Rickett—and the potatoes and cabbage had been boiled to the point where they were indistinguishable. Luckily, the sirens went halfway through dinner, and Polly didn’t have to finish it.
When she got to St. George’s, she immediately opened the Herald and looked through the “To Let’s” for somewhere else to live, but all the rooms listed had addresses on the forbidden list. She turned the page to the “Situations Vacant.” Companion wanted, upstairs maid, chauffeur. The hired help have all gone off to war, Polly thought, or to work in munitions factories. Nanny, maid of all work. Not a single ad for a shopgirl, and nothing in the Express either.
“Still no luck?” Lila asked. She was putting Viv’s hair up on bobby pins.
“No, afraid not.”
“You’ll get something,” she said, wrapping a lock of Viv’s hair around her finger, and Viv added encouragingly, “They’ll begin hiring again when the bombing’s stopped.”
I can’t afford to wait that long, Polly thought, and wondered what they’d say if she told them “the bombing” would go on for another eight months, and that even after the Blitz ended, there’d be intermittent raids for three more years and then V-1 and V-2 attacks to contend with.
“Have you tried John Lewis?” Lila asked, opening a bobby pin with her teeth. “I overheard a girl on the way home saying they needed someone.”
“In Better Dresses,” Viv said. “You’ll have to be quick, though. You’ll need to be there when it opens tomorrow.”
That’ll be too late, Polly thought. Tonight was the night it had been hit.
She was spared from responding by the elderly gentleman, who came over to offer her his Times to her as he’d done every night thus far. She thanked him and opened it to “Situations Vacant,” but there was nothing in it either.
Lila had finished putting up Viv’s hair, and they were looking at a film magazine and discussing the relative charms of Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier. Polly’d intended to observe shelterers in the tube stations, but St. George’s was even better. It had a diverse group of contemps—all ages, all classes—but it was small enough that she could observe everyone. And best of all, she could hear. When she’d come through Bank station Sunday on her way back from St. Paul’s, the din had been incredible, magnified by the curved ceilings and echoing tunnels.
Here, she could hear everything even above the crump of the bombs, from the mother reading fairy tales to her three little girls—tonight it was “Rapunzel”—to the rector and Mrs. Wyvern discussing the church’s Harvest Fete. And the same people came every night.
The mother was Mrs. Brightford, and the little girls, in descending order, were Bess, Irene, and Trot. “Her Christian name’s Deborah, but we call her Trot because she’s so quick,” Mrs. Brightford had explained to Miss Hibbard, the white-haired woman with the knitting. The younger spinster was Miss Laburnum. She and Mrs. Wyvern served on the Ladies’ Guild of St. George’s, which explained all the discussions of altar flowers and fetes. The ill-tempered stout man was Mr. Dorming. Mr. Simms’s dog was named Nelson.
The only one whose name she hadn’t found out was the elderly gentleman who gave her his Times each night. She’d pegged him as a retired clerk, but his manners and accent were upper class. A member of the nobility? It was possible. The Blitz had broken down class barriers, and dukes and their servants had frequently ended up sitting side-by-side in the shelters. But an aristocrat would surely have somewhere more comfortable than this to go.
He must have a particular reason for choosing this shelter—like Mr. Simms, who came here because dogs weren’t allowed in the tube. Or Miss Hibbard, who’d confided on their way over from the boardinghouse Sunday—she, Mr. Dorming, and Miss Laburnum all boarded at Mrs. Rickett’s—that she came here for the company. “So much more pleasant than sitting alone in one’s room thinking what might happen,” she’d said. “I’m ashamed to say I almost look forward to the raids.”
The elderly gentleman’s reason obviously wasn’t the company. Except to offer Polly his Times, he almost never interacted with the shelterers. He sat in his corner quietly observing the others as they chatted, or reading. Polly couldn’t make out the title of his book—it looked scholarly. But appearances could be deceiving. The ecclesiastical-looking book the rector was reading had turned out to be Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage.
Miss Laburnum was telling Mrs. Rickett and Miss Hibbard about the bomb that had hit