“She’s really glad about us winning. She ’ated the war.”
“No, she can’t go with us,” Eileen said and sent Alf back to his room.
When he came out, he had his Union Jack and a box of matches, three Roman candles, and a long string of squibs. “Where did you get those?” Eileen demanded.
“I been savin’ ’em up for the victory celebration,” he said, which wasn’t an answer, but it was already half past six, and they still had to get to Trafalgar Square.
“You can take the squibs and one Roman candle,” she said, trying to ignore Binnie’s look of disapproval. “And no setting them off when there are people nearby.
Come along.”
She hurried them out the door and down to Russell Square—another ordeal. The streets and the station were jammed, and they had to wait through several trains for one there was room enough to squeeze onto.
It was eight by the time they reached Leicester Square. “Off,” she ordered Alf and Binnie.
“Why’re we gettin’ off ’ere?” Alf asked. “We ain’t to Piccadilly Circus yet.”
“We’re not going to Piccadilly Circus,” Eileen said, leading them through the crowd to the Northern Line platform. “We’re going to Trafalgar Square.” She herded them onto the train, which, fortunately, was too crammed to permit further conversation.
The station at Trafalgar Square was even worse, a wall-to-wall mass of shouting, jostling people and noisemakers and paper streamers. “You could nick lots of stuff
’ere,” Alf said.
“No one is nicking anything,” Eileen said, grabbing his and Binnie’s arms and propelling them up the escalator and the stairs and out onto the street.
There were people everywhere—cheering and singing and waving Union Jacks. Church bells were ringing wildly. A BEF soldier was moving through the crowd kissing every woman he saw, and none of the women—including two elderly ladies in flowered hats and white gloves—seemed to mind at all.
A double-decker bus with a hand-lettered banner reading, “Hitler Missed the Bus!” crept past, honking its horn nonstop and parting the crowds in front of it, and Eileen and the children were able to cross the street before the mob closed in again.
But the moment they reached the other side, they were engulfed. “We shoulda gone to Piccadilly Circus instead,” Alf said.
“We’re going to Trafalgar Square,” Eileen said firmly. “We’ll be fine. We just need to keep together.”
“Keep together,” Binnie echoed coldly. She had that sullen look again.
What is the matter with her? Eileen wondered, grabbing her by the arm and Alf by the sleeve and pushing them determinedly through the crowd to the square.
It was filled to bursting with sailors, soldiers, Wrens, waitresses still wearing their aprons, all waving Union Jacks. They had climbed up onto the base of the monument and the sandbagged sentry points, and one American Marine was trying to shin up the monument itself, while a policeman below him shouted at him to get down.
Eileen forced her way into the square, dragging Alf and Binnie with her. Polly had said she’d seen her standing by one of the lions, but getting there was easier said than done, and holding on to the children even more difficult. She’d lost Alf before they’d gone ten feet, and had had to grab him by the collar and haul him back.
She twisted her wrist around to look at her watch. Oh, no, it was already past nine, and they were nowhere near the lions. She couldn’t even see them in this mob.
She stretched herself on tiptoe, trying to spot the lion which had had its nose knocked off, above the heads and hats and flags.
There it was, but she couldn’t get to it. The crowd was surging away from it, toward the fountains. She needed to use her hands to force her way through, but she didn’t dare let go of Alf and Binnie, and the crowd between her and the monument was rapidly becoming a solid wall of people.
What if I can’t get there? she thought, and felt a flutter of panic.
Of course you can, she told herself. You already did. And you won’t have to do it on your own. You’ve got troops at your disposal.
She pulled Alf back beside her. “I need you to get us to that lion,” she said, pointing. “Can you do it?”
“Course,” he said, and pulled a GI lighter from his pocket. Eileen resisted the impulse to demand to know where he’d got it and watched instead as he took a large firecracker from his other pocket and held it up in front of him.
“Fire one!” he shouted, struck a flame in the lighter, held it an inch from the firecracker, and marched them through the crowd, who scattered, shrieking, out of their way on either side. Even so, they were nearly separated twice before they reached the lion’s pedestal, and as soon as Alf clicked his lighter shut, the crowd closed back in.
Eileen turned to look for Polly on the National Gallery steps, and Alf and Binnie were both caught by the surging crowd and had to shove their way back to her.
“If we get separated,” she told them, struggling in the crowd to get her bag off her shoulder and open, “go to the base of the monument and wait for me.” She took out two half crowns. “And if you can’t find me at all, here’s money for you to take the tube home.”
She handed one half crown to Alf and held out the other to Binnie.
Binnie didn’t take it. She stood there, looking steadily at Eileen. She was very pale.
“I’ll take it,” Alf said, reaching to grab it.
