November 1940
They’d have taken the train north, but the station in Coventry was still being repaired after the air raids of the week before. Instead, Mary had called a friend of a friend, who in turn knew someone with a car they might borrow for the drive.
They’d agreed to meet outside the Tube station on Tottenham Court Road, which wasn’t far from Mary’s flat. Ruby was there promptly at nine o’clock, but it was closer to half past before her colleague came roaring around the corner in a jaunty little Baby Austin.
By the time they emerged from the tangle of London’s streets onto the motorway, Ruby was feeling distinctly green around the gills. Not only did Mary drive at breakneck speeds, freely using her horn to communicate with other drivers, but she also smoked one cigarette after the other, explaining briefly that driving made her nervous.
“You really ought to learn how to drive,” Mary observed. “It’s important for a woman. Gives you freedom.”
“I don’t disagree with you. It’s just that no one drives in New York, apart from the cabbies. There never seemed any point in learning.” Nor had she ever imagined any circumstance in which she might aspire to own anything as expensive as a car, but that was a discussion for another day.
“Didn’t you ever want to drive into the countryside? Breathe in some fresh air?” her friend asked, exhaling yet another lungful of stifling smoke.
Ruby wound down her window a few inches before answering. “That’s what Central Park is for. Acres of green, and more than enough fresh air to go around. Anyway, I thought you said you hated the countryside. That’s why you left Scotland.”
“I didn’t much care for it as a place to live, but I don’t mind a wee visit now and again.”
Ruby checked her wristwatch for the first time since she’d left; at the speed they were traveling, she judged, they’d probably reach Coventry by noon. That would give them time to visit the cathedral, or what little remained of it, and then attend the first of the mass funerals the government had arranged. Something like five hundred people had been killed on the night of the fourteenth, and they were still uncovering corpses a week later.
They would then attend the service, or rather stand by at a respectful distance, and capture the mood of the hour as discreetly as possible. On this, Kaz had been adamant, and had all but shouted Nigel down when the assistant editor had instructed Ruby to try to get quotes from people at the funeral.
“No, no, no. For the love of all that’s holy—you want her to accost the mourners at a mass funeral? Are you out of your mind, Nigel? No.” Waving off Nigel’s sputtering objections, he turned to Ruby. “If anyone seems inclined to talk, by all means listen—but do not approach anyone before or after the funeral. Not even if every other journalist there is getting quotes.”
“I understand.”
“The images of the cathedral and the ruined city—that’s what this piece will hang on. That’s why you’re going. A few months from now, it might be worth sending you back, but not now.”
Armed with a road map from Mr. Dunleavy, Ruby had acted as navigator for the trip north without too much difficulty, a near miracle given the lack of road signs and her unfamiliarity with the region. And there was no mistaking Coventry as they approached its outskirts: the closer they got, the more bomb sites they passed, and the dread of what they were shortly to witness began to weigh upon her.
At Ruby’s direction, Mary turned the car off the London Road and onto one of the ancient medieval streets just south of the cathedral precincts. On either side, the burned-out shells of shops and houses stood in mute testament to the firestorm they had endured. After only a few yards, however, Mary pulled the car to the side of the road and switched off the ignition.
“If I go any further I’ll puncture a tire, and God only knows where I’d find a spare. We’ll have to walk from here.”
The street, narrow to begin with, was choked with rubble and debris, although someone had cleared a rough path down its center. Most of the buildings they passed were in ruins, and the few that had survived, some with only broken windows by way of damage, looked as out of place as a tree on a battlefield. They picked their way forward, moving slower than a snail’s pace, and only when they were nearly at the end of the street did they notice the policeman standing at the far corner.
Since there wasn’t much they could do if he decided to be difficult, Ruby would have to win him over first. She pasted a friendly but serious smile on her face—she had mastered that smile over the past few months—and crossed the last few yards that separated them.
“Good morning, Constable,” she said, praying she had interpreted his uniform insignia correctly. “We’re with Picture Weekly magazine.” She already had her press card in her hand, and held it out to him now. “If it’s not too much trouble, we were hoping to get a little closer to the cathedral. But only with your permission, of course.”
He inspected her card, and then Mary’s, too, frowning all the while. “Come along with me, then,” he said at last. “Watch your step.”
They followed him along the street, progressing even more slowly as the piles of wreckage on either side grew higher and higher. Ruby winced as her stockings caught and tore yet again; looking down, she saw a thin line of blood trickling down her leg. She must have cut it on some broken glass.
“From London, are you?”
“I’m American, actually—I guess that was obvious as soon as I opened my mouth. And Mary here is a Scot,” Ruby answered, resigned to the loss of yet another pair of stockings. “But we both live in London now.”
“Hmm,” he said, and then, after they’d gone another few yards, “I expect you’ve been having a hard time of it, too.”
“Not as hard as you. This is awful. Were you on duty last week?”
“No. Probably the only reason I’m still alive. Station where I work took a direct hit.” He didn’t elaborate, and she knew better than to press him on it.
“When did it all start?”
“Around seven in the evening. Incendiaries were raining down like hailstones. The cathedral caught on fire around an hour later. They did their damnedest to fight it off, but what chance did they have? The roof leads just melted away.”
The corpse of the cathedral, for how else was she to think of it, now loomed before them. They approached cautiously, silently, for it already had the feeling of a place of pilgrimage. Its masonry was streaked black with soot, and its delicate window embrasures were twisted and broken, their centuries-old stained glass lost forever. It was a desecration.
They walked around its perimeter, Mary taking photo after photo, and eventually they came to a space, in the shadow of the still-standing tower, where the great church’s outer wall had collapsed entirely.
“I can’t let you go in. We’re busy enough as it is without having to rescue the pair of you,” the constable stated gruffly.
“Of course,” Ruby said. “We’ll stay here.”
So she stood and stared and tried to make sense of what her eyes were showing her. The cathedral was entirely open to the sky, for what remained of its roof had collapsed into a mountain of rubble, and every bit of its interior decoration, every treasure it had once contained, lay buried beneath the ruins. She was looking at a building that had stood for something like seven centuries, weathering all that history had thrown in its path, and in one night it had been obliterated.
“The king was here a few days ago,” the constable said quietly. “He stood just where you are now. Had the same expression on his face as you have now.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“No, he was ringed round by the mayor and people like that. But he walked by me, close as you are now. Never thought to see the king with my own eyes.”
She nodded, fixing his words in her memory.
“The thing is . . .” he began.
“Yes?”
“What happened to the cathedral is awful. Standing here, looking at it, anyone would agree. But five hundred people died that night, maybe more, and hundreds more lost their homes. Seems like all anyone wants to talk about is the cathedral. And I’d have thought that all those people dying is worse. I mean, you can rebuild a church. But you can’t bring the dead back to life, can you?”
“I’ll talk about them. The people, that is. I’ll write about them in my article.”
He nodded, swallowing awkwardly, and then, turning away, scrubbed a hand across his face.
“We’re meant to go to the funeral,” Mary said, her voice soft and strangely tentative. “Is it at the cemetery we passed on the way in?”
“On the London Road, yes. Straight back the way you came.”
“May I have your name?” Ruby asked the constable.
“John Stevens.”
“And may I quote you, Constable Stevens? What you said about the people who died and so on? And use your photograph? Everything we print has to pass inspection with the Ministry of Information,” she added, sensing his hesitation.
“All right, then,” he said after a long pause. “I said it. Might as well stand by it.”
They thanked him and shook his hand, and as they made their way back to the car Ruby repeated his words in her head over and over, not wanting to forget or change them in any way. As soon as they were seated and Mary had reversed around for the journey to the cemetery, Ruby pulled out her notebook and scribbled down their conversation in shorthand. Mary’s photographs would be the backbone of the story, but the constable’s words would be its beating heart.
The funeral was easy to find, for they simply followed the trail of people dressed in black walking along the side of the road. Mary parked the car just inside the cemetery gates, pulling onto the verge next to a handful of other vehicles, and they walked the remaining distance to the burial site.
Seeing Mary’s camera, a policeman directed them to an area where a clutch of other journalists was gathered. Ruby knew some by sight, having encountered them at the occasional MOI press conference, but apart from perfunctory greetings no one spoke.
They stood some yards distant from the graves, four endlessly long trenches that ran parallel to one another, and which were as deep as they were wide. The government had mandated this mass funeral—mass burial, to be brutally honest—as a measure against disease, and also to spare families the expense of burying their loved ones. The unacknowledged fact that so many of the dead had been burned beyond recognition had surely also been a factor.
The assembled dignitaries took their places as a convoy of trucks drew up nearby, the bed of each vehicle laden with plain, tarpaulin-covered coffins. One by one, the coffins were lowered into the trenches. Ruby stopped counting after a hundred and fifty.
The Bishop of Coventry, dressed in magnificent vestments and a steel helmet, said some words that were carried away by the wind, then another churchman recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, and that was all. No music, no hymn for the mourners to share. Only the distant drone, far above, of a pair of fighters that wheeled and turned like watchful eagles. “To stop Jerry from bombing the funeral,” someone whispered.
The service at an end, mourners began to approach the trenches, silently setting down wreaths at the edge, or casting single flowers, many of them fashioned from paper, onto the rough, unadorned wood of the coffins below. Soon the graves were all but obscured by the tributes.
Ruby was glad of Kaz’s injunction against approaching any of the mourners, many of whom looked to be still in shock; many were bandaged or hobbling on crutches. She hung back, as did the rest of the assembled journalists, and only once the mourners had dispersed did she go in search of her friend.
“Best be on our way,” Mary said. “I don’t much fancy trying to find my way around London in the blackout.”
They stopped at a roadside café outside Daventry for a late lunch of greasy sausage rolls and astringent tea.
“I’ve been wondering—”
“Oh, no,” Mary muttered.
“Wait until you hear my question. How come you don’t carry around a load of gear? I’ve only ever seen you with your camera. Where are your lenses and whatnot?”
“Don’t use them. I’m not much of a photographer, to be brutally honest.”
Ruby rolled her eyes in dissent. “I beg to differ. I’ve seen your pictures, remember?”
“Thank you. What I mean is that I don’t know much about photography, not technically, I suppose you could say. I know how my camera works, and I can get it to do just about anything I want it to do, but I’m rubbish with flashes and lenses and the like. What’s the point of a long lens, anyway? I need to be close to someone to take their picture.”
“Close enough to see the whites of their eyes?” Ruby said with a laugh.
“Pretty much, yes.” And Mary picked the camera off the table and took three pictures of her, one—two—three, just like that. “There. Something for you to send home.”
“Thanks. That’s nice of you. Except, well, there isn’t really anyone at home,” Ruby said, her gaze fixed on the chipped spout of the teapot at her elbow. “I’ve no family anymore.”
“What about friends? You seem like the sort of girl who’d have no end of friends.” Mary’s voice was gentle. Careful.
She shook her head. “Not really. The people I knew in New York were friendly acquaintances, but not much more. Not . . . not really,” she ended, realizing too late that she’d repeated herself.
“Well, you’ve friends here already,” Mary said. “Will you look at me a moment? Come on—you know I won’t bite. There. Now listen to me: you have friends here in England. You do. And you mustn’t ever forget it. D’you hear?”
“Yes, Mary,” Ruby said, and then she had to look away again. That, or risk crying for the first time in living memory.
“Now finish up that wretched excuse for a sausage roll so we can be on our way.”
They’d just passed Watford when Mary abruptly pulled onto the graveled shoulder.
“Do we have a flat tire?” Ruby asked.
“A what? Oh, you mean a puncture. No—the petrol’s nearly gone. Need to top it up.” Mary got out, tilted her seat forward, and pulled out a rectangular metal jerry can. “Hope this is enough to get us home.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to drive around with containers of gasoline? What if we got in a crash?”
“Didn’t have a choice,” Mary explained as she tipped the fuel into the Austin. “It’s not my car, so I don’t have my own petrol ration. Had to buy it off my friend. Oh, hell—I’ve gone and got it all over my hands. If Nigel gives me any guff about paying me back, I’ll make him regret it, so help me I will.”
They got back in the car, Mary still complaining about the smell of the gasoline on her hands, and set off again. They were both feeling very grumpy and hungry when they arrived back in central London, the light fading fast as Mary drove down Shoot-Up Hill.
“Why don’t you drop me at the nearest Tube station,” Ruby suggested. “You need to get the car back before the sun goes down.”
“You don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind,” Ruby insisted. “Look—we’re coming up to Edgware Road. Just set me down here. See you tomorrow?”
“That I will. Not at the crack of dawn, mind you. I’ll need a lie-in after today.”
THE NEXT MORNING Ruby had been hard at work for a few hours before she happened to catch sight of the calendar hanging on the newsroom wall. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before?
“I can’t believe I forgot about it,” she muttered to herself.
“Forgot about what?” asked Nell.
“Thanksgiving. It’s today.”
“Your American holiday? The one where you say thanks to the Almighty for your freedom from Mother England?”
“Ha, ha. No, Peter—it’s more to do with the Pilgrims and their first harvest meal. At least that’s what I learned in school.”
“So what do you do? Go to church?”
“Most people just share a meal together. A big one, with roast turkey and potatoes and pumpkin pie. There’s a parade in New York, too, with huge balloons and floats and sometimes even movie stars walking down the street, and the last float is always Santa Claus on his sleigh.”
“Pumpkin pie? That sounds like something dreamed up by the Ministry of Food,” Nell observed, her nose wrinkling.
“It does, doesn’t it? But there’s more cream and sugar in it than actual pumpkin. At least I think there is. I’ve never made one myself.”
“You going to celebrate?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not feeling like there’s much to be thankful for. Not this year,” she said, adrift on a sudden swell of homesickness.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” said Nell, not unkindly. “There’s plenty of others who wouldn’t mind being in your shoes.”
“I know. You’re right, I know.”
“Sure I am. So let’s celebrate your odd American holiday with a spot of lunch downstairs.”
That night, huddled on her camp bed in the hotel’s basement, waiting for the all clear to sound, Ruby let her mind drift across the ocean to New York. Last year she had watched the Macy’s parade on her own before going home and eating Thanksgiving dinner with the other boarders. It had been a good day, if a bit lonely at times.
She’d lived in England for five months, and in all that time she hadn’t written to anyone back in New York, nor had anyone there tried to keep in touch with her. Without quite meaning to, she had found a home in London. It wasn’t forever, though, for the war would end one day, someday, and she would go back.
Back, but not home. For here, in this battered and stubbornly beautiful city, where death and destruction fell from the skies night after night, she had finally found a home. Here was the one place in the world where she truly belonged. And that alone, she decided, was reason enough for thanksgiving.
Dispatches from London
by Miss Ruby Sutton
November 26, 1940
. . . The foundations for Coventry Cathedral were laid in the 1300s, roughly two centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World, four and a half centuries before America won its freedom, and almost six centuries before the Empire State Building became the tallest structure in the world. Yet the end of 1940 sees it in ruins . . .