“At work, putting in extra shifts at the motor works. Would you girls like tea?”
“Not for me, thank you,” Eve replied. The fire in the range had gone out on this warm September day, and besides, she knew how dear tea was in these days of ration books and pinching pennies.
“Oh, you’ve brought pure gold!” Iris’s granny exclaimed when Iris gave her the packet of sugar. “God love you for it, darling.” They carried a chair outside for her, and Eve and Iris sat beside her on the stoop, watching the swirl of activity in the street while they told her about their new jobs and three-room flat. Few people owned cars in this neighborhood, nor could they afford the petrol to drive them, but bicyclists and pedestrians strolled past, enjoying the lovely fall afternoon. Barefoot children played in the streets. A year ago, children had stood in long queues in the train station waiting to be evacuated. Now here they were, back home again.
The sun slipped lower in the sky. The damp, fishy odor of the nearby Thames drifted on the breeze. “We should probably be on our way,” Eve finally said, standing and stretching. “It must be after four thirty.” That’s when they’d planned to leave, but Iris had lingered, hoping her parents would return.
Then, above the clamor of children at play, Eve thought she heard a rumbling sound, like a distant waterfall. She remembered that sound from her time in Dover with Audrey—the hum of airplanes. Her pulse quickened.
She hurried out to the middle of the street, wading into a lively game of tag, and looked up. High in the distance, hundreds of airplanes filled the sky, glinting in the waning sunlight like a swarm of silvery insects. The children stopped playing and looked up, too. “Surely they’re ours,” Eve murmured as the rumble grew louder. But their shape was all wrong. And there were so many of them. Eve stood frozen in place, not with fear exactly, but with astonishment. Was this really happening?
“What is it?” Iris called to her, but before Eve could reply, the dreaded siren began to moan, shivering up Eve’s spine like an electric current. Wailing Winnie, people called it. The sound swelled as it rose in pitch, screaming a warning—loud and urgent. Eve’s instincts demanded that she run, like the children who were scattering in every direction. There had been air-raid warnings in London before, followed by small raids and a few clusters of bombings, but never such an enormous cloud of aircraft as this.
She sprinted toward Iris, shouting, “Where’s the shelter? We have to get to a shelter!” Ten minutes. Once an air-raid warning sounded, that was all the time they would have to get to safety. Iris’s granny stared as if she didn’t understand. She hadn’t seen the deadly swarm of enemy planes, but Eve had. She took the old woman’s arm and lifted her from the chair. “Where’s the nearest air-raid shelter? Do you know where one is?”
“Can’t we just go in the house?”
Eve glanced at the little shanty with its sagging roof and crumbling chimney. It resembled a cottage in a children’s fairy tale that might blow over with a huff and a puff. “No, it isn’t safe here,” she said. “Come on, we have to go!”
They followed the crowds of panicked people running down the street. Eve hoped they knew where to go. Iris’s granny couldn’t move very fast, so Eve and Iris slowed to match her pace. A squat, brick shelter crouched at the end of the block, and the mob funneled through its narrow door. Women screamed as loud thumps from falling bombs began sounding in the distance. Eve glanced over her shoulder and saw plumes of smoke rising in billowing columns. And still the planes kept coming. They would surely bomb the nearby docks along the Thames. The gasworks. And the Ford Motor Works, where Iris’s parents worked. Factories and warehouses filled London’s East End, which was why so many families packed the neighborhood.
Clanging fire bells added to the chaos as fire brigades sprang into action. Volunteers from the Auxiliary Fire Service poured from their homes in helmets and boots, turning in circles as if wondering what to do in this first test of their meager training. One of the barrage balloons, tethered from steel cables to entangle low-flying aircraft, exploded with a loud blast, bringing a shower of debris raining down. Eve felt the push and crush of people and wrapped her arm around the older woman’s waist as she and Iris tried to hurry her along, all three of them mute with fright.
They reached the public shelter at last. Why wasn’t it underground? Frightened people jammed the interior. More fought to cram inside. Iris found a place for her granny to sit and they huddled beside her as if they could protect her from the accelerating thumps and booms outside. Children clung to their parents. Women moaned and prayed. An old man shook his fist at the ceiling. Above the clamor, the roar of planes kept coming and coming. They were overhead now.