“Can’t they do something?” a woman asked plaintively.
A man’s voice in the middle of the crowd said with authority, “I think a prayer would be in order,” and the crowd went silent. “Let us pray.”
That had to be Dean Matthews. The chorister had said he was up on the roofs. He and the fire watch would be standing together.
Polly headed for his voice, but the crowd, spellbound by the drama on the dome, refused to let her through. Polly pushed out of the crowd and ran toward the cathedral and up the steps to see where Dean Matthews and the fire watch were standing. If she could spot Mr. Bartholomew from Eileen’s description and wave to him …
She clambered up next to the lamppost at the end of the stairs and scanned the crowd, looking for a clerical collar. She still couldn’t see Dean Matthews or the fire watch. She moved a bit to the right, attempting to get a better angle from which to see their upturned faces, lit by the orange light from the fires in Paternoster Row.
She noted and discarded the ones who couldn’t be on the fire watch—woman, woman, too young, too old—
Oh, God. She grabbed for the lamppost, suddenly weak in the knees.
It was Mr. Dunworthy.
How all occasions do inform against me.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET
St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940
EILEEN WATCHED THE WARDEN START AROUND THE INCENDIARY and up the steps after Polly. “You there! Stop!” he called after her, but she was already inside and the door had closed behind her.
For a split second Eileen was afraid he was going to go in after her, but the incendiary suddenly began gyrating and throwing off violent sparks and blobs of molten magnesium, and the warden stopped where he was, brushing wildly at his coat and arms. Mike leaped to his aid, slapping at the sparks.
The incendiary’s spinning was bringing it closer to the men and to the edge of the step.
“Look out!” Eileen shouted. It rolled over the edge, still spinning, and down two steps, sending off a shower of stinging sparks. Eileen instinctively backed away from it and fell off her step, stumbling and flailing her arms to keep her balance.
There was another, higher-pitched swish. “Jesus!” Mike shouted, running toward her. “Here come some more. We’ve got to get out of here!” He grabbed her hand.
They skirted the incendiary and ran up the steps, but too late. Another incendiary rattled down onto the porch, directly between them and the door, fizzing. They backed away from it.
And straight into the arms of the warden. “This way!” the warden shouted. “Quick!”
He grabbed their arms and herded them back down the stairs and around the side of the cathedral. More incendiaries fell, glittering among the trees and shrubs in the churchyard and along the lane as he propelled them down the hill.
“Where are we going?” Mike shouted.
“Shelter!” the warden yelled back over the roar of the planes. “Keep near the buildings!”
There was another clatter, several streets away, and a heavier thump. That’s an HE, Eileen thought. But Mike said it was all incendiaries.
They rounded a corner. A woman and two children were huddling in a doorway. “Come along,” the warden said, letting go of Mike’s arm to take charge of them, too. “We must get out of this.”
He was right. Fires were springing up all around them, turning the garish white light of the incendiaries to orange. The group went faster, heads down, hugging the line of wooden warehouses, and two elderly men fell in behind them.
Mike leaned close to Eileen as they ran. “If we get separated,” he said, “go to Blackfriars with him and wait for me there.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got to get into St. Paul’s.”
“But—” Eileen said, looking fearfully back up the hill. Fires were burning all along its crest.
“We’ve only got tonight to find Bartholomew,” Mike said, “and Polly doesn’t even know what he looks like.”
“But I thought you said we needed to keep together.”
“We do. But if we should happen to get separated, we can’t afford to waste time running around looking for each other. We may only have a couple of hours’
leeway to get to the drop—”
He broke off as the warden turned his head to say, “We’re nearly there.” The warden pointed down a side street. “There’s a surface shelter just round the corner from here.”
A surface shelter. Polly had said one of them had been hit. “I thought you were taking us to Blackfriars,” Eileen shouted over the anti-aircraft guns.
“This is nearer!” the warden shouted.
They rounded the corner and stopped. The building at the end of the block was on fire, flames and smoke boiling from its upper story. In front of it, filling the narrow street, was a fire engine. Firemen swarmed around it, uncoiling hose, spraying a stream of water on the blaze. Eileen stepped back involuntarily, and bumped right into another fireman. “This lane’s off-limits!” he shouted at her, and then at the warden, “What are these people doing here?”
