FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1940
A stiff westerly wind toyed with Hugh’s fedora and the hem of his trench coat while he waited for the bombers.
They would come. They had come every day and every night for almost a fortnight.
The deflating balloon of a moon overhead guaranteed their arrival.
Standing on the roof of Broadcasting House, Hugh interviewed Edward R. Murrow of CBS, who was preparing to broadcast live to the United States.
Murrow’s serious dark eyes and serious dark voice drove his point home. “The people of America have heard the courage of the people of London, that calm strength. You’ve shown the world how a free people can live in the most trying of circumstances.”
“Thank you, Mr. Murrow,” Hugh said. “And tonight, my dear listeners, if an air raid should come, if the bombs should fall, we will not be alone, for the citizens of America shall be listening alongside us. This is Hugh Collingwood reporting from somewhere in London.”
Tom Young gave the signal, and the recording ended.
“Excellent, Ed. Thank you.” Hugh handed his microphone to Murrow. Young’s team would aid Murrow as well, but Murrow’s report would air live in America. Hugh’s recording would air tomorrow.
Hugh had behaved himself. In his interview, he hadn’t asked Murrow about his struggle with the Ministry of Information to be allowed to broadcast live from the rooftop. He hadn’t even hinted at how Murrow had appealed to Winston Churchill himself to obtain that permission.
Hugh had respected his editor while meeting the needs of his audience.
He joined François Jouveau at the railing around the roof and nudged his friend with his elbow. “Norman Fletcher is visiting his wife and children in the country.” Not far from the Collingwood estate, as it turned out.
Under his black homburg, Jouveau gazed hard at Hugh. “Fletcher’s no friend of mine.”
“He took Gil with him.” Hugh leaned his elbows on the railing. Fletcher had scowled at Hugh when he announced this, adding, “Not all of us have an ancestral country estate to escape to on the weekends.” Then Fletcher proceeded to deride Elliott Hastings for throwing a lavish country house party with guests staying for days—while London burned.
Jouveau raised one eyebrow.
Why indeed had he told Jouveau about Fletcher and Gil? He grinned. “With Fletcher away, perhaps I could sneak a live broadcast into the programming.”
“Is that possible?”
Hugh shrugged. “I won’t, tempting though it may be.” Not only would it end his career, but it would end Fletcher’s, which wasn’t fair or right.
Besides, his work had never been so vital. Now that London was the front line of the war, he was reporting hard news again.
Jouveau sniffed and pointed his chin to the side. “Another reason to resist temptation.”
Albert Ridley approached in his black bowler hat and Savile Row overcoat. He frowned at Hugh and glared at Jouveau.
But Hugh offered a smile. “Good to see you, Bert. I came by your office today, but your secretary said you were out.”
“I was here in London. I was in meetings all day.” His voice sharpened as if Hugh had accused him of idleness.
“Ah, but your secretary answered my question, so all is well.”
Jouveau tilted his head in Murrow’s direction. “Did you come to see the Yankee make history?”
“A circus is more like it.”
Hugh gave a nonchalant shrug. “I know live, on-the-scene reporting of air raids isn’t possible here in Britain—American broadcasting is rather more advanced . . .” He waited for his statement—though quite untrue—to awaken Ridley’s patriotic fervor.
Awaken it did. Ridley inhaled sharply. “Surely you don’t mean that. Why, the BBC is the premier—”
The air raid siren released its howl, rising and falling in lament for the hundreds of lives to be lost in the coming hours. Already several thousand civilians had perished in the Blitz.
Searchlights slashed across the partly cloudy sky.
After Ridley left to talk to Young, Hugh turned to the southeast, the usual route of attack. He would take notes on the raid, but he wouldn’t use most of them. BBC news reports typically stated, “Damage is slight and casualties are few.”
Hugh had to find other angles. Tonight, to enhance his interview of Murrow, he’d report on the reporters reporting. The British people were fascinated by Murrow and treated his team like royalty.
Hugh flipped open his notebook to a page with a bit of remaining space.
No, he needed to follow Aleida’s advice.
Under the shifting bluish searchlight beams, Hugh found an empty page, wrote the date at the top, and even underlined it as Aleida would do.
Hollow booms of antiaircraft fire sounded by the Thames in the ravaged East End.
After their first aborted date that tragic evening, Hugh hadn’t asked Aleida out again. It seemed wrong with bombers coming nightly. Besides, he now worked every night, and she had ARP duty one evening in eight.
However, he saw her at the Hart and Swan more often than ever, in the early evenings before the raids. The last two days, service at the pub had been atrocious. Mr. Irwin hadn’t come in, nor had he informed his staff of his absence.
Hugh frowned. It wasn’t like Irwin.
The bombers droned closer, and Hugh searched the skies for where searchlights “coned” enemy aircraft, trapping them in their beams and illuminating them for antiaircraft gun crews.
From his eighth-story perch, Hugh traced the streets to Aleida’s neighborhood. Had she gone to the shelter, or had she surrendered to the strange thrill felt by so many Londoners—by Hugh? Watching bombs fall like a child standing in the rain heedless of lightning.
Murrow went on the air, and a glowing cigarette jiggled in his free hand.
The Luftwaffe contributed to the punch of the broadcast, flying nearer as if homing in on Murrow’s signal, as if aiming for the American.
Hugh’s heart raced as he scratched down notes. Antiaircraft fire thumped, aircraft roared, bombs pounded a few streets away, the floor rumbled beneath him, and Murrow continued his slow, methodical report.
The raid seemed lighter than usual, maybe only a hundred aircraft, but what did that matter to those who would lose homes or loved ones?
When Murrow finished, the men on the rooftop began to depart. The raid continued, but one building was as dangerous as another. Hugh might as well take his chances in his own Anderson shelter, where he might be able to sleep.
He and Jouveau headed downstairs, then Jouveau headed east into the Soho district favored by European immigrants, and Hugh west to Mayfair.
By the filtered light of his shielded torch, he made his way through Oxford Circle past the Tube entrance. The authorities had quickly decided to let Londoners shelter in the Underground—after East Enders “invaded” stations.
Hugh turned down Oxford Street, which had been devastated in a raid only three nights earlier. At Hugh’s townhouse, the raid had knocked down artwork and plaster and sent Lennox skittering under Hugh’s bed.
Crews had cleared most of the rubble and broken glass on Oxford Street. A gaping black hole was all that remained of the John Lewis shop, but D.H. Evans and Bourne & Hollingworth were already close to reopening.
A yawn contorted his face. Like everyone in town, he received precious little sleep with air raids day and night.
Through a gap in the buildings, fiery red glowed to the south, silhouetting a handful of bombers. Now that the Luftwaffe had shifted their attacks from fighter airfields to London, RAF Fighter Command was rebuilding strength. Fields were being repaired, aircraft were no longer destroyed on the ground, and the pilots could sleep.
If only they could attack the bombers at night, but they simply hadn’t the means to locate the raiders in the dark. Only four German night bombers had fallen in September, and all to antiaircraft guns.
However, the Germans had made a critical strategic mistake. If Hitler had known how close he’d come to wiping out the RAF, he wouldn’t have switched to bombing London.
Hugh blew out a long breath and a grateful prayer, and he climbed the steps to the blacked-out townhouse.
A light shined from the sitting room, so Hugh quickly shut the door behind him.
“Mowrp.” Lennox trotted up to Hugh and rubbed against his leg.
“Good evening, sir.” Hugh let the cat sniff his fingers. As soon as he received approval, Hugh rubbed Lennox’s soft head, then down to his neck, over his arched back, then up the fuzzy gray pinnacle of his tail.
Perhaps the daily brush with death made Lennox more appreciative. Regardless, the affection made Hugh’s heart hum.
“Good evening, Mr. Collingwood.” Simmons stood in the doorway to the sitting room.
Hugh tilted his head at the butler. “You didn’t go to the shelter?”
“I was waiting for you.” Simmons’s face stretched long. “Your father rang. He wants you to ring him back, no matter the hour.”
No matter the hour? A hole as black and gaping as a bombed-out lot opened beneath him, tugging at his ankles and coattails. Had something happened to Mother?
Hugh dashed to the sitting room, to the phone, and he forced his wooden fingers to dial the operator. The connection took long, too long, but in time his father answered.
Father never rang or answered—Mother did the ringing and the staff the answering. “Hugh?” Father’s voice faltered. “Thank goodness. I’m afraid your mother is too distraught to come to the phone. Your Uncle Elliott—he’s dead.”
Hugh sank into a chair. “Dead?”
A hiccup filled the pause. “Murdered.”
Hugh gripped the arm of his chair, and that gaping black hole whirled.