He was walking along a narrow alley off Drury Lane when a voice called out, “What’s your hurry, darling?”
He stopped. A woman was standing in a doorway opposite. All he could see was the glow of her cigarette and the light shining on her stockinged leg.
“Got a spare ten minutes, darling?” she asked him.
“I’m sorry, I’m in kind of a hurry.”
“You won’t regret it, sweetheart, I promise you. Five pounds and you can do anything you like.”
“Thanks for the offer, but no thanks.”
There was a pause, and then the woman said, “Here, you’re not a Yank, are you?”
The way she asked him, Josh was suddenly aware that he ought to be careful what he said. “I’m just on my way to meet some friends, that’s all.”
She stepped out of the doorway. She looked much younger than she sounded. Nineteen or twenty, not much older. She walked in an odd tilting way because her shoes were too high. She had upswept blonde hair and she wore a purple satin dress with padded shoulders, a deep décolletage, and a handstitched hemline that finished just above her knee. She was heavily made up, with thin plucked eyebrows, but she hardly needed it. She had a pretty, almost elfin face and huge dark eyes.
“Come on, darling. You can spare a fiver, can’t you? I’m starving.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have any money at all. If I did, believe me, you could have it for nothing.”
She came up to him, lifted her hand, and turned his face to the side so that she could see him better. “You sound like a Yank. You didn’t get shot down, did you?”
“Shot down? No. You’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t even fly.”
“So what are you? A spy? I could make a lot of money out of you, if you’re a spy.”
“Listen,” said Josh. “I came here looking for a friend of mine, that’s all. I’m not a pilot and I’m not a spy. If you really want to know I’m an alternative veterinarian.”
“What’s that when it’s at home?”
“I don’t really have time to explain. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“You are a spy, aren’t you? A Yank spy. They give you fifty quid if you turn one in.”
Josh heard the distant crump-crump-crump of anti-aircraft guns. More searchlights played tic-tac-toe in the sky.
“This may sound like kind of a dumb question,” he asked the girl. “But… is there a war going on here?”
“Oh, no. It’s fireworks night, that’s all.”
“God, you British and your sarcasm. There’s a war on, isn’t there?”
She came up close to him, and gripped the lapels of his coat, and pouted at him, and licked her lips, and lifted her thigh up against his leg. “Where have you been?” she asked him, with a smoker’s catch in her voice. “How come you don’t know there’s a war on? You’re not a loony, are you?”
In the far distance, Josh heard the droning of aero-engines. Not jets – piston engines, and there were scores of them, by the sound of it. The whole night started to throb, and the crump-crump-crump of anti-aircraft fire grew deafening.
“Second wave,” said the girl, in a matter-of-fact voice. “We’d better get under cover.”
She opened the door behind her and stepped inside. Josh stayed where he was, unsure whether she wanted him to follow her. “What are you waiting for?” she asked him, from the darkness. “You don’t want to get blown to bits, do you?”
Josh entered the shadows. The girl closed the door behind him and switched on the light. He found himself standing in a narrow, cabbagey-smelling hallway. On the right, there was a gloomy flight of stairs covered in old brown linoleum. On the left, there was a door which obviously led down to the cellar. “Come on,” said the girl. “We’ll be safe in here. Unless we cop a direct hit, that is.” Josh hesitated, but he suddenly heard a shrilling chorus of whistles in the air high above them, followed by seven or eight deafening bangs. They couldn’t have been more than half a mile away, and Josh felt the jolt through the soles of his feet.
“Don’t hang about. My Aunt Maisie hung about, and got her head blown halfway down the garden.” The girl led the way down the steps. Josh closed the cellar door behind him and followed her. “See … look,” she said. “I’ve got it quite homely, really.” The cellar walls were limewashed white. Two brick arches supported the ceiling, and formed three separate rooms: a makeshift bedroom at the far end, which was curtained off with a thick gray blanket, a living area with two old armchairs and a sagging sofa, and a kitchen with a paraffin stove and a few cans of food – corned beef, peas and carrots and a box of Shredded Wheat.
The cellar smelled of damp and stale cigarette smoke and unwashed sheets, but the girl was wearing a strong, cheap lavender perfume, which mostly overwhelmed it. She sat down in one of the armchairs, crossed her legs so that her dress rode high on her white, bruised thighs, and held out a packet of Senior Service cigarettes. “Gasper?”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on, it’ll do you good. Look at the state you’re in.”
“Are you kidding me? Don’t you know how bad for you those things are? You don’t want to survive all this bombing and die of lung cancer, do you?”
“Lung cancer, darling? What are you talking about? My doctor told me to smoke. He said it was good for my nerves.” She lit a cigarette and inhaled it deeply, blowing out twin tusks of smoke from her nostrils. “I think I’d die if I couldn’t have a fag.”
Above them, Josh could hear the pulsing of engines coming closer and closer, punctuated by dozens of ground-shaking explosions. It sounded as if somebody were stalking along a corridor, violently slamming one door after another. After each explosion, dust sifted down from the ceiling, which the girl nonchalantly brushed off her knees with her hand.
“It’s murder on your hair, all this dust. They said it was going to be bad tonight. I reckon we’ll have to throw in the towel if it goes on like this.”
There was another immense explosion, very close by. The lights went out for a moment, and they could hear masonry and glass dropping on to the ceiling.
Josh held out his hand. “Guess I’d better introduce myself, if we’re going to die together. Josh Winward.”
The girl said, “Petty Horrocks. Stupid name, isn’t it, Petty? Better than Petunia, though.”
“How long have you lived here, Petty?”
“Three months, give or take. My mum and dad moved out to the country when the war started, but I couldn’t stand it there. Lincolnshire, do me a favor. Nothing but sugar beets and lads as thick as shit. I told them I’d rather be blown to bits than die of boredom. So I came back to London; and this place was empty; and that was that.”
“And you survive …?”
“By screwing anybody who’s got a fiver. Or two pounds ten for a blow job. Sorry if that offends you. But at least I can go dancing in the evenings and have a laugh.”
“I guess we all have to survive the best way we can.”
Another five or six bombs fell, but this time they sounded further away. All the same, the droning of aero-engines continued, and Josh guessed that there must have been nearly a hundred airplanes passing overhead.
“We won’t be able to put up with this much longer, you know,” said Petty, in a matter-of-fact voice, tapping her cigarette ash on the floor. “The docks is all gone, Covent Garden’s gone. They even dropped a bomb on the Odeon in Leicester Square. Fifty-eight people killed, right in the middle of a Ronald Shiner film. Serves them right for going to see it, that’s what I say. Still, I won’t be sorry when it’s all over.”
Josh said, “Listen, I know it all looks pretty bad at the moment. But you guys are going to win this war. I promise.”