The Last Bookshop in London

by Madeline Martin

  “They didn’t get close.” Mrs. Weatherford rose stiffly from where she sat with a hand pressed to her lower back. “I’ll go put the kettle on.”

  She gathered up the candleholder with its pool of melted wax, the wick blackened and spent, and limped from the shelter. Grace went inside as well, but didn’t bother with tea. Her body ached from the uncomfortable position, and her eyes were heavy with exhaustion. Never had she been so grateful to have a day off from the bookshop.

  She woke later to a familiar tar-like scent. The carbolic smell grew stronger when she opened the door to her bedroom and made her way down a gleaming stairwell. Mrs. Weatherford greeted her at the bottom with a sad, apologetic smile. She wore a dark housedress and no jewelry or lipstick, but her gray hair had been pulled back in a neat roll.

  “Thank you for what you said last night.” Mrs. Weatherford self-consciously touched a hand to her hair. “You were right about Colin not wanting me to be like that. I can do this.” She swallowed hard. “For him.”

  Grace embraced Mrs. Weatherford, holding the other woman tightly. “We both can.”

  Mrs. Weatherford nodded against her shoulder. They spent the remainder of the day cleaning the house and working in the garden, now filled with beans, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.

  Through it all, a hazy cloud settled over the East End, a shroud to the many who had died.

  Midway through the day came yet another air raid, lasting nearly three hours. Only this time, the noise of the planes was accompanied by the boom of the anti-aircraft guns.

  Gossip hummed in the neighborhood louder than the bombers’ far-off engines. It was said hundreds died in the attack on the East End. Many had been left homeless, and the fires from the night before still blazed out of control.

  Grace listened attentively to each piece of news, stitching them together in her mind like a macabre quilt in an attempt to create a whole story. No matter how much she heard or even how many times it was repeated, she craved more. She was not alone in this desperation for information. Every wireless set in London was tuned to the broadcasts, and newspaper shelves were soon stripped bare.

  That evening, Grace was on the ARP schedule to work the night shift with Mr. Stokes, starting at 7:30 and ending at 8:00 the next morning. Though it was only three days a week and Mr. Evans allowed her to come in later the following days, it often left Grace tired.

  That night, however, she was beyond exhausted, her mind as gritty as her eyelids. Regardless, she would ensure she was sharp for her post. Of all nights to watch for visible lights, this would be one of the most important after what had happened to the East End.

  “It’s still burning,” Mr. Stokes said under his breath, squinting in the distance where a subtle red glow flickered. “I’ve a mate who works for the AFS near there; he said the scene was like something out of hell.”

  Grace did not envy the Auxiliary Fire Service, who had the extraordinary task of putting out such a blaze.

  She followed his stare. “I can’t imagine how awful it must be.”

  “Terrible,” Mr. Stokes answered. “Harry said hundreds of people died, some blasted so hard by the bombs, their clothes were ripped clean off.”

  Grace stopped walking, unable to even fathom something so awful.

  “Pieces of bodies were all over the street.” Mr. Stokes spread his hand through the air. “They had to keep stopping to clear away bloody bits from the road so they could drive on.”

  Mr. Stokes had always been one to amplify the gory details. Only in this particular case, she didn’t think he was exaggerating. And while she’d never offered much complaint before, his gratuitous attention to the gruesomeness raked over her nerves.

  Not noticing her silence, he continued. “A shelter was bombed too. On Columbia Road. A bomb fell straight down the ventilation shaft and...” He spread his hands slowly apart and imitated the rumble of an explosion. “Whole families killed off all at once.”

  “Mr. Stokes,” she said sharply. “How can a veteran such as yourself speak so cavalierly about the dead after the things you’ve no doubt seen?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “I’m no veteran. They wouldn’t take me in the Great War.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders, his mustache twitching. “Said I had a weak heart.”

  A weak heart.

  If they’d bothered to look deeper, Grace was certain they’d discover he had none at all.

  A sharp wail cut through the air suddenly, the cry announcing yet another slew of bombers. Her blood ran cold with pure terror.

  In the bombing the previous night, she’d been safely tucked inside the Andy. But wardens didn’t lock themselves inside when there were people to protect.

  No, they patrolled their designated sector, on the lookout for bombs and damage that might have been done so they could administer first aid to those who were injured. And help locate the ones who didn’t survive.

  She would be exposed there in the street, not even covered by the thin sheet of the Anderson shelter’s crimped aluminum.

  Vulnerable.

  “Come now, don’t tell me you’re frightened.” Mr. Stokes clapped a hand on Grace’s shoulder.

  She shot him a hard look, but it did little to chasten him. Instead, he laughed and shook his head. “This is why women shouldn’t be allowed to volunteer for a job clearly meant for men.”

  She stiffened at the offense, a sharp retort on her tongue, but he’d already wandered off toward the stream of residents exiting their homes. He waved his arm as though directing traffic, shepherding the frightened masses from the Borough of Islington toward their designated shelter.

  She gritted her teeth and recalled her training. She knew what to say. What to do. She need not allow the Nazis to get the best of her.

  The siren cut short and voices filled the air, asking any number of questions all at once. Where were they to go? How long would the raid last? Would it be quite as long as the previous night?

  Would they be bombed?

  All questions neither Grace nor Mr. Stokes could answer.

  But there was something about their worried faces and the way their voices trembled with panic. It reminded her of why she was there, to help the masses in their time of need. To be the example of calm when they were frightened.

  Soon, her even-toned instructions joined those of Mr. Stokes, leading with well-trained guidance and offering support. She led them to the shelter, their numbers far greater than during any of the air raids before.

  As people entered the brick shelter lined with sandbags, Grace recorded their names, recognizing all of them from Mr. Stokes’s nightly roster of house numbers. It made sense to her then, as she put the addresses to faces, how knowing who lived where and who was safely sheltered held such importance. The drone of planes caught at her awareness, tickling the insides of her ears and running a chill down her spine.

  They were louder than before.

  And growing closer still.

  Mr. Stokes glanced sharply behind them and slammed the door to the shelter shut. Grace looked in the same direction, searching the darkness for something, anything, with which to gauge the location of nearby planes.

  Spears of light stabbed up through the night sky as the anti-aircraft guns sought out their targets, the beam rolling over the dense underbellies of clouds. When Grace had seen the planes in the park, they had been flecks in the distance. Now, they looked much larger. Closer. Like an enormous black bird pinned in the center of the shaft of light.

  A German plane.

  Not above them, but near enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, an anti-aircraft gun boomed into action, its baritone shots rumbling in Grace’s bones.

  A dark, oblong object slipped from the bottom of the plane and sailed downward. A bomb.

  She and Mr
. Stokes stood transfixed as it glided toward its target, a whistle of air building around it as it went, followed by a fraction of a second of silence, so quick one could scarce blink. Then a flash of light. A soul-shuddering boom that rattled the ground where they stood. A cloud of smoke belched upward, flickering with flames.

  And just like that, someone’s house might be lost. A family might have been killed.

  The reality of it happening in Grace’s borough, to people she might know, was like a dagger in her chest. But she couldn’t stand in awe of something so terrible. Not when she had a job to do.

  It was difficult to tell from where they stood if the bomb hit within their sector. Adrenaline fired through her body. She charged through the empty street, lit by the nearby glow of a fire as well as the rekindled flames of the East End, which had clearly been struck again.

  As she twisted her way through the blocks they were charged with monitoring, the sounds of war grew louder. Only this time, the rattle of the flying planes was muted by the whistling of falling bombs and the shuddering booms of their impact. All this combined with the constantly firing anti-aircraft guns as well as the RAF overhead in aerial battle with Germany. When a lull presented itself, the ringing bells of an AFS vehicle could be heard on its way to one of the many fires raging throughout London.

  Grace’s breath rasped in her lungs as she ran, her legs moving with such force, they felt as though they might separate from her body and go on without her. Her feet crunched over the street where millions of shards of glass littered the road, sparkling like rubies in the glowing red light of London’s inferno. Every window of the houses on the left side of the street had been blown out, their shredded curtains hanging out like ragged black hair and their doors all knocked from their hinges.

  The scrim tape, so carefully applied in each of those homes, had clearly done nothing.

  “Miss Bennett, slow down.” Mr. Stokes puffed at her side. “Do remember my heart.”

  But Grace did not slow. People who might be dying wouldn’t give a fig about his heart, she thought. She rounded the corner and skidded to a halt.

  There in front of her was a massive gap in the neat row of townhouses, backlit by the flames. In its place was a smoldering pile of rubble where someone’s house had been.

  Their sector had been bombed, and now Grace’s job as an ARP warden truly began.

  THIRTEEN

  Grace drew to a stop before the bombed-out house on Clerkenwell Road, the muscles in her legs jumping from her exertion. The address was no longer visible in the rubble that had once been a home, but she could make out the two on either side well enough to identify the missing house number. For that number was tied to names in her mind, repeated by Mr. Stokes three times a week at several intervals on every watch.

  Mr. and Mrs. Hews, an elderly couple, had lived in that house since they wed nearly fifty years prior. Mr. Stokes often mentioned Mrs. Hews’s fondness for chocolate and how she’d always carried one just for him when he’d been a boy.

  Mr. Stokes’s footsteps slowed as he appeared beside Grace. “Mrs. Hews,” he whispered, his expression stark as he observed the ruins.

  “They were in the shelter.” Grace recalled the names from the list she’d assembled as people entered the door. “Mr. Stokes, they’re safe.”

  “Good.” He nodded. “Good. That’s good.”

  They set to work, dousing the small flames that flickered in the rubble with their stirrup pumps and continued their watch on the rest of the sector. More bombs fell as the night went on, though no more were in their area of patrol. The better part of their night was spent sweeping up the fallen glass on the surrounding streets where all the windows had been blown out, and at one point chasing away looters from the Hewses’ property.

  Mr. Stokes waited for Mr. and Mrs. Hews when the all clear sounded, thinking it best that he be the one to share the dismal news. Their pain was difficult to witness. After all, a woman’s pride was her home, and Mrs. Hews had put a lifetime of work into the grand little townhouse where purple cabbages grew in flower boxes that once held geraniums.

  But in the end, it wasn’t only Grace and Mr. Stokes who stayed on after the all clear to help them sort through the dusty rubble for anything salvageable. The inhabitants of the entire row of townhouses helped as well as neighbors from other streets. They ignored their own broken windows and blown-out doors to offer aid to those whose suffering was far greater than their own. A community brought together by loss.

  Their close friends took the meager pile of possessions to hold for them while Grace directed the stunned couple to the local rest center to be sheltered until a new home could be found. After Grace’s shift ended, she made her way back to Britton Street in such a fatigued state that her feet could scarcely function and clumsily stumbled over one another. She fell into bed with her dirty clothes on and slept where she landed until she could rouse herself for her shift at the bookshop.

  * * *

  A bath worked miracles for her and by the time she entered Primrose Hill Books, she didn’t feel nearly as exhausted as when she’d come home. Mr. Evans, however, frowned at her as she entered the store.

  “Have you had enough sleep?” He set his pencil in his ledger so it lay neatly along the seam.

  “Have any of us?” She offered a smile.

  He folded his arms over his brown pullover, which had become baggy as the ration whittled away at his once rather stout frame. “I heard the Hewses’ house was bombed on Clerkenwell Street. Were you there?”

  “Only afterward.” There was something in the seriousness of his tone as he asked that made her feel like a child about to be reprimanded.

  “You could have been there when it happened.” The white tufts of his brows inched together. “What would you have done if you’d been near the bomb when it fell?”

  Grace hesitated. She hadn’t thought of it, truly. After all, it was the East End that the Germans seemed to target. And the odds of her being hit by a bomb seemed far too slim to genuinely consider.

  “I don’t like it, Miss Bennett.” Color blossomed in his face. “I think you ought to resign from your post with the ARP.”

  A customer entered the store, setting the bell ringing. Grace glanced over her shoulder and recognized the woman as one of their regulars, one who seldom required assistance.

  “The ARP needs me now more than ever,” Grace replied in a low voice.

  “So does the store.” Mr. Evans snatched up his ledger, sending the pencil flying from its spine, and strode toward the rear of the shop without another word.

  Hopelessness welled in Grace, exacerbated by the tired fog clouding her mind. Mr. Evans was evidently worried she would be sacrificing her focus on the store for her efforts with the ARP.

  She was determined to prove him wrong.

  By the time the shop was set to close that night, she’d designed several new slogans with a couple already neatly printed on pasteboard. Liven up your shelter with a new book and Let a book keep you company during the air raids. They weren’t ideal, but they were a start.

  Regardless, Mr. Evans had scarcely said more than two words to her and merely offered a grunt at the new adverts.

  She had little time to worry over his demeanor, however, for when she went home, she fell into a deep slumber. One that was rudely interrupted around eight that evening by the wail of yet another air raid. She dragged herself to the shelter along with Mrs. Weatherford where the sleep she so desperately needed eluded her.

  The attack continued through the night, the same as the prior evening when she’d been outside helping the people in her sector. Only this time, she was locked in the darkened cocoon of the Anderson shelter, unable to see what was happening. But she could hear it.

  The blasts of the ack-ack guns rattled the steel frame and bombs detonated so close, the whole structure shuddered as though it was going t
o cave in. Once it even seemed to lift off the ground before crashing back into place.

  The whistles were sharp and loud just before going silent, followed by a boom so ferocious that the ground trembled. The all clear didn’t come again until the following morning, and the women resolved to layer the hard benches with bedding to at least make them more comfortable for sleep. Already they’d cleared away the gardening tools to restore it to a proper shelter.

  After all, it was beginning to look like the Germans were intent on bombing London every night.

  When Grace woke later that morning, she learned on the news that St. Thomas’s hospital had been hit, having received a direct blow along one major section. Nearby, a school had also sustained terrible damage. The Nazis were a foul lot, but it was truly low to target the infirm and children.

  Anger burned through Grace, arming her with the need to continue her role with the ARP—to do her part to fight Hitler.

  She was ready to declare as much to Mr. Evans when she went to the bookshop, but found the door closed and locked tight upon her arrival. He’d presented her a key some months before, and she dug it out of her handbag, unlocking the shop. Once inside, she flipped the sign to Open and pulled back the blackout curtains to let in a stream of cloudy sunlight as she called out for Mr. Evans. He did not reply.

  Apprehension tightened along her back.

  It was the only time in her employment he wasn’t standing at the counter like a sentry, awaiting her arrival before disappearing into the back to resume his daily work. His work, she’d surmised in the last year, was mainly reading the day away.

  And now, he wasn’t there.

  The building didn’t appear damaged, meaning his flat above would have remained intact. Images flooded her mind, colored with Mr. Stokes’s terrible stories. What if Mr. Evans had been out the previous evening and was caught unawares?