answer, his eyes focused on a point just over her shoulder, and for a moment she feared she had gone too far. And then he straightened up, leveled his shoulders, and looked her in the eye.

  “I’ll be fine, don’t you worry. My daughter lives down past Lewisham. She’s on her way to fetch me now. Just came back today to see if there was anything I could fish out of the rubble.”

  “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Mr. . . .”

  “Jemmett. But you can call me Bill.”

  “And you must call me Ruby. Is there anything I can get you? There’s a mobile canteen down the road. I could bring you some tea.”

  “Nah, I’ll be all right. Thanks anyway.”

  As Ruby and Bill talked, Mary had been taking pictures steadily, almost stealthily, and if it hadn’t been for the click and zip of her camera, it would have been easy to forget she was there. She came forward now and tapped Ruby on the shoulder. “It’s time to move on.”

  “Mary is right, I’m afraid. Would you mind if we used your name and photograph in the magazine? The article will probably run in next week’s issue.”

  “Would I mind? I’ll be the talk of the street. I, well . . .” Of course there was no street, not anymore.

  “You’re very brave,” Ruby told him impulsively. “I’m sure your wife would be really proud of you.”

  “Nice of you to say so. You’ve got me wondering, though—what brought you all the way from America? If you don’t mind me asking. Time like this, I’d have thought you’d stay put. Safer over there.”

  “But not half as interesting. I wouldn’t have got to meet you if I’d stayed at home, would I? Good luck, Bill.”

  “And good luck to you, Ruby.”

  AT THE END of September, unable to sleep after the third cycle of siren, shelter, and all clear since dusk, she wrote an hour-by-hour description of living through a night of bombing: the call of the siren, the rush for shelter, the hours of waiting. The dreadful anticipation of what morning would bring.

  She rewrote it at least a dozen times before working up the courage to show Kaz, and still she was uncertain. The man read faster than anyone she’d ever met, but it was a long while before he looked up from her typewritten pages.

  “I like it. I do, but . . .”

  “It’s not quite right, is it? I knew it. There’s something missing, but I can’t—”

  “It’s missing you,” he said. “It’s missing your point of view. Rewrite this in the first person. Tell the readers who you are, and how you came to be here.”

  “But it’s not my place to editorialize,” she protested. “I’m meant to stand aside so the reader—”

  “Did you learn that at the knee of Mike Mitchell? As far as I know, Mike’s never had to endure an aerial bombardment for—what day is it today?”

  “Monday the thirtieth.”

  “For twenty-three straight nights and counting. Your first day here, you told me you were an outsider. You said you wanted to stand back and observe.”

  “I did. But—”

  “So? Now you’re in the thick of things. You’re in the middle of this Blitz, same as we all are. You might as well be honest about it.”

  Dispatches from London

  by Miss Ruby Sutton

  September 31, 1940

  . . . I don’t think I could describe it if I hadn’t lived through it. It’s as simple as that. The fear of the bombs is real enough, and if there’s a man or woman in London who isn’t scared during the raids I’d like to borrow some of their courage. It’s their good humor that surprises me. How this city can paste a smile on its collective face and still get to work more or less on time, still get the jobs done that need doing, and apart from a wobbly moment here or there, still find things to joke and sing and laugh about, I haven’t yet figured out. When I do I’ll let you know . . .

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  October 1940

  They were winding up their weekly editorial meeting when Kaz announced, to no one in particular, that he was going to a concert at the National Gallery that afternoon.

  “Anyone care to join me? Mary?”

  “All right.”

  “Nigel? Nell? Peter? Ruby? Come on. A little culture won’t kill you.”

  The others mumbled their excuses, but Ruby was intrigued by the invitation. “What sort of concert?”

  “Classical music.”

  “I . . .”

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who only like modern music. Swing bands with their drums and saxophones and screeching clarinets. Stuff of nightmares,” he grumbled.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d been to a Benny Goodman concert.”

  Across the room, Nell let out a squeal of delight. “You’ve heard him play?”

  “Only the once, about a year ago. It was wonderful.” The concert ticket had been so expensive she’d nearly fainted, more than two whole dollars, but as soon as Mr. Goodman had stepped forward with his clarinet, she’d been in heaven.

  “I insist you come to the concert,” Kaz said, interrupting her reverie. “I’m certain you’ll enjoy it far more than Mr. Goodman’s startling syncopations.”

  “Very well,” Ruby agreed. “If you insist.” It would certainly be something new, and that couldn’t be bad.

  “When do you want to set off?” Mary asked Kaz.

  “Oh, let’s say a quarter to twelve? Just in case there’s a queue. We can get something to eat from the canteen at the gallery.”

  They all wandered back to their desks, their respective assignments crowding out other concerns, and Ruby settled down to the business of figuring out how to structure the story she’d been assigned: a day in the life of a Women’s Voluntary Service canteen worker. Nigel had suggested she ring up “someone” at the service and ask to be put in touch with a suitable subject, but Ruby would only adopt that approach as a last resort. A direct approach to the WVS would waste time, for there would inevitably be a tedious amount of official dithering as to who should be selected for the profile. There was also the likelihood of her being saddled with an interview subject whose personality was as lively as a piece of waterlogged cardboard.

  “All set?”

  She looked up to find Mary and Kaz in front of her desk. “Sorry. I lost track of time.” She stuffed her notebook in her bag and hurried after them, only stopping to grab her coat and hat from the rack in the front room. “Where are we going again?”

  “Trafalgar Square,” Kaz answered over his shoulder. “The concerts are in the basement of the National Gallery.”

  They turned south, walking down to the Thames and, she assumed, toward Blackfriars Underground station.

  “Why have the concerts in the first place? I’d have thought people were too busy for things like that.”

  “What are we fighting for, if not things of beauty like music and art?” Kaz all but barked, but then, as if realizing how harsh he sounded, he smiled at Ruby apologetically. “Sorry. It’s a bugbear of mine, this
notion that we all have to put our noses to the grindstone and ignore everything else if we want to defeat Hitler. I disagree, and that is why I’m on my way to enjoy a concert of beautiful music. What can he do to stop me?”

  “He can bomb the gallery,” Ruby observed.

  “He already has. They had to evacuate during a concert last week—I think an incendiary dropped through a skylight into an adjoining room. Didn’t stop the show, though. They simply moved downstairs. Beautiful music won the day.”

  “Let’s reserve judgment on the music,” Mary said. “That last concert we went to was something awful.”

  “The Stravinsky? I loved it.”

  “Not my cup of tea at all,” Mary insisted. “Give me Bach or Beethoven any day.”

  “Don’t people complain?” Ruby asked. “They’re both German composers.”

  “Yes, and to my sure and certain knowledge neither of them was a member of the Nazi Party,” Kaz grumbled, “so I think we can listen to their music with a clear conscience.”

  “I didn’t mean that—”

  “I know you didn’t, Ruby. Just me tilting at windmills. Right—here we are at the station.”

  A train was pulling in just as they descended to the platform. Though it was already crowded, Kaz insisted they squeeze on regardless. It was no more uncomfortable than the New York subway at rush hour, though, and it was only for a few stops.

  “What music is being performed today?” she asked once they were under way.

  “No idea,” Kaz said. “Likely something traditional. From time to time they experiment with more modern selections—as with the Stravinsky that Mary was whingeing about—but they’re not very popular. Most people want the old chestnuts.”

  “I’ve never heard an actual orchestra before,” Ruby admitted. “Only Mr. Goodman’s jazz band that one time.” She didn’t bother to mention the wheezing, out-of-key accordion that Sister Mary-Frances had played during Mass in the orphanage chapel each morning. That had been a torture device, not a musical instrument.

  “It won’t be an orchestra today,” Kaz cautioned. “Likely just a chamber ensemble. A dozen musicians at most. Or maybe a solo pianist.”

  “First you tell the girl the music will be wonderful, and then you burst her bubble by saying it’ll be one piano tinkling away,” Mary said, directing a playful frown at him. “Make up your mind, won’t you?”

  “Pay her no mind, Ruby. She only comes for the sandwiches at the canteen.”

  “Yes, and why not? They’re better than the cardboard and sawdust they serve up at the Old Bell.”

  Ruby wasn’t sure how to insert herself into the conversation, or even if she should, so she simply listened to them bantering like the old friends they were. Was their closeness born of ease, the sort of comfort you might feel with another who had known you for years and years, had seen you at your worst, and still liked you? Or did it spring from true intimacy—the kind that arose from romantic love? She couldn’t tell, and she certainly wasn’t about to ask. But she did envy them, just a little, all the same.

  As soon as the train pulled into Charing Cross, Kaz led the way upstairs. “It’s a bit of a walk,” he explained, “but it hardly seems worth the effort to change to another line just to go one more stop.”

  They walked for a few hundred yards along Villiers Street, turning left when they reached the Strand, and then the great open space of the square was before them. Only it wasn’t empty at all, but rather was filled with statues and fountains and people, hundreds of people, most of whom seemed to be simply enjoying the glorious afternoon sun.

  “This is . . . something,” she said at last, trying and failing to find an appropriate adjective. “We don’t have anything like this in New York.”

  “Not Times Square?” asked Mary.

  “It’s not really a square. More like a long sort of triangle. And it’s the farthest thing from beautiful. Just a lot of neon signs hanging off buildings.”

  “More like Piccadilly Circus, then.”

  “I guess so.” She had been past Piccadilly in a bus, late in the summer before the Blitz had begun, and it had reminded her a bit of Times Square.

  “Over there,” Kaz said, pointing to the south, “you can see the elegant little shelter they built for the statue of Charles the First—the one who got his head chopped off.” Ruby looked and had to laugh, for the statue had been hidden under a corrugated metal shell that looked like a windmill shorn of its sails.

  She looked back toward the center of the square, to the largest pillar she’d ever seen, its base covered by protective hoardings and a layer of sandbags. She knew it to be Nelson’s Column, and the hero of Trafalgar was still atop his perch, defiantly ignoring the bombers. The great bronze lions at the tower’s base, each as big as an elephant, were also uncovered.

  Around the square she could see a few small craters in the pavement, topped up with gravel while repairs awaited, and some boarded-up windows on nearby buildings. But the fountains were still full of water, the pigeons were still abundant, and the spirit of the square’s occupants was, as far as she could see, still undaunted.

  As they continued on toward the gallery, a building so large that it took up the entire northern side of the square, Ruby noticed a long and growing line of people snaking down the central steps and around to the right. “We’ll never get in.”

  “Only a hundred or so,” Mary said. “We’ll get in, all right. Then you’ll be sorry.”

  “Come on, you two,” Kaz urged them, and they hurried forward to join the end of the line. Seen at closer quarters, the gallery really was gigantic, and seemed to Ruby at least as large as the Metropolitan Museum back home. She’d visited it several times, always emerging with the feeling that, no matter how often she went, she would only ever see a fraction of its treasures.

  “You said the gallery is empty?” she asked Kaz.

  “Yes. Right after war was declared, the—”

  “Hello there!”

  A man had come up on Kaz’s other side and was shaking his hand. Peering around the large form of her editor, Ruby was surprised to see Captain Bennett. He moved on to kiss Mary’s cheek and then, coming face-to-face with Ruby, bent his head to kiss her cheek even as she extended her hand for him to shake.

  “Hello, Ruby. Lovely to see you again.”

  He was in uniform, though there was something subtly different about the insignia on his collar and shoulder tabs; if only she were better at remembering such details. He looked far less tired than he had in July, the shadows beneath his eyes much less pronounced. And his eyes—she hadn’t forgotten how blue they were. As dark and deep a blue as a brand-new pair of denim jeans, and if there was a more American way to describe them, she couldn’t imagine what it was.

  Suddenly she realized she was staring. “You look well,” she said, the imprint of his lips still warm on her cheek. “It’s been a while since I saw you last.”

  “Yes. Sorry about that. I’ve been away since the summer.”

  She’d enjoyed their dinner, and it had been a bit disappointing when she hadn’t heard from him afterward. Funny how she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on that last thought until this exact moment, standing in the sunshine, seeing him again.

  And it was silly to let such a small thing bother her. She was not, and had never been, the sort of girl who would allow herself to sit around moping when there was interesting work to be done. Life was about far more important things than dinners with handsome British army captains.

  “Glad you could get away,” said Kaz. “They keeping you busy?”

  “Not very,” he said agreeably. “I’m working at the Inter-Services Research Bureau now,” he explained for Ruby’s benefit. “No one seemed to mind when I said I’d be taking a long lunch today. Shows my importance in the grand scheme of things.”

  They reached the doors, and there was a moment of détente when she tried to pay for her concert ticket and program, only to be ignored by Kaz, who paid for all
four of them.

  “It’s the least I can do,” he said, “since I all but blackmailed you into coming along.”

  “May I at least buy your lunch?” Ruby asked.

  “You may not,” he said gruffly, but softened his words with a smile.

  The canteen, which was staffed entirely by volunteers, had been set up in an empty upstairs gallery. There were long tables filled with trays of ready-made sandwiches and slices of cake, and at one end a row of urns dispensing tea and coffee.

  “Cream cheese and dates, ham and chutney, cheese and chutney, sausage roll,” recited the volunteer who came forward to serve them.

  “Ham and chutney, please,” Ruby ordered, and was furnished with a sandwich that looked, as Mary had promised, far more tempting than their usual lunch fare at work.

  “Station cake farther along, and tea and coffee, too. Cashier is at the end. Next, please.”

  The station cake, on closer inspection, was a sort of pound cake studded with bits of dried fruit. “Dried plums, my dear,” explained the volunteer doling out slices. “Can’t find glacé cherries for love or money these days. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

  “Oh, no thanks. I’ll be fine with this.” Ruby had learned to be leery of what passed for coffee in London, since it invariably turned out to be hot water tinted with a few drops of tinny-tasting coffee extract.

  “Eat up, everyone,” Kaz commanded. “We’ve only a quarter hour until the concert begins, and I don’t much feel like standing.”

  Their sandwiches and cake devoured, they joined the stream of people making their way down to the basement and a large but low-ceilinged room. At its far end, a magnificent grand piano stood on a raised stage.

  “I wonder how they got the piano down the stairs,” she whispered to Mary as they took their seats about halfway back.