Renfrew came in from the other room, wrapped in a blanket. He looked as bad as I thought I must, his face slack and grey with fatigue. “Where was the incident?” he asked anxiously.
“Just off Old Church Street. In Nelson’s sector,” I added to reassure him.
But he said nervously, “They’re coming closer every night. Have you noticed that?”
“No, they aren’t,” Vi said. “We haven’t had anything in our sector all week.”
Renfrew ignored her. “First Gloucester Road and then Ixworth Place and now Old Church Street. It’s as if they’re circling, searching for something.”
“London,” Mrs Lucy said briskly. “And if we don’t enforce the blackout, they’re likely to find it.” She handed Morris a typed list. “Reported infractions from last night. Go round and reprimand them.” She put her hand on Renfrew’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go have a nice lie-down, Mr Renfrew, while I cook you breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry,” he said, but he let her lead him, clutching his blanket, back to the cot.
We watched Mrs Lucy spread the blanket over him and then lean down and tuck it in around his shoulders, and then Swales said, “You know who this Godalming fellow reminds me of? A lady we rescued over in Gower Street,” he said, yawning. “Hauled her out and asked her if her husband was in there with her. ‘No,’ she says, ‘the bleedin’ coward’s at the front.’ ”
We all laughed.
“People like this colonel person don’t deserve to be rescued,” Vi said, spreading oleo on a slice of toast. “You should have left him there a while and seen how he liked that.”
“He was lucky they didn’t leave him there altogether,” Morris said. “The register had him in Surrey with his wife.”
“Lucky he had such a loud voice,” Swales said. He twirled the end of an enormous moustache. “Oi siy,” he boomed. “Get me out of her immeejutly, you slackers!”
But he said he didn’t call out, I thought, and could hear Jack shouting over the din of the anti-aircraft guns, the drone of the planes, “There’s someone under here.”
Mrs Lucy came back to the table. “I’ve applied for reinforcements for the post,” she said, standing her papers on end and tamping them into an even stack. “Someone from the Town Hall will be coming to inspect in the next few days.” She picked up two bottles of ale and an ashtray and carried them over to the dustbin.
“Applied for reinforcements?” Swales asked. “Why? Afraid Colonel Godalming’ll be back with the heavy artillery?”
There was a loud banging on the door.
“Oi siy,” Swales said. “Here he is now, and he’s brought his hounds.”
Mrs Lucy opened the door. “Worse,” Vi whispered, diving for the last bottle of ale. “It’s Nelson.” She passed the bottle to me under the table, and I passed it to Renfield, who tucked it under his blanket.
“Mr Nelson,” Mrs Lucy said as if she were delighted to see him, “do come in. And how are things over your way?”
“We took a beating last night,” he said, glaring at us as though we were responsible.
“He’s had a complaint from the colonel,” Swales whispered to me. “You’re done for, mate.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Mrs Lucy said. “Now, how may I help you?”
He pulled a folded paper from the pocket of his uniform and carefully opened it out. “This was forwarded to me from the city engineer,” he said. “All requests for material improvements are to be sent to the district warden, not over his head to the Town Hall.”
“Oh, I’m so glad,” Mrs Lucy said, leading him into the pantry. “It is such a comfort to deal with someone one knows, rather than a faceless bureaucracy. If I had realized you were the proper person to appeal to, I should have contacted you immediately .” She shut the door.
Renfield took the ale bottle out from under his blanket and buried it in the dustbin. Violet began taking out her bobby pins.
“We’ll never get our reinforcements now,” Swales said. “Not with Adolf von Nelson in charge.”
“Shh,” Vi said, yanking at her snail-like curls. “You don’t want him to hear you.”
“Olmwood told me he makes them keep working at an incident, even when the bombs are right overhead. Thinks all the posts should do it.”
“Shh!” Vi said.
“He’s a bleeding Nazi!” Swales said, but he lowered his voice. “Got two of his wardens killed that way. You better not let him find out you and Jack are good at finding bodies or you’ll be out there dodging shrapnel, too.”
Good at finding bodies. I thought of Jack, standing motionless, looking at the rubble and saying, “There’s someone alive under here. Hurry.”
“That’s why Nelson steals from the other posts,” Vi said, scooping her bobby pins off the table and into her haversack. “Because he does his own in.” She pulled out a comb and began yanking it through her snarled curls.
The pantry door opened and Nelson and Mrs Lucy came out, Nelson still holding the unfolded paper. She was still wearing her tea-party smile, but it was a bit thin. “I’m sure you can see it’s unrealistic to expect nine people to huddle in a coal cellar for hours at a time,” she said.
“There are people all over London ‘huddling in coal cellars for hours at a time’, as you put it,” Nelson said coldly, “who do not wish their Civil Defence funds spent on frivolities.”
“I do not consider the safety of my wardens a frivolity,” she said, “though it is clear to me that you do, as witnessed by your very poor record.”
Nelson stared for a full minute at Mrs Lucy, trying to think of a retort, and then turned on me. “Your uniform is a disgrace, warden,” he said and stomped out.
Whatever it was Jack had used to find Colonel Godalming, it didn’t work on incendiaries. He searched as haphazardly for them as the rest of us, Vi, who had been on spotter duty, shouting directions: “No, further down Fulham Road. In the grocer’s.”
She had apparently been daydreaming about her pilots, instead of spotting. The incendiary was not in the grocer’s but in the butcher’s three doors down, and by the time Jack and I got to it, the meat locker was on fire. It wasn’t hard to put out, there were no furniture or curtains to catch and the cold kept the wooden shelves from catching, but the butcher was extravagantly grateful. He insisted on wrapping up five pounds of lamb chops in white paper and thrusting them into Jack’s arms.
“Did you really have to be at your day job so early or were you only trying to escape the colonel?” I asked Jack on the way back to the post.
“Was he that bad?” he said, handing me the parcel of lamb chops.
“He nearly took my head off when I said you’d heard him shouting. Said he didn’t call for help. Said he was digging himself out.” The white butcher’s paper was so bright the Luftwaffe would think it was a searchlight. I tucked the parcel inside my overalls so it wouldn’t show. “What sort of work is it, your day job?” I asked.
“War work,” he said.
“Did they transfer you? Is that why you came to London?”
“No,” he said. “I wanted to come.” We turned into Mrs Lucy’s street. “Why did you join the ARP?”
“I’m waiting to be called up,” I said, “so no one would hire me.”
“And you wanted to do your bit.”
“Yes,” I said, wishing I could see his face.
“What about Mrs Lucy? Why did she become a warden?”
“Mrs Lucy?” I said blankly. The question had never even occurred to me. She was the best warden in London. It was her natural calling, and I’d thought of her as always having been one. “I’ve no idea,” I said. “It’s her house, she’s a widow. Perhaps the Civil Defence commandeered it, and she had to become one. It’s the tallest in the street.” I treid to remember what Twickenham had written about her in his interview. “Before the war she was something to do with a church.”