Night of Triumph (16 page)

Elizabeth did, but didn’t speak.

‘It’s a type of Jerry rocket-bomb. I’m not surprised you don’t know anything about them. Do you know what the V stands for?’

Again, Elizabeth said nothing.

‘Well, let me tell you. Let me put you in the picture. The V stands for Vergeltungswaffe. I read that in the paper. Ver-gelt-ungs-waffe. It means revenge weapon. I can understand that.
Revenge weapon. I’ve got one myself.’ He patted the Luger.

Suddenly Mr Ware’s thoughtful indignation gave way to the cunning grin that had been his default position all evening. He sat back, smirking at her, smoking the cigarette that made his
pupils dilate and turned his eyes into two faintly irregular discs, like dirty threepenny bits.

Elizabeth rallied.

‘What on earth do you think is going to happen to you after this? Do you know who I am?’ she repeated.

He smiled, as if she was joking, or as if she was using her resemblance to a celebrated person, combined with her class superiority, in order to cow him. Did he realise who she was, or not?

‘Werll ...’ said Mr Ware expansively. ‘Your Royal Highness. You’ve gone slumming it in London’s streets. That club had some pretty nasty pieces of work in it. You
saw some of your chums, I noticed. You ask them the things that go on. Make your hair curl. But you know it’s all basically just fun. Bit of horseplay. Nothing really bad happened, did
it?’

Elizabeth thought about Katharine’s face: her broken tooth, and what it was like kissing her, before it was broken. The memory flashed in and out of her mind, like a glimpsed photograph in
the turning pages of someone else’s magazine.

‘And William Ware, ARP officer, accompanied you to safety,’ he continued. ‘On your way home, you were able to help me with my war work. After this night’s over, you can
just forget about it all. I thought you were supposed to be hungry, by the way.’

He smoked his cigarette again, and his pupils appeared to get darker and deeper. Elizabeth obediently tried to eat her chicken sandwich. She chewed the pieces of food, found there was no way of
swallowing them, expelled them back into her paper napkin as discreetly as she could and took another sip of her tea.

‘I think I wish to be excused,’ she said at last.

Mr Ware simply frowned.

‘I wish to go to the lavatory.’

He grunted. ‘All right, then. There it is. Mind you’re not long.’

Elizabeth went round, past the café counter, and tried to catch the eye of the woman serving and the
younger girl. Both resolutely looked away. They were closing up soon.

In the tiny lavatory, Elizabeth saw what she had been both hoping and dreading to find: a small open window. By hitching up her skirt and standing on one of the handbasins, she was able to look
out. The window faced onto a tiny yard, with three big dustbins with lids just below. There appeared to be a passage leading away from the yard and round a corner. Where that led, she had no idea.
Perhaps to freedom, perhaps to a brick wall.

She heard the bark of a dog, reasonably near.

Elizabeth pressed her hand to her forehead, as if taking her own temperature. She tensed her haunches, about to climb down, then changed her mind and stayed where she was. The dog had stopped
barking. She could hear the hiss from the café’s tea urn. It was now or never.

She squeezed herself through the window, and found herself almost, but not quite, trapped around the waist. There was no way to straighten up and kneel or crouch on the sill: the window was
hardly larger than a ship’s porthole. The more she got herself through, the more emphatically she jack-knifed in the middle, with the crown of her head pointing almost directly down at the
ground. After squirming and wriggling back, and finally retreating from the window-frame, she made another attempt, this time pushing her head and both hands through the enclosed space at once; she
was now able to get palms, forearms and elbows out through the window-frame, her shoulders jammed against her ears. Again, she tilted downwards, her tummy flat on the sill underneath. With both
hands, Elizabeth pressed on the brickwork beneath her; it was the only way to advance. There was no way to control her eventual landing. She would just have to push and push herself out, and when
she began to topple, and gravity took over, the only thing to do was to stretch out her fingertips, and hope that her descent onto the dustbins would not be too loud or too painful. Would she break
her arms? Would she break her neck? The hiss from the café now gave way to shouts in the kitchen. She had to get on with it.

Elizabeth pushed forwards, and dropped. Falling through the air seemed to take a microsecond longer than she thought, enough to register her skirts ballooning around her waist. And then, crash!
Her palms entirely failed to lessen the blow of her forearms and skull against the metal discs and Elizabeth did an agonising and – she could still sense it – horrendously undignified
forward roll, and landed on her back, into which the bin’s raised edge now dug excruciatingly.

She had never wanted anything in her life more than she wanted to cry – both to cry out, and to cry, to weep with pure pain and fear. Her head, back, arms and pelvis were in serious pain.
Had she broken anything? No. She could move. She was all right. She relaxed. She almost luxuriated, absurdly, in this position, like a tailor’s dummy dropped from an aeroplane onto a
semi-upturned dustbin. The dog had started barking again and she could hear raised voices from inside the café. There was no choice but to keep moving. Elizabeth got up and started to run to
where she could see the passageway turning, then buckled slightly and almost fell with the renewed pain, and then rallied and kept moving, a continuous movement in which she appeared to crouch down
and straighten in mid-gallop.

Around the corner was a high, locked gate, with six vertical metal posts, bisected by two diagonals, angled from the top left to bottom right: the higher was at the level of her face, the lower
at the level of her knees. The dog was chained up in a neighbouring yard. Elizabeth realised that its breathing was as laboured as hers.

She began to climb the gate. Her left foot went in, higher than her right, on the sloping lower bar. Agonisingly, each instep was crushed into the metal by the angle. Pushing off from the left,
she tried to hoist her right foot up onto the upper bar and with her right hand grabbed one of the row of topmost rails, exposed like spikes. Elizabeth sagged at this stage, and hoisted up her
skirts around her waist, to give herself more room to move. With a superhuman heave, she managed to get herself up on the top of the gate, and found that the spikes were spaced just widely enough
to allow Elizabeth to squeeze her bottom down between them and sit astride it.

The dog looked up and began to bark again.

Now Elizabeth swung her other leg over and found that she had, from this vantage point, no easy way of judging where the footholds and handholds were going to be on the way down. And it really
did look like a long drop. Her body continued to tremble and shudder in a way that made the whole gate rattle. Elizabeth could now hear the back door into the yard open and someone begin to turn
the bins the right side up. They would know she had made her escape through the window. They would come round looking for her. She would have to jump, would have to do it now. At least it
wasn’t a case of landing headfirst.

Elizabeth swung back and forth, and then leapt off. Her impact on the pavement was obscured by another deafening bark from the dog. She bent at the knees in an attempt to lessen the impact, but
an excruciating pain seared both ankles.

Elizabeth could hear footsteps.

She got up and attempted to run. Her whole upper body was shaking; her lungs were burning, and the pain in her ankles meant she ran with a crazy, wobbling, splayed gait. Rounding the corner,
wheezing but still not crying with distress, she found her way into another small yard, which led back round into Piccadilly. She was free – wasn’t she?

Staggering, Elizabeth found herself back on the main street. She was opposite the Royal Academy: actually, some way west of it. She reeled, and fought a desire a vomit. Every bodily movement
exacerbated the pain she felt everywhere. Frantically, Elizabeth looked up and down the pavement – all she could see were stragglers and drunk people. She could not see Mr Ware. Was there a
taxi? No. Eerily, there were no vehicles, no private cars, just people stumbling and drifting over the wide avenue.

Suddenly, Elizabeth saw a policeman, a man with precisely that genial, tolerant and yet watchful look that she saw in the officer who had accosted them both when she left the club. Seeing her,
the man appeared instantly to break into a broad, welcoming smile. It was a good omen. She attempted a bleary smile of her own and stumbled over towards him, asking for his help, as loudly as she
could, over and over, well before he had any chance of hearing what on earth she was actually saying.

‘Now, now, then,’ said the constable tolerantly, ‘what’s all this? One too many, is it? All over the place, you are.’

Elizabeth almost collapsed into his arms, gasped for breath, attempted to say the word ‘help’ but only retched into her palms.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he smiled, with more severity now. ‘This is no behaviour for someone in uniform, VE Night or no VE Night. I suggest you get yourself on home.’

Elizabeth’s face became a grimacing mask, still she could not catch her breath. ‘It ... it ...’

‘Is this young lady with you, sir?’ asked the policeman, looking at someone just behind Elizabeth’s right shoulder, and she could now feel the Luger jammed once again into the
small of her back.

‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry about this. We’ve all been making rather merry.’

The sycophancy of Mr Ware’s way of speaking, coupled with that quaint Dickensian phrase, made Elizabeth almost sag at the knees with horror and disgust. She did in fact collapse slightly,
and Mr Ware grabbed her under the left armpit while keeping the gun barrel firmly jammed in position.

‘Will you be all right?’ asked the policeman.

‘Oh yes, oh yes, please don’t worry about us. I’ve got her now. It’s time to call it a night. It’s been quite a night, hasn’t it?’

At this moment, a taxi came past with its light on. Mr Ware smartly placed his thumb and forefinger in his pursed mouth and gave a piercing whistle.

‘We’ll be off now.’

They were bundling into the back of the cab when the constable said quietly, and ineffectually, ‘Wait a bit, aren’t you ...?’

From inside the cab, Elizabeth looked back at the shrinking image of the officer with his puzzled, suspicious face.

‘Not long, now, Lil,’ said Mr Ware. ‘Not long. I just need you along with me for this job, and then, when the sun comes up, you can go back to your life and I
can go back to mine.’

They had got out of the taxi at the Western end of Green Street in Mayfair, opposite Speaker’s Corner. A row of houses were badly bomb-damaged, and boarded up. A single policeman stood
outside to guard against looters, looking sleepy and resentful, holding a cigarette with the lighted tip inward into his palm.

‘Evening, or should I say, morning!’ said Mr Ware, stepping up to him briskly with a broad smile.

‘Yes? What can I do for you?’

‘We just have to retrieve some equipment I’ve left behind.’

‘What sort of equipment?’

‘Two gas masks, a fire axe and my colleague’s whistle,’ continued Mr Ware brightly. ‘Left in there when we inspected this property last Monday. Got to account for all the
equipment, you know. Very important we get it all back. It’s a military matter,’ he added knowingly, pointing at Elizabeth. ‘My colleague is coming with me to establish that
it’s all present and correct.

‘Where’s this kit of yours stowed?’ asked the officer, quite baffled, but too weary to argue.

‘Ground floor.’

‘Well, for Gawd’s sake mind you don’t try going upstairs. The bomb damaged the stairwell; the thing’s unstable and the whole kaboodle could come down if you’re not
very careful.’

‘Right you are, chief.’

‘Don’t be in there long.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

There was another moment of hesitation and then the policeman exhaled heavily, puffing out his cheeks, let them through the door-sized hole sawn into the boarding, drawing aside a sheet of
tarpaulin like a curtain. The second level of admission to the house was the battered and unsecured front door, which opened when Mr Ware shoved against it. It ground against the rubble and rubbish
strewn about the floor, but swung back eventually. Mr Ware pushed Elizabeth inside and produced a torch from his bag; he removed his gun as well and held it in his other hand, pointing it at
Elizabeth.

‘Don’t you cry out, my girl,’ he told her. ‘Don’t you fucking make a peep. This is it. We’re here now. We’re in! Isn’t this a thrill?’

He laid the Luger down on a surface, apparently a sideboard, and swung the torch beam around. Then he moved forward, as stealthily as a cat.

‘Yes,’ he breathed, ‘there we are. There’s the kitchen. You can see the sink. There’s the kettle. Most of the wall’s gone, you see.’

Elizabeth could see the rough lumber of the wooden boarding behind the jagged expanse of missing wall. Most of the kitchen floor, she could see, was covered in a mound of rubble that could have
been about knee-height if you tried to stand in it. She could see what looked like a smashed rocking chair on one side, whose wooden back-struts had come away, and a ruined couch at the other end,
with some cushions lying about. Elizabeth was also aware of a strange, sweetish smell.

‘V2 hit this place. One and only V2 to make the West End! I happened to be on the scene. They cleared us all out sharpish, and I happen to know they didn’t look for survivors. And
why? Because, for why, they’d been informed there were
no
survivors. By yours truly. Tonight’s the first chance I’ve had to get back in here, and to be quite honest, I
didn’t know if they were going to let me back in at all. Bringing along someone in uniform was my insurance policy.’ In the darkness, Elizabeth could just see Mr Ware wink. ‘All
right. Come on then,’ he said, pointing his torch up into the corner, where the stairs were. ‘Up we go. This is where we strike a rich seam, my girl! Get along with you,’ he
picked up the Luger and shoved it into Elizabeth’s back. From somewhere, she found the courage to speak.