she said, fumbling in her shoulder bag for her coin purse, “I need a newspaper,” but he’d already shut the door.
“Wait!” she called through the glass. “Where—?”
He shook his head, pulled the shade down, and locked the door. Another siren, nearer, started up. Colin had said she’d have twenty to thirty minutes before the raid began, but she could already hear the drone of planes in the distance. She needed to find a shelter. She had no business being out on the streets during a raid, especially if this was the East End. Or even if it wasn’t. Colin was right—there’d been lots of stray bombs. And every one of these shops had plate glass windows.
There’s got to be a shelter somewhere near here, she thought. The women were going to it. She ran back up the road, looking for a notice or the red-barred symbol of an Underground station. But in the few moments she’d stood in the tobacconist’s doorway, night and fog had descended like a blackout curtain. She couldn’t see anything. And the planes were growing steadily nearer. They’d be overhead any moment.
Which meant this was the East End, and she needed to get back to the drop and out of here as soon as possible. But there was no way she could find her way back in this. She couldn’t even see the pavement in front of her or tell if she was about to pitch off the curb.
She took a cautious, exploring step forward, and crashed into someone. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see you—” And she still couldn’t. The person was only a solid mass of darkness against the more amorphous blackness of the road. She didn’t even know it was a man till he spoke.
“Wot are you doing out in a raid, miss?” he growled. “Why aren’t you in a shelter?”
“I was looking for it,” she said, squinting at him, trying to make out his features. It was unsettling, conversing with someone she couldn’t see. “Which way is it?”
“Here,” he said, and apparently he could see her because he grabbed her by the arm and hustled her round the corner and down a side street.
And I hope this isn’t one of the muggers Mr. Dunworthy was talking about, she thought, clutching her shoulder bag as he dragged her down the narrow side street. Or was it an alley, which he was taking her into to rob her? Or worse. If I get murdered my first night out, Mr. Dunworthy will kill me.
Her abductor hurried her through the dark for what seemed like miles and then stopped abruptly. “Down there,” he ordered and gave her a push forward. As he did, there was a thud and an explosion, and the sky to the south lit momentarily, outlining the buildings around them in a garish yellow-white light and illuminating a flight of stone steps directly in front of her, leading down into darkness.
Was there a shelter at the bottom? Or waiting accomplices? There was no shelter symbol on the wall next to the stairs.
There was a second explosion. She turned to face him, hoping it would illuminate the street behind him—and a path of escape. It did. It also illuminated the white letters on his tin hat.
An ARP warden. And seventy-five if he was a day. “Down there,” he ordered her again, pointing down the now-invisible stairs. “Quick.”
Polly obeyed, groping for the railing and feeling her way down the narrow, steep steps. There was another explosion, too close, but no corresponding light, and by the time she was halfway down she couldn’t see anything. She glanced back up the steps, but it was just as dark up there. She couldn’t even tell if the warden was still standing there to make certain she’d obeyed, or if he’d gone off to waylay someone else and drag him to a shelter.
If that was what was at the foot of these stairs. If there even was a foot—the steps seemed to go on and on. She worked her way down them, feeling for the edge of each one with her foot. After an eternity, she reached solid pavement and patted her way to a door. It was wooden, with an old-fashioned iron latch. She tried to open it, but it seemed to be locked. She knocked.
No response.
They didn’t hear me, she thought and knocked again, harder.
Still no answer.
What if the warden got disoriented in the darkness and brought me to the wrong place? What if