Nobody moved. They were choked with dust, but there was a strange unwillingness to leave the remains of the shelter and go into the open street. “Come along, Miss Tippett!” The voice was stern. “You know where our Rest Centre is, so suppose you lead the way.”
Oh, dear, Selina thought, I really can’t endure any more darkness. I want to lie down and sleep. If she had to move there ought to be a flying carpet to transport her, or she should be able to shut her eyes and wish herself there. Mechanically she flung her blanket over her shoulders and picked up the smaller of her suitcases. The handle was gritty and she bumped into a dazed figure still kneeling on a mattress. No, I can’t be first, she wanted to say, but at that moment a low, terrifying moan came from the corner: “They’ve got me, my head, save me …” then the words blended into a meaningless cry.
“Get them out of here as soon as you can,” Dobbie ordered, hurrying towards Horatio. “And tell them we want a stretcher.” Somebody else found another torch, and the procession, once it had begun to move, crawled up to the pavement. The door had been blown in, but workers had dragged it away.
Selina’s first instinct was to rush towards the Warming Pan, but a complete wall of smoke as thick as a hill advanced towards her, and before she had time to think, Ferguson grasped her arm and hurried her round the corner. The side street had been untouched, and was not too dark, for there were several fires now in the neighbourhood; the flashes and flares reminded her ironically of bright moonlight. There ought to be another expression for such light, but she could not remember one; all she could do was to relate new terrors to old experience. “I wonder what happened to the house,” she said, but Ferguson only walked along more quickly. “Oh, I expect it is all right. Do you know where the Rest Centre is? I don’t.”
“Keep that torch down!” somebody yelled in a very irritable voice. The shelter group had been dazed and motionless until as they began to use their limbs the hurry of flight possessed them. They streamed after Miss Tippett, shepherded by a warden, except for a few of the younger ones who dodged into the smoke at the heels of the rescue party. I wonder if it is like the Great Fire of London, Eve thought, as she tried to find the Warming Pan. It was and it wasn’t, she decided. It was true that the dark shapes grouped themselves into the forms of some old canvas and the colours were less black and purple than a patina of oil, age, and dust. Yet there was a new element of violence that was beyond apprehension and rational emotion. It had scooped out, somehow, a part of her own being.
“Keep back, keep back,” people shouted. Gradually the fog lifted and they could see flames. A bomb had hit the corner next to the restaurant, and as a result the Warming Pan was simply not there. The staircase that Eve had run up and down so many times had disappeared except for the bottom flight of steps. Her room was air. All that remained was a table, upright, with two plates on it and Beowulf standing quietly under the mantelpiece.
“I can’t believe it,” Eve kept saying; it must be untrue. Something must happen, and then everything would be in order again, the window that rattled and the patch in the linoleum. “Now then, Miss, you’re only in the way without a tin hat, get along to the Centre,” a fireman grumbled; but Dobbie slapped her on the shoulder; he had a list in his hand. “Was anybody there, do you know?” he inquired.
“No.” Eve ran over the names in her mind. “No, I don’t think so. Mr. Rashleigh didn’t always come to the shelter, but tonight Miss Tippett fetched him.” She had seen Angelina and Cook, Ruby of course went home to sleep, and there was Mary just in front of her. “It’s a mercy it didn’t hit your place,” somebody said to Dobbie, and he nodded gravely.
The house that was on fire had been evacuated some weeks previously. There were a couple of minor casualties from neighbouring buildings, but nobody had been buried, and the incident, on the whole, could be considered slight. “No good looking at it, miss.” Dobbie stuck the list back in his pocket. “Did you lose much?”
“No,” Eve heard herself say. “Oh, no, I had sent a lot of things to my sisters in the country.” That was not the point, of course; she had lost everything, but Dobbie would not understand if she tried to explain; his mind thought in items of clothes and armchairs. Nothing could ever make up to her for this robbery. The Warming Pan was a symbol of eternal freedom. She had never liked the things others loved, to find the first primrose on a freezing day or to bring back late roses to a company that would be garrulous about them year after year in exactly the same words. What she wanted was the anonymous liberty of thought that her room and old Selina’s cheerfulness had given her. It was less a question of atmosphere than of balance, of belief. Broad as the broadest Thames, she kept saying to herself, that was how she had seen the flowing of the years. Now all life narrowed as the bricks fell and the corner shrivelled to a point of flame and she saw herself in uniform, back in the centre of a family and a routine rigidly monotonous as school. “Better go to the Centre, miss,” Dobbie tapped her shoulder again. “It will be a blow for the poor lady, she was so proud of the place. And paid
