“Where’s the nearest tube stop?”
“Cannon Street,” the kid said, “but I doubt the trains are running. Waterloo and London Bridge were both hit last night.”
“What about Blackfriars?” Mike asked, buttoning his shirt and jamming the tail into his trousers. “Was it hit?”
“I don’t know. That whole part of the City was pretty much destroyed.”
Destroyed. Mike shoved his bare feet into his shoes and jammed his socks and his tie into his trouser pockets. “Did you see what they did with my coat?”
“No. Look, you’re not thinking clearly …”
There was no time to look for the coat. The nurse had already been gone longer than he’d had any right to expect. Mike pulled his jacket on, grunting with the pain, limped quickly to the doors, and opened one a crack. There were two nurses at the far end of the hallway, talking, but no one at the matron’s desk, and a third of the way down the hall, another hallway branched off it.
And I don’t look like a patient, he thought, glancing at his sleeve to make sure the bandage wasn’t showing and then smoothing down his hair.
Don’t limp, he told himself, and pushed the left-hand door open.
The nurses glanced up briefly and went back to talking. He walked quickly—but not too quickly—down the hallway, trying not to wince as he forced the weight onto his bad foot.
“Absolutely swamped all last night,” he could hear one of the nurses saying, “what with the patients from Guy’s Hospital and the firemen and all. And then, just as we’d got everyone settled, two horrid children came running through the wards …”
He reached the side hallway and turned down it, praying it was empty and that it led out of the hospital. It did, but it was raining outside—a drizzle so icy he debated going back inside to find his raincoat, especially since this seemed to be some sort of courtyard at the rear of the hospital. He wasn’t even sure he could get to the street from here.
“No, Doctor,” he heard someone say behind him.
He hobbled across the yard and through some bushes to the front of the hospital. He’d hoped he might be able to see St. Paul’s from here so he’d know which way to go, but a low pall of smoke and pinkish gray clouds hung over the buildings in every direction, hiding every possible landmark, including the Thames, and the fires were no help. Every way he looked there were flames.
And not a single pedestrian to ask directions of. The only person in sight was the red-coated attendant standing at the door of the hospital, his white-gloved hands clasped behind him. Mike supposed that was a good thing—at least there wasn’t a huddle of doctors and nurses around him, asking if he’d seen an escaped patient.
But he would come to that conclusion on his own if Mike asked, “Which direction is St. Paul’s?” and there wasn’t time to wander around till he saw it on his own—
“Need a ride, guv’nor?” a voice called from behind him, and to his amazement, a taxi pulled up to the curb, and a cabbie stuck his head out the window. “Where to, guv?”
Mike hesitated, debating whether to have the cabbie take him to Blackfriars first to pick up Eileen. If she was still there. He’d told her to wait there for him, but if the all clear had sounded, she might have tried to get to St. Paul’s on her own. “Has the all clear gone?” he asked.
“Hours ago,” the cabbie said. “And a good thing. If the jerries had kept it up all night, I doubt this hospital’d still be standing. Now then, where to?”
St. Paul’s, he decided. If Eileen wasn’t there, he’d go get her in Blackfriars after he’d found out from Bartholomew where the drop was.
But he’d better not tell the cabbie where he wanted to go till he was inside the taxi. He didn’t want him saying, “Sorry, guv’nor, I’m not driving into that mess,” and driving off. And he’d better not phrase it as a question.
Mike scrambled into the back, shut the door, and waited till the cabbie’d pulled away from the curb before leaning forward and saying, “I need to get to St. Paul’s.”
“You’re an American,” the cabbie said.
“Yes.”
Now he was going to ask if the United States was coming into the war or not, and Mike was too tired to think what the correct answer for December of 1940 was, but instead the cabbie said, “In that case, guv, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
If only you could, Mike thought.
“St. Paul’s, you say? That may take a bit of doing. Most of the streets are blocked off this morning, but I’ve got my own ways. I’ll see you get there. Take you right to her front door, I will.”
“Thank you,” Mike said. He took a deep breath. It’s only half past six at the latest, he thought. The fire watch doesn’t come off duty till seven, and Polly’s had all night to find Bartholomew, even if she doesn’t know what he looks like. And all she had to do was tell him, and he’d wait for Eileen and me.
He leaned back, cradling his arm, which was throbbing badly. So was his head. It doesn’t matter. They can fix them both in Oxford.
“Want to see the old girl for yourself, eh, guv’nor?” the cabbie called back to him. “Make certain she’s still there? I don’t blame you. I thought she was a goner myself last night. It looked like London was a goner, too.”
He turned down a succession of smoky streets. “I was taking a passenger to Guy’s Hospital—a doctor it was, trying to get there to take care of casualties. And when we got to Embankment, it looked like the sky itself was on fire, so bright you could read a newspaper by it, and this queer red color, it was.
“ ‘Guy’s won’t be there,’ I told him, and blamed if the hospital wasn’t on fire when we got there. I had to take
