“What’s happened?” one of them yelled.
“There’s an air raid!” someone in the crowd shouted back. “The Luftwaffe is attacking the East End. The whole bloody sky is filling with smoke!”
Some got off the train; some stayed on; others boarded until there was no more room. Emmy could not make her way forward to be among those who got on. It didn’t matter, though, because the train didn’t move after that.
She turned around and pressed through the crowd to get back to the stairs, but there was no way to ease or push her way through. The station was full of people, elbow to elbow, and outside she could still hear the wail of the sirens, the thunder of explosives, the crackling of antiaircraft guns, and even the buzzing hum of planes.
“What’s your name?” a woman said. She was clutching a little dog to her chest. Her hair had worked itself free of its pins and spilled about her shoulders in a wacky, unkempt tumble.
“Emmeline.”
“I’m Mrs. Grote. Do you live around here?”
“Whitechapel.”
A muted boom punctured the sheltered air inside and Mrs. Grote jumped, knocking herself into Emmy. “So sorry,” she said as she righted herself. “I am not good with loud noises. Percy doesn’t like them, either. Do you, Percy? Oh, I’m so glad I was walking my dog when the sirens started,” she said, now sniffling into the scruff of the dog’s neck. “I’m so glad. He’d be home alone if I had gone to the market instead. Can you imagine?”
Emmy wanted to get away from Mrs. Grote and her dog and her chatty demeanor, but there was nowhere to go.
There was nowhere for any of them to go. The people in the station could only lean against one another and wait for the thrashing outside to stop and the sirens to fall silent.
For more than an hour Emmy hunkered in the station, listening to the muffled sounds of a battle raging above. Finally, a few minutes after six, the world outside grew quiet compared to what it had been before. The crowd of people waited expectantly for the all-clear signal but did not hear it. After several minutes, a few people began to venture out anyway, despite a warning by a civil defense official who had dashed inside with them that no one should leave until the all-clear signal. Following those who pushed past, Emmy emerged back onto the street. The sky to the east was a bright blaze of gold and gray. The barrage balloons that hovered in the distance looked pink in the strange light of smoke and fire.
Emmy didn’t want anyone asking her any more questions about who she was or where she lived. She didn’t care if the all-clear hadn’t sounded and the Germans were merely circling to come back and have at them again. All she knew was the flat was in the direction of the fires and smoke. She had to get home to Mum and Julia.
She took off on foot as at last the all-clear sounded. She wasn’t sure where she was until she saw a landmark sign for Saint Paul’s two miles away. If she could find Saint Paul’s, she could find her way home.
Others who had been sheltered and wished to be home or at least somewhere else were also on the streets. Emmy could hear snippets of their conversations. Someone had been listening to a radio. Fires at the docks were raging. Warehouses were engulfed in flames. Stores, houses, churches, and schools all across the East End were demolished, damaged, or burning.
Emmy turned to a man who said it was most severe by Tower Bridge. “Which neighborhoods? Which streets?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, love. All over. Look at the sky.” He nodded toward the direction they were headed. The rosy orange hue seemed to suggest the earth had swung off its orbit and now the sun was preparing to set in the east.
The long walk to the Moreton train station that morning seemed like a lifetime ago as Emmy dodged her way closer and closer to home in the sickly hued twilight. She knew from Mum that it was three miles from the flat to Mrs. Billingsley’s in Mayfair. She tried to hail a taxi but none of them stopped for her. Everyone and everything moved at a frenzied pace as emergency vehicles raced to the East End and survivors made their way west. When Emmy could see the dome of Saint Paul’s, she knew she was two-thirds of the way home. Just a mile to go.
And then the sirens came again.
Louder this time.
Or maybe it was just that she so desperately did not want to hear them.
Antiaircraft guns began peppering the sky over the river. She felt the drone of the approaching planes in her chest.
The scattering of people searching for cover erupted all around her but she did not join them. Emmy doubled her pace for home, despite her weariness.
“Run, run!” someone shouted. Emmy heard a whistle, almost like a flute, and then the sound became an orchestra of angry flutes. Then there was a shattering whack. Her feet were off the ground and Emmy marveled for a split second at the weightless sensation of flying. And then her head slammed against bricks and the world went silent and dark.