Kit mouthed: Stretcher. She nodded: Yes, that might be possible; then pointed to her chest, meaning: I’m coming too. He shook his head, but she ignored him. They began walking along the court, keeping up a brisk pace because speed seemed to offer safety: a moving target, you felt, must be harder to hit. The road was black and gleaming wet, flooded for a stretch where a drain had been blocked by a great wad of charred and sodden newspaper. At first, the roar of the pump was enough to blot out all other noises, but then gradually, as they splashed through the black water, it started to fade, to be replaced by the crackle of burning brick and timber from the building straight ahead. Probably, the blazing building was a printing works or a newspaper office. Scraps of burnt paper whirled down from the glassless windows above their heads. Elinor could see flames and shadows leaping across the inside walls, making it look, unnervingly, as if there were people trapped inside. The two firemen looked dazed with boredom. They’d have been there hours, hands gripping ice-cold metal, doused from head to foot in ice-cold water. One man’s lips were moving; she thought he might be trying to say something, but then realized he was singing.
The other man nodded, saw she was a woman, and grinned. “All right, love?”
She smiled, raising her hand, as she and Kit started to edge along the wall behind them. She felt heat from the blaze scorch her face and neck, though she was still shivering. The branch seemed to be producing a fine, cold spray that blew back into the firemen’s faces and soaked everything. She was wet herself now, icy trickles running down under the collar of her coat. Normally, you wouldn’t be allowed to get as close to a fire as this. All the other emergency services were supposed to hold back until the fire service declared an area safe, but there could be no question of declaring anywhere safe tonight. She’d just seen the pillars inside St. Bride’s Church burning like torches. The whole City was on fire.
They walked as fast as they could away from the burning building, their shadows fleeing across the ground ahead of them. She felt like a mouse creeping along the floor of a great canyon, dwarfed by the four- or five-story buildings on either side. At the end of the court, they turned and looked back. The scene was fitfully lit by the flames leaping from the windows of the burning building, and it was unchanged. That solid-looking pole of white water the firemen were directing at the blaze seemed to be making no difference at all.
She looked at Kit.
“You could get a stretcher past.” His voice was hoarse with shouting. “That’s if we can get to the hostel.”
To their right was another court which seemed at first to be empty, but then they saw two figures walking towards them: an elderly woman, in a pink candlewick dressing gown, and another, much younger, woman, who was hobbling along, grimacing with pain at every step. Elinor shone her torch. “Oh my God, Kit, look.” The girl’s feet were burned black. How on earth had she managed to walk this far?
“I’ll take her,” Kit said.
No point arguing: it was obvious the girl had to be carried and only Kit could do that. But Elinor was determined to go on and look for more survivors. If these two had got through, there were likely to be others. “You go with him too,” Elinor said to the older woman.
“Oh, I don’t think so, dear.” A reedy, but authoritative, Edinburgh accent. “I’ll be much more use back there.”
Kit had lifted the girl and was looking at Elinor, obviously expecting her to follow, but she shook her head. He nodded, or she thought he did — the shadows leaping and flickering all around him made it difficult to be sure. But he turned, and his bulky, burdened shape disappeared rapidly into the murk.
—
THE GIRL WAS mercifully light; just as well too, because he was finding it difficult to keep his footing. Even in the few minutes since he’d last walked along here, the pool of black water around the blocked drain had deepened, and he was splodging through it. He hated leaving Elinor, but this girl was suffering from shock. The burns looked pretty bad; she needed to be in hospital as soon as possible. Which meant he’d have to drive her straight there, then come back for Elinor. He didn’t like the idea. They should’ve stayed together, but Elinor was never going to come trotting meekly along behind him. He was level with the firemen now, and they shuffled forward a few paces to give him room.
The upper stories were still blazing, the flames inside leaping and dancing as tauntingly as ever, though the white pole of water was now being directed at another window. And there was a kind of clicking noise. He couldn’t think at first where it was coming from, then realized it was the building. It was very like the sound a car makes on a hot day when you’ve just switched off the engine: the tick of cooling metal. But nothing round here was cooling. He wondered if the firemen had heard it — they must’ve done, but they were looking at each other and laughing, so evidently it was nothing to worry about. All the same, he tried to walk faster and was glad when the shaking and rattling of the pump drowned out the roar of the flames behind him.
As he emerged from the court, he saw another ambulance had drawn up at the curb. Bill Morris and Ian Jenkins came towards him.
“Would you mind taking her?” he asked. “She needs a doctor but I don’t want to go and leave Elinor stranded.”
He carried the girl the few yards to their ambulance, and saw her safely stowed inside, wrapped in a blanket, with Ian by her side. Bill said he’d try Bart’s first. Apparently, they were still taking people in, though there was some talk of an evacuation. My God, it must be bad.
Neville watched the ambulance bump slowly away towards Fleet Street, then he went back and looked along Wine Office Court. The scene hadn’t changed at all; the two firemen might have been carved in bronze. What to do? His first impulse was to follow Elinor, but then suppose she came back by another route and found him gone? If she could get through at all that was quite likely. He lit a cigarette. That was one good thing about tonight: there’d be no officious little pipsqueak of an air-raid warden shouting, “Put that bloody fag out!” Any leaking gas mains round here had long since exploded. He dragged deeply on the cigarette and then, rather belatedly, offered the packet to the fireman at the pump, who just shook his head and pointed to the cascading water. Poor bugger was drenched. And now, to make things worse, there seemed to be a wind getting up. He could feel it blowing along the court towards him, hot as a dog’s breath on his face. At first, he was puzzled because there’d been no wind, no wind all day, and then the truth hit him: he was witnessing the birth of a firestorm.
That wind would carry sparks from building to building faster than a man could run. He was suddenly terribly afraid, and not ashamed of it either. A man who tells you he’s not afraid of fire is either a fool or a liar. He lit another cigarette from the stub of the first. There was a strange smell, very sweet. He couldn’t think what it was. If he’d had to guess, he’d have said: incense. It didn’t smell like war. He thought it might be wood, centuries old, seasoned wood from burning churches. He thought he’d caught a whiff of it just now as they were driving past St. Bride’s. He tried again to peer into the flame-lit darkness of the court. Where was she? The conviction that something terrible had happened to her was growing on him by the minute. He shouldn’t have let her set off like that, with only the old woman as a guide, but then what else could he have done? Who’d ever made Elinor do anything she didn’t want to do? And then the memory of that evening resurfaced, bobbed up like a turd in a sewer. He had — he’d made her do something she hadn’t wanted to do. Oh, given enough time he knew he’d remember the events of that evening differently, smooth over the raw edges, but at the moment he couldn’t bear it. At least, it goaded him into action. He’d leave the ambulance, he decided. Go and look for her.