looked excited, undismayed, even elated. Strangers talked to each other, laughed, and pointed thumbs up. The traffic flowed thick as ever. There was no trace of damage on the street. Distant clangs of fire engines and a heavy smokiness overhead remained the only traces, in this part of town, of Goring’s tremendous attempt. Queues even stood as usual outside the movie houses, and the stage box offices were briskly selling tickets too.
When they walked in twilight down toward the Thames, after an excellent Italian dinner, the picture began to change. The smell of smoke grew stronger; flickering red and yellow light gave the low clouds, thickened by ever-billowing smoke, a look of inferno. The crowds in the street grew denser. It became an effort to push through. The people here were more silent and grave. Henry and Pamela came to roped-off streets where amid noise and steam, shouting firemen dragged hoses toward blackened buildings and streamed water at tongues of fire licking out of the windows. Pamela skirted through alleys and side streets till they emerged on the riverbank into a mob of onlookers.
Here an oppressive stench of burning fouled the air, and the river breeze brought gusts of fiery heat in the warm summer night. A low moon shone dirty red through the rolling smoke. Reflections of the fires on the other bank flickered in the black water. The bridge was slowly disgorging a swarm of refugees, some with carts, baby carriages, and wheelchairs, a poor shabby lot for the most part, many workmen in caps, and a horde of ill-dressed children who alone kept their gaiety, running here and there as they came.
Victor Henry looked up at the sky. Above rifts in the smoke, the stars shimmered.
“It’s a very clear night, you know,” he said. “These fires are a beacon they can see for a hundred miles. They may come back.”
Pamela said coldly and abruptly, “I must return to Uxbridge. I’m beginning to feel rotten.” She looked down at her flimsy gray dress. “But I seem to be slightly out of uniform.”
The sirens began their hideous screaming just as Pug and Pamela found a taxicab, many blocks from the river. “Come along,” said the wizened little driver, touching his cap. “Business as usual, wot? And to ‘ell with ‘itler!”
Victor Henry watched the start of the night raid from the balcony while she changed. His senses were sharpened by the destruction, the excitement, the peculiar beauty of the fire panorama and the swaying blue-white searchlight beams, the thick thrumming of the bomber motors, and the thump-thump of the anti-aircraft, which was just starting up. Pamela Tudsbury, coming out on the gloomy moonlit balcony in her WAAF uniform, appeared to him the most desirable young female on God’s earth. She looked shorter because of the low-heeled shoes, but the severe garb made her small figure all the sweeter. So he thought.
“They’re here?” she said.
“Arriving.”
Again she leaned her shoulder to his. Again he held her with one encircling arm. “Damn, the bastards just can’t miss,” he said, “with those fires to guide them.”
“Berlin can catch fire, too.” Pamela suddenly looked about as ugly as she could: a grim, nasty face with hate scored on it in the red paint of her mouth.
New fires sprang up along the river, and spread and ran into the big fire. More blazes flared out of the darkness far from the Thames. Still, most of the vast city remained black and still. A tiny bomber came toppling down through the smoky sky, burning like a candlewick, transfixed by two crossing searchlights.
“Oh God, they
And in short order two more bombers fell — one plunging straight down in a blaze like a meteor, the other circling and spiralling black smoke until it exploded in midair like a distant firecracker. In a moment they heard the sharp pop.
“Ah, lovely. Lovely!”
The telephone rang.
“Well!” she laughed harshly. “Uxbridge, no doubt screaming for their little fugitive from duty. Possibly inviting me to a court-martial.”
She returned after a moment with a puzzled face. “It seems to be for you.”
“Who?”
“Wouldn’t say. Sounded important and impatient.”
General Tillet said, “Ah. Henry. Jolly good. Your friend Fearing suggested I try you here. Ah, you do recall, don’t you, when you paid a little morning call a couple of weeks ago on a portly old gentleman, he mentioned that you might want to go along on a little expedition that was in the works? A trip to familiar foreign scenes?”
A tingle ran down Victor Henry’s spine. “I remember.”
“Well, the trip seems to be on. I’m to meet you tonight when this nuisance stops, to give you the details, if you’re interested. — I say, are you there, Henry?”
“Yes. General. Will you be going on the trip?”
“Me? Good God, dear chap, no. I’m a timid old fellow, quite unsuited for the rigors of travel. Besides, I haven’t been asked.”
“When is the trip?”
“I gather they’ll be leaving tomorrow, some time.”
“Can I call you back?”
“I’m supposed to pass your answer along within the hour.”
“I’ll call you back very soon.”
“Jolly good.”
“Tell me this. Do you think I should go?”
“Why, since you ask, I think you’d be insane. Damned hot where they’re going. Worst time of year. You have to be very fond of that kind of scenery. Can’t say I am.”
“Are you at the same number?”
“No.” Tillet gave him another number. “I’m sitting here and waiting.”
As he came out on the balcony, she turned to him, her face alight. “They’ve got two more. Our night fighters must be up. At least we’re getting some of our own back.”
Pug peered out at the fantastic show — the fires, the searchlight beams, the sky-climbing pillars of red and yellow smoke over the lampless city. “I gave you some good advice in Washington. Or you thought it was good advice.”
“Yes, indeed.” Her eyes searched his. “Who telephoned you?”
“Come inside. I’ll take that drink now.”
They sat in two armchairs near the open french windows to the balcony. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, holding the glass in his cupped hands. “Pamela, the RAF will be bombing Berlin tomorrow night and it seems I’m invited along as an observer.”
The girl’s face in the shadowy light went taut. She took her lower lip in her teeth, and looked at him so. It was not an attractive expression. Her eyes were round as an owl’s. “I see. Shall you go?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. I think it’s a goddamned idiotic notion, and General Tillet agrees, but meantime he’s reported the invitation. I’ve got to accept it or duck it.”
“Strange they’d ask you. You’re not Air Force.”
“Your Prime Minister mentioned it in passing when I saw him. He apparently has a good memory.”
“Do you want my opinion?”
“That’s what I’m asking for.”
“Decline. Quickly, firmly, and finally.”
“All right, why?”
“It’s not your business. It’s especially not the business of America’s naval attache in Berlin.”
“True.”
“Your chances of returning are something like three out of five. It’s miserably unfair to your wife.”
“That was my first thought.” Pug paused, looking out of the balcony doors. In the night the A.A. snapped and thumped, and searchlights swayed blue fingers across the blackness. “Still, your Prime Minister thinks there’d be some purpose in my going.”
Pamela Tudsbury flipped her hand in a quick irritated gesture. “Oh, rot. Winnie is a perpetual undergraduate about combat. He probably wishes he could go himself, and imagines everyone’s like him. He got himself
