Into the Darkest Day

“Sophie? Lily?” Her mother’s disembodied voice called out to her in the darkness.

“I’m here.” Even if her sister wasn’t. Her parents clearly hadn’t realized that yet.

Silently, the only light a flickering candle her father held, they all headed downstairs in single file, her mother first, followed by her father, and then her. Then out to the back garden, the siren still wailing, the air frigid and damp, the muddy ground squelching beneath their feet as they trod the well-worn path to the shelter.

Four years ago, when they’d first erected the Anderson shelter, and the government had distributed a little booklet about how to make it comfortable, they’d all approached the exercise with something almost like enthusiasm, or at least a determination not to let the constant raids get them down.

Lily’s father had built metal bunks, and her mother had stuffed mattresses and sewn sleeping bags. She’d even kept a few books and games out there to while away the time, until they’d become damp and moldy.

Yet sometime in the intervening years, enthusiasm had given way to grim endurance. As night after night had passed with droning planes and thudding bombs, as smoke-filled dawns broke with the charred smell of destruction, the once-familiar landscape now cratered and littered with rubble, women standing in the streets clutching their babies, looking blank-eyed and dazed, any sense of optimistic purpose had drained away.

Now no one spoke as they filed into the cramped shelter, the sleeping bags icy, a smell of mildew hanging in the air, everyone anticipating another uncomfortable and mostly sleepless night. In the distance, they heard the thuds of the first bombs falling, none close enough yet to be too worrisome, yet somewhere, Lily knew, someone’s house was being hit, someone’s life was being destroyed. Please God, not Sophie’s.

Once, after a particularly brutal raid, she had walked past a bombed house and trod on a mud-splattered book; when she’d bent down, she’d seen it was a wedding album with photos carefully pasted on its stiff cardboard pages, and the sight of it had made her want to cry. Lily had picked it up and given it to her mother, to give to someone at the WVS, but who knew whether it had found its way to its owner, or if there had been anyone left who still treasured it.

Lily shut down the door of the shelter as Carol blew out the candle and Richard lit the lantern they kept there. In its paltry light, Carol’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s Sophie?” Her voice was sharp.

Richard’s eyes widened as he looked around the small, gloomy space, realizing for the first time that their oldest daughter was not present.

“She’s out,” Lily said. Her voice sounded thin.

“Out?”

“She went out.” Lily didn’t know how much more she should say.

Her father stared at her blankly, while Carol looked utterly incredulous. “When?”

A whistling sound split the air, and everyone tensed, eyes wide as they waited for it to land. The thud was enough to shake the corrugated-iron sides of the shelter, and the lantern Richard had set between the bunks flickered and then steadied.

“She’s out in this?” Carol’s voice wavered.

Another thud sounded nearer then, followed by a crash. The lantern flickered and went out.

“Dear God,” Carol whispered in the dark. “Dear God.”

Richard fumbled with the lantern and lit it again. In the dim, wavering glow, everyone’s faces looked like pale, frightened moons.

“She’ll be all right,” Lily said, her voice just as thin as before, although she’d meant to sound bracing. “She’ll go to the Underground station. Loads of people do…”

“And do you remember when a bomb fell on the line, and broke through to Balham station? Two hundred people sleeping on the platforms were drowned.”

Lily looked down at her lap, biting her lips, saying nothing.

“Where is she, Lily?” Carol sounded as scolding as she had when Lily was a little girl. Her lips were pursed tightly. “Because it is clear to me that you know where she went, and who with.”

“She went to meet Lieutenant Reese,” Lily whispered. There was no question of keeping it secret any longer.

“Lieutenant Reese!” Carol’s lips tightened further, drawn up like the strings of a purse. “I should have known.”

“They were just going to the pub, the one by the Common. Just for a drink.”

“It is one o’clock in the morning,” Carol returned. “They have certainly not been at the pub all this time.”

“She’s a grown woman, Carol,” Richard said quietly. “Twenty-three last October. She’s bound to…” He trailed off as another whistling hummed through the air, followed by a thud close enough for them to hear the sound of breaking glass.

“I know she’s a grown woman,” Carol snapped. “But grown women can, and should, act with dignity and self-respect.”

“It was just the pub,” Lily said a bit desperately.