Someone had left a copy of Twickenham's Twitterings on the floor. I read the article on the walking dead again, and then, still unable to sleep, the rest of the news-sheet. There was an account of Hitler's invasion of Transylvania, and a recipe for butterless strawberry tart, and the account of the crime rate. "London is currently the perfect place for the criminal element," Nelson was quoted as saying. "We must constantly be on the lookout for wrong-doing."
Below the recipe was a story about a Scottish terrier named Bonny Charlie who had barked and scrabbled wildly at the ruins of a collapsed house till wardens heeded his cries, dug down, and discovered two unharmed children.
I must have fallen asleep reading that because the next thing I knew Morris was shaking me and telling me the sirens had gone. It was only five o'clock.
At half past we had an HE in our sector. It was just three blocks from the post, and the walls shook and plaster rained down on Twickenham's typewriter and on Renfrew, lying awake in his cot.
"Frivolities, my foot," Mrs Lucy muttered as we dived for our tin hats. "We need those reinforcing beams."
The part-timers hadn't come on duty yet. Mrs Lucy left Renfrew to send them on. We knew exactly where the incident was Morris had been looking in that direction when it went — but we still had difficulty finding it. It was still evening, but by the time we had gone half a block, it was pitch black.
The first time that had happened, I thought it was some sort of after-blindness from the blast, but it's only the brick and plaster dust from the collapsed buildings. It rises up in a haze that's darker than any blackout curtain, obscuring everything. When Mrs Lucy set up shop on a stretch of pavement and switched on the blue incident light it glowed spectrally in the man-made fog.
"Only two families still in the street," she said, holding the register up to the light. "The Kirkcuddy family and the Hodgsons."
"Are they an old couple?" Morris asked, appearing suddenly out of the fog.
She peered at the register. "Yes. Pensioners."
"I found them," he said in that flat voice that meant they were dead. "Blast."
"Oh, dear," she said. "The Kirkcuddys are a mother and two children. They've an Anderson shelter." She held the register closer to the blue light. "Everyone else has been using the tube shelter." She unfolded a map and showed us where the Kirkcuddys' backyard had been, but it was no help. We spent the next hour wandering blindly over the mounds, listening for sounds that were impossible to hear over the Luftwaffe's comments and the ack-ack's replies.
Petersby showed up a little past eight and Jack a few minutes later, and Mrs Lucy set them to wandering in the fog, too.
"Over here," Jack shouted almost immediately, and my heart gave an odd jerk.
"Oh, good, he's heard them," Mrs Lucy said. "Jack, go and find him."
"Over here," he called again, and I started off in the direction of his voice, almost afraid of what I would find, but I hadn't gone ten steps before I could hear it, too. A baby crying, and a hollow, echoing sound like someone banging a fist against tin.
"Don't stop," Vi shouted. She was kneeling next to Jack in a shallow crater. "Keep making noise. We're coming." She looked up at me. "Tell Mrs Lucy to ring the rescue squad."
I blundered my way back to Mrs Lucy through the darkness. She had already rung up the rescue squad. She sent me to Sloane Square to make sure the rest of the inhabitants of the block were safely there.
The dust had lifted a little but not enough for me to see where I was going. I pitched off a kerb into the street and tripped over a pile of debris and then a body. When I shone my torch on it, I saw it was the girl I had walked to the shelter two nights before.
She was sitting against the tiled entrance to the station, still holding a dress on a hanger in her limp hand. The old stewpot at John Lewis's never let her off even a minute before closing, and the Luftwaffe had been early. She had been killed by blast, or by flying glass. Her face and neck and hands were covered with tiny cuts, and glass crunched underfoot when I moved her legs together.
I went back to the incident and waited for the mortuary van and went with them to the shelter. It took me three hours to find the families on my list. By the time I got back to the incident, the rescue squad was five feet down.
"They're nearly there," Vi said, dumping a basket on the far side of the crater. "All that's coming up now is dirt and the occasional rose bush."
"Where's Jack?" I said.
"He went for a saw." She took the basket back and handed it to one of the rescue squad, who had to put his cigarette into his mouth to free his hands before he could take it. "There was a board, but they dug past it."
I leaned over the hole. I could hear the sound of banging but not the baby. "Are they still alive?"
She shook her head. "We haven't heard the baby for an hour or so. We keep calling, but there's no answer. We're afraid the banging may be something mechanical."
I wondered if they were dead and Jack, knowing it, had not gone for a saw at all but off to that day job of his.
Swales came up. "Guess who's in hospital?" he said.
"Who?" Vi said.
"Olmwood. Nelson had his wardens out walking patrols during a raid, and he caught a piece of shrapnel from one of the ack-acks in the leg. Nearly took it off."
The rescue worker with the cigarette handed a heaping basket to Vi. She took it, staggering a little under the weight, and carried it off.
"You'd better not let Nelson see you working like that," Swales called after her, "or he'll have you transferred to his sector. Where's Morris?" he said and went off, presumably to tell him and whoever else he could find about Olmwood.
Jack came up, carrying the saw.
"They don't need it," the rescue worker said, the cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. "Mobile's here," he said and went off for a cup of tea.
Jack knelt and handed the saw down the hole.
"Are they still alive?" I asked.
Jack leaned over the hole, his hands clutching the edges. The banging was incredibly loud. It must have been deafening inside the Anderson. Jack stared into the hole as if he heard neither the banging nor my voice.
He stood up, still looking into the hole. "They're further to the left," he said.
How can they be further to the left? I thought. We can hear them. They're directly under us. "Are they alive?" I said.
"Yes."
Swales came back. "He's a spy, that's what he is," he said. "Hitler sent him here to kill off our best men one by one. I told you his name was Adolf von Nelson."
The Kirkcuddys were further to the left. The rescue squad had to widen the tunnel, cut the top of the Anderson open and pry it back, like opening a can of tomatoes. It took till nine o'clock in the morning, but they were all alive.
Jack left some time before it got light. I didn't see him go. Swales was telling me about Olmwood's injury, and when I turned around, Jack was gone.
"Has Jack told you where this job of his is that he has to leave so early for?" I asked Vi when I got back to the post.
She had propped a mirror against one of the gas masks and was putting her hair up in pincurls. "No," she said, dipping a comb in a glass of water and wetting a lock of her hair. "Jack, could you reach me my bobby pins? I've a date this afternoon, and I want to look my best."
I pushed the pins across to her. "What sort of job is it? Did Jack say?"
"No. Some sort of war work, I should think." She wound a lock of hair around her finger. "He's had ten kills. Four Stukas and six 109s."
I sat down next to Twickenham, who was typing up the incident report. "Have you interviewed Jack yet?"
"When would I have had time?" Twickenham asked. "We haven't had a quiet night since he came."
Renfrew shuffled in from the other room. He had a blanket wrapped round him Indian-style and a bedspread over his shoulders. He looked terrible, pale and drawn as a ghost.