Noonday

THIRTY-FOUR

Afterwards, it was the horses she remembered, galloping towards them out of the orange-streaked darkness, their manes and tails on fire. One huge black shire horse with frantically rolling eyes came straight at them. Elinor wrenched the steering wheel violently to the left and, a few yards farther on, pulled into the curb. In the rear-view mirror, she saw the horses galloping away, their great, bright, battering hooves striking sparks from the road. She remembered a thud against the side of the ambulance and thought she might have caught one a glancing blow on the shoulder as it careered past.

She sat, breathing heavily, looking at her orange hands on the wheel. Even her skin didn’t look like skin.

Beside her, in the co-driver’s seat, Neville cleared his throat. “Would you like me to take over for a bit?”

“No, thank you,” she said, with another glance in the rear-view mirror, preparing to move off. She might have taken that from Dana or Violet, but certainly not from him. “Actually, Kit, if you want to know what it feels like to have your testicles skewered and roasted over a slow fire while you watch, you could try saying that again.”

“Fair enough.”

She risked a sideways glance. His face in the light of the fires was an expressionless mask. Beaten bronze.

For so long she’d contrived to avoid working with Kit. But then, over the Christmas and New Year period, single people like Elinor — and, of course, Kit — had signed up for extra duties so that married people and parents could spend time with their families. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day had all been quiet — she’d never played so many games of cards in her life — but the unofficial cease-fire was now unmistakably over. Hundreds, if not thousands, of incendiaries must have fallen that night and they were still clattering down. Yes, she’d had a moment of dismay when she’d looked at the duty roster and seen her name and Kit’s bracketed together, but she could hardly protest.

As she turned into Gunpowder Court, incendiaries clattered onto the ambulance roof like giant hailstones, and when she looked out of the side window she saw dozens more fizzing and popping all along the pavement. A squad of heavy rescue workers were shouting and jostling each other, like footballers fighting for possession of the ball, as they competed to stamp them out. As she watched, the man nearest to her dived and put his helmet over one of the skittering devices. “Gotcha, y’ little sod!”

Farther along the court, two fire engines were parked, taking up almost all the space. Half a dozen hoses snaked across the road, some gray and flaccid, but others very much alive — and she daren’t risk driving over those because, for the fireman at the branch, that interruption in the water supply could be dangerous, and the sudden return of water pressure almost equally so. She’d seen firemen injured by a branch writhing and spinning out of control. So: the way ahead was blocked.

She looked at Kit. “You could try Wine Office Court,” he said. “Try to get at it from the other side.”

“Is there a way through?”

He shrugged. “They all lead into one another.”

That was the trouble. They’d both have claimed to know London well, but neither of them was familiar with this particular area: the network of narrow alleys and courts off Fleet Street. Where was Derek when you needed him? Or any one of the other taxi drivers? Still, she wasn’t going to give up. They couldn’t. They’d been sent to a direct hit on a nurses’ hostel and that meant, potentially, dozens of casualties. Unless, of course, they’d all been on duty, or in a shelter as they bloody well ought to have been, but you couldn’t rely on that. Increasingly, exhausted people risked everything for the comfort and (spurious) safety of their own beds.

“All right, let’s give it a go.”

She reversed fifty yards or so, then pulled over near the entrance to Wine Office Court and stopped again.

They climbed stiffly down from the cab and walked across the narrow road. Elinor felt suddenly sick with tiredness, and cold; she was shivering inside her thick coat. Even the adrenaline rush of fear would have been welcome now, but she felt no fear; she felt nothing. Nothing, after the horses.

Just inside the entrance to the court was a fireman tending a pump, which roared and shook and pulsed gray water down its gray sides, deepening the pool of black water at his feet. He looked glazed, cold, wet, exhausted, bored, but he managed a wave. Kit tried to ask whether there was a way through, but he couldn’t make himself heard. They were communicating with the huge pantomimic gestures of people guiding aeroplanes into their hangars. Turning to Elinor, Kit pointed to himself and then along the court, signing that he was going to see if he could find a way through. Elinor shook her head, and made a sharp, dismissive gesture with her hands indicating the court was too narrow. She meant for the ambulance.

Kit mouthed: Stretcher. She nodded: Yes, that might be possible; then pointed to her chest, meaning: I’m coming too. He shook his head, but she ignored him. They began walking along the court, keeping up a brisk pace because speed seemed to offer safety: a moving target, you felt, must be harder to hit. The road was black and gleaming wet, flooded for a stretch where a drain had been blocked by a great wad of charred and sodden newspaper. At first, the roar of the pump was enough to blot out all other noises, but then gradually, as they splashed through the black water, it started to fade, to be replaced by the crackle of burning brick and timber from the building straight ahead. Probably, the blazing building was a printing works or a newspaper office. Scraps of burnt paper whirled down from the glassless windows above their heads. Elinor could see flames and shadows leaping across the inside walls, making it look, unnervingly, as if there were people trapped inside. The two firemen looked dazed with boredom. They’d have been there hours, hands gripping ice-cold metal, doused from head to foot in ice-cold water. One man’s lips were moving; she thought he might be trying to say something, but then realized he was singing.

The other man nodded, saw she was a woman, and grinned. “All right, love?”

She smiled, raising her hand, as she and Kit started to edge along the wall behind them. She felt heat from the blaze scorch her face and neck, though she was still shivering. The branch seemed to be producing a fine, cold spray that blew back into the firemen’s faces and soaked everything. She was wet herself now, icy trickles running down under the collar of her coat. Normally, you wouldn’t be allowed to get as close to a fire as this. All the other emergency services were supposed to hold back until the fire service declared an area safe, but there could be no question of declaring anywhere safe tonight. She’d just seen the pillars inside St. Bride’s Church burning like torches. The whole City was on fire.

They walked as fast as they could away from the burning building, their shadows fleeing across the ground ahead of them. She felt like a mouse creeping along the floor of a great canyon, dwarfed by the four- or five-story buildings on either side. At the end of the court, they turned and looked back. The scene was fitfully lit by the flames leaping from the windows of the burning building, and it was unchanged. That solid-looking pole of white water the firemen were directing at the blaze seemed to be making no difference at all.

She looked at Kit.

“You could get a stretcher past.” His voice was hoarse with shouting. “That’s if we can get to the hostel.”

To their right was another court which seemed at first to be empty, but then they saw two figures walking towards them: an elderly woman, in a pink candlewick dressing gown, and another, much younger, woman, who was hobbling along, grimacing with pain at every step. Elinor shone her torch. “Oh my God, Kit, look.” The girl’s feet were burned black. How on earth had she managed to walk this far?

“I’ll take her,” Kit said.

No point arguing: it was obvious the girl had to be carried and only Kit could do that. But Elinor was determined to go on and look for more survivors. If these two had got through, there were likely to be others. “You go with him too,” Elinor said to the older woman.

“Oh, I don’t think so, dear.” A reedy, but authoritative, Edinburgh accent. “I’ll be much more use back there.”

Kit had lifted the girl and was looking at Elinor, obviously expecting her to follow, but she shook her head. He nodded, or she thought he did — the shadows leaping and flickering all around him made it difficult to be sure. But he turned, and his bulky, burdened shape disappeared rapidly into the murk.

—

THE GIRL WAS mercifully light; just as well too, because he was finding it difficult to keep his footing. Even in the few minutes since he’d last walked along here, the pool of black water around the blocked drain had deepened, and he was splodging through it. He hated leaving Elinor, but this girl was suffering from shock. The burns looked pretty bad; she needed to be in hospital as soon as possible. Which meant he’d have to drive her straight there, then come back for Elinor. He didn’t like the idea. They should’ve stayed together, but Elinor was never going to come trotting meekly along behind him. He was level with the firemen now, and they shuffled forward a few paces to give him room.

The upper stories were still blazing, the flames inside leaping and dancing as tauntingly as ever, though the white pole of water was now being directed at another window. And there was a kind of clicking noise. He couldn’t think at first where it was coming from, then realized it was the building. It was very like the sound a car makes on a hot day when you’ve just switched off the engine: the tick of cooling metal. But nothing round here was cooling. He wondered if the firemen had heard it — they must’ve done, but they were looking at each other and laughing, so evidently it was nothing to worry about. All the same, he tried to walk faster and was glad when the shaking and rattling of the pump drowned out the roar of the flames behind him.

As he emerged from the court, he saw another ambulance had drawn up at the curb. Bill Morris and Ian Jenkins came towards him.

“Would you mind taking her?” he asked. “She needs a doctor but I don’t want to go and leave Elinor stranded.”

He carried the girl the few yards to their ambulance, and saw her safely stowed inside, wrapped in a blanket, with Ian by her side. Bill said he’d try Bart’s first. Apparently, they were still taking people in, though there was some talk of an evacuation. My God, it must be bad.

Neville watched the ambulance bump slowly away towards Fleet Street, then he went back and looked along Wine Office Court. The scene hadn’t changed at all; the two firemen might have been carved in bronze. What to do? His first impulse was to follow Elinor, but then suppose she came back by another route and found him gone? If she could get through at all that was quite likely. He lit a cigarette. That was one good thing about tonight: there’d be no officious little pipsqueak of an air-raid warden shouting, “Put that bloody fag out!” Any leaking gas mains round here had long since exploded. He dragged deeply on the cigarette and then, rather belatedly, offered the packet to the fireman at the pump, who just shook his head and pointed to the cascading water. Poor bugger was drenched. And now, to make things worse, there seemed to be a wind getting up. He could feel it blowing along the court towards him, hot as a dog’s breath on his face. At first, he was puzzled because there’d been no wind, no wind all day, and then the truth hit him: he was witnessing the birth of a firestorm.

That wind would carry sparks from building to building faster than a man could run. He was suddenly terribly afraid, and not ashamed of it either. A man who tells you he’s not afraid of fire is either a fool or a liar. He lit another cigarette from the stub of the first. There was a strange smell, very sweet. He couldn’t think what it was. If he’d had to guess, he’d have said: incense. It didn’t smell like war. He thought it might be wood, centuries old, seasoned wood from burning churches. He thought he’d caught a whiff of it just now as they were driving past St. Bride’s. He tried again to peer into the flame-lit darkness of the court. Where was she? The conviction that something terrible had happened to her was growing on him by the minute. He shouldn’t have let her set off like that, with only the old woman as a guide, but then what else could he have done? Who’d ever made Elinor do anything she didn’t want to do? And then the memory of that evening resurfaced, bobbed up like a turd in a sewer. He had — he’d made her do something she hadn’t wanted to do. Oh, given enough time he knew he’d remember the events of that evening differently, smooth over the raw edges, but at the moment he couldn’t bear it. At least, it goaded him into action. He’d leave the ambulance, he decided. Go and look for her.

He tried to speak to the fireman by the pump, so he’d be able to tell Elinor what had happened if she returned by another route, but he was signaling to the two men holding the branch. They’d backed away from the wall and seemed to be arguing about what to do. And then, with a great rush of relief, Neville saw her, standing at the other end of the court, waving to him. He started towards her. As the roar of the pump faded, he became aware of yet another sound coming from the burning building. Almost a groan. It sounded so human he thought somebody must be trapped. Was that what the firemen were arguing about? Trying to decide if it was safe to go in? But then he saw them look at each other, laughing, so he knew it was all right, and Elinor was still waving. Jumping up and down now, shouting, but he couldn’t hear anything above the roar of flames. She’d been joined by a young man in army uniform, who looked vaguely familiar, but couldn’t be, of course; it was just somebody Elinor had roped in to help carry the stretchers. Well, good girl. The more young, male muscle there was around, the better.

Whoever it was, he was waving too, or beckoning: Come on, come on. Hey, he wanted to say, I’m coming as fast as I can, but then, just as he drew level with the firemen, he heard the most stupendous crack, and the whole wall of the building bulged and loomed over him, hung motionless, and then, slowly it seemed, began to fall. He saw everything, in detail, without fear or emotion: the dark mass above him cutting slices out of the sky until only a sliver remained. He couldn’t move; he couldn’t speak. He heard silence, but then the roar came crashing back and red-hot bricks fell on his face and neck and dashed him to the ground. A cry struggled to his lips, but it was already too late — his mouth was full of dust. He thought: I won’t get to Elinor. And then he forgot Elinor. What finally crushed his heart, as the avalanche of bricks and mortar engulfed him, was the knowledge that he would never see Anne again, he would never again see his daughter, in this world or any other.