Полина Саймонс – Inexpressible Island (страница 11)
The siren continues to wail.
“Mia,” Julian calls out, “you don’t happen to have an extra coat for me, do you?” Why is he always grubbing for a cloak?
The passageway quietens down. The pitched warble above is the only sound.
“Why did you call me that?” she says. “No one calls me Mia but my mum.”
“
“You can pronounce your own girlfriend’s name?” Wild says. “Well done!” He throws Julian one of his coats. “Here, take mine. Let’s go.”
“I don’t mind you calling me that, by the way,” Mia says quietly to Julian in the stairwell. “I just wanted to know why you did, that’s all.”
“I knew someone like you once,” Julian says. “Her name was Mia.”
Mia smiles. “Yeah, but did she look like me?”
“She looked just like you.”
He doesn’t meet her questioning eye as they climb the stairs.
THE STREET IS COLD AND DARK. JULIAN BUTTONS HIS COAT. They feel their way down Princes Street, down the block-long granite sidewall of the Bank of England. The Rescue Squad jeep and the Heavy Mobile Unit medical truck are parked behind the bank on Lothbury. Julian doesn’t know how anyone can find Lothbury. He cannot see his hand before his face. In the blacked-out city, the streetlights are off, and the windows are covered with curtains. The night sky is under cloud. Finch gets behind the wheel of the jeep, Duncan rides shotgun, Julian, Mia, and Wild pile in the back. Phil, Sheila, Shona, and Frankie ride separately in the HMU van.
Julian had gambled on where he might end up and has read a bit about the Battle of Britain, about the bombs and the ruins. Here’s what he didn’t read about: under the night sky, the relentless air raid alarm is an insanity maker. It’s an echoey, up and down howling of a million wolves. Julian doesn’t know how everyone doesn’t plug up their ears and scream. His compatriots seem a lot calmer than he is, even the girl.
Especially the girl.
“Where are we headed to tonight, dove?” Finch says to her.
Leaning over Julian’s lap, Mia sticks her head out the window and listens to the drone of the enemy plane engines. Julian sucks in his breath and closes his eyes.
“Let’s drive to Stepney,” she says, settling back between Julian and Wild. “Something always falls near the docks.” She glances at Julian. He attempts to affect a neutral face. “Stepney, Wapping, Bethnal Green, Shadwell. All of East End is in pretty bad shape. Where are you from, Julian?”
“The East End,” Julian replies. “The East End originally,” he amends, knowing he won’t be able to fake a “been there, seen that” indifference to the coming destruction. “I’ve been away. Is Finch going to turn the lights on?” Finch is driving without them.
Mia shakes her head. “Can’t. Not allowed.”
“He plans to drive all the way to Stepney in the dark?”
“That’s one of Finch’s many gifts,” Mia says.
“You mean his only gift,” says Wild.
“Shut up, Wild.”
“Finch knows the city like a blind man,” Mia says.
“And drives like one,” says Wild as the jeep rattles over a pothole.
“
“I am,” she replies. “From the side. I’m with the Women’s Voluntary Services.”
“So what do you do?” Stay in the truck? Keep it running?
“Anything. Everything. Depending on what needs doing. Tonight, for example, you can help by being security with Dunk and Wild until the police come.”
Finch scoffs. “What’s
“He’ll act menacing,” Mia says. “You’re a pretty good actor, right?” Lightly she nudges Julian. “They liked you tonight. They’ve been getting quite bored with me. Maybe we can put on something else for them if we make it out alive.”
With the streets empty of vehicles and people, it takes Finch less than seven minutes to get from the Bank of England to Commercial Street, where he pulls up to a curb and idles the engine. Even though it’s cold, everyone leaves their windows rolled down. The rumble of a hundred enemy planes is not distant enough.
It takes Julian a few moments to figure out that the squad is waiting to see where the bombs will drop. But what if the bombs fall on Commercial Street? he wants to ask. What if the bombs fall on the jeep where they sit and wait? The rising and falling of the piercing siren has not stopped. The sky flares up, followed by the sound of thunder. The night air is suddenly not as dark. In the brief bursts of light, he can see Mia’s calm, focused face.
Lightning.
Thunder.
Rise and fall of the wolf howl.
Like fireworks at a state fair, one two three, a dozen flares all at once, still at some distance downriver. The sound of long booms and sharp cracks gets nearer, grows louder. The bombs whistle and explode. It’s one of the most unnerving noises Julian has ever heard. He can’t help himself. Turning slightly, he leans against Mia. He wants to cover her with his body. Why would anyone be out in this awful ruckus? It’s like being out in a category 5 hurricane.
Lightning is followed by instant thunder over the buildings a few blocks away. Brick-busting explosions, plumes of flame, smoke.
There’s screaming.
“Now we go,” Mia says.
Finch shifts into drive and races the jeep around the corner, to one of the narrow residential side streets.
Between rows of terraced houses, two bombs have fallen in the street. Choking dusty wreckage rises in the air and small fires light up the cratered holes in the smashed-up homes, windows blown out, doors blown off. The street is littered with brick and wood and glass. There is some human exclamation, but not much on balance, not very much at all, considering. As they get out of the vehicle, Julian hears someone say, rather calmly, “Bloody hell.”
Three women covered in black ash stand crying. One of them holds a small child. Wild immediately goes to her and tells her to move away from the house. She refuses. There’s a fire in her kitchen, she says, and she just had the cabinets redone, “last spring!” The fire brigade is nowhere to be found. Julian feels that the woman’s renovated kitchen might not be the brigade’s priority. Four other houses on their street need dousing, and on the next street, the fire already rages. Julian can see it over the rooftops. Because of the fire, there is now light. Night is now day. It’s a perversion of what’s good in the world.
From the back of the jeep, Wild grabs one of the buckets filled with sand and runs into the woman’s house, through the gaping hole in the wall. He heads to the kitchen.
“What is he doing?” Julian asks Duncan, watching Wild fling sand on the woman’s cabinets. “By himself, with one arm? Why don’t you go help him?”
“You go help him,” Duncan rejoins. “Wild used to be a fireman. Who else is crazy enough to run inside a burning house? Don’t worry about him. He’s wearing a flameproof coat. He knows what he’s doing.”
The HMU with Shona at the wheel and Phil Cozens shotgun pulls up to Finch, patrolling the street to assess the damage. Finch gives Phil the all clear—meaning there are no injuries at the moment requiring the doctor’s immediate attention. This does not seem credible to Julian.
“Duncan, go!” Mia calls, gesturing down the street. Standing next to Julian, Duncan doesn’t move. “You’re needed there, not here,” she says, stepping over the bricks in the street to get closer to them. “Wild will be fine.” Julian resists the urge to give her his hand. “Julian, will you go with Duncan, please? The valuables in the bombed houses need to be protected from looters.” She must see Julian’s expression because she shrugs. “War brings out the worst in some people. Though not that many, fortunately. But if they do come, it’s immediately after the bombing. They hurry to get here before the police do.”
“The thieves like the jewelry,” Duncan says, “but prefer not to put themselves in any real danger.”
Mia nods. “Somehow they always manage to find the street with the least catastrophic damage.”
Julian glances up and down the block. “This is not catastrophic damage?”
Mia chuckles. “I thought you were from the East End? This is nothing. No real fire, no major casualties. Go, you two. Take the cricket bats.”
“Don’t need a cricket bat,” says Julian.
“I’ll take one,” Duncan says to Mia. “But I don’t need him. I’ll be fine. What’s he gonna do?”
“Wait, where are
“What do you think I do, sit in the car and knit like Lucinda?” Mia says. But she hasn’t disengaged from him.
“That sounds wise.”
“Wise but not helpful. Look at that poor woman.” Mia points down the block where a dusty disheveled older woman stands wailing. “I’m going to help her get her things out before the house falls on her head.”