Luftwaffe, and they've surrendered.'
'Where's Mrs Lucy?' I asked.
'Still in with the new man,' Twickenham said.
'I'd better tell Mrs Lucy I couldn't find her,' I said and started for the pantry.
Halfway there the door opened, and Mrs Lucy and the new man came out. He was scarcely a replacement for the burly Olmwood. He was not much older than I was, slightly built, hardly the sort to lift house beams. His face was thin and rather pale, and I wondered if he was a student.
'This is our new part-timer, Mr Settle,' Mrs Lucy said. She pointed to each of us in turn. 'Mr Morris, Mr Twickenham, Mr Swales, Mr Harker.' She smiled at the part-timer and then at me. 'Mr Harker's name is Jack, too,' she said. 'I shall have to work at keeping you straight.'
'A pair of jacks,' Swales said. 'Not a bad hand.'
The part-timer smiled.
'Cots are in there if you'd like to have a lie-down,' Mrs Lucy said, 'and if the raids are close, the coal cellar's reinforced. I'm afraid the rest of the basement isn't, but I'm attempting to rectify that.' She waved the papers in her hand. 'I've applied to the district warden for reinforcing beams. Gas masks are in there,' she said, pointing at a wooden chest, 'batteries for the torches are in here' — she pulled a drawer open — 'and the duty roster's posted on this wall.' She pointed at the neat columns. 'Patrols here and watches here. As you can see, Miss Western has the first watch for tonight.'
'She's still not here,' Twickenham said, not even pausing in his typing.
'I couldn't find her,' I said.
'Oh, dear,' she said. 'I do hope she's all right. Mr Twickenham, would you mind terribly taking Vi's watch?'
'I'll take it,' Jack said. 'Where do I go?'
'I'll show him,' I said, starting for the stairs.
'No, wait,' Mrs Lucy said. 'Mr Settle, I hate to put you to work before you've even had a chance to become acquainted with everyone, and there really isn't any need to go up till after the sirens have gone. Come and sit down, both of you.' She took the flowered cozy off the teapot. 'Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Settle?'
'No, thank you,' he said.
She put the cozy back on and smiled at him. 'You're from Yorkshire, Mr Settle,' she said as if we were all at a tea party. 'Whereabouts?'
'Whitby,' he said politely.
'What brings you to London?' Morris said.
'The war,' he said, still politely.
'Wanted to do your bit, eh?'
'Yes.'
'That's what my son Quincy said. 'Dad,' he says. 'I want to do my bit for England. I'm going to be a pilot.' Downed twenty-one planes, he has, my Quincy,' Morris told Jack, 'and been shot down twice himself. Oh, he's had some scrapes, I could tell you, but it's all top secret.'
Jack nodded.
There were times I wondered whether Morris, like Violet with her RAF pilots, had invented his son's exploits. Sometimes I even wondered if he had invented the son, though if that were the case he might surely have made up a better name than Quincy.
' 'Dad,' he says to me out of the blue, 'I've got to do my bit,' and he shows me his enlistment papers. You could've knocked me over with a feather. Not that he's not patriotic, you understand, but he'd had his little difficulties at school, sowed his wild oats, so to speak, and here he was, saying, 'Dad, I want to do my bit.''
The sirens went, taking up one after the other. Mrs Lucy said, 'Ah, well, here they are now,' as if the last guest had finally arrived at her tea party, and Jack stood up.
'If you'll just show me where the spotter's post is, Mr Harker,' he said.
'Jack,' I said. 'It's a name that should be easy for you to remember.'
I took him upstairs to what had been Mrs Lucy's cook's garret bedroom, unlike the street a perfect place to watch for incendiaries. It was on the fourth floor, higher than most of the buildings on the street so one could see anything that fell on the roofs around. One could see the Thames, too, between the chimneypots, and in the other direction the searchlights in Hyde Park.
Mrs Lucy had set a wing-backed chair by the window, from which the glass had been removed, and the narrow landing at the head of the stairs had been reinforced with heavy oak beams that even Olmwood couldn't have lifted.
'One ducks out here when the bombs get close,' I said, shining the torch on the beams. 'It'll be a swish and then a sort of rising whine.' I led him into the bedroom. 'If you see incendiaries, call out and try to mark exactly where they fall on the roofs.' I showed him how to use the gunsight mounted on a wooden base that we used for a sextant and handed him the binoculars. 'Anything else you need?' I asked.
'No,' he said soberly. 'Thank you.'
I left him and went back downstairs. They were still discussing Violet.
'I'm really becoming worried about her,' Mrs Lucy said. One of the ack-ack guns started up, and there was the dull crump of bombs far away, and we all stopped to listen.
