The elderly gentleman’s reason obviously wasn’t the company. Except to offer Polly his Times, he almost never interacted with the shelterers. He sat in his corner quietly observing the others as they chatted, or reading. Polly couldn’t make out the title of his book-it looked scholarly. But appearances could be deceiving. The ecclesiastical-looking book the rector was reading had turned out to be Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage.
Miss Laburnum was telling Mrs. Rickett and Miss Hibbard about the bomb that had hit Buckingham Palace. “It exploded in the Quadrangle just outside the King and Queen’s sitting room,” she said. “They might have been killed!”
“Oh, my,” Miss Hibbard said, knitting. “Were they hurt?”
“No, though they were badly shaken. Luckily, the Princesses were safely in the country.”
“Rapunzel was a princess,” Trot, on her mother’s lap, looked up from the fairy tale her mother was reading to say.
“No, she wasn’t,” Irene said. “Sleeping Beauty was a princess.”
“What about the Queen’s dogs?” Mr. Simms asked. “Were they at the palace?”
“The Times didn’t say,” Miss Laburnum said.
“Of course not. Nobody thinks of the dogs.”
“There was an advertisement in the Daily Graphic last week for a gas mask for dogs,” the rector said.
“I think Basil Rathbone’s handsome, don’t you?” Viv said.
Lila made a face. “No, he’s much too old. I think Leslie Howard’s handsome.”
An anti-aircraft gun started up. “There goes the Strand,” Mr. Dorming said, and, as it was followed by the heavy crump of a bomb off to the east, and then another, “The East End’s getting it again.”
“Do you know what the Queen said after the palace was hit?” Miss Laburnum said. “She said, ‘Now I can look the East End in the face.’”
“She’s an example to us all,” Mrs. Wyvern said.
“They say she’s wonderfully brave,” Miss Laburnum said, “that she isn’t afraid of the bombs at all.”
Neither were they. Polly’d hoped to observe their adaptation to the Blitz as they progressed from fear to a determination not to give in to the nonchalant courage American correspondents arriving in mid-Blitz had been so impressed by. But they’d already passed those stages and reached the point where they ignored the raids completely. In eleven days flat.
They didn’t even seem to hear the crashes and bangs above them, only occasionally glancing up when an explosion was particularly loud and then going back to whatever they’d been talking about. Which was often the war. Mr. Simms reported the count of downed German and RAF aircraft every night; Miss Laburnum followed the royal family, recounting every visit “our dear Queen” made to bombed-out neighborhoods, hospitals, and ARP posts; and Miss Hibbard was knitting socks for “our boys.” Even Lila and Viv, who spent most of their time discussing film stars and dances, talked about joining the WRENs. And Leslie Howard, who Lila thought was so handsome, was in the RAF. He’d be killed in 1943 when his plane was shot down.
Mrs. Brightford’s husband was in the Army, the rector had a son who’d been injured at Dunkirk and was in hospital in Orpington, and they all had relatives and acquaintances who’d been called up or bombed out-all of which they discussed in a cheerful, gossipy tone, oblivious to the raids, which came in waves, intensifying, subsiding, then intensifying again. Not even Mr. Simms’s terrier, Nelson, seemed particularly bothered by them, though dogs’ ability to hear high-pitched noises was supposed to make it worse for them.
“Oh, that’s silly,” Lila was saying. “Leslie Howard’s far handsomer than Clark Gable.”
“‘… and the witch said, “You must give Rapunzel to me,” ’” Mrs. Brightford read. “‘And she took the child from her parents…’”
Polly wondered if Mrs. Brightford had refused to be separated from her little girls or if they’d been evacuated and then come home again. Merope had said more than 75 percent of them had been back in London when the Blitz began.
“Sounds like it’s moving off to the north,” Mr. Simms said.
It did seem to be moving off. The nearest of the anti-aircraft guns had stopped, and the roar of the planes had diminished to a low hum.
“And the cruel witch locked Rapunzel in a high tower without any door,’” Mrs. Brightford read to Trot, who was nearly asleep. “‘And Rapunzel-’”
There was a sudden, sharp knock on the door. Trot sat up straight.
It’s someone else caught out on the street by the warden, Polly thought, looking over at the door and then at the rector, expecting him to let them in.
He didn’t move. No one moved. Or breathed. They all, even little Trot, stared at the door, their eyes wide in their white faces, their bodies braced as if for a blow.
That’s how they looked when I was standing outside knocking that first night, Polly thought. That’s the expression they had on their faces in the moment before the door opened, and they saw it was me.
She’d been wrong about their having adjusted to the raids. This terror had been there all along, just beneath the surface. She thought suddenly of the painting The Light of the World in St. Paul’s. I wonder if that’s why whoever’s on the other side of the door isn’t opening it. Because they’re too frightened.
More knocks, louder. Trot climbed straight up her mother’s body and buried her face in her neck. Mrs. Brightford pulled her other girls closer to her. Miss Laburnum pressed her hand against her bosom, the elderly gentleman reached for his umbrella, and he and Mr. Dorming both stood up.
“Is it the Germans?” Bess asked in her piping voice.
“No, of course not,” Mrs. Brightford said, but it was obvious that was what they were all thinking.
The rector took a deep breath and then crossed the room, unbolted the door, and opened it. Two young girls in ARP coveralls and carrying tin helmets and gas masks tumbled through it.
“Shut the door!” Mrs. Rickett said, and Mrs. Wyvern echoed, “Mind the blackout,” exactly as they had with Polly.
The girls shut the door, and Miss Laburnum smiled in welcome. Trot let go of her mother, Irene took her thumb out of her mouth to give the newcomers the once-over, and Viv scooted over closer to Lila to give them a place to sit. Mrs. Rickett continued to glare suspiciously, but then she had done that to Polly, too.
The young women looked around the room at everyone. “Oh, dear, this isn’t it either,” one said, disappointed.
“We were going to our post, and I’m afraid we’ve got lost in the blackout,” the other one said. “Is there a telephone here we might use?”
“I’m afraid not,” the rector said apologetically.
“Then can you tell us how to get to Gloucester Terrace?”
“Gloucester Terrace?” Mr. Dorming said. “You are lost.”
They certainly were. Gloucester Terrace was all the way over in Marylebone.
“It’s our first night on duty,” the first young woman explained, and the rector began to draw them a map.
“Are they Germans?” Trot whispered to her mother.
Mrs. Brightford laughed. “No, they’re on our side.”
The rector gave them the map. “Shouldn’t you stay till this lets up?” the rector asked, but they shook their heads.
“The warden will have our heads for being late as it is,” the first one said, raising her voice to be heard above the din.
“But thanks awfully,” the other one shouted, and they opened the door and ducked out.
Michael Davies should have come here, not Dunkirk, if he wanted to observe heroes, Polly thought, looking after them. She’d just seen them in action. And it wasn’t only the young women and their willingness to go out on the streets in the middle of a raid. How much courage had it taken for the rector to cross the basement and open that door, knowing it might be the Germans? Or for all of them to sit here night after night, waiting for imminent invasion or a direct hit, not knowing whether they’d live till the next all clear?