“We can’t do anything for her now,” Grace said in a matter-of-fact tone she didn’t know she could possess in such circumstances. “We need to see if there are survivors we can help. I’ll go next door to Mr. Sanford’s.” She nodded to the wall to indicate the townhouse standing on the other side of Mrs. Driscoll’s and hoped the elderly man hadn’t suffered the same fate. He had stopped going to the shelter as well. There were too many who had.
They wanted a night of sleep in their own beds. They wanted normalcy.
But one couldn’t wish the world into its previous state. Not when it was rife with dangers.
“Will you go around to the townhouse beside Mr. Sanford’s?” Grace asked of her partner.
Mr. Stokes nodded and shuffled outside. She followed behind him, pausing only to ensure the mains had all been cut off, to prevent an explosion.
She did not turn to look back at Mrs. Driscoll again as she left.
The rest of the night was a blur, a forceful redirection of thoughts into that box in her mind. She focused on calling up her training, binding the bloodied limbs of survivors, helping put out meager fires with her stirrup pump, or sand if the oiled ground and odor indicated a recently dropped incendiary. It was one task after another until the sun rose and the night watch came to a blessed end.
On her way home that morning, despite Grace’s resolution, that locked box in the back of her mind began to rattle.
As if it too were a bomb whistling toward her. She threw open the door to the townhouse and raced upstairs as its shriek in her mind went silent.
And the box erupted.
The horrors she’d seen peppered her thoughts like shrapnel.
Sorrow for Mrs. Driscoll. Fear that Mrs. Weatherford could end up like her. Shock at how close Grace had come to being blown to pieces herself. The destruction. The gruesome injuries. The blood still smeared on her jacket. The death.
Mrs. Driscoll’s was not the only body they had found that night.
Grace threw open her bedside drawer and dug frantically at the contents until she found the identity wristlet with Viv’s neat script detailing Grace’s name and their address at Britton Street on the smooth oval surface. Grace’s hands shook so hard, it took several tries to secure it on her wrist. Once there, she slid to the floor and let herself be pulled under by the powerful wave of so much horror.
She had to deal with it now, to face its overwhelming and extraordinary force. So she could return to her shift tomorrow and do it all again.
FIFTEEN
By some miracle, Grace found sleep that morning, but as soon as she woke, the memories of the bombing were there. It was as if they’d been lying in wait, hiding in the shadows of her mind for her awareness to return.
They followed her as she made her way to the bookshop, each bombed-out building a nudge at her wounded thoughts. Buildings she saw every day on her quick walk to Primrose Hill Books had been reduced to heaps of brick with broken beams jutting from the destruction. The grocer who always reserved a few raisins for Mrs. Weatherford when he had them, the apothecary who helped them through the cutworms, the café on the corner where she was supposed to go on a date with George. And so many more. They were not the only losses. Many homes were shells of themselves, their missing walls revealing the rooms inside like a child’s macabre dollhouse.
People she passed on the street observed the damage with dull curiosity. A couple strode by, powdered with dust and clutching filthy bundles in their hands, the man’s face hard set and the woman’s eyes red-rimmed from crying. No doubt they had lost their home that night.
They were lucky to have not lost their lives.
Grace entered the bookshop and anxiously swept a loose wave of her hair over her right cheek. She’d taken to wearing her hair in pinned rolls to keep her face clear as she worked. Except that the bruised scrape on her cheek had stubbornly refused to be covered with makeup, and Mr. Evans would no doubt worry.
He looked up and narrowed his eyes, immediately suspicious. Grace patted her hair once more, self-conscious, and his attention drifted to the wristlet.
His jaw set. “I heard Clerkenwell was hit last night.”
Grace couldn’t look at him. Not with the tears welling in her eyes. She would be strong. She was better than this.
His steps thumped softly over the carpet as he came around the counter. “Grace,” he said softly. “Are you all right?”
Brushing him off with a simple yes would have been easier, but the tenderness in his tone and her aching need for comfort was too great. Even as she shook her head, his arms went around her, like a father’s, pulling her into an embrace of comfort such as she hadn’t known since her mother’s.