IN THE SUITE, THE REST ARE ALMOST DONE EATING. THE curtains are open, and the winter Thames flows below their windows. There may not be much traffic over the bridges, but Julian has never seen the river so jammed with boats and ships. It’s become the primary mode of delivery in and out of London. The Allies and the Londoners are supplied through its waters. No wonder the Germans are hell-bent on blowing up everything on its banks.
The mood of the other seven people in the suite resembles Julian’s and Mia’s. Every person around the living area, eating bacon and fried tomatoes and eggs, devouring bread with jam and butter, drinking tomato juice and tea, has a smile from ear to ear. Some, like Liz and Kate, are trying to hide it. “Liz won’t look at me,” a grinning Wild says. “Perhaps I’ve disappointed her.” He takes her hand. Sitting by his side, beet red, her smile enormous, Liz can’t look at him even more. Frankie is at the little table by the window, doing her jigsaw. But she’s smiling down into her puzzle.
Duncan is completely unsuppressed. He is the most outwardly elated of them all. There are no shadows on his joy, no pretense that he feels anything other than what he’s feeling. Both Shona and Sheila are embarrassed by his open adulation. They tell him that if he makes one remark about last night, ever, in daylight, evening light, in front of other people, any time at all, they will strangle him with their own hands.
“Strangling implies you will touch me again. So it’ll be worth it,” Duncan says. “You can do anything you want to me after last night. Anything.”
“Duncan!”
He opens his arms. “Come here, my beauties, strangle me.”
Julian and Wild grin at each other. Mia, standing over a sitting Julian, throws her arms around his neck, bends to him and whispers, “Are you jealous of Duncan, Jules?”
“No,” Julian says, kissing her forearm.
“Why not?”
“Been there, done that,” he says, pinching her skin lightly, and smiling up at her. “You mean you don’t remember? You were there, too.”
They take their time with breakfast as they wait for their clothes to be returned. They wonder if the famed bomb shelter at the Savoy is all it’s cracked up to be. They endeavor never to find out.
In the afternoon, dressed and washed and shaved and full, utterly sated in their bodies and souls, the nine of them strut out of the hotel, arm in arm, walk up Savoy Place and stand at the Strand, gazing left and right at their dominion, like conquerors. They hail two black cabs and make their rowdy way to Royal London Hospital to visit Finch. They go bearing gifts, bringing him scones from the Savoy, bacon rashers, some pre-made Pink Gin in Duncan’s flask, and even a blooming lily.
At the hospital, they learn that Finch died the night before, from internal hemorrhage. While they were drinking and dancing and carousing, having a joyous time, the best time they’ve had, possibly ever, Finch was dying.
“I feel so guilty,” Mia says. She can’t stop crying. “Poor Finch. But we didn’t do anything wrong. Happiness is not wrong.”
The air raid siren goes off while they’re still at the hospital. Sheila stays to work the emergency shift. Frankie and Kate drive off with Shona and a new doctor in an HMU. Julian, Mia, Duncan and Wild are loaned a medical jeep, this one with a plastic windshield, and Julian drives them just north of the hospital into their last fray.
That Saturday, the Germans bomb London four times. Over three hundred tons of bombs are dropped on the city. At night the moon is full again, and even the blackout and the decoy buses don’t help. At night new London is lit up like the London of old, but with enemy fire and a bright round moon.
For seven hours that night the city shakes in the earthquake of hundreds of bombs falling so close together there seems to be hardly a pause between them.
That night Kate Cozens dies, and Shona loses her leg. A bomb falls on the HMU truck while Kate and Shona are amputating a man’s mangled arm to save his life. The man dies, too.
Frankie will spend days putting together Kate’s body, so she can release it whole to her sister, Sheila.
They don’t return to the Savoy.
* * *
The acrid air is thick with smoke. There’s a prolonged rumbling sound, followed by thunder. There is unholy crashing all around them.
Grimsby Street, close to the railroad in Bethnal Green, has been almost entirely destroyed as the Germans bombed the dozen lines of tracks heading out of east London. Grimsby is opened up. What was down is now up, and what was up is now down. Houses burn out of control, many have crumbled.
But from one, awful sounds come, the sounds of live female human beings trapped under the weight of looming death.
We have to wait for the fire brigade, Duncan says. We can’t go in there. We have no hoses, no water, our truck has no sandbags or buckets. How can we help?
Duncan, listen!
We need to wait.
Duncan! Listen!
We need to wait!
Julian doesn’t disagree with Duncan.
Wild doesn’t disagree with Duncan.
Neither does Mia. But all four of them hear the unbearable sound of a young woman’s voice crying, Michael, Michael.
Wild is distraught, but he doesn’t move.
We gotta help her, Dunk, Mia says.
The fire truck will be here soon. They’ll help her.
I hate to agree with Duncan, Wild says, but it’s a bad idea to go in there.
But we’re the first ones here!
Is it our fault that Jules got here so quick? Jules, stop driving so fucking fast.
Michael, Michael . . .
It’s one thing to put out a kitchen flare-up, but Wild can’t go inside a fully burning house; everyone who knows his story knows that. No one is asking him to. Mia can’t go inside because she is terrified of fire for reasons no one but Julian understands.
Michael!
Men! Mia yells. Are you going to make me go in there on my own?
The three of them, with Wild far behind, make their careful way through the cratered rubble up to the house.
There is trouble in that house. The second floor has fallen and collapsed into the first, and all the bedrooms and furniture that were up are now down.
Two women are trapped under a bed. They must have hidden under it, and then the bed fell through the ceiling, and a dresser and part of the roof fell on top of them. One woman is badly injured because she’s not speaking, but the other one wails agonizingly, trying to point, crying Michael! It’s all right, darling, it’s all right.
When she sees the three men and a woman making their way toward her, she yells, “Not me, not me! Please—save my baby. Look. Save my baby.”
Sure enough, there’s an intact crib nearby, standing upright in the wreckage. It too must have fallen through the ceiling. Inside it, a child, caked in mortar dust, sits tangled in the cords of the fallen curtains. If he’s making any sounds, Julian can’t hear, because the air raid siren is at full throttle. It’s been twenty minutes, and the siren still shrieks, like the baby might shriek if his throat weren’t glued together with wet dust.
“Get him, please,” the mother trapped under the bedframe and the wardrobe begs. “Forget me, just get my baby.”
Every beam in the crumpling house is unstable, and the fire is raging.
Julian turns to Mia. “I’ll help her,” he says, “but you go back to the street. Don’t come in with us, it’s too dangerous. I can’t worry about you when I’m trying to help her. Please. Just turn around and get away from this. No, Wild—you stay.”
Mia returns to the street. Duncan and Julian try to lift the wardrobe off the woman. Wild stands back.
“My baby, my baby,” the woman keeps saying. “Just get my baby. Look, he’s scared. He’s stuck. It’s all right, darling! It’s all right, son, Mummy’s here. Please! Have him pull out my baby!” She motions to motionless Wild.
“Wild!” Julian yells. “Go get the kid!”
Wild shakes his head. “He’s stuck,” Wild says. “He can’t stand up.” He keeps shaking his head. “I can’t.”
“Wild! Go! Use the knife I gave you.”
“I can’t get him out with one arm.” What he doesn’t say is his brother was trapped like this, and Wild couldn’t save him even with two arms.
Julian can’t deal with Wild because he and Duncan are having zero luck budging the wardrobe. Above them, the house is burning and pieces of debris keep falling on top of them, on top of the wardrobe, onto the woman. The other woman has stopped moving or blinking. They can’t look into that face. They’re still trying to save the living.
A chunk of burning wood falls inside the crib.
The mother screams. Mia screams. Julian screams for Wild.
Finally, Wild moves. Taking out his knife, he makes his way to the crib. He loosens and cuts the drapery cords trapping the baby and frees the boy. Dropping the knife, he manages to pick up the infant like a puppy, by the scruff of his pajama suit. The boy, maybe six months old, grabs on to Wild’s neck. Holding him with one arm, Wild carries him from the burning crib, out of the house, and into the street where Mia stands with her arms out. While Wild holds him, she sticks her finger inside the baby’s mouth to clear his throat, pulling out a piece of wet wallpaper, a piece of plaster. The baby cries. He cries so heartily, he drowns out the wailing siren.
When the mother hears that sound, she calms down, stops being frantic and lies silently, watching Julian and Duncan struggle to move the wardrobe. “His name is Michael,” she says to them.
“We’ll get you out,” Duncan says. “You can call him by his name yourself.”
What’s left of the house is crackling, the fragile frame turning to tinder.
“Get out of there!” Wild calls from the street. “Get out! Duncan! Julian!” He points to the quivering roof.
“Let’s try one more time, Dunk,” Julian says. “You lift the cabinet just a few inches, and I’ll try to drag her out.” With a grunt, red from exertion, Duncan raises the wardrobe. Julian grabs the woman under her arms. He is able to move her half a foot. She is stuck somewhere he can’t see. “Just a little more,” Julian says. “You’re doing great.” He pulls the woman halfway out. “Almost there.”
From behind him, he hears both Mia and Wild scream. “Julian!” screams Shae. “Watch out!” A flaming crossbeam breaks and falls. It lands on top of Duncan and splits in two. It hits Julian across the shoulders and the woman across the face.
The woman stops moving. Duncan stops moving.
Wild is next to them. “Jules, can you get up? Dunk, can you get up?” Duncan can’t. He is breathing, but can’t stand up. One of Julian’s shoulders is dislocated. Wild helps him to his feet. With barely two working arms between them, he and Wild grab Duncan and drag him over the burning rubble into the street, and lay him down on the pavement next to Mia who’s trying to soothe the crying child in her arms. Now that she’s cleared the boy’s air pipe, he turns out to have quite a set of lungs on him. Wild takes the boy from her. He even lifts his stump to steady him. “Why are you shrieking, kid?” he says. “What do you have to worry about? Look around you. Shh.”
Mia is on the ground, touching Duncan’s face. “You okay, Dunk? What hurts?”
“Nothing,” he says. “But I can’t move my legs.”
The all clear sounds. The fire truck arrives. So does the HMU.
It’s obvious to everyone that Duncan requires the hospital, everyone, that is, except Duncan. He cannot feel his lower body. “What’s wrong with my legs?” he keeps asking. “Have they fallen asleep? Why can’t I feel them? Did I break my back? Fuck, tell me I didn’t break my back. Where is Shona? Shona! Tell me I didn’t break my back . . .”
No one wants to remind Duncan that Shona lost her leg and is in the dreaded hospital. Duncan keeps trying to grab the hem of Wild’s coat. “Wild, tell them to take me to Fixed Unit. I’ll be fine, but don’t let them take me to the hospital. Please, Wild, don’t let them take me to the hospital.”
“I’ll go with you,” Wild says, still holding the child. He explains to the new doctor how Duncan feels about hospitals.
“Where did you get the kid from?” the doctor asks Wild. “Did you pull him out of the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s his family?”
Mia tells the doctor the boy was the son of the woman in the burning house, but they couldn’t get her out. And the other woman, perhaps her sister, is also dead.
“So he’s an orphan? There’s a whole procedure for orphaned children,” the doctor says, reaching for the baby. “Give it here. We keep them at the hospital until either a member of the family comes forward, or we find a placement. The orphanage is on the fourth floor of Royal London. Lots like him there.”
Instead of handing the baby over, Wild asks the doctor to look at Julian’s shoulder. Julian is in considerable pain, and in the havoc only Wild sees it. The shoulder needs to be reset. While Julian bites down on Mia’s scarf, the doctor yanks his arm back into joint. Julian doesn’t know how he doesn’t pass out. He feels better, but not much.
“Chaps, I’m going to ride to Royal London with Duncan,” Wild tells Julian and Mia. “Dunk needs me, and I might as well get this thing to the fourth floor, like the doc said. When you’re done here, pick me up from the hospital. Jules, can you come with me to the jeep for a second, help me out with something?”
At the truck, Wild asks Julian to take some rope and attach the boy to his body in a protective sling. “The HMU jostles on the road, and I don’t want to drop him when we hit a pothole. He’ll be more secure this way.” Wild holds the infant to his chest, and Julian fashions a harness around the boy, tying him snugly to Wild. For extra warmth, they hide him inside Wild’s coat, the coat Julian bought for him. After Julian buttons it, you almost can’t see there’s a baby inside. To protect the boy’s exposed, nearly bald head, Mia fixes him with the red beret Julian gave her. “That’s okay, Jules, right? I don’t have anything else. You ruined my wool hat with your blood. The beret will keep him a little warmer. And Wild will bring it back in a few hours.”
“You’re talking about the beret, right?” Julian says.
The plump shivering mass that is baby Michael has quieted down inside Wild’s coat, stopped crying, stopped moving. Only his alert eyes with huge black pupils are open. His ear is pressed to Wild’s chest. He looks up at Wild and smiles toothlessly.
“What is he doing?” Wild says in a panic. “What does he want?”
“He’s just smiling at you, Wild,” says Mia.
“Why?”
Down the street and affixed to the stretcher, Duncan is howling, afraid they will cart him away to the hospital without Wild.
“Listen, never mind the hospital. Just head back to Bank, you two,” Wild says. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Look at Dunk, that poor bastard. I may be in for a long day. I’ll come back when I’m done. Jules, I know there are some black-market lorries near Brick Lane. Want me to pick up a few things?”
Julian reaches into his trouser pocket. He gives Wild what’s left from the sale of one of his coins, over a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds in 1940 is five thousand pounds today. “Get whatever you think we need.”
“That’s a lot of whisky, mate,” Wild says. “But we’re going to need it. A wake for everyone.”
“A wake for everyone,” Julian says.
“What do babies eat anyway? Can they have whisky?”
“If it’s laced with milk, absolutely.” Julian and Wild smile at each other.
“Wild,” Duncan calls from his stretcher. “Wild . . .”
“Pipe down, woman! Honestly, he cries more than the baby. I’ll be right there!” Wild rolls his eyes. “All right, I’m off. I’ll see you, Swedish.”
“I’ll see you, Wild.”
Julian doesn’t know why he feels such a stinging ache watching Wild and Duncan drive away in the medi truck.
“Do you know the names of the women who lived in that house?” the Incident Officer asks Mia. “I need to record it into my log book. Where is Finch? He knows everything. I can’t do this job without him. Is he not better yet?”
“Finch died,” Mia says.
The Incident Officer, who’s been everywhere and seen it all, does an unprecedented thing. He bursts into tears.