‘I worry about me too.’
‘Is it bloody?’
‘Dreadfully. But I believe it’s the right thing. I think we are doing the right thing.’
‘A just war? You know the Coles still have most of their family in Europe. Mr Cole has told me some dreadful things, things that are happening to the Jews. I don’t think anyone here really wants to know. Anyway,’ he said, raising his glass and trying for a cheerful note, ‘down the hatch. Here’s to the end.’
It was dark when she left and Hugh walked her down the lane to the station.
‘No petrol, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘you should have gone earlier,’ he added ruefully. He had a stout torch and there was no one to yell at him to put the light out. ‘I hardly think I’m going to guide in a Heinkel,’ he said. Ursula told him how most rescue squads had an almost superstitious horror of lights even when they were in the middle of a raid, surrounded by burning buildings and incendiaries and flares. As if a small torch beam would make any difference.
‘Knew a chap in the trenches,’ Hugh said, ‘lit a match, and Bob’s your uncle, a German sniper shot his head clean off. Good chap,’ he added reflectively, ‘name of Rogerson, same as the bakers in the village. No relation.’
‘You never talk about it,’ Ursula said.
‘I’m talking about it now,’ Hugh said. ‘Let it be a lesson to you, keep your head below the parapet and your light beneath a bushel.’
‘I know you don’t mean that. Not really.’
‘I do. I’d rather you were a coward than dead, little bear. Teddy and Jimmy too.’
‘You don’t mean that either.’
‘I do. Here we are, it’s so dark you could walk right by the station and never see it. I doubt that your train will be on time, if there is a train at all. Oh, look, here’s Fred. Evening, Fred.’
‘Mr Todd, Miss Todd. So you know, this is the last train tonight,’ Fred Smith said. Fred had long since graduated from fireman to driver.
‘It’s not really a train,’ Ursula said, bemused. There was an engine but no carriages.
Fred looked back along the platform to where the carriages should have been, as if he’d forgotten their absence. ‘Ah, yes, well,’ he said, ‘last time they were seen they were hanging off Waterloo Bridge. It’s a long story,’ he added, clearly unwilling to elaborate. Ursula was puzzled as to why the engine should be here sans carriages but Fred looked rather grim.
‘I won’t get home tonight then,’ Ursula said.
‘Well,’ Fred said, ‘I’ve got to get this engine back up to town and I’ve got a head of steam up and I’ve got a fireman, old Willie here, so if you want to hop up on the footplate, Miss Todd, I think we can get you back.’
‘Really?’ Ursula said.
‘It won’t be as clean as riding on the cushions, but if you’re game?’
‘I certainly am.’
The engine was impatient to go so she gave Hugh a quick hug and said, ‘See you soon,’ and climbed the steps up to the footplate where she took up her perch on the fireman’s seat.
‘You will take care, little bear, won’t you?’ Hugh said. ‘In London?’ He had to raise his voice above the sound of hissing steam. ‘Promise me?’
‘I promise,’ she shouted. ‘See you later!’
She twisted round, trying to see him on the dark platform as the train chugged off. She felt a sudden stab of guilt, she had played a rowdy game of hide-and-seek with the boys after supper. Instead she should, as Hugh said, have left when it was still light. Now Hugh would have to walk back in the dark alone along the lane. (She thought suddenly of poor little Angela, all those years ago.) Hugh quickly disappeared into the dark and smoke.
‘Well, this is exciting,’ she said to Fred. It didn’t cross her mind that she would never see her father again.
Exciting, it was true, but also somewhat terrifying. The engine was a great metal beast roaring through the dark, the raw power of the machine come to life. It shook and rocked as if it were trying to dislodge her from its insides. Ursula had never previously thought about what went on in the cab of an engine. She had imagined, if she had imagined it at all, a relatively serene place – the driver alert to the track ahead, the fireman cheerfully shovelling coal. But instead there was non-stop activity, a continual conferring between fireman and driver over gradients and pressure, the frantic shovelling or the sudden closing down, the continual rackety noise, the almost unbearable heat of the furnace, the filthy soot from the tunnels that didn’t seem to be kept out by the metal plates that had been put up to prevent light escaping from the cab. It was so hot! ‘Hotter than hell,’ Fred said.
Despite the wartime speed restrictions they seemed to be travelling at least twice as fast as when she travelled in a carriage (‘on the cushions’, she thought, she must remember that for Teddy who, despite now being a pilot, still harboured his childhood desire to be a train driver).
As they approached London they could see fires in the east and hear the distant pealing of guns but as they neared the marshalling yards and engine sheds it became almost eerily quiet. They slowed to a halt and all was suddenly, thankfully, peaceful.
Fred helped her down from the cab. ‘There you go, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Home sweet home. Well, not quite, I’m afraid.’ He looked suddenly doubtful. ‘I would walk you home but we have to put this engine to bed. Will you be all right from here?’ They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, just tracks and points and the looming shadows of engines. ‘There’s a bomb at Marylebone. We’re at the back of King’s Cross,’ Fred said, reading her mind. ‘It’s not as bad as you think.’ He switched on the weakest of torches, it illuminated only a foot or so in front of them. ‘Have to be careful,’ he said, ‘we’re a prime target here.’
‘I’ll be absolutely fine,’ she said, a little more gung-ho than she felt. ‘Don’t give me a second thought, and thank you. Good night, Fred.’ She set off resolutely and immediately tripped over a rail and gave a little cry of distress when she banged her knee hard on the sharp stones of the track.
‘Here, Miss Todd,’ Fred said, helping her up. ‘You’ll never find your way in the dark. Come on, I’ll walk you to the gates.’ He took her arm and set off, steering her as they went, for all the world as if they were on a Sunday stroll along the Embankment. She remembered how she had been rather sweet on Fred when she was younger. It would probably be quite easy to be sweet on him again, she reckoned.
They reached a big pair of wooden gates and he opened a small door set within them.
‘I think I know where I am,’ she said. She had no idea where she was but she didn’t want to inconvenience Fred any longer. ‘Well, thank you again, maybe I’ll see you next time I get down to Fox Corner.’
‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘I start in the AFS tomorrow. Plenty of old codgers like Willie can keep the trains running.’
‘Good for you,’ she said, although she was thinking how dangerous the fire service was.
It was the blackest blackout ever. She walked with a hand in front of her face and eventually bumped into a woman who told her where she was. They walked together for half a mile or so. After a few minutes on her own again she heard footsteps behind her and she said, ‘I’m here,’ so the owner of the feet didn’t walk into her. It was a man, no more than a figure in the dark who went with her as far as Hyde Park. Before the war you would never have dreamed of hooking arms with a complete stranger – particularly a man – but now the danger from the skies seemed so much greater than anything that could befall you from this odd intimacy.
She thought it must be nearly dawn when she got back to Phillimore Gardens but it was barely midnight. Millie, all dressed up, had just returned from an evening out. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said when she saw Ursula. ‘What happened to you? Did you get bombed?’