Chapter Twenty
When the siren sounded, I knew instantly what it was. With my heart pounding, I felt my way in the dark to the chair, where I’d laid out my coat and shoes. I was pulling them on when someone flung my door open and hit me in the face with the beam of a flashlight.
“Are you ready?” Meg yelled over the din. She was already zipped into her siren suit, which was made of black-and-red tartan.
“Ready,” I called back, hopping toward her while forcing my heel into a recalcitrant shoe.
The siren continued its deafening wail, rising and falling. Hank and Ellis staggered into the hallway barefoot and in their pajamas. Hank was wearing only the bottoms.
“What the hell?” he said, shielding his eyes from the flashlight.
“It’s an air raid. Come on! We’ve got to go!” said Meg.
“To where?” Ellis said, rubbing his eyes and looking confused.
“To the shelter!”
Meg and I pushed past them and ran down the stairs. I heard them clumping after us, cursing as they navigated in the dark.
Mr. Ross appeared at the bottom of the staircase holding another flashlight.
“Come on,” he said, waving us urgently toward the kitchen.
When we were all at the back door, Meg and Mr. Ross turned off their flashlights.
Meg went out first, and I could see just well enough to follow her. I stumbled and fell to my knees on the frozen earth. Someone—Mr. Ross, I realized immediately—scooped me up and propelled me forward, clutching my elbow with his left hand and keeping his right arm firmly around my waist.
Meg had thrown the burlap flap back and was already inside. Mr. Ross held me by the armpits and lowered me in, handing me to Meg.
“Mind your head. There’s a bunk at the back,” she said, pulling me in deeper and leading me to it. “There’s another above it, so mind your head there, too. When everyone’s in, Angus will get a light on.”
She sat beside me and leaned in close. I huddled against her and we clutched hands. It smelled damp and earthy, and was terribly, terribly cold.
Outside, the men were shouting. Hank and Ellis were arguing that they’d never laid eyes on the shelter in the daylight so how were they supposed to know where it was or how to get in, and couldn’t Mr. Ross shine the light on it for just a moment? He replied that he didn’t care what the hell they did or did not know, and to get the bloody hell inside.
My voice came out as a raspy screech: “Ellis! Hank! Get in here! It’s two steps down. Climb in backward if you have to, but hurry up!”
“Get in, amadain!” Mr. Ross bellowed. “Just get in!”
“I would, if I could just fucking—Hey!”
There was some kind of kerfuffle at the front of the shelter, followed by a thud, and a vile stream of curses from Hank. There was another thud, and this time I heard someone scraping toward us.
“We’re back here,” I said, reaching my arms out. My hands found the top of Ellis’s head, and then his shoulders. He was crawling.
“There’s a bunk right here,” I said.
“Conall, thig a seo!” Mr. Ross yelled, and shortly thereafter, he turned on his flashlight.
The burlap flap was closed. We were all inside. Our breath curled like smoke from our mouths, and Mr. Ross’s expression was so fierce that while I knew his eyes were blue, at that moment I would have sworn they were black.
When Ellis saw that the bunk we were sitting on was made up, he grabbed the top quilt with both hands and yanked it out from under us, nearly dumping Meg and me on the floor.
“Hey!” I said. “Was that really necessary?”
“I’m fucking freezing,” he said, wrapping himself in it.
“Throw me one of those,” said Hank, who was crouched barefoot against the corrugated wall. “I can see my goddamned breath.”
“Get it yourself,” said Ellis. “I’m as naked as you are.”
“Oh, for the love of God,” said Meg, and without even thinking I turned to help her rip another quilt loose, this time nearly toppling Ellis. She balled it up and threw it overhand at Hank. He wrapped it around his shoulders and made his way to the back of the shelter, climbing onto the bunk above us.
The wailing of the siren continued.
“You’ve not got your gas masks?” said Mr. Ross.
I glanced quickly and saw that Meg had brought hers.
“No,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”
He tossed his into my lap.
My hands shook as I tried to put it on. The smell of rubber was stifling, my area of vision vastly limited, and I couldn’t get the straps over the rollers in my hair. Meg pulled her mask on in a single fluid motion and turned to help me.
“Hold still,” she said in a muffled voice. “I just have to thread the straps through…There’s one…There’s another…Wait…I’ve almost got it…And there you are. Nice and tight.”
The combination of screaming siren and having my head confined sent me spiraling into panic. It was as though I was back on the SS Mallory during the U-boat attack. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, although clearly I could, because the inside of my mask was so fogged up I couldn’t see a thing. When I tried to wipe it from the outside, Meg pulled my hands from my face and held them against her thigh. “It takes a bit of getting used to. Just breathe normally and it will clear up.”
I closed my eyes and took deep, deliberate breaths.
“That’s it,” she said. “In through the nose, and out through the mouth. In, and then out. That’s better already, isn’t it?”
When I opened my eyes, the window of my mask was starting to clear.
“What about me? I don’t have a mask,” said Hank, from the bunk above us.
“You’d take one off a woman, would you?” Mr. Ross snapped.
Hank was silent for a moment, and then added, in a tone that could be interpreted as chastened, resigned, or both, “I don’t suppose there’s any whiskey in this tin can?”
Mr. Ross threw him a look of disgust and turned off the flashlight. The starry sky was briefly visible as he went through the flap. A moment later he returned and switched the light back on. He’d retrieved a rifle and was crouched with it by the opening. Just as I remembered his missing trigger finger, I realized he was holding it by his left side.