“Only eight, I’m afraid,” she said, coming down with the stemmed goblets in her blackened hands. “The Germans have broken the rest. Who’s willing to make do with the tooth glass?”
“I don’t care for any, thank you,” Jack said. “I don’t drink.”
“What’s that?” Morris said jovially. He had taken off his tin helmet, and below the white line it left he looked like he was wearing blackface in a music-hall show. “You’ve got to toast my boy at least. Just imagine. My Quincy with a medal.”
Mrs Lucy rinsed out the porcelain tooth glass and handed it to Vi, who was pouring out the wine. They passed the goblets round. Jack took the tooth glass.
“To my son Quincy, the best pilot in the RAF!” Morris said, raising his goblet.
“May he shoot down the entire Luftwaffe,” Swales shouted, “and put an end to this bloody war!”
“So a man can get a decent night’s sleep!” Renfrew said, and everyone laughed.
We drank. Jack raised his glass with the others but when Vi took the bottle round again, he put his hand over the mouth of it.
“Just think of it,” Morris said. “My son Quincy with a medal. He had his troubles in school, in with a bad lot, problems with the police. I worried about him, I did, wondered what he’d come to, and then this war comes along and here he is a hero.”
“To heroes!” Petersby said.
We drank again, and Vi dribbled out the last of the wine into Morris’s glass. “That’s the lot, I’m afraid.” She brightened. “I’ve a bottle of cherry cordial Charlie gave me.”
Mrs Lucy made a face. “Just a minute,” she said, disappeared into the pantry, and came back with two cobwebbed bottles of port, which she poured out generously and a little sloppily.
“The presence of intoxicating beverages on post is strictly forbidden,” she said. “A fine of five shillings will be imposed for a first offence, one pound for subsequent offences.” She took out a pound note and laid it on the table. “I wonder what Nelson was before the war?”
“A monster,” Vi said.
I looked across at Jack. He still had his hand over his glass.
“A headmaster,” Swales said. “No, I’ve got it. An Inland Revenue collector!”
Everyone laughed.
“I was a horrid person before the war,” Mrs Lucy said.
Vi giggled.
“I was a deaconess, one of those dreadful women who arranges the flowers in the sanctuary and gets up jumble sales and bullies the rector. ‘The Terror of the Churchwardens’, that’s what I used to be. I was determined that they should put the hymnals front side out on the backs of the pews. Morris knows. He sang in the choir.”
“It’s true,” Morris said. “She used to instruct the choir on the proper way to line up.”
I tried to imagine her as a stickler, as a petty tyrant like Nelson, and failed.
“Sometimes it takes something dreadful like a war for one to find one’s proper job,” she said, staring at her glass.
“To the war!” Swales said gaily.
“I’m not sure we should toast something so terrible as that,” Twickenham said doubtfully.
“It isn’t all that terrible,” Vi said. “I mean, without it, we wouldn’t all be here together, would we?”
“And you’d never have met all those pilots of yours, would you, Vi?” Swales said.
“There’s nothing wrong with making the best of a bad job,” Vi said, miffed.
“Some people do more than that,” Swales said. “Some people take positive advantage of the war. Like Colonel Godaiming. I had a word with one of the AFS volunteers. Seems the colonel didn’t come back for his hunting rifle after all.” He leaned forward confidingly. “Seems he was having a bit on with a blonde dancer from the Windmill. Seems his wife thought he was out shooting grouse in Surrey and now she’s asking all sorts of unpleasant questions.”
“He’s not the only one taking advantage,” Morris said. “That night you got the Kirkcuddys out, Jack, I found an old couple killed by blast. I put them by the road for the mortuary van, and later I saw somebody over there, bending over the bodies, doing something to them. I thought, He must be straightening them out before the rigor set in, but then it comes to me. He’s robbing them. Dead bodies.”
“And who’s to say they were killed by blast?” Swales said. “Who’s to say they weren’t murdered? There’s lots of bodies, aren’t there, and nobody looks close at them. Who’s to say they were all killed by the Germans?”
“How did we get on to this?” Petersby said. “We’re supposed to be celebrating Quincy Morris’s medal, not talking about murderers.” He raised his glass. “To Quincy Morris!”
“And the RAF!” Vi said.
“To making the best of a bad job,” Mrs Lucy said.
“Hear, hear,” Jack said softly and raised his glass, but he still didn’t drink.
Jack found four people in the next three days. I did not hear any of them until well after we had started digging, and the last one, a fat woman in striped pyjamas and a pink hairnet, I never did hear, though she said when we brought her up that she had “called and called between prayers”.
Twickenham wrote it all up for the Twitterings, tossing out the article on Quincy Morris’s medal and typing up a new master’s. When Mrs Lucy borrowed the typewriter to fill out the A-114, she said, “What’s this?”
“My lead story,” he said. “ ‘Settle Finds Four in Rubble.’ ” He handed her the master’s.
“ ‘Jack Settle, the newest addition to Post Forty-Eight,’ ” she read, “ ‘located four air-raid victims last night. “I wanted to be useful,” says the modest Mr Settle when asked why he came to London from Yorkshire. And he’s been useful since his very first night on the job when he—’ ” She handed it back to him. “Sorry. You can’t print that. Nelson’s been nosing about, asking questions. He’s already taken one of my wardens and nearly got him killed. I won’t let him have another.”
“That’s censorship!” Twickenham said, outraged.
“There’s a war on,” Mrs Lucy said, “and we’re short-handed. I’ve relieved Mr Renfrew of duty. He’s going to stay with his sister in Birmingham. And I wouldn’t let Nelson have another one of my wardens if we were overstaffed. He’s already got Olmwood nearly killed.”
She handed me the A-114 and asked me to take it to Civil Defence. I did. The girl I had spoken to wasn’t there, and the girl who was said, “This is for interior improvements. You need to fill out a D-268.”
“I did,” I said, “and I was told that reinforcements qualified as exterior improvements.”
“Only if they’re on the outside.” She handed me a D-268. “Sorry,” she said apologetically. “I’d help you if I could, but my boss is a stickler for the correct forms.”
“There’s something else you can do for me,” I said. “I was supposed to take one of our part-timers a message at his day job, but I’ve lost the address. If you could look it up for me. Jack Settle? If not, I’ve got to go all the way back to Chelsea to get it.”
She looked back over her shoulder and then said, “Wait a mo,” and darted down the hall. She came back with a sheet of paper.
“Settle?” she said. “Post forty-eight, Chelsea?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “I need his work address.”
“He hasn’t got one.”
He had left the incident while we were still getting the fat woman out. It was starting to get light. We had a rope under her, and a makeshift winch, and he had abruptly handed his end to Swales and said, “I’ve got to leave for my day job.”