A crash came from down the street, followed by the tinkling of glass. Together, they rushed toward the sound and found a group of more than twenty men climbing through the shattered window of an Italian café, shouting hostile slurs against the Italians for having sided with the Nazis.
Grace was frozen in stunned shock. She had eaten at the café several times with Viv. The owner and his wife had always been kind, expressing their own fears for London and offering extra biscuits for their tea, even with the ration on. And now the establishment the immigrants had run for more than twenty years was being ransacked.
A man exited the broken window with a chair in his hands.
“A robbery.” She lifted her whistle to her lips.
Mr. Stokes settled his hand over hers and pushed the metal from her mouth. “A retaliation.”
She jerked a sharp look at him, making out his glittering eyes in the semidarkness. “I beg your pardon.”
“Italy staked its loyalty,” Mr. Stokes replied dryly. “And it was not with us.”
She stared at him, appalled. “These are British citizens.”
“They’re Italians.” He lifted his head higher as another man exited with a sack of what might have been flour. “Most likely spies.”
“These are store owners who worked hard to build a business for themselves in London, who love this city as much as we do.” Grace’s voice pitched higher with vehemence even as her thoughts swirled at the madness of it all.
“We must put a stop to this.” She marched forward, but Mr. Stokes caught her arm again and gently pulled her back.
“Miss Bennett, be sensible,” he hissed. “There are more than a dozen men and you are only one warden.”
She glared up at him with tears burning in her eyes. “Only one?”
He slid his gaze from hers.
Another crash sounded from the café, followed by a glow of light as a fire erupted within the building.
“Cease this at once,” she shouted into the night.
Her order was met with laughter and jeers.
“Mind yourself, lest you be seen as a Nazi supporter.” Mr. Stokes’s voice was low and filled with enough caution to give her pause.
She clenched her fists as tears leaked hot down her cheeks in anger for her crippling helplessness. She shoved Mr. Stokes away from her. “How can you stand this?”
“Put that light out,” Mr. Stokes called to the men in a dispassionate, grating voice. “You don’t want bombs dropping on us.”
He didn’t look at her again as the fire was doused and a startling blackness took the place of those brilliant flames so fueled by hate.
After her shift, she could not find sleep. Not only in her worry over Colin, who had still not been heard from, but for her own impotence.
She’d joined the ARP to help. But that night, she had not helped. By not being able to stop the men from looting the café, she had been part of the problem.
She tried to read, but found that even books could not ease the burden on her soul.
The following day she was off from the bookshop, and Mrs. Weatherford had remained home as the BEF had ceased trickling in from Dunkirk. Her hope had begun to fade with the number of arrivals, especially considering how few had returned from Colin’s division.
Grace spent most of the morning in the garden, pulling weeds and inspecting the plants. Yellow blossoms had sprung on the tomato plants while those of the squash had begun to swell with yellow-green orbs. She had hoped the activity with the plants and the fresh air might take her mind from things, but she found herself continuing to prod at her wounded thoughts, leaving them raw and angry.
Upon completing her task, she tugged off her gloves and stepped out of her clogs before going into the kitchen to wash the residual grit from her hands. She was just finishing when a knock at the door sounded over the gush of the tap. Her blood went cold.
They were expecting no visitors.
The post would be pushed through the mail slot at the door.
There would be no reason for someone to be knocking, unless…
Grace flicked the water from her fingers and hastily dried her hands. Her pulse whooshed in her ears, but was not loud enough to quiet the sound of Mrs. Weatherford’s tentative footsteps heading toward the front door. Grace pushed out of the kitchen as Mrs. Weatherford accepted something from the delivery boy in a rectangular orange envelope.
A post office telegram.
The breath pushed painfully from Grace’s lungs.
There were few reasons why Mrs. Weatherford would receive a telegram, and none were good.