damp and cold. The beauty of the Whitehall building above her seemed a million miles away from this dim, cellar-like room that smelled dank. It reminded her of a trip she’d taken with her parents to Warwick Castle years before. The dungeons had felt cold and damp like this. As she looked around her, she hoped she wouldn’t feel claustrophobic down here. Julia shook that thought from her head. As challenging as it was, this was an incredible opportunity that she was getting. The door opened again, and a short, square woman with heavy, dark-rimmed glasses and black hair wound into a prim-looking bun eyed her with interest. The first word that popped into Julia’s mind was schoolmistress. The woman thrust out a cold, dry hand, accompanied by a tight smile.
‘Hello, Julia,’ she said, ‘welcome to the bunker. My name is Mrs Scriber.’ Her manner was businesslike but the pitch of her tone was such that Julia felt it would grate on her nerves if she had to listen to it for too long. ‘Come,’ she commanded, striding back inside, her square, matronly shoes whispering on the brown linoleum as Julia attempted to keep up with her guide’s fast pace. ‘I will be your supervisor down here. If you have any problems or questions, you come directly to me,’ she echoed over her shoulder as Julia nodded blankly to the woman’s back. ‘My job today is to show you around so you can familiarize yourself with the place. It can feel quite like a rabbit warren when you first arrive, but you’ll soon get used of it.’
As Mrs Scriber turned corners and snaked down hallways, Julia looked around her in awe. She hadn’t known quite what to expect from the war rooms. Maybe a couple of offices or separate rooms downstairs under the building. But she had never imagined anything quite like this. This was a hive of industry that burrowed throughout the depths of Whitehall. Along walls of cream-painted bricks that were dusty and smoke-marked, her guide led her past room after room of people working, with gas masks and signs warning them about what to do in an emergency everywhere, all illuminated by gloomy light bulbs.
Mrs Scriber stopped at the doorway to one room. ‘Telephone exchange,’ she announced, with a quick sweep of her hand.
Julia looked inside. Seated back to back in two rows of four, eight switchboard operators sat in front of floor-to-ceiling mahogany boxes, moving neat rows of telephone plugs in and out of their pegboards. Already busy routing calls, heads were bent low as they spoke quietly into receivers.
Hands lifted up haphazardly around the room but none of them moved their gaze from their equipment or broke from the intensities of their calls.
Her supervisor didn’t stop as she continued to weave Julia through the honeycomb of rooms, sweeping her arm towards another corridor where, lined along the walls, were dozens of bunk beds stacked with grey army blankets and clean sheets.
‘If you need to stay overnight, you can sleep here. During emergencies we can work well into the night. Sometimes there’s no point going home,’ she said with another tight smile.
As she marched on, her guide continued, ‘We have our own filtered air down here in case of a gas attack. We can be down here for days at a time if we need to be.’ She pulled back a curtained area. ‘Everybody is required to use the heat lamps that are supposed to combat the lack of light we all receive down here. You need to use those at least once a week. Strip down to your underwear and sit here for thirty minutes.’
Julia shook her head. She hadn’t expected any of this.
‘The canteen,’ Mrs Scriber said, continuing on her whirlwind tour, her hand pointing out the room to their right. The smell of something like shepherd’s pie – the war-rationed version of it, no doubt – drifted through the service hatch amid a mass of steam. In front, a large metal water boiler was steaming, lines of white mugs on a vast metal tray beside it. Through the hatch, the cook wearing a chef’s hat and a crisp white apron acknowledged Mrs Scriber with a nod as beside her a young girl in a blue-and-white checked pinafore, her hair wound up in a scarf, was making sandwiches. They passed by another room with a closed door.
‘The war rooms, dear,’ she said, cracking open the door. There was