She stood up and tugged her satin dress over her head. Underneath, she was wearing nothing but a grubby white bra. Josh had thought that she was wearing pantyhose, but she had simply colored her legs with foundation cream, which ended just above her hemline, where she was startlingly white. She was plump and full-breasted, with a rounded tummy, and she wasn’t unattractive, but there were bruises all over her – finger-bruises mostly, where men had gripped her thighs and her buttocks and her breasts. Josh felt powerless and sad, and he cursed all men for everything they do, their wars and their religions.
He watched her as she cleaned her teeth with an old, splayed toothbrush. She drew back the blanket that separated the “bedroom” from the rest of the cellar, and climbed into bed. Josh waited for a few minutes, but tiredness was overwhelming him, and eventually he stood up, took off his coat, and stripped down to his shorts. He climbed into bed next to Petty and lay there staring at the lime washed ceiling.
She turned over and touched some of the reddened scabs from the Holy Harp. “Are you all right?” she asked him. “Who did those?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I don’t mind. Everybody says that I’m a very good listener. You have to be, when you’re on the game. That’s what they come for, you know. The listening, more than the sex.”
She kept on stroking him, but the effect was more soporific than erotic. She played with his nipples, and then ran her fingertips down his sides. His eyes closed. He wasn’t quite asleep, but he was very close to it. Her fingers trailed lightly across his stomach muscles, almost as lightly as butterflies. He saw darkness and thought that he was back in bed in Mill Valley, in the middle of the night. He was sure that he could hear cicadas, and the wind-chimes jangling out on his verandah.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was another world?” said Petty, as she inserted her finger into his navel. “No war, no bombing. Everybody being nice to each other. Imagine.”
Josh slept. He was very far away. He was sitting in the bookstore coffee house in Mill Valley, trying to discourage a little mongrel called Duchovny from jumping up and annoying people. Nancy was there, and she was laughing. He could see her eyes sparkling and the sun shining through the feathers in her hair. He reached out to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let him, even though she was still laughing. Somehow her laughter began to sound tinny, and false.
“They’re coming,” she said. “Can’t you hear them drumming?”
Twenty-One
He opened his eyes. The cellar was shaking. The whole world was shaking. It sounded as if thousands of airplanes were flying overhead, thousands of them. Their droning made the door rattle and the brickwork crack and the cheap aluminum saucepans drop off their shelves. Josh looked at Petty: she was fast asleep, lying on her back with her mouth open. He shook her and shouted, “Petty! Petty, wake up!”
She opened her eyes and blinked at him. “What’s the matter? I was having a good dream then. I was dancing, and all these blokes were clapping and throwing me money.” She looked around, almost as if she expected to find the bedspread strewn with five-pound notes.
“It’s another raid!” Josh shouted at her.
The roaring of aero-engines was enormous now. It seemed to blot out everything: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and any sense of logic. Josh felt as if he were drowning in it.
“There’s nothing we can do!” Petty screamed at him. “This is as safe as anywhere else!”
They heard whistling, not far away. That dreadful, triumphant wheeeeeeee! Then the sticks of bombs began to land, fifteen or sixteen at a time, running up St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross Road in a series of minor earthquakes. They heard a gas main explode. They heard tons of masonry falling into the road. They heard bells, and bells, and more bells.
“Oh Mary Mother of God protect us,” prayed Petty.
“Are you a Catholic?” asked Josh.
She frowned at him. She was still naked, and there were red wrinkled marks from the sheets on the side of her left breast, where she had been sleeping.
“Yes, I’m a Catholic. What difference does it make?”
“It doesn’t.”
A huge explosion at the lower end of Drury Lane made the whole house shake. Josh heard windows bursting and bricks collapsing, and it sounded as if a whole truckload of bricks had been unloaded on the floor right above their heads.
“Oh please God don’t let us be buried alive,” begged Petty.
Josh didn’t say anything, but was thinking the exact same thought. Of all the deaths that he could imagine, being buried alive was the one that filled him with the greatest dread.
Another bomb hit Drury Lane, much closer this time. The impact made Josh’s ears sing, and almost threw them out of bed. Josh lay on top of Petty and pulled the blankets over his head, while even more masonry dropped on to the floor above them, and brick dust sifted down from every crevice in the ceiling.
Under the blankets, they clung to each other, sweaty and hot, but both of them praying to survive. They heard another whistle, much louder this time, and growing louder, as if a train were hurtling toward them, and Petty held him so tight that she almost suffocated him. “Whatever happens,” she breathed in his ear, “remember that I love you.”
“How can you love me? You don’t even know who I am.”
“I know. But you’re going to be holding me tight when I die. I can’t ask any more than that, can I?”
She lifted her head and kissed him. Her mouth tasted of gin and cigarettes, but all the same it was warm and soft and she obviously wanted him. At the same instant the world seemed to come to a stop. Josh felt an enormous compression in his ears, and the next thing he knew he was flung out of bed across the cellar, hitting his head on one of the armchairs and landing upside down in the kitchen, scattering cans and cartons and cutlery. Petty was hurled against the cellar steps and lay hunched up with her head in the corner as if she were playing turtles.
Tons of rubble dropped on top of the cellar. The lights went out, and they were left in choking darkness. Josh stayed where he was for a while, his feet up in the air, trying to get his breath back. Then he called out, “Petty?”
Petty didn’t answer. Josh managed to roll himself sideways, bringing down another clatter of pots and pans, and crawled on his hands and knees across the grit-strewn floor. “Petty, can you hear me, is everything OK?”
He caught his hand on a protruding nail, and he could feel the blood running down his forearm. “Petty?” he called. “Petty, for God’s sake, talk to me.”
Groping sideways, he managed to find the bottom of the stairs, and then Petty’s right foot. He felt his way up her body until he reached her head. Her hair was thick with dust and thousands of tiny fragments of glass. She might have been bleeding, but it was impossible for him to tell because his own hand was bleeding, too, and everything felt sticky and wet.
“Petty,” he urged her, turning her over on to her back. “Petty, for God’s sake say something.”
She remained floppy and cold and unresponsive. Josh could feel a pulse, but it was very thready. He felt for her mouth and stuck his finger into it, to make sure that it wasn’t obstructed. Then he leaned over and gave her mouth-to-mouth. A huge explosion like that could have compressed her lungs, or filled them with dust.
“Petty,” he said, between breaths. “Listen to me, Petty, you’re going to be fine. The worst of it’s over. They won’t be coming back. Not tonight, anyhow. Come on, Petty, you have to breathe here, baby. You have to use your lungs. There’s one thing for sure, I’m not going to let you die, whatever it takes.”
He kept up mouth-to-mouth for nearly twenty minutes. He massaged her heart, too. The cellar remained totally dark and he couldn’t see her at all.