'ME 109s,' Morris said. 'They're coming in from the south again.'
'I do hope she has the sense to get to a shelter.' Mrs Lucy said, and Vi burst in the door.
'Sorry I'm late,' she said, setting a box tied with string on the table next to Twickenham's typewriter. She was out of breath and her face was suffused with blood. 'I know I'm supposed to be on watch, but Harry took me out to see his plane this afternoon, and I had a horrid time getting back.' She heaved herself out of her coat and hung it over the back of Jack's chair. 'You'll never believe what he's named it! The Sweet Violet!' She untied the string on the box. 'We were so late we hadn't time for tea, and he said, 'You take this to your post and have a good tea, and I'll keep the jerries busy till you've finished.' ' She reached in the box and lifted out a torte with sugar icing. 'He's painted the name on the nose and put little violets in purple all round it,' she said, setting it on the table. 'One for every jerry he's shot down.'
We stared at the cake. Eggs and sugar had been rationed since the beginning of the year and they'd been in short supply even before that. I hadn't seen a fancy torte like this in over a year.
'It's raspberry filling,' she said, slicing through the cake with a knife. 'They hadn't any chocolate.' She held the knife up, dripping jam. 'Now, who wants some then?'
'I do,' I said. I had been hungry since the beginning of the war and ravenous since I'd joined the ARP, especially for sweets, and I had my piece eaten before she'd finished setting slices on Mrs Lucy's Wedgwood plates and passing them round.
There was still a quarter left. 'Who's upstairs taking my watch?' she said, sucking a bit of raspberry jam off her finger.
'The new part-timer,' I said. 'I'll take it up to him.'
She cut a slice and eased it off the knife and on to the plate. 'What's he like?' she asked.
'He's from Yorkshire,' Twickenham said, looking at Mrs Lucy. 'What did he do up there before the war?'
Mrs Lucy looked at her cake, as if surprised that it was nearly eaten. 'He didn't say,' she said.
'I meant, is he handsome?' Vi said, putting a fork on the plate with the slice of cake. 'Perhaps I should take it up to him myself.'
'He's puny. Pale,' Swales said, his mouth full of cake. 'Looks as if he's got consumption.'
'Nelson won't steal him any time soon, that's certain,' Morris said.
'Oh, well, then,' Vi said, and handed the plate to me.
I took it and went upstairs, stopping on the second floor landing to shift it to my left hand and switch on my pocket torch.
Jack was standing by the window, the binoculars dangling from his neck, looking out past the rooftops towards the river. The moon was up, reflecting whitely off the water like one of the German flares, lighting the bombers' way.
'Anything in our sector yet?' I said.
'No,' he said, without turning round. 'They're still to the east.'
'I've brought you some raspberry cake,' I said.
He turned and looked at me.
I held the cake out. 'Violet's young man in the RAF sent it.'
'No, thank you,' he said. 'I'm not fond of cake.'
I looked at him with the same disbelief I had felt for Violet's name emblazoned on a Spitfire. 'There's plenty,' I said. 'She brought a whole torte.'
'I'm not hungry, thanks. You eat it.'
'Are you sure? One can't get this sort of thing these days.'
'I'm certain,' he said and turned back to the window.
I looked hesitantly at the slice of cake, guilty about my greed but hating to see it go to waste and still hungry. At the least I should stay up and keep him company.
'Violet's the warden whose watch you took, the one who was late,' I said. I sat down on the floor, my back to the painted baseboard, and started to eat. 'She's full-time. We've got five full-timers. Violet and me and Renfrew — you haven't met him yet, he was asleep. He's had rather a bad time. Can't sleep in the day and Morris and Twickenham. And then there's Petersby. He's part-time like you.'
He didn't turn around while I was talking or say anything, only continued looking out the window. A scattering of flares drifted down, lighting the room.
'They're a nice lot,' I said, cutting a bite of cake with my fork. In the odd light from the flares the jam filling looked black. 'Swales can be rather a nuisance with his teasing sometimes, and Twickenham will ask you all sorts of questions, but they're good men on an incident.'
He turned around. 'Questions?'
'For the post newspaper. Notice sheet, really, information on new sorts of bombs, ARP regulations, that sort of thing. All Twickenham's supposed to do is type it and send it round to the other posts, but I think he's always fancied himself an author, and now he's got his chance. He's named the notice sheet Twickenham's Twitterings , and he adds all sorts of things — drawings, news, gossip, interviews.'
While I had been talking, the drone of engines overhead had been growing steadily louder. It passed, there was a sighing whoosh and then a whistle that turned into a whine.
'Stairs,' I said, dropping my plate. I grabbed his arm, and yanked him into the shelter of the landing. We crouched against the blast, my hands over my head, but nothing happened. The whine became a scream and then sounded suddenly further off. I peeked round the reinforcing beam at the open window. Light flashed and then the
