“Flying. And he’s found a girlfriend,” her mother told Mrs. Tranter.
“Mum?”
“Yes, love?”
“Are there any cakes left, then?”
“Yes.”
Her mother took a deep drag of her cigarette, then let the smoke out slowly.
“May I have one? Please?”
“If you have a sandwich first,” her mother said.
Again they could hear the staggered whistle-whistle-whistling as another cluster of bombs dropped from the sky, then the poom! poom! poom!
“What’s left?” Susan asked.
There was a cake tin on the floor liner just by her mother, and her mother, her cigarette’s smoke a dizzying contrail, took the tin and placed it in her lap and clawed open the lid. She poked inside. “Paste,” she said.
“What kind?”
Her mother looked. “Sardine and tomato,” she said.
Susan said nothing.
“Well?” her mother said.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, love, that’s all. What’s wrong with sardine and tomato?”
“It’s just . . . well, it gives you terrible breath.”
Her mother didn’t say anything.
“We’ve corned beef?” Mrs. Tranter offered.
“Corned beef?” her mother said.
“Jimmy. He sends tins of it from Canada.”
Her mother crushed her cigarette in the nearby glass ashtray. “Corned beef,” her mother repeated.
“Yes.”
“How—how’s Etta?” her mother asked.
“Getting shuffled about. Now they’ve got her billeted with a family of Catholics.” Mrs. Tranter thought for a moment. “You have to wonder what she’s eating.”
“Probably sardine-and-tomato-paste sandwiches, Mrs. Tranter,” Susan said.
“Susan,” her mother scolded, “don’t be full of yourself.”
“Oh that’s all right, Cless,” Mrs. Tranter said, smiling, studying Susan. “She’s lovely enough to get away with it.” Mrs. Tranter became thoughtful, then looked away. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment, “sometimes I think having my Etta here would be better than all the way up in Scotland.”
The whistling of the bombs intensified.
“At least she’s safe,” Susan’s mother said. “If Mac would let me, I’d send Susan here to my great uncle’s brother-in-law’s in—”
That’s when these bombs hit Poom! Poom!! Poom!!! closer and closer until BA-BA-BOOM! The iron roof above them shook and groaned as if tearing, and the candle went black and the earth beneath the liner trembled and shifted with a turbulence so powerful that it actually lifted them and moved them about on the floor liner as if they were afloat, and then it quelled; the shocks, they quelled and became subdued and there was an incredible ringing in their ears that with their hands covering them in the pitch blackness they fought to muffle but could not.
Moments passed. The three of them suspended from sound and earthly sensation. Then the ground finally became reliable and familiar in its motionlessness and her mother called, “Susan? Susan?” through the settling din. “Susan!”
The darkness thick and absolute; no near-blindness this but blindness and its beyond.
“I’ll—I’ll get the candle,” Mrs. Tranter said. “Wait. Here. Where? Oh God—God!”
“What?”
“The matches.”
“Susan!” her mother called again.
“Yes—yes, Mum.”
“For God’s sake! Why didn’t you answer?”
“I—I couldn’t hear,” she said. “I couldn’t hear.”
“The bloody matches,” Mrs. Tranter said. “I can’t find them. This is hell.”
“Not quite yet,” her mother said, “I’ve some—” The ringing went away enough for Susan to hear her mother grope for her purse, find it and snap open its clasp to then rummage. “Damn!” her mother said.
“I’ll go up to the house,” Susan said.
“No! No you won’t,” her mother said.
“I should go,” Mrs. Tranter said. “After all—”
“No,” her mother interrupted. “Don’t you see? There is no house. We’ve been hit,” she said. Her voice dropped to a whisper, yet one without a trace of self-pity: “Hit.”
“You don’t know that, Mum,” Susan said. She crouched over as much as she could manage and stood and half-crawled to the corrugated shelter door. With some effort she pushed the door up and open and back.
With the City under complete blackout, in the dark October sky there was a breathtaking extravaganza of light and sound. Search lights swung and columned and skimmed the sky’s dark and starry ceiling, slinging their beams back and forth, catching here and there an enemy wing, a tail, and the anti-aircraft guns would spark and punch blindly at it. The search lights all arced and pulsed and swung not as if they originated from the ground but as if they were tethered to the stars themselves and were hung in godly spectacle above both the Germans and the English, both sides a rapt and willing audience. And of course there was the whistling of the bombs’ descents and the poom! poom! when those whistlings died. And to the east, the mandarin glow of inexhaustible fires.
“Susan,” her mother hissed. “Susan.”
“It’s like—like when they’re on the trapeze,” Susan said, “at the circus.” She vaulted herself up and out and stood on the grass of the back garden. Ahead of her, through the totally black pitch of night, their house still stood. No more than a shadow but still standing. “It’s not us, Mum,” she called back down to the shelter. “Come see!”
“There!” Mrs. Tranter announced. “The matches!”
And Susan turned in time to see back down into the bunkered shelter as Mrs. Tranter struck a match and, cowling it with her hands, conveyed it to the candlestick. Light again filled the domed burrow and her mother came to the entranceway. “Who, then?” her mother asked.
“Ours, I should think,” Mrs. Tranter declared.
Susan looked about. “It’s not Mrs. Tranter’s either,” she told them.
“Alfred’ll be pleased,” Mrs. Tranter said, “if anything could please him.”
Susan looked again at her house. Through the kitchen window she could see the faintest of glows, a soft yellow, and it seemed to move. “Mum?” she said.
“Yes, love?”
“Did you—”
“What?”
Her mother stood bent over down in the shelter’s opening. The whistling descents of the bombs were more distant now and Susan began to walk through the encompassing darkness up the path and under the clothes line towards the house.
“What, love?” her mother called. “And where d’you think you’re going?”
“Did you leave a candle on or anything?”
“No.