English and Irish were the same, all capable of courage and pity.
The scene was horrible. Broken walls gaped, and scattered about were household goods, furniture, bedding, a mattress on fire on the footpath, clothes tattered like rags. The body of an old man, his legs missing, lay in blood on his own footpath.
A woman was standing paralyzed, her dress on fire.
“Oh, Mother of God!” Detta gasped, then swung to Matthew. “Coat!” she demanded. “Quick!”
He tore it off and she snatched it from him, lurching forward to throw it around the woman and then knock her to the ground, rolling her over and over.
Someone was shouting, words indistinguishable.
The fire was taking hold of the buildings. Timbers were exploding and showers of sparks arced through the air. Another blast shook the street and splintered glass crashed onto the pavements.
Matthew saw a body trapped under a fallen beam.
“Help me!” he yelled as loudly as his lungs would bear. “Help me lift this!” He charged forward, still shouting, and put all his weight to moving the massive length of wood. “Stay still!” he ordered. “We’ll get you out. Just don’t move.”
More rubble was falling and the heat was intensifying. Someone was there beside him and he felt the timbers begin to give. Then Detta was heaving at the fallen man, trying to reassure him.
An ambulance crew appeared and took the man away. Matthew and Detta moved to the next person, an old woman lying in the rubble, broken-legged and helpless.
“Don’t!” Detta said sharply as Matthew bent to lift her. “We’ll have to tie those legs or the jagged ends could cut an artery.”
Matthew understood immediately, and wondered how he could have been so stupid. But what could they use?
Detta was balanced on one leg. “Here,” she said, handing him her stockings. He bent to work. Another man came to help, hands trembling, sobbing under his breath. The noise around them was sporadic, shouts, sirens, more rubble falling, and above it all, what sounded like the crackle of gunfire. The air was full of dust and smoke, but it was beginning to settle.
Fire engines pulled up, horses tethered, eyes rolling, and another ambulance. The heat subsided as the water hit the flames with a roar of steam. Matthew returned from helping to carry the last injured person to find Detta filthy, her dress torn at the shoulders and her ankles bare beneath the hem of her skirt. There was a kind of triumph in the angle of her head, and weary and bruised as she was, she stood with grace. She smiled at him.
He gave her a half salute. It was not meant in mockery, it was the acknowledgment from one fighter to another. For once they were on the same side, and there was a sweetness he wanted to remember through the long loneliness ahead.
She looked into his eyes and saluted back.
The fire was nearly out inside the house. Somewhere beyond sight another wall collapsed, but with a thud, not an explosion.
“If we get out to the main road we might find a cab,” he said, looking down at her feet. He had never thought of feet being beautiful before, but hers were: neat and strong, high-arched. “Where are your shoes?”
She grimaced. “Under that wall,” she replied, gesturing toward a heap of shattered brick a dozen yards away.
“I’ll carry you as far as the pavement,” he answered, picking her up before she could argue. It felt good to hold her; she was lighter than he had expected.
He reached the end of the street and reluctantly put her down, slowly, so she was standing close to him and he could still feel the warmth of her. Then he saw the airplane. It was a tiny thing, double-winged, like a truncated dragonfly. It crossed the beam of light and disappeared. Then there was another one, climbing upward, veering right and left again. Gunfire tore into the silver ship, not the sturdy lower part carrying the bombs and the crew, but the huge, bright balloon.
There was a moment’s silence. He and Detta stared upward as the searchlights crisscrossed the darkness, catching the planes like angry insects. Tracer bullets arced through the night. And then it happened—an explosion of flame in the air as the gas caught fire and billowed up, lighting the sky.
“Oh, merciful God!” Detta said in horror. “What a terrible way to die!” She huddled closer to him, clinging onto his arm. Without his jacket he could feel the warmth of her fingers.
Matthew wasn’t thinking of the men in the zeppelin, but of the fireball sinking more and more rapidly, new explosions ripping it apart as the bombs left in it went off. He was realizing as it loomed above him that it would come to rest on the streets below in an inferno of destruction.
“Who?” he said hoarsely. “Them or us?”
She turned to look at him. Then she understood and her face went sheet-white. She started to say something and stopped. They stood close together, arms around each other, as the funeral pyre in the sky sank closer to the rooftops. It stretched out, an eternity—and no time at all—too little to escape. The glare increased. It was seconds away. They could feel the heat from where they were. What irony. Perhaps the parting he dreaded would never happen after all.
Everyone was transfixed, staring upward. A man in a long black coat crossed himself. An old woman was shaking her fist. A small dog barked furiously, racing round and round in circles, terrified and not knowing what to do.
A piece of burning debris landed fifty yards away.
People were passing them in the street, cars and wagons, everyone trying to get out of the way, but there was no time. What was left of the balloon with its gondola crashed on a row of houses and shops and another wave of fire billowed up.
Matthew started forward. He had no idea what on earth he could do, but it was instinctive to try. It was Detta who held him back.
“No,” she shouted, her voice harsh. “There’s nothing. No one will get out of that. Come. They need trained people now. We’ve done what we can. We’ll only be in the way.”
It was true, but it seemed a kind of defeat. He was exhausted. His whole body ached. He realized only now that he was also cut and burned. But infinitely more painful was the knowledge that they had said all there was to say, all the lies about England and Ireland, the half-truths about America, the evasions about Germany. Tonight they had seen a moment from the reality of war in the broken houses and shattered lives, the grief and the blood. And in attempting to help, they had seen the best in each other—but with nothing to add to it. This was a clean place to break.
They each thought they had been true to their cause, and deceived the other. Time would show who was right, and who was wrong would pay. It hurt almost beyond bearing that if he could, he had to make it her.
They walked slowly. The first available cab that passed would mean the time to say goodbye. She would not want him to know where she went home to. For minutes he did not look at the stream of traffic passing. The glare of fire made everything red. There were sirens behind them and the sound of other explosions—probably roofs caving in; slate, timbers, and glass bursting in the heat; gas mains exploding.
Was it going to go on like this, war from the air? No one safe anywhere?
He looked at the street and saw a cab moving slowly. It was time to put an end to the waiting. He put up his arm and the cab drew in to the curb.
“Where to, guv?” the driver asked. “You ’urt, sir? Yer din’t get caught in that bombing, did yer? ’Orspital?”
“No, we’re not hurt. Just tried to help a bit,” he replied. “Please take the lady wherever she wants to go.” He handed the driver half a crown, and opened the door for her.
She stood for a moment, the gleam from the fires red on the sides of her face, her dark eyes wide. There was no laughter in her at all, none of the old daring and imagination, only sadness. She looked very young.
“You’re wrong, Matthew,” she said quietly, a catch in her voice. “I don’t always like fighting. Sometimes it’s a rotten way to do things. Don’t change—that’s a battle I wouldn’t like to win.” She reached up and kissed him quickly on the mouth, then got into the cab and closed the door.
It pulled away from the curb, and he watched it until he could no longer distinguish it from the others in the darkness, then he started to walk. He walked all the way back to his flat. It took him an hour and a half, but it
