When the air raid siren sounded in late January, they all looked up from what they were doing. Oliver already had on his uniform and was about to commence his patrol. Charlie and Molly bustled into their winter coats, and they all hurried outside.
At the front door of The Book Keep Oliver said, “Now, go to the usual shelter. I doubt it will be much. The Germans are running out of things to chuck at us. I’ll join you there in a jiffy.”
They had parted ways and Oliver met up with Lee Parker. The two wardens compared their lists, checked the shelters, and found four people missing. They split that number and set off in opposite directions.
Deep in the basement of a warehouse near the river, Molly and Charlie sat next to each other. It was quite cold down here, but experience told them that the comingled body heat of all the folks here would soon rectify that.
“Do you think it will be bad tonight?” asked Molly.
“Dunno. Last few times it ain’t been.”
“Do you really think you’ll leave England, Charlie, after the war’s done?”
“I never been out ’a London, ’cept when we went to Cornwall. I might like to see some of the world before I die.”
“You have a long way to go before then.”
At that very moment an explosion rocked nearby.
Molly reached out a hand and closed it around Charlie’s. He squeezed back.
“It’ll be okay.”
Molly nodded, but she didn’t look like she believed him.
The next blast struck closer and with stunning power. The ceiling above creaked and groaned, and the huge wooden posts holding it up seemed to shiver.
“V-2s,” said Charlie knowledgably. “No hum or buzz, with the planes comin’ and the bombs fallin’.”
Molly nodded. She knew Charlie was extremely knowledgeable about such things.
Another blast hit, even closer, and dust and crud and bits of the place fell on top of them. Some screamed; others scrambled to find cover when there was really none to be had.
Charlie held tight to Molly, and they bent lower as the panicked wails of little children filled the now-smoky space.
“They say these V-2 rockets fly by radio beam,” Charlie said in an even, calm voice. “We try to block that signal. And we got pretty good at it.”
Molly knew he was doing this to take her mind off what was going on. She appreciated this gesture, but it did nothing to rid her of the terror she was feeling.
“Yes, I heard something like that, too,” she said tremulously.
“It’ll be okay, Molly, really. We’ve made it this far.”
Another explosion hit so close that one wall of the vast room partially collapsed, pushing dust and dirt and shattered wood in a tidal wave toward them.
Everyone ran from the destruction.
As they huddled against the far wall, with all looking anxiously upward at the tons of material sitting precariously above them, Molly said quietly, “It just feels different this time, Charlie.”
Charlie stared at the ceiling that seemed to be giving way bit by bit.
It does feel different this time, he thought.
As Oliver ran along the streets he didn’t bother to look up. There was nothing to see. No planes, no howls from Jericho’s Trumpets. This was clearly a V-2 rocket attack. It was only metal machines coming to kill them, no flesh-and-blood pilots and navigators and bombardiers required. And you would never see or hear them coming. Like his friend Major Bryant had said, you’d be dead before you even knew you were no longer living.
He had one more couple on his list to find. He pounded on the door of their home. “Mr. and Mrs. Perkins. You must come. Quickly now. Please.”
A blast hit somewhere nearby, and Oliver looked up to see a building collapse nearby. He put his shoulder to the door and knocked it in, toppled through, and shoved the door shut behind him as the concussive wave from the blast swept across the street and blew out the front windows of the house. However, the door had not fully closed, and it was hit with incredible force. Oliver was lying on the floor with his feet against the door, but it was blown open so powerfully that he was propelled across the room, where he smacked into a dining room table.
“Mr. and Mrs. Perkins!” He staggered upright and looked in every room. No one was there. He ran back out into the streets and hustled toward the shelter. He had seen plumes of smoke and fire, and they were coming from the very building where Charlie and Molly were sheltering. Another direct hit there, and they would be done for.
They are going to survive this bloody awful war if I have any say about it.
He redoubled his efforts to reach them. He would take them and the others to a safer location. He turned the corner right as a V-2 rocket struck at that exact spot.
A Legacy Given
He left the both of you The Book Keep,” the man in a somber brown suit, and with a handlebar mustache, said as he looked over the typed papers.
Seated in the study, Molly and Charlie stared dully at the man, who was Ignatius Oliver’s solicitor, as he went over the contents of Ignatius Oliver’s last will and testament.
Molly stirred. “He did?”
“Yes, in equal shares. When you come of age, it will be deeded in your names. There was also the payment from a life insurance policy he had. It will be sufficient to keep the shop going and to help with your expenses.”
“When did he do this?” Molly asked.
“On the day after Boxing Day. He came to me and said it was what he wanted. He said he never wanted either of you to fear you would not have a home.”
“That was so very kind of him,” she said, while a teary Charlie nodded in agreement.
The lawyer said somberly, “It was quite sad, what happened. They said he was just a minute or so away from safety. The serendipity of life is quite... odd.”
Molly said, “Yes, yes, it is.”
She then closed her eyes and tried to force her mind to shut down because she simply could not process having lost her friend forever.
Charlie simply gazed at the Crown typewriter.
The funeral service had been a very private one. Major Bryant was there, as were a few other government types. Some fellow booksellers and a couple of Oliver’s friends from Oxford were also in attendance. So was Oliver’s older brother, Francis, who looked like his younger brother but didn’t have his gentle kindness and empathetic spirit. However, he had told them that he loved his brother very much and that Ignatius had written him about them, and that if they ever needed anything, he would help them however he could.
He had shaken both their hands, glanced at his brother’s coffin, and then gone back to his home in Glasgow.
Major Bryant had spoken with Molly afterward. “I wanted you to know that while I cannot condone what your father did, the three soldiers he killed were a terribly bad lot. They had been involved in thefts and other attacks on both men and women, and were about to be court-martialed.”
“And yet the police would do nothing?”
“Heads have rolled, Molly, from the bobby on the beat all the way up to Scotland Yard.”
“Then some good came of it,” she said.
Bryant glanced back at the coffin. “It’s an awful loss, both personally and for the country. He was an air warden when he should have been working on other things for the war effort. He would have made a name for himself, I can tell you that. In his field he had few peers.”
“And what field was that exactly?” she asked. He looked at her stonily and she added, “Right, you can’t tell me.”