She set down her cup and frowned at it. “I don’t mind Anderson shelters, but I don’t like basement shelters. I’ve seen too many rescue parties at work. May I come with you?”
He opened his mouth to tell her she’d be safer anywhere but with him, but she raised eyes filled with a strange mix of fear and bravery. He also had seen buildings collapse into their basements. He also preferred to be on top of buildings.
And she’d never reach her garden shelter before the bombers came.
“How can I argue with courage?” Hugh pulled her dark blue overcoat from a hook on the wall and held it out for her.
She slipped her slender arms through the sleeves, he settled the coat on her shoulders, and she faced him with all fear erased. Only courage remained and a spot of anticipation.
Hugh set his fedora on at an angle. “Come along, my intrepid friend.”
They dashed outside and up Regent Street. The siren had stopped wailing, and only footfalls broke the hush.
In the moonlight, Hugh didn’t need his torch to find his way, not when Broadcasting House towered before him.
At the entrance, Hugh tucked Aleida’s hand around his arm and flashed his card to the guard. “She’s with me.”
“Yes, Mr. Collingwood.” The older man let him in.
Hugh led Aleida across the Art Deco lobby to the lifts, past people coming and going to work.
In the basement, the news readers would be preparing for the nine o’clock news broadcast. Throughout the building, engineers and telephone operators and others worked around the clock. Although most BBC departments had evacuated from London at the outbreak of war, others remained, including the news department.
“It’s a beautiful building.” Aleida admired the sculpture of The Sower next to the lifts.
“It is,” Hugh said. “Sleek and modern and specially designed for broadcasting.”
The lift doors opened, and Hugh pressed the button for the eighth floor.
By the time the doors opened again and they’d climbed a flight of stairs to the roof, all had changed.
German engines grumbled above, steady and unrelenting. Bright beams sliced the night sky. Bombs thudded in the distance. Antiaircraft guns barked their reply.
Hugh went to the railing near the southern point of the building with Aleida beside him.
If this raid mimicked the others, waves of bombers would arrive throughout the night, dropping loads of death. At least the Luftwaffe had abandoned daylight raids for the past fortnight, granting Londoners a slight reprieve.
After six weeks in a row of nightly raids, Hugh was running out of fresh angles for stories. And how could he concentrate on the news with Aleida standing close to his side, the warmth of her radiating to him?
He squinted into the night. Fires arose to the south along the Thames.
“What was it like growing up here?” Aleida said. “Were you mostly in the country or in the city?”
Hugh stuffed his hands into his coat pockets and chewed on his lips. He’d spent his childhood watching through windows while Cecil played outside, healthy and hale. He’d squanderedthe early years of his education since no one expected him to live, including Hugh himself.
But Aleida’s eyes shone in the moonlight, and her coat sleeve brushed against his.
Hugh gave a vague response, then inquired about Aleida’s childhood.
To his relief, her stories spilled out with the slightest prompts. She loved and missed her parents, and she told of her cousins coming to England each summer and exploring her aunt and uncle’s estate, having out-of-doors adventures as children ought to do.
Hugh loved the cadence of her Dutch accent, the music of her laughter, and how her hands relaxed as she talked about family.
But the bombs fell closer. To the south near Victoria Station. To the northeast near St. Pancras Station. Closer, toward Oxford Street.
Aleida fell silent. Hugh gripped the railing.
Faintly through the rumbling bombers and thumping guns, Big Ben’s gong resounded. Once, twice, nine times.
