“She’s still not here,” Twickenham said, not even pausing in his typing.
“I couldn’t find her,” I said.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I do hope she’s all right. Mr Twickenham, would you mind terribly taking Vi’s watch?”
“I’ll take it,” Jack said. “Where do I go?”
“I’ll show him,” I said, starting for the stairs.
“No, wait,” Mrs Lucy said. “Mr Settle, I hate to put you to work before you’ve even had a chance to become acquainted with everyone, and there really isn’t any need to go up till after the sirens have gone. Come and sit down, both of you.” She took the flowered cozy off the teapot. “Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Settle?”
“No, thank you,” he said.
She put the cozy back on and smiled at him. “You’re from Yorkshire, Mr Settle,” she said as if we were all at a tea party. “Whereabouts?”
“Whitby,” he said politely.
“What brings you to London?” Morris said.
“The war,” he said, still politely.
“Wanted to do your bit, eh?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what my son Quincy said. ‘Dad,’ he says. ‘I want to do my bit for England. I’m going to be a pilot.’ Downed twenty-one planes, he has, my Quincy,” Morris told Jack, “and been shot down twice himself. Oh, he’s had some scrapes, I could tell you, but it’s all top secret.”
Jack nodded.
There were times I wondered whether Morris, like Violet with her RAF pilots, had invented his son’s exploits. Sometimes I even wondered if he had invented the son, though if that were the case he might surely have made up a better name than Quincy.
“ ‘Dad,’ he says to me out of the blue, ‘I’ve got to do my bit,’ and he shows me his enlistment papers. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Not that he’s not patriotic, you understand, but he’d had his little difficulties at school, sowed his wild oats, so to speak, and here he was, saying, ‘Dad, I want to do my bit.’ ”
The sirens went, taking up one after the other. Mrs Lucy said, “Ah, well, here they are now,” as if the last guest had finally arrived at her tea party, and Jack stood up.
“If you’ll just show me where the spotter’s post is, Mr Harker,” he said.
“Jack,” I said. “It’s a name that should be easy for you to remember.”
I took him upstairs to what had been Mrs Lucy’s cook’s garret bedroom, unlike the street a perfect place to watch for incendiaries. It was on the fourth floor, higher than most of the buildings on the street so one could see anything that fell on the roofs around. One could see the Thames, too, between the chimneypots, and in the other direction the searchlights in Hyde Park.
Mrs Lucy had set a wing-backed chair by the window, from which the glass had been removed, and the narrow landing at the head of the stairs had been reinforced with heavy oak beams that even Olmwood couldn’t have lifted.
“One ducks out here when the bombs get close,” I said, shining the torch on the beams. “It’ll be a swish and then a sort of rising whine.” I led him into the bedroom. “If you see incendiaries, call out and try to mark exactly where they fall on the roofs.” I showed him how to use the gunsight mounted on a wooden base that we used for a sextant and handed him the binoculars. “Anything else you need?” I asked.
“No,” he said soberly. “Thank you.”
I left him and went back downstairs. They were still discussing Violet.
“I’m really becoming worried about her,” Mrs Lucy said. One of the ack-ack guns started up, and there was the dull crump of bombs far away, and we all stopped to listen.
“ME 109s,” Morris said. “They’re coming in from the south again.”
“I do hope she has the sense to get to a shelter.” Mrs Lucy said, and Vi burst in the door.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, setting a box tied with string on the table next to Twickenham’s typewriter. She was out of breath and her face was suffused with blood. “I know I’m supposed to be on watch, but Harry took me out to see his plane this afternoon, and I had a horrid time getting back.” She heaved herself out of her coat and hung it over the back of Jack’s chair. “You’ll never believe what he’s named it! The Sweet Violet!” She untied the string on the box. “We were so late we hadn’t time for tea, and he said, ‘You take this to your post and have a good tea, and I’ll keep the jerries busy till you’ve finished.’ ” She reached in the box and lifted out a torte with sugar icing. “He’s painted the name on the nose and put little violets in purple all round it,” she said, setting it on the table. “One for every jerry he’s shot down.”
We stared at the cake. Eggs and sugar had been rationed since the beginning of the year and they’d been in short supply even before that. I hadn’t seen a fancy torte like this in over a year.
“It’s raspberry filling,” she said, slicing through the cake with a knife. “They hadn’t any chocolate.” She held the knife up, dripping jam. “Now, who wants some then?”
“I do,” I said. I had been hungry since the beginning of the war and ravenous since I’d joined the ARP, especially for sweets, and I had my piece eaten before she’d finished setting slices on Mrs Lucy’s Wedgwood plates and passing them round.
There was still a quarter left. “Who’s upstairs taking my watch?” she said, sucking a bit of raspberry jam off her finger.
“The new part-timer,” I said. “I’ll take it up to him.”
She cut a slice and eased it off the knife and on to the plate. “What’s he like?” she asked.
“He’s from Yorkshire,” Twickenham said, looking at Mrs Lucy. “What did he do up there before the war?”
Mrs Lucy looked at her cake, as if surprised that it was nearly eaten. “He didn’t say,” she said.
“I meant, is he handsome?” Vi said, putting a fork on the plate with the slice of cake. “Perhaps I should take it up to him myself.”
“He’s puny. Pale,” Swales said, his mouth full of cake. “Looks as if he’s got consumption.”
“Nelson won’t steal him any time soon, that’s certain,” Morris said.
“Oh, well, then,” Vi said, and handed the plate to me.
I took it and went upstairs, stopping on the second floor landing to shift it to my left hand and switch on my pocket torch.
Jack was standing by the window, the binoculars dangling from his neck, looking out past the rooftops towards the river. The moon was up, reflecting whitely off the water like one of the German flares, lighting the bombers’ way.
“Anything in our sector yet?” I said.
“No,” he said, without turning round. “They’re still to the east.”
“I’ve brought you some raspberry cake,” I said.
He turned and looked at me.
I held the cake out. “Violet’s young man in the RAF sent it.”
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’m not fond of cake.”
I looked at him with the same disbelief I had felt for Violet’s name emblazoned on a Spitfire. “There’s plenty,” I said. “She brought a whole torte.”
“I’m not hungry, thanks. You eat it.”
“Are you sure? One can’t get this sort of thing these days.”
“I’m certain,” he said and turned back to the window.