Jack Read online

  Jack had lowered the binoculars and was watching where I had pointed. The fires didn’t start right away with a high-explosive bomb. It took a bit for the ruptured gas mains and scattered coal fires to catch. “What was she before the war?” he asked.

  “Vi? A stenographer,” I said. “And something of a wallflower, I should think. The war’s been rather a blessing for our Vi.”

  “A blessing,” Jack said, looking out at the high explosive in Lees. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see his face except in silhouette, and I couldn’t tell whether he disapproved of the word or was merely bemused by it.

  “I didn’t mean a blessing exactly. One can scarcely call something as dreadful as this a blessing. But the war’s given Vi a chance she wouldn’t have had otherwise. Morris says without it she’d have died an old maid, and now she’s got all sorts of beaux.” A flare drifted down, white and then red. “Morris says the war’s the best thing that ever happened to her.”

  “Morris,” he said, as if he didn’t know which one that was.

  “Sandy hair, toothbrush moustache,” I said. “His son’s a pilot.”

  “Doing his bit,” he said, and I could see his face clearly in the reddish light, but I still couldn’t read his expression.

  A stick of incendiaries came down over the river, glittering like sparklers, and fires sprang up everywhere.

  The next night there was a bad incident off Old Church Street, two HEs. Mrs Lucy sent Jack and me over to see if we could help. It was completely overcast, which was supposed to stop the Luftwaffe but obviously hadn’t, and very dark. By the time we reached King’s Road I had completely lost my bearings.

  I knew the incident had to be close, though, because I could smell it. It wasn’t truly a smell: it was a painful sharpness in the nose from the plaster dust and smoke and whatever explosive the Germans put in their bombs. It always made Vi sneeze.

  I tried to make out landmarks, but all I could see was the slightly darker outline of a hill on my left. I thought blankly, We must be lost. There aren’t any hills in Chelsea, and then realized it must be the incident.

  “The first thing we do is find the incident officer,” I told Jack. I looked round for the officer’s blue light, but I couldn’t see it. It must be behind the hill.

  I scrabbled up it with Jack behind me, trying not to slip on the uncertain slope. The light was on the far side of another, lower hill, a ghostly bluish blur off to the left. “It’s over there,” I said. “We must report in. Nelson’s likely to be the incident officer, and he’s a stickler for procedure.”

  I started down, skidding on the broken bricks and plaster. “Be careful,” I called back to Jack. “There are all sorts of jagged pieces of wood and glass.”

  “Jack,” he said.

  I turned around. He had stopped halfway down the hill and was looking up, as if he had heard something. I glanced up, afraid the bombers were coming back, but couldn’t hear anything over the anti-aircraft guns. Jack stood motionless, his head down now, looking at the rubble.

  “What is it?” I said.

  He didn’t answer. He snatched his torch out of his pocket and swung it wildly round.

  “You can’t do that!” I shouted. “There’s a blackout on!”

  He snapped it off. “Go and find something to dig with,” he said and dropped to his knees. “There’s someone alive under here.”

  He wrenched the banister free and began stabbing into the rubble with its broken end.

  I looked stupidly at him. “How do you know?”

  He jabbed viciously at the mess. “Get a pickaxe. This stuff’s hard as rock.” He looked up at me impatiently. “Hurry!”

  The incident officer was someone I didn’t know. I was glad. Nelson would have refused to give me a pickaxe without the necessary authorization and lectured me instead on departmentalization of duties. This officer, who was younger than me and broken out in spots under his powdering of brick dust, didn’t have a pickaxe, but he gave me two shovels without any argument.

  The dust and smoke were clearing a bit by the time I started back across the mounds, and a shower of flares drifted down over by the river, lighting everything in a fuzzy, over-bright light like headlights in a fog. I could see Jack on his hands and knees halfway down the mound, stabbing with the banister. He looked like he was murdering someone with a knife, plunging it in again and again.

  Another shower of flares came down, much closer. I ducked and hurried across to Jack, offering him one of the shovels.

  “That’s no good,” he said, waving it away.

  “What’s wrong? Can’t you hear the voice any more?”

  He went on jabbing with the banister. “What?” he said, and looked in the flare’s dazzling light like he had no idea what I was talking about.

  “The voice you heard,” I said. “Has it stopped calling?”

  “It’s this stuff,” he said. “There’s no way to get a shovel into it. Did you bring any baskets?”

  I hadn’t, but further down the mound I had seen a large tin saucepan. I fetched it for him and began digging. He was right, of course. I got one good shovelful and then struck an end of a floor joist and bent the blade of the shovel. I tried to get it under the joist so I could pry it upward, but it was wedged under a large section of beam further on. I gave it up, broke off another of the banisters, and got down beside Jack.

  The beam was not the only thing holding the joist down. The rubble looked loose— bricks and chunks of plaster and pieces of wood — but it was as solid as cement. Swales, who showed up out of nowhere when we were 3 feet down, said, “It’s the clay. All London’s built on it. Hard as statues.” He had brought two buckets with him and the news that Nelson had shown up and had had a fight with the spotty officer over whose incident it was.

  “ ‘It’s my incident,’ Nelson says, and gets out the map to show him how this side of King’s Road is in his district,” Swales said gleefully, “and the incident officer says, ‘Your incident? Who wants the bloody thing, I say,’ he says.”

  Even with Swales helping, the going was so slow whoever was under there would probably have suffocated or bled to death before we could get to him. Jack didn’t stop at all, even when the bombs were directly overhead. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, though none of us heard anything in those brief intervals of silence and Jack seemed scarcely to listen.

  The banister he was using broke off in the iron-hard clay, and he took mine and kept digging. A broken clock came up, and an egg cup. Morris arrived. He had been evacuating people from two streets over where a bomb had buried itself in the middle of the street without exploding. Swales told him the story of Nelson and the spotty young officer and then went off to see what he could find out about the inhabitants of the house.

  Jack came up out of the hole. “I need braces,” he said. “The sides are collapsing.”

  I found some unbroken bed slats at the base of the mound. One of the slats was too long for the shaft. Jack sawed it halfway through and then broke it off.

  Swales came back. “Nobody in the house,” he shouted down the hole. “The Colonel and Mrs Godalming went to Surrey this morning.” The all-clear sounded, drowning out his words.

  “Jack,” Jack said from the hole, and I turned around to see if the rescue squad had brought it down with them.

  “Jack,” he said again, more urgently.

  I leaned over the tunnel.

  “What time is it?” he said.

  “About five,” I said. “The all-clear just went.”

  “Is it getting light?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Have you found anything?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Give us a hand.”

  I eased myself into the hole. I could understand his question; it was pitch dark down here. I switched my torch on. It lit up our faces from beneath like spectres.

  “In there,” he said, and reached for a banister just like the one he’d been digging with.

  “Is he under a sta
irway?” I said and the banister clutched at his hand.

  It only took a minute or two to get him out. Jack pulled on the arm I had mistaken for a banister, and I scrabbled through the last few inches of plaster and clay to the little cave he was in, formed by an icebox and a door leaning against each other.

  “Colonel Godalming?” I said, reaching for him.

  He shook off my hand. “Where the bleeding hell have you people been?” he said. “Taking a tea break?”

  He was in full evening dress, and his big moustache was covered with plaster dust. “What sort of country is this, leave a man to dig himself out?” he shouted, brandishing a serving spoon full of plaster in Jack’s face. “I could have dug all the way to China in the time it took you blighters to get me out!”

  Hands came down into the hole and hoisted him up. “Blasted incompetents!” he yelled. We pushed on the seat of his elegant trousers. “Slackers, the lot of you! Couldn’t find the nose in front of your own face!”

  Colonel Godalming had in fact left for Surrey the day before but had decided to come back for his hunting rifle, in case of invasion. “Can’t rely on the blasted Civil Defence to stop the jerries,” he had said as I led him down to the ambulance.

  It was starting to get light. The incident was smaller than I’d thought, not much more than two blocks square. What I had taken for a mound to the south was actually a squat office block, and beyond it the row of houses hadn’t even had their windows blown out.

  The ambulance had pulled up as near as possible to the mound. I helped him over to it. “What’s your name?” he said, ignoring the doors I’d opened. “I intend to report you to your superiors. And the other one. Practically pulled my arm out of its socket. Where’s he got to?”

  “He had to go to his day job,” I said. As soon as we had Godalming out, Jack had switched on his pocket torch again to glance at his watch and said, “I’ve got to leave.”

  I told him I’d check him out with the incident officer and started to help Godalming down the mound. Now I was sorry I hadn’t gone with him.

  “Day job!” Godalming snorted. “Gone off to take a nap is more like it. Lazy slacker. Nearly breaks my arm and then goes off and leaves me to die. I’ll have his job!”

  “Without him, we’d never even have found you,” I said angrily. “He’s the one who heard your cries for help.”

  “Cries for help!” the colonel said, going red in the face. “Cries for help! Why would I cry out to a lot of damned slackers!”

  The ambulance driver got out of the car and came round to see what the delay was.

  “Accused me of crying out like a damned coward!” he blustered to her. “I didn’t make a sound. Knew it wouldn’t do any good. Knew if I didn’t dig myself out, I’d be there till kingdom come! Nearly had myself out, too, and then he comes along and accuses me of blubbering like a baby! It’s monstrous, that’s what it is! Monstrous!”

  She took hold of his arm.

  “What do you think you’re doing, young woman? You should be at home instead of out running round in short skirts! It’s indecent, that’s what it is!”

  She shoved him, still protesting, on to a bunk, and covered him up with a blanket. I slammed the doors to, watched her off, and then made a circuit of the incident, looking for Swales and Morris. The rising sun appeared between two bands of cloud, reddening the mounds and glinting off a broken mirror.

  I couldn’t find either of them, so I reported in to Nelson, who was talking angrily on a field telephone and who nodded and waved me off when I tried to tell him about Jack, and then went back to the post.

  Swales was already regaling Morris and Vi, who were eating breakfast, with an imitation of Colonel Godalming. Mrs Lucy was still filling out papers, apparently the same form as when we’d left.

  “Huge moustaches,” Swales was saying, his hands 2 feet apart to illustrate their size, “like a walrus’s, and tails, if you please. ‘Oi siy, this is disgriceful!’ ” he sputtered, his right hand squinted shut with an imaginary monocle. “ ‘Wot’s the Impire coming to when a man cahn’t even be rescued!’ ” He dropped into his natural voice. “I thought he was going to have our two Jacks court-martialled on the spot.” He peered round me. “Where’s Settle?”

  “He had to go to his day job,” I said.

  “Just as well,” he said, screwing the monocle back in. “The colonel looked like he was coming back with the Royal Lancers.” He raised his arm, gripping an imaginary sword. “Charge!”

  Vi tittered. Mrs Lucy looked up and said, “Violet, make Jack some toast. Sit down, Jack. You look done in.”

  I took my helmet off and started to set it on the table. It was caked with plaster dust, so thick it was impossible to see the red W through it. I hung it on my chair and sat down.

  Morris shoved a plate of kippers at me. “You never know what they’re going to do when you get them out,” he said. “Some of them fall all over you, sobbing, and some act like they’re doing you a favour. I had one old woman acted all offended, claimed I made an improper advance when I was working her leg free.”

  Renfrew came in from the other room, wrapped in a blanket. He looked as bad as I thought I must, his face slack and grey with fatigue. “Where was the incident?” he asked anxiously.

  “Just off Old Church Street. In Nelson’s sector,” I added to reassure him.

  But he said nervously, “They’re coming closer every night. Have you noticed that?”

  “No, they aren’t,” Vi said. “We haven’t had anything in our sector all week.”

  Renfrew ignored her. “First Gloucester Road and then Ixworth Place and now Old Church Street. It’s as if they’re circling, searching for something.”

  “London,” Mrs Lucy said briskly. “And if we don’t enforce the blackout, they’re likely to find it.” She handed Morris a typed list. “Reported infractions from last night. Go round and reprimand them.” She put her hand on Renfrew’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go have a nice lie-down, Mr Renfrew, while I cook you breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry,” he said, but he let her lead him, clutching his blanket, back to the cot.

  We watched Mrs Lucy spread the blanket over him and then lean down and tuck it in around his shoulders, and then Swales said, “You know who this Godalming fellow reminds me of? A lady we rescued over in Gower Street,” he said, yawning. “Hauled her out and asked her if her husband was in there with her. ‘No,’ she says, ‘the bleedin’ coward’s at the front.’ ”

  We all laughed.

  “People like this colonel person don’t deserve to be rescued,” Vi said, spreading oleo on a slice of toast. “You should have left him there a while and seen how he liked that.”

  “He was lucky they didn’t leave him there altogether,” Morris said. “The register had him in Surrey with his wife.”

  “Lucky he had such a loud voice,” Swales said. He twirled the end of an enormous moustache. “Oi siy,” he boomed. “Get me out of her immeejutly, you slackers!”

  But he said he didn’t call out, I thought, and could hear Jack shouting over the din of the anti-aircraft guns, the drone of the planes, “There’s someone under here.”

  Mrs Lucy came back to the table. “I’ve applied for reinforcements for the post,” she said, standing her papers on end and tamping them into an even stack. “Someone from the Town Hall will be coming to inspect in the next few days.” She picked up two bottles of ale and an ashtray and carried them over to the dustbin.

  “Applied for reinforcements?” Swales asked. “Why? Afraid Colonel Godalming’ll be back with the heavy artillery?”

  There was a loud banging on the door.

  “Oi siy,” Swales said. “Here he is now, and he’s brought his hounds.”

  Mrs Lucy opened the door. “Worse,” Vi whispered, diving for the last bottle of ale. “It’s Nelson.” She passed the bottle to me under the table, and I passed it to Renfield, who tucked it under his blanket.

  “Mr Nelson,” Mrs Lucy sai
d as if she were delighted to see him, “do come in. And how are things over your way?”

  “We took a beating last night,” he said, glaring at us as though we were responsible.

  “He’s had a complaint from the colonel,” Swales whispered to me. “You’re done for, mate.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Mrs Lucy said. “Now, how may I help you?”

  He pulled a folded paper from the pocket of his uniform and carefully opened it out. “This was forwarded to me from the city engineer,” he said. “All requests for material improvements are to be sent to the district warden, not over his head to the Town Hall.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” Mrs Lucy said, leading him into the pantry. “It is such a comfort to deal with someone one knows, rather than a faceless bureaucracy. If I had realized you were the proper person to appeal to, I should have contacted you immediately .” She shut the door.

  Renfield took the ale bottle out from under his blanket and buried it in the dustbin. Violet began taking out her bobby pins.

  “We’ll never get our reinforcements now,” Swales said. “Not with Adolf von Nelson in charge.”

  “Shh,” Vi said, yanking at her snail-like curls. “You don’t want him to hear you.”

  “Olmwood told me he makes them keep working at an incident, even when the bombs are right overhead. Thinks all the posts should do it.”

  “Shh!” Vi said.

  “He’s a bleeding Nazi!” Swales said, but he lowered his voice. “Got two of his wardens killed that way. You better not let him find out you and Jack are good at finding bodies or you’ll be out there dodging shrapnel, too.”

  Good at finding bodies. I thought of Jack, standing motionless, looking at the rubble and saying, “There’s someone alive under here. Hurry.”

  “That’s why Nelson steals from the other posts,” Vi said, scooping her bobby pins off the table and into her haversack. “Because he does his own in.” She pulled out a comb and began yanking it through her snarled curls.