and tap dances for the damp sullen people. For three minutes, she makes them happy. They cheer for an encore. She happily obliges. Four times she obliges, as if she is nothing but jaunty and carefree.
What is the song the kingdom shall fall for, and who will feel like a king with a crown? Florence Desmond’s spectacular double-entendre classic, “I’ve Got the Deepest Shelter in Town.”
Julian loves her so much and is so afraid for her, his whole body is in pain.
Mia, Mia.
12
Falling Beams
JULIAN WRAPS THE STRAPS OF HIS STILL WORKING HEADLAMP around an old bottle of gin filled with water. He points the bulb so it shines into the liquid, and the passageway fills with reflected ambient light. Everyone is impressed. Everyone but Finch who looks as if he wants to beat Julian unconscious in that ginned-up ambience.
No matter what goes on outside, the disposition of the Ten Bells gang rarely changes, but Julian’s mood changes. He gets progressively less jovial, and he wasn’t so jovial to begin with. They’re playing the Luftwaffe roulette every night. During the day a few bombs, a few missions. At night, hundreds of bombs, dozens of missions. Some nights, fifty tons of bombs fall. Other nights, a hundred tons of bombs fall.
A hundred tons of bombs a night. Eventually one of those bombs is bound to drop on the singular spot in the city where Mia stands or rides or walks.
It’s only a matter of when.
It’s only a matter of time.
Outside London, nothing is any easier. Coventry gets destroyed. Half of Birmingham is destroyed, because that’s where the Spitfires are made. Liverpool destroyed; that’s where the American ships dock to resupply the Royal forces. And the British Rail gets hit a thousand times. Train wagons stand on the tracks by the tens of thousands, waiting, not moving. There is nowhere to go.
There is only the Underground.
Which Mia makes her life’s mission to leave every day and night. She is always itching to be somewhere else. As if she doesn’t even care about being safe.
“Why do you always want to go outside, Mia,” Julian says, grumbling, trying to pretend he’s kidding so the others don’t notice. He doesn’t care if she notices. “There is nowhere to go.”
“Sure there is,” she says. “Like the cinema or the cabaret if you were so inclined.”
“A cinema, really?” a weary and skeptical Julian asks. Not another thing. Not one more thing.
“What is this, the dark ages?” Mia says. “Well, technically we are in a blackout, but—of course there’s cinema! I told you, we are all going to Gone with the Wind next Thursday. We have to get there early, or we won’t get a seat.”
The girls flutter with delight. Every time they’ve tried to go before, it’s been house full. There is only one matinee performance. No shows begin after dark. And it gets dark so early these late November days.
“Or instead,” says Wild, “we could spend Thursday night on the lash, rolling from one West End pub to another until we are thoroughly blitzed. Oh sorry, I thought it was August, when ‘blitzed’ carried a whole other meaning. Swedish, you in?”
“Swedish is not in,” Julian says, looking away from Wild, the days of pub crawls forever behind him. The Three Horseshoes on the Yorkshire dales has made sure of that.
“Better yet, the Windmill is still open,” Duncan says with a lewd grin. “That’s my kind of theatre. Who’s with me, boys? Jules, you in? I walked past it the other day. Sign says, Never closed, never clothed. Girls still naked as the bombs fall. Is anybody’s birthday coming up? Jules, yours maybe? Let’s go while the girls are in Covent Garden, swooning over Clark Gable.”
“You must’ve walked past it a while ago,” Liz says. “It burned last Tuesday. No more Windmill.”
“Fuck off!” Nick and Duncan and Wild cry in unison.
With the Windmill closed, the boys reluctantly agree to go with the girls to see Gone with the Wind except for Finch who makes a show of pretending to be excited. “It’ll be almost like a romantic outing, dove,” he says, taking her hand.
“Yeah, almost,” says Mia.
Julian sits and twitches.
Later, Duncan and Wild mock him for his pining face, but he wants to tell them it’s not just Finch and Mia that upset him. For some reason, the Germans love to fly over London on Thursday nights. The last three Thursdays, the city has been ignited by buildings turning into Swedish flames entire.