There was a high whistle outside and above, a roaring, crowding, thundering, clattering scream, that grew out of the blackness like a train wreck in a storm, and hurtled towards them. Everyone hit the floor.
The explosion crashed through every eardrum. The floor heaved. There was the sound of a thousand windowpanes blowing out. The lights flickered, and in the crazy moment before they went out, Michael saw the sleeping proprietress slide sideways out of her chair, her glasses still hanging from one ear. The explosion rumbled on in waves, each one less strong, as buildings collapsed, walls broke, brick tumbled into living-rooms and areas. The piano in the back room hummed as though ten men had struck chords on it all at once.
The lights flickered on. Everyone got to his feet. Somebody lifted the proprietress from the floor and put her back on the chair, still sleeping. She opened her eyes and stared coldly out in front of her. "I think it's despicable," she said, "stealing an old woman's scarf while she sleeps." She closed her eyes again.
The two Polish Captains put on their pointed caps. They looked around them disdainfully, then started out. At the door they stopped. On the wall was a poster of Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and Stalin. One of the Poles reached up and tore off the picture of Stalin. Then he ripped the picture in quarters, swiftly, and threw it back into the room, in angular confetti. "Bolshevik pigs!" he shouted.
The Frenchman who ate martini glasses got up from the floor and threw a chair at the Poles. It clattered on the wall next to the pointed caps. The Poles turned and fled.
"Salauds!" shouted the Frenchman, wavering at his table.
"Come back here and I will…"
"Those gentlemen," said the proprietress, keeping her eyes closed, "are to be denied admission to these premises from now on."
Michael looked over to the end of the bar. The Major-General had his arms comfortingly around Louise and was tenderly patting her buttocks. "There, there, little woman," he was saying.
"All right, General." Louise was smiling icily. "The battle is over. Disengage."
The siren went off, indicating, in its long, sustained note, that the raid was over.
Then Michael began to shake. He gripped the bottom of his chair with his hands and he set his teeth, but they clattered in his jaws. He smiled woodenly at Pavone, who was relighting his cigar.
"Whitacre," said Pavone, "what the hell do you do in the Army? Whenever I see you, you're holding up a bar some place."
"I don't do anything much, Colonel," Michael said, then kept quiet, because one more word would have been too much, and his jaw would have worked loose.
"Can you speak French?"
"A little."
"Can you drive a car?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Would you like to work for me?" Pavone asked.
"Yes, Sir," said Michael, because Pavone outranked him.
"We'll see, we'll see," said Pavone. "The man I had working for me is up for court-martial, and I think he's going to be found guilty."
"Yes, Sir."
"Call me up in a couple of weeks," said Pavone. "It may turn out to be interesting."
"Thank you, Sir," said Michael.
"Do you smoke cigars?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Here." Pavone held out three cigars and Michael took them.
"I don't know why I think so, but I think you have an intelligent look in your eye."
"Thanks."
Pavone looked over at General Rockland. "You'd better get back there," Pavone said, "before the General goes off with your girl."
Michael stuffed the cigars into his pocket. He had considerable trouble with the pocket button because his fingers were shaking as though he were plugged into an electric circuit.
"I am still sweating," Ahearn was saying as Michael left the table, "but everything is extraordinarily clear."
Michael stood respectfully but firmly next to General Rockland. He coughed discreetly. "I'm afraid, Sir," he said, "I have to take the lady home. I promised her mother I'd bring her back by midnight."
"Your mother in London?" the General demanded of Louise.
"No," said Louise. "But PFC Whitacre knew her back in St Louis."
The General laughed hoarsely and good-naturedly. "I know when I'm being given the business," he said. "Her mother. That's a new one." He clapped Michael heavily on the back.
"Good luck, Son," he said, "glad to have met you." He peered around the room. "Where's Ottilie?" he demanded. "Is she giving out those damned cards here, too?" He strode off, the Captain with the moustache in his wake, looking for Mrs Kearney, who was locked by now in the bathroom, with one of the sergeant pilots.
Louise smiled at Michael.
"Having a good time?" Michael asked.
"Charming," Louise said. "The General fell right on top of me when the bomb hit. I thought he was going to spend the summer there. Ready to go?"
"Ready," said Michael.
He took her hand and they went out.
Outside there was a sullen smell of smoke in the air, foul and threatening. For a moment, Michael stopped, feeling his jaws and his nerves panicking again, and he nearly turned round and ran back inside. Then he controlled himself, and started down the dark, smoky street with Louise.
From St James's Street came the thin tinkle of glass, and the heavy orange flicker of fire, spitting up through the smoke, and a new sound, thick and gurgling, that he had not heard before. They turned the corner and looked down towards the Palace. The street reflected the quivering orange fire in a million angles of broken glass. Down in front of the Palace, the fire shone back off a small lake of water. The gurgling was being made by ambulances and fire engines pushing through the water in bottom gear. Without saying anything to each other, Michael and Louise walked swiftly, their shoes crackling on the glass, making a sound like people walking through a frozen meadow, towards the spot where the bomb had fallen.
A small car had been hit right in front of the Palace. It was lying against a wall, crushed and compressed, as though it had been put through a giant baling machine. There was no sign of the driver or any of the passengers, unless what an old man on the right-hand side of the street was carefully sweeping into a small pile might be they. A woman's beret, dark blue and gay, rested, almost untouched by the catastrophe, a little to one side of the car.
The houses facing the Palace still stood, although their fronts had slipped down into rubble. There was the familiar and sorrowful picture of rooms, ready for living, with tablecloths laid, and counterpanes turned back, and clocks still ticking the time, laid open to the eye of the night by the knifelike effect of the blast. It is what they are always striving to achieve in the theatre, Michael thought, the removal of the fourth wall and a peep at the life inside.
No sounds came from the broken houses, and somehow Michael felt that very few people had been caught by the bomb. There were many deep air-raid shelters in the neighbourhood, he comforted himself, and probably the inhabitants of the houses had been cautious.
Nobody seemed to be making any effort to rescue anybody who might still be in the blasted buildings. Firemen sloshed methodically through the pond of water, from the gushing, ruptured main. Air Raid Rescue people pushed desultorily and quietly at the more obvious bits of the wreckage. That was all.