Christmas 1940
Ruby hadn’t expected to spend Christmas Eve in an air-raid shelter surrounded by strangers. Nor had she expected she would enjoy it so much.
With Christmas falling on a Wednesday, everyone at PW had worked well into the afternoon of the twenty-fourth. That way, they might then have Christmas Day off without falling too far behind. Before they left, Kaz treated everyone to dinner at a nearby chophouse that hadn’t been aired out or given a good scrubbing for the better part of a century. Despite its scruffy interior, the food on offer was good and plentiful, and even included roast turkey as a main course.
Kaz produced a bottle of red wine, which they used to toast the king, the prime minister, and finally absent friends, among them Nell, who had gone home to see her fiancé, back on leave for a few precious days, and Nigel, who had declared to everyone that he detested Christmas and was going to stay with like-minded friends in Reigate.
As they ate, Ruby’s friends regaled her with descriptions of the traditions and customs they observed in their families, and nearly all of them were unfamiliar to her.
“A Yule log, no. Pomanders, no. Bread sauce, ecch. Definitely no,” she commented. “I did know people who left out stockings for Santa—Father Christmas, that is—but I never did.”
“What did you do at Christmas?” Mary asked.
For a moment, she considered admitting the truth. Describing for them the grim reality of Christmas in an orphanage.
The charity baskets filled with cast-off toys and clothes that nobody else wanted. The bishop’s annual gift of improving books that depressed rather than consoled. The knowledge that Santa Claus left presents only for children in real homes with real parents. It had been a relief to discover he wasn’t real.
But what would that serve, apart from depressing everyone? Better to skim over the details and let her friends enjoy their lunch. “When I was young? Nothing very special, apart from going to church. And we would usually have turkey.” But only if someone had been generous enough to donate a few birds to the nuns. Otherwise it was whatever would stretch to feed all the children. One year they’d only had porridge and molasses.
Nearly halfway through the meal, Mary finally asked the question that had been weighing on Ruby’s mind all day. “Where is Bennett? I thought we might see him tonight.”
“I’ve no idea,” Kaz admitted. “I’d hoped to hear from him, but I expect he’s busy with work. Not to worry, though. He’ll make an appearance before long. Certainly before we ring in 1941.”
At this, Mary’s expression brightened. “There’s another tradition for you. Hogmanay. Scots for the last day of the year.”
“I’ve sung ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Is that part of it?” Ruby asked.
“It is. Just after midnight is the important part. That’s when you invite the first footer to pass through your door.”
“‘First footer’? Is that some kind of dance?”
“No, no. It’s the first person to come into your house, to set foot in it first, after midnight. They set the luck for the year, so you need to choose just the right person. The best luck comes from a tall, handsome man. Bennett would be perfect.”
“What about me?” Kaz asked plaintively. “Won’t I do?”
“With that sandy head of yours? Not at all. You’re bad luck. No, dark hair is best.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, there’s the gift to bring. My gran always preferred salt, but coal will do in a pinch. Or whiskey—I’ve never known anyone to turn up their nose at a bottle of good Scotch.”
The sun had set long before they finished their supper, but Ruby wouldn’t let Kaz ring up a cab for her. “There’s enough moonlight still for me to see well enough, and I know all the shelters on the way home. I’ll be fine.”
He looked doubtful, but she stood firm and he had to accede. “Very well. Happy Christmas, Ruby. We’ll see you on Thursday.”
She wished the rest of her friends a happy Christmas and set off for home. She knew the best route to take, along roads that were wide enough to catch some moonlight, and even though it was a solid half-hour walk, she made it back before the first sirens of the night had sounded.
That didn’t happen until nearly eleven, and although the all clear sounded less than an hour later, she decided to stay put in the basement. It was warmer there than in her room, to start with, and she knew some of the other long-term boarders well enough to wish them a happy Christmas and smile as they settled onto their respective camp beds.
It was usual, in the shelter, for everyone to observe a sort of informal curfew after nine o’clock or so, with no conversation above a whisper, and certainly no music or singing of any kind. But tonight was different, of course, and when a man on the far side of the basement began to sing “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” nearly everyone else joined in.
Ruby hadn’t sung carols for years, not since she had been a very little girl, but the lyrics came back to her, and without quite meaning to she found herself singing “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” and “Silent Night,” part of a choir of near strangers in a damp and rather smelly basement. And it was, with the possible exception of the concert at the National Gallery, the most beautiful music she had ever heard.
THAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Ruby and her colleagues worked hard to make up for time lost earlier in the week. She was struggling with her story, a piece on cosmetics shortages that felt irrelevant no matter what approach she took, and when Kaz called a halt to work at six o’clock she was more than willing to set it aside.
She had just switched off her desk lamp and slid the canvas cover over her typewriter when something made her look up. There, leaning against the doorway to the newsroom, was Bennett, and he was watching her. Smiling at her.
He had a black eye, she noticed suddenly, and a deep cut on the bridge of his nose, too. “What happened?” she asked.
“That bloody motorcycle again,” Kaz answered, brushing past his friend. “He never learns.”
Bennett simply grinned at her. “I lost a fight with a tree branch,” he explained.
“See?” Kaz said.
“I’d have ducked if I’d known it was there.”
“Are you back in London for a while?” she asked.
“A few days. We’re long past due for a meal at the Victory Café. If you’re free, that is.”
“That would be really nice,” she said, acutely aware that every one of her colleagues, Kaz included, was looking on and imagining far more than a simple meal shared by friends. “I’ll just get my things.”
They walked east along Ludgate Hill, moving slowly in the near-total darkness of the blackout. There was no moon at all, not even the thinnest crescent of waning silvery light, and it seemed to Ruby that her toes were magnetically drawn to every uneven patch of pavement and upended cobblestone. If it hadn’t been for the support of Bennett’s arm, she’d already have tripped a dozen times over.
“Did you have a nice Christmas?” she asked, hopeful for the solace of some easy conversation.
“Not really. It was rather lonely, I’m afraid. And you?”
“On Christmas Eve I had supper with Kaz and Mary and some of the others from work, and then I spent the night in the hotel shelter. We sang carols.”
“Did you go anywhere on Christmas Day?”
“No, I just stayed at the hotel. I didn’t mind, though.”
“Do you have any plans for New—” he started to ask, but the rest of his question was cut off by the rising wail of the air-raid siren. A heartbeat later, it was joined by the rumble of fast-approaching planes.
“Bloody hell,” he swore. “A little notice would be helpful. We’re not even at Temple Bar.”
“What should we do? There’s a shelter at the office.”
“We’re closer to the Tube station at St. Paul’s. Can you run in those shoes? Yes? Then take my hand.”
Together they ran through the night, his touch leading her forward through the swallowing darkness. They turned left, away from the churchyard, zigzagging through narrow, deserted streets that were completely unfamiliar to her.
“The dome of St. Paul’s shines white,” he explained. “On a dark night like this it’s a beacon. We need to get as far away from it as we can.”
Incendiary bombs were rattling down on the rooftops around them, here and there dropping onto the pavement to hiss and buzz impotently. “They won’t explode,” he cautioned. “Keep running.”
They veered left again, onto an even narrower lane, but as they turned the corner her heel caught in a grate and she fell hard on her knees. Without a word, he dragged her to her feet, hoisted her into his arms, and set off running again.
“I’m fine, Bennett. You can put me down.”
“We’re almost there. Not until then,” he said, his voice betraying no sign of exertion.
“I’m too heavy—”
“Nonsense. When I was in the infantry, my pack weighed twice as much as you.”
He ran on, not halting until they were well inside the station’s deserted entrance hall, and set her down at the top of the escalators.
“Switched off, naturally. Bloody things. Are you fine to go on?”
“I am. Lead the way.”
They hurried down the escalator’s stationary steps, first one long run and then another, drawn to the promise of light and refuge that beckoned, just out of sight, just around the corner. The platform was crowded, but Bennett, taller than most, spied a place where they might stand. It was at the very end, hard by the tiled wall that marked the beginning of the tunnel, and there was just enough room for the two of them.
The crowd was pushing her closer and closer to Bennett, and though she tried to maintain some kind of a decent distance between the two of them, before long she would have to choose between him or any one of a half-dozen strangers flanking her sides and back.
“Don’t be shy,” he whispered in her ear before gently pulling her forward. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”
It felt so wonderful to lean against him and let her head loll against his chest. Never, in all her life, had anyone comforted her so, and even the kisses she’d enjoyed from would-be boyfriends had been offered without the solace of a supporting embrace.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when the ack-ack guns started up. “We’re near a ventilation shaft,” Bennett explained, his voice calm and measured against her ear. “It amplifies the noise from outside.”
“It was just . . . I was startled, that’s all.”
“Of course. Now . . . what were we talking about before? I was going to ask what you had planned for New Year’s Eve.”
“Nothing, to be honest. And you?”
“The same. And I’m leaving London again for a bit, otherwise I’d offer to take you to dinner. To make up for tonight.”
“I see . . .”
“You know what we need? A diversion. Something lighthearted to talk about. Any suggestions?”
“I’ve plenty of ideas, but none of them are lighthearted.” How was she meant to think of something joyful when fleets of bombers were doing their best to exterminate them?
“You’re not making this easy. Let’s see . . . how about your favorite poem?”
“My favorite poem?” It was such an incongruous thing for him to ask that she nearly burst out laughing.
“You tell me your favorite poem, and recite it if you’re able. Then I tell you mine.”
“I don’t have one,” she admitted. “We didn’t really study poetry in school.”
“You didn’t? My ten-year-old self is exceedingly envious of you.”
“I doubt that,” she said, and this time she couldn’t suppress a giggle.
“It’s true. The horror of my childhood was being ‘set’ a poem. I was expected to memorize yards and yards of verse, and not only at school. My father was a great believer in making children memorize things.”
“You poor dear. Do you remember any of it?”
“God, yes. They might as well be burned into my brain. What would you like to hear first?”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“Of course I do. That’s part of the game. And how else are we to pass the time? Since our respective social calendars are all but empty.”
“Fine,” she agreed. “Go ahead and pick something.”
“Hmm . . . let’s start with some Milton.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom Thunder hath made greater?”
He peered down at her inquiringly. “What do you think? It’s from the beginning of Paradise Lost.”
“How long is it?” she asked cautiously, not enamored of the few lines he’d recited so far.
“The whole thing? Goes on forever. I can only remember bits and pieces from the first book, though. How about some Shakespeare? There’s Sonnet Ninety-Seven:
“How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!”
He really did have the most beautiful voice, deep and hypnotic and perfectly modulated, and very nearly transporting enough to make her forget where they were. In a courtroom, she imagined, his voice alone must have made him a formidable opponent.
He finished that sonnet and recited a second one that spoke of love being a fever and desire feeling like death, and then, almost without pause, Keats’s “Ode to Autumn,” which she decided immediately was her favorite, and then a long poem by Wordsworth about daffodils. It was so comforting, the sound of his beautiful voice, and after a while, when the noise of the bombs had begun to lessen, and the smell of smoke wasn’t quite so choking, she began to hope that the worst might be over, or at least close to being over.
“Did you learn about the Spanish Armada in school?” he asked suddenly. “No? The story has been polished and prettied until there’s hardly any truth to it, but I loved it when I was a boy.”
He told her how Spain had tried to invade England when Elizabeth was queen, and how, when the enemy fleet had first been sighted, and Sir Francis Drake had been informed, he’d decided to finish the game of bowls he was playing before sailing out to engage the armada in battle.
“It sounds too good to be true,” Ruby said. “As if someone decided it would make an inspiring story after the fact.”
“You’re right,” he admitted, “but it also says something about the way people thought of the man. Just imagine what they’ll be saying about Churchill five hundred years from now.”
“Is Drake your favorite hero? If you had to choose one?”
“If I had to choose one person from history? I suppose it would be Lord Nelson.”
“The man from the top of the column at Trafalgar Square?”
“Him indeed. When he led our fleet into battle in 1805, he’d already lost an eye and an arm in previous battles. Can you believe it? And even though it made him a target for French sharpshooters, he insisted on wearing his full admiral’s regalia, along with all his decorations. Partly it was vanity, I think, but mainly it was his way of leading from the front.”
“He won the battle, didn’t he? I do remember a bit of it from school.”
“He did. It was a near-total rout of the French fleet, but he was shot through the spine before it was done. He died three hours later. One of the last things he said was ‘Thank God I have done my duty.’ When I read that for the first time I wept for hours. I was only six or seven, and my uncle had given me a children’s guide to history for my birthday.”
“Do you think Lord Nelson was ever frightened?”
“Undoubtedly. A truly courageous man is the one who knows what he is facing, is scared to death, and still does what he must—does his duty, as Nelson said. The man had many faults, but cowardice wasn’t one of them.”
She meant to answer him, but she was so exhausted it was an effort even to stay upright. So she simply stood in his embrace, and after a while she wrapped her arms around his middle and rested her head against his chest, and he didn’t protest or move away.
And she was so very tired. Even through the lull in bombing over Christmas, she hadn’t been able to settle into sleep. It had become a habit, the awful wakefulness that came with being blitzed, and although she was really good at taking catnaps during the day, and could sleep in a chair in a pinch, she longed for peaceful slumber the way a starving man might hunger for a crust of bread.
The ground began to shake in earnest, really heave and tremble as she was sure it must do in earthquakes, and the stench of smoke and cordite and God only knew what else drifting down through the ventilation shafts spoke mutely of the fires that were raging above and around them. Even then the bombs kept tumbling from the sky, closer and closer until she held her breath in heartsick anticipation.
“I thought I’d be braver than this,” she told him. A confession, while she still had the chance.
He was a serious man at the best of times, but for some reason her words drew out his rare smile. “Who’s to say you aren’t? Brave, that is.”
“Just look at me. My hands are shaking. I’m shaking. I thought I would be brave, but I . . . I can’t stand it. I can’t.”
“You can. You will. And you’re not the only one who’s afraid. We all are.”
The crescendo of explosions climbed to a heart-stopping pitch, and along the length of the platform hundreds fell silent, waiting and bracing themselves and praying that this one, this next bomb, would fall somewhere else, anywhere else. Not here, not tonight. Not yet.
“I’m so afraid,” she confessed through gritted teeth.
His arms tightened about her. “I know.”
“You won’t let go, will you?”
“No. No matter what happens, I won’t let go.”
He held her close and tucked her head under his chin, and with his quiet strength he soothed her through the long, endless hours that followed. Her brain knew she was no safer in his arms, but her heart, illogical organ that it was, told her otherwise.
She lost track of time after that, for her next recollection was of the siren’s rising wail and Bennett’s soft touch as he brushed her hair off her forehead. “The all clear just sounded, Ruby. We made it.”
His face was streaked with dust, all but hiding the bruising around his eye, and the cut on his nose looked so awfully sore. “I can’t believe it,” she said haltingly, her mouth and throat gratingly dry.
“Shall we get you home?” he asked, and rather than answer she just nodded. He led her upstairs and outside, and though she was so tired that every step was a monumental effort, she somehow managed to climb the stairs and greet the day.
It had snowed overnight, just enough to whiten the pavement and rooftops, and were it not for the fires still raging in every direction, she’d have been delighted by the sight.
“The cathedral!” she cried out, remembering.
“Look south—see? The dome still stands. It survived, as did we.”
Gently turning her, he led them north, along sidewalks crowded with others making their way home in the first light of dawn. It was almost impossible to see anything beyond the backs of strangers’ heads and, far above, a sky still burnished red by fire. They were almost home, though, for they’d crossed over Manchester Avenue and—
“Ruby,” he said, stopping short and pulling her close. “Oh, Ruby.”
Only then did she look up and see. The Manchester was gone, and in its place was a smoking, devastated, and all-but-unrecognizable ruin.