A Quiet Life(64)

Laura turned and began to make her way south again. But she had never walked in this part of London before, and as the road stretched on its dusty way she began to be unsure whether she was taking the most direct route. She asked a young woman, who told her to take a bus. Laura waited at the stop for a long time before someone else told her the buses were being diverted due to another time bomb on the previous street. Laura’s once shiny patent shoes had lost the rubber to one heel at some point during her walk, so she went along with an uncomfortable limp. Finally she came to the road in Clerkenwell. The shop now stood in a row of boarded-up frontages. A scrawled notice in the window said, ‘Closed due to bomb damage’.

She began to limp back along the street, and just as she thought to wonder what the time was, ‘Here it comes,’ came the shout from across the road and the sirens began to wail. Laura knew no shelters in that part of town, and she meant to go on walking, but as she crossed towards Farringdon, a warden shouted, ‘Are you deaf?’ and she realised she could hear the thrumming of planes, already coming near. With other people, she started running towards Farringdon station. The noise was suddenly all around, and they crushed together as they entered the station. ‘Careful there, no need to push,’ voices said as they struggled into the ticket hall, stumbling over people who had already spread mattresses on the floor. A great rustling and sighing filled the air around where Laura was standing in the station entrance, as the bombers began to release their first loads.

‘Incendiaries,’ said a voice behind her, as the chandelier flares began their crazy descent. ‘Incandescent incendiaries.’

‘Incredible incendiaries,’ said another voice.

‘Inglorious, insidious, Indescribable, intensifying incendiaries,’ said the first voice again.

‘Alistair,’ Laura said, recognising the voice, but her words were covered by the rising force of the anti-aircraft guns, and she had to shout, ‘Alistair!’ before he turned and saw her, his face lit by the green-white flares of the incendiaries bursting on the road outside.

‘They’ve got St John’s,’ someone shouted, and she saw the light further away change to yellow and then blue where a gas main had been hit.

Alistair said something about this being an absurd place to meet as he struggled and failed to move closer to her. Laura replied, saying the bombardment had come early, but then she saw the station clock and realised she must have been wandering the city for hours. Her mouth was dry, her bladder burning, and someone’s bag was jabbing into her side.

She asked a ticket inspector who was trying to gather up mattresses from the people who had got there early, to encourage them to stand up to make more room, if there was more space further in. He told her that the escalators had been turned off, but people had already filled every step. ‘They’re getting it bad in Holborn,’ he said. ‘Watch yourself, what are you doing?’ The press of people was making Laura feel claustrophobic, and she had stepped into the road.

‘Wait, Laura,’ Alistair called to her. ‘Wait till this lot have dropped and I’ll come out with you.’

She stepped back in, and they waited for a few minutes that extended like elastic around the whooshing of falling bombs, the rumble of falling masonry, the dirge-like voices of the commentary of the people around them.

‘Come,’ he said, as the skies quietened. ‘Or do you want to wait it out after all?’

‘I can’t stand it, I’d rather walk.’

Alistair asked the friend he had been standing with if he was coming with them, but the young man shook his head, and Alistair and Laura went out into the exposed road, where other desperate people were beginning to emerge. As they were walking up Farringdon Road, they heard the low roar of aeroplanes again. ‘We’ll never get you back to Chester Square tonight; you should have stayed in the station.’

‘What about you?’

‘Can’t bear these nights. Tell you what, how about the Ace of Clubs, have you tried it? It’s reopened, safe as anywhere else, I would have thought, in that basement.’

Laura agreed, hardly knowing what she was agreeing to. She was limping again. She slid her feet out of her shoes and started to walk in stockinged feet.

Alistair shook his head, saying she was crazy to walk like that, in these streets. They were littered with shrapnel and glass, but she managed to pick her way in the glare of searchlights to the west. Somehow the madness of the situation made them elated, and they found themselves half laughing as more incendiaries fell to the west of them, until one bigger bomb sucked up the air as it fell too near and they were pressed against the side of a wall. But they went on like that through Holborn, with other scurrying ants who had come out of hiding. As they turned the corner into Red Lion Square, they saw two or three ambulances and muffled figures with stretchers. ‘Look where you’re going,’ said the person holding the end of one. It was a woman, whose gaze sought Laura’s, and Laura looked down at her burden.

‘Come on, Laura, we’re nearly there.’

They went on, but the sight of the bleeding body had taken away their ebullience. Could it have been a child? Eventually they made it to the club, and Laura walked down the stairs, clinging to the banisters. The room was stuffed with people, and a small band was desultorily playing songs from before the war. ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Alistair said. ‘You look terrible.’