every time she heard the crump of an HE and flinched at the poom-poom-poom of the anti-aircraft guns. Even the wail of the sirens sent her into a panic. If there had been raids in the East End today, she wasn’t certain she could have summoned the courage to come, map or no map.
At Commercial Street, she was supposed to change buses, but with every street barricaded she decided it would be faster to walk the half-mile to Gargery Lane. It was already three o’clock. But even walking was difficult. Entire streets had been reduced to rubble, and the tenements which still stood had their sides smashed in or their fronts torn away, the furniture inside exposed to the street. In one, a kitchen table set for breakfast stood on a now-slanting floor, food still on the plates. In another, a staircase climbed up into empty space. And in between, everything was smashed flat, including the corrugated iron roof of an Anderson shelter exactly like the one she and Theodore had spent so many nights in.
In more than one place, rubble covered the street, too, and Eileen had to backtrack and go around, getting thoroughly lost in the process. She had to ask directions and then ask again—first of an elderly man pushing a pram full of household belongings and then of a middle-aged woman sitting on the curb with her head in her hands. “Gargery Lane? It’s down that way,” the woman said, pointing toward a line of gutted buildings. “If it’s still there. They were hit hard last night.”
I should definitely have given Mrs. Hodbin that letter, Eileen thought guiltily. Alf and Binnie would have been safer on the torpedoed City of Benares than in this dreadful place. She hurried past the blackened shell of a tenement. What if Gargery Lane was a burnt-out ruin or a heap of plaster and bricks? What if Alf and Binnie had been killed, and it was her fault?
But miraculously it was there, and fairly intact. The windows had been covered over with tacked-up pasteboard, but the row of houses still stood, and they were proudly flying Union Jacks. The tenement the Hodbins lived in had “Weel Gett Our Own Bak, Adolff!” written across its brown wooden front in red paint—no doubt Alf’s handiwork, since most of the words were misspelled. Its windows were boarded up, too, all except for one, which must have been just blown out. Shards of glass lay on the pavement in front of it.
The door stood ajar. Good, Eileen thought. She could hopefully avoid the alarming woman with the red hands this time. She stepped over the broken glass and squeezed into the tiny front vestibule past a bicycle, a stirrup pump, and two buckets with ARP stenciled on them, one of which was full of soaking rags and the other of potato peelings.
The door on her right shot open, and the woman with the red hands came charging out at her, brandishing a rag mop. “Thought you could sneak past me, did you?”
she shouted, raising the mop above her head with both hands like an axe. “Not this time, you little bastard!”
Eileen shrank back against the wall, her hand up to ward off the mop. “I’m Eileen O’Reilly. I was here before,” she said, and the woman lowered the mop and held it out in front of her like a bayonet. “I’m looking for Mrs. Hodbin.”
“You and the greengrocer and the off-license,” the woman said scornfully. “Owes me four weeks’ rent, she does. And ten bob for the window in my parlor. As if
’Itler wasn’t breakin’ ’alf the windows in England, Alf ’Odbin’s got to smash the few we’ve got left. Threw a rock at it, ’e did, and when I get my ’ands on ’im and that sister of ’is …”
It’s like being back in Backbury, Eileen thought. She’d had conversations just like this one with irate farmers at least a dozen times. But at least Alf and Binnie were all right, and apparently undaunted by the Blitz.
“Them two’ll end up ’anged, you see if they don’t,” the woman said, “just like Crippen and—”
“Mum!” a child’s voice called from inside the flat.
“Shut it!” the woman shouted over her shoulder. “If you find ’em,” she said to Eileen, “you tell ’em to tell their mother either she pays me what she owes, or all three of ’em’ll be out on the street—”
“Mum!” the child called again, shriller this time.
“I said, shut it!” The woman stormed into the flat and slammed the door behind her. There was a smack and then a wail.
Eileen hesitated. It was clear Mrs. Hodbin wasn’t at home and there was no point in going up, but the thought of having to come all the way back here again made Eileen hesitated. It was clear Mrs. Hodbin wasn’t at home and there was no point in going up, but the thought of having to come all the way back here again made her determined to at least knock on the door. And she’d best do it before the woman reappeared with her mop.
She ran up the stairs to their flat and knocked on their door, but there was no response. “Mrs. Hodbin?” she called, and knocked again.
Silence. “Mrs. Hodbin, it’s Miss O’Reilly. I brought Alf and Binnie home from Warwickshire.” She thought she heard a noise from inside. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to speak with you about something.”
More muffled sounds, and then a “Shh!” that sounded suspiciously like Binnie.
“Binnie? Are you in there?”
Silence. “It’s Eileen. Let me in.”
“Eileen? Wot’s she doin’ ’ere?” she heard Alf whisper, followed by an even fiercer “Shh!”
“Alf, Binnie, I know you’re in there.” She took hold of the doorknob and rattled it. “Open this door at once.”
More muffled voices, as if an argument was taking place, then a scraping sound, and a moment later the door opened a few inches and Binnie stuck her head out.
“ ’Ullo, Eileen,” she said innocently. “What are you doin’ ’ere?”
She was wearing the same summer dress she’d worn on the train, with a holey cardigan over it, and the same draggled hair ribbon, the same falling-down stockings.
Her hair looked like it hadn’t been combed in days, and Eileen felt a pang of sympathy for her.
She suppressed it. “I need to speak—”
