All Clear

  “You’ll be safe here,” the chorister said to all of them, and walked rapidly back to the watch’s headquarters. But not back upstairs, and it didn’t look like he was going to go upstairs. He was messing about with the kettle.

  Polly looked about for a stairway at this end of the Crypt, but she couldn’t see one. What now? Should she wait here on the off chance one of the fire watch would come down here, and try to persuade him to take a message to John Bartholomew?

  From the sound of things, that wasn’t likely to happen. More and more incendiaries were spattering overhead, and the roar of the planes was growing louder even down here. “Will St. Paul’s burn down?” the boy asked his mother.

  “It can’t,” the woman said. “It’s built of stone.”

  But that wasn’t true. The cathedral had wooden inner roofs, wooden supports, wooden beams, wooden choir stalls, wooden screens, wooden chairs. And hard-to-reach spaces between the roofs which seemed to have been designed just for incendiaries to melt through and lodge in. Which was what the fire watch were working frantically to keep from happening. And would be working frantically on all night. The chorister was right. They wouldn’t be down before morning.

  She couldn’t wait that long. But to get to the roofs, she’d have to get past the chorister. And away from the shelterers, which would be difficult. When the boy wandered a short way down the Crypt, the women made him come sit down, saying, “The gentleman in charge told us to keep to this end.”

  “I only wanted to look at the tombs,” the boy said, which gave Polly an idea.

  “Isn’t the artist who painted The Light of the World buried down here?” she asked no one in particular, and walked over to read the memorial tablets on the north wall, working her way slowly along them and waiting for her chance.

  The chorister looked at his watch, took the kettle off the gas ring, and disappeared into one of the bays. Polly waited for the next batch of incendiaries and when the shelterers automatically looked up at the ceiling, darted into the next bay and along the Crypt, keeping next to the wall and looking for another way up to the main floor. Or to the upper levels.

  Two of the bays had mounds of sandbags covering something—the organ pipes? John Donne in his shroud?—and the next had a grille across it with a padlocked and locked gate, but in the one after that there were several shovels and coils of rope and a large tub of water. And a stairway.

  It was the twin of the one she’d come down, which meant it would only go up to the main floor, but it would get her up out of the Crypt and away from the chorister. She ran quickly up the not-nearly-as-dark steps and out into the north transept.

  And into the arms of the chorister. “Not that way, miss,” he said, catching her with both hands. “Down this way.”

  He took her back down the steps.

  “I was only—”

  “Quickly,” he said; he didn’t seem angry, only in a great hurry.

  He hustled her at top speed through the Crypt to where the shelterers were sitting. “Attention, everyone,” he said. “Please collect your things. We need to evacuate the building.”

  The women began gathering up their belongings. “This is the second time I’ve had to move tonight,” one of them said disgustedly.

  “Is St. Paul’s on fire?” the boy asked.

  The chorister didn’t answer. “This way,” he said, and led the way to a narrow recessed door in the northwest corner. “I’ll see you all get to another shelter.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Polly said. “I must speak to Mr. Bartholomew.”

  “You can speak to him outside,” he said, herding them through the door. “The fire watch is being evacuated as well.”

  The fire watch? Why were they being evacuated? They were supposed to be putting out incendiaries. It doesn’t matter, she thought. It means you can tell Mr. Bartholomew.

  “Will they come out this way?” she asked.

  “No, they’ll have gone out through the nave. It’s quicker,” he said, pushing Polly through the doorway, up the short flight of steps to the surface, and through the outer door. They emerged into the churchyard and a cacophony of sound—droning bombers, clanging fire bells, the deafening thud of anti-aircraft guns, the wind. It was blowing hard, fanning the flames of a Victorian house on fire just beyond the churchyard.

  The flames lit the churchyard with an eerie reddish light. The shelterers stood in a huddle among the tombstones, waiting for the chorister to take them to the shelter.

  Polly darted past them and around to the west front of the church. The fire watch was already there, standing in the courtyard. But there were far too many of them—an entire crowd—and they weren’t the watch, they were civilians. And beyond them, firemen were playing water on several buildings on fire in Paternoster Row. The people in the courtyard must have fled those buildings and come here for shelter.

  But they were making no attempt to go inside St. Paul’s. They were all standing well back from the steps, in the center of the courtyard, and they seemed oblivious to the fires behind them and to the deafening drone of planes overhead. They were looking, transfixed, up at the dome.

  Polly followed their gaze. Halfway up the dome was a small gout of blue-white flame. “An incendiary!” a man behind her shouted at her over the roar of the planes. “It’s too far up for the fire watch to reach.”

  “Once the dome catches,” the woman on her other side said, “the whole building will go up like a torch.”

  No, it won’t, Polly thought. St. Paul’s didn’t burn down. The fire watch put out twenty-eight incendiaries and saved it.

  The fire watch. She looked over at the porch, but no one was on it or on the steps or coming out either of the side doors. The chorister had said coming out through the nave was quicker. That meant the fire watch was already out here, somewhere in this crowd. Polly started through it, looking for men in coveralls and helmets.

  “Mr. Bartholomew!” she called, pushing between people, hoping someone would turn his head. “John Bartholomew!” but there was too much noise from the guns and the planes and the fire engines’ bells. She couldn’t make herself heard. And she couldn’t see any helmets.

  “Oh, look!” the woman she was shoving past said. “She’s going!” and Polly, shocked, turned and looked up. Where the small flame had been, large yellow flames were spurting, whipped by the wind. Even as she watched, the fire seemed to grow larger and brighter.

  “She’s done for,” someone said.

  “Can’t they do something?” a woman asked plaintively.

  A man’s voice in the middle of the crowd said with authority, “I think a prayer would be in order,” and the crowd went silent. “Let us pray.”

  That had to be Dean Matthews. The chorister had said he was up on the roofs. He and the fire watch would be standing together.

  Polly headed for his voice, but the crowd, spellbound by the drama on the dome, refused to let her through. Polly pushed out of the crowd and ran toward the cathedral and up the steps to see where Dean Matthews and the fire watch were standing. If she could spot Mr. Bartholomew from Eileen’s description and wave to him …

  She clambered up next to the lamppost at the end of the stairs and scanned the crowd, looking for a clerical collar. She still couldn’t see Dean Matthews or the fire watch. She moved a bit to the right, attempting to get a better angle from which to see their upturned faces, lit by the orange light from the fires in Paternoster Row. She noted and discarded the ones who couldn’t be on the fire watch—woman, woman, too young, too old—

  Oh, God. She grabbed for the lamppost, suddenly weak in the knees.

  It was Mr. Dunworthy.

  How all occasions do inform against me.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET

  St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940

  EILEEN WATCHED THE WARDEN START AROUND THE INCENDIARY and up the steps after Polly. “You there! Stop!” he called after her, but she was already inside and the door had closed b
ehind her.

  For a split second Eileen was afraid he was going to go in after her, but the incendiary suddenly began gyrating and throwing off violent sparks and blobs of molten magnesium, and the warden stopped where he was, brushing wildly at his coat and arms. Mike leaped to his aid, slapping at the sparks.

  The incendiary’s spinning was bringing it closer to the men and to the edge of the step.

  “Look out!” Eileen shouted. It rolled over the edge, still spinning, and down two steps, sending off a shower of stinging sparks. Eileen instinctively backed away from it and fell off her step, stumbling and flailing her arms to keep her balance.

  There was another, higher-pitched swish. “Jesus!” Mike shouted, running toward her. “Here come some more. We’ve got to get out of here!” He grabbed her hand. They skirted the incendiary and ran up the steps, but too late. Another incendiary rattled down onto the porch, directly between them and the door, fizzing. They backed away from it.

  And straight into the arms of the warden. “This way!” the warden shouted. “Quick!”

  He grabbed their arms and herded them back down the stairs and around the side of the cathedral. More incendiaries fell, glittering among the trees and shrubs in the churchyard and along the lane as he propelled them down the hill.

  “Where are we going?” Mike shouted.

  “Shelter!” the warden yelled back over the roar of the planes. “Keep near the buildings!”

  There was another clatter, several streets away, and a heavier thump. That’s an HE, Eileen thought. But Mike said it was all incendiaries.

  They rounded a corner. A woman and two children were huddling in a doorway. “Come along,” the warden said, letting go of Mike’s arm to take charge of them, too. “We must get out of this.”

  He was right. Fires were springing up all around them, turning the garish white light of the incendiaries to orange. The group went faster, heads down, hugging the line of wooden warehouses, and two elderly men fell in behind them.

  Mike leaned close to Eileen as they ran. “If we get separated,” he said, “go to Blackfriars with him and wait for me there.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got to get into St. Paul’s.”

  “But—” Eileen said, looking fearfully back up the hill. Fires were burning all along its crest.

  “We’ve only got tonight to find Bartholomew,” Mike said, “and Polly doesn’t even know what he looks like.”

  “But I thought you said we needed to keep together.”

  “We do. But if we should happen to get separated, we can’t afford to waste time running around looking for each other. We may only have a couple of hours’ leeway to get to the drop—”

  He broke off as the warden turned his head to say, “We’re nearly there.” The warden pointed down a side street. “There’s a surface shelter just round the corner from here.”

  A surface shelter. Polly had said one of them had been hit. “I thought you were taking us to Blackfriars,” Eileen shouted over the anti-aircraft guns.

  “This is nearer!” the warden shouted.

  They rounded the corner and stopped. The building at the end of the block was on fire, flames and smoke boiling from its upper story. In front of it, filling the narrow street, was a fire engine. Firemen swarmed around it, uncoiling hose, spraying a stream of water on the blaze. Eileen stepped back involuntarily, and bumped right into another fireman. “This lane’s off-limits!” he shouted at her, and then at the warden, “What are these people doing here?”

  “I was taking them to the shelter in Pilgrim Street,” the warden said defensively.

  “This whole area’s restricted,” the fireman said. “You’ll have to take them down to Blackfriars.”

  “Wait,” another fireman said, coming over from the engine. He was carrying an infant. He thrust it into Eileen’s arms. “Here. Take this with you,” he said, as if it were a parcel.

  The baby immediately began to scream. “But I can’t—” Eileen protested, and turned to Mike for support.

  He was nowhere to be seen. He must have taken advantage of the confusion to go assist Polly. And left her here. With an infant.

  The fireman was already walking away. “Wait, where’s its mother?” she shouted over the baby’s ear-splitting screams. “How will she know where to find it?”

  He looked at her and then back at the burning building and shook his head grimly.

  “Come along,” the warden said, and led Eileen and the others back to the corner and down the hill, stepping over the tangle of fire hoses which seemed to be everywhere.

  The infant was screaming so loudly that Eileen couldn’t even hear the guns. “Shh, it’s all right,” she whispered to it. “We’re going to the shelter.”

  It redoubled its screams. I know just how you feel, Eileen thought.

  The couple and the teenaged girl had all hurried ahead, and the warden called back impatiently to Eileen, “Can’t you keep that child quiet?” as if she were violating some rule of the blackout.

  At least they were going to Blackfriars. And between the fires and the searchlights, she could see the street ahead and the tube station below them. “Shh, we’re here, sweetheart. We’re at the shelter,” she told the baby, hurrying to the entrance, down the stairs, and inside.

  The baby abruptly stopped crying and looked around at the busy station, rubbing its eyes. It was perhaps a year old, and covered with soot. Perhaps it got burned, and that’s why it’s screaming, Eileen thought, and examined its chubby arms and legs.

  She couldn’t see any injuries. Its cheeks were very red, but that was probably from crying, which it looked like it was winding up to do again. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asked, to distract it. “Hmm? What’s your name? And what am I going to do with you?”

  She needed to find someone in a position of authority to give the infant to. She went over to the ticket booth. “Can you—?” she said, and the baby began to scream again. “This child’s been separated from its mother,” she shouted over its shrieks, “and the fireman asked me to take her to the authorities.”

  “Authorities?” the ticket seller shouted back blankly.

  A bad sign. “Have you an infirmary here?”

  “There’s a first-aid station,” he said doubtfully.

  “Where?”

  “On the eastbound platform.”

  But it wasn’t there, though she walked the full length of the platform, the baby squalling the entire time. “I don’t recall ever seeing one,” a shelterer said when she asked him. “Is there a first-aid station here, Maude?” he asked his wife, who was putting her hair up in pincurls.

  “No,” Maude said, opening a bobby pin with her teeth. “There’s a canteen in the District Line hall.”

  “Thank you,” Eileen said, and started along the tunnel. Surprisingly, it was deserted.

  Or perhaps not so surprisingly, she thought, walking through a puddle and then another. Water was dripping from the ceiling, and there was a distinctly unwaterlike odor. She walked rapidly toward the stairs at the end.

  Halfway there, she was suddenly surrounded by a gaggle of children. They ranged in age from about six to twelve or so, and were incredibly grubby. Fagin’s band of pickpockets, she thought, and tightened her grip on her handbag and the baby.

  “Give us a tuppence?” one of them asked, holding out his hand.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Why’s your baby cryin’?” the eldest one asked challengingly.

  “Is it sick?”

  “Wot’s its name?”

  “Has it got the colic?” the others chimed in, dancing around her.

  “It’s crying because you’re frightening it,” she said. “So run along.”

  “I ’eard ’er tell the ticket seller it weren’t ’er baby,” the girl said. “I think that’s why it’s crying.”

  “I bet she pinched it,” the eldest boy said.

  The girl circled around behind he
r.

  “That’s why she won’t tell us its name,” the smallest one said, pointedly not looking at the girl, who was edging closer to Eileen’s handbag. “Because she don’t know it. If it is your baby, wot’s its name?”

  “Michael,” Eileen said, and walked rapidly away.

  They ran to catch up with her. “What’s your name?”

  “Eileen,” she said without breaking stride and rounded the corner to a stairway crowded with people.

  The sitting and reclining bodies made it nearly impossible to get up the stairs, but it didn’t matter. The children had melted away so quickly she thought there must be a guard at the head of the stairs and scanned the crowd eagerly for him, but there was no one who looked official, only people in coats and nightclothes. Shelterers and evacuees. Eileen shifted the baby to a more comfortable position and picked her way up the stairs and out into the District Line’s hall.

  Where there was no canteen and no first-aid station. “Oh, dear,” she said, and was immediately sorry. The baby, whose crying had subsided slightly during the interesting encounter with the urchins, went off again.

  “Shh,” Eileen said, walking over to two women standing in an alcove, talking. “I’m supposed to deliver this baby to the authorities,” she said without preamble. “It lost its mother in a fire. But I can’t find—”

  “You need to take her to the WVS post,” one of the women said promptly. “They’re in charge of incident victims.”

  “Where’s that?” Eileen asked, looking round at the hall.

  “Embankment.”

  “Embankment? Oh, but—”

  “The westbound platform,” the woman said, and the two of them walked quickly away.

  Before I could fob the baby off on them, Eileen thought.

  What now? She couldn’t take it to Embankment. Mike had told her to wait for him here. If he found John Bartholomew …

  But she couldn’t go with him with this infant on her hands. And Embankment was only two stops away.

  But Polly’d said some of the lines had been hit. What if she couldn’t get back? She couldn’t risk it. She’d have to find someone here to take the baby. She surveyed the platform, looking for a motherly type.