job.'
I took the D-268 back to the post, but Mrs Lucy wasn't there. 'One of Nelson's wardens came round with a new regulation,' Twickenham said, running off copies on the duplicating machine. 'All wardens will be out on patrol unless on telephone or spotter duty. All wardens. She went off to give him what-for,' he said, sounding pleased. He was apparently over his anger at her for censoring his story on Jack.
I picked up one of the still-wet copies of the news-sheet. The lead story was about Hitler's invasion of Greece. He had put the article about Quincy Morris's medal down in the right-hand corner under a list of 'What the War Has Done For Us'. Number one was, 'It's made us discover capabilities we didn't know we had.'
'She called him a murderer,' Twickenham said.
A murderer.
'What did you want to tell her?' Twickenham said.
That Jack doesn't have a job, I thought. Or a ration card. That he didn't put out the incendiary in the church even though Vi told him it had gone through the altar roof. That he knew the Anderson was further to the left.
'It's still the wrong form,' I said, taking out the D-268.
'That's easily remedied,' he said. He rolled the application into the typewriter, typed for a few minutes, handed it back to me.
'Mrs Lucy has to sign it,' I said, and he snatched it back, whipped out a fountain pen, and signed her name.
'What were you before the war?' I asked. 'A forger?'
'You'd be surprised.' He handed the form back to me. 'You look dreadful, Jack. Have you got any sleep this last week?'
'When would I have had the chance?'
'Why don't you lie down now while no one's here?' he said, reaching for my arm the way Vi had reached for Renfrew's. 'I'll take the form back to Civil Defence for you.'
I shook off his arm. 'I'm all right.'
I walked back to Civil Defence. The girl who had tried to find Jack's file wasn't there, and the first girl was. I was sorry I hadn't brought the A-114 along as well, but she scrutinized the form without comment and stamped the back. 'It will take approximately six weeks to process,' she said.
'Six weeks!' I said. 'Hitler could have invaded the entire empire by then.'
'In that case, you'll very likely have to file a different form.'
I didn't go back to the post. Mrs Lucy would doubtless be back by the time I returned, but what could I say to her? I suspect Jack. Of what? Of not liking lamb chops and cake? Of having to leave early for work? Of rescuing children from the rubble?
He had said he had a job and the girl couldn't find his work permit, but it took the Civil Defence six weeks to process a request for a few beams. It would probably take them till the end of the war to file the work permits. Or perhaps his had been in the file, and the girl had missed it. Loss of sleep can result in mistakes on the job. And odd fixations.
I walked to Sloane Square Station. There was no sign of where the young woman had been. They had even swept the glass up. Her stewpot of a boss at John Lewis's never let her go till closing time, even if the sirens had gone, even if it was dark. She had had to hurry through the blacked-out streets all alone, carrying her dress for the next day on a hanger, listening to the guns and trying to make out how far off the planes were. If someone had been stalking her, she would never have heard him, never have seen him in the darkness. Whoever found her would think she had been killed by flying glass.
He doesn't eat, I would say to Mrs Lucy. He didn't put out an incendiary in a church. He always leaves the incidents before dawn, even when we don't have the casualties up. The Luftwaffe is trying to kill me. It was a letter I wrote to The Times . The walking dead may hallucinate, hearing voices, seeing visions, or believing fantastical things.
The sirens went. I must have been standing there for hours, staring at the pavement. I went back to the post. Mrs Lucy was there. 'You look dreadful, Jack. How long's it been since you've slept?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Where's Jack?'
'On watch,' Mrs Lucy said.
'You'd best be careful,' Vi said, setting chocolates on a plate. 'Or you'll turn into one of the walking dead. Would you like a sweet? Eddie gave them to me.'
The telephone pipped. Mrs Lucy answered it, spoke a minute, hung up. 'Slaney needs help on an incident,' she said. 'They've asked for Jack.'
She sent both of us. We found the incident without any trouble. There was no dust cloud, no smell except from a fire burning off to one side. 'This didn't just happen,' I said. 'It's a day old at least.'
I was wrong. It was two days old. The rescue squads had been working straight through, and there were still at least thirty people unaccounted for. Some of the rescue squad were digging half-heartedly halfway up a mound, but most of them were standing about, smoking and looking like they were casualties themselves. Jack went up to where the men were digging, shook his head, and set off across the mound.
'Heard you had a body-sniffer,' one of the smokers said to me. 'They've got one in Whitechapel, too. Crawls round the incident on his hands and knees, sniffing like a bloodhound. Yours do that?'
'No,' I said.
'Over here,' Jack said.
'Says he can read their minds, the one in Whitechapel does,' he said, putting out his cigarette and taking up a pickaxe. He clambered up the slope to where Jack was already digging.
