She was sorry she hadn’t got to see Maitland or Sutcliffe-Hythe or Reed one last time—she had grown amazingly attached to all the FANYs over the last year. But she was only experiencing what every person here in Trafalgar Square would be in the next few days and weeks. This wasn’t only an end to the war. It would be the end to who knew how many friendships, romances, careers. All sorts of partings, all sorts of goodbyes.
end to who knew how many friendships, romances, careers. All sorts of partings, all sorts of goodbyes.
And if she was going, she needed to do it now, before the trains stopped for the night. And before the Major and Stephen got here. Stephen had nearly reached the foot of the steps. She gave him one last regretful glance and then looked at the other girls. Their eyes were still on the Major, on whose head an air-raid warden had just plunked a Nelson-style tricorn hat.
“Do you think we’d better flee while we can?” Parrish asked.
“No, it will only make it worse when she does catch us,” Talbot said.
“Perhaps she’s come to celebrate with us,” Reardon said.
“Does she look like she’s celebrating?” Talbot asked.
She didn’t, despite the festive tricorn. I’ll miss you, too, Major, Mary thought, and leaned toward Paige, who was still calling and waving to Stephen, and kissed her on the cheek. Paige didn’t even notice.
Mary edged slowly away from her and then turned, squeezed quickly along the porch to the steps, and down the same way she’d come up, taking her cap off and keeping her head down in case Paige realized she was gone and began looking for her.
If she did, Paige would hopefully assume she’d tried to get down to Stephen and been carried away by the crowd. Which could be true, she thought, reaching the front of the steps.
She set out at an angle across the square in the direction of Charing Cross. Halfway across, she caught a current that swept her in the direction she wanted to go and let it carry her. It looked like it might even deliver her neatly at the entrance to the tube station.
With time to spare, she thought, stopping at the edge of the square to look at her watch.
The little man in the bowler was still in exactly the same place. “Three cheers for Patton!” he shouted, but the “Hip, hip, hurrahs” were drowned out by the approaching beats of the conga line. She pushed through the crowd toward the Underground station. Hopefully, it would be less jammed than when they’d come.
Certainly none of these people showed any sign of going home any time soon, and once the train got past Holborn, it should be—
“Come on, ducks!” a burly merchant marine shouted in her ear. He grabbed her around the waist, thrust her into the conga line ahead of him, and forced her hands onto the waist of the soldier in front of her.
“No! I haven’t time for this!” she cried, but it was no use. The marine had an iron grip on her waist, and when she tried to plant her feet firmly on the ground and refuse to go, he simply picked her up and held her out before him.
She was carried remorselessly back into Trafalgar Square and across it by the snaking “dunh duh dunh duh”-ing dancers. They were heading straight back to the National Gallery. “You don’t understand!” she shouted. “I’ve got to get to the Underground station! I must—”
“Here then, let her go. That’s a good chap,” a man’s voice said, and she felt herself grabbed by the waist and plucked neatly out of the conga line. The marine and the rest of the line danced past her and away.
“Thank you,” she said, turning to look at her rescuer, but before she got a good look at his face—she scarcely had time to register the fact that he was a soldier and that he was wearing a clerical collar—there was a loud explosion over by the fountain.
“Sorry, I believe I know who did that,” he said, and strode off through the crowd, presumably to rescue someone else.
“Thank you again, whoever you are,” Mary said, and set off for the tube station again, this time keeping to the very edge of the square and the street.
The little man in the bowler was still standing outside leading cheers. “Three cheers for Dowding!” he shouted.
He’s going to run out of heroes to cheer, she thought, squeezing past him to the entrance, but she was wrong. As she ran down the stairs, she heard him shout,
“Three cheers for the firespotters! Three cheers for the ARP! Three cheers for all of us! Hip hip hurrah!”
Father, we thought we should never see you again.
—SIR J. M. BARRIE, THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON
London—Winter 1941
THEY LASTED LESS THAN A FORTNIGHT AT MRS. RICKETT’S, even though Alf and Binnie had proved quite adept at keeping their parrot out of sight—and earshot—of the landlady.
Mrs. Bascombe was a quick study, and it only took Alf a day to teach her not to do her air-raid imitations except when the actual sirens were going and not to screech,
“ ’Itler’s a bloody bastard!” at anyone who came near her cage.
But she was, unfortunately, also quick to pick up whatever she happened to overhear and to repeat it in a dead-on imitation of their voices—which explained how Alf and Binnie had been able to keep the masquerade of their mother’s still being alive going for so long.
But that skill also led to Mrs. Rickett’s hearing what she thought was Binnie saying, “What is this swill? It tastes bloody awful,” and using her key to get in, expecting to find, as she told Eileen, cooking going on in the room. And finding herself instead face-to-face with the beady-eyed Mrs. Bascombe.
“Not to worry,” the parrot had said in a spot-on imitation of Alf’s voice. “We’ll ’ide ’er. The old witch’ll never find out,” and all five of them had found themselves out of a place to live and forced to take up residence in Notting Hill
