“Can Alf and me go look at the body?” Binnie asked.
“No,” Eileen said. They had no business being out on the streets in this either. “Is there a shelter near here?” she asked the officer. “These children—”
“You can’t leave us here,” Alf said. “We’re your assistants.”
“But your mother will be worried about you—”
Alf said, “We ain’t—”
Binnie cut him off. “Mum ain’t ’ome. She’s at work.”
“And if you make us go to a shelter, who’ll tell you ’ow to get back to St. Bart’s?” Alf asked.
He was right. She wouldn’t have a prayer of getting the ambulance back to the hospital without him. She was completely disoriented in the smoky fog, and Dr.
Cross was even worse. “No sense of direction, even in the daytime, I’m afraid,” he’d said on the first trip. “That’s why I never learned to drive.”
“You can leave us behind in some shelter,” Binnie said, “but you can’t make us stay there.”
She was right, and God knew what the two of them would do or where they’d go if they weren’t with her. “Get in the ambulance,” Eileen said, and went over to Dr. Cross and the incident officer.
The doctor was speaking on a field telephone. As she came up, the incident officer said, “Are you injured, miss?”
“Doctor,” he said, turning to Dr. Cross, “this young lady is—”
“I’m not injured. I’m Dr. Cross’s driver.”
Dr. Cross took the receiver from his mouth and said, “I’ve just been in contact with Moor Lane Fire Station. They’ve a fireman in Alwell Lane with burns and a broken leg. Guy’s Hospital was supposed to send an ambulance, but they can’t. The hospital’s on fire, and they’re busy evacuating their own patients.” He handed the telephone back to him and turned to Eileen. “We need to go pick up the fireman.”
He started for the ambulance.
“Wait,” Eileen said. If she could phone the fire watch and get a message to John Bartholomew, she could tell him they were trying to get to him and to wait till they arrived.
“Can you get through to St. Paul’s on that telephone?” she asked the incident officer. “My husband’s a member of the fire watch. I was on my way there to take him his supper when I was recruited into driving. He’ll be frantic with worry over where I—where the children and I are. If I could only telephone him to let him know I’m all right—”
The incident officer looked doubtful. “These phones are supposed to be for official business only.”
“This is official business,” Dr. Cross said. “We don’t want any of those lads worrying. We want their full attention on saving that cathedral.”
The incident officer nodded, cranked up the telephone, then put it to his ear and said, “Put me through to the fire watch at St. Paul’s,” and handed it to her. “It’ll take some time to patch it through.”
Eileen nodded, listening to a series of hums and trying to think what to say. She couldn’t mention their drops or time travel with the incident officer listening. And Mr. Bartholomew hadn’t met her yet. Who should she say was calling?
Mrs. Mr. Dunworthy, she thought, and I’ll tell him I’m trying to get to St. Paul’s so we can go home together, and to—
There was a sharp crackle, and a man’s voice said, “St. Paul’s Fire Watch here.”
“Yes, hello, I’m trying to reach—”
There was a volley of static, and then silence.
“Hello? Hello?”
The incident officer took the telephone from her. “Hullo?” He flicked the switching mechanism back and forth. “Are you there? Hullo?” He listened for a moment.
Eileen could hear a woman’s voice on the line.
“They just lost the telephone exchange at Guildhall,” the incident officer said. “They’re trying to get it back.”
But they won’t, Eileen thought. The Guildhall’s on fire. They’re evacuating the telephone operators.
“I’ll see if I can patch you through,” he said.
But that didn’t work either. “The operator says lines are down all over the city. If I do get through, what should I tell him?”
She thought quickly. “Tell him Eileen said that we can’t get through, but the three of us are coming to him as soon as we can, and to stay at St. Paul’s till we arrive.
Tell him on no account is he to leave for Mr. Dunworthy’s in Oxford without us,” Eileen instructed, and at his curious look, she added, “We were to have gone to our friends in Oxford for the New Year.”
He nodded, then ran up to the ambulance as she was pulling away. “You didn’t tell me your husband’s name.”
“Husband?” Alf said incredulously. “She ain’t—”
“Bartholomew, John Bartholomew,” she said quickly, and drove off before Alf could do any more damage.
“Bartholomew,” Dr. Cross said musingly. “How fitting that you and your children, the angels who’ve come to St. Bartholomew’s aid, should be named Bartholomew.”
Binnie began, “We ain’t—”
“Angels,” Eileen finished neatly.
“Oh, but you are,” Dr. Cross said. “I don’t know what we should have done without you. Half of our drivers were caught on the other side of the fire and couldn’t make it in. If it hadn’t been for you and your children—”
“We ain’t—”
“Which way do I turn up here?” Eileen cut in to ask.
“Left,” Alf said, “but—”
“It was extraordinarily good luck that Mrs. Mallowan told me she’d seen you leaving,” Dr. Cross said, and Eileen realized she’d heard him say that name before, when they were leaving St. Bart’s on that first run. But it had to be some other Mrs. Mallowan.
“Mrs. Mallowan?” she asked, to be certain.
He nodded. “Our dispenser, though actually she’s not ours. Our regular dispenser couldn’t make it in, and Mrs. Mallowan kindly offered to—”
“Her given name isn’t Agatha, is it?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Agatha Christie Mallowan?”
“I believe so. She lives in Holland Park.”
Binnie had said, “The dispenser looks like she don’t miss a trick,” and she was certainly right about that.
I finally get to meet Agatha Christie, Eileen thought ruefully, and when I do, she stops me from making my getaway and going to St. Paul’s.
“Are you acquainted with Mrs. Mallowan?” Dr. Cross was asking.
“Yes. No. I’ve heard of her.”
“Oh, yes, I believe she writes some sort of novels. Are they good?”
“People will still be reading them a hundred years from now,” Eileen said, and turned into Alwell Lane.
And into a scene of chaos. Nearly every building on both sides of the narrow street was on fire, bright yellow flames shooting from the windows and boiling up violently from the roofs and over the narrow street, threatening to engulf it at any moment. Three firemen had their hoses aimed at the burning buildings, even though there was no way they could save any of it. The stream from their hoses was only a thin trickle.
But they kept on spraying the buildings, oblivious to the flames arching dangerously over their heads. And to Dr. Cross. He had to shout at them twice before they told him where to find the injured fireman, and there turned out to be three other casualties as well—two firemen unconscious from smoke inhalation and a young boy with badly burned hands. They had to cram the four of them into the rear of the ambulance, and Binnie had to sit on the doctor’s lap on the way back to St. Bart’s.
The journey took even longer than the others had. Every road they turned up was blocked with fallen masonry or roaring flames or both. They could no longer catch even glimpses of St. Paul’s. It had been swallowed up in a boiling mass of smoke that filled the entire sky. When they pulled in to St. Bart’s, the smoke stood like a great red wall stretching from horizon to horizon.