Goodnight from London

by Jennifer Robson

“Good question. Carefully, I expect.”

  She ended up seated between Mary and Captain Bennett, with Kaz on Mary’s other side. “Can you see all right?” the captain asked. “We can switch seats if you like.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “When the concerts started last year, they were upstairs—I can’t remember the name of the room. At any rate, the musicians were directly under a huge glass dome. Beautiful venue, but not a wise place to be during an air raid. No one wants to see Myra Hess skewered by broken glass.”

  “Myra Hess?” she asked. “Is she one of the musicians?”

  “Yes, and the woman who had the idea of holding these concerts. Quite a remarkable person. If we’re lucky she’ll be performing.” He pulled his program, now rather creased, out of his breast pocket and scanned it quickly. “Not today, alas. Haven’t heard of either of the musicians, although they’re usually pretty good. I do like the pieces they’ve chosen.”

  “Ah,” she said, not willing to admit she knew as little about classical music as he likely did about baseball.

  “They’re starting with Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Pianoforte in A Major, then a short intermission, then Elgar’s Violin Sonata in E Minor. The greatest of our modern composers. Beautiful piece, although I prefer his cello concerto.”

  “It sounds like you know a lot about classical music.”

  “My mother was a musician. A pianist, although she never performed professionally. Really more of an avid amateur.”

  “Did she make you learn, too?”

  “Yes, although I was awful about it. Would much rather have been climbing trees or breaking the conservatory windows with a cricket ball. Of course I’m glad now that she made me keep on.”

  A round of applause signaled the arrival of the musicians, two men dressed in uniform who bowed before turning to their instruments. The violinist stood alone at center stage, while the pianist was joined by a young woman who sat on a stool to his side.

  “To turn the pages,” Captain Bennett whispered in her ear.

  Silence . . . and then music, sublime music that filled her thoughts, her senses, obscuring all but the sweeping, plaintive notes of the violin and the precise delicacy of the piano. It was mesmerizing stuff, and Ruby leaned forward, eagerly drinking it in. What little classical music she’d ever heard on the radio had seemed stuffy and ponderous, but this was magic. This was sunshine made audible.

  With one final flourish they were done, and so caught up was she in the performance that she jumped a little when everyone began to applaud. Glancing at her watch, she realized that nearly half an hour had passed. It had felt like only a few minutes.

  “Did you like it?” Captain Bennett asked quietly.

  “I did. I had no idea . . .”

  “It’s lovely, and not performed nearly often enough.”

  “There’s more, though, isn’t there?”

  “Yes. They’ll be back in a minute for the Elgar. It’s very different to the Mozart, but I think you’ll like it just as much. Possibly even more.”

  The Elgar sonata was indeed different, so heartfelt and romantic that it left her breathless and shaky and nearly dizzy with delight. She turned to Captain Bennett in astonishment as the musicians took their bows.

  “I knew you’d like it,” he said.

  “Did you say the composer is English?”

  “Was. Died five or six years ago. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. Only that it’s the most un-English thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Why? Because it’s so passionate?” he asked, and though he tried to put on a serious face, he couldn’t quite keep his smile in check.

  “I guess,” she said, stifling a giggle.

  “Hmm. I’d say you need to get to know us better. Come on—time to go.”

  They made their way outside, a slow process given the hundreds of people who had crowded into the basement, and waited for Mary and Kaz to join them.

  “Mary and I are heading back to the office,” Kaz said, “but you should go on home, Ruby. No point in coming back when I’m just going to send you packing an hour later.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Captain Bennett offered. “My flat isn’t far from the Manchester.”

  “Don’t you have to get back to work? It’s only half-past two.”

  “We keep odd hours at the bureau. They won’t mind.”

  Even bankers kept longer hours than that, but who was she to argue? They said goodbye to Kaz and Mary and walked north along Charing Cross Road, presumably in the direction of the nearest Tube station.

  “I thought we’d take the Piccadilly line to King’s Cross,” he explained after a few minutes. “We can change there for Aldersgate. Unless you were wanting to go somewhere else?”

  “No, home is fine. I have a lot of reading to do.”

  They just managed to squeeze onto the next train, and although it felt a bit uncomfortable, standing only inches from a man she hardly knew, she wasn’t crazy about the idea of getting any nearer to the complete strangers who were pressing close on every other side.

  “I’m sorry for having vanished,” he said after a few minutes in which she studiously avoided making eye contact with him. She looked up, and was surprised to see that he really did look apologetic. “I’ve been away for months. I only returned last week.”

  “I understand,” she said, wondering where he’d been and what he’d been doing, although if he’d wanted her to know, he surely would have explained.

  “I did keep in touch with Kaz while I was away. He said your editor at The American has given you a column.”

  “He has. They call it ‘Dispatches from London.’”

  “Do you enjoy writing it? I presume you haven’t had any difficulty in finding subjects to write about.”

  “None at all. Some weeks I don’t know where to begin . . . there’s so much I want to say. I usually fall back on describing something I’ve seen or experienced personally. Nights in the shelter, the morning after a raid. Conversations I’ve had with people who’ve been affected. That sort of thing.”

  “Kaz certainly likes what you’re doing. Both your columns and the pieces you write for PW.”

  “He does?” And then, although it was pathetic of her to ask, “What did he say?”

  “Among other things, he said you’re able to make a story moving without manipulating the reader. And that you never cut corners, no matter how pressed you are to get a story finished.”

  “That’s . . . that’s very nice of him,” she stammered. “I’m glad that Kaz is pleased with me.”

  “So you’ll call him Kaz, but I’m Captain Bennett to you?”

  The man was determined to confound her. Why should he care what she called him? “Your first name is Charles, isn’t it?”

  He groaned softly, his face twisting in mock disgust. “Yes, but I’m not fond of it. For some fool reason, my mother decided to name me Charles Stuart, always the both names together, after Bonnie Prince Charlie. Never mind that the man was an asinine dullard.”

  “So what am I supposed to call you? Charlie? Chuck? Chaz?”

  “Ha. No, Bennett is fine. Just Bennett.”

  “All right. Bennett, then.” Somehow this seemed even more daring than referring to her editor as Kaz.

  “See? How hard was that?”

  Once the train arrived at King’s Cross, it took them a while to make their way from one platform to the next, since people had already begun to stake out spots in anticipation of the evening’s raids. Ruby thanked her lucky stars, and not for the first time, that she had such a safe and congenial place to shelter each night.

  The platform for the Piccadilly line was already crowded, and two trains came and went before one arrived that wasn’t already bursting at the seams.

  “So you were saying you’d just started at the—” she began, but stopped short when he frowned and shook his head.

  “Not here—sorry. Too many people.”

  Only
when they had left the train, and were walking up the steps at Aldersgate station, did he bend his head to explain, his words tickling at her ear.

  “I am sorry. It’s just that I’m not meant to talk about my work at all. Probably overcautious of me, I know.”

  “Not at all. None of us are meant to talk about anything important. At least that’s what the posters on the Underground say. Is it interesting, though? The work you’re doing?”

  “In fits and starts. A lot of the time it’s actually pretty boring. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but at times it’s even more boring than being a barrister.”

  “I’d have thought being a lawyer—a barrister, I mean—would be really interesting. Being in court, you know, and standing in front of a judge. Arguing about life-and-death things every day.”

  “Not in my case. I specialized in international law. Trade relations and treaties.”

  “So you don’t miss it?”

  “I do, at times. I certainly miss my colleagues. What I don’t miss is that damn wig.”

  “I . . . what? A wig?”

  “In Britain judges and barristers wear wigs in court. A periwig, actually. Imagine the sort of thing your George Washington would have worn. They’re made of horsehair, so they itch like mad.”

  “Where is your wig now?” she asked teasingly. “At the bottom of the Thames?”

  “Now there’s an idea. No, it’s bundled away for the duration, along with my robes. God knows when they’ll see the light of day again.”

  They’d been standing in front of the Manchester for several minutes, she realized. Perhaps he was going to ask her out for dinner.

  His next words put paid to that notion. “I had better be going—I’ve another engagement this evening. Otherwise I would ask you to come to dinner again.”

  “I don’t mind. I should try and get some work done before the first siren goes off. I can’t believe we haven’t had any yet today. Perhaps—”

  “No, they’re coming. Don’t doubt that. Promise me you’ll go to the shelter, will you? People are getting killed because they’re tired and they stay in bed when the sirens sound. Even if the hotel isn’t hit, there’s the shrapnel to consider. It can fly through the window and cut you to pieces.”

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I always go.”

  “Good. Well, good night, then.”

  “Good night, Bennett. Thank you for walking me home.”

  He turned away, crossing the street and disappearing back down the steps to the Underground station, and only after he’d vanished from sight did she go inside, to the solitary comfort of her room, to read and work until the siren began its nightly wail.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  November 1940

  They’d have taken the train north, but the station in Coventry was still being repaired after the air raids of the week before. Instead, Mary had called a friend of a friend, who in turn knew someone with a car they might borrow for the drive.

  They’d agreed to meet outside the Tube station on Tottenham Court Road, which wasn’t far from Mary’s flat. Ruby was there promptly at nine o’clock, but it was closer to half past before her colleague came roaring around the corner in a jaunty little Baby Austin.

  By the time they emerged from the tangle of London’s streets onto the motorway, Ruby was feeling distinctly green around the gills. Not only did Mary drive at breakneck speeds, freely using her horn to communicate with other drivers, but she also smoked one cigarette after the other, explaining briefly that driving made her nervous.

  “You really ought to learn how to drive,” Mary observed. “It’s important for a woman. Gives you freedom.”

  “I don’t disagree with you. It’s just that no one drives in New York, apart from the cabbies. There never seemed any point in learning.” Nor had she ever imagined any circumstance in which she might aspire to own anything as expensive as a car, but that was a discussion for another day.

  “Didn’t you ever want to drive into the countryside? Breathe in some fresh air?” her friend asked, exhaling yet another lungful of stifling smoke.

  Ruby wound down her window a few inches before answering. “That’s what Central Park is for. Acres of green, and more than enough fresh air to go around. Anyway, I thought you said you hated the countryside. That’s why you left Scotland.”

  “I didn’t much care for it as a place to live, but I don’t mind a wee visit now and again.”

  Ruby checked her wristwatch for the first time since she’d left; at the speed they were traveling, she judged, they’d probably reach Coventry by noon. That would give them time to visit the cathedral, or what little remained of it, and then attend the first of the mass funerals the government had arranged. Something like five hundred people had been killed on the night of the fourteenth, and they were still uncovering corpses a week later.

  They would then attend the service, or rather stand by at a respectful distance, and capture the mood of the hour as discreetly as possible. On this, Kaz had been adamant, and had all but shouted Nigel down when the assistant editor had instructed Ruby to try to get quotes from people at the funeral.

  “No, no, no. For the love of all that’s holy—you want her to accost the mourners at a mass funeral? Are you out of your mind, Nigel? No.” Waving off Nigel’s sputtering objections, he turned to Ruby. “If anyone seems inclined to talk, by all means listen—but do not approach anyone before or after the funeral. Not even if every other journalist there is getting quotes.”

  “I understand.”

  “The images of the cathedral and the ruined city—that’s what this piece will hang on. That’s why you’re going. A few months from now, it might be worth sending you back, but not now.”

  Armed with a road map from Mr. Dunleavy, Ruby had acted as navigator for the trip north without too much difficulty, a near miracle given the lack of road signs and her unfamiliarity with the region. And there was no mistaking Coventry as they approached its outskirts: the closer they got, the more bomb sites they passed, and the dread of what they were shortly to witness began to weigh upon her.

  At Ruby’s direction, Mary turned the car off the London Road and onto one of the ancient medieval streets just south of the cathedral precincts. On either side, the burned-out shells of shops and houses stood in mute testament to the firestorm they had endured. After only a few yards, however, Mary pulled the car to the side of the road and switched off the ignition.

  “If I go any further I’ll puncture a tire, and God only knows where I’d find a spare. We’ll have to walk from here.”

  The street, narrow to begin with, was choked with rubble and debris, although someone had cleared a rough path down its center. Most of the buildings they passed were in ruins, and the few that had survived, some with only broken windows by way of damage, looked as out of place as a tree on a battlefield. They picked their way forward, moving slower than a snail’s pace, and only when they were nearly at the end of the street did they notice the policeman standing at the far corner.

  Since there wasn’t much they could do if he decided to be difficult, Ruby would have to win him over first. She pasted a friendly but serious smile on her face—she had mastered that smile over the past few months—and crossed the last few yards that separated them.

  “Good morning, Constable,” she said, praying she had interpreted his uniform insignia correctly. “We’re with Picture Weekly magazine.” She already had her press card in her hand, and held it out to him now. “If it’s not too much trouble, we were hoping to get a little closer to the cathedral. But only with your permission, of course.”

  He inspected her card, and then Mary’s, too, frowning all the while. “Come along with me, then,” he said at last. “Watch your step.”

  They followed him along the street, progressing even more slowly as the piles of wreckage on either side grew higher and higher. Ruby winced as her stockings caught and tore yet again; looking down, she saw a thin line of blood trickling down her l
eg. She must have cut it on some broken glass.

  “From London, are you?”

  “I’m American, actually—I guess that was obvious as soon as I opened my mouth. And Mary here is a Scot,” Ruby answered, resigned to the loss of yet another pair of stockings. “But we both live in London now.”

  “Hmm,” he said, and then, after they’d gone another few yards, “I expect you’ve been having a hard time of it, too.”

  “Not as hard as you. This is awful. Were you on duty last week?”

  “No. Probably the only reason I’m still alive. Station where I work took a direct hit.” He didn’t elaborate, and she knew better than to press him on it.

  “When did it all start?”

  “Around seven in the evening. Incendiaries were raining down like hailstones. The cathedral caught on fire around an hour later. They did their damnedest to fight it off, but what chance did they have? The roof leads just melted away.”

  The corpse of the cathedral, for how else was she to think of it, now loomed before them. They approached cautiously, silently, for it already had the feeling of a place of pilgrimage. Its masonry was streaked black with soot, and its delicate window embrasures were twisted and broken, their centuries-old stained glass lost forever. It was a desecration.

  They walked around its perimeter, Mary taking photo after photo, and eventually they came to a space, in the shadow of the still-standing tower, where the great church’s outer wall had collapsed entirely.

  “I can’t let you go in. We’re busy enough as it is without having to rescue the pair of you,” the constable stated gruffly.

  “Of course,” Ruby said. “We’ll stay here.”

  So she stood and stared and tried to make sense of what her eyes were showing her. The cathedral was entirely open to the sky, for what remained of its roof had collapsed into a mountain of rubble, and every bit of its interior decoration, every treasure it had once contained, lay buried beneath the ruins. She was looking at a building that had stood for something like seven centuries, weathering all that history had thrown in its path, and in one night it had been obliterated.

  “The king was here a few days ago,” the constable said quietly. “He stood just where you are now. Had the same expression on his face as you have now.”