“The War Emergency Hospital,” Sister Gabriel said. “In Orpington.”
This Way to the Air Raid Shelter?
—NOTICE ON LONDON STREET, 1940
London—10 September 1940
IT TOOK EILEEN UNTIL TWO THE NEXT DAY SHUFFLED from bus to train to bus again—to get the children to London, by which time she’d spent over half of the money the vicar had given her on sandwiches and orange squash and reached the end of her patience with Alf and Binnie.
I am delivering them to their mother, and then I never want to see them again, she thought when they finally arrived at Euston Station. “Which bus do we take to get to Whitechapel?” she asked the station guard.
“Stepney’s closer than Whitechapel,” Binnie said. “You should take Theodore home first and then us.”
“I’m taking you to your house first, Binnie,” Eileen said.
“Not Binnie. I told you, my name’s Spitfire. Any rate, our mum won’t be there.”
“And if you take Theodore first,” Alf said, “we could help you find his street. You’ll likely get lost on your own.”
“I don’t want to go—” Theodore began.
“Not one word,” Eileen said. “Out of any of you. We’re going to Whitechapel. Which bus do we take for Whitechapel?” she asked the guard.
“I don’t know as you can get there at all, miss,” he said. “It was hit hard again last night.”
“I told you we should go to Stepney,” Binnie said.
“What sort of bombers were they?” Alf inquired.
“Shh,” Eileen said and asked the guard for the bus number.
He told her. “Though I doubt they’re running. And even if they are, the streets’ll be blocked off.”
He was right. They had to take three different buses and then get out and walk, and by the time they reached Whitechapel, it was half past four. Whitechapel looked like something out of Dickens—narrow, dark lanes and soot-blackened tenements. A pall of smoke hung over the area, and off in the distance Eileen could see flames. She felt guilty at the idea of abandoning Alf and Binnie to this, and even guiltier when she saw a tenement that had been bombed. One wall still stood, curtains at its blown-out windows, but the rest of it was a mound of timbers and plaster. Part of an upended kitchen chair stuck out of the mound, and she could see pieces of broken crockery and a shoe. Alf whistled. “Will ya look at that!” he said and would have climbed onto it—in spite of the rope barrier—if Eileen hadn’t caught hold of his shirt collar.
There was another mound of rubble on the corner and, at the end of the next street they crossed, the blackened skeleton of an entire row of houses.
What if when we get there, Alf and Binnie’s home has been hit? Eileen thought worriedly, but when they turned in to Gargery Lane, all the houses were intact, though they looked as if a good, hard push could topple them, let alone a bomb. “We can find our way from ’ere,” Alf said. “You needn’t go with us.”
She was sorely tempted, but she’d promised the vicar she’d hand them over to their mother personally. “Which one is yours?” Eileen asked him, and Alf pointed cheerfully at the flimsiest-looking tenement of all.
And it must be theirs because when she knocked on the front door, the woman who answered growled, “I thought we’d got rid of the two of you. You stay away from my Lily.”
When Eileen asked if Mrs. Hodbin was home, she snorted. “Mrs. Hodbin? That’s rich, that is. She’s no more a missus than I’m the Queen.”
“Have you any idea when she might be home?”
She shook her head. “She never come home last night.”
Oh, no, what if she’d been killed in the bombing? But neither the woman nor Alf and Binnie seemed worried. “I told you you should take Theodore home first,” Binnie said.
“I’ve brought Alf and Binnie home—” Eileen began.
“Spitfire,” Binnie corrected.
“—Alf and his sister home from Warwickshire for the Evacuation Committee,” Eileen said to the woman. “Can I leave them with you till their mother returns?”
“Oh, no, you’re not going to land me with them two. For all I know, she’s gone off with some soldier again, and then where would I be?”
In exactly the same position I am, Eileen thought. “Well, is there someone who could watch—?”
“We ain’t babies,” Alf protested.
“We can stay by ourselves till Mum comes back,” Binnie said. “If this old cow’ll give us our key—”
“A good beating, that’s what I’ll give you,” the woman said, “both you