“Yeah,” Alf said.
“One of the fire watch was injured,” Eileen said.
“They’ll have to send another ambulance.”
He reached across and honked the horn. An attendant appeared in the doorway. “As soon as Dawkins gets back,” the doctor called to him, “send her to St. Paul’s!”
He turned to Eileen. “All right, let’s go.”
“We ain’t sure it’ll start,” Alf said.
“It wouldn’t before,” Binnie added.
And if I can’t start it, Dr. Cross will have to find some other transport, Eileen thought, and yanked roughly on the choke the way she had on her first driving lesson.
The ambulance started up immediately. She put it in gear and let out the clutch with a motor-killing jerk that didn’t do anything either. The motor was practically purring.
“Turn left onto the street,” the doctor directed, “and then left on Smithfield.”
Eileen began to back out of the courtyard. An ambulance was pulling in. Why couldn’t it have been here five minutes sooner?
She slowed, trying to think of something she could say to persuade him to take the other ambulance.
Two men in helmets and overalls were clambering out of the back. They pulled out a man on a stretcher. Attendants converged on them.
“Hurry,” the doctor said to Eileen. “We haven’t much time.”
Paradoxically one might say that the most important incident of that night was one that failed to happen.
—W. R. MATTHEWS, DEAN OF ST. PAUL’S,
WRITING ABOUT THE NIGHT OF
29 DECEMBER 1940
St. Paul’s Cathedral—29 December 1940
“MR. DUNWORTHY,” POLLY BREATHED. SHE GRABBED FOR THE lamppost at the end of the steps of St. Paul’s, legs suddenly wobbly. Eileen had said he would come, and he had. And this was why she hadn’t been able to get a message to John Bartholomew, because she didn’t need to. Mr. Dunworthy had found them before they found him. It was only a spike in slippage, after all, and not some horrible catastrophe that had killed everyone in Oxford, and not their having changed the outcome of the war.
And not Mr. Dunworthy—and Colin—having lied to them.
Colin. If Mr. Dunworthy’s here. Colin may be, too, she thought, her heart lifting, and glanced at the people on either side of Mr. Dunworthy, but she couldn’t see him. Mr. Dunworthy was flanked by two elderly women who were staring raptly up at the dome.
“Mr. Dunworthy!” Polly called to him, shouting over the roar of the planes and anti-aircraft guns.
He turned, looking vaguely about to see where the voice was coming from.
“Over here, Mr. Dunworthy!” she shouted, and he looked directly at her.
It wasn’t him after all, even though the man looked exactly like him—his spectacles, his graying hair, his worried expression. But the face he turned to her showed no recognition, no relief at finding her. He looked stunned and then horrified, and she turned and glanced automatically behind her to see if the fire in Paternoster Row had reached St. Paul’s.
It hadn’t, though half the Row’s buildings were now ablaze. She looked back at the man, but he’d already turned and was working his way to the rear of the crowd, away from her, away from St. Paul’s.
“Mr. Dunworthy!” she called, not quite able to believe it wasn’t him, and ran across the forecourt after him. “Mr. Dunworthy!”
But as she followed, she became even more convinced she’d been mistaken. Mr. Dunworthy had never had that defeated stoop to his shoulders, that old man’s walk. The likeness of his features must have been a trick of the red, flickering light. And of her wishful thinking, like the times she’d thought she’d seen Colin.
But she had to be absolutely certain. “Mr. Dunworthy!” she called again, plowing through the crowd.
“Look!” a man shouted, and several hands shot up, pointing at the dome. “It’s falling!”
Polly glanced up. The fiery yellow star that was the incendiary wavered and began to slide down the dome and then tumbled off and disappeared into the maze of roofs below. The crowd erupted in cheers.
She turned back to Mr. Dunworthy, but in the moment it had taken her to glance at the incendiary, he’d vanished. She pushed her way through to the back of the crowd, which was already beginning to disperse, the people hurrying away from the cathedral as if they’d suddenly realized how close the fires were and how much danger they were in.
“Mr. Dunworthy! Stop! It’s me, Polly Sebastian!” she shouted. The guns and planes and even the wind had stopped for the moment, and her voice rang out clearly in the silence, but no one turned, no one slowed.
It wasn’t him, she thought, and I’ve been wasting valuable minutes I should have spent looking for John Bartholomew. He’ll be going back into the cathedral any moment.
She turned to look at St. Paul’s, but no one was going up the steps yet, and a knot of people were still gazing up at the dome.
“Have they put it out?” a boy shouted, and Polly looked up to see the silhouettes of two helmeted men at the dome’s base, bending over the incendiary, shoveling sand on it. More men were hurrying toward them with shovels and blankets.
